 Good evening and welcome to Montpelier Civic Forum. We're on the road to town meeting 2020. This is going to be a very interesting year because we have one district with two seats up and that's as a result of Ashley Hale resigning. There's a one-year term and one candidate running and there's three candidates running for the two-year term that Glenn Hutchison had. The seat he currently has but won't have because he isn't going to run again. In district two we only have an incumbent running, Connor Casey in district one. We only have an incumbent running, Donna Bate. You can see a trend developing and that's a very good show by the way. We have Donna and Connor together in two half-hour shows discussing their view as incumbents on city government. That's a really good one if you can catch that. And we also have Bill Fraser talking about the city budget. Now on the school side you can see the same trend. Everyone who's running for school board is going to make it on. We have all of them, an individual show for each and all of those shows are excellent as well. And we have, how about editing that? And we have Libby Bone Steel, our superintendent of the schools. And this is our first time with us Libby. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. And it's the first time because your school board president Jim Murphy was on last year with your budget. Yes he was. When did you come in? I came to Montpellier Roxbury last year, last fall, last July was my first month on the job. And you came in from where? Franklin Northwest. I was the director of curriculum and instruction in Franklin Northwest which is up in Mississippi, Swanson area. Now you had a hand in drafting last year's budget. I did? With your team. I did, with the team, yeah. What was that like? Your first budget with Montpellier parents sitting in front of you, those parents at that meeting after meeting after meeting. What was that like? Well, our team is pretty strong. So I have a very strong business manager and Grant Geisler. And we pretty much followed the same timeline and path that the district had been using in the past. I was still, we start budget season in late September, very early October, with internal discussions about what we need. And I was still learning a whole lot about the district at that point. So we followed what had been set up. We didn't make tremendous changes in our budget last year except for the busing increase. Could you explain the busing increase in last year's budget? Sure. Last year's budget we added busing to Main Street middle school students who live beyond a mile radius from the school and added that to our UES busing. So that's principally kids out on Elm Street? Yes. Kids out on Terrace in that area? Yes. Kids on Entown Hill? Yes. And kids up the hill, right on the south side? As if you're going up to Northfield. And there's some also on, I believe, Berry Street side there too. Now, is that winter busing or is that a whole season busing? Whole season. You also had a change in capital and the structure of how you approached capital last year. Yep. So last year the voters voted on not only the school budget but also a capital plan. There were two separate items to vote on. It will be the same in this year's budget as well. There were two separate items to vote on. And the capital plan was well in line by the time I took over. Okay, now what is a capital plan? Capital plan is a kind of a separate account that we use for building maintenance to ensure that we don't have deferred maintenance and that we have money in the bank in order to do larger projects. So we can start to limit our reliance on bond projects and an enormous voter asks. So it's the fund for bigger projects that are coming down the line. How much is normally in that fund? You know, I'd have to look at our exact numbers from the budget presentation. But it's a considerable amount of money and that money can roll over over years so it's not refilled each year in the same way that a school budget would be refilled. So it rolls over if we use it or if we don't use it. This year in our capital projects, we're looking at window replacements. We have some different ideas and those uses are primarily run by Andrew LaRosa, who's our Buildings and Grounds Facilities Director. And in conjunction with Grant, Andrew knows our building is better than anybody at this point. Wasn't he a new hire? He came in with me last year as well, yeah. Now, you inherited another project. You inherited Union Elementary's playground project. And the High School's Auditorium project, yes. Now, the Union Elementary playground project came in on time. Well, it depends on whose timeline you were looking at. Some might disagree with me on that. You're right. It took a long, long time. But once those dump trucks were there, it did open in time for the school year. Yes. So when Andrew and I took over, we promised that we'd have it ready for the school year. When it came in, the final construction work was done, I believe, two days before school started. And that's a very popular site now. Yes. So it's a beautiful playground. What is ongoing right now in capital expenditure? What are you working on presently? Presently, we're making plans for what needs to be done for next year. So those plans are in place already. We are seeding the mud lot out of capital plans. Okay. What is the mud lot? I know what the mud lot is, but nobody else knows what it is. So when you drive into Montpelier, Montpelier High School from Bailiave, where the circle rotary is right there, right in front of the auditorium, there's been a mud pit, basically, that people have parked on over time. It's a very compacted surface. And for a long time, we were in talks with the bank across the street. And they wanted to pave it into a real parking area that they would be able to use and rent the spaces from us over time. They decided the project was too expensive. So we went to the school board to say, do you want us to pave it? Do you want it to be seeded over? What would you like us to do? We talked to them about potential parking challenges if we didn't pave it into a parking lot, but the board in the end decided to seed that space. What happened with those potential parking spaces? Because over years, what, some 30 cars? Yeah. So we've terminated the contract with the bank. So the bank and we had a contract going where their employees could use our parking spaces. And when we decided not to pave this over, we said we're just not going to have enough parking space for that. So bank employees no longer can park in our parking lot during the day. That we can still use it for overflow parking for things like graduation and the very big events that will still be available for our spaces just as we find lots of other spaces around the property for overflow parking in the big time events. But the high school parking lot will most likely be a permanent place moving forward simply because we don't have the parking space for faculty and staff if we don't do it that way. Okay, let's do an overview of the district. Sure. We've got four principal buildings. One is in Roxbury, three are in Montpelier. How many students are there at the Roxbury Village School right now? Currently there's 37 students in K-4 and our preschool has 17 four-year-olds in it. Union. So Union has over 400 students. I believe it's actually up to about 415 now in pre-K-4. Main Street Middle School. Main Street Middle School has had a little influx, especially in the sixth grade this year. And so there are about 370 students in grades 5, 6, 7 and 8. Did we pick up an extra teacher for that? Yes, we did. Are there any projected, we're going to get to this later, but are there projected extra teachers as that, as the snake swallows that particular thing and it goes up? Yeah, our cohort of sixth grade right now is very large. It's over, I think it's at 102 right now and just the sixth grade alone, 104 maybe. So we did put in a sixth grade teacher this year paying for and out of our fund balance. What is the fund balance? So a fund balance is kind of the rainy day fund. Like I said, we have the best business manager in the state in grants and when we budget for a certain thing and we come in under, that's a good thing. But the money's already budgeted so it goes into the fund balance. And the high school? The high school is about 365 right now in grades 9 through 12. Now how does this compare? I'm going to ask you for figures off the top of your head so you could just say roughly. Forgive me if I don't know it. Exactly, you could say roughly. How does this compare with last year? Are we up? We are increasing in enrollment, yes. A product fewer than 50, more than 50? I believe it is a round 50. It would be probably a good round number of what we picked up this year. We had a very big increase at Main Street Middle School this year. Was that due to Roxbury coming in? Not necessarily, no. What would bring an increase at the middle school like that if it's not showing up at Union Elementary? Are people coming in from those outer feeders in a way that they didn't? It would be all the assumption because we don't necessarily ask but it could be that families are just moving in with those aged kids. It could be that some parents in Montpelier decide to send their students to alternative schools or private schools and then decide to send their kids to Main Street Middle School or Montpelier High School because we had a big influx of 10th graders as well at Montpelier High School. But we don't really know exactly where, why or where. Are any of these people tuitioning in? We have a few tuition students, yes. Is that trend to continue? I think it's on the down flow, isn't it? I'm not sure what the trend is across several years but every year we have a few students who are tuitioned in. Let's go to a budget summary. By the way, if you're following this I'm following her document that she prepared for the board that you can find on her site in the budget section on the Montpelier Roxbury School District site and this will be there in a much bigger form in a much more detailed form but we're going to walk through the highlights of that particular presentation so that we avoid going into the weeds in terms of what the number is this. If you're interested in that, find it on their site, it's very easy to navigate. I can also say, Richard, that we do have a community budget forum on March 2nd at 5.30 at the high school in the library. As you always do before town meeting day. Yes. Which Orca I believe will show. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if they did last year or not. I think we did. Yeah, okay. If we don't, I'll request that we do. Okay, the increase in education spending. So our increase in spending in education spending is 4.68% this year and spending per pupil is 3.51%. How does that compare with past years? You did last year's budget. Is that roughly what we're coming in at? Yes. Yes. Is there any economy of scale since we're picking up students? Are we such a small district that the numbers are too small that the addition on the margin will affect these numbers tremendously? Our equalized pupil count actually did affect our numbers. So if you were to go... Okay, I'm going to stop you. What is an equalized pupil count? That's a larger question. There are formulas that the AOE uses. AOE Bing. Agency of Education uses. Lots of acronyms tonight, folks. To determine how many equalized pupils. So for instance, high school students are weighted more than a preschool student is because preschool receives less education. Technically they're there for less time. Kids who are on free and reduced lunch receive a different weight. Kids who come in with... English is a different language receive another weight. So the AOE takes these identifiers and adds a weight to it and what we get back... So it's not just one student, one dollar. It's what we get back based on our weighted count. Is that possible? It sounds so convoluted. It is ridiculously convoluted, yes. Is it possible for you to estimate that? I suppose you estimate it. But at what point in the budget process are you sure exactly what that number is? The AOE gives it to us. This year it came in rather late which is why the budget presentation that's on the website says 3.77 increase when it's actually 3.51 because our equalized pupil count came in higher than we expected. Which is good. It's a good thing, yes. It's a very good thing. Special ed kids are they weighted as well or is that a separate system all of its own? Kids with special needs are also weighted differently, yes. In terms... How does that translate in terms of tax? You know, Grant gave us the exact dollar amount. Again, I'm not going to hold you to it. Yeah, and it's a significant one pupil one equalized pupil more is something crazy. The same is decreasing our budget by $20,000. It's really a large factor. So schools with decreasing enrollment that significantly influences their budget. And for us, because we have increasing enrollment it influences our budget but in a better way. We'd have to decrease our budget monetarily quite a bit if we had lower enrollment. So let me understand this. You're starting this process in September or early October without knowing what that number is that will determine the ultimate cost in a house. Yes. How does that work? Well, we're not alone. We're not unique. It's the way the system is currently set up. There are some things that we can control and some factors we can control and then some factors we can't. So when we're looking at our budget this year in particular with my leadership team we sat down in a room for a long period of time several long periods of time and put up on our walls all of our needs and wants and desires and then we started prioritizing as a team from there. And once that those priorities start to get limited then Grant will start to put some approximate numbers. We can see trends over time and make very educated guesses for some pieces like CLA and CLA's people that come in. We have to wait for the state to get the exact amounts, however. And so if those original numbers start coming in too high then we come back to the drawing board and we say, okay, we have to prioritize further. Now, you have budget themes. The board sets themes that you're working within. They set priorities that you're working within. What would those themes be? The broad themes that the board is working on this budget. So our four pillars that we're standing on right now is ensuring that we have a guaranteed and viable curriculum that we have of an effective. Okay, I'm going to stop you. What is a viable curriculum? Viable is that the teachers can teach it. Okay, that's viable. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, if the Common Core were taught as stated a student would need about 22 years of schooling in order to master all of them. So we have to prioritize. These are the prioritized bit of these standards or whatever standards document we're working within. And we can, we're going to guarantee it to each kid and we're going to make it viable for teachers. So it's not too much. Does that relate to the proficiency-based graduation? Yeah, absolutely. So that's driving these viable standards? Yeah, so each priority standard that we call it has a proficiency scale attached to that. And that's how we assess whether students are making sufficient progress. Those are our markers for proficiency, yes. And then in order to graduate a student has to hit those markers of proficiency by the time they reach the point of trying to graduate. How are we doing in that transition? I think we're in a really nice spot right now. Montpelier High School in particular was a leader in this in the state from the get-go. And they put some systems and supports in to make this happen through excellent communication and a staff that was ready to work and change. They made some significant changes early. Now I believe we're at the point where we've been doing a certain system within proficiency-based learning for a while and we're ready to say, is this the best way? Now that we know more, when you know more, you do differently, right? And so now Montpelier High School as well as Main Street, Roxbury and Union put systems in saying, is this what we want to say? Is this what we want to do? Are there places that we can tweak and change to make those more supportive for students? Now, what about the gap? The achievement gap? So I'm not my four pillars. So one is a guarantee in a viable curriculum. The second pillar that we're standing on is collaborative practices and collective responsibility. Okay, what is a collaborative practice? Yeah, so that's called professional what we want all of our teachers in as a team. So getting all kids to learn at high levels, which is the soapbox I continue to stand on because of what we do every day is we can't do that individually. It's just too complicated and too complex. So we're putting in systems and cultures that ensures that we have collaborative practices. That means teachers are collaborating over let's look at what is it we want all kids to learn? How do we know they've learned it? They already know it. And what do we do if they don't know it yet? So teachers are working in teams. Mostly grade level in the younger grades and more content area based in 7 through 12. But they're working together to decide to look at practices and figure out which ones are working and let's get rid of the ones that aren't in order to reach our priority standards. Now, I know that you're a data-driven superintendent. I am, yeah. So we use data to decide if that's our evidence to see what practices are working and what aren't working and the idea that we're not there yet. In some of our data, it's pretty good. Our more subjective qualitative data says that we're producing pretty good graduates with the help of our community partners and our help of our parent community. Many of our graduates are going on to do phenomenal things. Before the camera started. So many of our graduates are really doing just amazing things in the field right now. We have some that aren't making the mark in the way that their life wants them to make the mark. So we want to ensure that when somebody graduates from the Montpere Roxbury school system that they have choices in life and that those choices are going to make a difference for themselves, their communities, their families. A positive difference, hopefully. And we need to ensure that's happening. If they have the evidence for that. Well before you came into this district we had an academic achievement gap between students of lower income who are on subsidized lunches and food stamps and other students who aren't. That's not something that came in with you from another district. How are things changing in that? How do we address that population to try and bring them up closer and closer to where everyone else is? So my other two pillars besides guaranteeing we're getting there. Collaborative practices and collective responsibility. The next one would be effective multi-tiered systems of support. Excuse me, I have a cough. Sorry. So that we ensure that learning is the variable and not time. Okay stop. Learning is a variable and not time. So I'm sorry. Time is the variable, not learning. Thank you. My essay is that we will give students based on our priorities based on our priority standards and the guaranteed and viable curriculum we will give students the time they need to show proficiency in those standards. And some students may need to be pulled into smaller groups to do that. They need to be retaught in different ways. We need to spiral around so that they have multiple opportunities to learn. But the learning is not the variable. The learning is going to be the expectation. That would be our third pillar there is an effective multi-tiered system of support. We have multi-tiered system of support now. We've always had multi-tiered systems. What we're working on is the effective part and that's where the data comes in as well. The data will tell us whether or not we are effective in that. What's the fourth pillar? So the fourth pillar would be high quality instruction in every single classroom. So this school year kind of behind the scenes work the administrators, the leaders and principals, director of curriculum instruction, director of student support services myself, assistant principals have been working on coming to consensus on what do we exactly do we mean when we say high quality instruction. We've been working with a document called the 5D, which is five dimensions of instruction out of the University of Washington's Center for Creative Leadership or Center for Educational Leadership, sorry. And we've been working closely with a consultant, Michelle Mason, out of that group, some of the principals and myself and then we've been coming back with a team working two times a month on watching video of teaching, being in classrooms together, then coming back and saying what are the themes we're noticing what is it, how would we provide feedback to these teachers how do we get at intentional planning around ideas. We've been doing that work together. It's been a big learning year for the leadership team around that and at the end of this year we'll be thinking how do we begin really truly working with the staff around the 5D so that we all have a very common understanding of what we mean when we say high quality instruction. In terms of high quality instruction Montpelier has a very senior teacher's core. Yeah we do. That's at the high end of the scale but at the same time probably worth being at the high end of the scale in spades. Is that teaching core going to stay together or is it gradually retiring? I think we have this year we have I believe three retirements that are happening so far. Any names that you can remember off the top of your head because those of us who don't have kids in school know those people. Yeah so just the other day Mary Mello gave me her letter of resignation who was a long time kindergarten teacher at Union Elementary School it was a very hard decision for her after she handed me a letter she goes I've never retired before I'm not sure I would do this. I was like well you just kind of give that to me and that's it. So Mary's retiring of course Pam Arnold's retiring at Main Street Middle School with Linda Goodell as well and her administrative assistant Lisa Moody at the Main Street a 6th grade teacher is also retiring. Boy she's been principal for so long. 14 years. I was a parent on the committee that chose Pam Arnold, yes I was. Anyone else? Off the top of my head those are the biggies off the top of my head. Now let's get to one elephant in the room on your budget the increase due to health care costs. It wreaked havoc on the city budget and you can tell because Bill discusses it on Bill's show that's well worth watching. What did it do to your budget? Well you can see the health the health rates increased 12.9% this is not a Montpelier Roxbury number this is a statewide number. Why is it a statewide number? It's set by the state. In a collective. So this isn't just unique to us. Was it anticipated? It's a considerable raise it's hard to anticipate that number it was a considerable bump from last year to this year I can't remember exactly what that number was but I believe it's a 3% increase I'm not positive on that though. And so that is that isn't we get that number early in the budget season though that is not like the equalized pupil number that comes in relatively early so we can factor that in in the beginning of the process. Did that constrain the board from new spending initiatives? Not that particular piece. In terms of the budget itself let's go into some of the things that the budget did in terms of staffing. Yeah. So we have an increase in English language learners particularly at Union Elementary School and so we've increased that teaching staff by 0.2 English language learners would be what we used to call ESL, English is the second language. Yes. You tell how old I am. So students who come in with multiple languages that we have our buildings are a considerable asset to the community and a highly desired space on the weekends which makes our custodial crew work a whole lot of overtime we have some custodians currently who have worked every day of the week for two straight months so we've put in a weekend custodian in order to try to alleviate that on our we want to make sure that we keep our custodial core and not overwork them to death so we put in a weekend custodian that's 0.4 FTE FTE being the employment amount that they work during a week so it would be one fourth of 40 hours right okay equals about two days 0.4 would equal about two days the after school enrichment is already in the budget actually it just wasn't in the budget for last year so that it was in the budget last year as a different piece is the after school program could you talk about the after school program is something different than we've had in the past with community connections so we currently are working with part two for our kindergarten through fifth grade students which is an organization out of Chittenden County they've come in to rave reviews to the programming that they're offering our kindergarten through fifth grade what kinds of programs would those be off the top of your head just a sample of what kids have offered after school so they join into that level joins into that program and then they have a whole calendar events that kids can have different choices for kids during the day whether it's different cool crafts or I know they're playing in fifth grade a lot of football outside because there's a bunch of boys who are in the program they are outside quite a bit through nature nature hikes and that kind of thing is there a copay involved for parents yes and then we also that after school enrichment however is for a position that works with our grades five through twelve offering mountain biking after school and kayaking and skiing and that kind of piece so again there'll be a parents copay that will generate some revenue for the district for that our librarian Roxbury Village School does have a librarian what they do not have is a technology integrationist and so that point too is so that the librarian can also serve as a technology integrationist in the classroom you've lost me I'm too old what is a technology integrationist somebody who can work with teachers on how to increase their capacity to bring technology and globalized learning into the classroom now union elementary picks up yep this is actually happening this year that's why it says status quo in our budget presentation because of act one sixty six which is the universal pre-k law with the legislation when did that come in that's been a while yeah it's been a few years there's certain licensure requirements for all preschools who qualify for act one sixty six dollars from the state act one sixty six being the preschool universal preschool law and head start which is part of our program that's offered at UES had some trouble year after year hiring a licensed teacher and so the program was in jeopardy so what we did this year was ask the board to make our what was currently point five preschool teacher into a full time pre-k teacher and so the board did that again on a fund balance and so what we see in the budget this year is to ensure that status quo happens like the snake that swallowed something main street middle is going to actually see that rising from the elementary school and from other people coming in in that particular grade six large gray six cohort so we've put in the staffing grade seven eight teacher a full time teacher there main street middle school also is the only school in our district with the exception of Roxbury who does not have any position dedicated to social emotional learning supports or behavior supports and it's needed to have no yeah exactly to have to have a weekend to behavior program at the middle school is not what we want so a behavior position is in place for main street middle school full time teaching position we've added some athletics there in terms of Nordic skiing track boys lacrosse and then some co-curricular work as well I think we're putting a musical in there aren't we looks like it yeah how about our high school what's happening on the margin yeah so at the high school one of the things we wanted to do again going to our social emotional learning we are not unique in that we have a lot of students coming to all of four of our schools with significant backgrounds and mental health challenges and we don't have the current programming in place to be able to serve them well so at main street or I'm sorry high school it's being proposed to create an alternative therapeutic program with we have some people in place the planning is still being done kind of waiting to see if the budget passes before we do significant serious planning but some ideas are being thrown around that's a more outdoor education program building leadership confidence with a licensed social worker so this would be another one of those past to proficiency yes it could be yes now what is the path to proficiency so with flexible pathways law x77 the legislature says that there's multiple ways a student can show proficiency in Montpelier high school is a state leader we were doing that before the law different opportunities with our community based partnerships thank you very much community and different the community based partnership for those of you who know Matt McLean yeah he's the director now what is that so we have a department at the high school that when kids want to explore different options different career options or different experiences we make it happen for them so we've had students who have done community based partnerships and beekeeping in archeology in music in state government all over the place in social justice action and it's really an amazing opportunity I believe a large percentage of Montpelier high school students have done that oh yeah last year I believe in the second half of the year we had 77 students in some sort of community based learning but by the time they get out of that school most will have done what about fine arts fine arts so currently our fine arts offering at the high school is band orchestra, chorus, or art our art classes have a considerable wait list every single year and we have one art teacher so we increased our we lost an art teacher last year I believe we did unfortunately she passed away and Liz Windell who was her student teacher was Barb's student teacher took over which was fantastic and Liz is awesome and kids love her and she's a fabulous teacher it's a significant wait list so how will this affect the significant wait list what we'd like to do is add a fine arts because it is a graduation requirement we do have to have a proficiency in fine arts so we want to add more opportunity and more choice to our students what is going on in the guidance section yeah so the state is requiring districts to provide more data collection in a relatively complex manner and so we had a data manager position in the district but that data manager position also served as a guidance assistance for power school and data management because of the complexity of what the state is demanding us to do we needed that data manager to solely work for the district and the data management piece so the point 5 you see in guidance assistance is to work with the guidance department and their data needs now Roxbury is picking up someone to help them with technology integration the high school is as well yeah so the library assistant at the high school is slightly different that is a true instructional assistant if anybody has been to the library at the high school they know that Sue Monomy who is our librarian there is top of everything I love her and so Sue will be playing the librarian technology integrationist role in order to free her up to do that she needs an assistant at the high school it's the same model that main street middle school currently has we've got after school activities at the high school what kind of activities would those be basically the same as at the middle school sometimes I know mountain biking and that kind of thing there's a lot of weightlifting and health and fitness offerings there's also a writing club that's happening creative writing that's happening at the high school this year Drew who's our after school enrichment coordinator is still building that program now I'm going to show you something so you're going to be looking down at program expenses anything catch your eye there as an increase as a decrease the co-curricular in athletics has a significant increase we're adding some middle school opportunities for kids and some of that will be offset by copayment not the things that are the after school enrichment yes because it's just slightly again we had it last year it was just written differently in the budget this year so this is just to clarify that but the spelling team the fall musical and then three additional coaches for three additional athletic opportunities would increase that budget quite a bit one of the things there's a group that's meeting on main street middle school on the very site itself to discuss where are those athletic activities happening there's not a whole lot of land over on main street the main street outdoor activities happen either at the high school or dog river fields and other rec fields in the city Roxbury kids how do they get home from this afternoon stuff do we have a late bus we have a late van kids have to let the office know that they're staying after and we have a late van that runs any kids home that needed around five o'clock every night okay so those kids integrate into the after school curriculum in the district they can if they want to yes just like any other kid I'm going to take you through what you're going to it's the only graph from the entire table that you're going to see behind us and it's the enrollment projection yes and if you look behind us you can see that the numbers are going to be really really tiny so we're not going to sit and deal a whole lot you can see the numbers on the x-axis going down and you can see the years on the y-axis going across what is going on with the high school in terms of enrollment in the long term and this is until 2023-24 it's increasing it's slowly increasing and then it takes a slight dip downwards yeah of course these are models so that projection for year 2023-24 is projecting from what's at UES right now so UES was at an increase for several years a significant increase it's for several years right now it's plateauing of it and so that plateau will be represented then but it must be tough projecting those 6th graders going into 7th grade where we don't know exactly where they're coming from and exactly why whether that's temporary bounce or whether it's a permanent trend all of this is modeling so it's major it's all models of what we can predict how do we model the main street middle school in terms on this chart behind us very similar ways we look at the population from UES and we extrapolate out now UES has a slight downward trend as well going forward so that's based that is the number that is the most insecure on the model how so it's based on kindergarten birth rate or it's based on kindergarten nurse that from birth rates 5 years prior and so we all know that's not a if a child was born in Montpelier 5 years ago they may or may not be there we don't have a track record of that so it's based on birth rates from years prior now imagine that you're working along with the development corporation and the like in terms of kids who aren't born in Montpelier whose parents are moving into Montpelier in possible new housing in places like Savins Pasture does that factor it all into this or people like my wife and myself who might actually sell our house in Montpelier to a family that has a couple of kids we hope you do a lot of people hope to be out of this community no not that way that we hope if you sell it to a family with kids we're not getting into my family situation but how do you deal with an aging population here with housing stock that can accommodate a great number of families the housing stock I don't believe is put into those models at all it's strictly based on birth rate so if our housing stock increases that hopefully will increase our enrollment even more or people who used to have families choose to buy one size or something and from what I hear the housing market in Montpelier continues to be hot on the other side of that equation the housing market in Montpelier is very expensive and is difficult for younger families to buy into because they're not necessarily first time houses absolutely but that must be a very difficult model to put together and you can see the assumptions that are sitting behind us what's the strength of the Montpelier school district there's so many there are absolutely so many I'd say that our desire to and our expectation quite frankly to create graduates in partnership with families in the community who have an incredibly well rounded experience and graduate ready to take on any challenge that has put their way I think that's our strength we provide multiple opportunities from pre-kindergarten all the way up to 12th grade for kids to experiencing the world in multiple ways and showing their learning in multiple ways and we're only going to get better and the challenges I'm going to walk you through a couple that I walked Jim Murphy our current chair who's running for office again has his own show safety in the schools how so in what way in terms of children feeling safe parents feeling that their children are safe in our schools that's a macro issue in terms of the macro so currently we came in with safety plans that were a little all over the place and we've spent the last year and a half with Andrew LaRosa our buildings and grounds facility leading the way of pulling those together we currently have one crisis plan and instead of four crisis plans we have a close partnership with Montpelier police department and fire so that they know very well what our plans are and you have a resource officer in the schools as you've had for years yes and Matt nicely has held that position Matt got promoted to detective and now Diane who's been working closely with Matt is taking over in April now do you feel that that parents everybody has to ring the buzzer to get into the school do students feel safer you'd have to ask the students I think that this is a I mean this is larger than Montpelier of course it's a macro issue I would like to say that our schools are as safe as we can make them and that we are prepared should horrendous things happen there's no guarantee there of course and it's a very hard topic for all of us to grapple with and digest so I'd say yeah we're a safe school and we've taken measures and steps and plans to ensure that everybody who needs to know knows what to do in a time of crisis the board has taken a lot of steps in terms of we were a homogenous state we are a white state in terms of ethnic minorities in terms of minorities as a whole can you discuss that as it relates to the work that the board has done in terms of integrating students of all kinds and making them feel welcome just this morning the mainstream middle school raised the Black Lives Matter flag in front of the building to cheers from the crowd which was wonderful to see so your email box will be full by the end of the day it could be not so much but it could be so the board last year took steps by being one of the only boards in the state to ratify a diversity equity inclusion policy what were the highlights of that policy the highlights of that policy is that we will look closely at data around learning for all of our historically marginalized groups or kids that have identifying factors to them that we will learn and how to take steps to hire more diverse staff staff as a result of that policy we have a district wide equity and inclusion team that includes parents and teachers and myself and administrators it's being facilitated by a parent and community member so we have another parent coming on board to talk about what exactly does equity mean for us and what steps can we take our next meeting will be planning a parent night around this topic so we're working very hard we are a school district that still sees microaggressions between our students small little acts that often times kids aren't thinking about what they're saying and how that could influence and affect others we're not immune to that in any way shape or form and so we're learning how do we how do we support all kids and create safe spaces how do we teach kids microaggressions as learning opportunities to say this is what that means do we really want to go there and how do we use those to move forward together as a whole community my wife and I were walking home with the dogs one evening and we walked routinely by Union Elementary and there's a very well attended parents meeting or community meeting on transgender and non conforming students what would have been covered in that meeting I wasn't there so I'm not positive it's an initiative dealing with transgender and non conforming students I wouldn't call it an initiative it's another place where we want to encourage the safety of all students we have a rather large student population who are working through gender identity ideas and so I would imagine that the conversation was how do we support all kids how do we talk to our kids about these issues for people my age who have students and potentially in the elementary schools it may be a new concept for us to be talking to our kids about and how do we do that well so that our kids are coming in welcoming and our kids are making friends with all kinds of kids and having all kinds of different experiences so as you submit this budget in an elevator speech 15 to 30 seconds why should we vote for the budget it's building our capacity and ensuring that we have equitable services across all four buildings it has a focus, a strong focus on building our capacity for social emotional learning which is a need in our buildings and we want to make sure that we have a culture and climate and our human resources are well trained and well ready for any kind of challenge that comes our way towards that it's one initiative that's not in the budget that got so much publicity during the year in front of the school board and that's language immersion in the elementary school what's the status of that right now it didn't make it into this budget what is going on last year's budget had $20,000 for a study put aside with a consultant with a national consultant and that work is happening currently it's being led by Mike Berry who's our director of curriculum and technology in the final stages of that work now it was not ready for this year's budget we weren't in a place that we could propose anything any idea when that will be presented to the new board it should be presented within the coming months so there's a possibility that this might actually integrate into the following year's budget if it's going to go then yes if it requires new spending if it does Libby, I really want to thank you this has been an excellent show an experience for me thanks for having me anytime and I want to talk to you now and I want to urge you to watch all the shows Libby's is not the only good show Bill Fraser's show on the city budget was really good all of the school board candidates presented their view of what's going on in the district and what should go on in the district and I thought those were excellent shows the show with Connor, Casey and Donna Bate was a really really good show as were all the ones with the people from District 3 and I'd be remiss and I'm saying and I forgot her the first time through Anne Watson has a show you're a physics teacher and our mayor she has a show that's really good it's an hour long, broken into two segments and Anne presents a state of the city and that's Anne's states why she believes that Montpelier is a dynamic place to work and to live as Libby did in her own way and as I will it's a dynamic and great place to live if you come out and vote and if you support your community get out and vote and make sure your family and friends do too town meeting is not simply an old tradition here it's what binds our community together thank you very much for watching