 to get started here. Thanks, thanks to everyone for coming out on such a inclement evening. There's none of those in here, so that's good. I'm Craig Lyne. I'm the moderator for the school district, for the Cal School District, and I've been asked to help moderate this forum. It's not town meeting. I'm not going to entertain any motions. I might rule someone out of order, Paul. So I just want to give you a brief overview of what the evening is about. It's information, it's sharing, it's really, from the school board's perspective, I think I can say it's about listening. You know, they, I, we have I think an idea of where Calus seems to want to head, but nothing is said and done. And so this is part of the process to deal with that which has been, I'll say, editorially handed down from on high. So I'm going to turn things over in a moment to Dot Naylor, newly enthroned school board member, and then she to Scott. And then we really want to hear from everyone who wants to speak. But at that point in the evening, I'll kind of moderate it, and I will ask people to be recognized to speak, to not just jump in and, and to please state your name, because the secretary taking the minutes wants to know who people are. And it might be helpful for you to do that each time you do speak. I'm going to tend to want to give everyone a chance to speak at least once before I come back to someone. So if you've got a point you want to make or a question, jot it down or remember it, and then I'll come back to you. Does that sound reasonable? Any questions? Any, any thoughts or expectations from anybody? Okay. Wow. This is easy. Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to turn it over to Dot Naylor. Good evening. Thanks for coming. And as Craig said, at least you're away from the black flies. Um, I must apologize. Chantel would normally be here. I misinterpreted the email from her saying that she had to go to school board chair and superintendent training today. And I guess I kind of thought that was just day and not also evening. So I apologize. She is not here. Scott is going to speak to her tremendous amount of time she spent on the act 46 committee and not just at a meeting every other week, but all the study and figuring out everything in between times she spent an enormous amount of time. And I'm sorry that she could not be here. And that said, Scott will kind of fill in for Chantel a little bit because he was at those meetings with her and has talked to her about what he would like to do. And he has a very short PowerPoint. Probably not short enough with some very interesting things on it. And then we basically want to answer your questions and hope that you will talk amongst yourselves about the important part of our school and what its future will be. We know its past was our town actually decided in 68 that we needed to bring our students all into one building from the three buildings that we were using. And then we decided when we needed to make it bigger and we had a couple fights along the way but got all settled and we did not need the state to tell us what to do and when to do it. And so I will hope that we will still be able to tell ourselves what to do and how to do it. And our school will remain in our town in the future. Thank you, Don. And I echo thanks to all of you for coming and just want to point out that Susanna Kover, the vice chair of the school board is here as a security read. Susanna when I was on the school board was always sort of the policewoman of the no bullshit zone. So I'm trusting you to keep it up Susanna. In addition I'd just like to welcome friends from East Montpelier and Worcester. Yeah exactly. I think they've welcomed me and Dodd and others of us to to their forums and I would encourage you if you're... Oh and Drew, my God, Drew is a school board member as well. Anyway, Worcester in particular did a great job, Matthew DeGroote. I'm going to try to rise to his level of statesmanship because in fact I have to declare my my colors in this matter. I've been at times I suppose a bit of a bomb thrower on the side of not consolidating of pursuing a federated structure that preserves the town districts, but I owe it first of all to Chantel Eckhaus, who in spite of our disagreeing completely about this respect, she asked me to become to step into her place as voting member of the Calis delegation on this Act 46 study committee when she stepped down. But even more I owe it to you to try to you know paint a really fair and objective picture of the choices that that we face. They're pretty significant and I think as Dodd mentioned in her flyer, you know I may think I know the answer but really I don't. This is this is something that we all have to get to together and we all have to listen to each other and listen to each other again with respect and with understanding to do the best we can and arrive at the best outcome we can. So I'm as I mentioned on the side of developing an alternative. Chantel is in favor of consolidation. She's not alone. This is a completely respectable point of view. There are examples of consolidated systems. We even have you know a unified union district, which is what that's all about. Down the road in Montpelier that functions quite well. It's entirely possible that this might be a good thing for our five towns to develop this. And it's worth thinking about you know why does it work there? Why might it work here? Or why might it not work here? Just to again to ask the questions and probe into into what it's all about. So I have I've tried to modify this presentation I first put together during the sort of the more bare-knuckle days of the of the merger study committee about six months ago. But tried to reframe it again to give you a sense of what it is that we picked up during the course of our 18 months of work. But doing so in terms of questions. There's questions to prompt you know further questions I hope. So while we do this I love it if you were to interrupt me at any point you have something that you're saying what the heck is that or what do you mean by that or wait a minute I there's something that you should know or whatever it was something everybody else should know please don't hesitate. This this is really supposed to be just a provocation to get you to talk because I'm already tired of it. I have a question already when did the idea what year the idea of consolidation actually get moving for the first time? Well that's a it's been sort of heading in that direction for many years now but act 46 and perhaps that's my cue to act 46 in 2015 was when it kind of sprang from full grown from the and fully armored from the heads of the legislature. 2014 there was discussion about it but they didn't take any action. Education committee studied it took testimony but didn't end up doing anything late in the session 2014 I think. And it came out this consolidation was has happened in other states much much earlier. Is that your question when did the legislature? Our legislature yeah. Yeah there's a there's kind of history there's a lot of background which we'll try to speed through. Sorry this is sort of so anyway if anybody is wondering we're feeling bad about not knowing what act 46 is you shouldn't because it's not exactly a thing that tells you what it is by its name. Kind of like these you have to be introduced before you know. So and even when you thank you even when you see what it is it's not it's not immediately obvious that it's such a major thing. An act relating to making amendments to education funding education spending and education governance. I love the modesty of it. It's but one of the interesting things this is the first page of 64 pages. About a third of it is governance a third of it is taxes and a third of it is kitchen sink miscellany. But you can see that that very number one concern is the drop in student numbers in Vermont by about 25 percent from 1997 to 2015. And then the very next one the number of school-related personnel has not decreased in proportion to this. So you can tell where immediately where the legislature is coming from. So what's the real what's the nub of it the action that we're supposed to take. Essentially the the legislation gives three options. They're at section 5B is what they call the preferred structure which is the one board one budget one education tax rate for all for all five towns since we're focusing on the supervisory union. Section 5C right after talks about an alternative to that which is in fact basically the system that we have now the supervisory union with member districts. So the existing system becomes the alternative legislation. And then something that I perhaps misread at one time but a governance structure different from the preferred structure. Is it a real possibility or just a tease? The jury is still out but there there's movement in the legislature even now. So we'll know a little bit more about that. Jump in. Whenever you have questions. Next please. So just a very brief account of where we are. We formed in the fall of 2015 a merger study committee under this 16 USA 706 which was looking at the possibility of a merger. It basically deadlocked in March just a couple months ago between these two options a consolidated structure with you know town councilists to sort of soften the loss of town boards and then this federated structure that keeps town boards that I mentioned I was in favor of. What would a town council what would they do? Would they have any voting authority? They would have potentially be involved in hiring of teachers. They would they would perhaps have a kind of advisory capacity but they would not have voting authority. No. They would have no legal authority. So it's like our select board in the town has legal authority to make decisions for our town and change our rules and the school board is the legal authority in our town that's elected and can make legal decisions. So our school board and that would be a consolidated board of the five members from the five towns and we would have maybe two representatives and those two representatives would then be a part of the advisory council but it might be akin to someone brought up an example in one of our meetings it might be correct me if I'm wrong but it might be akin to you know our select board has a lot of groups that meet to help with the work. So we have a cemetery commission and a conservation group and all these groups to help organize things in our town they have no legal authority but they give you suggestions and the select board is likely to follow their recommendations given the work they've done. So it would be sort of like that. Yeah and that would also be true over building issues things that would happen here at the school. They would have advisory no no no actual authority or the grounds. The school ceases to belong to the town and all. It transfers for a dollar to the consolidated union and no longer belongs to the town of Calis. If that board decides to sell the schools, no recourse. It's a town camp that gets sold, that's it, closed and sold. Except for the property belongs to the town. Property, I don't know if the school is not the asset. Well okay, but I mean the school closure, I think the school asset goes to the group, correct? Yep. Yeah. Sorry, Sage. Who is the select board in the A consolidated structure with town councils in this area? The big school board? Who makes those legal decisions in the A? In A, there's a central, there's a single board that would be in the sort of the structure that was. The central supervisory union board? Well, it wouldn't be exactly that. It would be a new thing. It would be a unified. Who would elect those people at that board to make those legal voting decisions? I think, pardon me? Who would appoint those people on this? We would elect them. We would elect, for example, the kind of thing that we were looking at would have had East Montpelier, maybe elect three, Berlin three, Calis two, Middlesex two, and Mr. one. So based on population? Based on population, exactly. Just wanted to know if there was actually a town representation. Yes, we would elect our representatives to that single board. And the single board also owns the budget, so we would no longer have a separate Calis town budget, East Montpelier, not town, sorry, but school. There would be a Cal school district budget, East Montpelier school district. It would be one budget for all six schools, the five elementaries and U32 would be one budget that was decided together. That idea of a unified budget to me is counter to what Act 46 is supposed to accomplish because under a unified budget there is absolutely no incentive for any one town to keep its budget under control because we don't vote by town, we vote on the whole shebang, and who's to know if Calis sort of added this and added that. Every school only has an incentive to add to their budget and not to keep it under control under what you have described. And that to me is a huge concern. Yeah, if I were to put on my statesman hat, I might answer that the board would be rigorously trying to hold tax rates down and would be looking carefully to make sure that something like that didn't happen. But there are, I mean, yeah, yeah, I definitely agree. We've all done budgets. Right, yeah. One of my big consents to all this is too, that I mean because of the population based representation, essentially you've got a couple of towns controlling the decision, and if it's to their financial advantage, which it will be because of the debt, the shared debt, you know, they might not hesitate to close a school like Calis, which has, you know, because they can handle the capacity at their school, which for them is a very good thing. It strengthens their local economy. Town like Calis, it hurts. Hurts our ability to draw families, hurts property values. I mean, this goes way beyond education. Real consideration. Yeah, these are exactly the sorts of things to be to be weighing and to be thinking about Kelly. So I'm Kelly McMarnie, I teach kindergarten at Calis. I'm representing actually from a teacher point of view right now. I just think, boy, no, I just can't stop thinking about how we had this hour and a half long meeting today when we talked about every single kid in the school to make sure we had a plan for them to move on for next year. That was so tight and so good for them. And it's the most creative place I've ever known for meeting student needs. Just amazing. I taught here for eight years, moved away to Wisconsin where they consolidate like crazy 800 elementary school students in one school that even cares all about money. And then I keep that because this is really awesome. This education here specifically is so good. And I think what happens when all of the decision making goes away and something happens with the student, we really need support from our school board to make those legal decisions about how we can meet needs specifically. I just really worry about that. Like, do we still have the same ability to meet student needs if we don't have our strong school board who we can go right to backing us up and saying, look, we need to meet the student need. What are we going to do? What if we don't have that? And you wouldn't that really is scary when the teacher point of view. We love to have that support so we could stay creative and awesome for our students. Did you not have that in Wisconsin? You want to talk about that? No, maybe not. Do you know their situation there? I think seriously. Well, I do actually. Okay, not as well as you, of course. But yeah, thank you. This is very unique and very special what we have going on and would hate for this recipe to not exist the way that it does. Well, thanks. There's one aspect of the process that is highly regrettable, which is that there was never a vote. The committee never laid an egg for the, or, you know, came up with. The committee never came out with a with a decision that voters could actually vote on that. That is really too bad. Shanta has pointed this out. Matthew was pointed this out. And they're right. That was that was unfortunate. And I was a part of it. So why in your opinion should should there have been? Well, because then then it allows people to, you know, to actually focus on the issue. People always I mean, at least I shouldn't generalize from my own experience. But, you know, when you have to make a decision, that's when you find out about things. And it would, it would have, I think, maybe motivated broader involvement and discussion. Also, I was participating in most of those meetings. It's just a public member from the beginning of that place. Scott and I have been involved with this since this was in the legislature. And I would actively said at multiple meetings, you need to be having public local concerns meetings. That's basic for my policy for that. I worked in policy and planning and transportation. That's this is protocol that you follow. And if you go out right from the beginning, you don't need to know all the answers, you go out and talk to the community, get their feelings, you bring them back and that's how you develop your process together. And it did not happen. They ignored that. So no, no, no, we're going to wait, wait, wait. Ultimately, what happens is I think the hope is that people will go into a blind vote, not knowing what they're voting on and then in the hope that you can actually pass it. And that is was the this is such a large decision. Maine did this. I know I'm only tired of hearing this, but Maine did this in 2008. And it's been a pretty big disaster for many of those communities, about half of them. I called many of these communities personally. I took notes on and you know, they said basically the cost went through the roof. Accountability went to zero and public participation just dissipated. The schools no longer had that ownership. They've no longer had that franchise. Many of them, I mean, they practically had a revolt. They had to change their legislation to give the towns, make it voluntary. And since that time, since the last time I looked, what 42% of the towns that were forced to consolidate are either in the process of or have withdrawn from consolidation, mainly rural towns. It works in the Chittin County as well. The experience of others is another factor to take into account to the extent that you can find out about it, whether it's Wisconsin or Maine or anything that you know about. Although I should, again, the alternate to that is that some people have, you know, grown up or even taught in consolidated systems. And they're very, they've had a very successful experience. So it's not like consolidation bad, no consolidate good. It's a, it's sort of a case by case thing that you have to look at, I think. What's the one size fits all that really meant? Scott, a little factoid is that there are 89 towns in Vermont who have not merged or had a vote. They're in various stages of trying to decide what to do. When you read in the newspaper how Act 46 is successful because 105 towns have not merged. And that includes towns like Montpelier who was already merged in South Burlington and so forth. There are 89 towns who are doing things like this, trying to figure out what their people want to do and how they can get there. And interestingly, it's about 40% of the students in the state kind of like what Rick was saying about the problems in Maine, the relative ratio. I'm sorry. I'm not sure when to jump in with us but there was a particular issue that gets, that has gotten me interested, which is the debt. And the way it's been explained to me is that, that Calis has basically debt-free as an abundant space, a physical plant. We would be merging with East Montpelier, I believe. It has quite a large debt and we would then be on the hook for that debt. I've got to ask, what on earth would persuade us, if there were a vote, what on earth would persuade us to take on debt that is an ours? What's the penalty to us to say no? I mean, is there a reason that we're interested? That's for some sort of... What's the penalty to us to say no? I will be getting into, I'll be going into debt very soon. When you do, the question's been worded another way, which is what's the penalty to us to say no? To say no to the solution? So given that we would obviously say no to taking on debt, why would we be persuaded to say yes, or in other words, what would be the penalty for us to say no? What are we risking? Yeah, the possibility of being forced to do it anyway is, but we can get into that as well. Before you go, I know you really want to do that. No, I want to hear. This is going back a little ways. The representation of the voting elements from different towns and how that was partitioned out, it's my understanding that due to constitutional constraints, the ratios of number of voting members to population base, those numbers can't really be changed. Like for example, if we all want, if it was agreed miraculously to have the same number of voting represented from every town, could that not even legally be done? It could be done. I think Matthew was working on some of this. If you had fractional voting, for example, if you had three vote, three members from Worcester, each of whom had one third of a vote. So you have voices in the room, but you don't have more voting? Yeah. More of ways? That's not really what I was looking for. It sounds like Chamber of Counties running the whole state and we're going to do the same, get the same thing done. There's been quite a fear. I want to try to discourage just jumping in. I know there are lots of questions and answers, but I do want to let Scott get through his thing to some extent. And this is great discussion. I'm not trying to quash it, but to move through it and there will be time, if it's a burning point right then and you're going to lose it, fine. But I just want to... I would like, I do want, this is not quite as relevant to what was just said. And I think throughout this process, there's been this carrot and stick approach and we're going to do it. If you better listen or you better do it, we're going to, there are going to be penalties. I think the question we should be asking is what are going to be the penalties for our elected officials if they force this crap on us? That's the way I look at it. We toss them out. I mean, this is kind of misrepresentation in my opinion. I'm pretty harsh on this. I will have nice things to say about our legislators very soon. Appreciate it. But this is an important reference point. The Act 46 goals, anything we do has to satisfy these five goals. The legislative language is, you know, there's all sorts of stuff encrusted around it, but it boils down to these five. And I once thought that these were about as bland and milk-toasty goals as you could possibly have, apohood, and mother pie. Sounds like a rock group. But the more I've sort of thought about them, the more they actually reflect a certain way of conceiving education that maybe you like, maybe you want to think about some more. But if we continue, please, just to, so equity, quality, efficiency, transparency, and value. And this is a quote from a meeting that of the, I guess, of interested people that Nicole Mason, Donna Russo-Savage, who works at the Agency of Education, Nicole Mason is the Executive Director of the Vermont School Boards Association. They were at U32. And Nicole said, the preferred structure presumptively meets the goals of Act 46. So that's why everybody, you know, the preferred structure is on a fast track to approval. And that statement is echoed in so many official documents. Does it mean it? Well, by definition. By definition. Yeah. Thank you, Charlotte. Well, it may. That's the thing. Oh, sorry. Yes. Are those five criteria defined? Has the legislature defined what they mean by the law? They, there's more, there's more information than just that, yes. So quality, for example, is to meet or exceed the state's educational quality standards. And equity is basically equity of educational opportunity for all students in Vermont. And so forth. But for me, that's all hard to remember. So I kind of have to just get the core word. But efficiency is basically efficiency. Transparency and accountability. And, you know, value. Value to the taxpayers is what it says. Value to the taxpayers. Yeah, financial value. Yeah, thanks. So, oh, thanks, Rick. Yeah. This is what, this is what we kind of crashed into. This idea that the reality of our situation appears to contradict that presumption. At least for our situation, not necessarily for anybody else's, and not speaking for anybody else, but for Calis, it seems to. And I'll explain in more detail So this is a question, this is the debt question. And this is what ideally one would like the debt distribution to look like. This is actually how it does look like at U32, which has 12 million in debt. And like, I guess most of the finer things in life, it all comes down to pizza. So the shaded areas are the slice you get to eat. And the sort of underneath it is the slice that you pay for. Ideally, what you eat and what you pay for are the same. Oh, sorry, Sage, yeah. I don't know if there are actually percentages to go with those pieces like this. Not, not, I mean, it basically one quarter, a little bit more than a quarter, maybe. A little bit less than a quarter, Worcester about one tenth, and Calis about one sixth. So middle six, East Montpelier and Berlin are almost the same size? No, not really. Berlin and East Montpelier are pretty close. Are they about equal now? Okay. Yeah, Calis and Worcester together are about equal to East Montpelier. And middle sex, yeah, middle sex is in between, in between Calis. No, no, no, that's okay. And it changes from year to year, which is why I didn't want to get to. The 12 million in debt, that's Berlin's three. Oh, no, this one's 32, 32. That's only U32. But this pizza, this is a New York style pizza. If you could tilt it on its side and see the time dimension, this is going to get paid off in 2019 and 2021. The next slide shows a Chicago style pizza. So this is the elementary school distribution. So if you were to tilt it, you would see East Montpelier's debt. This is how it was at the time that we kind of discovered we tripped over this issue and how it was until December, roughly of last year before Berlin got its new bond. So if we were to tilt this on its side, East Montpelier would go to 2033, Middlesex to 2035, and this one of Berlin is almost paid off. But you can see East Montpelier has a slice, you know, roughly twice as much than what it's paying for in a pooled scenario, a consolidated scenario. And Middlesex has, you know, somewhat more. Callus is eating nothing, Wister, nothing. The problem, pardon me. Well, this was really the issue, plus in terms of per capita income, the highest per capita income town among our five is Middlesex. Followed by East Montpelier, followed by Callus, Berlin, and Wister. So essentially in this scenario, the lower income towns were subsidizing, would have been subsidizing the higher income towns. And because the achievement gap that has been identified as our number one educational challenge is essentially defined between lower income and higher income populations, basically this would be putting further pressure on lower income populations while benefiting higher income populations. Sage? Do you have a higher chart of, I know this was quite a few years ago when they were following the caps on how schools were doing. Middlesex and Callus were the only two of the six in our supervisory union to not be on probation at one of those last years when they followed it. Oh, there was a child left behind there, yeah. So when the middle school or when we talk about equity, and I was at a couple of those meetings for Act 46, it was truly awe-inspiring. I do want to thank Berlin for stepping up and Karl for coming and saying, you know what, this isn't going to work. But also, you know, my son who's in seventh grade and the chair's daughter who's in seventh grade enter U32 with different learning abilities, different achievements, different everything. And when we were talking about equity, the big concern was making sure that all kids got what they needed. I feel like this is already a school district for 45 years. Our towns have shared millions of dollars in a budget as well as if you tack on that supervisory union money that we all pull in. I feel like our money is more than 50% shared and why can't we be a district in a different way because we could work better. I know that with the five schools having that ability, yes, having more organization maybe to help them work together, but it feels like we're making it harder than we need it to be. And that those achievements, you know, Calis and Middlesex, they're in the middle, they're not really the small school, and they are really the big schools. And I don't think bigger is necessarily better. I do think sharing our knowledge, you know, sharing our great teachers, we've got such a great staff here, and people work hard to get a great staff here. And the staff has survived so many principles. Leland in sixth grade, Calis is fourth principle. So, and we fought hard to get that principle, who will stay. The supervisory union's choice, which was one person on a nine people hiring committee, didn't want to put our principle forward at all for even an interview and didn't and then forced us to have another person with her to meet people. And that person went on to be a vice principal for one year at U32 and then left. Like we don't need that higher up, more far removed from our town. People stay in Calis. People stay in Calis. There's a, you know, high population of kids who have grandparents in this town and whose parents went to this school. And I don't know, like U32, bless them, but they bought new bleachers this year that don't fit the seventh and eighth graders in that gym. And they're like, for Pepperellis, Simon, who's in the 11th grade said, who are the most spirited kids who want to embrace their school and like be part of the bigger school. And they bought bleachers that don't fit a third of their school in for Pepperellis. It's like, really? So it's those upper, they're little things, but when you get more far removed from the local and really our school board, I don't think earns any money. It's not blessed our hearts, but it's not a lot of money. I'm sorry, I went on a tangent. No, but I think, you know, this idea of distance and how important is that is another factor to keep in mind. So may we proceed? Can I just ask you this one, the Berlin chunk? Yes. Does that reflect the current? No, so you will see that in the next one. The next one, I hope, is not too confusing. Just say the numbers. Point to the town, say the number. The important thing to, this is with Berlin's new bond. The important thing to see here is that with the new bond, which is the black pizza rim, Berlin and Middlesex come very close to balancing out, to breaking even. In that scenario, the money that they put in is equal to the money that they that they're getting, that they have gotten out. East Montpelier is still disproportionately, is still carrying a disproportionately large debt load and Wister and Callis, which have traditionally pursued policies, no bond policies for capital planning and budgeting and replacement, would essentially take on this segment. So again, the thing about this is, from my perspective, the debt issue, it's important because it's money, but it's sort of a technical issue. And what's remarkable is how difficult it has been to solve. If we all borrowed up to our share of $23 million, which would mean Callis borrowing almost $4 million for what? We don't need it. Wister, 2.3. And then Berlin and Middlesex would also have to increase their borrowing. Then it would be, we would have a fairer pizza. But it would be a lot bigger. But it would be a much bigger and more expensive pizza. I don't sense any disagreement in this room with what Randy was saying, not one little and what Sage was saying, I have a hunch that we are all pretty much on the same page. Unless you can show that East Montpelier had some exceptional emergency that they had to fulfill, but if they just screwed up, do they have a facility that's overly grandiose? Yes. They like it. Because they thought we were going to take us on. No, they didn't. Oh, really? Really? No. No. That's not fair. That's a little bit of money. That's not fair. They seem to, that's not fair. That's not fair. We're not, we're not here to bash Court East Montpelier. I'm trying to take it back. I just wanted to say that, as Scott pointed out, it is a technical problem. So what we've all been trying to figure out is, is this a problem that we can make rules around? If we decided to consolidate, form one board, form one budget, is there a way that we could write in rules that say, but we're not paying for the debt? Would you do it by right here? Why not? Well, we've run into problems and we've consulted with some lawyers and it's actually a pretty complicated technical problem because that board, in the current legislation, state legislation, that board owns all the debt as one board. So the question is, can we move the debt to the towns or can we write in rules that, as you said, you know, towns are proportionally paying out of our one budget? You know, so we might be able to write something in, but we're just looking at the legal implications. Is that possible? And right now, Janet Ansel has been really working for us on this in the legislature. And it's not in the education bills that have been going through. It's actually gone into the housing, right? It's in, it's in a totally different bill. It's not 513, it's in a different one. This is the tax one, I mean, the debt one is now in like tax legislation. It's still in the legislature. It hasn't been passed. She's not sure if it's going to go through. And I don't even know what it is that she's proposing exactly. Yeah. And I think it's very important to make clear that the, that people who are, who see the educational advantages of consolidation are not in favor of pooling the debt. They want a solution to the debt. Yeah, like Chantel. Like Chantel, for example. There, this sort of pooling-ness is not acceptable to anyone. Yes. Am I correct that each of our towns would be happy to continue as they currently do each owning its own debt? Yes. So we all are, in other words, every single member is willing to have the current system continue. The law won't allow for it. Well, that's the, that's the issue. Each person who now has, each person, town. Town. Or town school district that now has debt is willing and perfectly, you know, feels it's a moral obligation as well as, you know, just a legal obligation to carry their own debt. The problem is if we merge, then what do you do with new debt? Yeah. Would it, like if all of a sudden we want to borrow a bunch of money, then do we then get to spread it around on everybody else? Absolutely. No, no, because we will all have a vote in that decision-making process. No, but we did not have a vote prior. Yeah, but the town, the bigger towns have more votes. This is true. This is true. So, so that is, that is a problem because we don't ever need to have a bond here in Gallus. If we continue to operate the way we have always operated or at least for 20 years, we don't ever need to go that route of having a bond. So, we would be in the position in the future of paying for other people's bonds when we don't have a need ourselves. Yeah, you're assuming we're no longer controlling the fiscal repair, the maintenance on these buildings. Do you see our town, people being absolutely willing to give a ownership of this thing? I don't see that. You're crazy, too. Great. The only way this will ever work is every town and U32 has one vote, not based on population, not based on dollars and cents, is the only way you could get a fair system going here and then figure out the debt. But if you've got a three, three, two, one, it's never going to fly. And the one, one, one won't fly either because of the constant, the way the Constitution has been interpreted by the Supreme Court. What about the fractions? Is that still a possibility to even need the fractional? That's a possibility. There are a bunch of possibilities, including at-large voting, so that basically Calis would still get, well, everybody would represent, you could do it just, we're no longer, there's no difference between towns, period. There's just, we're just one great big thing. And vote for, vote for the board out of that, or you can, yeah, at-large, or you can have a way for candidates from each town to be voted on, not only by the voters of that town, but by all the voters. So what if one town said, uh-uh, sorry, I hope we're not, we're not paying our share? What are they going to do? What are you going to throw us in jail? If, uh, if one- Yeah, let's say Calis, if this were to come to fruition, and we get stuck with them saying, okay, you guys got to cough up some more money, and we said, sorry, we can't, we don't have it. What are they going to do? And it's not an idle question, because we would be such fat little biggies, you know, with no debt. Right. Look, scrumptious. I love how this is all relating to food. Are you bringing pizza later? I should have. And you're really, what are they going to do? I would have given everybody the Calis slice. Fewer calories, it's fat-free. You know, basically what would happen is that everybody pays the same tax rate. Everything, um, and I'll actually be showing you in a moment what that looks like, if, um, It's just, oh my, oh my, no, it's terrible. So anyway, we can, this, this is what kind of got my attention on the debt. The problem was, you know, it looked as though we were heading more towards inequity than equity. So, can we continue, please? Right. And this, this was, is basically history, um, what we tried to do to fix it. And Shannon played a big role in this, but, um, last year it failed. And the message was, no state level solutions to local problems. This year, it's totally different. Hundred per, hundred degrees different. There are a whole bunch of state level solutions to local problems. Whether it's to Vernon wanting to get out of its supervisory union or for, you know, different situations with these various, um, two by two by one mergers and, and different configurations of these. So, can we continue? Yeah. So our legislators are, um, I have to say, I mentioned I was going to say something nice about our legislators. And with this H513, which is, um, basically passed but hasn't been signed into law yet, they got, they really cracked it open much wider. So there's a lot more breathing room for, um, for working on this issue. Anyway, quality. This goes to, you know, a bit of what you were talking about, Kelly. Um, historically, the consolidation of school districts and the consolidation of schools has gone hand in hand. And, um, the next slide, I think, shows that, um, ah, right, um, this is, uh, this just shows you the, you know, the, how difficult it is to draw a sharp line, um, that yes, consolidation or no, because, um, what the research will show is often that there is some small benefit. Usually it's, it's, it's not huge, but, but it's measurable nonetheless to larger districts. However, the problem is that larger schools, um, have larger problems. Yeah, exactly. And, uh, have a negative, no, Jamie, need to hear it. And, um, and that they tend to work against student achievement. What was that quote from? Oh, oh, it was from, um, yeah, uh, Barry and West, um, Christopher Barry and Martin West. It's a 2010, um, article. It's one of the very few that actually looks at student outcomes. Um, interesting. Oh, thanks. Yeah. And this, you know, um, a lot of times we hear that, you know, consolidation is, is, um, sort of 21st century, you know, modern governance. Um, it's actually, it was formulated about 100 years ago and had its, um, during, but, but that's not necessarily, I'm not, I'm not dissing that actually. Um, the, its heyday was really between about 1930 and 1970. Um, during which, you know, the great majority of school districts were consolidated. Now the thing about this is, um, the, um, consolidation arose as, for really good reasons, from the administrative progressive movement, um, essentially to try, because there were, there were lots of messes out there that needed to be fixed. And this is basically the heyday of the, you know, um, of administrative centralized big government initiatives, the, the new deal, um, you know, the, the Sputnik, the reaction to Sputnik, um, great society. And it, it essentially, it doesn't come to a crashing halt. It continues to this day. There's certainly more, well, maybe 14,500 somewhere between 14 and 15,000 school districts left. But, um, here is where the, the reaction began, you know, during, um, the 1970s and the Reagan years, um, the reaction against the administrative state. Um, so this is part of a very big picture that's worth, you know, bearing in mind. Um, the consolidation accomplished, um, in many cases, at that time, a lot of good things. It helped to end desegregation. It helped to, um, improve, um, help, um, to end segregation, it helped to, um, really to provide a lot of, uh, a lot of opportunities to students who might not have had them at that time. The question is, you know, is that still the case? Um, and so, um, you know, when we look, we're asked, what's, what might really be going on? Um, there, this is from a, um, a classic paper in 1987 that, um, the expansion of the state's role into the local education arena leads to larger and more bureaucratic district structures. This sort of goes to Sage's point from a while back. Um, larger, more bureaucratic, more distant, uh, from the people. Um, and this is also closely related to state involvement in education finance. So, um, this is a point that, that you made Matthew some time ago about, um, you know, the state, um, the sort of, uh, an echo effect of Act 60 and 68. Um, more involvement in finance brings more attempted involvement in the structure of governance. So, um, anyway, efficiency, again, efficiency is great. Everybody wants to be efficient, I guess. Um, but, you know, everything in, in, um, due proportion at the same time. And this, um, this is just to flag the efficiency can be problematic. Um, this was a book, Raymond Callaghan's book from the early 60s. Um, but it's amazing how much of it resonates today. Um, the, the basic problem being the shift of attention towards the large-scale management and administration of schools and away from the actual educational experience for, um, for the child, the child's contact with the world in the company of his or her peers and, and teachers, skilled teachers. Um, so, uh, this is, again, a question. How far do we want to go in that direction? Um, oh yeah, transparency and accountability. Um, this is, I think, in my opinion, fortunately, this is very unusual. Our supervisory union is usually really good about producing, um, uh, honest and, and, uh, comprehensible data. This is their worst effort ever, I think. Um, the idea of the cumulative tax rate over five years, um, is, uh, you know, like saying, every day I drive down route 12 at 40 miles per hour. Um, where I drove down route 12 at 40 miles per hour for five days. So my five-day cumulative speed was 200 miles per hour. So, um, it's just not, it just, you know, yeah. But this is one, this is one of the risks of, you know, having, of, of numbers. Numbers, unfortunately, can be used, um, offensively, as well as informatively. Um, so let's, let's get past this. I don't want you to remember this slide. It's, it's, okay, this one, um, this is the question of what happens to tax rates. Um, the tax effects. Green line is under a consolidated scenario, uh, East Montpelier and Calis. Red line is basically staying the same, supervisory union. Now the thing is, this green line and this green line are basically the same green line. We would be paying the same education tax rate. The difference is where we start from. So that's the, that's the real problem. And this, here the issue is that this includes the tax incentives. Even with the tax incentives, we would be paying more from the very, from the very outset. So, um, it makes sense that very quickly. Yeah, after four years, um, now. So anyway, this is, the question is, um, Susan. You don't have any data that shows what that looks like after the incentives disappear. No, they stopped in the last year. Nice. This is assuming we're sharing that. Yeah, it does. Yeah. Basically, you know, what I've seen in the, in the supervisory, in the consolidated union, it's, it's saved on average. The cost dropped maybe 0.5 to about 1.5% in the first years. But then without that collective, you know, that fiscal discipline that the individual boards really impose, that's where it goes out of control. And that's what the mainers said. They said, you know, talk to me. This is quickly cost skyrocketing. Because basically there was no accountability after that. This is when Charlotte was talking. That's, yeah. And that, I mean, that in, you know, in the debt issue adds more. I think the number is just rough numbers. I think to say the impact on Cal us for a $200,000 property. I think it's roughly about between, what's it, $300 and $400 a year? I'm sorry. It was, that was from six months ago. There was a lot of calculation. It's pretty significant. We actually turned that into dollars. Yeah. It was several hundred dollars. Which meant that that didn't include her way. And yeah, right. That's just, that's the old, right? Yeah. No, it wouldn't include the problem. I think you need to explain the graph because I don't think people can read it. So we talked about what, what we're, make it clear for us what we're seeing. Sure. This is the dollar, the tax rate per grand list value. And the shows the, and at the bottom, the x-axis is the fiscal year going out. So this is where we were last year. No, year before last. This is where we are this year. That's East Montpelier. Then East Montpelier, sorry, where they are. Next year, the year after, the year after, the year after, if we were to stay in the same configuration we are now, that's the red line. The blue line is if we had gone for the accelerated merger. If we had basically wrapped this up and decided on consolidation and voted for it and done everything. With the discount. And we missed that. Yeah, we missed that deadline. This is really kind of the past. It's not the station. And it's also very, it's almost a bogus point because you're not, it's a false savings. Yeah, it's going away. And this is the, this isn't for the conventional merger incentives. So the green line. And it counts. So are you, so you're saying that under consolidation, Montpelier's tax rate is going to go way down? Yes. So East Montpelier, their tax rate is going to go down that much. Right. Okay. And ours? And ours is not. Ours doesn't go down at all. Ours goes up. Yeah, it's not. And how much does ours go up? Well, it basically, this is the thing. It approaches 190 in $1.90 and FY 2223. And again, that number does not include Berlin. Does it include U32? Yeah, it does include U32. But it does include the debt. But it does include the Berlin's new. The three million. The three million. The new three million of Berlin. Sorry, yeah. So if these are debts that are going to eventually be paid off, whether it's for dinner, East Montpelier, or whatever, why not delay, talk about merger until everybody's at a level playing field, i.e. debt rate? God, that'll be 30 years from now. I don't ever get that. I'm going to make the 30th college. Yeah, that sounds good to me. I love it. That's a great idea. Right then, I'm going to submit it. I like that. I'm just aware that we've got 20 minutes. Oh my God. And Craig, okay. I mean, does anybody know when East Montpelier's debt will be paid off? Berlin just took that. 2033. 2033. Yes. And middle section 2035. There are a lot of people. Berlin is 2037. I know you had a chance to speak. We'll promise that we will. Then. I just want to give you my appreciation. Yes. Okay. Just a little time check. I'll just say, just really quickly, the precept of the whole graph being created is that, I mean, it really has to do with the debt. So you wouldn't really be able, it's very difficult to know, assuming the debt were to be resolved, what that's going to look like. Yeah. It would look like the red line. It's kind of like the one in this elephant. It would look like the red line. Yeah. Actually, it ought to look like the red line if the debt issue is resolved. But we're also making assumptions about how that word would vote on a budget and what. That's true. Yeah. And yeah. A lot of imponderables. Yeah. So, Craig has told me that we're, that time is a waste, and hopefully not, well, wasting time. No, please. Yes. Anyway, I think it's good to be skeptical about all of this, not just consolidation, but about not consolidating. I think it's really important to look at all of this with a, oh, this is from the National Education Policy Center, consolidation of schools and districts, what the research says and what it means. And state-level consolidation proposals may serve a PR purpose in times of crisis. They're unlikely to be a reliable way to obtain substantive fiscal or educational improvements. So, really, again, this paper is an argument for a case-by-case approach. So, this is just a general idea of what a good governance structure should look like. Centralize what works best when it's centralized. I think there was some discussion about that up here. Decentralize what is best decentralized. However, in each case, there may be differences of opinion about what is best centralized or best decentralized. And to the extent that we can build in new value into the system. Let me continue. So, this is, thank you, Matthew. This was an idea, this was something that Wister showed that I thought was really interesting. This comes from our merger study committee. This is the single board preferred structure model. And this is the current system as portrayed by, you know, essentially a more pro-single-board view. The thing is, this is actually even simpler than it looks because the five towns are really, in essence, transformed into a single virtual town, with each town basically being an election precinct for that big virtual town. What this, unfortunately, this doesn't show the most important bit, in my view, which is a kind of Copernican revolution of sorts. This here, each board, in the current system, each board revolves around its school. Here, the board revolves around the superintendent in central office. And that may be good. It may be bad. I'm not going to say anything about that. I think it's, but it has to be, I think, evaluated in that way. Can you just go back to that for a second? Yeah. Thanks. I just, I'm getting a really strong sense of people's concern about debt, for sure. We're hearing that loud and clear and some concern, too, about having representation on the larger board. But I'm just curious with this slide, you know, when I look at this, I'm a little bit OCD, and I, the one on the left is like, oh, please, that's so much more appealing. But when I actually think about the education of our children, I think, maybe I want the one on the right, you know? Maybe I want it to actually be way more complicated, in some sense, to do what's right for each individual child. Maybe I don't want it to be one big board that's deciding what's right for 900 individual kids. Maybe I actually want there to be a lot more people involved in that decision-making and a lot more eyes on it and a lot more people close to the ground. So I just wonder what people think about that. Okay, I agree. And I was seeing, too, we're hearing a lot about the debt. And I'm wondering, you'd mentioned educational benefits, advantages, and you talked a little bit about research that looked at larger districts, but what is the district saying? The advantages are. What are the educational benefits for our school? Basically, it involves being able to mobilize and transfer resources more efficiently to where they're needed, ability to provide a more consistent and harmonious, perhaps uniform curriculum and approach to instruction, possibly the ability to create experimental units, such as magnet schools, or maybe zero to pre-K type establishments. That's, those are the kinds of things that I've heard. And Matthew or Kitty, is there anything else that I? Is there more research that we didn't find? There is an absolutely unbelievable amount. It's massive population stuff. Where did you find benefits, academic? Oh, no, actually, you know, there are actually relatively few studies on consolidation and student outcomes. Most of them have to do with economies of scale and, you know, where you, you know, money. Efficiency. Efficiency, yeah. But I do have a few that I can share. Yeah, would be great if the district could put it out, too, for the public to look at. Okay, sure. It seems that everything you've been saying tonight really leads to the conclusion that each worst-case scenario could be made good by keeping governance at the place most directly affected. Everything. Thanks. You've done a good presentation. I'm going to put you on the spot just a little bit. I'm a cousin of Suzanne. You are the Cal's representative on the U32 board. I am. And I hear a lot of concern that a population of 900 students would not be well-served on an individual basis and perhaps might be overlooked by a consolidated board, which is what we have at U32 right now. Do you see students being overlooked and not taken care of right now? I'm not aware of that happening. And U32? Well, at U32. I'm not at O4. Except for, you know, what you would expect to be a background, you know, flux of cases where things don't work because, you know, there's always something that doesn't work. But I think in general, the U32 governing structure basically works. It could be better. Did you see the size being a hindrance? Do you see people just being indifferent to the concerns and needs of the board members or not? I wouldn't say that they're indifferent or, you know, unconcerned, yes. There's a vestigin that said that you have to remember that you've still got well-established local boards driving the elementaries. And believe me, that carries through to that school. You start breaking. You sent him there with much more. You rank that out. Yes, we're also talking about carrying kids from three-year-olds to 12-year-olds to 19-year-olds. And I don't think it's a huge developmental lead that we ignored with that question. True. That's it? I've always been really pro-U32 because long ago my kids graduated from there. And I've lived either in middle sex or now in Calis. And I think a school like U32, which I've really known this school over a long period of time, you get your good economies of scale and you've got 900 students. I have grandchildren who will go to probably Montpelier High School who knows what will consolidate in the next few years. But you hear about Montpelier High School having a student population of 200 and losing some of their best courses. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you want to talk the economy of scale and you want to do it, now that's not a good comparison because Montpelier is 9-12, U32 is 7-12. But U32 is a lot of good things that a smaller school sort of doesn't have, can't have. Yeah. And that's one of the points that the Secretary of Education uses to argue in favor of trying to pool resources as much as possible in larger districts. In the hope, in the hope, I think it's a hope. It's not necessarily a sure thing. That this will allow for greater opportunities for students. So again, I guess we're almost done with this. Charlotte. I want to jump ahead a little. I think that we have over time, among our school, centralized and consolidated many functions that have worked very successfully. And you had some of those on your chart. There are things that did work. Buses. But also some academic things. Many of us remember when we didn't even have a single curriculum within this school. So having a single curriculum is really a strength. And sending our kids to U32 having had the same curriculum is a huge strength, I think. So I think we really have done many things that are consolidated and that have helped all of us and have strengthened us. What I hear you say, though, is that you are part of a group that in considering a confederated federated model, federated. Confirmed. You are trying to, to those other things that are just much more naughty, you're trying to figure out what would work best for our schools. And I would say that that's our only solution. Not to do what the state tells us, but to figure out what would work well for us. And whatever we call it, we call it whatever would make Montpelier happy. But I would just say thank you so much for all you have done in trying to consider what would work for us and please continue. That's where I am. Please continue to find things that would work for us that do bring us together, but in ways that we could all of us accept and endorse. I mean I think we want to endorse some kind of coming together, but we certainly don't want to endorse one that makes our kids not have that personal touch or that puts us at a tax disadvantage that is so severe that it would, you know, really cause hardship to people. So the only solutions I see is for your group to continue its work. And it's horrible, terrible, hard work. But thank you and please continue because what else do we have? Thanks. I think everybody is working really hard. And that's the one thing that makes me feel optimistic about all of this. There's so much energy and talent and especially good will going into this. And even though there were difficult moments during the study committee process, and what I've actually been doing is taking you on a fast forward of 18 months of our study committee. And this is sort of where the alternative group, it's an example of what an alternative federated schematic might look like. Because we do think that we can do better than what we have now. I think that's another point that we share in common. We all think that we can do better than we're doing now. And this is essentially sort of the lines of what Susanna was talking about. This is sort of like the preferred structure, the consolidated structure turned inside out. Where instead of the center governing the localities, the localities govern the center. Ah, the Copernican. Yeah, yeah, color of, yeah. Got it. In the waning days of the legislature, has anything new come out of the form of education? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Can you tell us what those things are? Well, oh, they're so long. Well, that will directly affect. But basically, Katie, do you want to? I was just going to say one of the things in the new HS513 that's pretty much been passed, it does mention specifically that any unequal levels of debt would be one reason why the state might consider an alternative structure. So basically, it gives us a reason to say to the state, we don't fit the preferred model. It might give us a way to say that and have them agree and say, yes, you are one of the exceptional cases. Because a lot of the towns, Scott spoke of the number of towns, or Dot mentioned the number of towns that haven't come to an agreement that are looking an alternative. And many of them, it's because of geographic isolation. We don't have that excuse for all. We're pretty close together. We all managed to get to U32. But we do have this debt issue that could be one way we say to the state, this is why we need a different structure, and that's in the new legislation. It hasn't been passed yet, though. No, that hasn't, yeah. They emailed us this morning saying that they might be leaving something out. That's a different piece. The one that's an H509 is part of that whole debt package that's being... But the one I'm talking about is in the new... Yes, the reason to be an alternative. The reason to be alternative. Okay. Yes. Not how to deal with the debt. So is there a need to race to put together a document that is specific and outlines exactly what is preferred? Well, that's another thing that came in this F513. That right now, if you wanted to be a preferred model or one of these SS-1 or side-by-side, you have until November 30th to agree to what you want and write articles of agreement. And there's a few other things you have to show how you're going to meet the goals and so forth and so on. If you're going to do an alternative model, which this is and we've been talking about, you have until so many months after they go through, what is it, the CLAR, the passing rules, whatever that final thing is for passing rules, or January 30th, whichever comes first. So it looks like we have two or three more months to get together with the other towns and whatever towns, write the articles, go through the books, and show that we have community support for what we're doing. That's why we're having these meetings. That's one of the things we have to show is how the community is responding to this. And so those are some new things that have happened this year. I mean, it's just a miracle that it's happening. But a lot of people went to a lot of hearings and state and board of education hearings and wrote comments about their rules and how they should be. 83 pages could actually become 27 pages, and there's a lot of work to be done. And Dodd sat in on Senate Education Committee meetings all through the spring. I don't know. Not all through the spring. A lot of spring. It was fun. Nobody knew who I was. It was really my whole. So anyway, we can go to the next one. This is just an example. There are a lot of big issues still that need to be worked out regardless from the legal issues, which are huge and which are not easy. Making sure that there's clarity of responsibility in whatever we put together in the lines of authority, protecting the disadvantaged. Objections have been raised to the idea of having voters vote on the central office budget in that the central office budget is sort of the bucket of things everybody hates and that everybody can easily feel like they can vote no against. Whereas a lot of that is special education, things for people who really need it, students who really need it. So my answer to that objection is that what people hate about the central office budget is not what's in it so much as that it's diffused into everybody else's budget and they don't get to vote on it directly. Or even no. Yeah, sometimes. But that in fact it's highly and defending it and justifying it as part of the discipline of budgeting. And I think it is defensible and it's justifiable. So much of it, perhaps not all of it, but that's why you go through that on those hoops. So I-46 penalties against small schools, this is especially Worcester, which would lose its small school grants. That would not, having Worcester, again the lowest per capita income town, where the brunt of any formation that we make is unfair. And we need to deal with it in a mutual way. And electing board members. Oh, there's one more here that I think is dear to Rick's heart. Voting smart, making sure that people are involved. I would have been so happy to see Doug, Lily, or Geraldine going in here. Geraldine did talk to me, she called me. Did she? Yeah. She was very interested. But there's a whole segment of town that just feels alienated from this. I have the feeling. And really want them to be able to be part of it. And feel that they're an important part of it. Sorry, yes. Would there be a special town meeting petition for adopting this new structure? After it goes, I guess, okay by the Department of Education. By the Board of Education. Yeah. Yeah, by the Asian State and then the Board. State Board. Then we would have to vote on it. That's sort of the sequence of events. It would be Australians or... Australians. Yeah, which is important to know. That's right. That's why that public, that ongoing public feedback was really important in this process. Because, you know, there's a lot of misinformation out there that's been... And people just don't... They don't really know the ramifications of this, either way. Can I have a few people? Yeah. There's one more slide which shows Raphael's hand. Put it at the bottom. Get the bottom of it. Just the basic idea is that for an alternative, it should be... It's a living thing. What we're dealing with here is a living human thing. Education and the governance of education. And the hope that we can come up with something that relates to it in that same way. I apologize if I've turned on too much, but... That was a really short slideshow. It's a lot of information, and I think the discussion's been good. I just want to offer the chance to anyone who didn't speak during that, or offer their thoughts to do so, if you want to. If there's somebody that's saying, we'll have maybe less out there than Rick or Stella. You still haven't answered the question. What's the penalties to call us if we don't go along with this whole action? That was the very first question I ever came out of the thing. What is the penalties to us as a town if we don't go along with the masses? I was really hoping to forget that. Actually, I want to warm up. The potential penalty is that in the legislation, at 46, it gives the state the authority to do what it wants with us, essentially. To have its way with us. To consolidate us against our will, if you want to put it that way. It is. Potentially. It looks right now. It looks like we have a fair chance at asking for an alternative, and saying we don't want to go along with this. The other big question is why to put out the reasons. Right, and part of that is if we want to go that route, we do need to know that that's what our town wants, and that people have said that. But also, we need to know what our other neighboring towns want, and it would be much more effective if all five of our towns can come together and put something together that's a joint effort that says, this is how we're moving forward at the supervisory union as a group. Totally agree. Absolutely. So I thought you didn't really vote it. No, not exactly. Well, yeah, they... What are your favorite consolidation? Right. The board. Just the board. Just the board, not the town. But I don't know how they're going to consolidate with towns that don't want to consolidate. Right? That's why we're supposed to have conversations with... Even these five... If you just think about the four towns getting together, we can invite, say, we'd like to invite you, but we also would be required, part of it, I think, isn't it, Scott, that we talked about earlier? Exactly. Very... That we talked to other towns. So we don't just kind of state to ourselves, we need to kind of expand and see how many people we can get into our spider's net. But in the end, we will probably end up... Did you say spider's net? Web. Web. But in the end, I really think it will end up our five towns doing something. Don't you? I think so. And I agree. Reaching out beyond just the supervisory union is very important, too. I think there are more possibilities than we've even thought of yet. And it's just a matter of talking to other people and finding the common ground and the common needs, the common concerns. We can maybe do even better than we think we can do. But we do have... We thought we had November as our deadline. Perhaps we have until January. Right. We had, what, a year and a half? And we got nothing done. And no offense to the mid, to the meetings, but we're at square one. Well, I wouldn't say anything about it. I would say that nothing got done. I would say there was no end result. There was no end result. I think we need to be a little bit more focused on putting together an alternative model if that's what we decide to do, but we can't wait until October to decide that that's what we're going to do. If we want to do an alternative model and take control of this, because we only have limited options, we can ignore it and see what happens. We can do the preferred and drink the Kool-Aid or we can work together and put together an alternative model that meets all the issues and solves them. And it may not look exactly like what the legislature is telling us we have to do, okay? But we have to put something in front of them. We should do what works for us. Exactly, right. And, you know, that makes those changes. That's what we have to do. The alternative committee did. And did it. Get it out there. Put together a very good alternative. And the 706B committee, remember, this legislation was written to drive the preferred model. The 706B committee basically had one task. That was either to accept the preferred model, either take it to the public or not. Not develop other models. We did that with the board direction. And, you know, there wasn't agreement on it. But there is a good alternative. There's definitely some good opportunities here. You don't have those constraints now. We can develop the models and move on. There's already a solid framework. And there's already a lot of data collection that was done by that original committee that we need to include in what we do. So they did get a lot of work done. Yeah, and I don't discount that. They did a lot of work. But I just don't want to continue a lot of forum. I think everybody's really in agreement about local control and not taking on the debt. But we need to work with the other towns. Craig, do you have a spasm in your arm? Has anybody watched that map? Can't we get mom period to come in with this whole group, make mom period a junior high, their high school, and their high school U-32, go one to five in the schools and do a, that, that, it's like a spoke and mom periods the center. Yep. And they won't budge. I mean, and it's so smart. They only got 200 students, make your sixth, seventh, and eighth grade in Montpelier, do your high school up here, and get all the schools to one to five. Are they possibly waiting till you, to Washington Central, resolve some of its stuff? Are they kind of on the outside waiting for some stuff to resolve? I mean, this has been going on for 30-some years. They've had conversations with other districts, too. They wouldn't give up a lot, because they basically, when they came to the meetings, to the confirmation meetings, they basically would not give up their local control. Under the original Act 46 proposals, they, it was, what was the cutoff? 1,200 in the original. And it politically got reduced to kind of boot Montpelier out of the mess. Yeah, it got reduced to 900. And that was politics. So they now don't have to do anything. So they're in a position of power. But you're right. Yeah, I was right. You're absolutely right. That's why then you'll have all your junior highs in one spot, your high schoolers in another spot, and all your elementary schools feeding those two areas. And they would all have their own boards, correct? Yep. Oh, yeah. And then, answer to a group. Have your own. You get one supervisory, you get buses on buses. You're right. And what's nice is that the elementary schools would stay the same and based in their communities, which is exactly what people want. Right, where I was right. But there's a lot of support for that. Yeah, I was right. We were at junior high school in a one-high school. Yeah, you're right. And there are people in Montpelier, too. Yeah, there are people that want to go for a whole mess. Montpelier likes its centralized model, one board for pre-K high school. They like having one board for all of those schools. We obviously don't, so. Well, they didn't say that when they came and spoke at the U-32 consulate. They said the reverse. They didn't want to give up local, their board authority, which would they would have to give up in a preferred model. That was, they would not agree to that. So that can still, that was a deal killer. Interesting. I don't have a way to talk to them. I want to ask you a couple questions of the board thinking about moving forward to the next meeting. A, how is it going to be different than this meeting? Are we going to build on this? B, is there a way to communicate what happened here in a consolidated form? And somebody asked about resources. You did, actually. What are the resources are out there? How can we find more information to read on our own? Is there someone that can put some of that information out or websites on front porch form or somewhere? And D, how do we recruit more community members? So making it challenging for each of us tries to bring two neighbors or two other friends in the community to reach out and work. Because I know a lot of people, despite getting the mailing, they was completely operating apart this time of year with kids doing stores. That's a lot of moving on things, right? You can kind of just word of mouth and talk about it, Mark. What's your sense, Dodd, about the next meeting? Is it just another one like this or...? It will be very different. Chantelle will be here and I won't be. I thought we got you for that thing. U32 is meeting that day. Well, the other thing that will be different is we will know what actually happened in the legislature. Yes, that's right. So we could know... Well, some of it was a 7-2-0. I don't think we have a 7-2-0. We won't know the budget. We're doing it. If you didn't sign the sign-in sheet, please do so. So the next meeting is the 31st, that's 6. Is that correct? Yeah, but then we'll try to make it different and we'll try to get more other people here. The kindergarten preschool meeting is 5.30 to 6.30, so people might come in the middle or I'll try and end it early so that they have more time here. But that's a good group of people that'll come right from there. There you go. Something that we should really keep saying. Yeah. And your next meeting is here. It's bringing pizza. One thing we make better than that. One thing we're making pizza. Pizza coming. Cabels pizza. I don't think you're going to be really considered as a collective eating police. You're going to select boards from the five towns. I highly recommend bringing everybody together and having this conversation. I don't know if we do it right now. We have a few meetings for our own, but this is a conversation that really is going to have to be a cooperative effort among the towns. It's going to have to be a univital voice. Let me tell you, we've been heavily involved with this since the beginning, and there is a steamroller on this legislation to push it through and not. The preferred. The preferred model. And they've shipped out and around the edges minimally, but I think it's going to have to be a fairly widespread and unified voice for them, because they have to know there's going to be a price to pay for this, because ultimately they answer to us in the polls. And this is something that's our only hope of really listening. I don't hear anybody here tonight who favors that preferred model. Yeah, I agree. Anyone? I didn't hear any of it in any of the very two people at the public meetings. But you're right, we need to start talking more broadly, I think, to the other towns. Yes, and I think also to still maintain an open mind towards the consolidated structure, just because Or features of it. Or features of it, right, because there are definitely important ideas to come out of that. Yeah. Well, I remember when Scott and I originally testified to the House when this was being debated, and we said to them, be careful, don't enable, don't mandate, enable towns to do this, provide the expertise, provide the funding if it takes that, it's local boards, communities, this is complex to consolidate. Some places it works, but you can't, it won't work everywhere. And there's no one who knows better who, how that's going to impact a community, who their partners are going to be from the people in those communities. And unfortunately, they went the exact opposite way. And they dictated it, they created a structure, this kind of uniform, and it will work in some of them. Unfortunately, usually the wealthier and larger towns and a lot of the smaller towns are going to be victims. And it's been proven in the past in other states, and it's failed. And it's seen it work in any state where those numbers don't pretty much match. And this is, you know, that was the mistake they made here. You know, they, it's a tops down, instead of bottoms up model. And this is a pretty bottoms up state. Any other thoughts or questions? Thank you. I have a final thought. The school was very generous in setting up this room this way. There are usually tables in here, and I just felt that it was more comfortable to talk at each other rather than across tables. So if you could stack your chairs, and then it'll make it easier for them to reconfigure the room. I think. Thank you. What? Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Have a word. Sorry. Thank you for coming. Thank you.