 Welcome to our school board meeting. My name is Flordia Smith. I'm the chair of the school board and I'm very excited to see a lot of people that are board meeting. I know this setting is a little awkward. We're doing the best we can so that we have added a mic to make sure that you can hear us. And we're just excited to have all of you here with us. I'm gonna start with my little usual. We have talked about this at the board before. Beginnings are notes for the symphony of the possible. And I feel like we're at a new beginning again. So beginning that goes to break the pattern of our lives and reconfigure afresh. And that takes courage and great tenderness. So the tenderness is you guys being here with us and I'm thinking the courage to look at this budget again. Our goal is to bring forward a budget that our communities can support. And one that moves the district forward in a sustainable way. Not backwards. We all come to this from different places. We all had a life today. We all are coming with different emotions to the table. They're like let's acknowledge that. We are all the people that you see here sitting at the table are just public servants. We're here for the kids, the same as our administrators. So we have a lot of people in the room today and we wanna make sure that the tone that we set for this meeting is the one that we are taking responsibility. We are continuing to learn with you. I would tell her that to her face too. We want everybody to remind everybody to be kind in their comments to look at questions with curiosity. And to, you know, there's no wrong questions. So please ask all the questions you have and if you have comments, please let us know that it is the comment that you're making. We're gonna enforce the two minutes just so that the Board can get its work done. There's gonna be plenty of time after the meeting also for four comments, but we wanna make sure to everybody that is both online and present here has a chance to speak if they have comments for the beginning of the meeting. With that, are there any changes to the agenda for members? I'll turn the show off. So we're gonna move into public comments right now and please help us model for kids, the, you know, stability, you know. If you have a comment, please raise your hand both online and in the public and we're gonna go back and forth. You're not gonna separate comments and questions at the same time. Can you hear me? Oh, that's true. We're gonna do, yeah, we can't because we're using the mic, we're gonna do first public and then we're gonna move to people online. So any members of the public that have a question or a comment, please raise your hand. The evening morning is Larry Goldberg. I live in Tislam, failure. Do not have children in the school these days but three of them are still in the whole system. Successfully, so I'm very happy about that. A couple of things I wanna say thank you. All of you for all the hard work that we do. Thank you so much, generally. And maybe even more thankless in the coming days. I don't know, but. Can you hold the mic for a little higher? I appreciate the work that you do. No, this is the guy that told us the other side, yellow. So there's so much about this budget that I do not understand yet. You guys are great and so you have a lot more information than I imagined that many people like me who have come in at the last moment here are also a lot of naive impressions of the budget. So I hope you're understanding about that. One question is that I very, very much didn't try and understand what parts of the budget are off limits. In other words, it's money that we have to spend. We don't have the choice of non-discretionary and which parts are discretionary. A couple of, I know it seems like there's too much of a short term that we create a budget that's gonna pass here in the coming weeks. And then we create a budget for that here in the coming years. So those are two separate things. One of the, or two long-term ones, I think, is that there's the issue of your career center which passed and it was kind of unfortunate. I wrapped it into the school budget. So the career center passed, school budget did not. So now we have no opportunity to go back to the career center budget and explore that anymore. Is that my understanding if I'm wrong about that? I'm happy to be correct. And then one last thing that'd be very interesting to hear comments from all of you, anybody here really about what the long-term opportunities are with the Rontlet and Spacers. So we can use our voices, like hopefully 30 school districts going through the same process to ought to create some of it. Thank you. Okay. Nobody's there. I'm sorry. Right, I'm basically with my military and the Middlesex resident. I'm just here to try to pay attention. Decisions, effects, my kids, I would have been, I also read this post, but I would have been one of the families who's affected by Adobe and Romney Kindergarten was charging and traveling to Adobe or Kindergarten said having to be together at the same school. So, that was kind of a confusing thing, but I think in looking at how the consolidation now should be done on the table, I think that's more convenient. I think that's what we're doing. It's hard to pay attention, and it's time to be here at the parent. So, I think we should be here, pay attention, and see, try to, as everyone gives an important puzzle. Thank you. We're gonna move it. We'll get to you, Larry, once we start discussing, we're gonna move into the comments in the online. So, give Mark a second to switch that. All right, let's move it. Okay, we have Becca. Do you want to unmute? Yes, Sharon. I'll let you see me too. Okay, can you hear me? Okay, great. I have two different questions, one is a comment, I think, and one is a question. No, they're both questions. Anyway, the first one is about, if we know the number or percentages of people by town in our district to pay based on income versus pay based on property value, I have a work colleague who lives in a different school district, and they sent out to all their voters a breakdown of that information so that we could all sort of really get a sense of what the actual cost is to different folks in the district and how that cost is shared across the schools and the district and the towns. So I'm wondering if that's something I can, I'll email it to you all at the document. It's really, really rich and full of really helpful information. And I would love to see if it's something that we could put together in this part of the budget process and actually make part of the process for coming years too. So I'll email that to all of you after. And then my second comment, or second part of my comment or question is about, as we're talking about cuts, and I know it's really important to all of us to think about the folks who actually interact with our kids and really enrich the student experience across our schools. And I'm wondering if some, as we sort of lose enrollment in some of our schools, if some of our existing administrative structures are no longer serving us as well as they could have. And if it's time to take a hard look at some of the ratio of administrative staff, especially at U32 or some of our other schools versus our ratio of student, folks who actually touch students' lives every day. So I just wanna put a plug in, I guess this is more of a comment than a question, put a plug in for really looking at some of those ratios and if there's some cost savings that we can accrue there. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Becca. We had one more hand, and now I lost it. Anybody else online that has a question? I do not see any other things. I don't see. Okay. Is there something in the chat? Okay, let's see. Is that, oh, there's four in the chat. Oh, good. Yeah, I just said something like mute. Your microphone's mute, that's all it was. Okay. So, Mark, I'm gonna flip your mic to the other side. Mm-hmm. No, no, I wouldn't. I think you're good. Just a minute. Yeah, nice and high. Okay. Thank you everybody for your questions and comments. We are gonna get started with the meeting. Some of those questions would get resolved while we are at the meeting. So let's get started. The next part of our meeting is our student report. And we have Willa with us. And Linnea. I don't know how we're gonna do with the mic, but do you guys want to? Oh, it's really loud. Can you hear them? Are you guys good if we talk this loud? Without the mic, he's the best. Yeah. Jen in the back. Oh, sorry. He's the first poll in the audience with the mic. I'm sorry. Oh, okay. I might go to something about him. The mic is needed. The mic is needed for people, for accessibility reasons. Yeah. For those in the audience. If you guys can't hear me or Willa, just let us know. We'll try to project, but spray your hand or something and we can yell a little bit louder. All right, so stage 32, which is our theater program here in 32 is competing this weekend at the Highland Center for the Arts Theater. And they also gave a performance for the middle school today during the school. The competition this weekend is going to be regional. So if they win this, then they will be going to the way, they will, I mean, going to the way it was, which is, well, yeah, I don't know if that makes sense. Oh, it's good. We also had our winter sports banquet last night, Natalie Beauregard and Dominic Kifasi won the principal's award. So good for them. We also had a smaller food drive, trying to get that a tradition I didn't know last night. So we're going to have more prep for it in the spring season. So if you guys go to that, make sure to bring some food. So the spring is coming up. It's on the 30th and a lot of people are getting excited. They're getting ready, getting interested, their suits. So that's exciting. And next month is April and April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. So the conversation and most club are bringing together a kind of a presentation for a callback. And we're making bracelets with the color teal to support survivors. And we're going to get some guest speakers to come and talk and show how you can help someone in an unhealthy relationship or if someone needs help, we're going to figure out how to do it and make our community more accessible for everyone and make them feel heard and overall good. And PEP Squad is also running a kind of a winter wellness. We had to cancel our last one due to like weather and stuff. So this time we are going to have a ton of different activities for everyone to participate. There's going to be a volleyball tournament that hopefully the seniors will win. And we're going to do a movie in one of the rooms. There's going to be snacks. There's going to be bracelet making when you can go on a walk. And it's going to be, I think, the week, the week, the Friday before break. So it gets everyone just kind of ready and good. Student teacher conferences are coming out on the 22nd, which is on Monday. And all students have a day off, which is great. And spring is coming. And I, for one, am ready for sunshine and warmth. I'm over the snow. And I think also it brings more of a excitement to the students here, especially because once we start getting outside and graduation's coming around and everyone's hopeful for the future. And just a thank you to all of you here. I know it's hard to do this. And the conversations we have is kind of uncomfortable at times. But no, there's hope at the end. So let's do it together. Just kind of bouncing off of that. We're just starting soon. We're just super exciting. We've got pre-season for our girls across, boys across. We're just over at Montpelier. We have like just everybody's just starting out. We have softball, baseball, so that's super exciting. That'd be great. And Pat is the students room for it. Any questions? Yeah. Any questions? I think I can project. I'll use my teacher voice. So how is the morale at this time of year? It seems like it's really hard with more snow and everything. What's the energy level like? Whoa. I definitely saw it today where everyone's just a little stressed out. Right around now, everyone's trying to get in their work before spring break. And that's normally when there's big projects coming. So the Advanced Expo are finishing our Hamlet unit. So we have a ton of work for that. And then I know there was a physics test today. So everyone's just kind of getting through. Everyone's a little stressed out, but stress is OK. But overall, I think everyone is ready for the work. But everyone seems OK right now. Everybody's sick and all these big tests and projects. It's just like, OK, but we'll get through it. This always happens. It's nice out today. So that's encouraging. Yes. I'm enjoying it. Any other questions? Seeing none, all other questions, thank you both. And thank you for the energy that you bring to the meeting. It's really neat. So that's up to the superintendent on central office leadership cold report. Yeah, I'll just highlight one piece. I don't know if Kara. It's on. I know it's on. Yeah. Kara, do you want to speak a little bit about some of our work around seclusion and restraint and some new training? Sure. Can everyone hear me? Yeah. Being heard is not typically a challenge on my part. I'll assume that folks can hear me. About a year ago, we shared with you that we were taking a look at analyzing our social-emotional structures and the frameworks that we use for students with the most significant social-emotional behavioral needs. And at that time, we pulled together a work group and started to compare our current framework, which was handled with care, with best practice and what we know that our kids needed. And since that time, we made a shift to CPI, for example, and to pursue, which is more of a focus on de-acceleration, connecting with students prior to behavioral concerns. And we made the shift. And as while as we were just looking back in a year, we've made that shift. And we were looking at the data last week and noticed that, really, the highest extent of intervention for students is when they are struggling to be safe with themselves and others. And when we intervene with students at that level with their documentation and reports that are required, and we have a 90% decrease in the most severe level of intervention, which is really exciting and speaks to the great work of our parents and PIs and our staff and embracing a new approach and focusing on the earlier level of workforce with those needs. I've been looking at other data related to discipline referrals and the other ways that we can measure that. But I know it's one of the most intense intervention. Our schools have done really great work. Thanks, Kara. Thank you, Kara. Any questions about that? No, I was just hoping that you could highlight that 90% and for our communities to know about that. And that is a big shift for us as we talk about mental health. We've been visiting every school and talking about emotional learning. And this is really also part of that. So I just want to make sure, because sometimes we struggle with asking questions at the board. So I was hoping that we could highlight something that we could all be excited about. Are there any specific questions for our principals and the whole co-team? No, that includes central office and leadership team. So people know what co-team is. OK, well, thank you. It's always great to read that report and really gives us an insight of all the hard work that you guys do. So with that, we're going to move into board operations. Hopefully, I'm not totally deaf and in Carolina. I'm sorry. Oh, but I will say that this is much better when the microphone is further from the speakers. I don't know if it did work, but then the audience said that there was a problem. Oh, maybe it's them. The hours of that is going to be really hard, so. OK, great. Can I say something? Who just broke me a number as well, right? And I don't know if anyone who would like there is going to be one right now. But they're already available. So I was going to start this conversation also by just having us introduce ourselves. This is our first day of board meeting. I was going to ask you to your name, your town, committee that you serve. And if you're an officer of the board, just say that. So start credit. Good evening. Thank you for coming out tonight. My name is Chris B. Bay, I'm the middle side representative. So I'm on the policy committee. Thank you, Diane. And so Diane Nichols-Flaming, I'm a representative from Berlin. I'm on the steering committee negotiations and quality and also finance. Is that all of them? Yeah, it's a tough act to follow. I'm John F. Goddard. I'm a representative from Berlin. And I'm also on the policy committee, Chris. I'm McElon Leclerc. I'm from Worcester. And I'm on Ed Quality Finance and Steering Committee now. Natasha Eckhart also from Worcester on policy. And I'm on Ed Quality. I'm Michelle Sefka from Calis. And I am on finance. Welcome, Michelle. It's our new board member. My name is Alayna Darrow. I'm a junior guy in 32. I'm from Worcester. And I'm a junior representative of the board. My name is Joshua Sevitz. I'm a middle sex resident. I'm on the negotiations committee and the new career center rep for our district. Hi, I'm Ursula Stanley. I am a representative from middle sex. I am our vice chair. I am the chair of the Ed Quality Committee. I serve on the finance committee and the steering committee. Good morning. I'm Suzanne Gain, the district business administrator. And I'm Megan Roy, the superintendent. And I'm Andrew. I'm Floor. And I'm the chair, you know, and I sit in the steering committee to say that. Good. My name is Rolla Mashkarie. I am the senior representative. And I am from middle sex. And I'm Keely Sloan. And I'm from Berlin. I'm Daniel Keaney. I live in Calis. And I'm the finance committee, the Ed Quality Committee, and the steering committee. And I'm Zach Sullivan. I'm from East Montpelier. And I'm on the finance committee for the Ed Quality Committee. OK. So with that, I just want you guys to, you know, it's our new start. And also in our packet, we always include, they are still killing you, Caroline. I see faith in it. I don't know what to do about it. In our packet, we always have our norms. I'm not going to go through our norms because they're personally re-organized. In our packet, we always include our norms. We start also by the little comment we had about how much time we have for public comment. And we had added some procedures that we used and some helpful information also about agenda key, so you know what all of those names. With that, I'm going to just get us really jumping in into our finance work tonight. I know that you guys sold out the finance memo just this afternoon because we were trying to finish it up between after our finance committee yesterday and today. So I was thinking that I was just going to ask for the purpose of being clear and not all the community members have this in front of them. I was just going to read the first, what it is about that we're going to do right now, just the first two bullets so that it's clear. So our job today is to identify a budget, a budget re-vote date and timeline for the budget adoption, warning and informational meeting. And then the second part of the meeting is provide administration with a budget target. The staff member will give the administration an overall direction, as well as enough information to make determinations about reductions in course in order to meet contractual obligations. For this, we put two sub-bullets so that it will answer some of the questions that were asked before. It is the perspective of the finance committee that would be important for the board to focus in this discussion on the net education spending. The goal is a budget that meaningfully reduces spending while preserving the opportunities for each of our students. Our hope is that this discussion will result in a budget that our communities can support and one that will step towards making our district sustainable in years to come. And the second part of the leadership team will continue to look at all proposals through the lenses that they have been working through these past years, educational quality, equitable distribution of resources and student need. So with that, let's look at the timeline. I'm gonna give it to Megan. Sure, we started with just operating the board at a discussion point. We did consult with our attorney. There is some guidance in legislation in law about budget revoked timelines. Ours is a little bit more complicated because the board shows to mail all ballots. You also need to decide if you intend to mail your revoked ballots. And if you do, you will need to add a little bit more time to your timeline to factor in the printing and mailing of those ballots. So what's in this document is, I'll frame it this way and then I'll run through what's offered here. And it is offered as a discussion point. This is really what the board needs to decide. July 1st is an important date for the board because by statute, if there is no adopted budget by July 1st, the district starts that fiscal year operating on 87% of this year's budget. Later on, we'll talk about what that looks like, but that is a significant cut. So the goal is to have a past budget before July 1st. And so you want to balance the time you need to develop a good budget, communicate it well to your communities, and also have enough time to potentially vote again. So the timeline offered here, had you adopting a revised budget on April 3rd? Very quickly after that, warning the budget and starting the process of printing the ballots, you would then offer an informational meeting. This is right now penciled in as your April 17th board meeting. Again, that's for you to discuss. And then you would be able to vote either on April 30th or May 7th. And that depends on whether or not you want to mail ballots. If you want to mail ballots again to everyone that you would want to aim for May 7th. And if you are not mailing ballots to everyone, you could vote on April 30th. We think that timeline would give the board one other opportunity to vote if the second budget fails, which obviously it's the hope that it won't, but you want to plan accordingly. Happy to answer questions that people have or anything like that. Go ahead, McKaylin. So we don't legally have to mail all ballots because we did it at the right time for our choice. And if we choose not to, people can still reflect after the ballot. Yeah, exactly, thank you. It would be bound by the earlier deadline if people request the ballot. So the advice is the language is the ballots are available 20 days before the vote or as soon as possible, which is, that's pretty vague. So that this timeline assumes 20 days if you are not mailing them. And we basically add about 10 days if you are. So that the 20 day marker would give us time to mail people who requested mail them ballots. It's still tight. It's still tight, but we, and we consult it with our lawyer. So yeah, it's still tight, but we would have the 20, and that's the 20 days. George Roth. Is there reason to believe that the legislature may come up with another law or be changing some sort of rules that would conflict with mailing the ballots? I know that because we had mailed ballots this year, it sort of shut down. It was the, it was the opinion that that shut down and he sort of, or created confusion if we wanted to like not, if we wanted to cancel our budget this year, would there be any, is there anything on the horizon that might with printing and mailing ballots that might cause confusion again? I would say I cannot predict what the legislature would do, but I would say that the advice we've been given around budget timing and mailing and printing came from the secretary of state's office and they have issued that guidance. So it feels relatively fake, at least from a timeline standpoint. My sense is the legis, my sense, right? This is not. That they feel like the H850, the law they passed that allowed you to revote, that was their temporary fix and they have turned their attention to longer term, looking ahead, that does not mean that they won't do something in the interim, but that's my sense. So that they have turned their attention to something different and aren't likely to do anything that would adjust this. Yeah, and the only confusion that could come from us, right? So we just have to be clear wherein the ballots will be available that they can request the ballot. So it's just our communication has to be pretty straightforward. Versa, if we mail the ballots for this vote, would we have this exact same timeline, essentially the 20 days for a second vote? You would decide if you would again, have the discretion to mail or not mail. So the second time, which would be your third vote, you could decide to, but yes, everything else about that, it's a repeated timeline. Yeah, and even if we had to do it twice, we'd figure we would still, even with mail-in ballots, we would have two opportunities, like Megan said. Do we know the cost of mailing all the ballots? Again, I mean, if you don't have it immediately, that's fine. Yeah, we have it and right now it's more about the timing, right? I think we would want to be responsible, but we're looking to save money and certainly we would want to know how much of me if we're talking half a million dollars or something like that. No, no, no, no, no. It's like less than $5,000, yeah, yeah. I would have to look it up, I'm not sure about that. But it's definitely not bad. The round, yeah, nine hard times, but it's a good look like two for, yeah, two for, it's okay, any other questions with, would you guys be careful, would we be okay with this proposed timeline right now? It would give us two weeks before we are adopting a budget, which would mean that the work that we do tonight is important because in order for them to come, prepare at that meeting, we wouldn't be picking and choosing. We would be adopting a budget, right? So I don't think we should have another meeting in two meetings just to touch base, even virtual, just because you're saying that at the same meeting that we're gonna have with the responses also we have the vote on, it doesn't do much on no reflections if needed. I think as the board discusses that, what I would say is if you are adding a meeting, I would say the only feasible thing you could do is push back that April 3rd adoption date and add one after because next week is next week, we won't have had an opportunity to pull it together and the week after that are some pretty key superintendent search dates that I don't think you want to adjust. So there isn't an ability to add one before. So if the board decides that they want two meetings, I would suggest it be April 3rd and then April 10th and adoption on the 10th and then that, then you'd be looking at the probably May 7th instead of the 30th. So for the board. So maybe we have a pretty long meeting. What do you mean? I don't know if anyone knows. The steering committee wants to share about April 3rd because there was some discussion about also not delaying your configuration engagement. And so it is actually slated to be a pretty lengthy meeting because of that. Yeah, we said we were trying to work in our work plan today at the steering committee and what we were trying to do is what we will do, we will present the strategic plan and the configuration, not study the configuration, what we got to see as a finance configuration committee as been presented to the board. And it would be an opportunity for community also to be there. This meeting was going to take place in Calais. So we would be sort of advancing that work. We would start with that presentation. So community members also know that we are serious about where we're going, right? That we are studying this. They would understand our strategic plan. They will understand the options early on, just as us, they would be involved in that conversation at the beginning of that conversation. And then we would adopt the budget with the guidelines for right now, because we really don't have a lot of time to go back and forth. And I think what we need to do is be concrete in, you know, if they use those lenses right now, what we can control is the spending. That's all we can control is the spending. So if we are able to give them a target, we talked as a finance committee about trying to be, you know, bring our spending from 16.14% down between 10 and 13%. So we could ask them to bring a budget back. And I'm just giving examples, you know, so please I want everybody to have a chance to talk. I'm just summarizing a little bit of what we talked just yesterday. This is, and this is, you know, it's not a, it's American. So one option would be to get guidance from them. And they brought some numbers for us today too. What, you know, how much would it mean to have at 10%? We wanted to start by you guys understanding what it would be and for community members to understand too, what it would be to operate on an 87% budget if we didn't have a budget. That's one marker. Then what is the 10% budget? What is a 12% budget? What does it mean to the tax? As we know right now, right? Because we, the yield is going to change because we are all interconnected in the, you know, they had fun is a collective effort, right? Is what we all bring of cost. So that's where we were, I would be open for other finance committee members or we could just start it and we could just, you know, popcorn as you feel that you want to make a comment in what would, what would you be comfortable with in, and I know it's hard to say because we, you were there Chris. No, no, no. But there's no clear there yet. In terms of, if we say 10%, we know with that in terms of, we have to buy. We don't know what that, what a cut that means and where is it being cut? And what, you know, so, you know, we can start that when we say, okay, we'll go to 10%, that's I think 1.9 million off the budget. Yes. Okay, so. In addition to, more than what you've already got. Yeah. Right, in addition to, so where would that likely come from? And, you know, so to have that discussion in terms of specifics and in form, I would just go. Yeah. I mean, I can, oh, sorry. Oh, good. I know, the only thing I was going to say is what finance committee discussed is, to some extent, administration can't go back to do its work until we have direction that we are in a little bit of a chicken and egg scenario. What we did say though, is we know that we proposed reductions to the board last year. So the first thing we would do is look at those again to see if they are still relevant. That was around 850,000. That does not mean all of them are still something we would continue to recommend, but we did recommend it a year ago. So that's the first thing we would do. The second thing would be, we would revisit the other recommended reductions that the board restored, again, to determine whether or not that is where we should go. That number alone tips, if we were to take all of that, we don't know if we would. But it's a starting place for administration's work because we made those recommendations last year using the same lenses. So if it helps the board to know that that is where we would start. And the second place we would go is, there are additional specifically enrollment related reductions that we could make because our enrollment continues to decline. And so we would look at that. So if the board, and we would look at other functional areas, including administration, because I know that it's always a question. So that's where we know we would start. That does not give you the specifics that you are talking about. You're right. You won't get that until we present it. But that is a starting point for how the administration of intensive. So, Mary. Can you hold on one minute, Chris? I'm gonna let Joshua speak. Did you have your hand up with two, Diane? Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna let Joshua go, and then Diane, just in order of how I had it. And then Diana. And then, oh, Diana. I think Megan said it exactly. Check on anything. Like we don't know what is, we need to give the administration guidance. And then they will decide based on the three pillars of our lenses. The three lenses of what we use as our guidance in this situation. Then I just want to caution us to just not, as we hear back next meeting from the administration, just caution us in terms of our preferences as to what's being cut and proceed with faith in the administration's decisions. Diane. So the only thing I was gonna say was going back to the one question that was out there too, as to what are the pockets we can touch? What are the pockets we can't touch? Because then that also shows a little tipping of the scale. And I'm not trying to second, I know I get painted as the person who doesn't trust and doesn't accept, but it's more so having a time, a chance to look at that. To me, I'm wondering if we're able to get to a conversation one about, we know what pocket can be touched. And then what is the percentage of what we're going to look at in that? So as some of the categories you remain in their formula for a ratio that we as a group are comfortable with between direct services, other functional services, what is that going to look at? And I would also remind us as what was on the news, one of the challenges for our schools is the level of work that has to keep on going. So there was the three in our hand, which is a very important and needs to be done. But again, it's an additional weight that we've put on our buildings and on our staff, which is why I think there's so much frustration out there about the end funding and the formulas for it because we as that community center is having to take on so much while there's all these other initiatives. So a couple of things that I think it's important for the board to understand. So first of all, I do not think it's judicious for the board to tell us what functional areas to go after. That is really difficult for administration to do its work. It ties our hands. We do, however, and I said this to finance committee, if there is something that you know you will refuse to take our recommendation about we need to know it now so we don't start. So there is an element of that, but I would not advise against a go look at your functional areas this way. There is some information because folks did ask what it looks like just how it's woven down that's in your packet. It's still useful information for you. What's important for us is to know the magnitude of reductions. And the other thing that I would say because you've heard this message before, not just for me, but from the team, there are limits to what I don't have a dollar limit in my head. If I did, if I had a thought in my head I would ask you for it but there are limits to what we can reduce in our current structure. We know that. We know the magnitude of reductions though that we do think we could continue to deliver services and meet the needs of kids. We have been looking at that. That number is in the million range. So yes, we do think there are reductions that we can make. And just like we have in the past we would also, if you gave us a target and we did the work, we would show you what it would look like and we would say we don't recommend it. Here's where we think we would land. So we would still do that. I don't know that that's helpful except that the piece that is a theme is it's going to be difficult in our current structure. And yet we understand that we need to make reductions and we think we can. And we think we can and in a way that still allows us to meet students needs. Daniel. I had a couple of points. One was the, in terms of the capital plan and the budget for the capital, I'm a big fan of the capital plan. First of all, I want to say that up front. I think a lot of districts are in a worse situation than us because they have not had a capital plan. They have not kept up with their capital plan. But I'm also realizing where we are. I want to understand why nothing in the coming year's budget that is up for investment in the capital plan can't be moved down one year. That's an important question to answer in the court for this. Similarly, we had a discussion earlier this school year about the importance of appropriate staffing in our central office because we were at a situation where it didn't feel kind of old. And in terms of what the office's capacity was. So I come in to that conversation with some skepticism that anything can be cut from the central office budget. But I also want to understand where we are. Where we are relative to other districts in terms of our central office staff and in terms of our general administrative thoughts. We haven't asked for that before, I realize. But I think that's an important point. And I also think that tonight before we direct the administration to come up with an amount to reduce the budget by, I think we need to examine how much, if any, of the fund balance we want to contribute to this problem we're in. And there's no in the memo for those who haven't seen it yet about what the fund balance flexibility is. And Daniel, I have a couple of comments. Sorry, Caroline. I have a couple of comments starting with the capital plan. I think there's several of us here. Carol, you're here. There's several of people here that have been part of where we were before. Sort of firefighters bring fires all over our building not taking care of our buildings. 2%, if you see the graphs are 2% of capital plan doesn't totally cover what we need to be covering for each of our buildings as they are right now. So it would make it like, well, we know what you, it's almost like you have a strategic plan and then decide that you're not gonna take the action steps of your strategic plan. So it's kind of similar. And I know it just feels like building, but the building affects the outcomes of our kids. And I think sometimes we refuse and it affects our staff, it affects our students. So if we had less facilities, maybe that would be the case. It would still be an old facility and we wouldn't want to take care. But that 2% is not gonna break where we are right now for adding money to this conversation. So I don't want us to go backwards in the way that we've been creating systems for a reason. And it's taking a long time to get here, to be able to hire a person that is in charge of her buildings to really take care of our buildings, to not be always in putting down fires, and I know Susan could even speak more eloquently like me. I am really passionate about this. It took a really long time to get here. I don't think we can go backwards in that it wouldn't be responsible. Daniel, Ursula and then Joshua. Sure, and I would say perhaps the same, maybe true for the central office as well. I mean, our buildings will continue in the future. Our buildings will continue to play an important role in the district, no matter how many we have, and same with the central office. I mean, that's going to be key. And I think it's happening that appropriately is still going forward, which is great. I don't know, it may be hard to rebuild some traditions as well. And I know some folks are open to looking at that. And I am too, but I just thought I would. And I didn't want to have a comment but I think it's helpful about the, okay, and I, I was a couple of, okay. I just, the one last question that Daniel, you were raising is that I just wanted to think about that when we say that leadership team is looking with three lenses, educational quality, student need and equitable distribution or resources, that's everything that they're looking at central office. They're looking at the budget. They're looking, it's an equitable way to look at our system as a whole. It doesn't mean that anything is off just because we say that we're using this three lenses. It doesn't mean that all we're looking at is staff. Otherwise it wouldn't be responsible. Here. I just want to point out as it relates to capital plan we have a big unknown cost in only one of our buildings and that's PCBs. So if we discover, because we've, and we're very glad that we are covered for the cost of finding this out but it does not cover the cost and Steven, feel free to weigh in but that would come out. That is an unplanned expense. It would come out of your capital plan and might already blitz your capital plan. So further doing that is We have full preliminary reports back on and we'll have a full report out as soon as they provided. We've identified where the math amount of PCBs are in the school with the first round of testing. It's the fire proofing that is all the entire first floor on every beam that's in this building or that wasn't completely renovated. So we have no idea what kind of remediation but it's going to take quite a bit from what we're hearing from our control staff. So I hate to pull up the capital volume so quickly but I'm saying that we have a very large unknown cost. And do we have to remediate as soon as possible? So it could take us up to two years to do all of the remediation but just starting to begin some of that process as soon as they have a plan that's approved by about six or seven government agencies. Yeah, it's a pretty big process but we're just at the beginning of it. We'll have a better report within about a month, so we'll know. I also think that would underscore the importance of unbalance and maintaining our unbalance for unknown unpredictable expenses. Predictable, unpredictable expenses as a word in this case. Ursula, do you have something? I would just have a hand up. So what it sounds like to me based on suggestions that have been brought up in the sponsor here then is that and I may be wrong, what it sounds like is the only option is to cut staff. And if that is, because that's what it sounds like, it can let us know that. So when we are thinking about this, that's the lens that I'm looking at it through. Because when I hear, could we look at this? Can we look at this? Can we look at this? And the response is, no, we can and here's why. What it sounds like is staff. So if that's the case, I just want transparency that that's the case so that I can modify how I have to think about looking at budget cuts. I think we've been really clear the only way we can realize any kind of significant reduction, which again depends on what you ask us to do is through staff. And that is because it's 80% of our budget. That does not mean. So I don't think that's been explicitly stated to just now. But that's what we've said. Every budget we've ever brought you is 80% of our budget is staffing. This is what we can bring you at. That is absolutely been our message. It will not be the only thing we look at. It is never the only things we look at. We absolutely have to scrub all our lines. But the magnitude, I think, unless the board is deciding not to make significant reduction, that is your choice. But the magnitude of the reduction that I believe you have to make, there is no way to do that without reducing staff. That is the unfortunate part of this process. And I think we've been really clear about that. Where's Linda and Micaelyn? So I'm going to respond to that and then also talk on the fund balance and kind of both then as well. But we've talked about this budget and the fact that we were going to have hard choices coming down the line for three years. And for three years, it's been staffed. They brought us reductions last year that were staffed. We said, no, we're not ready. We'll do it next year. And it is next year and we did not do it. And so here we are, asking to do a revoke. So we can't keep pushing it down. We keep thinking that if we reconfigure enough, we're going to be able to cover all of this spending and we're going to get to a point where even that's not going to be enough. We need to be honest and it's been brought to us for three years. And we need to remember that it's our job. We're elected to remember beyond just each meeting all of the information that's being brought to us. And I'm going to say taking money from the capital fund or our general fund is a one-time solution that is not lasting. It will not help us next year. It will make it worse next year as well. Okay. The capital funders are what? Funds are. General funders. General funders, yeah, yeah. Fund balance. So, okay. A couple of things. I do hear what I'm saying about the fund balance and capital projects, et cetera. I do, I think we're currently in an unusual situation. So I don't think we should necessarily close to 100% of all of that. Maybe it's not pulling from it or maybe it's not transferring a million dollars in the budget out of their funds because that is a lot of money. I mean, John, that's a lot of money. And so if we are talking about cutting people, I'm curious what positions are currently open and if those could just not be filled for a year or if we could creatively fill them with current staff. And then I know at least for myself and probably others in the community and on the board is just cutting teachers, doesn't, it's not gonna fly for me. So I, you know, it will make sense to have some teaching positions, absolutely, especially if it's, you know, creating more equity across the school, for example. But, you know, can we look at sharing principles across them on our smaller scale or that sort of thing. And I know you mentioned you're gonna look at administration and I have faith that you will. And I want a bunch of projects to have a mixture of diversity, you know, preparation, unlimited. I'm curious. Yeah, so it's 70 to 80% of our expenses. And it's all staff. And so when we're looking at cuts, all staff should be creating equal rather than some staff being more equal than others. And I know that that's difficult, you know, lift the votes and it's good. I mean, we have had staff cuts. It has always been teachers, counselors, or nurses. Always. Let me just finish. We have had attrition, we have had attrition this year where we added back some nursing staff and some counseling staff to the tune of $182,000. That adds back this year. And correct me if I'm not speaking because I think we sometimes would let each other say things that are not factually correct and we should correct it so that we're on the same page. But we added back $182,000 into the budget. And that is not what budget that. Because I think 58% of our community voted against the budget and it wasn't just about $182,000 item, add back. It was an unfortunate complements of things that some of them would be at no control. But I agree that we probably need to cut staff hopefully through attrition, although it sounds like we already had the attrition rate when we come to the first round of the staff cuts. And but I'm thinking this needs to be more equitably distributed in terms of cutting things or we just decide not to do things this year that we may have done before and just put them off. I think Stephen makes a fairly good point about we have this unfunded remediation problem with PCBs that we need to deal with. And who knows what that's gonna be? And it's gonna start this year because I probably will hit the next budget year in our next budget. So the planning would have to start at first. The planning would have to start at first. I mean, you're not gonna be able to hire people. Well, we're talking about a year and a half, right? So we have that planning to do. I tend to agree that we don't use fund balance because I agree. I think once you're dipping into that, that can become a, you know, we need North Hammett for that if we keep doing that. But, you know, but it's a serious discussion that across the board, not one section of our, of our staff members, because it's set to our communities. You know, it's gonna be shared, should be shared sacrifice, not a cherryfield sacrifice. I'm sure it's that, go ahead. I just wanna say one thing on the question, the fund balance, I don't know if now is the right time. I don't know if this is the right amount, but that fund balance builds up because we put forward a budget that was more than two, put forward a budget in the past that was more than we needed. And we taxed at higher rates that we strictly needed to. And I mean, budget is a good faith effort. You know, you're not always going to get a perfect, but at some point, I think it's also fair to say if we've, you know, if we have run over that some of that should go back to the taxpayers. If we, you know, if in the past we've overshot that they've borne that. Some of that fund balance as we've discussed in these meetings has come from the fact that we've been unable to staff positions, which means we are not serving the students the way that we needed to and the way that we maybe wanted to or administration wanted to. And so we had money leftover and it wasn't necessarily like, hey, we found some extra pennies under the couch. This was a, we didn't fill positions that we intended to fill, despite trying. I'm not saying y'all didn't try. I'm just saying it didn't happen because of the situation we're in. Daniel. I think both of those things are true. I think also in light of what's, you know, the news from Megan and Steven about PCBs, I think I want to retain more of the fund balance than I came in here wanting to retain. But I think I mostly land on Zach's side of things that I think it's appropriate in the courts of this to at least return some of that fund balance to the regular, to the regular budget and to cut less the cut of it. So, go ahead, Joshua. I think that we should be careful about using the phrase returning our fund balance to the taxpayers. Not every district is in the privileged position that we are in to be allowed by our community to hold that. In some districts, school boards are required to give that back. And that's something that is unique to us, not all districts have that. So I just want to throw that out and be careful about saying, let's return it. So if that catches fire, you know, it's a vote to say we have to return that money every year regardless of what college it probably is. So, I think I'm hearing you all, and I'm sorry, Chris, I was getting a little, but not usually in a style, but I was getting a little tense there. And that's not, you know. It's the time of the war. I know, and it's hard. What we're doing is really hard, but this is not the moment to not trust our administrators. And I know that that's not what you're trying to do, but just hear me out. If we use those three lenses in, just stop rolling your eyes at me because it's just like, not you, not you, and you know who they are. So it just like, because it just stresses me out. I know it stresses me out. So I'm trying my gear back today in, you know, there's a lot going on and I'm a little stressed that we can't really, this has been coming for three years. This has been coming. We knew this fiscal clip was coming. Two years ago, I remember this meeting, we were at East Montpelier, and I remember leaving that meeting in tears, which is not what I like to do. Like, I love this meeting, but we are not making progress. We need to make progress as a team. We knew that this fiscal clip was going, that the answer funds were gonna disappear, that we didn't know what they yield, they were gonna put, we are in unprecedented times in our legislature too. We don't have a lot of support on public education. And should I let you speak sustainably? I'm getting too emotional. No, no, I'm just happy to help with the fund balance discussion. I feel like, and I'm gonna throw out a feeling, we need some direction on dollars so that as a leadership team, we can go back and talk about what to bring to you. And in that package that we bring to you, I'm hearing that you would like a proposal of some use of your fund balance if we wanna analyze what we think is a practical amount and that you'd like us to analyze the capital plan. These are things that I'm hearing from you. I think we need a chance to do that as a leadership team, a direction of dollar amount would be really helpful. What is our target? Are we hitting it? Are we hitting for $1 million and $2 million? What are we looking for? So we give them, I'm gonna let you speak on it, so we give them a target and we say those are, you can see, be creative. Be creative with using the three lines that says, we give you a target of 10 or 12%, I know, because we need to lower our, and they can come back to us and say, if we dip into here and there, we can meet student need and still provide opportunities for our kids. We can't do it on 10%, it needs to be, whatever it is, it needs to be 13, we can't do it on their top, but we at least allow them and trust them. They have demonstrated to us year after year, you see the reports, we just went through the report, like they have our students back, they are the people most qualified to make these decisions. So we just need to allow them and have a little trust, they allow, give them a little trust and Natasha, go ahead. So two things, one, I get really frustrated when people throw around the phrase, we need to trust our administrators, because I don't think any of us understand, we don't have to start administrators for our leadership team. So every kind of that phrase is put out there, I like, sorry, I was gonna do a clue reference, blame's up the side of my face. So I would appreciate if we just kind of like, took that out of the conversation, because I don't think that that's where anyone's coming from. Second of all, other people said it better than I did in terms of staffing. I understand the lens we have to look at, we have never been brought anybody but teachers, nurses, counselors, paras. I would love to keep everybody, I know that this building has operated with more administrators that operated with when I went here and we had more students when I was here. So I would like that if staffing is brought to us, that we are not just seeing the same group of staffing all the time, because those are the people who are directly interfacing with our students. So that is what I'm asking. I'm gonna, no, not yet. Okay, Chris. Our industry is more to do than they did. I mean, there's just there are different mandates I think that respond to someone. I'm recognizing that. And there are two more buildings. Right, so what I would propose is that we have to get some concrete information from Suzanne and Megan in terms of what certain percentages to reduction are. And then each of us voice, you know, after we've had our general discussions, voice our opinion is the one that we're comfortable with. And if we have views on what we don't want to see come, mention that at that time. So that's not coming up later. But I think that might be help us move towards giving more concrete direction to our leadership staff when the time is appropriate. But I think knowing what different reductions look like in terms of dollars, we'll help us get that. If I think that's a good suggestion, Chris, I think what you're talking about might be a good segue to what's in the memo, the charts on the second or, yeah, second or third page. Can I just say one thing? And I'm sorry to make an interrupt, but I don't think any of us are saying, I'm not saying I don't, I'm not realistic about the number of cuts that we, you know, I've been saying this in my home and that we know that it was very clear with the vote going down to me that these cuts are there. All I am saying is I do not feel comfortable saying, yep, 12% and whatever you bring me on April 3rd, I'm going to say, yeah, no problem. I may, but I don't feel comfortable saying today without knowing what that is, that it is. So I think that, I don't think any of us are saying, we're not realistic about that there. I can, so you had your hand up, so I don't want to ask. I just wanted to say one thing, the, I think also the difference is with, in the talk about what you said with how there wasn't as many admins when you were in high school, I think behaviorally and mentally, the states of students then and now are very different. And I think it's a lose-lose no matter what, but I just want to make that shown that like, how students act in a classroom now are different, especially with one of our grades now. So I just wanted to put that out of there. So, Michelle, and then there's, because we haven't had a chance. And a few others have said, we need to give the leadership team though, the direction of where to go. We can't just say, just learn how to spend a budget. We need to give them a target. And if they can hit the target and bring it back, they may come back and say, okay, we tried to hit your target, this is what it is, but we couldn't, this is what we're proposing, but we have to give them a starting place. Without a starting place, they're gonna meet for hours and try to figure out what do we do? So, you know, in Miami talked about 10 to 12%. Like, if we give them that as like, here's the target, somewhere in this area, if you can do it, you can't bring up what you can, but we need to give them a starting place. First of all, you have- And I guess I, we all need to be clear that if we're asking for them to bring us information for us to look at and say, no, we don't like these cuts, try again. We've been here before. They don't appreciate the exercise. We've heard that, hopefully we've all heard that and understood it. But we are, we have a deadline to meet. We don't have time to spend four months figuring this out. We started our budget process in October. We now have to condense this timeline of give them time for your information and they're gonna give us the recommendations on how they meet our students' needs with the amount that we think our community can shoulder. That's what we need to do. That's our responsibility is to go, our community can handle this size budget. Can you figure out how to do it with that size budget? And they will tell us whether or not it's possible given our current configuration. I think for us to go bring us back information based on some number that we've given you and we may or may not approve it. And so we're right back at the same point of then they're gonna have to run back with a new number. And how do we decide that? How are we determining what we think our communities are saying are physically responsible if we just don't, we don't like the cuts you made. Try again. So we're gonna run out of time. And then we'll be at a 13% decrease to current budget. McKaylin. Sorry, I just have a really quick definition question. And I'm embarrassed to ask it now, like four years or however long I've been on the board. Can you clarify who exactly is on the leadership team? On the leadership team? Yeah. I think they could all stand up. I think the majority is here is. The federal office administrator, so special director, curriculum director, business administrator, myself. Louder please. Here. Director of technology. And then it's the principals from every building and the leadership team at U32. You won. I think she won. I'm sorry, not administrative. Is anyone not administrative on the leadership team? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I don't know if she's leadership. No, no, it's licensed administrative staff. Yeah. It's the leadership team. Thank you. Suzanne, I'm wondering if we could, before we make a final decision, if we could go through what it would mean, it tax-wise with the information that we have right now and maybe start with what it would mean to operate with the 87% and then moving to this two scenarios. Is that okay? And I'll give you the mic. Well, I did the chart with four different scenarios. One is a level fund in budget. So a 0% increase, a 10% increase, a 12% increase. And then I showed the 13% decrease, which is an 87% of the current budget that we're operating in. So we would actually experience a tax rate decrease on the equalized tax rate. And I wanna focus on the equalized tax rate first because that is the number prior to the CLA impact. So if we could just think about that for a minute. On the 0% or level funded one, we would see a decrease in the equalized tax rate of about 12 cents. Is that an argument available? I think there might be some copies over there by press. I wanna give everybody just a minute. I'm looking at the table at the bottom of page two in the memo that we handed out tonight and it's titled Local Education Spending Models and so I modeled four different scenarios at the top of page three. Oh did it come out at the top? Okay so the top of page three. Four different scenarios. One is a level funded budget so that 0% means we don't increase over FY24. 10% is an increase of 10%, 12% and then the 13% in parentheses is actually a decrease because that models out that 87% like what will that look like if we're forced to use 87%? And the budget we already performed was 16%? It was about 16.1 to 14% increase. The last column is the decrease in the equalized tax rate and the equalized tax rate is the tax rate developed prior to the impact of the CLA and so the CLA is how we come up with the individual town tax rates but the equalized tax rate is your budget figure calculated out into a tax rate by the fur people spending. So we've got a decrease of about 12 cents on our level funded budget. We've got basically no pretty close to no change in your tax rate on a 10% local ed spending so with a .0084 like almost one penny about three and a half cents on a 12% and then we'd see a 30 cent decrease on the 87% budget. Remind me the last budget we already put forward, what was that amount? It's the percentage increase of the tax rate. I can't remember that. I can look it up. It was like 1.585 so it was probably about nine cents. So .095? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Any more questions on that chart before I move on? I just want to point out specifically the bottom chart is of taxes of $100,000 full. Yeah. I was going to get down there. I was next. I'm on that first table. Any more questions on the first table before I walk down to the second table? Sorry. No, it's okay. Yeah. You roll a little faster than I do. So yeah, the next table is the tax rate projection based on $100,000 house because I had so many scenarios. I didn't want to try to do the 100, 200, 300 and give you five different charts. It would have been really messy. So try to boil it down to that. On the 0% you see we still have increases in every one of our towns except Worcester on a level funded budget. And I just thought that was super telling to see that even if we level fund our budget, we will see tax rate increases in almost every one of our towns. And that's because of the bills that we cannot control from the legislature. Yes. And that's why one of the reasons in finance yesterday we had a long conversation about trying to not focus so much on the tax rate because there's so much of that tax rate that we have no impact on. We cannot change the fact that your CLA's are so low. We cannot change that factor. So on a level funded budget, you will still see tax rate increases in four of your five towns. In the 10%, you'll see that. And if you take those numbers, you're going to multiply it by whatever factor your house, you know, if you have a $300,000 house multiply it by three. And obviously in your 13% decrease, you're going to see tax rate decreases because you've cut your budget by about $10 million. And one other big point, these tax rate projections are based upon a property yield that has changed multiple times over this process. As you all know, this is a new number projected by AOE as of Friday the 8th. It is based on budgets that passed. So now that they have some small handfuls, like 56 budgets that passed. The other 30 are going out and then there's still another like 24 that haven't even voted. So they have increased that property yield slightly. I think it's like a $16 increase over the one that we were using in the annual report. As that number goes up, your tax rate goes down. And if you look at the likelihood of it going up, given that 30 different budgets failed, those, those districts are all doing what we're doing and possibly looking at making cuts. So that property yield could very likely continue to go up, which would then decrease your tax rates further. I think that's everything I wanted to say about that. And I was clarifying questions. Yeah, go ahead. So, so if I'm reading this correctly for a, so I would multiply it out if it's a $300,000 house. So I'm looking at, if we went with 5%, you know, potentially $1,200 increase, correct? Which is not much different than what was put forward. And the reason why I bring that up is we are then in, in order to really move this needle. We're, we're talking about, you know, even below check. Even below zero. You know what I mean? I, you know, so I just think that that's why, but again, that's also why we're saying it's a broader scope of things to that we're looking at because our context is very different. Well, and continuing to remember it's a statewide funding system. Even if you move the needle down a little and the other 29 districts move the needle down a little that 97, 85 is going to go up and the closer to 10,000, that number gets the much better. All of these tax rates across the state will be. Yeah. Okay. So we, we got to give them some guidelines. No, your comment right now is really important. Yeah. Diane. So are you thinking of the lower number? I don't understand. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I get to see your hand. I think it's a similar to where Diane was, but yeah, I think that. I wouldn't be real comfortable going above 10% on that. I think that I feel good about going out to the voters saying, here is how the budget breaks down. We, we kept the firm people spending almost entirely level. You know, and they're, you know, and I hear the fact that they're out of control. I think there was also just some genuine sticker shock. And I mean, and there are plenty of people out there saying, I appreciate what you're doing. I respect what you're doing. You have a really hard job. I just can't afford it. And for that type of person. They may acknowledge that this is the, the things are out of control and still say I can't afford it. And so I think the 10% puts all of our towns. End, you know, sort of end of the day increases at less than 20%. I think it's going to be really hard politically to go out there with a number that's starting to. On the, on the increase. Thank you. Thank you. I think something is going to look like that anyway. So, you know what I mean? So, because. When we look, especially for Berlin, if you look at what our increase was, our increase was in that. And even if we drop it down, I think it's still going to look like that. So, you know, it's that challenge around the way it's the funding works. I do wonder, you know, a couple of things like that. I mean, I think you know, I think he had mentioned the ability for us to put together a resource list or at least, you know, a sheet that shows what are the resources out there and for our families to enter mobile orders. To know what what's really getting balanced on the back. It is sticker shock because to be very honest. When I used to look at our budget, it was, lens. So I wasn't looking at all of them rolled in. And as that continues to increase, I think we're also feeling that that shock of what is consolidated district look like, good, bad, or different. It's a different, different lens to that as well. But I, you know, so to me, there's those two things of it can we put together a sheet understanding the economics of our communities. And then two, I still haven't really heard when I'm looking at this, in terms of wrapping my brain around it, what parts of this we know we can't change, because there has to be things in here we know, you know, we're not going to change the fuel, we're not going to, you know what I mean? There's certain things that I just would be helpful to have a sense of. I would say that the tech center is one of the things that can't change because that's a rolling six semester average. And it's so it's based on prior term enrollment and an announced tuition and the state pays a portion of it that we actually pay, but they put this mythological revenue source in. So tech center is not touched. And I would say that we potentially could look at fuel, the inflationary factor that was applied. So maybe I can reduce that percentage to bring it down a little bit. And I could do that with the supplies per pupil that we budget for, we would obviously go back to all of the lines and look at those inflationary factors that are in there. Just to reflect more on reality. No, to cut your budget. I have an estimated inflationary factor in there for, you know, to go, it's last year's actual plus an inflation for this year plus an inflation for next year. So I'd adjust that. I don't have one for next year. So I'm making some assumptions about next year. And that's probably what I would adjust is what I'm getting at. Okay. So it's a budget. It's a plan. And that's why you have a fund balance to help if that budget doesn't hit its target. But those are things that we would obviously look at is lines across the district. So no, it wouldn't just be positional. We'd be looking at everything like that. So it's looking a little bit like we are kind of agreeing at a 10% would be the exercise for them to be creative on. And yeah, and we will go around to make sure that everybody is okay with that. And that that is the guidance. So we are agreeing that we want a budget to be looked at a 10% and that they have, they should look into the fund balance. Do we want to provide an amount for that? Or just a little bit of that? How much does it cost? It's in the back of your package right now. At one point, what we would touch is 1.2. I don't have it in front of me. There's 1.3 in there after the 2% reserve. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, 2.58 million. That's not reserved. There's no set aside. So 1.3 is after the 2% that we like to keep on hand. Yeah. So we should just be looking at the 1.3%. There's no reason for us to move away of, again, the systems that we have created because we know that they have worked. It should be on top of the 2%. Exactly. The 2% need to be untouchable. Can you talk later, Chris? Yeah, I'm sorry. If the PCB issue is coming up, so we're not coming from nowhere to fund out, I think. So there's not necessarily there. You do have your capital reserve fund and we already have some projects planned in there that we anticipate might help with the PCB projects. We don't know what we don't know with PCB. So it is helpful to maintain some portion of your fund balance. I don't want to say that right now on the spot. I'd like to take some time to look at it and think about it. That's why I was saying, give us a number. We'll go back and we will consider fund balance and try to see what we could use. I just wanted to have other districts gotten numbers back for remediation. And I know everybody's project is different now. Yeah, it would be hard because it would be who is available to do the remediation. We put out a request for proposals at the timing. There's too many factors too. Okay. Although what is this at? Where is the state funding at this point? The funding is only on the current being done, the investigation, the testing. So they've authorized $216,000 and that's it. They have not allotted any money for the remediation. And the remediation could be containment or it could be removal. So without knowing what the scope of that project is, we don't know what we have to reserve. But we do know that some of the projects we already had planned are also associated with PCBs. So for instance, we have projects for LED lighting that's one year out from here and frequently PCBs are found in the lighting. So I'm just putting out that we may already have some money in there in the capital reserve. Just building on Diane's point, I do think it would also be helpful when this budget comes back, whatever we say to cut by, if we could have a really clear table that says with the last budget that failed, this is what your potential increase we thought was. And then with this budget, this is what we think your potential increase is per town. Because I think that's going to be really helpful in communication that we made a really good faith effort to balance cutting the budget with still being able to educate our kids. Any other questions before we go around and see if they're comfortable with the 10 percent? We will take, Larry, I've been seeing your hand. I'm not trying to ignore you, but we will have public comments at the end of the board discussion. Sorry. Although I'm sorry, I'll also hear from the people who are voting before I decide. Okay, we'll make an exception because we're about to go ahead, Larry. Not just for Larry Gilbert, anybody else? Yeah, and just that we could get out, it's the meeting of the board, so I just want to, you know, so, okay, go ahead, Carol. Thank you. I would be really unfortunate to go back to voters and have them reject your next proposal. I have no insights into what everybody else in the community is thinking. 10 percent, to me, you have to have really good reason why that has to go. That's just one person, so I have no suggestions on exactly where the cuts are going to go, but that's my purview obviously. I do think that you don't want to have to go through this again, that there is a slight, maybe more slight mistrust of what's going on in this institution. That was reflected in the boat. And so, if that has to happen again, it will erode the trust even more, and so I would urge you all to be brave, and this is a tough year, no question about it. I thought this is, as you said, a good thing. I don't think I need this because I use my teacher's voice too. I would name, I'm sorry. Yeah, my name is Lee Gehry. Thank you. I'm from Worcester, in case anybody wants to know that. I would just really encourage you to think about the conversations that you had in coming up with the last budget, and what I'm talking about is feedback that you got from the taxpayers about what they hold sacred, what they don't want to have cut, such as the counselors and the nurses at a couple of our schools in particular that you were talking about. I would really hate to spend a lot of time rehashing conversations that we've had before. I know we need to, you know, make cuts or whatever. And Larry, I know what you're saying about 10%, but if you looked at, I mean, in past years, if you look at 10%, you know, 15% and whatever 20%, there are substantial differences, but you have to be able to look at sort of them line by line to be able to tell where it comes from. But I just would hate to see you spend a lot of time going over things that have been put to bed, basically. Thank you for those, that's my comment. I think that when we go to vote, it has to be great right there, and then it's the sticker top. I think that's what a lot of people have had a bad reaction to when they go to down. And knowing that is really important. And like seeing what that is going to be for each town, it's going to be something that's going to happen or not. And I think that you're right, like something under 20, it's going to be a lot better than going in and seeing, I think in those like 21 or something. And it's just, it's 20 somethings, big difference with something a little bit under 20. So I think, you know, having a good understanding of what we're going to go in and look at and be able to be comfortable voting in support of is important. And knowing that that number is, like, this is a hard or really confusing, I don't understand it. 10% it's hard to go. I think, like, just focusing on that number of votes, whatever you want to go in and look at and go forward or vote against. And knowing that, you know, went in and made some hard decisions and made it better, it's going to go a long way. I don't think, I mean, personally, I, you know, I think what we get behind it and, and then another thing I was going to say is, in April 3rd, you know, having a budget submitted by April 3rd, whatever the times that they're going to have public input, because you got to know what people want. And there has to be a chance to go a way in during the process while it's still ongoing, not just, okay, here it is, and have one opportunity to come in. So either to more meetings or chances that people will come in and say what they want to see, that it's one meeting, it's not going enough and we're going to end up out of it. We don't want to support it. All right, we're going to go in and this would be 15 seconds. And it's more logistical, because of your April 3rd deadline, something we did on the school board up for a win, the previous budgets that were being brought back to us by the leadership, you know, we'll be seeing for tenants opposite the plan, or I apologize to the leadership, you know, because this might be more work for you, but they would bring us three, five, seven. So we get a lot of that, but three percent of it would look like this, five percent of it, and seven percent. So something, because we've got to get that April 3rd deadline, maybe a six, eight, 10, 12, 15, maybe a formal decision. Yeah, Mike, I'm going to need some help making the transition, because I know to allow some people online. Just one minute. Great. Yeah, Lisa, you can unmute yourself. Yeah, I think first I just wanted to ask for clarification about public comment, and whether now is the opportunity, or if there's still going to be a space after this, just for everyone who is. There will be space after the meeting, unless you have a comment right now for the budget specifically. After the meeting or after the budget? After at the end of this discussion, at the end of this meeting, you will have an opportunity before we adjourn. Okay, I guess just for clarity, then I will just speak now. I'll just say, chime in and say that I found it disappointing that I was argued so forcefully during this meeting, that it's been crystal clear all along that in the end the budget will hinge on cuts of our school staff. I know that number of 80% of our budget being staffing has been articulated repeatedly, but I would also argue that before tonight it's not been said loud and clear that in order to achieve our budgetary goals, school staffing will have to be the focus of our sacrifice. I agree this has been implied, but we need to be more conscious about explicit communication, and in that vein, I would ask us to commit right now to be explicit about the fact that when we cut 10% of our budget through student-facing staff, our students will feel that impact, and they will be adversely impacted. I do think it's disingenuous to say that the admin team could propose a budget with those level of cuts that would continue to meet our students' needs. Our schools are struggling right now with current levels of staffing, and less staff equals more struggle. I think we owe it to our communities to be clear about that. We need our communities to be affordable, but we also owe it to them to be honest about what the impact on their students will be. Thanks. Thank you, Lisa. Lauren? Sorry. Well, Lisa was a lot more eloquent than me, but I have a couple of comments and then one question. I have two children at the Dodie School, and I have the utmost appreciation for every adult in that building, and I just think these budget talks are really hard. I understand for everyone, and I just wanted to be stated that the teachers and adults, all the staff in our building are amazing and integral parts of the success of our kids' daily life in school. Everyone knows that. It just gets important. For the reason this budget process, I would just ask the school board and the administration to recognize how stressful this is for the teaching staff and the uncertainty of this process. And so I would ask that there is clarity for the teachers and the people in the building from the top level administration that is clear across all of the buildings so that teachers know what is happening with the school budget and that they can feel at least informed about the process. I felt that the fact that a week went by after the budget failed, and then this is our first meeting about the budget. I recognize you've met on Monday and Tuesday, and there's a lot of work that goes into this, but it was a week of stress and unknown, and the communication thus far from the administration and the school board has been, I think, lacking from a parent perspective, and I just hope that you recognize that the stress of this causes for teachers in your district is huge as well. I appreciate the board asking about administration cuts. My question is, have administration contracts been signed? Is there a statute that says that principal contracts were signed in February, and so those positions are untouchable? So that's just a question that I would like clarification on. And again, I really appreciate your work and time. Thank you. Thank you, Lauren. Shannon? Hi there. I'm Shannon Miller. I'm a parent of two at U32 and one at Berlin. I just wanted to make a couple of comments. One was that I've heard a few people say to reach our budgetary goals, and I think we can all agree that this budget is no one's goal. No one set out with these intentions, and it's really an unfortunate situation. So just putting that out there. I also just wanted to show a lot of support for the administrative team. I know that there, it feels like, what are they doing? They're making decisions to insinuate that these folks are not student-facing. I think sounds really inaccurate to me. I think the person I've heard from the most at U32 this year is probably Jess Wells. Admittedly, that's probably my kid's fault that I hear from Jess Wells the most. And I do want to say that if anyone is facing students, it's these guys, and I really appreciate them. I'm also, you know, as an employee, a person who likely will lose my job as a result of budget cuts. I understand the position that we're in. I understand what it is to be in that administrative room, and it is hard. Nobody is taking these decisions lightly. This is not a fun thing to cut staff. There is not a person on the list that anyone is excited to take off in a situation like this. But our role is really to protect students, right? Protect students not just make things feel fair or good for adults, and that is awful. It's a terrible position to be in. I feel for all of you making these decisions. I'm hoping for the best for our kids, and really just want to appreciate all of you doing this super hard work. So thanks. Thank you so much, Shannon. And the last comment, Hannah Brown. Hi there. I'm Hannah. I'm in middle sex. I have three kids, two of whom aren't from me. First, thank you for all your hard work. I really appreciate it. And I don't, nobody who's not there making decisions envies your position. One comment, and I just want to say that I really appreciate Natasha's comment about saying that disagreeing does not convey mistrust. And I want to show support for the leadership team, too. And I really like what was just said about them being student-facing, too. From my perspective, when I've seen the last few years of budgets, too, I mean, it has been notable to me that there haven't been as clear administrative cuts as teachers, counselors, nurses. And bringing that up is not an expression of distrust at all. That's just what we're here for. The other thing that I want to talk about, and I'm saying this, out of maybe there are other people who are as ignorant as I am, and maybe it's good for everybody if I say this, as seeing what's happening with the Romney and Dodie pre-K and kindergarten, and having looked at some of the reconfiguration schemadas, I want that to be talked about a little more out loud. Are we talking about closing schools? And if that's the ultimate, I mean, it seems like that's the direction, that's what everybody is whispering about at bus stops. Is Dodie going to close? Is Callis going to close? And I don't know how taboo that is to talk about. And if that's where things are headed anyway, I would just really appreciate more clarity, because everyone is whispering about it. And if that's the goal to really slash our budgets, and that would be across the board, buildings, overhead, administration, staff, whatever, maybe I've been missing part of the conversation, and that can't happen for another year or two. But it looks like we're sliding into that. And I would like just some more clarity around that. So thank you so much. And thanks for your work. Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for your comments. Oops, sorry. I'm going to turn the mic on. Thank you, everybody, for your comments. We're going to go back into dialogue with the board. I'm not trying to not answer questions, but we don't go back and forth with public comments. Those are valid comments, and we appreciate everybody's public comments. So let's go back to the question. I think what we're hearing is that maybe we have to also look at below 10%. So I think we need to give them a parameter between six and 10%. And it might not be attainable, right? Because the structure that we have right now might not allow us to do the necessary cuts we need to do to come to that percentage and still serve our students and provide, you know, meet student need and provide the opportunities that they need. Ursula? If we were going to look at that six to 10% range, which I would support, can we ask administration to look at what reconfiguration ideas would be feasible next year that might help us? Is that something that they can look at while they're being creative? Yes, I think that, but I just want to be really clear. Your articles of agreement prevent the closure of any school without a vote. So feasibly, if the configuration option relates to closure, it cannot happen in time for next year's budget. That doesn't, I mean, so yes, right, there are things that we could come back to you and talk to about, but to the point of closing a school that is not something that you could do in that amount of time. Yeah, we need to put an article in front of our electorate to close the school or to change the articles of agreement, right? But that's not a conversation for now. Yeah, exactly. So that's not a conversation to have right now. But right now, you know, so it's not being transparent. Yes, we are looking at configuration, but we're looking at configuration, not under the lens of just saving money. We're looking at a configuration under the lens on how best we can serve our students, how best can we give more opportunities to our students, and by doing that serve our communities. And we have been talking a lot about having a larger sense of community too. But we will engage with the community on those conversations for tonight, just looking at the clock too. It's like, we need to give them some solid guidance so that they can come back to us with some, you know, with some information so we can make an informed decision. So if we're leaning towards 6th to 10th, and we've got 6th, 8th, and 10th, someone mentioned having those three different looks, that would be helpful. Yeah, I think that would be fine. All right. Joshua. May I suggest one primer to look at is the sixth grade students and how much if any money that would save to combine them into the mid school. So 6th, 7th, 8th. Yes, and we can discuss the benefits that that brings to our community as well. Am I hearing an agreement from everybody? I'm just looking for a thumbs up at least. 6th to 8th, 6th, 8th, and 10th percent. Okay. Yes. All thumbs up. All thumbs up. Okay. Clear guidance. Okay. You do have another question or somebody behind me has another question. I'm not seeing. Okay. So I just, I just want to say that you're exactly right. When we're looking at reconfiguration or configuration, it isn't being driven by the cost. It is our hope that it will expand or do that, but we're doing it. And that's also why we're not quickly putting forward a vote on this. And it's also why we want to be sure because we're aware of the whispering and the nervous and the anxiety that's going on. So we want to get that open conversation occurring sooner rather than later, even though it adds to the plate of what we're considering. But we are mindful of how that feels. And we want to just be sure that the open conversation starts. But it is important by the cost. Right. But we've been told for years that consolidation is going to save and we've never seen that. But we also have to, we also have to, you know, admit that the only reason we're able to keep our small schools open right now, both Dodie and Callan, is because we're consolidated. Right? We all understand that because we consolidated and we're able to share the cost across our, if we had independent schools right now, we wouldn't be able to do it. We don't know that because Dodie and Callan would, once you didn't bond anything and they were self-sufficient, I think. So we don't know what to that matter. So to say that they're the only staying open, because they're small school grants, say they're the only staying open now because we're supporting them in the district as a whole. We're supporting each other as a whole. Okay. Okay. So is that enough guidance or is that, is that enough guidance to move into the next conversation? I think you've got to go back to your timing and vote conversation and whether or not you are contemplating adding additional meetings. So let's go back to the timeline. So if we're going to add an informational meeting, sorry, I'm just trying to open my calendar. So if you, if the board is looking for a first presentation of the six, eight and 10 on April 3rd, you could be prepared to pick one at that date. You could also decide to add a meeting at that time. You could say now I think we want another meeting, but also have a meeting on April 10th and I'm just picking the Wednesdays because we're used to Wednesdays. I'll pause there. Do you want to anticipate two meetings for us? Yeah. So do we want to, do we want to move proving our budget to April 10th and having an informational meeting on the 3rd? Not informational, but having a meeting to look at it and have community meeting engagement on the 3rd and then we would adopt a budget on the 10th. And when would we vote? I think then we will move it down. Yeah. And we then be able to have another vote. If we needed it. May 7th, still gives you one more chance before July 1st. Yeah. Just. And I think we don't want to be like counting on a second vote. We want to get this miraculously with the help of everybody and also the understanding of the community that this is a step forward to where we're trying to get. We can make all of the savings at once to see her, right? Like we are setting ourselves in a steady path to sustainability, but not everything can magically happen this year and having enough savings to represent a good tax and lowering the tax because our CLA is so horrible. So, okay, is that so we're agreeing with that? We would move it down. We will run those dates. We'll have a presentation on the 3rd with the decision on the 10th. And you wouldn't be stopped from making the decision on the 3rd if you felt like you had what you needed that just ends everything sooner. But yeah, so I think what I'm hearing though and Chris, it would require that we not have a policy committee meeting on the 10th if we're holding that as a second board meeting. You better say yes. Okay. But I do want to be, you know, just like, so again, I am not saying that I'm going to pick it back that I don't think that's any of our intentions. I think we all just need to understand it. But I also want to be very transparent that this timeline, because of the budget going down, the reality is, is it doesn't have the opportunity for the community input. So, you know, you had asked when are the conversations with the community and I want to be realistic and transparent about what are thinking is behind that. I think that's a good point. It's a good segue. The finance committee didn't talk about whether or not you sent a survey out of post budgets. And it gets some information just about what it's pretty simple survey. What do you want the board and administration to know? You know, we could work that those but that would at least be a method to get some input. Yeah. So we're adding that meeting and we are going to send a survey out. And you actually have some time but we don't send a warning out for that. We should start communicating that our attention. And we'll put some dedication after this meeting out so they know where we are. And that's, you know, we're moving forward. We're moving forward. Okay. Okay. We also need to decide today to mail or if you'll not mail. We should. We should. Yeah, we should. We should. We should. We need an action for that. So we would need a motion on the table to to mail or not mail. Okay. So Chris, was it second? Any discussion? Without mailing them? What would be the one? What date? They made 27. It's 27th because you added the 10th. Yeah. If you would push it out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the 10th of your decision. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. And it's going to allow people to still ask for absentee ballots and there will still be 20 days for them to get it. So, yeah. Yeah. Any other questions? Save the absolute comment at the end. In favor of favoring the side by saying aye. Any opposed? Doing non-demotion carries. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Okay. We're going to move into our finance committee and we have an emotion on the table. Please go through the Social Security System project. I moved it before the awarding the Washington Center Unified Union School District 2020 for Security and Project Contracts and Safety Systems in Vermont and the Mountain Ons would exceed 430,531 dollars. Thank you, Daniel. Okay. Any questions? All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All right. And that's those two approved by teachers. Resumations of circumstances, page 20. I move that we approve the resignation of David Matthews, EMS School of Practice. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Michelle. We have a set of summation with thanks and great rep. I'm sorry. Are you relating us? Okay. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none. The motion carries. That's moving. Okay. It brings in the committee update. They're starting to get some echo. Should I stop this? We haven't changed anything. It was working fine and now it's not. Oh dear. I'm going to shut you off for just a minute and see if that kind of resets things. I think we can be as loud as I can right now. Okay. Okay. Superintendent search update. The committee is a proceeding in a time of matter. We met this this weekend. We have our questions. There's members of the committee here. We finalized our interview questions. We have reviewed applicants and we will move into interviews and we are on track on our timeline. That's all we have to share. Any questions? So on the 27th, when we, that's going to be in person, correct? Correct. Yes. Correct. It would be similar to how we did it the last time. We are planning to be able to have the hybrid ability to be in person. Yeah. And there will be more details coming once we know. Okay. Any chits that you want to make as I'm going to be able to hear. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's worse than it ever so. Yeah. Okay. We can go back to that, Mike, if you want to. Okay. I must admit it. They let that move in about them. Yeah. Sorry. Okay. But can everybody hear me so far? Okay. So let's move into approving our minutes of the infirmary. Motion. I motion to approve the minutes. Okay. Thank you, Michelle. Second, but I was looking like Jonathan just did something. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries. We need to approve our board orders. They're circulating quickly. Oh, okay. They're plugging them. Oh, no. There's posts it's there for you guys to sign. So again. Can't read any of our hand. Okay. But can I have somebody willing to read them out loud? They're Diane. Is it these three things? Yeah. On the front? I think that we approve the board order. I just do the total for them. Yeah. We just do the total. Board orders of $400,726.79. Second. Thank you, Diane. And thank you, Ursula. Any discussion? Being none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Board orders passed. Okay. And then there was one hand and we'll open it back to public comment. There was one hand. Hey, are you still here? Sorry. I was not trying to ignore you. I guess she will. I think she was right. Oh, no, there's one. Okay. Yeah, this is Kay. Anybody else that wants to have a public comment either here or, okay. So we're going to do online first since I don't have the mic going on right now. Is that okay? Okay. And Kate, you had your hand up before, so you're welcome to unmute. I just wanted to draw attention to the bike problem. We couldn't hear you very well, so. Oh, okay. Sorry about that. Okay. It's fixed. Great. Okay. All right. So, honey. Hi there. I would just like to formally request clear communication, which includes a timeline for potential risks for staff. As it's been mentioned tonight by members of the community, there are a lot of staff members feeling in this limbo stage and sounds like that's going to go on for a little while. So if we could have a timeline of finding out when we might potentially be rift, that would be really helpful. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I have a suggestion. I don't think I'm going to date myself, but back before the middle school was built, we needed to pass a bond. I know, given her a long time. We needed to pass a bond. So we needed the communities to be behind us. And the way that we went about, one of the ways we went about doing it was to have a meeting in each of the towns. Now, I know we're short on time, but I know that there's school for people from each of the towns. And I really think, you know, front porch work is great. And it does reach people that sometimes they'll come out. But it's not the same thing as having a meeting like at the elementary school, where people are invited to come and they get sort of cashed around. So I just throw that out as a possibility of something that may have been pretty quick. If everybody decided to have one on the same night, all the towns could have their information. And it may not work. I know there's a lot of, you know, there are a lot of Roger's rules of ordering things like that. So it might not happen. But I thought I would just thank you. Thank you. And our next meeting, of course, there is a callus. Yeah, but thank you. Okay, I'm going to try. Let me see if there's anybody else. There's nobody else. And like, go ahead. I just wanted to say I think the ones who judge about reconciliation, about sixth grade, and maybe putting that and having it all be different too, see like practically as a very, very good idea. I just, for the idea of doing that next year, though, just seems harsh for kids who are, would be going into sixth grade coming their final year at our elementary school and then having that being taken away from them, never going to have this chance to do my nose in the small schools, do a lot of like special things for their sixth grade kids. And that would be something, you know, that would be sad. So I think the great idea is new energy. Thank you. Okay, so with that, we need to move into executive session. So I'm wondering if our clerk, oh yeah, let's, well, can we, is that okay? Can we have the motion to go to second session? And then after that go to, I'm like on a roll right now. Okay. So Michelle moves and second by Natasha. All those in favor, and to include Megan Roy. Okay. Yeah. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Please use the facilities and we'll see you there in eight minutes.