 talk a little bit about just education form because I connected with VSBA and I want to just go over sort of what they have for proposal because it's not exactly what the board was looking for but I want to just make sure that works for the board and then we need to just talk again a little bit more about the letter to the voters in the town reports and then links will give us an update in terms of where things are out with the budget so that's kind of the focus of the meeting. We do have an executive session for this meeting as well regarding the committee with the bus drivers, some personnel issues, and the real estate. So we need to have a meeting evaluator and usually Linda brings the evaluation for me. So but somebody could just evaluate just using their own judgments and I think that would be fine. We don't necessarily need that formal checkoff so do I have a volunteer? And I'm happy to do it. I'll do it. Alright, thanks Ashley. And then just don't let me the last time I forgot to ask the person that was evaluating to actually share so let's make sure we do that at the end of the meeting. So public comments this time around I didn't have any email comments from any folks and it doesn't appear to be that we have anybody from the public so I think we'll move forward on that. So next up is just what I found out from the VSBA. I sent just late this early evening the contract that VSBA writes everything up as a contract so I met with Sue Holson I believe is her last name. She's the gal who's in charge of providing education and support to boards and she connected me with Jackie and I'm gonna forget her name her last name Jackie pulled it up here so I would remember Jacqueline. Jackie is the policy governance trainer that the VSBA has engaged and so I had a conversation with her just letting her know what what we were looking for and what she proposed to do is basically to meet with us over we're gonna have five hours of training with her. The first training would just would be a time for her to just review in general what policy governance is and that it isn't and she wants to have us just to do kind of a self-assessment as a board in terms of what's working and what isn't working so that so that we can understand kind of where we are with things and then from there kind of make a training plan and then use the remaining time with her to kind of work on things that we feel we want to work on to improve our process and to improve our policies so they don't do a strict walk-through policies which is what had happened before with the with the required state and federal policies they don't they don't do that so she will help us work with our policies but we will be doing the changes if we want to make changes it's very inexpensive they're charging us $120 per hour of training so the whole training would be $600 and we could always if we felt like we needed more we could Jackie was a superintendent she used policy governance in her district so she has practice sort of influences processes so she said that is her strength going into it she said not necessarily a policy governance expert but I've used the system and has experience from that standpoint so we as a board need to decide is this not exactly what you all wanted me to have but what we were looking for is not offered just sort of having somebody rewrite our policies for us or help us read right she will she will she can help in that process but she said you guys are going to have to do it but is this in response to our question about so remember one of the things that we've been trying to do is just relook at our policies and each time we do a monitoring of a policy we're looking at do we want to make any changes to any of the policies yeah and so she will kind of help us understand that process and how you can do that but she won't she won't look through them and say you should change this that's there isn't somebody that will do that will she use our policies as like is she going to take us through one what the what the process would be or is it all we can that can be part of what we ask her to help us do she wants to first get an overall assessment of kind of where we're at and what we're what what our challenges are and what our strengths are in terms of how we're using our policies and we're going to need to sort of guide her in terms of what what we want to work on when Katya and I met for the agenda meeting Jackie was willing to come and use sort of the education section of our meetings to do the training and Katya and I sort of talked about it and felt that that might be that might not work for everyone that people might want to just focus on the training part in a separate meeting so so we have and and Jackie's willing to do that she is doing jury duty so she gave me at several dates in January that she would be available but she would need a start time of six thirty or seven well I think that was all something we wanted to bring to the to the group to see whether or not I mean because it was originally going to be an hour yeah so the thought process the thought was do we want to add an hour of just this focused training on top of our meeting knowing that we would still then have like our typical hour-and-a-half meeting or is that just too much for us all to deal with that and then try to have our board meeting at the same time right so it's open obviously it's not a done deal that it has to be done that way but that was just a thought process that we had so would love to hear from you guys as far as if it was just one meeting no no so it's five hours it's five hours yes so it would be one hour a one-hour session five times yeah right up to an ending before Feb one so this would be right 22 oh that's so that's two to three in December and January whichever we decide where the three okay I was misreading that I was like that's weird because I thought it like I was thinking February of 20th the next year yeah oh she'd want to get it done boy once a week or something and that's way more than I'm willing to commit to personally yeah yeah I'm glad you guys were paying attention to the date time is not necessarily so do we want to propose it different well I mean the first is this is something that seems valuable to the group as far as a what we're looking to get out of things so would this be a value to us and then so that's the first question and the second question is if it's a value to us we want to break it into a separate training session or do you want to include it in our regular board meeting knowing that it would be one hour of our board meeting right and that would be one hour in January that's all that's this meeting is right now and then it would have to be before February 1st right we could also change I think we could change that because when I talked with Jackie I mentioned January to June and she was like yep yep that's it and so that's why when I saw the thing I was thinking boy the BSBA gave us until February but I apologize I didn't pay attention to that 2022 date so let I think I think it would be a little bit hard to move that quickly I guess from what Anne has explained of what she offers is anyone feel what are people's feelings on whether or not it would be valuable for what we're looking to achieve with our policy review it sounds like it could be valuable it could be it could be told us but we wouldn't know unless we try it when did I come in just looking at the specific policies that are sort of relative to our exact like more like our personal I want to say personal but it's not personal but it's like specific to our school and board and right and that's what we'd be doing with her looking and we would be looking and assessing how this is the governance system overall is working for us and what we might want to change or where we're feeling like you know I don't understand you know when you know the process of what we should be doing or if we're going to review how do we review how do we know like from the last meeting people were sort of like I don't know what might need to be changed or if it needs to be changed so maybe diving in a little bit deeper into our policies understanding them understanding the monitoring so that we feel comfortable that our policies are saying what they need to say and if we understand how to use them to deal with any concerns that we might have in terms of our ability to govern the district I mean I guess it sounds like a fine training I would not want to do it during the meeting I would want to do it separately and I think that if we can do it between now and June or now and next February then that's great but between now and this February I think it would be a value to if we had a training that started now and then continued with as new board members come on new board members come on to help them understand the whole policy governance as well so what sounds the most valuable to me is just it feels like our biggest stumbling block right now is where do we start how do we begin to review so you have your so the policy governance piece that you you have is actually having been through it three four times now is fairly robust I haven't seen anything missing that I would say hey you should have this as well I think a lot of it and what you have seems like it was is was pretty well covers everything that should be covered a lot of it I think comes down to your own kind of as a board and as a kind of a collective group which a personal flair is and feelings are or if there are things that have changed in the world that would require some changes to yeah where the policies created when the merger between the three twenty sixteen I think no that it we were doing policy governance before the merger we were doing it for quite a while before and you you guys merge before act 46 so the year or so before yeah and and we were one of the first districts to go with policy governance so that's where when I had the conversation with Jackie she she was like your you know a lot of the districts that then followed to create a policy governance governing structure looked at our policies and and model their own after hours so what other kinds of governance are there well everything in the BSPA is policy governance it's just that policy governance the trademark policy governance is a certain way of doing it and Jackie would probably be able to help us look at if you've decided to go away from the trademark policy governance to just straight you know create your own policy governance because in general the BSPA is wanting every district to run from a policy driven focus versus getting into the details the details that we right right so I guess I think we should do it if we can spread it out over the course of the next year so and that would be our only training for this next year unless as we meet with her we we decide so we have a training budget we have a budget well year was 10,000 my recommendation is 15 based upon what you did last year because you added in the strategic planning piece that added a little more so I think he came out to probably spend it about 12 so if you put in put away for 15 today I think that'll cover you for anything that you need and more and our current budget though is about is 10,000 right and we required a certain amount right to do a certain amount within fiscal years correct you're required to do so many hours of training yeah yeah yeah so but to go along with Chelsea's question if we do this in this fiscal year it wouldn't apply to hours for the following year so it wouldn't necessarily be the only training and as we consult with Jackie we may find that you know her expertise again she was like don't let them think that I am like the expert in policy governance she's a practitioner she knows she's used the system she's fairly familiar with it but she kept saying I'm not an expert in the in the sort of the theory behind the system but she's had practical experience using it and you know if she felt like you know she she might recommend you know maybe we pull someone in to just you know that maybe is more expert on monitoring or whatever but we have to kind of assess sort of where we're at and that's what she will help us but I apologize because I thought we had longer I didn't realize that that it was February the day 2022 that we would have to have it all done because that seems a little bit and even if we were to add it in for our meetings we're doing five sessions that would bring us to do in any way close to it so so do you want me to go back to Carrie Lam who put together the contract and say hold on and I'll double and I can double check with Jackie and just say we're not we don't have a bandwidth to do it all you know super quickly and we can also play it by ear you know she might say you know if we did two hours we could do two hours in this area you know once she sort of assesses where we're at and where we want to go yeah I think we'll give us a more of an idea of kind of where what our needs are in that in the assistance that we need from her we can extend it I think that's the first question okay so I need to find out then and it could have just been because Carrie wasn't the one it was Sue who is there and Sue is actually getting ready to retire so she gets she wanted to sort of get the contract up and rolling because then she's going to retire so let me just find out if we can extend to is June sufficient or do we want to say extend to July could use it for your strategic planning in the summer to what do we want June July I mean I would go out as far as you could because that way it gives us a buffer in case one something doesn't work out okay August that will get us all the way through the summer and then do you want me to just ask to if she's willing to add in more sessions if we need I mean they would just need to write up another contract if we wanted more more sessions it didn't sound like these and then no it was just let's start with five and just kind of see where where the board is I don't think it's probably not a big deal either anyway so right yet through our five hours and we think we want more I'm sure it's they will have no problem giving you a new contract so we'll check on that and then dates for the first session I think we need to know first because if they say that we can only do February then there's no point then there's no point okay okay all right so then that means we don't really get started then until February anyway well once we hear we can send an email around that's okay so we'll try okay so we'll do that be it email setting up the first the first so are we a go then if we can extend to August or so yes okay so then I'll go ahead and sign off and then and then we'll just figure out the date okay that's not all right I'll make a motion we have and contact the BSB to see if we can extend the training until August and if it they can to sign up and then schedule afterwards second second second from Megan all any discussion see no discussions all those in favor say hi hi hi hi all right so then annual conference I have a I attended I didn't get to see the waiting or I saw part of the waiting study which is really interesting and would benefit our district if it goes through but I don't know exactly what's going to be happening that's where they're looking at education funding and trying to make it more equitable and in the process they're sort of reweighting schools where you have a higher special education number of kids in special education ESL students and students in poverty so with our district and the numbers in our district it could really actually be a benefit to us but there's there's some politics in terms of when they would do that and given sort of the situation with COVID and everything else they're not wanting to move too quickly yeah they're in a weird position they did send out a formula that we used when the budget presentation last month and also when we talk about the budget a little bit today to try to estimate you know what but we would be receiving because it's supposed to go into effect under the law next year so it affects our budget year next year the problem is is that there were a lot of provisions that were supposed to be followed through on that weren't probably because of COVID and so then the question is they've got a group out there that's kind of reevaluating the weights that's supposed to be doing a report by like December 15th and then the question is is the legislature when it gets back in session going to extend things is it going to keep it you know running for next year we just don't know but it would take a legislative act at this point in time to stop that block grant you know change from happening I think most of the superintendents I spoke into are all for it I think it's going to benefit our district in the end right now with the formula that they gave to us it keeps us about equal to what we've always had to spend the special education services but you know I think the biggest thing that the superintendents are worried about is just hope making sure that all districts are held harmless in other words you know nobody wants to wake up you know two months after you've done your votes for the community and find out that the legislation has changed it and now you're getting 400,000 was in the I think that's the concern right now there was also a really great speaker on just conflict and dealing with conflict they recorded everything so I have an email out carry she hasn't gotten back to me but if it is recorded I'm hoping that they're going to make it available to board members but just in terms of you know thinking about community members and just the amount of stress and tension between teachers and community members and just the heightened stress level and conflict and polarization in you know in our community and in the state and in the nation it might be worthwhile it's about an hour or so the presentation I thought was really helpful in terms of thinking about how to deal with different views and conflict so she doesn't she did she had a great presentation so once that comes through or once I hear back from Kerry I may just send it out to you all and listen when it's convenient for you so that's the VFBA conference next up is the report to the voters and last time we sort of talked a little bit about what we wanted in the in the report so we talked about including some information about ends and acknowledgement for the staff for their continued their continued work during this what we thought was maybe going to be the end of COVID and now it's just seeming to be the never-ending COVID story so just acknowledging that maybe talking about our success in the union negotiations because we can we spent a fair amount of time doing those and then talking a little bit about the strategic planning process and where we're going with that so what I was hoping is that maybe a couple of people wanted to take on a section of the report and maybe put something together and then and then we can kind of work from there one of the things that might be helpful I don't remember if I mentioned this Ben Merrill who manages our website is also a PR person and so in previous years a lot of times what we'll do is folks will sit down with Ben and say hey this is what we're looking at for the annual report this is what we'd like you to include and he has all the information because everything that I send and everybody in the district sends he puts up on the website and he usually can pull something together in a draft form and can kind of get it up to kind of a semi-draft form in that that point in time and whoever is is kind of finalizing it can finalize it and then bring it before the board but that's that's been a typical process and he's really good at it too that sounds great so but if you have folks that are willing to tell them what you want it'll is this typically signed by like the whole board or is it from the board from the chair I feel like I'm pastored I feel like I just saw Laura's name it's typically that chair is the the has been the writer that's not typically how it's done because as a group you should be speaking with one voice it shouldn't be everybody but again every board does it a little bit differently and so I think it was probably good if it was from from everyone I do an annual report as well for the annual meeting mine's typically a little bit different I typically take a look at you know what we accomplished last year and where we're headed because a lot of it's about trying to sell the budget to folks and so that they know exactly you know why we're asking for what we're asking for and what we what we did what we asked for in the previous year so does that mean you're going to focus on the ends report will you hold a little bit a lot of it I'm not sure how well that interprets over easily to the community who's reading it but a lot of it is hey this is the money that we had this is the purpose we put it to to and it should result or it has resulted in this benefit and so kind of yes kind of no that the ends report that I put together what we had unless somebody wants to really sit down and go through find the tip but I think it might be a bit confusing but they you know they are parallel it's just not not going to use quite the same language typically just because of the audience right so I was hoping that we could get a few people to kind of get together I mean maybe we just create a subcommittee that or or if people have you know certain things they want to they want to focus on so like if you're like I really want to make sure we mention this or that in regard to the ends you know maybe somebody wants to head up that sort of section of it and and then Ashley had mentioned acknowledgement of the staff and I don't know if someone wants to sort of take on the negotiations as something to just report out that you know we or if you think that's worth reporting out to the voters and then the strategic plan I can talk about that because I was involved in that and then we could also just talk about too that you know we're getting ourselves trained we're working on figuring you know learning about how to operate as a board so you have any people dying to get involved and sort of putting at least together an outline of what we want to share with the community so would this be a place where we would share with the community that the ends aren't necessarily where we want them to be and it's because we are not functioning at a capacity in terms of employing the people to put the put the programs in front of the students so that they are confident in at least English math and science so then we can move on to things like arts and I mean isn't that something that the voters should know about yeah I mean it's perfect thing to communicate it seems like this would be the time to portray that so that when the budget goes up they're like oh okay this is why and it's it's good to keep them posted on again it's it's what we're using the money for I mean we're asking for 21 million it's that's a big chunk of change so they should should know exactly what we're working on and you know it also relates to them that there is a bigger plan right there's we've got the three pieces that three four pieces that we're working on very closely with right now and as soon as those hits a certain threshold we'll be taking that money and moving it over unless folks decide that they really want to pony up and try to do all at once so yeah and I think it's a really good thing and then Ben is a perfect person again if you a lot of it if you just have the conversation with him and talk about it and you know can point him towards source documents so like I said he'll produce a pretty good first draft for you we just need somebody to kind of chat with Ben or a couple people with different ideas and you know work with them to kind of collaborate to see what's the best way to put it all together so do we have a few people who want to be involved in that sure I'm happy I'm happy to be involved in it when when like when does it have to be done by typically should draft time you know early January right because again the goal is to have it out in the um as as a part of after you do your vote on and early January on the budget that that's part of the materials that kind of back up that that vote that you made yeah so it's in our it's in the in the annual agenda for January so we've got to be submitted I think to the county right mid to end of January yeah so we so we have basically um okay who is Ben Ben been maryl m-e-r-r-i-l if um you go into your orange southwest he's there just start taking Ben his name will come right up so and do you want to work with I mean someone else yeah yeah right yeah so I I would be interested anyone else we ready to take this on yeah sure okay so um and if you want we can just talk on the side to maybe just do some things via email or I know can we communicate do we need to privately you're not you're not a quorum we're not a quorum but we can but you should probably vote to authorize them to do the work but that will be presented to and voted on the board by the board in January all right if that makes sense so we'll create a subcommittee of two or or can we just say we're that Chelsea and I are going to work together to create a draft of the I moved to have Anne and Chelsea work with Ben Meryl to create a draft for the report to voters any discussion all right uh all those in favor say aye aye okay so that's decided um okay so next up we have um just the review so this is the first review of the EL 2.4 the planning and budgeting um monitoring report and the emergency superintendent succession um yeah yeah 2.4 is actually kind of apropos because we're right in the middle of a budgeting season but really um in general it's looking to ensure that you know the budget's aligning with the ends the way the board would like um that our practices ensure that we're always in the black at the end of the budget year um and that our financial predictions that we're using like we were just talking about the um the act 76 the the block grant money that's coming in just that they're based on reasonable data and reasonable research and so that's what that one's about um 2.5 has to do with uh having things set up so that somebody can step in on a on a temporary basis should the superintendent be incapacitated and that's a fairly simple one it's actually one that we're trying to enhance a little bit um with this year's budget um typically what I've done in the past is there's always two people in the district that I've signed a letter of authority over to that in my incapacitation they have um signing rights and and have the full authority that that I do um the cabinet is also kept in pretty good contact with most of the things that are happening in the district we meet at least every other week um we discuss most things um which keeps them in the loop so they would be able to keep things going for a little while if they needed to um but you know one of the reasons you know we talked about this budget about needing additional staff at the central office and kind of going back and forth between the human resources and the assistant superintendent um piece one of the reasons that I I kind of switched over a little bit to the assistant superintendent um piece was to support this and this is the executive limitation a little bit to make sure that you've got a single individual it would be tough if uh you know if you were out without a superintendent for a month or two it would be tough for any individual to be able to maintain their own work and try to do this on top of it you know piecemeal so and I do report compliance on both so next up we're going to share with us how you're doing yeah yeah um this is just a couple of slides so let me see if I can put this up yeah we did the full um presentation at the last meeting but there's been some changes and a couple of things to remind folks of especially if new to the board is that in January you'll actually be voting on three separate budgets so the one that we talked about the big one is the OSSD that's the one the money that flows into the elementary schools and the high school there's also the technical center budget which is a separate vote and then there is the Raven program we have a program for students primarily on IEPs with different disabilities that we run in-house and serves a lot of our students but also serves a lot of other students from the surrounding districts as well and so we'll talk about all three of those today right now we actually did get some data finally we talked last time sorry about that I hate it when it does that we talked last time about you know it's usually December 15th or later before we get the final formulas from the state but they were put stuff out like early this morning so we had some data that we can share there's actually a lot of really good news out there which I'll show you when we get to the next slide here but there are also some concerns they had a lot more flow into the education fund than they expected like significantly more so that should be a help to taxpayers and especially some of the things that we're asking for this year but one of the biggest problems in this one we can't evaluate yet we won't get this information till closer to the end of December is tax rates for folks usually the biggest thing that they're determined by is what they call the common level of appraisal right so right now in this pandemic what's happened is there were a lot of people trying to move into Vermont out of the big cities housing prices have gone up and so what that means is that tax rates are probably going to go up as well because and again not in our control has nothing to do with the schools but if people's houses are worth more then the state is going to expect to be able to to charge more in kind of the most basic of senses but they've gone up quite a bit so most towns can expect a higher tax rate again has nothing to do with the schools and the other concern that people should just be aware of is right inflation right now is up around six percent doesn't look like it's going to be breaking anytime soon historically for New England it's been about 1.6 percent for like the last decade has been pretty stable all right so we talked last last month about the fact that you know we're talking about expenses we don't know too much about revenue because we got to wait until the formulas come in so you know we added a lot to the expense size a lot of things that we're looking looking for for a variety of reasons and I said that you know the revenue picture actually looked pretty rosy and it does there should actually be a large increase to our revenue they gave out the yield prediction the numbers that we should be using to calculate the yields probably the most basic way to explain that to to folks even though it's not quite accurate is it's how much we get per student from the education fund based upon what they're saying right now at a minimum that yield is going to give us about 1600 extra dollars per student so we're talking somewhere between 800,001.28 million dollars of new money just because of that yield change that's coming in from revenue from the Ed fund we also if you remember I set aside a significant amount in an operational reserve fund figuring that it was going to take us three years to recover from COVID well the second payment of that is due to help offset the taxpayers next year so there'll be 412,000 from that operational reserve fund to go in to kind of balance out our expenses and then the other thing that we've got going on which we have no idea what the impact is yet they don't have the numbers yet is what they call the average daily membership so in other words the number of students that we have on a two-year average determines how much we get and we had a huge increase this year so we'll see 50% of the benefit of that those increased enrollments this year and the remainder of the benefit of that next year and that goes on into perpetuity as long as we continue to have students that number of students so minimally we're looking at a 1.2 million dollar increase in terms of revenues next year and that's minimal that's about as conservative as I can make it it's probably if everything they're saying is true it's probably going to be significantly more than that since the last time we spoke we added a few more things to the budget that came up the tech department again they are doing a one what's called a one-to-one program with computers every kid in the district right down through preschool as a computer or an iPad that they do the majority of their their work and their communication with their teachers through we've only had three folks in the tech department for time out of mind and they are strapped they not only manage all that they manage all the software for the district at all levels at all schools and so it's it's time to get them some extra help so we had put in for an extra body that was done last time in addition to it then in the past they used to have students come in over the summertime to provide extra help for the the more basic work you know just just swapping the computers out basic updates things like that that are a low level that the the techs can take off their plates so they can work on the higher level things and hopefully focus a little bit more on on the educational aspect of things as well because you know one of them is a specialist in using technology to to help educate children so they're looking for four thousand dollars for summer tech help based upon the final discussion that the subcommittee had with the the bus drivers which hasn't been finalized but where you are at we added in what the potential cost change would be we had already added in any anticipated cost in the last budget based upon your discussions it would be an additional 19 000 to that we also had a sabbatical request that the board will be reviewing in january that's where a teacher takes some half a year or a year off under the cba if the board approves it they're allowed to do that and while they're out we have to get a replacement teacher for them and so that's what that money is for and then kind of expanding the role of our preschool coordinator that's pat miller we had put some money in there for her to keep that going but we're really having some deep discussions about close to full day for for three year olds you know we were hesitant against doing that early on because you know you can't keep three year olds you know and an educational program that long but it doesn't need to be we can do the 10 hours of education and then just provide the services to the parents that need it plus the fact that you're probably going to get a lot better from us than they would in most locales that are out there it's also in anticipation of the federal work that's been happening one of the pieces they've been focused on is trying to provide additional funding for expanding preschool and so it's it's trying to get things set up this also goes that goes towards the ends it's literally it's a whole extra year of education we've got right now for the students right our four year olds we have full free full day free preschool for four year olds and it's expanding that down into the third grade and these are the kids that need to work the most because a lot of them what we're recognizing is they are not coming in with the the skills from the families you know basic things like being able to count from one to 20 say the alphabet which i think that the the three-year-old preschool will be able to help could i ask a quick question about the sabbatical what is the agreement what does the teacher have to fulfill during a sabbatical that's one of the i'm going to argue that that's potentially one of the weaknesses of your cba most districts don't do this anymore but typically what a sabbatical is for is for folks to go out and gain additional knowledge or education that they're going to be able to bring back and it's going to trickle down to kids yeah and so you know that's one of the good questions usually when i talk with the teachers is hey you know when you're putting in this request it might might be helpful if you know you say say what you're doing but technically i i'll have to go back i haven't reviewed that section in a while i think you know we we have to take the first one that applies each year then we get things are written in the cba okay good okay but yeah i know a lot of times it was um universities started it especially when they had their professors doing research right they had to break a certain yeah they needed to take a break from their their teaching duties to wrap up you know that's how your research so what we're looking at um potentially is right a 1.2 million or greater probably greater increase in revenue in a 1.1 million dollar increase in expenses so we're actually well in the black actually be saving folks a little bit of money i am prepared to cut if we need to again we've got the preliminary numbers from the state anywhere from 274,000 to 415,000 out of the request and i'll do a pie chart for you in the final presentation when everything is kind of getting close to finalized once we've got all the final numbers from the state i'll put together a budget that i am sure is going to pass but it's going to get us most of what we want that's kind of kind of my job but the pie chart one of the things the little show is okay this is what we're asking for this part of it is is mandatory we don't have a choice and then there's what we call discretionary and you'll see that the mandatory will probably be 75 percent of of everything so any questions on the OSSD part yeah i'm expecting go back to this a little bit i'm expecting there are going to be some huge increases just in cost staffing you know i i kind of put that in superintendent's report we're not going to see turnover this year and when i say we i mean education collectively across the country we're going to see an exodus the the last couple of years under covid have taken a toll we had administrators leaving in districts today was here in the superintendent shooting emails back and forth and teachers as well so you know i'm keeping my fingers crossed that come february you know we turn a corner good enough of the little guys vaccinated so that we don't have to people aren't stressed and hopefully the amicron is is what most viruses do you know it's more more contagious but less dangerous that's usually what happens to them over time um rtcc is a little bit more problematic and one of the things that makes their life difficult is that they had a pretty good increase in enrollment this year which is going to continue in the next year but it takes three years for them to get additional benefits additional money from the state for that increased enrollment and so you get stuck into this horrible position where we've got all these kids we're not getting any more money um and so for three years but we still have to have the staff to work with them and so that's kind of where they're at so what felicia was asking for which is is is well deserved and we'll talk about this a little bit if she was looking to get an assistant director a point five assistant director and a point five fte science and structure hopefully in the same person one of the reasons for the science is that's directly related to the ends right you know the science s back is one of the things that i chose for the ends and what ends up happening is you know 50 of our classes typically go over to the the technical center and um they don't get science that year and 11th grade is the year that they take the the science s back and so the hope is is that you know providing the service um for those students is going to make sure that you know they're getting the science they need to perform well on that that that assessment on the s at or the s back so the science the s back that's yeah so that's the state used to be what was it me cap that you guys had it was always encas in massachusetts every state kind of did their own thing but they they oh sorry about that from on science assessment but if kids aren't having the science that they need in their junior years and they're probably not going to score well on their s at either uh potentially you are you are correct because they have changed it over to being the subject test that goes up i believe through biology unless they've changed it i haven't done like a principles report in a long time so i'm not as involved with the s at piece but it used to go up at least through biology so it may or may not impact them usually that that third year's chemistry so yeah it's a very very good point they have a math teacher there that's helping provide math instruction for students to make sure that they can still meet their graduation requirements from their sending schools so that they can still graduate point three of it has been in paid for under the perkins grant the other point seven is out of the regular budget you can only carry things for so many years under the perkins grant before they expect you to take it out and so felicia is is wisely trying to get this moved out into the regular budget they have a single pair of professional there who works works with the students half of it was being paid for in perkins the other half was in the regular budget they want to get the other point five moved in she was looking for additional supplies and i'll tell you why these are in red in just a minute of about fifty thousand dollars for furniture replacement kind of a one-time cost and then in the blue i've kind of broken a couple of things down there is the cba mandated salary kind of what we're talking about with the the pie chart that's the increase that they're looking at just because of everybody's moving up a step on the pay scale because of the additional cost of benefits for the teachers and because of the the contracted increases that we've given through negotiations the discretionary is everything else the things that we're talking about what is likely going to happen there's there is no way that we can you know increase a three million dollar budget by almost half a million dollars for under twenty nine thousand because it would be catastrophic to the tuition right because it's all tuition based a lot of you know we get reimbursement from the state but a lot of it's the tuition the schools pay it would probably cause a three three thousand dollar increase in tuition if we did this all at once so the two things in red i'm going to recommend we take off the fifty thousand i'm going to recommend to felicia that we put in a request to the board to take that money from the reserve funds so that it doesn't have to you know hit the the tuition line since it's kind of one-time stuff anyway and then the director this one's a little bit more problematic um the director of the science instructor piece we need to talk about one of the problems with having a director an assistant director at the tech center is the fact that the state typically reimburses about 30 percent for any employees at the tech center but the an assistant director they won't do that until you've had 150 kids on a three-year average which we don't have so we won't get that reimbursement so her numbers are up there to get there now there are between 150 and 160 but we have to keep keep them up there for for three years which is likely but at this point i think it's just going to be too expensive i may talk with her a little bit i'm going to meet with her next week about providing instruction and the best way to do it what a lot of schools have done as i was going up through the ranks is in situations like this is they'll create an online academy they'll have one instructor that works with the kids on their online courses keeps them up to date keeps them on track provides tutoring if they need it as opposed to having three separate teachers so the online academy they can take any course they want and any subject they want and then have a single person that works with the students that are now online program and so instead of having three separate you know instructional teachers there you know we would only need one but that's a that's a discussion and then she would have to be on board with that so there's going to be some adjustments to this before next time and i'll also we should have enough information from the state to be able to say what the impact on tuition is going to be so questions on that a lot easier when i'm standing if i'm doing presentations the raven program that's our program for iEP students with with certain special needs and this is going to go down next year there are about a quarter million dollar program the total expenses are going to go down by a little over $14,000 their tuition is going to go down by about $1400 per student there are great program they're very effective these students that were paying you know $25,000 a year to serve through that program would typically cost us anywhere from 60 to 130,000 if we had to send them out to another another local so it does i did some calculations two years ago this program by its existence probably saves us about a million dollars every every six to seven years so they're in pretty good shape can i ask a question about the raven program so because i know that we have separate discussions about rtcc we talk about the director how is raven structured as far as like who is like the director of raven are the teachers that are teaching in raven part of the union that we discuss with like there's just never any discussion so raven um is probably try the best way to describe this when it was originally conceived and it's been we've been shifting it a little bit um it was in the building that was out behind the tech center and so there's basically two adults that that supervise it there's an instructor in a in a para um there's usually about 14 kids give or take um total that are in it um it's a vocationally based program they have educational periods during the day and then they spend a lot of time with um with engine repair um to keep them motivated to keep them interested um in the early days it was overseen by the director of the tech center and it was only done that way because of the physical locale right if you had a discipline problem that was beyond the teacher's ability you needed an administrator um to be able to go and help um or you know if the students needed to see the school nurse like anybody else does they would go see the nurse through the tech center um now that they are over at the building by central office um central office has kind of taken over that role for the most part is that that overall administrative body that oversees it we actually do charge them a little bit for the administrative oversight um that uh that we do as well as we do all the financial something like that for them so so they're kind of uh if you're in a business model there are cost center within within the the bigger organization they're considered part of the district like a school part of the district there they're school kind of a school within a school okay yeah yeah they typically they they serve many more students from the sending schools than they do our own on average you know there's about 14 students there about three you know if you average it out over over time it's about three students per year some years a little more some years a less from us directly yeah and we've been thinking um with the expansion and the prevalence of the autism in the district that's been growing um because we're kind of central in the state we've had discussions um with a couple of the other student superintendents of another school and then a school concept like that for students with autism um so that's kind of got derailed a little bit like a lot of things from COVID happened but that that may happen or it may be presenting that to the board at some time in the future that's it for changes for budget most of questions any questions the financial reports you said um yeah Robin wasn't going to be able to have them yeah what happens they close out a month and because this is you know December 2nd and the month closed on December 30th they have not had time to reconcile all the payables and receivables usually takes them about a week so what will happen is next month will happen I think it but I think it's January 6th is the next meeting so I think there's enough time for them to have that one ready but what I'll do is I'll have her just email the entire board when it's complete in a couple of days she did say I did talk with her a little bit that things there's no no concerns that she has whatsoever and how about the facilities report yes uh talk a little bit about get my ideas together here so there's been a lot of work going on right now they probably had I think a chance to read the paper they probably have an article with people on it today about the water up at Brookfield and so what is going on is a lot of their time is being expended to try to get that resolved after many many many years and when it all started they had a report from a water engineer about nine years ago which was before my time that we've been following through on that gave a suggested plan for how do we remediate this water well the water up there has lots of dissolved solids in it and a lot of chloride and so while it's not dangerous it you cannot drink it it's just completely unpalatable you know I went up there I think it took about three or four hours for the just the taste the aftertaste to get out of my mouth when I tried some of it so we've been providing them with with bottled water which is a good solution but the problem is is that when you have dissolved solids at that level it will degrade the plumbing over time if it hasn't already done so and so what the engineer who recommended us doing is three steps start with the cheapest one first and work your way up until you get one that works so the cheapest step which was between 25 and 30 thousand dollars was to have the well driller come out and seal off of the top portion of the old well so that you didn't have any water that was seeping in you know right you draw the draw the well water from down here you didn't want stuff seeping in from up here right because especially if it was picking up you know salt from the the roads and things like that that was draining down so we sealed off the the well almost all the way to the bottom so the only water that was flowing in was from the bottom couple of feet of the well hole it made an improvement it cut the solids by half but when the solids were a thousand times more than they you know they should be and you cut it in half it's still unacceptable so the second step that they suggested was drilling the well which we did you guys approved the money for that we didn't spend all the money which which was good but we got the well drilled we worked they worked with a state geologist they even went around to the houses that were around Brookfield and offered to test their water because you know the depth of their wells and so we were trying to find who has the best water so we're going to drill into that same location if we can with the help of the state geologist which is what we tried to do that water came back the salinity salinity was about as bad but it also had radium in it and radium again then raises the level that you've got radon concerns and so we immediately set up for testing for radon that came back fine so we don't have radon concerns up there right now but the final and the most expensive step is what we're looking at now and depending upon how expensive we may need to make some decisions about whether that's a site that we can maintain you know I'll say it now for the first time we're looking at an osmotic system to filter the water up there there's a moderate emplacement cost but there's a high cost for on to run the thing on going whereas like with the well there's a high cost up front that it's almost nothing to keep the thing going after that so we've got an engineer who specializes in this coming out to take a look but there's a lot of problems with it and you probably may know more about it than I do but the the the biggest piece is that they're not efficient on average for every gallon of filtered water you get you produce about three to four gallons of wastewater right because you know you get the fresh stuff over here but those three or four gallons have now concentrated all the stuff you took out of this gallon here and given our concentrations of dissolved solids I bet we're going to have to filter probably 10 to 15 gallons of water to get one gallon of of of good water up there and so that's why we've got the engineer coming and and then the other piece to it is that wastewater that's produced you know those extra gallons you have to do something with it well if it's not too bad then you build another leech field like you would for a septic tank it's got to be separate from the septic system and you pump it out there but our solids are so high that you got to wonder whether or not you know it's considered toxic waste or we're not to have a hauler come in and pick it up and take it off and so there may be significant cost to this can you just leave it the way it is and just keep doing bottled water uh we can probably do that but I don't know what the how long it's going to take to to ruin those pipes completely up there and that's going to be an expense in itself to have to replace that periodically because all those dissolved solids we're not talking about you know like some of the houses around here people complain with hard water where they got 300 parts we're we're talking 2000 3000 parts it's it's very high and so that's the the other other piece so the other problematic pieces of it is any of these systems require people to be trained to be able to maintain them and keep them running which we could do internally but again it's another it's another cost and if you have staff turnover then it gets exceptionally costly to keep training people i'm not in the water management piece so there's a lot of pieces to go into this but i'm not saying anything until we get the idea what the cost is and especially the the biggest thing for me is what we have to do with wastewater if we put the system in you know we we had talked about potentially you know and this is one of the other discussions is that she's let's only do the osmotic for the areas where there's uh where people will be drinking from uh that kind of makes sense you know you don't don't need great water to flush the toilet but by the same token again you've got that that piping piece that's that building up in the in the pipes it's like getting clogged arteries eventually it will fail so kind of where we're at so the one piece I do as part of this discussion notify the board a little bit of up as long as there's no disagreement is you had improved approved funding from the reserve funds I think there's about 130,000 for the well drilling they only used part of that and so what they would like to do is be able to use the remainder of what was allocated to pursue the osmotic otherwise all we'd have to do is um you know just put in another vote for the board for the to do the osmotic separately from the reserve fund but that's that's the intent unless there is disagreement on that how much did the well cost they had to build a road out to it because of the site so between 80 and 100 so it was significant but that's again like I said the engineer was uh the the benefit of having the well as it's a high upfront cost but then you don't have a lot of cost to keep the thing going osmotic will be kind of a would be probably a middling cost depending upon what we got to do with the wastewater but then it's going to be a high cost to replace those membranes and the filtration and whatnot and again it's going to be dramatically higher I would think just given the level of dissolved solids it's in that water and then we also have to have the discussion is um you know if we're able to do the osmotic do we want it to draw from the old well or the new well what's the problem with the old well since they're both you know the water has both about the same amount of dissolved solids problem with the old well is that it's a slow flowing well right whereas the new well actually flows great so it's like crazy so if you're you know doing a big draw off that you know you're not going to end up with problems um so it might be better uh you know if we're able to do the osmotic to complete the the new well so who knows there's there's a lot of questions there that we're trying to research so but my job is to notify you that we plan on using that the remainder of of that reserve money that was for the well now that it's not being used for the well for the osmotic unless less less folks disagree um or if there's other questions about this well you're waiting to hear from the engineer regarding to get an idea yeah that's that's probably going to take a little bit of time that's not that's not going to be an easy easy thing to figure out interesting pieces um i don't think it's coming from the road salt i mean it could be but the concentrations and an aquifer that size are just too huge so the question is where is it coming from i think when we tested i think they were there were two that were in kind of the same boat if i remember because we did that a year ago and then there was one or two that were really good and those are the ones that they were shooting for but yeah um yeah it's interesting where is the well the old one or the new one either so if you're facing bookfield when you drive into the parking lot the old well is literally right in the front that sticks out of the ground you can actually see it it's right in front of the building um the new one if you go across the athletic fields through the trees where they put that drive it in yeah it's it's down there so the the well the the actual borehole the well and everything is complete i mean we didn't put a pumping station or anything there at this point in time but there is a serviceable water source yeah there's somebody donated quite a bit of land out there um so there is quite a bit of land that now we've got that we've got the line ready to go but it's it's not connected and part of it is we don't want to we don't want to do it until we have to because we were trying to connect it with the that needs to be repaved up there so if we're going to rip that that that up because you have to put the pipes in and where the pavement is it makes sense to kind of do it all at the same time so yeah a lot of projects going on but that's uh that's where their primary focus has been been lately and i don't know if we've got any questions on the report i apologize for being long waited tonight so the where where that state where you're leaving that is they're gonna look at the we gotta we gotta find out what the potential upfront cost is going to be as well as what the predicted cost is to maintain it and you'll let us know oh yeah so it's not a decision in the end it's not a decision that i can make by myself or should okay and you're on again for the covid operating plan just yeah there's not not much has changed um a lot of it was just kind of some updates to the test to stay program um it's funny a lot of the districts ran off and started doing it right off the bat before they had all the pieces in place the thing that that delayed us a little bit was we had to find a medical waste person to be able to pick the stuff up and dispose of it properly from the testing kits the immediate use testing kits um that uses we have that in place right now they are actually planning on starting a run tomorrow with a small group of kids and so we'll see how that goes again it's uh it's i think it's a pretty good program but it becomes ineffective if you've got a lot of students at once if you got a got a class if you got 1015 it's great you got 60 or 70 just because of the the how the test works in terms of the timing we're being incredibly difficult to do you could do up a half a kid probably you get in the class for half the days over do we have any classes out right now uh i believe we've got two yeah it was um things were quiet um after thanksgiving we'll see what the holiday does by next week we'll have a pretty good feel for you know who picked up what um the only other piece to kind of add to this which is it's not in there um but it's kind of related was uh the state um started asking um us to fill out a survey um on vaccination rates they only did it once my guess is they're probably going to do it monthly um i sent it in on november seventh um our eighth grade class had the highest vaccination rate at 75 percent um our seniors had the lowest vaccination rate at 34 percent with our juniors close behind at 37 and our staff vaccination rate 70 percent right now the folks know um that's it unless there's questions yeah we've turned into a medical facility in addition to education that we have um so next up if there are no other other questions on the COVID is to move on to um our budget and setting the amount someone has it and i'm curiously um do you think we should up our amount 15 um i mean if if the only thing that you're planning on doing is like a strategic session in um the piece that you're talking about your 10 is fine if there are other things um or if you know you might decide to change midstream that hey this is a working for us we want a different presenter a lot of those presenters can be $1,600 a day i mean they they can be very expensive um so if you think that you might end up doing something else or something in addition you know i i put in for the 15 and what people need to be thinking is this is going to be the budget that starts july 1st of the coming year so our budget for this year is already set but it would be for the budget starting july 1 of 2022 well and you said we went over because of um strategic plan this year yeah i think that was 7,200 or 7,800 historically we haven't gone over a budget no but but you are doing more than previously the previous ones i think we'd probably be safer staying with 10,000 i am so how much we want to allocate for the 2022-23 school year for the budget for board education and training right i'm getting the right school year date right school year 23 it's even confusing because we're six months off everybody else yeah the rest of the world make the motion where we set our training budget for the school year 2022-2023 at 10,000 dollars we have a second i'll back down second in my time yeah and any any further discussion all those in favor say hi hi hi so that's pass uh next up is uh a required policy that we reviewed last time um lane did you want to yeah this is um you have two sets of policies you have a big book that's the policies that are required under state and federal mandate this is one of those and then you have your policy governance your governance policies um this one um by the looks of it uh is probably a requirement for the states to receive federal funding and to be able to distribute to the districts this is just guaranteeing that we're going to follow the uh agency of education's guidelines when it comes to how we administer our special education programs um they refer to a handbook which i don't believe has been created yet that's how new all this is but they're trying to get it in place for the the federal monies that are coming so it'll be a state handbook or yeah the agency of education yeah yeah and you just need to be familiar with it the policy that we have is kind of boilerplate like all the districts are pretty much yeah so uh what's what i typically do um one or two pathways um typically the best thing to do is the vsba um will create model policies they usually work with heather and ph or lin to do that this is the model policy from the vsba that i've i've adapted you know to us um if i don't have a model policy like that to draw from i work with the lawyers to create it okay so that unless there are further questions i that that's going to move into the consent agenda as um a policy that we're going to uh approve in that consent agenda um so are there are there any questions on that policy before we move to the consent agenda okay so um so that's in there um we needed to review the meeting notes from the last time did anybody find anything that was inaccurate and then we also have the advisory board minutes from the rtc meeting that we had um so those are in there as well and um i can explain those two yeah the authorizing the signatures yeah so um we have three scholarship accounts um that still have the name of the old elected treasurer on them this is to change the name to our new elected treasurer and so it takes a board vote and it has to be shown in the the minutes that the vote vote occurred to be able to change the names on those accounts and so this would be authorizing kind of two things with this consent it's authorizing the name change and then authorizing in um to be able to be the signature as the chair to sign off on it that's the other one there's a what's called the financial questionnaire i don't know even why we do this i was talking with robin about it's just something we're supposed to do and keep on file basically what she does and anybody can look at it who wants to is she goes down through the list and i think it's it's checking checking in on me you know we have these policies in place we don't have these in place it's it's that and then signing i sign off on it to say yep i'm in agreement with what she said and the the board should sign off on it happens every year i think that i think i did send that one hopefully in the packet but yeah that's the one but again it's an odd one it's one they like like you to have the auditors in the in the federal but they never check it the other thing you could do is you know you can authorize that for ann and if ann wants to go in and talk with robin and whatnot too you know that might not be that might be appropriate well is this something to that you've put in your your the monitoring report i have not included that as part of that but it seems to me that that might be yeah i can is that you know this is all been checked off and you have all of these things that you're supposed to have we're in compliance you're in compliance but it needs my my signature is that what a board signature we have to authorize someone to sign for it authorize somebody to sign for it i think it's more than you guys have seen it as opposed to agree with it yeah i would like to see this too in that monitor yeah we'll add it for next time actually makes sense i wasn't even thinking about it when i was yeah i mean if that's one of the things that the auditors are looking for and that we should make sure is in there and that you have it yeah i think it's because it came up after i wrote the report so just so i understand we're authorizing ann to be signature on the financial questionnaire and on the other as an account they have to change names on the accounts to the new treasurer i have a question about just about this this thing um so it says things like it says that i uh did i see that have school board members attended financial trainings no is that something that they want no they're just board members to it's not not that's what's quirky about it it's not like it's uh but it might not be a bad idea can we change it for relevant uh yeah i think it's a federal yeah i'm not i was just the fed it's a federal form they just want you to have it like i said it's it's weird but again what i would do is um you know if you authorize it if there's things you have questions on don't sign it talk with rather before you sign it well again i think if we see this in in that in that uh monitoring report i think it's just another piece that we all see not just me yeah no it makes sense a hole and that would be important this this does come to the federal because we do um for loans and stuff for the town for our projects their questions are almost identical yeah some of them they just have checkboxes they have to do and i asked you about it i said geez do they even check do they check this you said no we're just supposed to have it well probably the auditor checks to make sure you have it and they're probably assuming that you're doing it might be do on here it might be uh an anachronism from an old plot that just was never taken off the books that happens sometimes too so extra people approve the consent agenda as submitted including author and the signature on the account name changes and financial questionnaire that appropriate yep one second any further discussion all those in favor hi hi everyone okay so we're moving on uh so we're on the reports now rain anything you want to add yeah there were apologies there were three because there's a lot of stuff that happened um that we got info from the state on um today um a couple of things first off uh the five years ago um the legislation passed a law that um all districts were going to use the same financial software to make the transmission of data to the state system a lot easier and when they did that the state said okay because you know we're kind of mandating this on you um the state will cover the cost so they started the the the process we were actually supposed to uh move on to it two to three years ago um and the software was just horrible um and so they've gotten to the point where they kept delaying and delaying in the hopes that the vendor would fix the software get it up to speed to where it needed it to be and unfortunately the state signed into a contract with the vendor and so they were at a point uh this year where they think they're going to be going back to the legislature to say hey what we signed into a contract on is not good um can you please change the law so that this is no longer a requirement so then the question becomes is okay in our case uh we have not paid for updates on our financial software for five years because it didn't make sense since this was supposedly coming every year um we have antiquated financial software um and so depending upon what happens uh we might be on the hook for buying a new financial software package uh after this legislative session um software package probably estimate about 50 grand um to get it in get people up and running on it and what we need to do and so what i will do just to give you the heads up is i'm going to put 50 000 into that operational reserve fund from surplus at the end of this year for the specific first purpose if it comes up just to make sure that it's covered but again kind of unanticipated um here we are don't know what the state's going to do they might come back and say um yeah you know we'll we'll still pay for it um each district can do its own thing as long as it's compatible with the state system don't know um so we talked a little bit about that today the other thing we finally heard back i'd fill that up some work with the state filled out a survey like most districts um to receive uh HEPA filters for every classroom um in the district um they sent out the survey just before vacation for deliveries um and so the hope is is that every classroom um across the district including the spaces and central office that we don't have real ventilation in there um we'll have the HEPA filters in place they said they wanted to get those deliveries um two folks before the holidays so we'll see if that happens but that'll be a major logistical challenge because there's quite a few of them um and then kind of more of a a reminder we kind of talked about this at the beginning uh but the three board members that are up for reelection this year is our Ian Kaplan um Ashley Lincoln and Brian Baker just to make sure that you guys are aware that's it any questions on that okay so just as a recap um we have i will be connecting with Jackie and the BSBA to make sure that we can extend that training policy governance training um through to august and then um we'll get back to the board and let people know and you can um through email um figure out a date to do that if if they will extend that um Chelsea and I will set up some time between the two of us to work on getting at least some ideas down for the inner work and then work with them now to get my draft going with that and I believe everyone should be um you know preparing and looking at the monitoring reports for 2.4 and 2.5 and so Ashley you are our meeting evaluator great thank you um so I wanted to say that I do really like um starting the meetings noting the objectives and then ending with the recap um so folks know uh what we are expected during the course of the meeting and then the next steps I think that's a nice um addition and so that was really good uh the beginning part I was going to say that we were definitely not following the agenda times but there was great recovery and we are almost in great on time so that's good news as well um and from where I am sitting it does seem like there was a fairly decent um participation from the board which is what I have thanks great thank you very much all right so um we're now going to move into an executive session I move to enter executive session we need to move at 740 and we don't come out of the main meeting until after so I'm going to switch the meeting over because I don't want books and our work a person did you vote oh oh all right we haven't voted yet so um second we have a second Brian is going to second any discussion all right should we say what we're going in for oh yeah sorry uh for potential do I read this thing though yeah that'll work potential labor relations agreement with employee bus drivers and personnel issue and a real estate discussion second not any further discussion all those in favor bye