 But let me take your thumbs up if you can hear me okay. Yes, thank you Maggie. So we have in the room Daniel, Ursula, Megan, a community member. Do you mind choosing yourself? Hi, I'm a media. With us, and let me see it too. And screen we have Maggie, we have Suzanne. Natasha. And Jonas. Michael Wayne and Alan. And. Yeah. I don't see other faces. We're going to, we're going to get started. I wanted to ask you for opinion and fear we would open it for questions and not necessarily have to go through the entire presentation today. The presentation was on there. In our, in our website, but if people are here or online when that was to go through the entire presentation, happy to go over that. I'm wondering if everybody. You see the postcard and has. I picked up a report. What is the pleasure of the board? It's the same presentation we've done. Yeah. So I feel we just, we're here to answer questions and. I'm going to stop sharing. Well, I'm just asking the board members. What do you guys want to do? I think that's up to the, to the non board members, right? If anyone wants to see the presentation, if anyone wants the information by all means, let's roll it out and do the whole thing. But if not, if everyone feels like they've been informed by that deck already, then we can get into answering some questions and have some dialogue. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. I would like to spend most of her time and dialogue. If that's what. People would like. With some of the non board members, Allen or. It's the nailer. Do you guys have specific questions that you would like to answer? Or do you want us to go through the presentation? Go ahead. So, can you go ahead? Hold on a minute. Yeah. Okay. My, my question isn't so much about the presentation. It's a little persnickety about. How this meeting was rolled out. And I just, I feel like. I don't understand why some places I see it's an informational meeting. And then other places I see it's an annual meeting. And I know, I believe by the bylaws, we have to have an annual meeting. And I assumed that this was an annual meeting, but I just think that for. Yeah. The sake of continuity and community awareness and connectedness. That the language really needs to be the same. And I just realized that this was the annual meeting. And thinking that tomorrow on the ballot, it says annual meeting on top of the ballot. So it's. I mean, the town is having an annual meeting. And they are having a ballot, but they're also having an annual meeting. I just, I feel like. For improved community engagement, if that's the goal. Which we're, you know, hiring someone to engage the community, these kinds of things really need to. You know, be put together a little bit better. So thank you. Thank you. You're muted. You sound like you're in an echo chamber. And I don't know if other people are having trouble hearing you, but it's a little bit difficult. And I'm not sure it could be me, but I, I heard the previous person just fine. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's because she's in a big room at you 32. And there's a lot of echo in the room. Preview speakers, you know, speaking online at home, just as I am. Right. So we're trying to do the best we can with, you know, these mixed kind of meetings. Right. The audio with the audio isn't great. Right. You 32 room wasn't set up as a, as a, as a studio. Well, when you live in Worcester, you're always wonder if you have any connection at all. I just wanted to make sure I was getting the best connection I could. So I, I did have a question. I, I think the big, the big message that I took from, from the report. Is that our per pupil spending is, it has really gone through the roof. And it's because that we're losing kids. And that's not. Anything new in terms of we're losing kids. It's been a long-term trend. But it looks like the curve down has gotten steeper and steeper. To have, to have per people spending go up almost 13% in one year. I can't recall a similar year like this, where that's happened. And they're really, they're really concerning thing to me. And I'm guessing other people as well as. As myself is it looks like this trend of. The downward student numbers is going to continue. The projections you have in the report show that we're going to be going down at a pretty steep rate. So I'm wondering what kind of, what kind of thinking you've been doing about. What happens next year. And the years after that. Do you see us at a really critical point where we have to do something quite different starting next year. If we don't get a lot more students moving in all of a sudden. Because I don't think that a 13% increase in tax rates every year is, is sustainable. I mean, people are. People are going to. People are going to be, are going to notice this. And they're going to be hit by it when they get their tax bills. And I just wonder what kind of, what kind of thinking you've been doing. When someone asks you what's going to happen in the next four years. If we continue in the same direction. Thank you. So I'm going to have to start the conversation and then four members can. And Megan is also with us today. You know, like I was saying, my letter in the report, you know, there's no question. This is a hard budgeting year, right? We are facing a number of things. And especially declining enrollment is a big one. Okay. So answer specifically your question. We are involved in a visioning and strategic planning. Hopefully you can hear me. Okay. Can you hear me? Okay. Yeah, it's a little bit difficult, but keep going. I'm like. I went closer to the screen. Yeah. If I move the, I will. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We can move it. But so we're, we are involved in a visioning and strategic planning. And through that process, we are going to. Try our best as a board and as our administrators to bring new, what I call, to the system. So how can we be creative and better servers kits with the resources that we have. And not a, you know, hopefully next year. It's going to be a really hard year again. But hopefully we can do some efficiencies to try to adjust to decline in enrollment and not make it more expensive for our taxes for tax payers. So still serve all the needs of our kids. With as bad as we can, with the resources we have. And so with that community engagement, it would be better be able to address whatever, whatever the needs of our kids. And we're going to be able to address whatever, whatever created. I don't want to say this is what the solution is going to be. We present them a couple of different options. Through our budget, whether it is for some of our six graders to be together, whether it is some of our preschoolers to be together. What that is, you don't know yet, but we're definitely in have our creative thing, you know, hats on right now. And that's what we were going to be spending most of our time. And that's part of reason we want to engage in this strategic planning and community engagement. Because it's not just the board that here, the community needs to be involved in order to that. It to feel, you know, meaningful and that it responds to the needs of our community and the kids. Yes. If I could just have a follow up question. Is there one thing or several things this year that were different in terms of higher expenditure levels? And one of the, one of the things I've been thinking about is, I know the state has tried to put more and more of the expense of the pension system on to the local districts. That was, it used to be that, well, that has been a state program forever. And starting about five years ago, the legislature started putting small amounts and then they started growing bigger. And I think that's one of the things that we've been thinking about. Do you know how much the local district now is putting into the pension system that it wasn't five years ago? My head is. Or Megan. Well, go ahead. I don't know the difference from five years ago. So I mean, it's not something. That I would know. Right now. It's something I can follow up with and find out. Do you have any idea what the, what a round number is for next year that, that we as a supervisory district will have to put into the pension system. Well, before I don't know that we have that off the top of our head. I would say though, to that question. Yes, there are changes in the amount of contribution districts bank to pension and retirement. That's not the biggest driver of our increases this year. Our biggest increases this year are related to. Inflation, the cost of living a high percentage of our actually more than a high percentage. Most of our budget is supporting people. So salaries benefits collectively when they go up at a higher rate than we are used to, and they have. The second impact is we've also had declining revenue. So we've, we are receiving special education funding in a different way this year because of a law passed a number of years ago. So that has gone down. To your point, we have fewer students. So there's revenue decreases in that. Those are the biggest cost drivers of this increase. So yes. I'm sure that if we looked up the numbers around. Inflation, pension and benefits that that contributes, but the, we were, I would add to your description, which I think is accurate. It's a bit of a perfect storm. We have high costs. Less enrollment and less revenue and those things together. Resulted in the budget that we have. And I think in terms of the next few years, I don't anticipate, although inflation likely will go down, which will be good. But I think that our realities will change significantly in the next couple of budget cycles. So the hope is as we try to figure out how to make difficult decisions, we want to ground that as floor said in what do we all. And by we, I really mean our communities. What do we want for our students so that when we come back to make difficult decisions, because I think the short answer to the comment and question is. I think the board recognizes that we're in a place that isn't sustainable and we have to figure that out. But we want to ground that in what's best for our students. And, and really lean on voices in our community that maybe we don't hear all the time in order to figure out what that is. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. And with the expected loss of revenue next year, how much revenue will we will you 32 lose when the students are at the career center all day. I'm just assuming that money will follow them to the career center and how many students from you 32 go to the career center. Thank you. We have five students that go to the career center, but the money is the same, you know, the tuition is the same. We're not because they're going to be there all day. It doesn't mean that we're going to pay more. It's the same amount. I just had a rent. It's about $8,000 that is 500. But that doesn't mean that shouldn't be a driver or a discouragement. I don't want kids or parents to feel different about it. It's a path to finishing a high school. It's one of the options that our students have. It's a really meaningful way for our students to finish high school and for all of our students to be involved. So that that is not, that won't be a driver of us having less revenue if we have more kids go. And this year we have wonderful work here. I believe we have, I don't know. I just wanted to follow up. I wasn't saying it was a negative. I'm just, I was just curious what, how that money following, not following works. And I understand about tech schools and the career center. I'm just wondering how many students go there. And I'm not saying it was a negative thing. Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't mean to say that you're saying that. I just didn't want to forget confused into that. We will lose revenue if they, so we do send $8,000 to the career center for a student that is part, we have allocated that in our budget already. So I don't know how to explain that better. So it's not like a loss of revenue. It's definitely some revenue that we invest in the career center. Right. I think the key to your question is that there is no, the change of their structure is not a driver is not one of the significant drivers of the increases. We do have some projected, some additional projected revenue decline next year with a loss of our, our. So that's the last of the COVID relief dollars that we have. So that would be, that's a reduction in revenue next year that will exist regardless. And I just realized Jonas's hand is up. He might have a better answer than I. So it's, it's not a question, more, more clarification. It's our students that go to the career center still count as equalized pupils. They still count as, as people. So we do get that revenue. So it's not like when they go to the career center, we have to send money and we also don't get, you know, we don't get credit for that. So I wanted to make that clear. Thanks, John. Thank you, Jonas. And I, and it's going to, I'll get you the numbers. I have the enrollment for, I'll get you the numbers in a few minutes. Any other questions. Matt, your hand was up before, but I don't know. And I guess here with us today. Yeah, maybe we should run. They're going to be helpful to run. Hey, Jonas. Yeah, but before the week, I just, I wanted to clarify a couple of things. You know, I think that, you know, it's absolutely true that the budget is the most important thing, which we use is important and we need to be very specific and accurate with what we say today on front porch forum. There was a very well intentioned post saying, you know, asking people to support the budget and saying that it was a level funded budget. And I appreciate that sentiment, but it's, it's important to note that it is a level service budget. Right. We're spending more money because things cost more, but we're not adding services or taking services away. So I just wanted to make sure that everyone knew the difference between, you know, the level funded and level service. I also want to, I think it's important when we're talking about taxes. That tax rates are not going up at the same rate that our spending is. Right. So the budget and the amount that we need to raise from taxes is 12 something percent. But tax rates are not going up 13%. As someone said earlier, and I think it's important to note that as well. And I wanted to chime in a little bit from, from my perspective to talk about where, where we are and what, you know, what this moment is and what we need to think about and what we need to plan for moving forward. And I think it's instructive to look back at our budget process. And, you know, speaking to, to Alan's questions, you know, about where we are and what, what, what the board sees. What we heard from the superintendent and the administration was that. We couldn't achieve a level service budget and we couldn't achieve the budget level that the board asked for. Without a change in the structure of the district. And to me, to Alan for, to speak for myself. I think that means where kids are going to school and where the adults that are providing services, services to them are working. I think that's the core of the question that we need, the core of the question is that we need to get through in the next year in that planning process. Which I think everyone here is, is looking forward to doing in, in good faith and engaging the community. So, you know, Alan, we certainly don't see that as, as sustainable, you know, that kind of increase, but we are in an extraordinary moment right now. The board felt that it was important to maintain the services that we had, even though that means, that we need to increase in the money that we need to raise for taxes with the understanding that everyone involved, right, everyone who has come to these school board meetings over the last few months. As we've been talking about the budget and talking about, you know, the services that we provide, everyone needs to participate in that. We need to get as many voices as possible. So I'm glad to see some, some folks coming to this meeting who we haven't seen before. It's great to see more people, but I think it's going to be a long process. You know, this is, this is, this is what people were, you know, this is a lot of what people were talking about with Act 46, right, what happens to the schools, right? Are you going to close schools? These are the conversations we finally need to have. And I think that this board is in a really good place to do that. And I think the budget that the budget that we're putting forward that I hope people will support gets us to a place where we can have those conversations from a position of strength rather than a position of weakness. Go ahead. So I noticed during the budget planning process, there were other budgets with lower rates of increase. And I was just wondering why the board ended up, I mean, I think they looked at a 6% and then a 7% and we kind of ended up at a 10% raise. I was just, you know, I just wonder why the board went with the higher raise. Because, you know, we do have declining enrollment and we need to start cutting back on some things. Flor, if I may. Sure, you can start. So we, we asked for a level service budget first. We saw how much that was going to cost. And it was a, it was a number, an increase that was, you know, historically high and far above what I've personally seen since I've been here. We asked for a cut down to 6%. We were told, we were told by the administration that that was not possible with the, with the structure of the district and the structure of the schools as it is. We were then presented two options. One included, you know, a number of some service cuts, including Spanish program at Romney. I think some, some para support. I think some food service support. I think it ended up being six or seven FTEs that we would cut. And some services that we would no longer provide in some schools. We heard a lot from the community. A lot of people came out and told us how important those services were to them, that they would be willing to pay more taxes to support that, that these were critical, critical, important things that they wanted the school to provide. We understood that that was going to mean, you know, increasing the budget number and increasing the tax rates. But having heard from the community, a majority of the board voted to support the higher budget with the level services. Right. So that we are not so we're not starting to cut services this year as part of that process that we need to go through to get our per pupil spending, you know, where we want it to be. And to get the tax rates where we hope we can get them. That's what we did. That was the process this year back. That's that's how we landed at this number. That was a long, long process. And we heard from a lot more people about this budget than we've heard about any budget I've been part of before. And they were nearly unanimous. I just want to add to, to Jonas's synopsis that we also heard. A real desire to be engaged in any. The community to be engaged in any restructuring, revisioning of what our schools look like. Which felt very valid and additional. Yeah. Maggie, why don't you turn off your camera and maybe. There were several. Maggie, why don't you turn your camera off because we can't really hear you. Right. We went through. I can hear you, but you can't hear me, huh? Yeah. Now we can, but maybe. Yeah. You're kind of breaking. Yeah. Yep. It's coming. The internet's coming. The internet's coming. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can't hear you. Right. We went through. I can hear you, but you can't hear me, huh? Yeah. Now we can, but maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The internet's coming next year. So the other thing. I don't know where I got, I left off. Being heard, but. What we heard from the community was if there is going to be fundamental restructuring of what our schools look like, we want to be involved. We want to be involved in the process of the different budgets and, and the comparisons of reductions, frankly, which also included nursing and library services and some of the schools in addition to the services that Jonas spoke to. And a, you know, significant shift in pre-K location for the, for Worcester. So. Yeah. I think that's what we really need to be involved. We need to be involved. We need to be out so that we can be fiscally. Responsible going forward also with an understanding that this year, it was just. It would have been an incredible ship to make the changes that, that were recommended, but it's has people paying attention now. And that's what we really need. Need people to be involved. Because it can't look like this going forward. And I think we all as a board understand that and are ready to be involved. Yeah. Yeah. I think most important. As a board as a whole, we agree that this board will serve our kids. And that we are all like really red. Into the year round budgeting process again. And we know that this didn't end that day, right. like we, you know, we're hoping for, you know, to hear the results from the budget, you know, tomorrow, tomorrow night, and we will be jumping into a finance meeting just right the next week and continuing this conversation. So we realized that we can be doing but then it just, you know, for a period of time right before the town meeting, right? And even though we started back in October and we had a really, we need to be thinking about the budget year around so that and realize the opportunity that we have as a district together and hopefully economics are going to be better next year and you know, we're going to be facing some challenges but we are ready to work together. I think that's important right there. The challenges and level service, how we do that, I don't know because with the declining enrollment and the costs, I think it was great people came out. Now we have to look forward to how can we continue to educate in the best way possible without the too much increases and our per pupil spending looking at it quite carefully. Yeah and with the strategic planning and being able to hire this person right now to work with us, we have to make sure that we are able to have everybody at the table, right? And make sure that everybody's voice is represented and you know, like we were saying, there's certain things like we're going to start in the negative next year, right? So part of the reason to start early too is that we know that we need to have 500, you know, half a million dollars of extra funds, right? Just there we're starting under but we are also realizing that we have never had the ability as a district to realize all the opportunities that we have together too. You know, it's challenging but it's super exciting and I think we have a lot of opportunities as a district together and we're working, you know, the three pillars that we have set are achievement and student outcomes, student and healthy and safety schools and human injustice and equity to keep all of those pillars and know that our administrators are working towards that. You know, the reports that we're receiving from them, like we're doing great work in our quality committee too to make sure that we stay on top of monitoring and what is best for kids and, you know, invent some things that would thank our work for our kids. So I'm excited. I think more members are excited. We are intimidated, I'm sweet, you know, it wouldn't be not real if you didn't say, oh my god, you know, it is going to be hard but I think you have a board that is committed and an administration and our spirit and that are committed to doing what is right for kids and for our community. So I'm excited. It's going to be a lot of work and we need you guys to be at the table, right? We need more community members so please go and vote tomorrow and we're happy. I was thinking that maybe we could share the slide. I think it's 14 that shows those budget realities and then the other slide that shows the three pillars. Yeah, maybe we could start with those, you know, the three pillars that we're talking about right here. Oh yeah, I guess. Sorry. Can you see it now? Oh no, I just wanted to quickly. We could see it. There. Okay, so it's coming. I think it's loading in my computer. There is low so maybe we're getting yourself there. Okay, so those were the three pillars that we were just talking about or there is a focus that we have been doing and that we're continuing to do academic achievement and oh, we just lost it. All right, no, I just wanted to pass. Oh, sure. There we go. There we go. It's safe by healthy schools and our humanity and justice and my justice is working under that. You can see I'm not going to read all of that or you can see some examples of what those areas are working on. And then if we can move to the next slide and you can see what we were talking about the realities of our budget for the question that you asked. So those were our realities, inflation and economic reality, climate enrollment, instructional time funding changes is what Megan was talking about, how to receive funding and the sunset of our S&P funds and the S&P funds is what we've been getting federally right now through the, you know, some people call them pandemic funds, but you know, those are S&P funds and the work first challenges that we have faced this year that's all part of the inflation. And the budget, you know, this is another great slide. You know, the budget definitely has education quality, evidence-based practices, what we were just talking about. How do we do that as a as a as a district is what we've been working as we, you know, forever as individual schools. But as a district now, we have even greater opportunity and the budget represents our spending in equitable distribution of resources as well. We're working forwards in all our, in all our schools. And that's the enrollment reality, which is so get more people to move. But as many people say, we don't have enough houses. Anyways, but yeah, we, we need more kids. So we need more kids in our district. I don't know about other towns, but in East Montpeliers, the death rate is way higher than the birth rate. And it was very, very clear this year, especially that it seemed, I don't know. And it's not just Vermont, you know, it's the name, it's all of the United States and some of the rural states in the, taking the exact same, you know, and especially Vermont and Maine, you know, our most growing population besides home on this is 65-year-olds. So, yeah, yeah. I would add too, and this is related to the question about enrollment. Part of the reason we've shown three years back and three years forward is because after three years forward, well, for two reasons. One, to show that these declines have held our predictions over time of the decline, they're coming true, which is important information. But also after three years, we do level out somewhat, at least our predictions would have us level out. And that's also important because the structure that we build for that time should be the right structure for, for at least some amount of the future. So, and I wonder, Flor, do you, should we go to the slide that showed the tax impact? Sure, can you join us at this point about the difference between that we talked about? And I'll even skip this, yeah, this, but this, I think this one and the next one, right here, the couple, the next one is impact on house taxes. Yeah, so we're going to, so you can see here, yeah, okay, so the local education spending for a glass vehicle is 20, you know, from the previous slide just because that's not right here, you can see at the local spending is 23,022 dollars. They compare this amount with the 15,400, for 15,000, for a very ill, please, so any class tax of 1,400, sorry, 1.4873. This table, it says the tax rates calculate across the district for this budget, the tax rate still increases in each town, but the increases range from, as you can see there, from 11 cents to 5 cents in Wooster. And this shows what that looks like, yeah, based on house value. Yeah, and that's the other thing that hit us too, the CLA, the CLA, how houses are being sold right now in our towns are being sold higher. We haven't had a real place, so we are all, all our towns actually, are due for real place, and that is part of that, that graph, so that the CLA also didn't help us, but here you can see the tax rate for a house value of $1,000, $100,000 to $200,000 and $300,000, you can see those labels up there. So using our proposed budget to protect the increase, you can see the increase on Berlin there at 100, for example, is 1.16, and in Wooster is 50, if you house a value of 300, I'm going to jump all the way there and see the increases for, for towns, for several each month of those years, so you can see that as 269 dollars while in Wooster is 150. So, Floor, I don't think we have the slide in this packet that had, that shows the difference between the two budgets that we looked at, the one that had the service cuts for nursing and food service and Spanish and the one that that's warned for tomorrow. Yeah, I don't have it. I don't think we have that slide, but I think it's important to, the questions that people have asked, the difference between the two budgets that we saw at the two final budgets that we saw, the one that's being voted on tomorrow and the one that had all the service cuts, the difference in tax rates was between those two budgets was $35 per 100,000 of value. All right, so as we're thinking about, you know, what we were going to spend and what we, what we wanted to ask the community to pay for, that was the difference, $35 per $100,000 in home value, the difference between lots of service cuts that people didn't want and the budget that we're at now. Any, any other questions? I think those are sort of the most important slides around why we've been talking about today. Now you'll need to repeat that, you know, you're entering a difficult time, but I'm here to work together. Oh, Maggie. Just to Jonas' point, that information is all available on our website in the packets from the prior meetings. So I don't know about, I can share that link in the chat. One is in video form from the February meeting, but I think one of our January meetings has that the three, the three or four budgets, right? Because we went through four to four B, correct? At the end, we had four A and four B. So we went many iterations of a budget during this planning process. I'm happy to find that and connect it if community members would be interested in seeing that visually. And I also just wanted to thank administration again, because we put them through all of this, and they were always prepared at our next meeting to present us with what we were asking for, a great deal of work for central office. And administration for that matter, principals were, you know, heavily involved, as I recall, in having conversations with Megan about what revisioning what our schools might look like if we were taking a creative approach to this in order to meet needs. Thank you, Megan. And then one last quick comment I put in the chat, the central room, one third report to remember to ask for that ballot to go to vote tomorrow. We haven't voted on that ballot. That'd be great. And page 10 of the calendar is the enrollment. And we have 47 students right now, year 32, for the first instance. And with that, I think we will conclude our annual meeting. Thank you to four members for being here. Thank you, Megan and Susanne for being here and Alicia also here. We, as Maggie was saying, we do have a pretty incredible leadership team and administrators and staff. So I hope that you can all remember to go and vote tomorrow if you haven't already. And thank you for being here. Thank you for members for being here too. Thank you. Thank you very much.