 time with just an ownership linkage, some ends, and budget information, as the other green stuff that we're going to be going over. It's likely to have a fair number of folks in person and online. So, does anybody have any desire to change the layout of the agenda before we get started? So, we're going to move right into public comment, and before we get started with that, I'm just going to read a short statement about public comment so everyone is on the same page. The board welcomes comments, but it is not able to take any action on them other than to direct the public to the appropriate staff member or to the complaint procedure. Comments are limited to three minutes per speaker. Time may not be ceded to another speaker. Comments are to be addressed to me, the board chair, or the board as a whole, not to any individual on the board, on the staff, or in the public. Please raise your hand and wait to speak until you are asked to by me. Please identify yourself with your first and last name in your town of residence. Please refrain from restating comments that have already been shared. You can express agreement with those comments. Order and decorum shall be observed by everyone. Shouting and profanity are prohibited. As the board chair, I will maintain order and decorum of the meeting. So, with that, do we have some folks who want to speak? If you can raise your hand if you're online. Beverly Taft and then Tiff Kelman. Okay. So, Bev. Hello, everybody. I know some of you already know me, but for those of you that don't, my name is Beverly Taft. I'm a community member and homeowner in Randolph, as well as having had the honor to work with our students in the district for the past 19 years, 19 out of my 22 years in the profession. I can state without hyperbole that the past five years have been unlike any years I've had in education. Societal turmoil and the pandemic have left very few of my students unimpacted. Whether it was fatigue or my getting sick with the seventh cold this year, that's my exaggeration, I found out some disheartening news on Monday evening and I burst into tears after shortly finding out there was a possibility that our district could lose seven direct service employees. This hit hard. While I understand the impact of common level appraisal as having all districts decreasing enrollment and yet to be settled CBAs, I come to my board members to plead the case that now is not the time to make cuts to direct services and that in doing so, our students with the greatest need will be the most effective. Yes, there has been a slight decrease in the number of IUP's individualized educational plans at our U. However, we have seen the highest number of 504s. Those are plans for students with or new Americans with disabilities act with significant and complex mental health needs, which has also impacted their learning. When this is combined with the overall compromise executive function of our general population from trauma of the pandemic, I have not seen a level of need this great in my 19 years at our U and my 22 years as a school counselor. These cuts will significantly impact our tier two supports and creates inequity, unfair inequity for our most struggling learners. Reduction workforce and services is not in the best interest of our children and the greater community. This is the last place we should focus cuts. As more and more schools are called upon to provide a long list of services that are not met through community agencies. To cut positions of those in direct services to our children can do irreparable harm. Thank you. Thank you, Beth. Ted. Thank you. I'm going to talk right now. I'm just at my own time. I'll try to keep myself honest. I'm Ted Combin, his school social studies English teacher. I'm also the president of the association. And yeah, I'm here because I'm really concerned about the impact that we are being contemplated if an active would have on student learning. And I'd just like to share a few kind of downstream effects that the board may not be thinking about that I perceive as potential if this goes through. The point I'd like to make is that the logic of right sizing is about eliminating waste and maximizing efficiency which makes good business sense, but it doesn't always make sense in a educational context. I think it's important to realize that what on paper looks like a late teaching load or an under enrolled class often translates into the flexibility and space that teachers need to do things like collaborate to build relationships with students or families to develop more ambitious and innovative and exciting classroom experiences to sub for each other when people get sick and we can't get subs which has been an almost daily occurrence for the past few years and to adapt to unexpected things that come up which, believe it or not, can happen and has happened a couple of times. So that's one point. Another point I'd like to make is that we're really concerned about our ability to deliver our tier two supports to students with these riffs. Tier two supports, as you may know, are interventions that are less intensive than what special education services would entail but beyond what classroom teacher can kind of provide through the time they have allocated with students. Currently, as we have mentioned, our coordinator of those services has a case load of more than 40 504 students. Which I'm not sure perhaps this is a side effect of our reduced spend population but in any case that's another impact that I'm concerned about. And a third one is that nearly half the teachers in this district have been here for three years or less and almost a quarter of folks working in the district this year are new hires and having such high turnover is really inefficient and also has a really corrosive effect on staff morale and student learning. And it feels like ripping seven direct service positions is kind of a recipe for the folks who are here next year having to do more with class. It doesn't feel to me like a recipe for cultivating a staff of veteran, skillful, committed teachers who are going to be able to go the extra mile for our kids. So I believe that if the community's goals and the board's goals are to raise test scores and math and reading to sustain and expand on innovative, authentic community-based and project-based learning to address the staggering levels of trauma and behavioral challenges and learning challenges that are being fueled by that and be resilient and adaptable when things don't go as planned then I urge you to reconsider the risks that are being covered. Thank you. Thank you, Kat. I'm Richard Hyden. I'm a Brooklyn resident but I'm going to speak with my teacher today because I work in this building as a sixth grade teacher. Just to add on, I hope I'm not repeating anything here. I think I'm heading on, but looking at the positions that are considered to be cut, I don't know where they are being cut from but from the lens of were they to be cut from this building. We, for the first time, have had an academic interventionist in this building this year and we are lucky when we get to utilize her services because most of the time she is pulled to cover for those who are out. So were we to lose her, then we would have zero intervention. That's not an exaggeration. We'd have none. And then I think towards our social worker who's here half-time, her services, having someone full-time in the building who can support students, who some of them are in crisis, has been an absolute gun changer compared to when we didn't have that service. And if we did not have someone there, a student in my class who is struggling for whatever reason I say, I really don't need to go and see that adult in question. Were they to not have that safety net that would make a massive difference to their well-being and their ability to function in the classroom? So again, I would add to the course to urge to reconsider cutting these positions. They are massively impactful. Thank you. Hi, my name is Andrew Glenn. I'm from Brookfield and I am a special educator at RUHS. Although it is vaguely something that Tav had mentioned, I would like to speak as a special educator. So much of the efficacy that we experience with students with disabilities come from the relationships that they have with the special educators and direct support staff, whether it be service providers or parents. And yeah, just the inconsistency and some of the turnover would, I think, be very detrimental to not only the students who we serve on IEPs and 504s, but really all of the other students as well because what's good for them is good for everyone. Andrew? Anybody else, if you're logging in online, if you'd like to speak, please put your hand up. I don't see anybody. Thank you very much. So we're going to move on. The last time we were together in our meeting, we had the annual report to voters that Chelsea and I had worked on with Ben Merrill. So everyone was going to be reading through that and letting me or Linda or Chelsea know if you wanted to have any changes. We didn't hear of any. And so you're presenting this as the report to go in the brochure that goes out to all the voters. So I need a motion to accept it unless someone forgot and there's something egregious that needs to be fixed in here. So do I have a motion to approve the message to the voters? I make a motion to approve the message to the annual report. A second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Okay. So that is done. You can have your hand up too. So next, we need to set the date for the budget information meeting. So that has to happen 10 days before town meeting. So the suggestion which I'm not getting too confused, this one would be March 1st at 6 p.m. March 1st at 6 p.m. And we typically do that in the RUHS auditorium. The Thursday could work as well if that's more convenient for the board, but the Wednesday looks like things are nice and wide and open. So that's the Wednesday March 1st. And that's the budget meeting. That's where we do discuss the budget with the community. I do the presentation partially of which which I'll do in front of the board tonight as well. There's also the March 6th date which is the annual meeting. That's always the night before the vote. So that's already when you approve the warning or if you approve the warning today I'm just going to be back. Yeah, and that meeting is so and I don't know the history of that meeting but that's the annual school district meeting. So it's one not run by me it's run by Peter and Alan and we elect the treasurer who I found out from Linda doesn't want to be the treasurer anymore. So we're going to need to hopefully find someone Linda was saying that. Well then Linda was the backup we had Teresa up in Brookfield right in the town offices that was the right and she let Linda know that she doesn't want to do it anymore. So we're going to be looking for a treasurer and then we also elect Linda as the clerk and I don't know do we elect Peter as the moderator for the next year. Yeah, so that it's just kind of I need to then you move into the basically the floor votes on the dollar amounts that will be going out for vote the next day. Yeah, so that's March 6th. So everyone should make sure they have that on their calendar as well. So that's March 6th at 6pm. Yeah, and that'll be again the annual school district meeting. Why is that I don't know that's what I'm saying. I think it's described by state law. So it's just following whatever ancient law was there for that process. Do we have a way to have really good description of what the treasurer's responsibilities are? Yeah, I think Robin would probably I mean we can I can do a broadband email and invite people that may be interested. They have to be nominated for that night. Yeah, let me write a note. Okay, so but right now we're trying to figure out when the budget is going to be. Right. And Lane does the presentation. So he's suggesting March 1st. I like March 1st. You like March 1st. Everybody March 1st seem to work. Okay. You got the notes chosen. Awesome. Alright, so March 1st at 6pm in the RUHS auditorium. RUHS auditorium. Okay, next up we have just an update on the ownership linkage. We can start with the ownership linkage committee. I believe we have a date. Yeah, it looks like for the ownership linkage committee we were looking at this third Wednesday monthly. That seems to be the most everyone said Wednesday work for them. Okay. So the 18th so that would mean that next Wednesday would be our first meeting of that committee. At what time? We thought 5.30. Or would you prefer 5? Do people have a preference 5 or 5.30? An hour is what we aim for. Yeah. Five. I can do five. Megan can you do five? That might be a little early for you getting home right? I can make it work. You can make it work? Perfect. So monthly third Wednesday of the month at 5pm. 5pm. And that will be virtual. We do need to have a a link. No physical location. Oh yes, after January 15th. Yeah. I could be the link and go to the high school because I'm the closest I think. And then I'll just see if I can be there. We can find a location. So we would need to get that out for public warning buying by this Friday. 48 hours ahead. It's 48 hours and remember in your thingy in your binder you can look that up if you forget. Okay. So for now I'm going to say RUHS media center. So at time let's hit 5 to 6pm. 5 to 6pm RUHS media center and what day? Third Wednesday of every month so at 18th this month. I just want to make sure because I'll be the one that's doing the morning. And we'll need this thingy set up. What do you call it? A special board? The owl. Right, the owl and the smart board or whatever it is. Okay. And then Heather is just going to update the board. Remember at our last meeting I believe or the November meeting we directed the administration to do a portrait of a graduate student. Experience for our community to use it as a way to be able to check in to make sure that our ends are in line with sort of where the community is in terms of the outcomes that the school system is working towards. So Heather is Yes. In conjunction with the ownership and leakage committee and in my role as the district equity coordinator we are moving forward with this vision to engage the community in the creation of the OSSD portrait of a graduate. We had hoped to launch this work in January but due to the availability of facilitators we now expect to begin in early January. We received bids from facilitators from across the country but we selected a local vendor which is a Vermont based nonprofit organization that is committed to empowering youth and adults to reimagine and transform education together. Up for learning? Up for learning. They also have many other initiatives that we also engage in in conjunction with Gifford Medical Center and they really are focused on engaging the students in the work. We'll begin with a student retreat where students are brought in as leaders in this work. So they will be doing a lot of the data collection and analyzing the data and be deeply involved in the creation of this aspirational document. This facilitation will go on will be over 120 hours of service from this organization and will cost approximately $16,000. This will be fully funded by federal grants that are set aside for creating community engagement in schools and for equity work. So really excited about this and that concludes my report. Awesome. So what is the start? So I have a meeting with them tomorrow to set exact dates. Their first date of availability is February 3rd and then they subsequently are available on February 9th so I'm hoping to set dates for student work and then immediately after that do the community launch. But I haven't snagged them yet. So Friday afternoon I will have more information to share which I will share at our I guess our 8th meeting on the 18th our meeting on the 18th which I've already added to the calendar so that we're sure we're going to have a great meeting. Awesome. This agenda is so tiny. Excellent. So next up we have the monitoring reports on the financial planning and budgeting and the emergency succession for the superintendent succession succession and those we had last month so hopefully everyone had a chance to read through them again as we look at them we are looking to look at is the interpretation of the policy reasonable and translated into a reasonable compliance standard is there sufficient rationale for the interpretation and the compliance standard and is there enough evidence or observable conditions to say that it has that it is in compliance so the first one up is the financial planning and budgeting and remember we do this so that it sort of coincides with the next time that we are in the budgeting process so hopefully everyone had a chance to review are there any questions or concerns regarding this monitoring report I have I just found two typos I don't know if we want to bother with those or I can just show them delaying afterward but they're good defense does that get older and tired or my eyesight is I'm sure it's one of the their words spelled correctly it's just that it was the wrong word so instead of in it's is instead of is it's if so it's not a big deal but so do we have a motion then to approve EL 2.4 seconded by Sarah any discussion all those in favor say aye any opposed we'll move on to the next so the next one feels a lot for me anyway feels a lot nicer in that we now have an assistant superintendent so they're right there able to move into position and I really liked that you added just that procedure is that somewhere where would that be found on is it on the website or yeah it's one of those quirky ones so one of the things that makes life difficult for administrators is you've got so many different layers of laws federal and state laws you've got AOE regulations you've got local regulations as well this is an AOE regulation so it's directly from there their manual so is it where would it be so I purposely put it in the executive limitation report so that you have access to it so we have it so that's where we would look at it usually you try to connect the procedures with the policy so this is a quirky one because it's an executive limitation policy so I've actually put it in there as the procedures so if you have to go back and look it's a little bit difficult to find information sometimes on the AOE website because there's just so much information out there but it's also findable there as well but that was the most recent update from the secretary of education in terms of you know a succession so I appreciate you putting that in there so are there any questions regarding the report I move to accept policy 2.5 I second any discussion okay all those in favor say aye aye any opposed okay so those are accepted approved next up we have the budget presentation from Lane and because we are going to be having a vote on this we will be able to open up to public comment again so once folks hear a little bit more from the presentation we will have an opportunity to be heard so I'm going to actually do two things and I apologize because things will probably go a little longer than expected I think as you got my emails the CLA's the common level of appraisals came in towards the end of December break and they were potentially catastrophic the amount of change that was there and so we spent 2 or 3 days ready for this reading scramble and around trying to find the best way to address that that was fair and just and would hopefully allow us to pass the budget and so because there have been some changes to the last presentation that I give you which really kind of delves into the details of yep 70,000 for this 60,000 for that I'm going to throw those slides up there a fairly quick fashion just to show you what the changes are and then we'll go over to the more formal presentation that we typically do at this session which is really kind of bottom line dollars and cents you know what potential tax rates would be I'm actually going to throw out two different scenarios when we get to the second part of the presentation and that's actually looking at okay if we keep things steady state this is what people's potential tax impacts will be if we go back and take a look at the 6.6 um position cuts two of which aren't really risks two of those are actually positions that either somebody has vacated and we haven't been able to fill out a position that we haven't been able to fill out so it would just be limiting positions that we don't have people in anyway right now so what I'll do is I'll do those two presentations so this is what your tax burdens across the three towns would be if we don't do any riffing if we reduction in force and this is what the tax rates would be if there is reduction in force have a discussion about it I hope to do with the folks that are here and then from that discussion you know I can make a recommendation to the board and then we can make a decision and so that's one of the reasons that the sheets that were handed around tonight you'll see like the warning you know there's two versions of it those cuts without so give me a second I'm going to try to actually do this through the presentation mode so the folks at home can see it a lot easier as well so give me a second to get that set up then on this computer and hopefully any don't set up a big feedback loop but the sound goes crazy something's happening behind me that's a good thing actually we can start here so anything that's highlighted is a change from our last discussion and if folks have questions on those that are in there from the past just holler it includes folks in the audience as well so these were the new expenses that kind of generally applied to the district as a whole you know trickled into all the schools in one shape or another the majority of them are focused around the board's end right the Carnegie Math is the program that we brought in to meet that kind of foundational math then we've got the robotics which falls under the digital literacy STEM and ELA GO's Witten Wisdom and Foundations those are ELA programs that we have brought in to show the foundational end in English, writing and reading Project Lead the Way is an engineering program that we are looking at bringing in for next year we've got the lead curriculum to revamp our health curriculum some time for the curriculum directors that we have we have too to spend a little time over the summer to do their planning for how they're going to roll out professional development to the staff over the course of next year we have a boot camp that we put in place a few years ago and what that is is all the new teachers come in for a week and learn all the new initiatives that we've been working on so that they can hit the ground running with everybody else on the first day of school the other kind of general expense in there is an increase in transportation and that is due obviously to the predicted increase and the cost of fuels a couple of new things that we've discussed in the last week or so that are actually additions to this we've been developing a homework policy there are a lot of things that this district has not done historically that normal schools do and so we are trying to make sure that we are connecting with those normal things and regular reasonable homework that's of high quality is one of those things especially in terms of how it supports learning and retention as we transition to that because it hasn't existed before there was a lot of concern of if the kids are grappling with something new that they haven't had to do how do we best support them the activity bus that runs seven days a week so the students can say after school get some help and then hop on the bus and get home seems to be an ideal way to do that the other reason for the activity bus is that as we're coming out of COVID a lot of students have suffered you know they've been isolated there's a lot of trauma based behaviors of a different sort than we've ever seen before and the more we figure that we can get the students involved in the extracurricular activities after school whether it's the robotics program that's going to be expanded next year whether it's just the sports teams whether it's the drama club to give them a way to get home after those extracurricular events should expand how many students participate so this is a trial run and the research has been clear for years and years and years we've been involved in these extracurricular activities the more engaged they are in school and the less likely and less time they have to engage in risky behaviors outside of school we just add in terms of equity we have a premier library package that's been used at RUHS and RES for years it's only fair that the two smaller schools get that as well especially considering that we're increasing the number of librarians in both of those two buildings and then grade team leaders as we have been engaging in this massive amount of curriculum work across all the areas identified that are in need of foundational knowledge and the board's ends we had a need to build a hierarchy of leadership especially at the teacher level that can help us make sure that all those things that we're working on and all the plans in place are trickling into the classroom and these folks will be fully engaged in helping us roll out the curriculum work helping us review the assessment data using that to inform instruction have those deep discussions with their departments so that they can say hey we're doing really good here let's celebrate that, hey we're suffering a little bit here in terms of our interactions with the kids on these standards differently and how are we going to plan that out and what activities are going to develop to make that happen so again, things that normal the regular schools in and around the country do the district is historically not one of the things that we will talk about as we get to the more general dollars and cents of the budgets and people's tax rates is we have increased spending a significant amount but two years in a row the revenues that we're generating are far outpacing our spending so for the last two years at least in terms of the schools impact on your taxes we've been bringing your taxes down CLA, that's a whole different ball game that's not within our control we'll talk a little bit about that so the revenues that we've got rolling in this year that we talked about a little earlier is that act 173 that census block grant that's the money that helps pay for special education services we're expecting the CLA $234,000 increase there was a huge increase in the property yields this year which relates to how much we get from the ed fund per student that we have so much so that we are going to receive an extra $1.7 million because of that increase we have a large number of students that pay tuition to go to our schools that currently sits as of the end of last year at $465,000 a year there over the course of time during the COVID years that people remember that have been to some of the budget meetings we have surplus money at the end of each year and what I have been doing because we couldn't predict what the financial landscape was going to be you know with all that uncertainty I have been building a structure of having subsidy money available each year to help subsidize and bring down folks' taxes so from previous surpluses there was $746,503 already there to subsidize next year's budget and based upon the new surplus amounts that we will talk about tonight is that something else that you need to vote on is there will be an additional $350,000 that is added to that and again all of this was we got those CLA's in full crowd we were doing really well because we were actually going to be asking less from the taxpayers for a second year based upon what happens within the school but those changes in people's property values threw that to the wind and so we are doing everything we can to maintain our services for students while being as reasonable as we can to the taxpayers no change here we are adding a para at the preschool level in Brookfield just to make sure they get the staffing they need to handle the number of students that we have that is going to be a very successful program we have full day preschool for free for all four year olds in the district brain tree we did make an adjustment here this is actually an addition we had already talked a little bit about increasing the library and media aids that broke brain tree in Brookfield that is to provide extra time for teachers for planning over the course of time I am going to try to get them up to 5 days a week plus it supports the digital literacy ads that we have their enrollment has increased enough that they are going to have problems in a couple of their classes if we do not give them another classroom teacher that addition of this classroom teacher will keep their enrollment numbers in their classes between 14 and 17 which is right in line with what our role in policy states Brookfield no change just the library media specialist again to provide additional planning time for the teachers within the school and to be able to interact with each other so here is two of the potential cuts Randolph elementary and again we cut positions not people so whoever is in this position may very well have bumping rights but we are looking and considering the academic interventionist Randolph elementary as well as a building para there Randolph elementary is way out of sync with the other schools in terms of the amount of support staff that they have they actually spend more in terms of staffing salaries for support staff than they do for their instructional teachers that taken into account in the fact that the first time in decades the work that we have been doing in special education has our IEP numbers falling this is an inappropriate move we don't have the students to be able to maintain this we would have basically an extra teacher for them RUHS we talked about earlier on the stuff that is not highlighted is things that we discussed last time drug and alcohol counselor that is moving over from RTCC we need that there there was a huge increase in substance use during the COVID pandemic that still exists especially the increase in vaping so we need those services the life skills again that is a board end that we are building into next year career exploration is Jason Finley mostly to provide transportation to get the students out and about for internships and job shadows and things like that the Saturday attention piece that we talked about this is another structure that a lot of schools have it's supposed both academics and improved culture if we are moving to a homework policy and if the teachers are providing students with quality assignments that they are supposed to do they have to book for not doing and so between the after school time and the Saturday time students will be expected to come in and make that work at those times and hopefully get the message that yeah this is serious we need you to take it seriously and hopefully over the course of time they begin to start to do it on their own the current structure is that they have x-blocks within the school day that detract from time on learning and academic courses and I worry that the students are actually being enabled not to do the work on their own to get that self-sufficiency because they know they can always not do it and show the x-blocks the two potential cuts there we have a physical education teacher 0.6 this is a person who will not be returning next year so it makes sense to eliminate that position there are ways to jiggle the other students around on the teachers and students and then there are two academic teachers on math and ELA and so before people freak out about that it's important to explain the logic of why those were chosen these were actually noticed my first year here in the core classes these are if I could draw this out somewhere but if you imagine that you've got five teachers teachers typically teach five classes in the core areas they teach four classes and have what's called the learning lab the learning labs have been historically ineffective and so the easiest thing to do is to eliminate the learning labs take the sections from that fifth teacher put them on the other four teachers these guys now have a full schedule and now I have somebody who doesn't have enough students for us to be able to supply them with so it's a teacher that we don't need so these cuts can be made without changing either class size or impacting the learning that the students are getting in their core classes and so those would be two teachers there and again contemplation doesn't mean that we're pulling the trigger but all the things that we're looking at to try to make sure this budget passes for everyone special education a lot of this is due it's kind of interesting this dynamic that we've got going on there's a lot of ads there um we've got fewer students on IEPs but the students that are moving in are much more expensive to serve so the overall number of students on IEPs has gone down but we've got a number of students that have moved in over this last year that are very expensive so you know if I have two students that go out that you know each require 30,000 a piece in services that's 60,000 total but I got a student that moves in that requires 170,000 services numbers have gone down a lot so you see this shift in where our need for services is you know there's a pair educator for a one to one we've got some heavy hitter students that are going to tuition out for a while to get really focused service hopefully be able to return back to the school within 45 days of that placement because of these students are being tuitioned out to other places transportation associated with that that we have to account for there is a need for occupational therapy that has been growing especially with the younger students that are coming in so we need to shift some budgetary resources there and then we had brought in a speech and language pathologist to work with our youngest kids as they're coming in the door in preschool of the kindergarten because the state had identified us for identifying students with speech and language problems you got too many compared to the nation odd IEPs and so this was our solution that we worked out with the state it was okay so we'll get a speech and language pathologist in here to work with our really really young kids and really try to capture the problems early and fix them early so they don't develop and get worse over time and eventually need an IEP and that has been successful students that are coming in with visual impairments that need specialized equipment so that's a one time purchase we do have a number of teachers when we look that have a very limited number of students on their caseload for next year like 7 you know typically you see anywhere from 10 to 14 is kind of a norm that can be different depending upon how heavy hitter a student is but we reasonably can make a cut without affecting services for students again we have a gigantic surplus of support staff at the Randolph elementary school and so we're looking potentially at RAS social worker that is there a lot of that was built up over time some of it was to compensate for the fact that they didn't have a second administrator there which they have now and so the second administrator can take over many of those services that these folks were providing contractual and mandatory we talked about this last time these are the dollar amounts that we don't have much control over right either there's contractual increases that we've agreed to with our various unions there's health insurance increases there's inflation how it impacted supplies and heating other utilities that we have to pay for so those are all things that we just have to do so we don't have much flexibility in what those costs are so they're mandatory we have $247,800 increase to our budget because of the tuition increase that happened at ROTC or is projected to happen at ROTC we send 60 of our students give or take there every year so if their tuition go up we get the biggest impact because we pay tuition for our students to go back to the tech center I have a lot more to talk about these slides these are just specific details so any questions at all kind of specific details and where you know things are being added and where things are potentially being cut and then we'll get into the kind of bottom line figures you talked about the two academic teachers possibly being cut at RUHS and one was a math and one was a ELA what is the ELA position English sorry about that English language arts yeah beat me up if I'm using lingo it's good I should probably know that no but it's good because most people probably don't so will RES not have a social worker in Brookfield and Braintree will or RES has multiple social workers okay so they would be losing one and potentially that person may bump out somebody else but there has always been a bit of an equity issue it's kind of hard to equalize when you got schools of different sizes but over the course of the years RES has always had the lion's share of additional services and supports again there are some behaviors and things that are ramping up those people that would serve those needs are still there there are other areas where things are ramping down which is good and so we don't have as much as a need for those services if that makes sense social workers is that mainly or mental health counseling or is that for social services mental health trauma they were being used effectively but they were not being used the way they were intended to when they were brought on you know we were attempting to build a program within the school where students that were were constantly blowing out could go spend time in that program and slowly work their way out of it as they develop the skills to be able to coexist within the classroom it seemed to have developed more into kind of a triage method the triage means that the students have a bad day they get sent down the social worker tries to calm them down enough so that hopefully they can go back and be effective in class if they can't get them calm down enough then usually they might get sent home or they might try to put some other wraparound services on it but we had a number of students whose behaviors were so over the top that you couldn't get any learning done anyway and so it made more sense to try to create a program that you could put them in where they spent the majority focusing on the one or two skills they needed to learn to be able to self-regulate themselves as quickly as possible so that then they could start to slowly reintegrate back into the classroom you know they go out into the classroom they practice their skills normal they're probably going to fail the first couple of times they do it they got a place they can retreat to debrief go back out try it again after the debrief and over the course of time slowly increase how much they're participating again in the regular environment the original model was supposed to do so there was good service there it just wasn't quite what we needed the problem with the triage model is that it solves the problem in the moment but it doesn't fix it long term it's the kid back in the classroom today but it hasn't solved it caused him to blow out in the first place the goal of the program was actually to change those behaviors over time so that the kid would just stop blowing out here again so what are we doing now? what's the combo of a lot of it I've got Kayla Link our special education director is also our student services director I've given her a couple of models of very effective MTSS models multi-tiered systems of support she has been adapting that to all these components and to build one cohesive K to 12 MTSS model to address all of these things so part of this is her manipulating around the resources and where they go based upon where the current needs are as well and she's been doing a fabulous job with that so good questions back to the academic teachers in R&D just the learning labs how long have the learning labs been a part of before my time I flagged them my first year here I talked with David and Elijah about them David and Elijah wanted a year or two because they had turned into kind of just a study hall you know technically if they're done exceptionally well it's just hard to do them really well what would happen is students that are struggling they have the learning lab the teacher is getting assessment data that says the students are weak in these areas and the teacher would actually have a planning time to sit down and plan out how they're going to connect with those students around their weaknesses and actually teach that to them and get them up to speed that's not the model that ever unfolded and so David and Elijah wanted a year to take to do some work on it see if they could get it to happen it didn't I remember it was in the PBL lab in a room upstairs but we had math folks social studies in English folks that were there and I talked with them about the learning labs directly and said are these effective and they said no I've never had that and so we were getting ready to start to do this transition of okay we're going to take the learning labs away you know take you know sections from one of the teachers Adam here and then we either can do one of two things either we eliminate that position if we need to save it in terms of the budget we can have those resources available to use towards some of the other ends work that we wanted to do at the time that got all blown out of the water when COVID hit because the teachers were working their tails off in terms of connecting with the kids you know remotely or in the half remote and half in session days it didn't make sense to pursue that at that time but again we're at a crisis point a little bit in terms of what happened with the real estate values in the state and the CLA that it's time to consider it again it just seems a shame to lose the opportunity to figure out how to get the intended goals it wasn't being successful but that doesn't mean it's not necessary that it's just the process of trying to reach it wasn't there but there are other plethora of Tier 2 supports Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 Tier 1 is best practice within the classroom the teachers are supposed to be connecting with the students using a variety of different skills and differentiating instruction in a variety of ways to try to reach them the best they can if the students are struggling the teachers experiment a little bit with different accommodations working they report back to the MTSS team which takes that native into account and puts together kind of an education plan for the kid to try out to see if that helps them be more successful so that MTSS system that CLA is coordinating across the district will serve that purpose there are Tier 2, we have academic interventionists across the district at this point in time that serve that purpose typically small group instruction you got a couple of kids that are all having problems in kind of the same area they go spend time with that academic interventionist and they get them up to speed and that is a very focused towards going directly after where their weak links are in terms of their learning so that is a very effective model Tier 3 is typically these are students that have some pretty severe needs usually it is usually a one to one kind of situation can I ask a question so thinking about what you knew and thinking about what Heidi just said about the academic like the learning labs Amy Ferris sorry parent from Braintree teacher in the district I would think it would be better spent especially thinking about teenagers to reinvest some time in the learning labs then to do as far as I can see especially from my three children's perspective a Saturday morning to do homework would be very punitive you would have far more success reaching a child especially in the teenage years if you spent some time on the academic learning center time then this Saturday idea in my opinion so there is a couple of pieces to that those learning labs have been again I can't say how long before I came along they were in existence the whole time they were in existence we were one of the lowest performing schools in the state we went in we collected actual data on the students to see what the impact was there was no impact from those learning centers and the teachers were straight up about it the teachers weren't thrilled at least during that conversation about running those because again they weren't effective that is an enormous amount of funding that is going into a program that does not work and so there are better ways of doing it the academic interventionists are fantastic at it because that's really what they're trained to do it's tough as a teacher you already got especially in a small school because a lot of you have more preps than you should and then to try to go in and prep for half a dozen kids that you may have in this learning lab it's an unrealistic expectation kind of the place on the teachers it's great if they can do it so it's not this one especially was not an off the cuff it's been on the radar for five years so Richard how do we get putting on the parent hat here just because just because this has been brought up I have a question first followed by a comment Lane the homework the homework policy which grades would that apply to and what those minimums be it will and actually you asked two really good questions so don't let me off the hook for answering the second so the homework policy is what we've done is we went to the research base we developed it it's gone out to the cabinet to the curriculum teams for their feedback they are supposed to be connecting over the course of the remainder of what would be this quarter to get feedback from teachers and from everybody else that might have to work with this the PTO groups will be working on it so they get feedback from parents they implement it in a test let's see how this works the fourth quarter of the year the expectation is pretty much all grades but obviously it looks different people think homework they think going home and doing 100 math problems that's not what it's about what would happen at the the lower grades in the elementary school might be quite different than like the upper grades in elementary and certainly middle school and high school so with them this is where we get our family engagement piece worked in you know maybe there's a couple of math games board games that we can purchase that we call on the parents for a parent evening one night and we teach them how to use it and play that with their kids and the expectation is that they go home and they actually play those games with the students a couple of times a week it's going to help develop the math skills a little bit but more importantly one of the things that we really need right now coming out of COVID because of the isolation is families getting a little bit closer together and that may help make some family connections as you get up to the elementary level the key is it's not how much okay so the research is very clear that you know you used to have schools that say yeah if you're you know if you're an AP student it's four hours a night there is no time on this it has to do with the quality right so if you have identified that you're working on this concept with kids today that they really need to know well for you to be able to teach them what's happening tomorrow or a week down the line that's probably something you do want to attach a homework assignment to and again what does quality mean quality means that it's not asking the students to do things that they shouldn't know at this point in time but it might be asking them in a different way than they've encountered before because that helps to develop the transferability of the skills the other thing that homework does is it really is an extension of learning it's additional time on learning for students and the more that they can run those ideas and those concepts through their brains the more they're required to kind of mediate and think deeply about things the more they make connections between all the other things that they know and so they actually end up after a process like that of knowing more than you ever taught them and so that's kind of the goal that gets down to the critical thinking skill so there is no time limit what I have told the cabinet and the curriculum team leaders is I would expect you know homework you know at least in three three areas right if you're a teacher you recognize the kids got to have this down pattern I can't teach them what's happening tomorrow that should probably have some homework if we have what are called the foundational standards now that the curriculum documents are being done foundational standards are just that if I don't learn it with you I'm going to have a hard time in the next class that I take so identifying those foundational standards those should have some sort of of homework assessment that goes with them because again it helps with the retention it helps the students develop those concepts and then the last place where they should be happening is when we start to look at the assessment data in the fall is you'll be able to go through the assessment data and say oh these 400 standards I taught the kids this year these six they're really weak on so when I do lessons around these six standards I'm always going to have an assignment to make sure that I'm bolstering that learning and giving them some extra time and some extra thought probably more than you wanted to know so in my own in terms of research in this area speaking as a parent of a first grader and an incoming kindergarten I have barely got an hour and a half with my kids in the evening if I'm lucky I will not support a policy that means that I have to do mandatory work whatever it looks like from a school with my kids when I want to spend time with them engaging them in play family based activities of that nature that's my parent perspective and backed up by from everywhere that I have looked there is zero evidence at the elementary level that homework has any benefits I worked directly I worked directly with the Harvard professor that did the seminal research when I was at Nalwan on homework so I disagree with you wholeheartedly I am charged with advancing the school's ends in these areas and these are things that the schools need to do again there are too many things that we don't do that normal schools do which is why our scores have been so poor for so long yeah go ahead finish again just speaking from all the reading that I've done both as a parent as an educator but really with my parent hat on I can't support a policy that from everything I have read has no effect on students in the elementary age levels if I'm going to go to the other side the other half of what I am and go on to my educator side we are supposed to be a trauma informed school we're supposed to be promoting equity and homework is fundamentally inequitable in terms of access that students have to resources at home to support at home to be able to complete that homework so I put in a few solutions I have finished before being interrupted I'm trying to be courteous I'm just trying to remember what you're asking that's fine in any setting where I have especially in the elementary level where there has been homework the students who complete the homework are the students who support the ones who typically don't need the review the ones who do not complete the homework it's because they can't they have other things bigger things on their plates all it does is teach them to despise the educational environment and you're going to put that into them from a young age and you're going to teach them at school it's not a place they want to be not a place they want to have anything to do with when I removed the homework policy from the sick grade here at this school six years ago the response I had was immediate and enormous it transformed how parent teacher conferences were conducted it removed a massive burden from families and the students in the class were more engaged and your scores have been dropping in this school in this school since that time the score is going all the way back to ten years ago so let's talk a little bit about the equity because that is a that's not my experience but it happens to be very problematic I present it to the board every year usually in the ENDS report but let's talk about two really important pieces because you hit on two that are near and dear the equity piece so remember one of the pieces so let's talk about the upper grades and then we can kind of touch a little bit on the elementary grades in terms of equity one of the things that I said is it's got to be homework that the kids can do right on their own that's the equity piece because they don't have to rely on their parents for that the other equity piece is the seventy thousand dollars we put away for the after school busing so the students can get help after school if they don't have to rely on their parents and that's K-12 we try to address the equity issue I still rely on the parents to access those services which be mostly parents again we're making too many excuses I would rather try than none the other piece that I want to talk about is something that I've talked about with the community and the teachers quite a bit at the beginning of the school years is this idea of trauma based students there are students with a lot of trauma out there and there is one thing that can help above and beyond beyond all of the things I cannot fix a student who they come into school and I provide resources to them to try to help them with their trauma when they go home every night and are retraumatized I do not have the resources to go into those homes and stop that trauma from happening so trying to deal with trauma on that level is important and you can do it in some of the lower level cases you can't do it in the moderate to high level cases but there is one thing that helps if I have a student who is learning rigorous academic material who can walk into these schools every day and knows that when he walks in your door or Tim's door and knows that he has got the skill set because we provided it to them that they can do that rigorous work that you are going to ask of them their self-efficacy and their beliefs in themselves is going to shoot through the ceiling and then the trauma is not going to have as much an impact on their life and they are going to be much more resilient than they are Does the student go home to a trauma study? Yes, because they have self-efficacy they have a belief now that I can do it I have seen because of the work that I have been doing in the classroom that I have some control over my future in the environment around me and the environment around me doesn't always control me I would like to on how that in a real-world situation those students going home to those traumatising households what we are doing by expecting homework is we are adding a layer of trauma to an already traumatising situation by putting an expectation on them and their parents and creating a conflict between and all that can do is add to that trauma I am going to say that again what you are saying to me is opinion I have done the research I have worked in schools where this has worked and schools where there has been significant trauma I can request that the evidence that backs this up Yes, I am going to ask you to provide me with the evidence that backs this up What I am asking is, are they parents? That is why I am an incoming kid in the government if I am expected to help them I as a parent would like to know what the evidence is in a way that parents district-wide would be able to access and understand what is the evidence and where does it come from I see I don't want to to hijack and I like the conversation but we do need to move on hopefully you will be working with staff you will be working with parents to pursue that work policy a little bit more so can we refocus back to the budget and about the homework is not the learning last My name is Heidi Schwartz I am a Brookfield resident I have two kids at this school and I am a special educator at RUHS I have been with the district I was at RUHS before and another thing I do at the high school is I am the coordinator for EST which is educational support team for the 11th and 12th graders so that is very tier 2 is what that is all about I kind of wear both hats tier 3 as a special educator and tier 2 as an EST coordinator and about what is replacing those learning labs I am not going to argue about their effectiveness but one of the things that I think a lot about is a student is struggling not at the level of needing an IEP but certainly needing some support to be successful and we don't have a great variety of offerings in terms of intervention and I am thinking about specific children who are accessing those learning labs and we are going to take them away what are we going to offer instead and I am hearing conversation about highly skilled interventionists who are able to deliver targeted intervention based on data which sounds wonderful but my experience has not been that we have that level of support that is neat so that is my question maybe learning labs aren't perfect are we going to add more interventionists because I didn't see that in the budget anywhere and I am just seeing cutting and I am really concerned about tier 2 because as a special educator when those kids don't get what they need they fall further and further and further behind and then they end up on our caseloads and that drives those that budget up we all see those numbers they are terrifying and I just feel like if we can catch them before they get to me that would be great so that is my question so the academic interventionists and the number across the district have been expanding every year ever since COVID started not just academic interventionists but behavioral interventionists as well especially at the high school before it started at the elementary school so those are in place one of the things that had needed to happen and I think with Alyssa Matz there that there is a really good person who is a gatekeeper for this identifying what we call the child find identifying the students that need access to the services setting goals for what is required for them to access those services when you access and so she has been doing an absolutely fabulous job but I don't want to speak with her that would not be appropriate but I would recommend to talk with her directly about her feelings on the learning labs I will happily do that I am just asking who is doing the intervention and Alyssa is fabulous at identifying the students but I think what we all struggle with is who can do the intervention there is math interventionists at every school as well as behavioral intervention but I am not sure if I am answering the question I don't think so I think when you look at the number of students in labs who have identified needs to be placed in those labs and then you look at finding intervention groups and times and available intervention professionals you will see that those numbers don't add up but Alyssa has been doing a very good job but again if you have specific call me on it shoot me an e-mail say ham give me the specifics and I am happy to go out and look and confirm or say nope maybe it is not what I thought final budget summary this is a more of a broader sorry about that Beverly go ahead Hi, just a couple questions first of all I want to practice it with oh my gosh, love the idea of an activity bus because that is about equity that is wonderful I had a question similar to Heidi's regarding direct services from interventionists in our building and if we could focus on that at some point because we don't have those types of services anymore we have people I think giving recommendations but not working with students we used to have project to achieve which is pretty phenomenal and I got taken away during the pandemic and provided really good intervention skills my question is is it possible at some point and I know these are just presenting ideas and Lane I am really appreciative that you are thinking okay how can we I do agree with I think it was Richard sorry if I didn't get his name there is a lot of research from the APA and Duke University around the inequity of homework I am really hoping will there be an opportunity for teams to work together because Saturday detention is highly inequitable and also targets those students at the highest risk so with the bus thing I love the bus idea because that can increase homework clubs but I am just wondering if we will do some more work with a broader group and with specialists in the area to kind of help guide us because I do have concerns about mandatory homework policy and a Saturday detention so that was my only question thanks again there has been a significant amount of work and a significant amount of research that has been done on the policy that was developed folks will have an opportunity to provide input as the curriculum team leaders and the principals the cabinet members actually have those discussions with the staff thank you Angela Angela Keene yep thank you most of my comments have already been brought up so I don't want to repeat them I appreciate Richard's comments around equity and Bev I am with you in support of the activity bus I think that does support equity I am an ELA teacher I have been at Randolph since 2011 I have taught both 7th and 9th grade I am an EST coordinator I am a grade team leader so I have my hands on a lot of different things I am also the parent of students who go to Montpelier and they don't have a homework policy so my wheels are spinning around a mandatory homework policy and the equity piece I am also someone who teaches one of those learning labs and I feel like if homework is required then the learning labs are going to become even more important while I do agree that there are challenges because kids who come into those labs have a variety of different needs they don't need to be eliminated they need to be reinvented and supported I feel like we have in our director of targeted supports whose name is Alisa Matz we she collaborates so well with our lab data she develops lesson plans that she pushes out so that we can target kids in our labs to support really succinct literacy needs I think we are doing a great job and it started in 2017 and we kind of piloted it after study halls were eliminated because study halls weren't effective, study halls were kids just hanging out the labs did become a targeted support that we are still grappling with how to use them to their greatest benefit but I think we are making advances and we are having lots of conversations around how they can improve and I just feel like we are working really diligently to improve them so I think eliminating them at this point in time isn't necessarily the best way to go especially to justify eliminating a position very quickly this morning I had two kids who haven't done anything in my English class who are not on track to complete the course and in that learning lab we called it a literacy lab I was able to sit with them model for them a skill watch them learn the skill, practice the skill and then do the skill independently in the course of an 80 minute lab and I would not have had that opportunity to see that these students are proficient and can complete the course if I haven't had that time with them so I do think there is value in the labs I do think we do need to rethink what they look like and how they support students I do think we have a gaping hole without project to change which really did target multiple like specific skill sets but I don't think it's fair to identify those labs as ineffective as a way to justify cutting a position so again I've got to push back I have studied them since my first day here folks in that time I've been talking with David and Elijah first and then when Katie and Elisa to work with them to try to make them effective and they are not effective they have never been effective I honor what you're saying but please don't interrupt and I'll give you a chance to respond I have done the research I've looked at the numbers I know where the test scores are at the high school they have not been effective even the faculty when I sat down with them my second year here said they weren't effective so I appreciate the holding on but if we're actually going to get these kids performing where they can perform I'll try some different things so perhaps in your second year I would agree with you that they weren't effective because they were just beginning and we didn't they were there for years before I started we haven't collected data like we do now we haven't had professional development like we have had now Elisa, Matt's has been great in finding wonderful professional development for us in order to enhance the work that we do in those labs I think we're on a good track I can agree with you that if you asked me 5 or 6 years ago if labs were effective I probably would have agreed and said no they're not but it is a support that those kids need particularly those kids who Richard was pointing out will have enormous challenges with a homework policy these are kids who when they get home they have to work on the farm they have to work a job to support their kids that need that extra time and space and support from a content area teacher in order to be successful not only that it helps us develop relationships with these kids in a tier 2 support place where they start to feel like they can do the work and that's an important thing too I'm not going to argue with you you have your beliefs I have mine so in the effort to kind of move things forward a little bit so that everybody's not here until midnight I recommend that we move on if we can so you are going to give us a little bit more was that it on the budget? no that was just you know potential changes from last time so this is the bottom line kind of budget hopefully we can kind of move through this quickly now just give me just a second here there we go so our TCC is one that you'll need to be voting on tonight don't want to have the presentation on just a little bit I think I got it yeah give me a minute I can only do a couple things at a time alright we got that let me get this up there so tech center just basic comparisons where we're at so that you know what you're potentially voting on the total expense budget remember we're only looking at expenses in these because that's what the taxpayers vote on they don't get to see much in terms of what the actual revenues are which is a shame because the revenues are fairly significant so what we are looking at is that the current total budget so that's the year that we are existing in right now is 3.1 million based upon a lot of discussions with the tech center in terms of their needs and the fact that they have had an increase in students but the revenues have not caught up with them yet because of the three year methodology they used to determine how they're going to go out the funds based upon student enrollments they're asking for 3.6 million that's a total change of 530 thousand current tuition is 18670 tuition potentially for next year would be 22876 so it's a significant jump in tuition the reality is that I did go through and I took a look at what the tuition are at the other regional technical centers out there and there are quite a few not a lot but a few 3.4 that are in the $23,000 range so this is not out of line also takes into account two kind of important things one is that we actually offer a full day program when the others are offering half day programs which is one of the reasons why our expenses are a little bit higher than most summary of kind of the major changes that are going on is that we are adding a math teacher to meet the boards and the state's ends the students when they get over to the tech center without a solid connection with a math teacher in taking an actual core course in mathematics they struggle very much in terms of that skill set and the state has flagged them is not performing where the state would like to see them they do have a math teacher there now but that math teacher is serving all 130 students and that's just too big of a case load for one teacher we've got somebody who would like to speak I am the math teacher at RTC I currently serve I currently serve every student except for one program so I teach 10 different classes and I cannot stress how much I would like to have another math teacher and how much the kids would like to learn from that I am not able to meet everybody's needs and it is a very curfewy and to ask if you have engaged in and thank you for the bottom of our hearts because it is not easy I can't emphasize enough so it is critical we wanted to also add a little bit of tuition just too high some of the other reasons for these changes we're moving some required staff out of grant funding into the regular budget they're typically only allowed to be in there for 3 years they've exceeded that 3-year mark the dental program was paid out of grants for the first 2 years out of the time grant cannot be paid out of that anymore so it is now a part of the regular budget we've got contractual obligations we've got anticipated pay raises when the negotiations are done for the teachers that are built into that and then there's been an increase in the cost of supplies inflation has it's depending upon what it is it's anywhere from 11% if you're looking at heating oil it's up towards 20% if you're getting into supplies the basic cause of those increases in terms of the OSSD budget really and we had talked about this last year this year we were trying to pursue all of the board's ends I had spoken with the board about that last year you know why I only focused on mass science and ELA well it's because if we do them all at once it's going to be extremely expensive so what we're trying to do is get those 3 up to where they should be and then be able to shift some of the resources to the others and slowly develop them over time and we've got this strong focus on having the supplies that we need the programmatic materials we need to do those things that all schools do that we have historically not the other piece is that you know we have what I'm calling this catastrophic increase in terms of people's tax burden due to the change in CLA and really trying to minimize that as much as possible and having a big impact on all the things that we've built up to try to help kids across the district so there are two scenarios I will spell out for you across the next four slides this one's pretty quick but it's to give folks an idea of what tax rates would be and what the district would be spending in a case where we don't do any staff reductions and in the case where we do the ones that have been proposed that would be a little rift so current total budget is $22.1 million the request for next year would be $23.5 so it would be a $1.3 million increase of that increase $365,000 of its discretionary in other words I could say don't do it but all of it is geared towards the board's ends a little over a million of that increase the teachers have staff increases there are things that we have guaranteed that we will provide and so that's what that line is all about $1.3 million with what is the note at the bottom I cannot so to confuse you a little bit more which is what the state likes to do when this goes out to the voters to vote on we have to include what we call all expenses these are the expenses that would impact the education fund but we bring in a ton of money in grants as well that we spend on behalf of the students so while this is what would impact voters in the state the grant money does not but we will still have to state what that is so you know yeah so this is saying we will include the federal grants the federal grants will probably add another $2-3 million to our expenses but those do not come from the taxpayers from the federal government so good pick up on that local tax impact just remember that it comes from two sources the district controls some of what happens with the school tax and there are things that are completely out of control what is the district control how much we're spending you know one of the areas where we generate a lot of revenue is the tuition that we get from students that choose to come to our school the portion of the tax rate and this is vital this is what the school's impact is on your taxes the district's impact is on your taxes the portion of the tax rate that is controlled by the district would go down by 7 cents almost 8 cents for $100 of assessed value this year if it were just what the school were doing okay and to kind of remind folks we also cut our piece of the budget for the taxpayers last year by an additional 6 cents almost 7 cents for $100 of assessed value so over the past two years if it was just what the school was doing a person with an average price home in this area would have seen a $550 cut in their taxes the piece that we don't have control over is this common level of appraisal and we'll talk a little bit about that in the next slide or something so again this is considering things with no reduction in force right now the CLA for Braintree is 88.72 they are right in the middle of where the state is this impacted every town across the state some got hit much worse than what we do what does 88.72% means it means that after the state did its equity survey this year it is saying that we are only paying 88.72% of the taxes that we are supposed to be paying right why did that happen? well last year the average home value in Vermont was $281,000 this year it's $385,000 in other words the value of our properties went up because they are worth more we need to pay more in taxes because of that additional value and that's kind of what this gets down to Brookfield is interesting Brookfield reassessed last year they had to reassess their taxes and so actually with this they are actually looking at a decrease they are looking at an almost $1,000 decrease in their taxes on the average price Randolph is looking at $379 in payments questions on this hopefully this is a little bit more straightforward so now we'll flip over and we'll look up here if we do the cuts right you can see that we were about $1.3 million without the cuts now our increase in expenses would be $972,000 the discretionary hasn't changed but our contractual obligations have gone down and again this does not include federal grants what does it mean in terms of our two sources here well in this case if we do those 6.6 cuts the portion of the tax rate is controlled by the districts who go down by $0.10 closer to $0.11 for $100 in assessed value taking that into combination with a decrease that we did last year that would have brought the average price home taxes down by $669 to go to the piece that's the most important folks is this one here brain tree would see an increase for the average price home of $358 Brookfield would see their taxes go down on average a little over $1,000 Randolph would see a $243 increase what is the difference when we compare the two no rift with rift it would save taxpayers about $130 so those 6.6 cuts it's a lot of money it's $600,000 or more of cuts but because our budgets are so darn big in a sense it's a drop in a budget and so the discussion to have here is do we want to go and make the cuts and save everybody an additional $130 on the average price home or is the $130 not worth the potential impact in terms of the teacher's rights am I making sense a little bit that's open to you folks as well with cuts without cuts these numbers are different is that because that's taking into account the federal grant neither one takes into account the federal grant without cuts means that we're not cutting any of the faculty yeah I'm just saying like the numbers the numbers here I think were like $22,000,000 or something and this is $24,000 so I'm just wondering what the extra so remember we're not looking at revenues let me have this in we're just looking at expenses the additional money generated by those cuts would be a revenue yeah it's confusing and my explanations aren't perfect but they're in the ballpark enough that hopefully people can understand it I used to spend about two weeks going through all the financial nonsense for how this stuff is calculated and I'd understand it for about a week and then it would fall out of my mind so questions on these so the question is for the average we're talking $130 difference $130 difference on the property tax so one of the ways of looking at is the changes are so darn high right now the difference is $130 but the changes are so darn high right now given the state of the economy inflation peak in October is going down but interest rates will continue to go up and they will continue to go up until layoffs start to happen people are not good economically in their households at this point in time the average increase in salaries for folks across the country the average across all jobs last year was 5.6% inflation I believe it's around 7.8% right now the last time that I checked you don't have to but eventually we're going to have to decide between one of these two so it would be nice and I'll take the heat I'll make the recommendation but I want it to be based upon what I'm hearing from folks this option or this option that's what you got some risks or no risks I think given the tumultuous period of education in general right now and just coming out of the pandemic I think we would be doing students in faculty of this service by making cuts I'm more interested to see a free market approach and what the dust settled but I think to keep the money in that's my two cents on that and I'm not invested in either or if you I'm providing options to the community and hope and try to pass the budget what is the current education spending per equalized student for this year this is what it would be next year I can tell you what it was last year for the second it's on the tax sheets can you find mine I can talk about this slide too for a second while we're there but let me let me give you what the current current is how would you love tax time so we've got more papers and we know what to do with it because the difference between those two is like $500 right but leads to it almost 3% maybe she doesn't have it on here I could look it up it'll take me a minute but what you this is actually an important discussion to have so because it kind of touches on your question so there's a couple of things that we try to at least I try to manipulate whether it's a good idea or not but I'll explain it so the yield right here is $15,479 so it's a huge increase in yield it's like a $3,000 increase because he had funded so well the way that they don't like you looking at it but what it really means is that's how much we get per student from the state our cost depending upon whether we do the no cut or the cut for a student if we don't cut anything our cost for a student would be $21,523 if we do the cuts it would be $210,59 why is this important because there is a spending threshold if we cross that threshold we pay penalties and then all the additional money comes directly from the towns if we stay under the threshold then this is where financial people will tell you anytime you get free money you do what you have to to get as much of it as you can if we are below that threshold the money that we are receiving is coming from the ed fund meaning that it's being paid for by all tax bearers across the state including us so the trick is if you want to maximize assuming that you actually need those funds to do your work you want to get as close to that threshold as you can without crossing my guess is we were trying to actually you might be more knowledgeable on the question I'm going to ask in a second here maybe not so if not just say hey I don't work on the finance group what you were seeing is because people's taxes again we're in the middle of CLA we're like dead center in the state so half the state is getting hit a lot harder than we are half the state is doing a little better we're right about what the average is for the state because everybody's taxes are going to go up by this astronomical amount what that kind of leads me to believe is that the ed fund is going to be flushed with cash next year this yield is likely going to go up next year which is all to our benefit Richard has a question no I have a question just a comment I think there's an honest thing as a taxpayer and an educator just the impact of the social worker who serves all the students it doesn't matter about your IEP numbers your ESG numbers if I think about the students who access the social worker for support it goes across all demographics and some of these issues are complex some of them parents have not caught and we have alerted them too to really problematic things just the impact of that one social worker for me more than just advice of $130 increase in my taxes and to support Richard's even thinking about the other positions what Richard is saying is the social worker is a highly qualified person who if the interactions with the students is structured well which is what Kail is working on the MPSS project they might be able to change the student instead of just triaging them every day I'm catching that because a lot longer he's right the same thing with the speech line which the longer it goes on the worse it gets Nick would also like to speak Nick go ahead yeah I want to be make sure I'm clear on this we're talking about $130 for a year $400,000 that's worth $400,000 so that's about $11 a month and I mean not to generalize but if you own a $400,000 I think a $11 a month isn't asking too much or having these educators and direct service providers in the school building definitely pays dividends to the community to me just looking at the numbers that we have right now really just kind of seems like a no brainer it seems like a really smart and good investment in this community so I would certainly hope that the board would support not cutting these teachers and presenting the community with the budget that reflects the teachers and other providers keeping their positions thank you so is the board ready to do we want to have more discussion are we ready to vote I'll just remind folks that remember also in Vermont we do have an income protection so if your income is at a certain level your property is worth a fair amount there is some protection there from the state there's a subsidy what's the name of the forms homestead declaration homestead declaration I was actually I'm glad you brought that up I was scrambling around robbing the data see if they had actually changed with the threshold the threshold is actually quite high it used to be 98,000 but it may have changed just so folks know your income is 98,000 or less you know if you do that homestead declaration tax then part of your tax will be reduced but you got to fill out the form I just have a question about the vote because there was a lot more information in there other than the reps so is that all that are we voting piece by piece or are we voting a package deal we've got to talk on surplus and we've got to talk on announced tuitions but it depends upon which way people are feeling that we should go again I am not they're separate votes technically they're on the consent agenda so you'll do one vote to accept them all at the end what's the decision is made but what I need to know is where we scan and again I'm not invested in either I saw a gigantic increase in taxes that should be giving people some options to have some discussion so we're voting on what goes out to be presented to our voters at the end of the day tonight they will have the opportunity to say yay or no and if they say nay then we come back it becomes a little complicated though because there are timelines for notifying for cuts and things like that but that's alright so quick I don't want to put people on spot they don't want to be on the spot but give me a general sense right so far I've heard all positive about no cuts I agree the one thing I would say you made some arguments that were pretty convincing for cuts and I think always looking towards efficiency and using taxpayers money wisely is really an important thought process of discussion to be having and that's one of the EL requirements is at a cost that taxpayers are willing to apply now to be put a little more data in here so people can understand one of the reasons for these potential shifts is because we've had to drop an enrollment but what's been happening over the course of the last couple of years with COVID we had this stretch where the enrollments were going up what we've got going on now is we have a drop of 50 kids one year we see in the next year a drop of 50 and then a gain of 60 and I don't understand why that swing this year we were in a low hopefully it jumps back up next year and then there's a better use for those folks can I ask another question here too because there were two positions that you mentioned are not currently filled there are no individuals in those positions so are those positions potentially we would keep open then or are those positions that we recognize we haven't been able to fill and potentially they're not positions that we would consider filling in the future even I could put them to use and a couple of the ways that we could put them to use is it may not necessarily be for that thing we have other priorities that we could shift towards one of the biggest things in terms of the equity piece in providing equity to students who may not have as much support at home either because the parents are working can't provide it or they just don't is the summer the summer schools we've been building in the after school programing that we've been building this academic in nature and so it could be shifted towards that right now those are primarily funded through grants which is a central office they brought in tremendous amount of money and grants to support this but this would help us provide a little bit of a shift towards making it something permanent in the regular audience so that's probably if you're asking me about that here and now that's where my gut is leaning but when we actually get the state data sometime this year that much changed but I have not seen any data from the state and they sent out again to pursue a budget without cost without cost I second that any further discussion all those in favor I Megan's and I too awesome no thank you let's rush through the last couple pieces because these are simple you guys know what surplus is right money that remains at the end of a budget year so we are cleaning up examining and have discovered what the surplus was at the end of last year not the one we're currently in what typically happens with that money is one of two things we can either roll it over to subsidize the coming year's budget or we can ask the community to put it into reserve funds so that it can be used in the future for specific purposes right we got facilities reserve funds so that would be useful for things like repairing the heat that went on us you know not too long ago so that we don't have to go out for bond for a half million dollar project which is what that isn't going to be and those need to be approved by the voters in March and so the reason to talk about this is because that warning spells out what we're asking to do with the surplus money for the next actually up to three years here for the community members remember that this is something that you approve for what we can use it for and then once the money goes into these reserve accounts the district can only access it if the board approves it when we request it that way that's the control to make sure it's being used for what it should be used for the twenty twenty one twenty two surplus is one point three million we just got this number this morning four hundred three hundred ten thousand four hundred thirty nine dollars what I am recommending to the board is to continue this program of subsidizing future budgets with it so typically what I do with the surpluses and you'll see it on the next slide is I take a good chunk of it and say okay let's take a third of that use it next year a third of that the year after and a third of that the year after because during the COVID times we didn't know what was going to happen in terms of the financials in the economy and this gave us a way to help the taxpayers out as much as we could the recommendation of this one point three million is that we use a million fifty thousand of it to subsidize taxes next year the year after the year after that in equal portions three hundred fifty thousand a year the remaining I'll show you this it's easier to see on the little table would go into various reserve accounts to help out with future needs what this looks like right we started doing this with the surplus from the 2019 2020 school year right we put 826,000 towards subsidizing the next year's budget then we got the next surplus so next year we split it up so that it lasted out three years so that this current year we benefited from 746,000 dollar reduction in the budget right because I was subsidizing it next year that will be the reduction from our subsidies to try to help out because we're going into a catastrophic year like I said the district's doing everything to help out the taxpayers the year afterwards it's at least this amount if we add more from the next round of surplus next year you know that will potentially go here and add it to it but the other reason that I built this in was because I didn't want to have a cliff here if I was subsidizing so it's designed that at the end if this ever ends right you get this slow meaning off and hopefully the plan would be is that either our enrollments are going down then we have to be letting staff go because we don't have the kids to support it so the savings is there so it offsets the weaning off or more hopefully is that we've got our scores up enough that people are flooding to the schools and our enrollments are going up and so that additional funding that we're getting for the enrollments compensates for that decline we've got $10,000 splitting up over the next three years to subsidize the budget talked a little bit about that already we are under the threshold that's a good thing we're trying to maximize the money that we're getting from the Ed fund so these are my suggestions on what to do with what remains I want nothing to go into the vehicle in the bus fund buses are $85,000 a piece typically we have nothing there right now so hopefully if we needed to there is no reason to add more we try to replace one or two a year the oldest one or two to make sure that none of them are more than seven years old but our buses this year are in really good condition we don't need to do a replacement and Robin always builds enough into the regular budget to replace one bus anyway if we needed to building and maintenance we've got $3.2 million in there right now which is a large sum of money it costs about a million dollars a little bit less to replace a full roof and all the mechanicals on a building should that come so we have that covered for the foreseeable future we did spend about a half a million out of this by the time things are over to deal with the heating issue there will be another $300,000 for the repairs that are happening at the central office at this point in time so I'm going to recommend that $100,000 go into building and maintenance I'm recommending that we put an additional $50,000 into the legal fund the rationale being the same as it was last year the staff that are out there when we go out to hire because they are so few they are not always the highest quality we've actually done pretty good but when that happens you end up with more HR issues that you have to deal with maybe the legal funds to help you with that special education fund I'm recommending putting another $50,000 into the special education fund this sits here because remember as we get closer and closer to 2025 we will receive a block grant at the beginning of the year a chunk of money here you go and if we get that is based upon our current enrollment if we get a couple of expensive kids that move in in the middle of the year we have no way of compensating for that because the old method used to be a reimbursement method where kids move in they would reimburse this at least for a significant part of it here's your chunk up front and if anything else happens it's on you and so I'm trying to build up a reserve in case we get a catastrophic move in the middle of the year which does happen operations fund this is where the money sits for the subsidies that we're paying out to offset taxes right because it goes out for three or four years so I'm recommending $110,000 to $438,000 to come over that's the $350,000 each year for three years to cover the subsidy plus another $60,000 some odd just to have in there in case we have operational needs that we can't anticipate to be prepared we have some other money that is in there for different purposes that was put in last year some of it is funding our new financial software that is currently going on right now and the other portion of it is currently funding our new website that is being built as I speak so that's what those are used for so these are my recommendations to the board on the vote and what would happen if you approve the warning which one current or add to surplus add to surplus on here so $350,000 is already applied towards next budget so you get $750,000 and then there was the everything that was left over went into the operational reserve fund just to have something in case something major blows up or you get into first robotics and they're holding it in Austria this year and you want to take they do that and then you want to take the trip out there we have the money to be able to do those things so it's moving that money over but the amount here that we're showing on article 11 minus the $35,000 $35,000 yeah good pick up can I just ask about we've talked about our school buildings being at the end of their toward the end of their useful lives and there's the state list that we talk as far as how to use that that's a good thing because we can put pressure on people because of it when you look to put money into the building and maintenance fund are you thinking about because they have this surplus that you're going to subsidize taxes with and proposing to subsidize taxes with are you thinking about how we're going to pay for a new school building when we need one so the yeah, because our building right now they have done an amazing job of maintaining it but it is old that is out of date it is not modern by any stretch of the imagination except for you know the clear touch boards that we put in the last year or so and I think we've been talking about aiming to have a free standing middle school at some point yeah, the piece that will it's been on my mind for three years the piece that will spur me into action will come out of this legislative session you know they went out they did a study you know that's how we got put on that list they did a study to try to see where the state of the buildings were so that they can get somebody to do analysis to say how much should the state put aside to help assist districts actually do renovations or reconstructions if the legislature passes a law that puts money aside that they can tap into for those things that is my cue that I'm going to start going into high gear on this if that does not happen I do not see a reasonable way of requesting from this community in these times you know a potential $150 to $200 million project so that's the key piece for me unless somebody has other things that I haven't seen or thought about I was hoping that our PCB testing would happen in October they moved it out two years I think they started to realize that it was the testing if they didn't move it out it was going to cause a lot of problems and they hadn't set aside funding to help people but you know got the PCB the reason I was hoping we were going to do it in October because if we got ahead puts a little more pressure on us to be able to access that funding if it comes about and provides a sense of urgency with the community to get it done so yeah piggybacking off of that question I guess given the different scenarios that could come from the legislative session or by any on funding versus no funding is that being taken into account for your surplus strategy no the I had thought about it the more amounts if we wanted to do the surplus thing for 50 years we might get 50 million and the other thing so yeah it is an idea and it has been thought about but remember the other thing that we are doing is we're going after a tremendous number of things in terms of building programming trying to improve academic outcomes for kids so our expenses have been going up and one of the ways of subsidizing that is putting a chunk of the surplus back in the taxpayers' hands they pay for it up front makes sense that they should get the benefit of it one other quick question on your slide about legal wouldn't we spend in legal in the last year or two we typically typically it's in the $20,000 range so we do build some in the regular budget for exceptionalities above and beyond it's probably closer to the $40,000 range in years that we have negotiations right because the legal team is involved in all of that so it all depends on what's happening typically I don't know how many rounds of negotiations we've had I think I've been through four or five at this point in time typically a superintendent who you know has a 30 year career you know might see a negotiation three to four years they've been accelerated and a lot of that happened was due to the state taking over the negotiations around healthcare because we all you know you didn't want to negotiate a contract this long if a healthcare negotiation was going to happen here because you didn't know what the impact was so good questions so I always comment on this every year about the budget and the surplus and I just I think it's great to just as an aside think about it in terms of if there's a way we could move some of that surplus money over to the general fund to improve our ends over and over and over asking that question I think is a good idea I would say at this point in time we are working on capacity towards it more money wouldn't help us right now once some of these programs again remember coming out of COVID are up and running the way that they should and they are called what I call self-sustaining you provide the training you do the work you set the expectations that folks are going to carry things out in the classroom based upon what they learn you develop a departmental team that creates that as the culture at that point it becomes self-sustaining and then you can kind of move on to other things we're in capacity right now I couldn't use the money above and beyond this if I had it I'm not effective but it is a good thing the community has been incredibly generous the last couple of years so the reason that I'm pulling this down is because this is the last thing that you would have to vote on tonight and this is announced to missions so the board has voted to go with the reductions so this is what the tuitions would be for the various entities across the district Raven you kind of already check this box the last time we met tuition for Raven would be 26,410 which is awesome if those kids went to any other school it would be at least 60,000 RTCC is the 22876 that we talked about at the very beginning for a student to tuition into the elementary school it would be 17707 and for an outside student to tuition to RUHS it would be 2103 so those are the other things that you're going on hopefully that said I don't think there's any more and that's everything that's in the consent agenda it's everything in the consent agenda and remember you have two warning sheets there one that's with cuts one that's without you are going with the one that is without cuts so I appreciate the extra time and the good conversation you know I apologize I get a little I get a little pushy especially when I've done a lot of research and a lot of numbers because I you know I don't come in and speak off the cover in general as I go back I hit the numbers in the research so I apologize if I was a little pushy well it sounds like that so you'll be able to look at the time used for the learning labs so you know work with yourself and everybody about the mandatory homework well one of the and this will be a part of the discussion with that I think is good is that you know we could reduce the learning labs add more sections of math in ELA with fewer kids in each section which is also a huge benefit in terms of that lots of options yeah so there's lots of options that we can team together talk about in the budget to pass so again we'll be voting for all of this in that consent agenda so moving on we had our board policy our government's policy 4.6 that we were supposed to evaluate in the interest of time we are already over our meeting time I move to table that do we have a second on that second from Sarah any discussion on that alright so we will table that for the next meeting oh alright all those invaders getting like most forgotten anybody opposed so that is table the next thing that we have is just the second reading these are state required policies that Lane has updated and added in because they're required so we need to vote to approve those second we have a second from Sarah all those in favor and then we have a first reading this is a recommended state policy and Heather's our equity person and she's going to just share a short bit about it the BSPA it works with a legal team to put these policies together as Anne said this is important with the expectations of Act 1 and the expectations of the state of Vermont for equity in public schools the wording that I put in this recommended policy is written by the Vermont school board association and has not been changed in any way as it contained by us or any do is straight down the middle approach and its emphasis is on a district commitment to the success of every student regardless of race, ethnicity, religion economics, gender sexual orientation or any other aspect of our identity and this policy of course sets forward the expectation that the superintendent will monitor equity and give a report to the board annually so everyone should review that we will have a vote for accepting that policy at our next meeting next up is just information about our upcoming meeting in February so far I've heard back from four of the legislators who represent the voters in our district and I'm hoping that I can get the other two to say yes they will attend we will have that meeting at the high school just for convenience sake and a larger area and so what you might want to be thinking about is just things that you feel you want to share with the legislators in terms of what we need from the state who are the two outstanding so the two outstanding right now are Mark McDonald and Senator Perchak Larry Sackowitz Jay Hooper Anne Cummings and Anne Watson have all confirmed that they will attend I am having Linda send out just a little reminder as that meeting approaches so hopefully and we will put them right at the top of the agenda so we'll come in and start with that and then carry on afterward but so you can invite your neighbors and also just be thinking of questions that you might have for them I was going to check I think I checked only the representatives but I didn't see any of them on the education committee because Jay was on it Jay is now on GovOps okay get them out of there before you decide to have to spend it all so anyway that's that so next up are any questions on that the next up is our consent agenda so that also includes the minutes from the last meeting and then the warning this financial management questionnaire that's that quirky one that is an anachronism from time long ago it was originally intended just to make sure that boards were aware that there should be protocols that people were following when it came to financial management it was more of a to make people boards aware when we checked on the purpose behind it so and then all of the other things were what we went over with the budget discussion try to move to approve the consent agenda as listed second seconded by Sarah second all those in favor aye Megan's an aye too okay next up just a quick update on where we are with negotiations thanks for meetings yeah two seconds impasse with support staff union mediation session is January 25th it's typically at RES we haven't given the time yet but I would guesstimate 6 p.m impasse with the teachers union the mediation session right now is scheduled for March 15th same thing that is usually RES we usually meet in the conference room and I would assume 6 p.m. they'll give us more information as it gets closer I think if there's a mediator who typically is he's good at what he does he most likely will be online and he'll just move back and forth between the rooms using the rooms in zoom that's where those are okay thank you and that was Wednesday the 25th for the support staff support staff okay so then we had the superintendent's report principal's reports, financials anything that we should be aware of so as I was kind of emailing folks my superintendent's report kind of same thing with the principal's reports this round is always what we put in the annual I can't do it until all the financial stuff comes in I didn't get it until 1222 so I'll spend the next two days trying to get that up and then I'll email that to you I usually email it out to the community and then it goes into the actual glossy that goes around but for my part I try to explain you know this is the budget these are the increases these are what we're trying to accomplish with these won't you please help it's the selling point financials for the district are in really good shape for a while you know just on the basics you know we're six months into the fiscal year so you would have expected expected us to have spent about half the budget at this point in time we've only spent about 39% so far so we're well on the board again there's still a lot of grant money flowing around which is going to be drying up like a desert you know at the end of this year so we have tabled our monitoring of our own policies until next time are we willing to just keep us on track for the next few weeks so we'll just that's being pretty busy isn't it oh yes we'll have the legislators as well because it's the reorganization oh that's March that's March so the one after February is also busy right we can do two next time well the we should so 3.0 which would have been next month is one item yes two next month yeah two next month okay got it and then I will continue to hound no not hound but I will continue to reach out to the remaining legislators hopefully they'll get back to me they just started so maybe they just haven't seen a request yet oh we have somebody that has some power and next up well our next meeting no we'll have our February meeting before we have the budget meeting so we still have quite a bit of time before that so this is when I usually do my three budget communications and then and then we'll do the final big one on the 27 yeah okay alright and then do we need a session we do for personnel for personnel or labor personnel okay yes let's go to enter executive session for personnel matter at 827