 but this is what the last budget that we, that the leadership team and the administrators in ourselves have worked really hard, especially the leadership, I guess you think the leadership team, especially in our administrators, because they have put a lot of hours into this budget. Since our merger last year, we have been working hard to develop a shared understanding of equity issues across our schools. So this budget supports our goals. So for our communication with the community, engaging in long-term planning and supports in food, educational and academic outcomes. And I know a lot, most people that are here are familiar with that, so I don't know if you have any questions for that, but what I would say that what I'm most excited about this budget is that it really supports our strong multi-tier system of supports right now and continues the work that we've been doing to really, this budget puts, I'm gonna say the educational outcomes at the forefront of our budget. There's a lot of other things that we wanna be doing, but as our first unified budget, we wanted to make sure that kids are getting the supports that they need before they fall behind. And the kids are getting also the opportunity to exceed if that's where they are. And that our teachers are getting strong, you'll see the numbers, but I try to take a little time to sort of set the tone of that, that our teachers are having enough time to get professional development and also enough time to plan together so that they can teach with intention and really be able to support the kids, meet all the kids where they are. And also that our schools keep providing, we've been investing a lot in being trauma informed, so our teachers are also taking that into account. And this budget supports that work. Board, which you're familiar with. That board will be growing into 15 members. So if you're a resident of Berlin here especially, if you would like to run for the board, please. We can't wait to meet you. As always, we have competing pressures within and across each of our schools, right? And with the state, we have Pat Herden, Asian Quality Contracts Division, federal mandates, facilities mandates, it requires student service, economic pressures and benefits. But I see this budget, besides all that you see there, I really see this budget as investment in our next generation, not just with some expense. And so how do you develop this budget this year? So there's a burden on the business and their service, and our principals get together and they put some draft examples for us. I gotta say that they did a lot of work. I don't even know how they did it because this was the first time that everybody was sort of not just thinking about their own school, but about multiple schools. So they presented three different scenarios to us and this is the last one that we're presenting to you. And then the finance committee, which at the moment is Scott Thompson, Vera Pressure and myself, met in between those meetings to try to make changes or just support the work. We're gonna try and get the board approval tonight and then the voter approval after that. Our student enrollment has stayed pretty steady as you can see, we haven't, we're hoping for that to go up, but I realized if pupils for this year are looking good. So we're about 1,500 right now, or 1,574. Yeah, actual enrollment for next year. So that's really good news. 1,574 students, 3K, liberation. We talked about all of this before and of course, we merged on July 1st, so there has been a lot of work done in this past six months to get a better understanding. The board has been touring every single building. We've been trying to get shifting every month. We have one meeting at E32, one meeting at the school and we take time to go into each facility and try to get, familiarize ourselves with, not just the building, but also the staff if possible. Okay. So, but yeah, thank you. Just shows the differences of the drafts. Yeah, so glad to see you. Do you guys want to talk about just the draft that we're presenting today? Or do you want to talk about the steps how we got here right now? Our budget for 1920, we're presenting 33,154,769,000 dollars. But we had, as you can see, draft one, one A, one B, and draft two, to get to that number. Yeah, the last draft. Most of our budget is around salary and benefits. The increase for this year for salary and benefits, the budget change was 5.43%. The non-salary item, as you can see, is not a large amount, 1,080,408,763 for adjusted budget of 2020. And then we still have that between our, between our schools, and you can see here that the budget changes minus 1.15 because we just finished that up on for U32, which is in our favor. So the combined total expenses for Westbrook Central is 33, for this adjusted 33,854, like we said, for the total budget for 2021 that we're projecting is 35 million for that 130, with 102 cents. So the total impact on taxes is 3.09%. I'm jumping around because I want to get to the questions, if, but if you have any questions, ask them, talk and please feel free. I have one. Yeah. Flora, you just mentioned the U32 bond that retired. Yes. How much did that free up? How much was going into bond payments last year? That freed up 461,000. And was that the lowest of all the years that the bonds go down? Well, that was the $9 million bond. We still have a $3.1 million bond that will be retired within the next two years. Okay, but 461 has gotten, almost half a million has gotten freed up because of that. Is that good? Yes, thank you. Yeah, I'm just curious about some of the staffing changes. Can you talk about what the question was? So, what we were talking about is like, we didn't want to reduce our instructional pie. And definitely we had needs in different schools. So our approach now is we're investing heavily in coaching and trying to have more effort around our schools. So everybody's getting this, not the same but what they need for their students. But we also had some needs in, we're talking about the rest of our schools. We had some needs in Calais. So it's basically some is special education and some is instructional practices. What we believe is making a difference right now. We're putting those enforcing every building. I don't know if you have something to add to that, Deborah? Sure, the board was very interested in having equity as a focus in our budget this year. And we were also focused strongly on student achievement. So one of the things we did was take a look at, we call our support interventionists and supports and coaches that all help students and teachers improve instruction. And there were some needs to equalize some of those positions based on student needs. So we added some positions there. We also saw an increase in some of our special education student needs which required some increased staffing. So as you can see, the salaries have benefited 70% of our budget, but that also is the instructional pie of our budget. So that's where we want to be. If anything is growing, it should be an instruction, not in operation and that hopefully. So transportation services were 4% operational, 3% and special education and tuition, 8% and non-salary, 9% for this particular budget. So here we have the difference between our budget from last year and the budget that we're for this current year, so 19 to 20 and 20 to 21. Really the main difference and it's not a huge is direct instruction, which is what we've been talking about from here we were at 36.5% and we're at 37.4%. Again, that is related to what we believe will be the best for student outcomes. I don't know if you have any other questions. So this is easier because in the pie it's hard to see from, so it's easier to see it here. So direct instruction, the change really from last year is 7.29% of the total budget. Of the total, yeah. So all these percentages are from total budget and special education is 9.70% and then support programs. Do you want me to read each one? No, that's what I'm doing. So it is, like it says here, it's just an expression of each budget area and I see and you guys here and I wanna talk to that a little bit and I know that you guys are, like the strength, the arts is something that we, I believe all in the board and the leadership team and the superintendent and everybody, it's something that we really, really wanna do and something that we believe makes a difference for all students and we know that kids that are involved in music do better in school and it really helps. We were trying to figure out different scenarios and I know we had their number wrong at the beginning and I'm not sure if it's, so we changed that number around so what we were hoping at our last finance meeting, which we haven't read in the minutes since the four yet, we talked about that and we were like, that has to stay at the forefront and Lori and Deborah are here to just confirm that that's what, at least that's four members, that's what we said. We don't wanna lose sight so our little cloud here, not break, our little cloud here, we have foreign language and strengths and we wanted to maybe this year, we've talked about many different scenarios so how can we be more creative, right? Like either do an afterschool program sooner rather than wait but as of this year, we were not able to get that wish list yet. So that's part of the reason that it's not reflected on this, on this project. Lori. Yes. This is large, you want me to just take it from here? Okay. So if you, what am I taking? Sure. The common level of appraisal. Okay, I'll just stop for a break. So we received the latest information from the tax department on the common level of appraisal. Three of our towns had an increase in the common level of appraisal and when you have an increase in the common level of appraisal, it means your tax rate wouldn't be as high. If you have a decrease in your common level of appraisal, it causes a tax rate increase. So the towns that had a favorable change to the common level of appraisal for the purposes of taxes are Berlin, Romney and Dovey, so Wooster and Middlesex. When we set a tax rate, it's not on this particular slide, but we do have the equalized tax rate of $1.79 and 34 cents and that would translate into a four point one cent tax increase if everyone had a common level of appraisal of a hundred percent. So it is one tax rate with one tax increase, but you can see that in Berlin, the tax increase way over to the right is two and a half cents and it's less than the four cents because they had this common level of appraisal that went up. Am I going too fast? So the number on the right, if everyone was at a hundred percent it would have been four point one cents. You can see in the situation of Calis and Ismaelia, their common level of appraisal went down so their tax rate increase is greater than the four point one cents, it's six point one and seven point four. For Middlesex and Wooster, you can see their tax increase is very minimal and in Wooster's case, it's projected to be a reduction because of the common level of appraisal change. Did I cover too much or not enough? I think I wanted to do for your question ahead so it helped me prepare. I think that is part of your question. Yeah, at some point I was going to ask you what the change in the per pupil spending is from year to year. Okay, I think that's all I'm getting at next slide. Okay. So if there's any questions, I can take those. Okay. I would like to see if the per pupil is... Yeah, we have that. And we have it being out of hand now. Yeah. I guess I could just say it. The per pupil equalized spending is four point six one percent if this budget was approved or changed. So do you have the raw figures of how much... Right. For the current year, it's 18,659. Okay. Excuse me, 657. I need three. 18657. It's currently projected at 19,518. And that represents a four point six one percent increase. And do you have the total enrollment figure for the current year? Enrollment for equalized pupils. No, the enrollment. So 15,70 is going to be more. I mean the year before that number that was up on the chart. I don't think we had the year before. I'll just see if I can get out of here. It's only in a photographic position. I do not have it, but I could get it to you? Yeah. What we saw was that the overall total did not change significantly, but what's different is we have more students who are in pre-k and less that are in K to graduation. So from the equalized pupil point of view, that resulted in a change. Right, right. Because those students are weighted and you won't receive appropriate benefit of a pre-k. Can I, instead of asking a question. Yeah. Well, this is a question, but it'll take a second. What I've been trying to figure out is how, if the budget is going up a total of, how much is that again? Five point, four point seven? Three point one, I don't know. Four point six five. Four point six five? Yeah, right there, yeah. We have additional revenues because a lot of the budget increases due to special education. So we would receive reimbursement this coming year for those expenses. Yeah, it seems to me that I thought back in June, you said the U-32 bond was gonna get retired, at least one of them was. So I figured there would be new revenue coming in. There'd be less revenue, less expenditure, half a million dollars. So that opens up a pool of money unless you wanted to readjust the budget because that money is no longer needed to pay a bond off. But even then, I couldn't figure out how, I mean Wooster is kind of a good example. The CLA is always exactly what it should be and the tax is going to basically be the same, go down four tenths of a percent. So I'm trying to figure out why when the budget is increasing somewhat substantially and the spending per pupil is certainly increasing by almost $1,000, why the taxes are not going up more? Because the change in the common level of appraisal was almost 3%. The common level of appraisal for this current year was 97.84 and it's currently for this coming budget 100% 23 times. Right, so. So that's about a five cent tax increase. So if I'm looking at it from the perspective of my town, basically what's happened is probably property values have not risen as quickly as they have in the other towns. So the CLE, which is, I don't know when the last reappraisal was, but it looks like we're still judged to be appraising our houses accurately. The other towns have not been presumably because they haven't been reappraised lately or something else happened. I don't know. You had reappraised or done something back in FY17. It was 104%. Then it went down to 101 and then it's been hovering around 100. Other towns, yeah, it doesn't appear that there's been a reappraisal at least one pillier that I can tell for the last five years. But I'm not sure. Is that an accurate statement? No, but basically houses having been set, you know, they're having been selling for what they are in price. So that's a good moment. Yeah. But I don't believe you had a reappraisal. I don't think we have had a, it's sometimes had a two years ago and I think each one pillier had a two, maybe five years ago. I don't remember the exact. I guess what I'm trying to figure out is it's not the size of the budget. The increase in the budget that drives the tax rate, it's the increase in the per pupil spending. And this is a pretty substantial, it's sort of in line with previous years. We've been going up somewhere between $500 and $1,000 a year, I think, for a number of years in per pupil spending. And this is, these tax rates don't seem to reflect that large of an increase in the per pupil spending. So I'm just trying to figure out where the additional either lack, cutting of expenditures, which doesn't seem to be the case, where the extra revenue is coming from. And it seems you're suggesting it's coming from, changes in the CLA, it's coming from the retirement of the U32 bond, and it's coming from special ed money you hadn't anticipated coming in, but is. Some of the budget increase is special education. We've increased the number of positions there in this budget. So there's a reimbursement increase of over 300,000. When you look at that 500,000 in revenue, that's helping to reduce taxes. 300 and 5,000. Right, I'm trying to figure out where that revenue's coming from. True, that would be coming from the state. The state is also, I'm not sure if you were on the board when we signed up on the new bus contract, but at the time I had mentioned that it would take a two-year lag before we would get the reimbursement for the bus contract. So that's coming in now, it's 133,000. And we're also adjusting our tuition income for 53 students, and increasing our tuition as part of that overall 529,000. I was curious about that specifically, that 53 students is $152,000 is above the current budget? True, we had an increase in tuition as well. So we have more students that we're budgeting for, I think there's three additional students, plus we've increased our... Even with Roxbury students... Out. Moving away from... We have not seen a huge decline in our tuition students. That's really good. That's really good. That's pretty stable. Sorry, if I'm answering all the questions. No, no, you should. You keep pointing to me so I don't mind. Yeah, I'll move on. We want it, yeah. This relates to a question I had as well, which is not a question, but I am wondering how you're thinking about this, the implications of this longer term, because I was really anticipating, oh, we're ending this one bond payment, which is significant. We've been waiting years for this to happen. And it's not really, I mean, it's in here, but we're seeing at least an average, maybe an above average increase overall on average. Does that, do you think there's implications of that for future years in terms of this new union? Yeah, I think that because this is the first year that we're doing a budget all together, and for our desire to sort of have equity around our schools and invest in what we were seeing that was starting to work to reduce the treatment gap. So we are not a guest estimate, but we're putting all our ducks right there, right? So because we want that to, we want to continue to support our work because we're seeing that it's working, right? So that it needed more people, right? And that's what is expensive. I think the thing we missed in our slide is that we didn't share that health insurance is also projected to go up on those 13%. And we also have an estimate in here for negotiations. So if you look at it in total, $1.1 million is in that $1.8 million for benefits and salaries. Yeah, and that's built in, you have no options. True, sorry, we didn't put that in the slide, I apologize, we should have probably. And that was really good news because a lot of this weeks were hit with that 12% increase of health insurance and we had planned. And so it was that, it didn't, it was the zero, but we were waiting that day at our meeting like if it's gonna really hit us and we're like, no, it's neutral, right? That's what we had. So we were somewhat lucky. We did have another budget with that larger. In Grisbelle, we're trying to negotiate that being fiscally responsible and we're ready hearing from some people that 3.19 is large. So we're here to take input, right? So there's something that you think should be different, please talk to us. Board, can you imagine equity just a moment ago? Can you speak to the board's current thinking about how you're going to be measuring equity across especially the elementary schools? I mean, what, you said something about outcomes, I think in an earlier slide, but that's sort of one thing. What I wrote here, and this is mostly because as a board, we haven't defined yet what equity means. This is something that we're, the other thing that you have to remember is that six-month-old board, the seven-month-old, six-month-old board that's trying to pull it together. We've been doing a lot of our own professional development work, our book, equity from the classroom, from the board to the classroom. So we've been doing a lot of work, but to tell you that we already figured out, I think the leadership team has a better idea of what equity means around the schools. But to me, this budget is like an affirmation of our desire to have better outcomes for all kids. And that's what we were trying to concentrate. So I know that that doesn't define what equity is because there's too many explanations, but my favorite one is that we build, and this is not something from all the board because we haven't yet had that conversation. I don't wanna speak for the entire board that I believe that all kids can learn, right? So if we believe that all kids can learn, we need to put the supports in place to make sure that all kids can learn and exceed wherever you are, so meet them where you are and not, and not just do, not sacrifice our belief on having the best outcomes and sacrifice an experience because we, every single one of our communities is slightly a different step back. So like I said, I'm not, you know, we are not, and Jonathan's gonna please feel free to, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of different ways to look at equity, right? There's equity in opportunities to the different schools. There's equity in outcomes between, you know, the kids at the high end, we're testing the high end and the low end of, you know, that achievement scale. There's a lot of different ways of looking at it. I think, you know, I'm not on the finance committee, but I think that what, you know, what Florence, Scott, and Vera have done, with Lori's input and the rest of the leadership team, is a focus on equity in outcomes, right? The, with the investment in special education, right, and the services and improving instruction, right, is our attempt to try and make, you know, those outcomes more equitable and provide the services where they're needed. So in other words, you mean the outcomes, performance of students is more equal across schools? It's more about the supports, really, so it's more about the, so like I said, we know that if we do interventions when they're needed at a school, so if a kid gets a shot in the arm on math or in reading for six weeks, he's not gonna fall behind and become, you know, especially if he's gonna get he or she or is gonna get what they need. Yeah. You know, that is an investment that saves money at the end. We know that if we invest in professional development and have the teachers have time to plan and teach, you know, and teach with, I call it teach with intention or do the differentiated teaching, it takes coaching to get that. You know, we know that teachers need that time on their schedule and they need the professional development and the coaching and that costs money, whether we, you know, like we need the people in place. So that is a strong sort of multi-tier of supports. And then, you know, and it's about student driven, right? So it's not just putting more people in every building because you have two than I need two, then you have three. It's not about coming or taking from here to there because you have more. It's about if any of the principals wanted to speak to that and give different examples. I want to follow up with this because I think I must be missing something. When I hear equity of outcomes, it says to me, you can achieve that anytime the outcomes across the, let's say the five elementary schools are more or less the same. And that's fine if everybody's outcomes are high, but you can also achieve equity of outcomes if everybody's outcomes are low. Well, certainly no, we're aiming for high expectations. And how are high expectations defined? Well, back in October, not to dissuade you from having a more detailed explanation, but we did share with the board when we met at East Montpelier a detailed review of our achievement, looking at the assessments that were occurred over the prior year. And we established the fact that there were certain grade levels or schools across the system where we had some disparities where our achievement was not up to par and at that point that the board and leadership team took again that to task and said, well, in order to improve our outcomes, what inputs or changes do we need to accomplish? So it is based on data and it's essentially looking at and using more supports into the system. We do have supports currently, but we felt that more supports were required. The other additional piece that has been mentioned is that we've seen an increase in our number of students with special education needs and those students require more intensive services. And while we do receive some reimbursement, there are some of those costs which we need to take on as local schools and communities. So these are really student driven changes to our budget. So would it be fair for me to think that really what you're talking about is equity of support and intervention as opposed to really equity of outcome? Our goal is to achieve equity of outcomes by adding additional supports, professional development and as I mentioned in other areas. So yes, that's our goal. Equity of high outcomes. So some means to the end equity in improving our outcomes across our schools. Thank you. You're welcome. With the standard being our student learning outcomes, right? We want all students to be able to achieve those. Yes, our standard is our goal or our belief that all children are with the proper supports. You mentioned that the other two goals were long-term planning and communication. Any thoughts on how the budget supports those two? But long-term planning, we have work happening this summer at our different buildings. We have been, we develop a spreadsheet. We hire a flagric sign to help us sort of prioritize what that means as far as long-term planning for capital for all our buildings. And then as far as engagement, we've been, we had those two people, five meetings around the different schools to try to engage people in the sprint and on search. We had one big meeting at U32 to find out what our community values. So we have big goals. And we're hoping, we engage with the back with Deborah Wolf and my friends from the Central Education, like trying to create a partnership. So we have how we're gonna measure that. As I know you're in monitoring. I don't, we haven't set that yet, but we have been working hard at reaching out to our community. I mean, we're not on the, we're not in the budget. Or, you know, an elementary string teacher isn't been included in the budget. And I guess I would just, you know, to, since I'm here and I'll voice that, you know, 16 years ago the district hired and started a string program. And in that program has been mostly supported by one or two of the elementaries because of particular staffing. And that staffing has changed. And now there is one school providing instruction for a string program that is a successful string program and part of our music education program. And so it was our feeling that now is prime as we're merging to talk about this from an equity standpoint. And if we believe in this program for our school, the way it's going to survive is by having students be instructed before the seventh grade year. We wanna provide equal access to the strings program at U32 for all the kids in our district. Not just those who go to the school where they have a string program or for those kids who have money and time to go to private lessons. You know, there's an expectation that kids arrive at the instrumental programs in U32 with some experience playing their instruments. And the way most kids get that is through their school lesson programs. And at four out of the five schools you can't take lessons free of charge through the school on a stringed instrument the same way you put on a saxophone or a clarinet. So I mean, there's a real issue of inequity there. And you know, you mentioned that it's studying a string instrument and improve math and reading. But I mean, beyond that, there's research that improves empathy and group communication and self-esteem and so many things that would give a kid a head start. And by the way, I've got some copies of our proposal here so some people would like to look it over and not too many, but I'll run the answer later. I think that there is consensus on the board. Like, I don't think there's any dissent, but that is something that we wanna do. We just, this year, this budget cycle we haven't found the way to do it. I mean, I would like to see that extended, before fourth grade too, for obvious reasons, Michael. I'm really, really hopeful that we'll be able to get to that perhaps next year. This year with the increase in insurance, the special education mandates, I mean, those are not nice to have, right? That's a must have, that's my law. There's a lot going on. I think Lori did, and everyone else in the central office has done a great job bringing the total number down to a place that we hope is palatable for the community and the people who will support it. Please don't think that the fact that we haven't included that doesn't mean that there isn't support for it. Absolutely. Thank you, I appreciate that. And I would just, I do need to add that the numbers in the high school program are dropping, and next semester there are six kids in the ensemble, and that's been a trend. So I guess in closing, I appreciate the support and the idea that it's not off the table for a future or a long term. And I would invite conversations about creative ways to offer these. We've had generous donations from local instrument dealers to give us instruments for free. We have the staffing already built into our district, so please, we're happy to talk about creative ways to get this thing going even before it can show up, I guess, in an overall budget. And I think there's interest, not just from the board, but from our administrator, you know, from our principal leaders to have it. You look at, we had this wonderful district elementary school music day in B32, and on the stage there were, I would say, over 100 kids in the band. And there were 13 elementary string students, and I think 12 of them were from Worcester. So I mean, we just like to- From the middle school. From the school that has the instruction. The school that has the instruction, you had 12 groupers, so it was good. Thank you for that. I know I'm sorry, I'm walking in halfway through the movie, but what interests me about this is that most of the budget from what I gathered seems to have been developed sort of by the leadership. And this particular initiative is kind of coming up from the ground. I think we need to try to find a way in our budget to have room for something like that, even if it's on a very small scale. Like we kind of, I don't know, and even if it's out of the fund balance, I mean, how much are we talking about if I might ask for a three-day or week position? I was told that 54,000 with the bet is including benefits. 54,000 if it's- They would include that bet includes benefits. That includes benefits. Three days. For three days. Okay. 54,000, I mean, it's not a lot. I wonder if it might be possible. Lori will probably throw something at me for this. But to carve out some section of the fund balance that the board can have authority over as a kind of internal grant issuing or seed money for piloting, what seemed like worthy initiatives that are generated from the ground up just so that it keeps the, it seems to me it keeps the whole system aired in a way so that it doesn't feel quite so top down, I guess. Yeah, and I think to that I just want to say that I would, that like having a daughter that has completely benefited and was like maybe the one string player from East Mobile that moved to and had to go through the years trying to figure out which class another takes so she can stay in the orchestra. I totally support this. But I want it to be like real, right? I don't want it just to add it at the end because we need the buying and the scheduling power. So what does this do? I'm looking at you guys. What does this exactly do to your schedule? So I'm more interested in making it a reality. I said, well, maybe because of where we are in budgeting right now, maybe we should get together and look at this. What does this look for after school this year and how do we integrate it into the schedule for next year? I don't know. I'm looking at, I would need to like throw, the budget that we built today is not, to me not built top down, it is built student. Yeah, I don't know. So this is the reality of our students right now, our student population or where we're trying to invest. And I don't want to just put strings and then never have the time, you know what I mean, we never have the time for it to happen. It was the same with Spanish. We're going to run up some simple schedules of how this might play out that we would be happy to share. Yeah, so you guys. I could come in on the conversation that we've had the leadership team. We had a, as you know, our first budget was level service and then we came back and said, here are the additions we'd like. And we also looked at the strings program along with elementary foreign language and a variety of other projects and services that we either had to incorporate or felt were important. And our leadership team had much discussion about them and we actually prioritized them. We shared that prioritization with you. I think it was back in December, November, December. And our thinking was that there was also a question of not just scheduling but time in the student day. And our priority was to increase the supports for academic time at this point, but we were committed to looking at it in the future time. In particular, if we could really look at our student day at the elementary level and also plan for the curriculum and the supports that begin for a new program that was going to be offered district-wide. So does that capture what we discussed? Please, anyone want to jump in? That's the principle of this whole task program. There we are, Graham. Right. And having, you know, I credit a lot of my point as having actually been a violinist. So I totally bought in there was the, there, with strings in our foreign language, what we talked about is the difference of doing something and doing something well. And so figuring out how are we going to do this well? You know, one of my big hesitations about an after-school program is then any family who has a parent who's working, who doesn't have transportation, that student is excluded from it. But just thinking, I mean, I'm really interested to see your proposal and talk about how we implement it. And maybe if you thought of something that's actually easier than what we're thinking, but it's also this issue of looking at the five elementary schools and looking at our days and how we have our time and that we're all structured a little bit differently is we could certainly do a string program next year. And we probably do world language next year, but we wouldn't do them well. And so that's sort of the hesitation about it and saying, okay, we've got the timeline for the budget. The budget has to happen when the budget has to happen. Let's take a breath and say, okay, we're committed to these two things. But we're committed to doing them really well. Which I recognize is easy for me to say because I have you. So somebody who has dealt with school budgets for a number of years, I gotta tell you, especially at U32, the yearly bond payment was something we looked at. And we always said, boy, if we didn't have to spend this money paying back that bond, what could we do? And I think we all look forward to the time when the bond was paid off. And lo and behold, it's happened, which is great. I think people are gonna wonder, now that we have $461,000 that's not going to the bond, what has the school done with that money it was spending? What has it added? What new opportunity has it given to kids? And I would suggest that you take some amount of money from that $461,000 that has gone somewhere in the budget, maybe take $100,000 out and start an enterprise fund. It could be used to start new initiatives like the expansion of the strings program. And maybe word language the next year. But I think a lot of people are gonna be, if they start looking at this budget and they realize how much money is not being paid in the U32 bond anymore, they're gonna wonder where that money went. And it would be good if you could say something really positive about what you've been able to do now that some of that money has been freed up. I mean, I'll tell you, we've heard exactly the opposite. In another meeting where people have, I forget who it was that said, I hope you don't treat this, that the fact you don't have to pay this bond as a honeypot that you can now go in and take things off your wish list. I mean, we're not paying that bond back to the budget, it's still going up, 4. whatever. And the bottom line is going up 3.09%. There are tough decisions to make. And again, I'm not on the finance committee, but I support the focus on the classroom instruction and the special ed services, to try to close that gap, to try to provide the education to the vulnerable and those kids who are not being as well served as they should. I mean, I completely support the strings program. I would sign my kit up for it yesterday. So I hope that when the voters look at the budget, I hope that, I totally understand where you're coming from. But there's a bottom line component. And we have to put this thing up for a vote. Right, but you've absorbed almost half a million dollars into the budget as essentially revenue. I mean, that money is going to be buying something. And I... But it's not revenue. It's not revenue. It's not revenue. It's just money. You're right, it's an avoided expenditure. So it essentially acts, it's $461,000. You no longer have to pay. It's like when your car payments are done and all of a sudden you have, you're no longer paying $225 a month. But your health insurance went off. But there's the other six. The cost of living went off. That's absolutely true. But you wanna realize that when you get into that thinking, you're never going to be able to justify the funding of a strings program. And I would think if there's ever a time that you could justify it, it's when you have $461,000 that no longer has to be paid. So when we looked at the data of the gap that's there and it's not the list here, and you guys speak about what equity looks like. To me, equity looks like looking at all of our programs and that definitely includes the arts and music because that lower tier, that's the important part for them to be able to focus their energy and take pride in things that they may otherwise struggle with. But that gap is there. And when you talk about those kids that can go to a strings program, I can afford it. That's what we need to invest in right now with the academics because those kids that can get the academics need that extra support. And we need to support our teachers right now to support that. But in looking at what our programs are and what we want them to be, that wish list is so important but we need to make sure that the academics are supported as well. And I do think that making sure that the arts is high, high, high on the agenda is absolutely a focus of this board. Let me just say, I think Al was making a really good point that in terms of your sales pitch to the townspeople, this $460,000 is an opportunity. It's an opportunity to either reduce expenses or to reinvest in, what I hear, you chose to reinvest. And if you look at the staffing changes and academic program staffing changes, it's almost entirely a match to that 460. You chose to put that money into what I heard as supporting teachers and students. And in the programs that already exist, the academics, the things that we think are the most important. So I think you just want to draw that connection for folks. It's important. Yeah, we were hoping to have something, and I was about to talk about this, have a little token to give to the community, but it's just like we were not able to quite get there, but what we have you here, we are gonna work on that certain programs and the foreign language. It's not something that we're gonna not, it's something that we believe in and hopefully it can be more cross-curricular too, so that it can not be such competitive with the schedule, but we were, I feel terrible that we were not able to do it today, but feel confident that this really supports our team and our students the best for next year. I wonder if we should take a break and be prepared for our next meeting. And I don't think I introduced myself before. We jumped right in. I'm Deborah Taylor, the superintendent, and thank you for coming. You are welcome to stay. The first item in our agenda will be the budget. So we're gonna keep this conversation going. And we have carrot cake. And there's plenty of carrot cake. I made it yourself. I'm gonna go back. Yeah. We have our carrot cake.