 All the meeting to order at 808, and apologize to those of you who've been waiting sorta out of our control, but I'm sorry. And welcome, Tim, welcome. Revision's to the agenda. I was just gonna add to approve the creation of the creation and membership of the Act 49 Committee to that, to the Action Agenda. Is that okay to do that? I'm thinking proper tools, you can add whatever you want. Okay. Public comments? A motion to approve the minutes of November 28th? So moved. Cary, and a second? Second. Carl, comments, questions, changes? At least you do a really nice job. Everybody else up? Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion carries. Let's go down to the reports to the board and go right to the students. Thank you for coming. Yeah, so we met last week, right? We did. Wasn't very long ago. Well, that was fun to talk about. The first thing that we wanna talk about is we had a winter concert yesterday for, was it just high school? No, high school and middle school. We're doing a new thing this year, so, fan. And Blam went to Berlin Elementary today, and we talked with the faculty, with all the teachers we had. Shelly Vermilia came, and so we broke in half and half of the staff went and talked with Ginger, Devonte, Izzy, and I, where all four of us were there, and half of the staff went and talked to us, and half of the staff was with Shelly Vermilia, and then we switched. Who's Shelly? Sorry. She's Zora and Dashel's mom, and she teaches, she's a professor at St. Mike's, on the gray shell and gender stuff. Okay. And other places. And she does places. Many other places. And she does, right? Yeah. And she's in teacher education. And then the next thing is, I correct me if I'm wrong here, but I had a conversation with Brian Fisher last week, and he mentioned, is there a potential food service budget cut? Is that on, no, could that happen? Yeah. Okay. So, sort of just from the student perspective, I wanted to share about the food here at U32. So basically, since Brian came whenever that was like two or three years ago, I've noticed that just the quality and variety in school lunches has really improved. I know from speaking with him that not necessarily more students are getting school lunch, but those who do get lunch are just having a better experience, and I just really like to speak to the fact that Brian's brought a lot to the program, and that I don't, I'm no financial expert, but at least from my perspective, I don't think that is the place that, let me show you guys that. I'll beat you two up, but go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Do you mind if I interrupt just for a moment? I won't break your train of thought. How do you think more students can be induced to get lunch? Yeah, so I actually talked to Brian about that last week because he came up and talked to me after the meeting. So from my understanding, part of the problem is that students will just get a slice of pizza or one of the grab-and-go wraps or whatever, but what they have to do for the food service to get money back from the government is getting what's called a meal deal. So they have to get all the components like a healthy meal, and I think the problem is that students just don't do that, and I think if they were made more aware of the impact that that has on our school, they would. Like, I've talked to a couple of kids and they're like, hey, did you know if you get these extra things, like it actually gives our school money from my understanding? And I think that Brian's works to have students be more involved in the process of school lunch, like he's had here a callback either this year or last year with vegetarians and vegans about making more options. So I think that in order to get more kids to get school and to make them more aware of the variety, because I think a lot of kids, there are so many things we can get and they're just simply not aware of it, and I think that's why we haven't seen more kids getting lunch. Thanks. That was my question. It's great to get some feedback from actual students. All we know is that once a month we get a meal, that's actually pretty good. It's the lessons. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when we talked about their two sides of the budget, the money that comes in and the money that goes out, and if we don't wanna cut the money that's going out to pay those people, because that's what helps make the quality, and he made that very clear, that we gotta figure out how to get more money coming in. And if you look at the percentage of kids that have taken lunches over the last, I forget what it is, four or five years, it's dropped precipitously. And so we also have fewer students and a smaller percentage of them are taking lunches. So there's a lot less money coming in. So in my mind, getting more kids to eat the lunch would be great. A lot of students not just planned, but other students who are also wondering about the second flagpole or the new flagpole and whether that was going to be incorporated into the budget too. That's not something that, Yeah, yeah. You don't have to, yeah, it's not. It doesn't come or go. It's a small enough amount of money that if they wanna do it, they can find the money. Yeah, so every winter slash fall, I guess now the middle schoolers is eighth graders. Seven graders do Lotus Lake Adventure Days. So we're also having those this week. And I remember them from middle school and they're just super fun to do all these games outside and you bond with your TA. So that's happening this week on, looks like Thursday and Friday? Oh, tomorrow's Thursday. Good cool day, sir. Let's go. And the middle school theater is starting their A&E production. When did they go from three separate plays to one big play? They used to do, each core did a play. Oh, this is stage 16. This is stage 16. Oh, it's not. It still does play, so it's like. Okay, I'm sorry. I misunderstood. The core's like, you have to do the play and then that's what I thought she was talking about. Or like, actually. Kendrick. Yeah. He did a lot. He did a lot. Do you want to talk about the second flagpole? Do you, is there anything that? I assume, what is our bigger problem right now? And Kitty wouldn't put it out there, but we've got the funds set aside in our capital budget. We just have to get the process. And so the idea is we will do it. So we are getting the second flagpole? That's our goal. Will it be like the only one out there or will it be an additional two? No, it'll be two flagpoles. It'll be the second flagpole. Yeah. So is it like, is the black one a matter of flag doing on that one? I just wasn't aware of getting the second flagpole. So we're working towards getting a second flagpole, one flagpole. Actually, we would probably be erecting a taller flagpole that would carry the American flag and the Vermont flag and use our existing flagpole for student organizations as outlined in my flag policy. And the thought behind that is that when the flags go to half-mast, if there are two flags on the existing flagpole, they get pretty low. Is that correct? Black flag is a matter of flags. Any third flag on that flagpole is almost on the ground at half-mast. Thank you very much. And you're welcome to stay or go at any time if somebody's mother's back there. Before they leave, I would love to hear the story of Lucy Spud. Oh, hi. If she doesn't mind sharing it. Oh, my foot. Oh, no. Oh, and I got X stories yesterday. It's some sort of like stress-type reaction. So we're still figuring that out. But for the meat, I'm not in a blast in this boot, so. On the snow. Tim. It sounds like you have solved the flagpole stuff, but have you come up with a plan for what is gonna go on to the flagpole and the standards and guidelines? So a month ago, maybe, or I can't. Recently, we passed a flag policy that outlines that we will accept student requests for flags and they have to support the student learning outcomes and the mission and the vision of the school. And there's a procedure that the administration has to follow to bring that flag request to the board. And. Correct, but it's not, it's not a adopted policy that's written down for anybody for like these girls or myself or you to read yet. Yeah, it is. We passed it. It is a. All the procedures have not been finalized. But they're pretty, I mean. Do you have it in there because I have it. That's what I'm going. Okay, I have it in my bag. But if you don't have it. The policy's been adopted and we were charged for right as you were just saying to put together the written policy. Oh, the written procedures. Procedure. So here's the policy right here that we have. And it says the criteria the board will include making decisions on flying flags that request the flag must come from student groups, which must be able to articulate the importance of flying the flag. The flag must represent ideas that are linked to and support the current WU 32 mission goals and student learning outcomes. The flag must bring no harm to other groups of students at U 32. The request to fly the flag other than the United States and Vermont flag must be made annually to the school board and the school board may dictate the length of time the flag is to be flown. If appropriate, the board will invite and comment from the community, including students about the proposal. School administration in consultation with the U 32 board and school community will develop operating procedures that include criteria for reviewing requests from students groups to raise flags. I know Jody and Stephen, but as I'm saying Jody is because I remember seeing it from you a little bit we had some draft procedures that just hadn't been finalized yet. But I thought that the point of all this is that these students were gonna make their own groups up and then have their own flags on the pole, not bringing outside sources, flags, organizations, and things like that. It was that student groups could make the request for a flag. And it didn't specify which flag, whether it's theirs or that they created or existing flags, but that they have to- I mentioned my animals here on the side of there and I feel like I heard about what she read and it cannot be another business. Organization, nonprofit, anything like that. And that's why BLAM is acceptable if they come up with their own logo and all that, but the other flag is not. So we didn't address what the flag would look like. That actually- And that's where the loophole is. Well, that never came up in our discussion at all. And that's why I said three, four weeks ago that's satellite, not gold there. Let's get flagpole and then we can move on to this issue later. And I believe it's been thrown under the carpet. I'm sorry, I never, I didn't understand that. I never understood that there was a, that you were concerned about, I don't know what you call them. Student design flags and, but- I'm pretty sure I can speak for her. She's not here, but she's got everything highlighted and it cannot be a nonprofit organization. It has to be a school functioning thing that's brought up by girls and guys here. But it, our policy doesn't address, and I never, I never even thought about that. Whether the flag is- It is, and I believe Diane showed me where you guys made an adopted policy and wrote it down. Well, this is what we adopted, what was the date we adopted it? You adopted it on November 7th. So, and we had read it, I had written it one time, it came back, we made a few changes, it came back again, and I think the second time we adopted it or one more time- The second time, the second time we did it to- Yeah. Like, keep this- And I could go back in my bag back there and find that- I think there may be some confusion around who creates the flag versus who could bring forth the idea of the flag. Well, and that's- Yeah. And I think that maybe we're, in case you break down- So you agree that a non-profit organization that isn't able to do that? No. I'm promoting, I've had that discussion. But in our, go ahead, Carl. Only a student group can make the, I hear, wait, let me finish. Only a student group can come to us to make the request to put up a flag. We did not write into the policy in any way, shape, or form directions as to what that flag would be. That would be something that the process, the procedure would then address when a group brought a request for a flag to us. So we did not strictly rule out an external, or a flag from an external source. But we also didn't necessarily say that it would go up, either. It would have to meet the criteria that we laid out in the policy. I'm just looking back on those drafts of the policy. Yep, so it was the month before- I'm looking at, I just learned you read the 24th of October. And there was something down, kind of three quarters of the way down, about it had to be legitimate student groups. We took out the word legitimate, but then at the bottom it said something about, go down to the bottom paragraph. The school administration and constates on these areas of board and the school community would develop operating procedures that include criteria reviewing requests from individuals and or groups to raise flags. And that's where we took out individuals. Yeah, so hold on. And we said student groups. I'm going to the meeting before. So here's a draft that's much different in just at the least in length. I have to read to say content. And I'm sorry if there was a misunderstanding. I remember a conversation about the groups too, of whether outside groups could make a request to the board. And we decided no. And we changed that. Yep. So you said just a second ago that you decided no. It has to be a student group that makes a request. That's what my whole point is. And the Black Lives Matter flag is not a student group. No, but the student group made the request to fly the Black Lives Matter flag. That's what our policy, that's what we passed, that a student group can make a request to fly a flag and we can accept it. We couldn't have the, I don't know. So would. You know, the National Guard come in and say we want to fly our flag on your flagpole because it's not a student group. But if someone came here and gave us reason and I'm totally making this up. You know, some student group came in and said, the National Guard flag represents this and this and this to us. I don't even know if they have a flag. And the board said it goes along with the student learning outcomes and the mission and the vision and it doesn't cause harm and all, there are a couple other, they could raise, the student group could raise that flag. That's a hard one. It is a hard one. And so that would be for the board to decide. And the procedures asked for consultation with student groups and with administration to figure out whether it causes, and with the students to figure out whether it causes harm or not. I thought to stay away from all the drama and stuff and all the kids and all that. There are groups that they're building and creating inside the school, not outside the school. This doesn't preclude that. That could still certainly happen. Talk to them. It would be easier. We didn't use 32 flag potential. We did talk about that. Also. And when we develop policy, we try to kind of think of a broad umbrella that gets across the meaning that we want and then the procedure kind of sets up the criteria, the specific way that that's going to happen. And hopefully between that broad umbrella of what we're trying to create in the school and the specific way that it does, we'll meet the needs of all the groups. And if a group comes and it doesn't fit the procedure or they think it does and they bring it to us and we don't, then we have the right to make that decision one way or the other. One last time I was waiting for you to move on. But today the stock market one brings you group, okay? So it's horrible. But let's just say that this school is about economics and things like that, okay? What if all of a sudden the world just wanted to really promote China? And all of a sudden we want to throw a China flag up there. So a student group would have to come to us, to the board. First they'd have to go through the procedures with the administration. And then they'd have to come to the board and be able to say that it supports the mission of U32, the vision of U32, the student learning outcomes of U32. It doesn't cause harm to others. There are two others but I can't remember what they are. We'll request the flag. Okay, so those are sort of the big criteria. And I would say just in that regards that the flag of another nation has different rules to follow anyway. So I mean like there are other things that would be considered by administration in those kinds of cases. So it's our, it's the school board's job to figure out when those requests come one by one, whether they fit with this policy or not. And it's up to the student group before they come to us to make sure they've fulfilled all of those criteria also. Thanks. And I'm sorry if there was misunderstanding. Sorry. Budget, draft two. You guys want to talk to this? Yeah, we're sorry. Sorry. Thanks girls. Thank you. Good night. So we're in the budget. Yeah, we're in the budget. So you give us some time. I'd probably do better if I were asked questions right now. I, what we've just... Well, what are the differences? Oh, well the differences are that once we have now made some changes to our estimates for assessments from WCSU also from the CDC from the Tech Center along with the increases that we estimate through salary, health insurance that we had a need to reduce our budget by a fair amount. I mean, we've really, this draft is so different than the last draft that it's hard to compare them directly. There were some features that we had talked about already. We talked about food service. So if we were to include food service as part of our budget, we would have to add an additional 500,000. You mean the whole food service? The whole food service that we had to add an additional 500, a little over $500,000 to the entire budget, which would put us over the threshold which Bill can explain much better than I can. And so we did not include that as an option in this budget draft. We also, to look at food service overall, we did not see where we could add an additional $70,000 of support without cutting faculty position because there are other cuts that are already within this budget to meet the board's request of 2.99, or less than three budget. And so we actually pushed forward in this budget as a recommendation to eliminate one position within food service. We have a retirement happening this year, so there would be, there would be unfilled, yeah, attrition. And does that do close to 70,000? It does, no, no, but there are other things that we can take, that we can move towards in terms of trying to reduce that. I think one of the other concerns that, and Jonathan, you brought this up is making sure that we support students. So we do, I don't know if the board recalls, but at times we've asked the board to eliminate debt that existed because of students who were not able to pay. We do that pretty regularly and we make sure that kids are taken care of. We run a very small deficit now. There was a time where we were running about a $10,000 deficit with what students had purchased, students and staff, I shouldn't be clear, had purchased but were running in the red. And so that's down into the two to $3,000 range now. And usually what we see is a student who ends up on that list because they don't have the funds. We typically, Brian is doing an excellent job. I don't need to say this is an excellent job of contacting the family, getting the student approved for free and reduced lunch if necessary. And that's typically the scenario is that that student's run up a debt because they actually qualify. And then we typically write off the debt that was there. And that can be anywhere from $20 to $200 is what we've looked at on individual students. But I will say that Brian is very aware of making sure that if somebody needs a lunch they get a lunch or needs a breakfast, gets breakfast. And he's worked with families to make sure the kids get qualified. And so- I would also say that for those who aren't qualified, it's a code system. So even though I work here, I have money on my account. I go on and punch in my code, you know? And so the kids have their codes as many. You can pay with cash at the cash register as well. But there's a code system. And so that helps take away some of that stigma of who's getting a free lunch. I was running the register before. I can't begin to tell you who's free and reduced and who's not. But I can't tell running the register who gets a free lunch and who's paying for their lunch. Because they typically, the kid will have a few dollars on their account. It's near impossible for you just to glance and tell. You really have to know what's going on. So can we pause on this point of the food service for just a moment? So what you're telling us is you've reduced the food service expense by a position. Correct. And essentially we'd be funding it at approximately the same level of the current year. Yes, so our budget shows the same level of funding for food service, which is about $31,000. Okay, so that's not what we asked for last time. So we just pause and ask how people feel about that. And the reason you did that is because otherwise you couldn't hit this 3%. 3%. I could not hit that 3% or less mark without starting to eliminate teaching positions at that point. And we talked about that on Thursday and I was in full support. I said I could not support fully funding at $100,000 that you're superintendent would go having to make academic cuts. Although there is a line that says academic program minus 269, is that the special education? Is that corresponding on the next page to the special education? Yes. Yeah, you saw that in the special education, yes. So what's that? So just in terms of process, I think you guys made a decision in a draft form that we may have arrived at on our own. What we were asking for was put it in there, show us what it looks like and then offer us a sort of a menu of painful options that we can choose from. We felt right there were a order for us. So I'll tell you, I took the responsibility. He heard that loud and clear curry. I decided not to follow that. And I said that to Stephen and he said, you know, when we were discussing, I said, listen, we are gonna make, you know, we need to, we are gonna have to go into some academic areas and the budget that we recommend. There are also other factors that I would say as we go through this budget, you're going to see that we did not know, actually we didn't even know at the time. And so when you asked us to go put together scenarios, we also didn't have full information as to some of the other places that we're going to impact our budget. We didn't know until Thursday morning that we had a $117,000 increase coming from CVCC. So we had to put that into the mix to get down to 3%. And that's in here? Yeah. So there's a 12% increase in their tuition. So we didn't, we knew, we didn't know here Wednesday night, didn't know the dollar amounts, but we knew because you had sent through in Cary that we were changing the population shift that's happened for the Washington Central Assessments. So that came down to a positive for us. Oh, no, no, no, it was another. Oh, I thought you said all these things were positive. They're all negative. All of these are all negative. Salary and Benefit Tech Center and Washington Assessments, that's negative. Those are all things that came back to us and hit us Thursday morning. So what did you take out of the budget in order to lower the percent increase with all of these things going higher? I just totally misunderstood that. Okay, so where we, so we, the biggest spot that we reduced our budget in this was personnel that were not teachers. And so we looked at across the school, what positions did we have that were not directly impacting individual students or were a certified teacher position. And so what you see before you is, one of those spots is in food service. We also have within our paraprofessionals which support classrooms, not individual students. And we reduced in that area as well, as well as saying that we would not fill a position that was coming from Berlin. So we have a student coming with a one to one need from Berlin, but as opposed to adding another position into our budget, we would absorb that into our existing staff. And so with that cut, so you see, I mean, the one line that you see the most is special ed programs is the one that took the cut. That also reduces some of our revenue, but more importantly, it reduces, it reduces our overall budget enough to get us close to the, we didn't actually, as you see, we got the 3.03, so we didn't actually get below 3%. I just like to probe again a thought that I have to thank Kari for carrying on my behalf at a finance committee meeting before. And looking back a couple of one or two SU board meetings ago, there was projections for end of year fund balances for all the various schools in the SU. And added together, two point one and one point is about 1.9 million right now. It's about 1.9 million right now. Okay, so. Numbers from me, I'm doing it from my head. Okay, yeah, that's absolutely fine. And I know we're in a hedging situation, we're not sure what necessarily what's gonna happen, but if there is a merger, then those fund balances are gonna be merged as well. So the target fund balance for the merged district will be 4% of the, so that would be like 1.2? No, we're right around the 4%. The target's probably gonna be less because we probably don't need all that fund balance. The problem is right now that our, many of your fellow boards are talking about spending down their fund balances and not coming in with them. And so that's gonna be a tough thing to do. So we're trying to, I'm trying to figure out, it's kind of, I just don't, I can't tell you to depend on fund balance. Right, I understand. Because I just don't know, I mean, already Doty last month decided to spend 60,000 of their fund balance because feeling like they needed to spend it for their voters because it was raised with a Doty budget. I have a different viewpoint than the board does because all this money is state money. It's not local town money, it's a state funding system. And so there's a town in our district that raises enough taxes in their town to pay their education expenses. So it's all coming from different places. That could be a nice, Alan and I had a nice long debate on that. Just to speak to that, we've talked about making this an orderly transition from a budgeting process that we try to do this as similarly as we have in the past. And to try to anticipate what the next board wants to do with its fund balances. I think we should behave as though we're creating our own unique budget and then they'll do what they want. Understood and I think that's an excellent point. I'm sort of just kind of testing because at the same time, I think you mentioned that this next fiscal year is the last fiscal year for one of the bonds. Yup. So 430. So anyway, what I'm just trying to feel out is whether granted that we want to preserve as much as we can for the track and for other needs. But if we could peel out 150,000 to knock off one percentage on the... So you can do that, but you'll have a double bill of that, so 250 is that $300,000 you'll have to increase next year in 2021 fiscal year. And as I said to you last meeting, you were one bond payment away from when the bond ceases, bond payments right now do not count for your local spending to set your tax rate. Next year when that bond payment goes away and we've talked about using that for other capital expenses, you will be at the threshold at a levels, not service level funded budget. So that's not including the raises from healthcare or from salary increases. So there will be definite cuts in 2021. So you can go ahead and do that, but we're just, it's the same, you're causing a worse problem for 2021 because now instead of being right at the threshold, you'll be $300,000 over the threshold. I'm looking three or four years down the road budget. Oh, that's good. And this whole district is gonna be in threshold. We have three schools right now that are in over the threshold spending limits with draft one's budgets. We're looking at all of our districts in a year or two, just at the rates we've been spending. So it doesn't matter governance. We can be talking, it doesn't matter governance, I wanna really say that clearly. And I hope you're getting this on the video. It does not matter governance. You can go combined merge together or individually. We have a budget problem and the amount we're spending. So, and it's gonna get tighter faster because of the way the law was changed in 2015 to set the threshold limits. And it's based off the 2015 school year budget plus CPI. And CPI has been really low this year. Right now it's a two nine, which is the highest it's been in three or four years. And we've had increases much greater than CPI. Of course we have because we're not a consumer. We're a government agency. Right, right. And that's right. Because we have set pieces that we have to pay. I mean, that is part of the right, Scott. It's part of the place. And I would add in with your permission is that special education funding changes after this year as well. And we're not sure exactly how that's going to affect us in its entire. So special education funding is based upon a reimbursement formula now. So you see the reimbursements come in. After this budget cycle, it becomes a grant, a block grant. And so that block grant amount is all we will receive. There is no excess, there is no, so we need to begin to position ourselves to accept that reality as well. Which is we will have lower revenue for our special education spending. So you see we're juggling knives and chainsaws and all that fun stuff and we're throwing more in because the changes that are occurring while they're not all going to happen this year, we need as a school to start planning for those changes that are going to happen both in the next budget cycle after this one. But also as we start to look at our overall numbers, which we've been really pouring over, our kindergarten class is 76 students right now in all of the kindergartens in our supervisory union. 76 total students, as opposed to what we have been working from, what do you think about? Our seventh grade class is 111 kids. So our classes are running, we average about 109 kids per grade level at U32. The elementary schools average 98 students per grade level and that actually declines the further out you get. And so we have to start planning our school for every year being a reduction in the number of people who work here over the next decade. And so, Scott, I appreciate the idea of using the fund bounce but if we have to make up $300,000 when our enrollment drops again, we just, we're gonna spiral down quickly in that case. And Scott, we, years ago, we had a discussion and decided we were not going to do that because it just, it didn't reflect our true spending. It kind of, it just inflated. It didn't, it wasn't fair and the next year you're paying for it twice. It's what Phil Scott did with the whole education budget, you know, kicked it down the road and said, here, we'll fund it with this. So, I mean, if you look at the kindergartens, the past three years and four of the past five years are all under 100. I mean, we've, this is our demographic projections that we get every year have been showing us that we're gonna go down in size and we're headed for, we're at four, our equalized pupils right now across the district are at 14, I didn't do where to put it, right, 1439. When I came, our equalized pupils were close to 1700. And if this trend continues, we're headed for 11 to 1200 kids. The trend is definitely continuing. Yeah. And in fact, you know, this is maybe a bigger thing but that's the real crisis. There's population loss in the law, it's over all. Yeah, it's not just school. Yeah, exactly. Can I ask a couple of questions? Yes. So, I guess in light of that, are we doing enough with this budget to reduce? Are we wasting a year that we could better position ourselves for this coming? I do not believe so, because we can also see, so this is that long-term planning, what we see were some retirements that are on the horizon for us. We will certainly have some attrition. You know, there will be a few teachers that leave. We have to ask ourselves at this point in time, should a teacher leave? Do we really fulfill that position? Yeah, true. How do we prioritize that? I will say that when we looked at our cuts, the one place that we tried to preserve within our budget, the increase that existed there, was in math. So, we do have a teacher on a one-year contract, but we have tried to preserve in our budget to keep that teacher, primarily based around the conversation we just had, which is we have a goal of reducing math. I would say that everywhere we looked, we looked at is, can we preserve a certified teacher instead of a classroom support that is not certified? And that was what we looked at. So, the DMG report, if we go back to that, we are trying to implement some aspects of that within this budget, is really what, this budget is trying to address. And if we look at our class sizes and our staffing sizes, are they still reasonable? So, we average about 13 to 14 kids per class across the entire school. The only classes that are under 10 students, when we look, this is the report as of today, when we look at the number of kids in class, the number of classes or the classes where we have less than 10 kids, they're support classes. So, math support or reading support, and they usually are in the six to nine student range, or are AP classes in AP stat, AP calculus, chemistry two, and AP physics and bio. This is actually, I would consider, more of an anomaly of this year than the long-term trends in the AP classes. We just have a smaller enrollment AP this year in those classes than we've had traditionally. But they're all under 10, if just so we're clear on which classes. Are those classes likely to be above 10 next year? Yes. Okay. So, either you choose not one of the schools that's at the threshold, is that correct? It isn't right now, but when the bond payment goes away, you'll be right at it. Because the difference of what's above the threshold right now in the bond payment is less than $100,000, and just the medical increases this year, or around $100,000, so this is perverse. Okay. Yeah. We're not anticipating any new information that would put us over the threshold the next year. Well, I will tell you, as I said in there, I don't know that our equalized pupils, it's done in-house. Michelle and Laurie are really good, but we're having a hard time getting information from AOE. They have not met a timeline with many different things with budgets that they usually do this time of year. They're just overwhelmed with work. They don't have a staff down there that they used to have. They've been cut. So last question is the, so this draft of the budget, does it significantly impact student learning in a negative way on a budget basis? I would have to say no, based upon the goals of the board. I do not believe that it does. Speaks to preserving teachers. Yeah, I mean, that was the thing. I mean, when we were talking and doing this work last week, it was let's go right to the DMG report. We're gonna try to do a little more gradually, but to say we're putting in or keeping teachers. And then I guess my question is, you're keeping teachers, but are those teachers able to meet the needs of the kids without that classroom support? And I know the DMG report says that classroom teachers do it better, but I know from experience, if you have some support in there, they can do, if you're differentiating, you've got someone who can do a group. Maybe it's the highest kids or the kids that are most, you know, have, I don't know, and the teacher works with another group of kids. I would offer that the classroom support is usually, you usually will see someone else in that classroom who's there for one-on-one support in many of those same classes. And so what we have to do is we have to help our one-to-one people work with other students as well so that they're not just focused on that one kid for the entire time if possible. But I will say this, that it does require teachers to differentiate, be stronger at differentiation within their education. I would say that for the last two years that we've been working on our teachers with project-based learning, which is something that helps do that. Like we've been doing the things to try to improve and help them improve their own instruction. And if you have one-on-one assistance or those U32 people or are they Washington County mental health people? No, we're both, we don't, well, we don't. I don't have any Washington County mental health PIs right now, do I? Do I, I don't know of any. Only for, yeah. Not, yeah, yeah, probably because it's. Because the. Or the college, what do you think you do? And for a one-on-one, that obviously is in a child's IEP. Correct. And so it's sometimes tricky to get them to work with other kids. And sometimes, because the kids' needs are so high that they have a one-on-one, that you need to be with that kid. Sure. You know, speaking from experience. Yes. If you turn your back on this kid to help this kid, the reason he has a one-on-one becomes very apparent. Just, this is a small thing, but I'm just, I'm still thinking how to make Kari happy with a 2.99. There was a near-term services entry, $30,000. That is mostly software, and I think we're actually gonna be able to reduce that down a little. Really? Actually, but yeah, it's mostly software, is what that cost was. But I'm happy. No. You know, something like this or both of them. Oh, thanks, Kari. But that's taxes for high-paying schools. Carl? Yeah, just so a clarification, or just a long clear on what we're talking about. So it's a position or retirement and food service, correct, that will remain unfilled. And then there's a support person that will be cut. There will be multiple positions. Okay, multiple. So, can you be more specific as to multiple positions? How many? So one of them is definitely a position that was coming to us from Berlin. We won't fill it here. So if a kid moves, they tell us to add one more person into our budget to cover that kid. We will use the existing personnel for that and not fill the position. So it is all total. It's a cut of probably six positions. Oh, wow. Support folks, paraplegicators. Yes. Do they know it's a possibility? No, no. This is one draft of a budget. No, I know. Is there anything else we should know? I will say that the one thing that, the surprise in our budget to us was the increase in the CDC tuition. A 12% increase. We watched our complaint. They heard from two of us. I actually missed the negotiations. Some, as Carl knows, on Monday, that's where I was coming from. I'm lodging the complaint of, they're going to have 185,000 and 117,000 of its here at Washington Central. Where have we kids? We have 25 kids currently at CVCC, but we are paying for 31 students next year because of the sixth semester average. So last year we had 32, the year before we had 37, and year before that we had 36. So we're paying on the average of those three years right now. And now, this next year, we'll be paying on the average of this year. And the previous two. And the previous two. So our overall cost is going to decline because of our 25 kids that we have now, but it's going to take a little while before that actually was due to this. Who else is paying the other part of that increase? Distributed amongst the other four super-browserians. Probably Barry's got the second highest. Because you have to look at the number of kids. Is Harwood one of them? Harwood's one of them that's going to, but they can have a decrease in student population. And because of the state statute, that requires the way the funding works. I mean, this is all statute-driven protect centers at sixth semester average. That, you know, Harwood, some of those issues or some of those high schools could see actually lower costs when we have ours increasing. They gave it to us Monday. I didn't bring it with me what the different, what the changes were. You said about it. What are the chances of the appeal? What, the appeal? Right, you lodged a complaint. What? A complaint, yeah. We actually don't set the budget. We don't, we just wear the wrap. We sit on the wrap and can recommend, but it's set by the, well, be the Newberry School District. We'll set it. 12% increase. Yeah, and it's actually budget to budgets at an 18% increase. From last year's budget to this year's budget. And that budget's set. They set it already? They haven't set it yet. They are gonna, I guess there's some other means. I had to leave early to try to get back. He had to leave. I kept up the complaints. Jackson. And so, but we do have another meeting in December to the Regional Advisory Board has to recommend it. How can they justify that? That's what I'm saying. There's an increase. Where, yeah, how's that going? So, I mean, they have a very hiring new staff. They have some staff. They're increasing, they're increasing their co-op coordinator from point two to full time. They are not, there was no indication of any cuts. No, they've used, in previous years they've used fund balance to cut their tuition. They're not doing this this year. Or as much. They are using it a little bit. Are they using it a little bit? Yeah. But not to what they used to. And they have a decline in it. Well, there are enrollments declining slightly. So there are about a hundred, the number that was given there, that they're basing in budget on 143 kids. So we, some of it, so I would say, I mean, it's really to report to the board. This kind of, this is kind of a carryover between those two. I would say that there are a lot of factors that go into this, like it's not a clear cut as to how it all happens. I would say that from our perspective, we have a declining number of students who are going there at the same time that they're increasing their program. That's an added cost to us. One of our other complaints is that the tuition that we pay there is for, what essentially is a three quarter day. Students do not go full day from this school to there. They actually come back to us for one class each day. And so if we compare their tuition to the tuition of other tech centers, that is not an apples to apples comparison because some of the other tech centers are full day programs. So even though their tuition may look similar to some of those programs, those programs are full day. So the kids get all of their education at the tech center. Randolph is one of them. That's a full day program. One mile is a full day program. And so we have some issues with that is that our kids are sent back to us and we have to educate them. We're responsible for that, even though we're not able to, of course, increase our spending. So do we not get state money for them? We're gonna go straight back into it. So the state money that we get goes straight back in and then we have additional funds that have to go in as well. So our state funds are really a pass through. Yeah, it's pretty much what it is. And then we have to raise an additional $250,000 in our budget to cover the additional costs. That's not an increase, but that's the budget in line that we have. So yeah, it was our single biggest hit. Yeah. Other than our salary and our healthcare, which barely came under healthcare. Yeah, that's true, because healthcare is 132. Yeah. So any other questions? People comfortable with this? Yeah. Was that the latest draft? Do you want something different? Do you want more information? I still worry about the fund balance that it has grown, I would say healthy, but maybe too healthy. It starts to look a little bit slushy after a certain point. So I know it's... We're about, you have an action item that's gonna take care of a big part of that. And so, and then that would be moving into a capital expense. And we recognize that I would also say that a big part of our fund balance increase has been on the backs of tuition kids. So we have 71 students who are tuition into U32 right now. We budget for less than that, we budget for 54. I think it's 54. I think is what we budgeted for in our next budget. We look, if you recall, we no longer receive Roxbury students who accounted for currently, we have 10 students in the school from Roxbury. That's about $180,000. We graduate four next year and then two each year after that until they're gone. And we don't replace them. There's no replacement for those kids. And when we look at Washington and Orange, which send the bulk of students to us, their class sizes are 20 or less in almost all of their grade levels, K through eight this year. So there are 19 students in the eighth grade in the Orange Washington system. And so if all 19 kids came, we would preserve even because we have 17 tuition students who will be graduating this year. But the odds of every kid from Orange and Washington coming here is extremely low. And so we're going to start seeing the same decline in our tuition students that we see overall. Yeah, that's the most reason why the fund balance. And so there's not, that really is all to say that that fund balance is going to go away. Right? That difference is going to be gone. Okay. In fact, over the long term, we'll need to reduce our reliance on tuition students even more. And we wanted that was sort of a goal. We actually thought of giving them last year to this year based upon the number three. Okay. Can we talk about the four of them? That's my next thing. Cool. So I've been working on updating slides. I just wanted to run some things by asking a couple of questions. Modeling on last year's, we'll go through the background information, talk about the budgeting process, always a good opportunity to talk about the mission, some of our performance and the plan. I was even going to include the math target, to show people where we're at with this. And then talk a little bit about trends and student enrollment is an important trend. Then get into the draft budget that we just reviewed and it'll summarize that at a pretty high level, I think. Oh, question. Scott, do you want to do the macro economic stuff this year? I love that sort of thing. If everybody is willing to humor me with that. I mean, it's part of the context. Yeah. Should I send it to you? Yeah. I have from last year, if you do whatever you want. I have a new, Yeah, great. A new show. Okay. Yeah, so then, basically presenting at just a really high level, you have draft budget number two. There's doesn't seem to be a reason to include a menu of budget reduction options at this stage because we're kind of at the target that we established. So then I was just going to move into questions and comments and here's what I have. What questions do you have? This is for the audience. What is your reaction to this information? So really general, right? And then are we properly balancing impacts on the students in school and taxpayers? And we won't have tax information in two weeks. Bill? Sorry, I'm trying to just make sure we have our notes in a row for what that's about. Will we have any tax information in two weeks for a community forum? I can give you a little preview right now. If you'd like to have it. I don't like the sound of that. I know it's not true. I want Kari to finish what he was doing, but I just wanted to. Well, yeah, I mean, maybe there's a better way to weigh that or word that, but something about a properly balancing the impacts. You know, being fair to the students and being fair to the taxpayers. What's your best thoughts? Good. Sound good? It sounds great. And we'll do it right at six o'clock. Okay. And we will have a hearing at 5.30, that Krista got the quorum for us last week and forgot to call. And she apologized profusely. Yeah, she felt terrible. Oh, she felt terrible. They didn't know that we had a quorum. She forgot to call. No, she said she was so focused on making sure we had a quorum, then she got the quorum and she didn't think, oh, now I need to call the people and tell them we got a quorum. So they didn't know, they weren't, right. So she apologized profusely and I didn't want to do it tonight because I knew it would be a disaster. So. It was one of the most enjoyable half hours. It was. And I told her that. I said, you know, it's okay. We had a lovely meal and a lovely discussion and we all make mistakes sometimes. Usually a half an hour is enough, but we want to make sure it's enough given that we have guests coming. You know what? I'm going to keep it to half an hour. Okay. This is what night? December 19th. So it's two weeks from tonight. So 5.30. Don't be late. Don't be late. And I will just, I'll say, we only have this much time for the quorum and we'll figure it out. That sounds great. Okay. Do you need help or are you all set? Well, I'm going to send it to Bill to update a couple of the data points and then. And Scott will go to this part. I'm here. Thank you very much. That's really great. Do we want to hear tax information tonight or if we had enough? It's 10 after nine. Can it wait? Do you care? I can wait. We'll have to wait for information. Why don't you and I work on something for a slide on the taxes? Okay. Yeah. That's what people want to know, right? Yeah. The problem right now is I told you we had districts in the penalty so it's kind of like, I know they're changing their budgets too. Right. So let's not even talk about it tonight. Yeah. Okay. And we have to, I guess I would like to know this for the presentation. Would you like to see the differential between emerged and the individual or just to this individual? Individual. I think that's just too much complication for people around their hands or something. I'll make sure. We've been running those for a while. Is it really different? It's actually surprisingly close. Did Bill use 32? No, no, I'm talking for everybody. Really? It's not that much difference. I would just go with what right now. That's good to hear. I mean, this is a draft budget forum that we're going to end up probably making a recommendation. Yeah. Be up to the next board to actually present it. Reports to the broad, central from our career service. Did we just get that report? You just got it. You got it. Student reps, we had administration. I've been working on a budget. Okay. Finance, we just got. Executive committee hasn't met policy committee. We met on Monday. We didn't have a quorum, so we worked on the charge, as Lindy said. We also looked at a bunch of one required policy. What's the required, there was a new required policy on student media. That's right. And student press and freedom of speech. Three weeks ago on freedom of speech. And what they can publish. And then we looked at a bunch of recommended policies and had those up against the policies that all the different schools now have and trying to figure out the similarities and differences and hope that we can just go to one recommended policy. A lot of the ones that are on the books are very old, 1998, 2002, 2004. So we still have more work to do on that. School quality, did not meet negotiations. Nothing to add to what Sean, you said earlier. Okay. So action agenda, approve a capital budget transfer. So we're asking that the board approve $500,000 from the fund balance to capital for our track project. Is there a motion? I'll make the motion. Scott, in a second. I'll second. Jonathan, discussion. This is what we've been talking about for the last couple of months. And the hope is that we won't have to, we'll be able to pay for it. No bond or anything. Yeah. Yes. Oh, sorry, no, no, no. Please go on. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion carries. The pre-qualification criteria we looked at last week. Were there any changes to that? No, you asked me a couple of questions, Adrienne. Yeah, thank you. Answer them satisfactorily. Yep. Do people need to look at it again? Are you okay? So a motion to accept the pre-qualification criteria that we looked at last week for the track improvements. So moved. Scott, Carl, discussion on that one. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Somebody was gonna say something. You were gonna say something. I am gonna say something now, which is, so as a result of you doing this, we will also need to make sure that this board meets, so our architects and our engineers are going to need the board to meet in the January, am I correct? We have a January 2nd meeting for us. That's an important board meeting for us to, because we'll need to, well, you'll have to pre-qualify the companies that can bid so that the bid cycle will start at the right time. Isn't everybody going to work on January 2nd, anyway? Yeah. I don't know, that's a heck, yeah. Or does it mean to pre-qualify? So what you've essentially done is you set the standards of the companies that can pre-qualify for the project, and then those companies, you will then certify that these companies, and they're going to be extensively reviewed by our tech and engineer. And they will say here's the companies that meet your pre-qualifications, you will approve those companies and those companies that can bid on the project. But the caveat here in this process is the company that comes in with the lowest bid is awarded the project automatically. Automatically. Unless there's like a one percent. Unless there's like a one percent, right? Right, now we have to make decisions. But so the pre-qualification is the important part of all of this. The companies that you pre-qualify, you don't want to pre-qualify, and this one is well written and done by our tech and engineers is because if you pre-qualified a company that was substandard and they came in with a low bid, you would have to accept choice. But we don't really play much of a role in that. No, no, this is where you lean, and this is where we're building our business. This is where you lean on half, protect our clerk of the work who's part of this bill forward and our engineers because they have experience working with these companies. Yeah, are they going to provide a letter or something? You know, well, knowing John, he'll be here. He'll be here. Okay. I just want to say that a lot of... And can we make a motion to approve the creation of an Act 49 committee and then add the membership of Card to that committee? Emotion? Anybody want to do that? That's what, what's his name? Matt was talking about in there. And I'm not going to go through all the details. I think we can just approve this. Basically the next iteration of the article's committee. Exactly. So a motion to approve the creation of an Act 49 committee and appoint Carri Bradley to do it. So moved. Carl, in a second. George. And Carri said he would be willing to continue to do that. So discussion on that. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion carries. Board orders? Is there a motion to approve them? I saw them somewhere. All right, put them away, sorry. Lisa, do you need the number? I think so. 42,391.33 cents. Let me check it with my class. Is that number? Yes. I can't take mine off. 42,391.33. Motion to accept those? So moved. In a second. Second. Questions about them? All those in favor say aye. Aye. That motion carries. Future agenda items. Budget. Board communication. We need to do a, excuse me, front porch forum. I can do that. And I'm certainly making the announcement about the forum. I think that's the most important part of that. And I think it would be good for us to post twice. You know, like once in the next week and then once the week after that. Yeah. Okay? Yeah. Anything else we want to include in that from the past month? Have we passed, so that we passed our five policy? We did last night. We did that. Okay. I think we're good. Just focus on that. Yeah. Budget. Happy holidays. Happy holidays. Come spend them with us. That's right. That's right.