 January 15th meeting of the Rumble Recruiting Board of School Directors at six, three, three, six, 35, yeah. First order of business public comment. Third order of public comment. Consent agenda. Motion to approve the consent agenda. Somebody to approve the consent agenda. To approve the consent agenda. I'll second that. Oh, is it there? Hi. Any opposed? I have a quick question for you, Jim. At the outset, I wasn't certain where this should go. Jerry and I were talking at the beginning about the quantity of paper that we received this time, and both she and I rely on digital documents primarily, and I was just wondering, I understand some people probably prefer paper and some people don't, but for those who don't want this much paper, and I don't really need it, and it seemed like that was the case for Jerry, too, I thought maybe we could figure out how many of these need to go out versus how many don't. I just wanted to throw it out there so that we could use the quantity of paper and the time that Anna spends on this. I'll kind of defer to Anna. I mean, my initial thought is since the thick packages are relatively rare, that having the Q-Track of, we're probably not saving a ton of paper and having the Q-Track of who wants it and who doesn't might be more worth than just printing out nine copies, but if you feel differently, I'm happy to save paper. I appreciate that, but it will also not be hard for me to get all of your preferences and accommodate you. Yeah, so if you want to let Anna know that you don't want hard copies. Yeah, great. I'll connect with all of you then. Yeah, perfect. Thank you for bringing that up. Our students are not here today. Okay. And did we? We had a vote on this. All right, so we are fast-forwarding to your grandstallite, your budget. And the warning of the vote. We're skipping the busing. No, where was the busing? Underneath the students. We can be grand first. Okay, I just thought of where it was. No, let's talk about busing, sorry. Okay, so Andrew is not here. We had a little miscommunication, but I can talk about this as well. So as most of you know, when we were picking up students from Main Street Middle School in the afternoon, the 15-minute period of time there has caused some consternation in the community. And so we continue to, we're continuing to look at this. The plan that was suggested to us by, I believe the chief police, but in the meeting that I had with the chief police of fire, the idea was suggested, could we have the buses come through Peck Place, which is a little tiny street right behind Middle School, through the playground out the basketball courts and out, pick up the kids on the playground out Main Street. So I had Andrew, we had to hire an engineer anyway to look at the basketball court because that's part of the capital project is to get the drainage fixed and things on the basketball court. So an engineer was already coming out to look at that space. So I asked Andrew to add it to the engineer's docket and to look at the playground space in general and can it hold the weight of buses on that or would we have to do significant work to that area in order to hold the weight of buses. So Don McLean, he's a resident from Liberty Street, lives right near J. Nichols. Can't remember him. Okay, I'm on failure folks. The first name's Don. Don came out and looked at it a couple different times by himself. Gave us a very large number. Said, yeah, we can make this work. This is what is going to cost you in order to make it work. And then on Monday, Andrew, myself, Don, Zach from the Department of Public Works here in Montpelier and Glenn, the head custodian over at Main Street, were out there for about an hour and a half at 7.30 in the morning looking at just the area in general. And it was great to be out there then because there were snow banks and there was some logistics that we wouldn't have thought of had we not been out there in the middle of winter. So we were looking at, we had Stacey Emerson, too, coming from the bus garage but she unfortunately got sick so she couldn't make it. So we were looking at could the bus make that turn? What would we have to do to the property? And overwhelmingly the group decided we just couldn't make this happen. If it's like tomorrow where it's supposed to snow all day, we don't have the capacity to keep the snow away. We wouldn't have the capacity to be able to plow it out. We'd have very large snow banks throughout the winter in the middle of our playground and virtually make three quarters of that playground, which is very small in the first place, be not usable for kids because they would have to go through the basketball court and all that kind of stuff. And it just wouldn't work. I mean, thankfully we were there in the winter and it's just not going to work. And it was extraordinarily expensive to make that. And we could make the bus turn. We could get through Peck Place. We could do all of that. We could pick up all the kids there. That's not the issue. But when you look at the logistics of that operation and what we have the capacity for and what the Department of Public Works has the capacity for, the group just decided this was not a way that we could go forward. I'm happy to keep going with that investigation. However, I think there's a lot of things that we have to overcome in order to make that work. So we're back to having to figure out the best place to pick up kids, not directly on our school property. The building committee is asking that as a question. So I look at Tina and Andrew. The building committee has asked that, you know, that's a need that the school has. We're looking at needs and assets of the building right now. So that is part of the Main Street Middle School building committee work as like, this is a need. That's what listed on there. Place for safe drop pickup at the end of the day. We were talking about Franklin Street. The one right next to the middle school. Franklin Street has no parking on one side of it. And up to the first driveway, we were literally out there pacing out buses. We could fit three buses, we believe, there on Franklin Street without blocking one driveway at a three at a time. But then going to block the street. Yeah. The whole street of Franklin Street? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For the 15 minutes of picking. Well, it would be longer. So that is the only other feasible option that we could come up with besides Cross Street is that if you park three buses there, we'd have to change our routine at the end of the day because you can't let walkers go then. You can't just let all the kids go because now you have buses that you have to compete with. So if we change the logistics at the end of the school day, which is a possible thing to do, we would have three buses at a time, the same three buses get there first, get to Union first, Drive Order Main Street, and three buses get to Union, Drive Order Main Street. It makes the bus pick up considerably longer. So Franklin Street would be blocked off for a longer period of time. And it would block the street because you have to have the red lights flashing. And then the third option is to continue with Cross Street the way it is. So as I said on Monday at the building committee, because we were talking about this, there is no good answer. There is no great spot or perfect solution to this. So it's really what's the best of the worst that influences the least amount of people. And I'm not sure between Cross Street or Franklin Street if there is a least amount of people. I think it's an equal, it's an equal challenge. I mean, I'm trying to picture this. Since I walked here all the time, but just what occurred to me is the fact that the three buses on Franklin Street wouldn't block a driveway, it doesn't seem particularly relevant since you wouldn't be able to use the street. You'd have to go up around. Well, you can't go the other way. Is it too dark? You can drive. You can go across to North Street. Oh, right. Okay, so you can go out that way. Which is how the buses would have to leave to get out of there. And why it is important is if you're one of the people that can't get out of your driveway because the bus is blocking your driveway on Cross Street, that would be important. Right, no. No, I was just trying to imagine the Franklin Street. If you could use the unblocked driveway anyway. There was one driveway that looks blocked, but exact because he was in his public works uniform. Actually went down the driveway and that driveway exits out Main Street. So the one driveway that appears to be blocked actually isn't because they can access Main Street through a different direction. So the other challenge though is that you have three buses there and the other three buses are either on their way or they are on blocking Liberty waiting for the three buses on Franklin to leave. So there is a challenge with timing. There's six buses? There's six buses. And they all go to the middle school. Yes. So that's a... The police and fire have already told us that Liberty would double-sided parking and especially in the winter with a snow bank that that is a non-starter. Yeah, not do that. So there's no way to have them like swap like three at Union, three at Middle and then the three go to the other places so that they're essentially taking up the same amount of time. I think that that would cut. We would have probably about a half-hour dismissal schedule then it would take a pretty good chunk out of academic time. We can... I'm not saying it's not possible. You know, we could do that. However... Did they load on the street now? Yes. We load the middle schoolers on Cross Street. So the buses drive up on Cross Street. The kids are there. Get on the bus and they leave. It's about a 15-minute process. And once... How does it compare to the pickup at Union? Because I'm always... It is the exact same as the pickup at Union. In terms of the disturbance in the neighborhood? Oh, no. I think the disturbance at the Union is much more. Because at Union... The disturbance at Union is more? Yeah, at Union you're blocking out Park Street which isn't a huge challenge because there are not too many houses on Park Street but you're blocking out Park Street. I know you did. But at Union, the added challenge is that you have a considerable amount of parents as I know... I know you know because I've seen you in the line picking kids up from school streets. So at Union pickup, not only is Park Street blocked off, but pretty much all of School Street is blocked off because of parents not buses. And so there is more challenge at Union except it's been happening for... People are used to it. However it's long and people are used to it and it's just the way it is. So we're blocking... The district is blocking a considerable more amount of houses at Union than at Main Street. But it's important to know or to know rather that this has been going on for a long time at Union Elementary School and this change at Main Street Middle School, this is new. It's what I'm trying to figure out. I think we probably, as it's really probably city administration, probably the school board, everybody probably could have done a little bit better job of doing some outreach at the front of this with regard to those residents in that area. And so that's something that we discussed with those residents and we've been discussing with those residents quite a bit as part of the building committee, the Main Street Middle School building committee. They've really been the only members of the public who have been engaged and that's really... We're happy to have their engagement but that's really the only issue that they have articulated concern about. So we might consider, as we go forward, to have more of a discussion with all of the community members that surround that building because maybe they have an idea that we haven't thought of. I'm not trying to just miss any concern I'm trying to see if we've created a situation at Middle School that's comparatively different than what is different. It is less destructive at Main Street Middle School than it is for the neighborhood that surrounds you in elementary school. But it is a new challenge. But it is a new disruption for them. Yes, absolutely. So we're going to keep talking about this. I just wanted to... Andrew and I were talking and said we should probably prize the board about the fact that the Peck Place option is not an option. I just don't see it being feasible in the public works department to see it being feasible either in terms of keeping that clear for buses too bad because I was thinking that... That's exactly what we were talking about. It's just sad. Yeah. And the plowing that would eliminate basketball and things like that. So it's a conundrum and a challenge that we're going to still work on. Okay. Well, thanks for giving us a little bit. Any other questions or comments? So, Grant, something earlier than anticipated, but... I didn't bring any hard copies because there's only a handful of slides that changed. So we sent it out to you. Oh, the lights. Is there... Thanks, Dan. So, I'm going to just skip to the slides. This whole thing will be presented... will be posted on the website, but there's only a few slides I wanted to go over. So I'm going to start with changes. From the last meeting to now, the only thing that changed is equalized pupil count. And I wish I could say it changed because this is the final number, but it isn't. So we did get a count from the AOE. Our numbers are in, but the count came in at just under 1,240. And if you recall, I've been using 1,245, or at least that's what I used the last time. So it was lower than what we expected. And whenever I dug into it a little bit, I found that there's an ELL tab for English language learners. And on that tab, I looked up Montpelier and Roxbury, and there were no kids listed. Zero. We've got, like, 61, I think. So I thought, oh, great, this is still another problem unique to us. But then I started looking up and down, and it's not unique to us. There are a bunch of school districts that have zero ELL kids on the sheet that should have ELL kids. It's a big deal because there's a waiting factor for ELL. So one ELL student is actually weighted as 1,2 students. So those kids are in our data that got submitted, but they're just not designated as ELL. So we're only getting credit for one instead of 1,2 for each one of those kiddos. So we just got an email or I just got an email from the AOE today saying, no, you're not going to get a new equalized, frozen equalized pupil number today, nor tomorrow, nor this week. Maybe next week you will. Maybe not. Because they now are trying to figure out what all the districts need to do to submit their data in a way that the statewide longitudinal data system can pick it up and plug it in. So it will be a while, but we can kind of make our good estimate on this. If there's 61 kids times a waiting factor of 0.2, that's 12.2 kids that should be added, and we know the number was just under 1240. So you'll see on a slide later I've upped our equalized pupil count from 1245 to about 1251 or 1252. I'll forget, you'll see in a minute. I think that's a pretty stable number. I don't think it will adjust by much. The reason why I can't get it nailed down exactly is because the AOE will throw some equalizing ratio, some percentage against everybody's numbers, and I have no idea what that's going to be. It might drop down a little bit, which would make everybody's numbers come down a little bit, unless I'm not seeing something, I think the equalized pupil count that I've got on the slides that's factored into the warning should be very close. And in the warning itself, it says words like estimated, projected. So I'm not worried as long as we're close, and I think we are close. So the next slide I wanted to skip to is this at-a-glance slide. So you can see now, instead of 12.45, I'm using a number that's almost 12.52. And while that's still an estimate, it should be pretty darn close. So when you plug that number in, and this goes up by almost seven kids, then this number, of course, went down. I think it was 1,7060 last time, so the spending for pupil came down about $100. And now it's a 3.77 increase, instead of I think it was 3.... Well, I've got it written down here, but I can't see it because it's too dark in here. 4.34 is what it used to be. So that slide changed. And then I'm really going to skip way forward and go to the tax rate calculation, because none of these, obviously, have changed at all. I didn't change any expenses or revenues. Grant, you got an estimate from the state on the yield, and that happened before they discovered that they were missing a lot of bodies? No, the yield shouldn't really play into equalized pupil counts, because equalized pupil counts is really just shifting the counts around. So they know how many kids there are in Vermont. That's why there's this equalizing ratio, because everybody gets these factors weighed in. And so you may have 1,100 kids, but your equalized pupil count initially comes out at like 1,200. And then the AOE will multiply that by 0.93 to get you back down to 1,100 real kids. So the ED fund isn't just divided by the number of equalized pupils. It's actually to get yield. It's actually then neutralized effectively. The ED fund is going to be looking at the education spending number this 21,240. That's much more complex than I recall. And so now this residential tax rate, you've got the new equalized pupil count. I already told you about how that impacts this. The yield that Steve's talking about, this 11,000, the tax commissioner's recommendation was 10,883. Initially, I was thinking maybe I would drop this back down to 11,000 to the tax commissioner's recommendation because we're hearing a lot about the statewide health negotiations might cause some districts to see some increase in their expenses. Some significant, not so much us because of how we already had our health plan in place. But some districts weren't offering health plans to all employees or all health plans to all employees. So there may be some higher cost. So initially people were thinking, well, that might drive up the ED fund and that might cause this dollar yield to have to go down some. But internet sales tax revenue is up significantly, like $8 million. So the last time I had a conversation with a friend of mine at the AOE, he projected that the yield would go up from the tax commissioner's recommendation. So because of that, I left it at 11,000. As Steve and I were talking about before the meeting started, a lot of times we go with the recommendation, we go to town meeting, we show them what the tax rate calculation comes out at, and then through the legislative process, the dollar yield ends up getting set higher. Tax rates are even lower than what you told the public it was going to be. So I think 11,000 is really my best guess at what this would be. And I wanted to basically give what I think the best estimate of a tax rate would be. Can I just add one thing to that, just so everyone's aware, the sales and use tax now goes entirely to the ed fund. And that change occurred as the Supreme, around a similar time that the Supreme Court ruled that states could collect sales tax on remote sales into their state, which is how a lot of retail is occurring these days, via online sellers. And so that revenue that Graham was just talking about the online sales, that's a new thing the state's able to get. And also because that happened at the same time, the sales and use tax was shifted to the ed fund, that's helping to relax the pressure on property tax rates a little bit. So I think we've got about as good a guess as we can get on a lot of these. What did come in, I think we talked about the last time the CLA's came in, I was pretty close on Montpelier, I think it was maybe three percent off what the action number came in. We talked about it last time in Roxbury, I was taken off guard because the CLA actually went up by 0.5, which was shocking because it dropped almost six percent last year. So for it to turn around and go up. But there are not a lot of houses in Roxbury. So if there's a few sales that take place that could really swing things. So it works out great for the tax rate for Roxbury and I did want to give you some context this box at the bottom. What that's telling you is if the CLA was identical in FY 21 to what it was in 20. Meaning if in Montpelier it was still 89.67 percent the tax rate would be 5.4 cents lower than what it is. So the tax rate is going up 8.4 cents in Montpelier 5.4 of the 8.4 is because the CLA dropped from 89 to 87 or 89.7 to 86.9. But anyhow, this I think is as good as we can get right now and probably will be as good as it gets for quite a while because I don't think we're going to get an equalized pupil number until at the earliest maybe the end of next week and we do have to get our articles done and information submitted to the municipalities for the annual reports. I updated this. The Roxbury numbers didn't change at all. Montpelier changed a little bit. That was a $94 increase because it was 9.4 cents. Now it's 8.4. So the Montpelier impacts have changed a little bit. I did say that the numbers could change slightly based on a final equalized pupil count. It could also change based on a dollar yield getting set differently at the end of the legislative session. I think there was two or three more slides. I updated this tax rate history slide too just to put in the latest numbers. And once again this is just trying to call out that if you look at FY 18 compared to FY 21 without CLA being factored in Montpelier's tax rate is 2.6 cents lower in FY 21 projected to be 2.6 cents lower in FY 21 than it was in FY 18. If you look at Roxbury 26 cents lower without in the CLA as a factor. In Roxbury even when you factor in CLA it's still lower the 1.716 versus 1.0 so it's 10.6 cents lower in Roxbury the actual tax rate. While in Montpelier of course once you factor in the CLA which is dropping every year it's actually like a 10.6 cent increase and as Andrew pointed out at the last meeting you look at that 10.6 cents across three years that's 6.6% increase if you divide that by three years that's a 2.2% increase in actual tax rate per year 2.2 is well below inflation so I think we're doing pretty good as far as controlling the tax rate as much as we can. The budget summary slide is a little different now so I updated the numbers I think the ad spending number is still the same yeah it would be still 4.7 but the increase in per pupil spending now is 3.8 instead of 4. something because of the increase in equalized pupils and then just the tax rates is based on these things pupil counts statewide dollar yield CLA Montpelier right now has a 5.1% increase but the majority of it is really associated with CLA if we didn't have to factor in CLA it would be a 1.8% increase in the actual tax rate Roxbury of course is decreasing 5.5% it would decrease even more but while we're getting that 2 cent it's now what 6 cents that merger incentive that tax rate break while you're getting that tax rate break you can only decrease your tax rate by 5% your equalized tax rate by 5% per year and since the CLA went up we actually see that number grow a little bit so instead of 5% it's 5.5 and then this would be time for questions before I get there though I just wanted to point out we are getting down to it so the recommendation is for a motion to approve the total budget of 25.3.24.090 which includes the 270 capital plan you will see two different numbers in the warning you'll see the number without the capital and then a separate article that's the capital because you have to do it that way but it's voted on all at the same time it's not a separate vote it is a separate article so it's two separate votes you can vote yes on just the overall budget and no on the general fund or vice versa it's a little wonky if somebody approves the capital without approving the budget but it can happen but do you mind folks that the tax rate includes the 270,000 it does it's not extra right so if you're okay with it that would be the motion to approve that budget and then also a motion to authorize the Board Chair to sign the warning which we sent that out to you as well and I believe there's a hard copy for Jim to sign if you approve that but now after that we can go back and circle to any kind of questions that anybody has I mean I know we've gone through the numbers the expenses the revenues but we're really just down to now kind of tax rate type stuff so if there's any questions or concerns I can try to address them at this time thank you Graff questions concerns comments I don't have a question but my concern is over a 5% increase in the budget I think is too much I mean it's already taxed a lot I will say that I am sensitive to that sentiment and I was very anxious about this budget but I thought it was important to look at the numbers over time and we look at from FY 15 to FY 20 5 fiscal years our tax rates in Montpelier related to education rose 4.7% so that and in some of those years they actually decreased it's over a 5-year period 4.7% that reflects deferred maintenance and a lot of needs that weren't being met and when I look at inflation over the same period that we're looking at if we look at just FY 15 to FY 20 when we had that 4.7% increase inflation went up 8.66% during that period so that means that our tax rates and our per pupil spending was roughly in line with those tax rates too our per pupil spending and our tax rates were less than inflation by you know and almost half yeah, almost half of that and so yeah this is a big year 5.1% I'm super sensitive to tax payers and other burdens but when I look at FY 15 to FY 21 that's a cumulative 10.1% increase and when we look at actual inflation and projected inflation based on the state economist projections inflation is looking like 11.2% so we're still looking at our tax rates being behind inflation by 1.1% and our per pupil spending is even less than our tax rates we're looking at 9.55% increase in per pupil spending over a 6 year period which is so less than 10% over a 6 year period which when you put it in that context and when you look at some of the needs in our district we're doing well on many levels I think it is important to keep that context in mind from a financial standpoint this is a good argument if you're basically pacing inflation you're just keeping up and I think we've made a lot of great strides in the district in a budget context that I think a lot of people would say is just keeping pace with inflationary needs Michelle I think the 3.8% per pupil spending is great that's the bottom line of what we need to be looking at is the per pupil amount and a 3.8% increase I think is justified I mean I'm very comfortable justifying it and I think people will be comfortable supporting it I'm sensitive to the tax increases too but I think it's a very responsible budget I also feel that you know we had a few years where actually a year a couple years where at least one year two years where our tax rate actually decreases two years yeah so when you put it in an overall trajectory it's it's part of a responsible very responsible budget during the story I move to approve the budget of $25,324,090 including the $270,000 capital fund second all is in favor aye aye any opposed I'm opposed eyes have it I move that we authorize the board chair to sign the morning all is in favor second oh sorry all is in favor aye any opposed yeah passes as well congratulations don't say that yet yeah I'm sorry thank you thank you I know you thought it through and made some choices I don't know I think it's a good budget for the kids and well now it's our job to sell it to the community do we need support from Grant or Libby to reduce talking points or I think they certainly would be appreciated do we all feel confident in distilling it from presentations I think some talking points would be great if you want to vote for the community and I would like to do an update as well last year we in the annual reports I think it was last year that we started this we did kind of a budget overview a narrative of budget overview like a one page thing which I think last year was the first year we did that so I need to do that anyhow for the annual report so I'll give that to Libby and of course and you'll be doing the superintendent's report as well so we might start with those two documents to see if they come close to what we need and then if you need something beyond that that's more basic or bulleted then we can certainly work on that yeah that would be great if you can have something like that we could probably turn it into talking points because we can distribute it to community members so they understand the context and what's in the budget and it's always very helpful I appreciate as always your tenacity that so we are well ahead of schedule which is good so the next motion is for executive sessions or personnel so we don't need a special motion just a motion for executive sessions if you want to make it sure I move that we enter executive session for the purpose of conducting personnel evaluation second sounds like a motion all those in favor thank you