 and time's future, I hope to, as well as two gentlemen who will be, although not much. 1.2, Agenda revisions, there are several. I suppose taking them in order, what I would like to do if there are no objections, is pull 9.2, Cross Vermont Trail Project from Board of Operations up to 1.5 bottom HEP fiber, so as to not make Great Western sit around for too long. The second Agenda revision that I would, and sorry, no objections, correct? Okay. Second Agenda revision I'd like to suggest is inserting, I think it would make sense perhaps under, when we get to policy, inserting an action item relating to what I sent around, renewing Washington Central's Supervisory Union's 2017 decision to join the amicus brief in favor of grim versus Gloucester, and we can talk about that in greater detail when we get to it. So that would be 7.2, amicus. I would like also to, oh, sorry, no objection, I hope? No, great. I'd like also to add an executive session about 15 minutes at the very end per Title I, Section 313-3, regarding evaluation of an employee in the event, Deborah. This is a check-in for us, I hope? Any objection? None? Great. Okay, and I might just at this point make an announcement that after adjournment of this meeting, Floor and Jonas and I will get together with Deborah in open session if anybody cares or wants to stick around for it after our executive session to just plan out the next meeting's agenda, the December 4 meeting agenda. So just so that's clear, that's happening after everything else is done and we're adjourned. Public comments, oh, sorry, I'm sorry. But so having said that, and the Westergaard agenda, the meeting's on December 4, maybe can you assign to it to be a timekeeper? Floor, thank you so much. Is George, George isn't here? No, he isn't here. Does anybody want to volunteer to be a timekeeper? There aren't times on here, so how is that? Yeah, at the beginning you can say, it's just so nice of her to talk. Yeah, at the beginning of the agenda item, I'll just arbitrarily decree it. As far as agenda provisions, under finance, I'd like to discuss the bill that's in the warrant for elections based on some of the minutes from past meetings and that I didn't see a resolution and yet I saw bills, so I wanted to discuss that. Is it better for finance or for board orders? Oh, I didn't know where to begin. In finance? Okay. In direct finance. We have it as part of our finance. Okay, I just wanted to make sure that's discussed as the warrant's going around. Okay, very good, thank you. All right then, ready for public comments. Are there any public comments? Not at this point, okay, you're very welcome nonetheless. So next up is David Healy with CV Fiber and I think Keith will also be a kind of discrescent on this, to understand, you're looking at about 15 minutes. Oh, is that all right? Sure. Great. I want some questions as well. Anyway, my name's David Healy, I'm from Calis. I'm the Calis Delegate to the CV Fiber Board and what is CV Fiber? Many of you who were at Tom meeting in March of 18, it was votes in most towns to join and not join a central online internet group which is called a communications union district which is a municipal entity, similar to a fire district or whatever. It can get municipal bond money but it can't get anything under the property tax. So that's the way a municipal entity works. It's not taxing authority. So anyway, and so it's under state statute and it's basically community-run, community-developed. A mission that we adopted this way up last year was provide central online residents, businesses, civic institutions with universal access to a reliable, secure, locally-owned and government communications network able to grow to meet future community needs. I think we're pretty aware in the organization that educational institutions need a lot of bandwidth in their internet and so we're hopefully going to be partnering with you folks as we go forward with what we're doing. And our success, we're hoping to model our organization after an organization in East Central Vermont called EC Fiber, which there was a lot of skepticism that they'd be able to pull off if they did. They now have Fiber at every premise in 23 towns in East Central Vermont. So Royalton, Randolph, Barnard, all those towns now have Fiber at the home and they did it on their own. So that's our emulating model, anyway. Current status of where we are, it's been, as you well know, as a volunteer-guided organization. It's a lot of work and very little time you donate to it. But in any event, we're moving forward. We've got a community survey out there which, if you haven't seen, posted on your front porch forum. Actually, how many people have taken the survey? A lot, so we still have a lot to talk about what we should do. Just to let you know, a little competition here, 21% of middle-sex residents have filled it in. Followed by Worcester with 17% of residents. Calis is at 13. Berlin is at like five. And East Montpelier, I think, is about 10. So there's a lot of work we still have to do to get people engaged. But we'll also be doing a survey in the next month of businesses and organizations, slightly different kinds of questions to find out what people's needs are, what organizations needs are, including schools. We are, in the last year, we received three grants for planning. One from Think4Mont, which is the state agency of Commerce and Community Development for $12,500. We got a USDA World Development, Business Planning Grant for $25,000. And then just this week, we got a $60,000 grant from the state's Department of Public Service, a broadband innovation grant. So we're combining all those monies to put out, we put out an RFP about two weeks ago to do a feasibility study first and then a business plan second, because that's the way the state's grant wants it done. If we have a successful business plan, if we have a successful feasibility study, we're eligible to borrow up to $4 million from the Vermont Economic Development, which we get us going. And I can tell you that $4 million will build about 120 miles of fiber. So it's a pretty expensive proposition. The estimates I've done per town is like Cal City, about $3 million to run fiber down the network. And that's not connecting to your house, that's getting it down to your get-to-your-house. So we're hoping to have the studies completed by the end of the summer this year, 2020, and then doing the first phase construction sometime in 2021. So it's a ways out there, unless there's a golden egg that drops on us in some form or another from any of the federal discussions in the next election is a lot about broadband. And so there may be more money available in the next few years to advance what we're doing. But first off, we need to be successful at the first project and that'll lead to the next one. I have a lot of slides that I have information on that I'd be happy to provide to Keith so you could put it up on the... Or if he'd like to email it to me, I can distribute it out. That'd be great. And because there's a lot of data here and some of it's useful, some of it's not so useful depending on who you are. But if you haven't taken the survey, I actually have some with me if you don't wanna go online. But it is a web survey as well. And so we're encouraging as many people to fill it in as possible. So if there are any questions, I'll be happy to answer them. I know part of our approach, we want to encourage this as a community-based effort. We also have to look at the needs of the school and dovetail them. And I think this is what Keith has been thinking about. And I wonder if this would be a good time for you, Keith, to just sort of... So I can talk a little bit about it. David and I actually had a discussion. Oh, sorry, just a moment, please. Excuse me. For the, in the boards and the handout that you have, I'm very, very back with your packet. Here's a memo from Keith and I that summarizes where the school district is with our fiber pursuits. So just leave it as something to refer to. Excuse me for interrupting. We have the memo. We just got it today, so we'll make that a show. So certainly you can refer back to that but I can also speak to it briefly. So we are looking right now at moving forward for next year, trying to do basically a wide area network configuration for our network services to provide internet to all the schools and connectivity between the schools. Right now there is a significant disparity between some of the schools in terms of the bandwidth they have available. A lot of that has to do with the service that has been available in those communities up until recently. But we are going to basically go out to bid through the e-rate process. I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with that. It's basically federal funding. We get up to 60% of our services reimbursed through the e-rate program. So this sort of dovetails into what David is talking about. And I've spoken to both David and Jeremy Hansen who is one of the founders of CB fiber. He lives in Berlin. I'm sorry? And lives in Berlin. And lives in Berlin. Yes. No family. So I think this could dunk you nicely into that. I think given the timeline that they're working on, like you said, we sort of need to look right now at what the schools need and what we need to do. But I think sort of in the near future, this would be a short-term solution. And then CB fiber is successful and standing on service and can provide that. And I think we absolutely will not get part of it very much. The, in terms of service capacity around bandwidth, Worcester is one of the worst places in all of Vermont. Middle sex isn't doing great. And so there's a lot of need here. And I think that's why the survey results of what they were is a reflection of that. And I think it's important in terms of equitable access that every household have access. So, yes. That's great. How great is all services? I know all services. Yeah. Is it fair to say that we as a board are interested in, of course, developing what we can for the school on the timetable that suits the needs of our schools and students with the longer range idea of mainstreaming into CB fiber when it comes online? Is that? Well, I think saying we support CB fibers work and what they're doing in order to have more equitable access to internet is important. I would thank you. I can also work with Washington Electric Co-op as well. So, much of the things coming together. So I have a question. Did you say that there is a significant difference amongst the schools in terms of bandwidth? In terms of what? And explain what the difference is. Is there any short-term solution to that that we can take now, disparity of access in passage? That's wrong. You can say that's not correct. But if it is correct, is there anything you can do in short-term to improve that for the schools that don't have as good access? I think there's always something we could do. I think it would be a matter of cost. And I think the cost could be fairly significant for not much being the unfortunate piece of that. We did bump up all the schools from last year in terms of the bandwidth that's available. So I am hopeful that that will mitigate some of that for this year. Certainly in the future, this is a lot to use to provide those services. It's not something that I've looked into extensively, but just sort of knowing what the services cost and what is available out there right now to respect the cost. It is something to do with this. I mean, what is it that's not as accessible? What is it? So it's basically a question of data. It's how much data can you push through that connection? To cover it at the same time. So if you had 20 kids through the video, could you support that or would you be using so much of that connection that it would be pausing or not loading or things like that? What is the difference between the different schools that some don't have as much of a problem with that as others do? Are you asking why? Yeah. It has to do mostly with the infrastructure and the data motivated. So is it infrastructure in the school or outside of the school? Outside of the school. So what are the services that are available? Who's reselling them? What are those services to the building cost? The schools are fairly similar in some way in terms of the network infrastructure in the building. So Eastmont Pillar and Berlin are closer to sort of more central hubs. And then the other schools, Calis, Dode and Romney, are further out and you'll find that residents in those communities also don't have as many options. I'm a Calis resident and I have very limited options. I have basically one carrier that I can get fairly limited made with where I live. So it's really a question of infrastructure out into the buildings themselves. The timekeeper is giving me the nod. One question I had is whether it would be possible to encourage families through the newsletters, families and school children to fill out the survey to see if that might bump up. Yes, I think that would be a problem for our principals to include on. I'll work with you to get the verbiage and the link if you could provide that. I know it's on front porch form already. And I think front porch form, if it can be re-entered periodically to bring people's attention because we only reach about 20% of the community because that's about the number of our citizens who have children in schools. So using front porch form more regularly is a really good way to get to all others individually. But certainly. Okay, many, many thanks. I appreciate it. Good luck to you. Yeah. Greg? Hello, I'm Greg West from the Rostroman Trail Association. Also with the infrastructure network topic, we've obviously been working for years on the regional bike path network or multi-use non-motorized path network. Our specific project for many years now which is on schedule to start construction next year pending sufficient funding. We have permitting now and other things are in line, the engineering, which is to extend the Montpelier bike path, which just extended out to the Allison Hill Road. And then theoretically starting next spring, we would continue that up to the school, U32, and then down back down the hill, a bridge over the Winooski River where the old Montpelier Wells River Railroad across the river would run out alongside the river parallel to Route 2 to just before Vermont Country Campers cross route to there go up the hill to Route 14 near where the Humane Society is. And then starting there, the old rail that is still exists and is a public trail now. And so that's the idea is to connect the Montpelier bike path across up to U32 and all the way across East Montpelier. So we would connect at least some neighborhoods in East Montpelier Village directly to the school and a M1 family lives on the trail route whose child is like three now. And they told me by the time she's in seventh grade, we have to be done. So that's the timeline. We, again, like I say, our active 50 permit and all the other permits are just about done supposedly the next few days. We finished a very extensive B trans mandated design process which is now concluded. And because that took a while, the costs have gone up, especially the cost of steel because of tariffs and things. And so we had a federal grant which was received a number of years ago to pay for this trail up to the school and bridge over the river and all this stuff. And then we had to raise a local match for that and all of the towns in the U32 school district in the last couple years had voted to make a contribution to the local match as well as many hundreds of local citizens to make donations, things like that. But because the costs have gone up, we need to apply for more federal funding. And the grant program that we're applying to is the Transportation Alternatives grant program which is federal highway funding. It's due on Friday, so I'll be submitting it then. And normally one of the requirements of the grant, the reason I'm here tonight, one of the requirements of the grant application is that that be announced to the community at a publicly advertised meeting. So I thought the school board would be a logical public meeting for that. And also, while I'm here, to ask if the school board could, and then I have to give them the minutes which I know won't be available by Friday, but you know, they know that too. So once the minutes are available, I'll pass on the minutes to prove that we did the meeting. And since I'll be reading the minutes, I thought that might be a chance if it is something you'd be able to do, would be to confirm the past action of the board to support the creation of this trail. And just something obviously the school has donated trail easement to us to allow the construction and so on. And so if that were all, in the minutes that you were confirming your support of the project and that you think is good for the school, the folks reviewing the grant don't have it right in front of their faces. Yeah, it's coincidentally, the chair of the U32 board at the time that we took that action is sitting right next to you. Oh. I had to read everything. And I think we did it twice. Yeah, at least, yeah. Over the last 10 or 12 years we did design. So that's really exciting. Yeah, so just to get clear, some kind of confirmation. Yeah. Form of confirmation, as in a vote, is that? Yeah, just something that would show in the minutes. Yeah, this is sort of, here we go, acting on the fly. If you're, if the board members are comfortable, again, reaffirming decisions that have been made by predecessor boards in support of the Cross Vermont Trail system and it's running through U32. I would just, so the board knows what all we did. One of the things I think that's really important to note is that our attorneys, their attorneys got together. I mean, this was, so the easement rights because it's gonna be an accessible path from the school down to the river to where the trail is. And so there was, there's a lot of back and forth, but our board did approve the easement and several other features that are a part of the trail because it's gonna be on our property for a very little distance on the U32 property. Yeah. And so it's, but our property will also be an access point to the trail from our parking area. And so that's with signage that directs people there as well. So I think that, just so you know what we're doing. So is the easement already granted? Yeah. All that's in place from your previous board. Well, but it doesn't undo what it's done before. That's true. I'm happy to reaffirm what you just asked, if you were taking any substance of action. No. Yeah. This new board supports what was decided at a previous board. Right. So, what'd you like to make a move on? We have to reaffirm the prior action taken by the U32 board to provide an easement to the bike path. Cross Vermont Trail Project. Cross Vermont Trail Project as corrected by Mindy. Oh, second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? And opposed. Great. Thank you. And the minutes will reflect this. Okay. Should we put that in bold? No. Big font. Thank you again. Thanks very much. I guess we have, yeah, nothing more on any of agenda items one, agenda category one. So, then we move on to spotlight on Casey. Well, thank you all for being here. We're excited to be able to sing in your company. We are going to be doing a tour tonight, but I will be watching my clock to make sure that we're tackling with this. So we'll try to be brief. I'll make just a couple of quick statements in our classrooms and get us back here in a timely manner. But we're excited to have you here. We're going to head back to the lobby and we're going to start with our primary wing. And then we'll come back to our second intermediate secondary wing and then we'll finish here in the cafeteria auditorium. So, follow me to the lobby. So, thank you very much Casey. That was great. It was also a very nice stretch of our legs and circulated tent and along with our incirculation through our beautiful school. Congratulations. I'm back anytime. Oh, thanks. So, 3.0 then, book reflection. I understand Alicia. Hi. Hi. Thank you for everyone who forgot your book. Explain the protocol. I think Deborah sent it to you, but it was a while ago that we were excited to do this. We're going to do it tonight on chapter four, five and six, but I've also turned it out of hard copies of all of your notes that you took from your highlights and quotes from the book in case you want to use those for the protocol. We're going to get into small groups and I'm going to ask if a member of the leadership team can be described. We're going to use chart paper and we're going to describe. We're going to put your four rounds in a small group and I'll go over what those look like in all time. We have five minutes for each round and I'll let you know when it's time to move on to the next round. So, the first round will be called the four A's. Scott. Alicia. So, sorry to interrupt. It's okay. I just wonder if we can maybe invite members of the public who are here to sit in on one or another of the groups as they choose. You're more than welcome. So, the four A's text protocol is a protocol we use a lot in schools when we're talking about a text and I thought this might be a helpful one especially because we're covering three pretty hefty chapters and in a pretty condensed conversation. So, the first five minutes are just what assumptions do you think this author makes? And you may want to pick some of your assumptions from your own quotes that you picked out or you might want to just pick them on the chapters. What are some things that you agree with in these three chapters that the author has said and again you might only use some of the quotes or write directly from the text. The third five minutes, what in there do you want to argue with? What do you question or disagree with or want to argue with? Because of course we don't always agree with everything every author has to say. And then the final round, what parts of the text do you want to aspire to? And really this is the conversation with the board. What do you want to aspire to or act upon as a board? So, I will go over just who is in each group and then if you're welcome to spread out anywhere if you want to stay at tables, if you want to stand and stick the chart paper to the walls entirely up to you. I think we've had everyone but I was looking for what were to write this down and there was one in there but you'll see it with the top, your names. So, group one is Lori Scott, Vera Kelly India. And group two, Floor George is not here. So, Floor Erin Keith and Jovi. Over here, group three, Jonas, Giles, Jen and Casey. And then group four is Chris Lindy, Deborah Steven and group five, Dorothy, Maryland, Bill or Cat. Oh, Bill is not here either, Cat and Gillian. So, if you want to get up and move around, find your chart paper there for the scribes. There are markers and there's packets of the quotes and find a place where you're comfortable. In about two minutes, I will let you know when we'll be back. Amina, would you mind holding this so I can write? Sorry. The one assumption is that it's possible. Yeah, that's you. Okay, I'll move over. Oh no. No, that's right. I'll just go get a coffee. Community engagement is key. Yeah, key. To success or just key? Just key. Yeah, process. Oh, to the process, that's good. In fact, it reminds me of the work that we are trying to accomplish with our collection of information. You find it? In part of what I added was reflecting on page 42 and I'll just kind of paraphrase. So, increasing, I'm not sure of their role because community stakeholders are expecting boards to know everything about sister separations. And then the mandate board trainings, which kind of goes back to what our training will be. So the assumption is that the board has the information, not only that we, so not only assume that people make the same meeting from information, but that you get the information at the first place. That you have it in the first place. That we have it, yeah. And then you can have a dialect about it if you had any clarification and questions or things like that. So would this say, confidence in us about operations? Yeah, I just, really just like, it was talking about operations and also circular. Now comes really, I mean it's budget. I mean history doesn't know where I see it. Mm-hmm. Embeddedness also sounds like to me that you have to be making the assumption that we're doing things in the same way in all of the buildings. That's really cool work in progress, man. We just started. Hey. The last time we did this, which I think was a couple of meetings ago, having been through a bunch of the buildings, right? It seems like a lot of this is being done already. I think that he would benefit from the conversation this day. We need to have ground equity and have a common definition. And from that, I think we could sort of move forward. I don't agree with that. We do not have that. John, you agreed. So if you're going to make an assumption now, what do you agree with in the tech market? Awesome. How did you see that? From, you know, some people who are at least close to the student. And then I said, we're going to teach her to be honest. I don't know what to do with this. How about this? Do you have a record? All right. So they agreed. And then they added a little bit to the crowd. One of the things that I've enjoyed the most is the question of the day. I don't know. Or when monitoring just the preparation systems will be placed for the fourth official meeting. As well as the situation. Yeah. What page is that? 46. Thanks for giving us a choice there. There's a lot of, like, news women. What was the last one? Page 56. 46. 46. I argue. He's good. Laurie. What's the challenge? First, I want to ask you, Mia, if there's anything so far that you would argue with that's up there. No, I think those all make sense. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. In that case. Okay. I guess we can just... Yeah, we're not already. Yeah. We're... Yeah, we're right on time. Yeah. We're accelerated. Yeah. So, chapter five, page 53, one thing I would argue with, when a collaborative relationship exists between management and labor, what I argue with is not the collaborative relationship, but rather the categorization, management, labor. I would much prefer, say, administration and faculty or something like that. They change in board members. They'll change in student representation on the board. They change in administrators. How do you sustain this system or any system? How do you constantly retrain new people or train new people and retrain, you know, so that it's an inclusive environment? The thing I do argue with him, is that he reaches his conclusions without necessarily explaining the half. Yeah. He says, this will lead to this. Okay, explain how that happens. Okay. First, we're going to the superintendent writes the whole agenda. Yeah. What do you need to BLT? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How do you start? What does that mean? But that's not all that's difficult. So, in doing a treatment, what do you want to aspire to or act upon? What do you think? I don't know if in the future it would make sense to not have, like, just use a review to recognize on the board six groups or something. Think about aspiring to. It's something that you have pointed out that you already agree with. That highlighted it here. That on page 49 there's a paragraph about how a district can only be high-achieving when you have a courageous board and that their role of the board is not just about monitoring effectiveness, but creating a system of collaboration from all levels of business. And I think that's something that I would aspire to. Write her down. See she has to work. I want to show you're a very good timekeeper. Whenever you come over I feel like you're going to crack the whip and get right on top of it. So we have five more minutes, right? And then we'll debrief it. Ah, debrief? Okay. I'm going to take a quick back. Yeah. We don't have information built into this. No, that's true. Yeah, we need to have sort of biographs. At all levels. The four A's. But what I will do is I'll take the chart paper and I'll type these up and I'll share them out with everyone just so you can see what other groups talked about and some assumptions that they felt the author made or things that the groups talked about that they agreed with or maybe just didn't agree with. But I was thinking we could just open it up to anyone. So not putting any group or individual on the spot, but just thinking about what is this, what is your conversation, what does this mean for our work together, for your work as a board, and anything in relation to what you just all talked about and the conversations you had, some stayed strictly to the protocol and other conversations kind of veered off, but they were all really important conversations. So I just open it up to anyone. Yeah. I think for me anyway, our discussion built up to a climactic final chord of essentially the idea that what we aspire to is a system in which all stakeholders are able to work and study and learn and within a culture that allows for a sense of security and enough personal safety to allow for willingness to take risks and experiment and push boundaries and try new things. This is the part that allows for some excitement. Other thoughts? I think what Scott says echoes what our group talked about, recognizing the importance of relationships and that the board is a new group. The leadership team has new members on it, and so we're really not there yet. We're really not even close actually because there's so much newness and we talked about this idea of generating like a plan so how do we get from this state of newness and having this ideal of what we can be? What are the action steps that we can take to go from here to there? Thank you. Other? I'm sorry, we do little things so when we were doing this work I think that why that's exciting for me is that we have the opportunity to think that we're all establishing a school system as opposed to a system of schools and we still kind of have a system of schools so I think it's really exciting through this process we could be more equitable and provide more opportunities to all our students but create a system that we have right now for K or I guess we can't forget to graduate, right? So we have that if we put all this we have all the parts until we just need to put the system in place and do that through follow-up or diagram so I don't feel I went too far up but not far up we have a lot of work to do but that we have all the parts that we are able to create in the benefits of organizing ourselves Any final thoughts? We landed on the importance of a shared definition of equity the need to do more of the work to get more community involvement and community buy-in with what we're doing Thank you Kyle Thank you everyone for participating for getting up and moving around and taking this time I think it's helpful to capture it in writing to be able to look back on we talk about a lot in these chapters and there's a lot in them and it's helpful to go back and look at what these conversations were so thank you Thank you Alicia for your time discipline much appreciated Speaking of which we're hoping to we're shooting to end by 9 if we possibly can so I would with that advisory welcome Thank you very much We're moved to Chris seconds Approval of the minutes of November 6th 2019 Any comments? Corrections? Alright In that case ready for a vote? All in favor please say aye Any opposed? Not opposed? The minutes are approved Alright Now we have the board orders I don't know where those are Great We just need someone to make a motion with the amounts Should we do you want to So we're not voting Sure I was going to go as part of the finance but I can answer as part of our finance committee we're going to send an email to everyone all of the town clerks and everybody had the same opportunity after our last meeting to submit an 1% cost that they had seen as the advertisement cost and anything could cost from employees that were not part of the town clerk employees that they had to hire directly for the election there was no regular staff and then we had both East Montpelier and Mooster not submit anything to reach back to them but they had to post their books and they felt like they didn't hire anybody outside and Berlin still submitted a bill for $2,256 Calas were $1,560 and Middlesex was $370 After our little discussion we wanted to set a policy for after this but we wanted to have closure in this and there's one chapter and it felt like everybody had had the opportunity to submit so that's where we are I don't know Gloria you have something to add to that No I think Mr. Mooster had noted that they did but their books were closed and they felt like it was behind them always covered the cost of elections some of the costs were one time in nature for advertising that the schools used to pay it just the bill never got to this school before we closed the books in the old entity for advertising for the actual elections the schools usually pay for those I went back in minutes and found that we had never come up with I think it was October 16th board minutes said that Debra and Lori would be collecting information I mean it's been Yes, I was to the finance committee and that's where the discussion was so I don't feel like we ever as a board came up with how do we I mean justify these amounts or determine that if all five towns were doing this there's a pretty big discrepancy among them now the towns are different sizes so I was a little uncomfortable because as I looked through the minutes I saw nothing where we had decided on a system going forward or for this election there's never been anything like this in the past and I don't believe I have a copy with me but online you'd see our finance committee from the prior month after that I have that one so the finance committee had a conversation about what ought to be considered included within those bills we closed a flat payment of 500 for every one that's what I was reading from October 10 now maybe there was another one but the ones I found were October 10 and I think it says dot had proposed a flat payment of 500 for every school election and then there was discussion and no they needed more information to make up so it said that Lori had recommended the board solicited a corrected oh that was for the previous invoice and the full board will be that the district will pay for costs of additional elections of special elections I thought that was after the individuals who are employed they're not for example Townsworth but individuals they're called that are employed by Townsworth just for the election day or period that's what that was that Kevin was referring to specifically so you're correct we did not bring that conversation back to the board until this evening and it had been thoroughly researched and I believe it was the recommendation of the finance committee that the final bill revised will be brought forward for discussion it might be correct the only reason there on board order 2 is because if it was approved we did a lot of research so we did give guidance to Lori to go back and find out exactly who were we knew that we needed to be paid we had almost no voters as far as percentage across the thing I know we still have to be there we have to have everything set up I just was surprised to see it on the board warrant warrant and we felt like it was not up to us to question them so we said please provide to everybody with the same exact letter that please keep us just everyone that was not your regular staff that you had to employ for the election and then the advertisement cost that you had we didn't receive it specifically we received an amount from Berlin but it was not like by item the dates that I'm looking at are more for events that occurred February 19th, April 8th, April 9th June 21st, June 25th and those are the key dates and then there was an easement vote at Calis on April 23rd that a bill came in for that should have been received by the school district prior to us closing the Calis books and easement before the transfer of the property and that's part of that's a bill that typically the school would have paid for but that's not an election but that was an outstanding bill that the criteria that I was asked to solicit it's a vote vote for that time it's not an election but it's a vote because school property you need to have the vote to transfer the property so they set up a whole election stuff that's one of that they set up a whole election for that there was a town meeting kind of arrangement I'm still uncomfortable because it has not been so I guess what we could do is I maybe it was me but what we could do is we can give some guidance there's some by statute that we have to pay but also we can give some guidance to our policy committee and say maybe we need a policy that says that we would pay just for additional for not regular staff in future elections moving forward so that we have and we know that each town operates a little different rights Berlin doesn't get as many volunteers as some other and I don't really know I'm not a Berlin president well it's a town's responsibility to run elections but it's our responsibility and it's all of our tax dollars well the district is now a municipality so we have a requirement to carry out school elections and cover a portion of those costs which is essentially how this happens in school systems door steps so it says we are such a good distinction as a July one as a July one and these were both leading up to the decision we did contact the Secretary of State and concurred that these additional expenses would be the responsibility of the school district because of that statute that references but as a July one as a July one and I go back in time okay so it's really just this last vote but nobody's for one oh wait wait no no the bill is not transferred to the other one this is not transferred to the other one but what I'm saying is we weren't a municipality until July one we've only had one election and we had a state you were in transition I think that until July one we were in transition again it's a compliance but I think we have the ruling from the Secretary of State that we're responsible I think the expense is legit we can't force people to bill us if they I'm not saying to force people I was questioning if we had the books closed and it was their responsibility but we can't every time I was trying to add more to the bill no no so are we ready then to make a motion on the board orders I don't think so why it appears like the only one that's concerned about this is you're concerned that we're paying the costs at all or is you're concerned that we don't have a mechanism for justifying and knowing what those costs are going to be moving forward or both a little of that because we could be setting a precedent okay I don't need to get volunteers because the school district is going to pay for me to hire a whole bunch of I'm not saying any town is going to do that I'm just saying that that could be believed that's all I'm saying because we've never done this in the past the cost that we've been invoiced for from the three towns, four towns are they along the lines of what Lawrence Scott and Deborah talked about that they're just those additional costs anyone that billed us for more than that had to do a corrected bill at one point some of the towns had billed us for more they billed us for regular staff and so we had to pick that back and say yes and everyone they had some too but they pulled it back so would it make sense to I mean these are not some would it make sense to approve these and give that guidance whether formally or informally to the policy committee saying break this down well we're in municipality now there must be some rules that came with the statute it's that every town operates differently and I don't know what control you have on that so I hear your because there should be some sort of limits but I think your policy but the clauses yes we did we did four times but the first three so we should prioritize it and we can also if part of the motion just rather than this contains some that is a one time expenditure and is not any type of precedent moving forward into the future it was a transitional time an unusual precedent time and it's not meant to be any indication of what will happen in the future okay how about emotion then I have one question about the Montessori what those are for that's one, six other things but it's not related to this it has to do with Act 166 where we are requiring a tuition for students who attend 10 hours up to 10 hours of preschool and then qualify for programs who reside in our town so we offer that by law we also offer preschool in our school districts so about that yes and then there can still be discussion after the motion okay so a little bit we authorized one warrant in the amount of $476,000 $403.64 in another in the amount of $31,619 with caveat that in these warrants are cost for town elections that occurred up to the during the formation of the school district this is a one time expenditure and it's not meant to establish any precedent for future activity this is Lisa's favorite part of the meeting he's got the no the way he worked it was done I'll second it I think he should do his favorite part of the meeting I guess we're there sorting that out is there any other discussion or questions about the board orders thank you Lisa alright unless you have further questions Chris alright I'm in favor of the board orders as Chris moved them please say aye none opposed good alright 5.0 reports I think what I'd like to do again is for superintendent just questions we have the written report and and I have a feeling that some of this will be picked up when you talk about the BSBA components any any other any questions for Deborah on her report thank you very much let's move on then to Mia we've had two snow days perhaps two weeks the scissor has happened to fall on both of the snow days so that's getting rescheduled Cross Country went to New England last week and Jesse Irons is a two alum and he came he's playing with the Montpelier Chamber Orchestra right now and he came to 32 and played for the strength program and some math classes also came to listen math classes yes K. McCann I'm not going to do the tree all the tree classes really when was there sort of oh yeah was there was the math was the music back into the math or is it I think it was just the broad concept of math or music and the band concert is tonight and they're rolling up our cities community thank you very much any questions for Mia what program is your schedule for tonight they're rolling up our cities community it's a thing that's been happening once a month or it's a broad community that's been happening and it happens any afternoon there's a meeting every night I'm not sure if the thing was this time but I know that Kai Morris is going to be there and they're talking about the lawsuit thank you very much Mia alright 5.3 BS3 at conference so there were nine attendants at the BSPA conference and we did a quick update on what we learned so we're going to keep it brief because we have a long meeting but there were a couple of things Valerie Greenhill came and talked about the portrait of my graduate and that was a really interesting conversation that we feel is a conversation we're having for engaging our community you guys is that she talked about learning this rapid trip into Colorado and she has never been in the rapids so doing white water rap thing and she's never through that challenge and how she put that into education as she was explaining it to us because she had just done it in the summer and it made me think of us that she was talking about how going down the rapid you come to appointment and shout the rapid and that's where you see you get a bird's eye view and it was like us you get a bird's eye view of where you're going or what is the line so that you don't fall up the boat and then the next thing was she talked a lot about the different characteristics for our learners and this is really quick I promise like who you wanted in this rapid trip with you so would you pick student A or would you pick student B so student A is math, science English and social studies student B is content, mastery critical thinking, communication collaboration and creativity who would you pick on your boat I think they can see faces so that was a great conversation to have and I think it's not easy but a great conversation to have with the community and then the last thing that also made me think about ourselves is that she talked about conflicts where the two rivers come together specifically where she was but it made me think about the two rivers I think to myself this is where we are two rivers that are slowly coming together beyond where we were and how long it took us to get here and I'm looking forward to having that moment where the two rivers come together not just on paper because she talked about how when the two rivers come together the river is colder and the river is warmer and if you swim in the middle you'll feel kind of even how we're sitting right now just like how we're and then we said we had a very interesting equalized people and talking about the weighting stuff the input from all school board members there's going to be a lot of discussion as the session starts on the school funding system and schools will be expected to contribute in this discussion debate about the impact of the weighting studies basically not how we're spending the money but not to tell about spending that's something that is coming down our pipe and the last thing there was some student data privacy privacy data and we have kids here and we're right on top of that and they're trying to come up with hopefully as a country with one privacy data but right now there's a go six s and 111 that they're trying to bring back up at the beginning of the year and the last thing we have a new executive director for the ESBA who came to one of our meetings she used to be the council and he said goodbye to Nicole and to a couple other board members that stepped down and last we passed both of our resolutions they're not to vote it was still part of the committee but it passed unanimously so we should be proud of that is that anything else that I I used to cover almost everything I had on my list but I'll just add a few more so I also attended a very an interesting workshop on community engagement I believe it was Melting's where they were beginning the process of dealing with the street plan so talked about several ways that one could reach out to various stakeholders including students things like having the students draw at an early age and write comments about what their aspirations are for the future and other very activities that help the community would like to see the school move into the future what direction does the school go so since community engagement was part of our discussion this evening in chapter 6 I thought it was worth highlighting that which is simply good opportunities out there for us and also that was for mentioned the portrait of a graduate exercise we have already completed that and one school brought a chorus who had developed with their director a song which is specifically explained to their portrait of a graduate statement and various elements of their vision and it was really touching excellent that we well done I reported it it's very long we're hoping that they would not roll it around but they it was really moving and certainly displayed how high school students are very multi talented as we know very very interesting I think that's the highlight set just in here thank you very much any questions is nothing using that consultant I don't know I think I know if there was something that's also here decided to 5.4 of superintendent search which is I think I've been appointed the chair of that committee which means I say we are now in a session and then we are now at like consensus and most of our consultants but we made a decision to design a survey to find ways to engage various stakeholders of the community in the various parts of the search going along my understanding is that we are not going to make a search committee that includes the board of people from the community and some teachers and some leadership it will be pieces at a time that can come together and have the kind of community engagement around what that particular stakeholder is interested in and those dates will come out after probably meeting next Monday the the advertisement went in school spring last week there was some responses already it is scheduled to go into the Times-Argus on a couple of weekend papers I don't remember the other places it was but that's what it is and we are getting together a fairly short straightforward survey could you remind the board who is actually on this committee now oh that's right I don't know if I have we have Steven and Laurie and Kate McCann and Chris George are part of this committee now and I guess we'll reset have the board accept them and I don't remember honestly if they are voting members or can I just go ahead there's some confusion so this is just a steering committee of the superintendent search this is not the interview committee so this the interview committee being this committee doesn't guarantee that the interview committee would be made out of community members administration principals of the elementary schools students because all those people were U32 but you listed yes exactly in this steering committee there are things that have been a very great time for them remaining every Monday at 8 o'clock right now but all this committee is really just steering the process of reaching to all the and we actually have the association both of those people are co-presidents of their association they're not just random teachers we just approach them as the representatives of the association Chrissy she's the co-president of the ESP association and Kate is the co-president of the teachers and there are elementary staff who are co-presidents also teachers and support staff but we don't have any of the elementary people in this steering committee yet but I wanted to be clear that this committee is not doing the interviews this is just a steering committee if they interview committee we'll do the interviews and pass their candidates to the board and our standards for membership on interview committees are a lot higher thank you thank you thank you thank you and the board component of this committee you've already voted on Dorothy is mentioning this at least from my perspective as chair of the board just to make sure that there's no objection to our including Laurie and Steven and Kate and Chrissy on what Flora refers to as the steering committee we normally have a steering committee approval to include those votes from the board I was hoping to finesse it with just no objection but if you if you feel like we ought to have that's fine but it's just a recognition by the board that these other individuals are going to be helping I see as more or less an official mention exactly and the other clarification would be that Steven as we left that meeting you are communicating with the elementary principals right? yes can I just ask a question I'm just curious why the decision was made not to have any representation from any of the elementary schools on the steering committee there was no decision the steering committee just started to grow but there was no particular decision so we are at the moment that if the elementary schools wanted to have there's no reason why you guys could speak it for myself I would say that when I approached both of the associations it was with the understanding that they would be communicating with their membership so I we believe in inclusion so what is the steering committee's goal? it sounds something like something new to me so I'm just curious it's basically the mechanics of the search so the interviewing committee will actually be doing screening and the evaluation of the applicants so was this committee put together to make the ad? yeah among other things to arrange the community engagement to yes that's what I was going to say we're trying to make sure we touch all the bases and get people involved in as least complicated way as we can given the fact that we're approaching Thanksgiving and the Christmas holiday people don't want to go out to school things for the holiday as well so we're just sort of making sure that we touch base with all the things that need to be done and then once we have this list of candidates during one of these meetings we will decide how to populate the interviews so it's kind of nuts and bolts in order to get ready for the committee is the interview committee a completely separate group of people? that was some of the same person I expect there will be overlap then does that interview committee make a recommendation to just report? yeah so we either does that or it goes from interview to the screening to the we're the deciders no I meant in terms of interview both committees who would be recommending the interview committee because then this other committee might not be existing will it? no it started with you guys sending us to spear the process and then Lurie and Steven came to our meeting and as we started talking to Mark Andrews he was like oh maybe we need what he told them? Exhibition Exhibition that's it we need some more Exhibition but I am completely happy I totally hear your point of view so if there's somebody from the elementary school that would want to participate right now we should I don't want to speak for anyone else and I'm not saying I want to do it I don't have any principles right now we didn't know who was on the committee or how it got decided or when you met so I feel like it's a little bit on the spot for any of us to say we want to do it or I don't even know if anyone is interested I just was curious why that was the decision and it's a little bit concerning that there isn't anyone representing any of the five schools but I don't want to speak up for anyone who wants to do it well since I have three kids at this elementary school I'll put in a plug for having someone from one of the elementary schools on that committee and then I had a question which is what is the term of the contract when you select a superintendent would it be another five year contract as historically has happened or is there an option to do a shorter term after the website we haven't gotten there yet can I make a comment about the elementary school teachers that if you guys want to get your heads together choose somebody to be there at your park one day morning we'll walk from you we'll do it out privately and then someone will show up any of the principles that sounds good if two come that would be two five and if there was any mistake in numbers no this is just I think it's just our first time hearing it so we haven't had a chance to I don't know that anyone's interested but that's just how I feel it would be helpful to have a representative actually I feel sort of good that you're actually learning something new from one of these meetings I'm not sure can I ask just one more question what is there a timeline for this committee or what are the just because we don't know the steps after your meeting on Monday are there a series of meetings or is it so let's identify the additional tasks that we will form before they need to be communicated and I think it's going to be we're preparing questions we'll eventually select the interview committee and give them their charge and public engagement to get input from community members and different stakeholders on what they'd like to see we prepare four different questions I'd like to ask or going out to form and conducting a survey just to get input back from community and different stakeholders being at the end of the test for this steering committee in terms of an active role until the interview is on the course and the interviews would be in general in the middle of general and I think January 17 is a day 16 or 17 is sort of a target so one of the questions is how many candidates to forward to us becoming out of the interview process and so I think we have to address that and then we'll address what kind of term we may be going to offer to begin I don't know if that usually comes up during the interview but in terms of how many candidates to forward to this board for its considerations we have to make that decision to give that to the interview committee folks who are going to be going through the application good point which we don't have to do tonight but we have to do it it is the future and one last thing that I would mention is that some of the community engagement that we are trying to do we reached out to Deborah of all the friends of Washington Central to help us with that so that we start creating a system with them and they're going to help us put together the forms so it's not all going to be left by us and Mark Andrews is still the head of the leading research I hope that's reassuring yes thank you I'm glad you do are we good on this should I put the name to the people in here again because I'm a steering committee member or should I not sorry is that sure we can so besides the four of us there's Dorothy I have Dorothy Floor, Steven Dellinger and Lori Bebo can you say George and Kate McCann I'm not sure I'm not sure yeah Cori Cori I'm not sure she's the notator for all of these good all right finance and we should try to put any rest to the extent that we can yeah this is the first sort of understood you were hoping for 30 minutes can we shoot for 20 and see what happens we we have control on the clock let's shoot for 20 minutes and we have alright finance what do we need to do so we had a finance committee meeting and we have minutes to pass around and the first the first part of that was the budget so because of timing the thing we should dive in we have more time for the rest of what we did in the finance committee but we think the first draft as a finance committee we were able to review the first draft and Lori just one thing to point out is that we try to stay since the last time we authorized we were all happy with the format of how this report went out we decided to stay with that have Lori follow that same format so where you have in your packet it reflects it reflects that and then I was going to just let Thebra and and Lori take it from there because we are short on time so I'm not going to start if you could look in your packet on page 9 if you didn't have this available to project so so the first item here is a memo to which is similar to the memo that was shared with the finance committee last week essentially it describes once again more information regarding our timeline but in particular what comprises a level service budget level service budget as you can see this section includes our current staffing, salaries and benefits and plus in effort for inflation our current year student information from this bed service plan current contracts such as busing and auto service level budget and or adjustment for non payroll expenses using historical information that would include things like electricity and fuel food service support from operating budget level service technology plan for multi year budget and our debt service approach schedule so we have included information you'll be receiving and reviewing tonight in detail is a budget that encompasses those areas the other information that will be coming in the future are potential budget changes this is our first time as a newly merged district and administrative team to construct the budget and we've done a good job to get to the point where we are with the level service budget that you will be reviewing and we also have some other topics to bring forward to you the next avenue for this conversation which will be in December where we'll be examining equity areas some board requests and some staff requests for students with possible inclusion in the budget so those will not be incorporated into this evening but we are wishing to include them in that to present to the budget will go up it depends on whether we can find a way to trade items and then looking at the draft information if you turn the page to page 10 you'll notice our October 1 enrollment and this is the total number of students that enrolled in our schools as of October 1 it is a 1574 the total elementary number is 833 and the total secondary number is 1574 notice if you will the fairly large number of preschool students if you take the first three or four lines on the top row you will see the very large number of students at that population which bodes well for our overall enrollment moving forward and that's a trend in the state as well so those are things we keep an eye on and this is the number we will use moving forward as we look at budget calculations the next page apologize for the small print but it is a staffing incarnation which again ties out with our level service budget this is our level staffing overview so you will see beginning on top our enrollment summarized by school and then our staffing wrote out full-time equivalency by school and by area including general instruction fine arts support program support staff administrative staff etc and then there is some information below regarding contract and services and special education so if I may interrupt this part that you were just referring to are they included in the above total or faculty and staff or are they separate? no those are people that we do not include or if they are they may be district-wide employees who are not included in the visual price okay thank you so and then the next page on page 12 there is a document called the change summary and if any of you have a strong recollection of our last annual report this is a chart that we had to use in the past both individually by school and certainly this past year as a new district so the purpose of this page is to highlight the change areas which were probably in the level service budget and in a moment I'll ask Lori to review those in more detail with you and then the next page beginning on 13 and through 16 through 15 is the budget summary which again those of you who have memorized our report from last year will recognize this format and it's very similar and as Florian mentioned we wanted to try to provide our community with a way to access this information I hopefully find meaning and value so the very last page in our packet is which will be the focus of our next meeting December 4 this information about our capital funds as of November 14 so that includes the balances as of July 1 and these expenditures for 1920 and then also how we stand with our combined totals and what the finance committee has done in their last meeting was also have a time to briefly overview some of the capital investment external plans that have been presented to them by Black River Design John Helmhauer and Bill Ford who is the work of the works who's worked with our schools for many many years because it was the initiation of an effort to try to help the work become familiar with the immediate needs for the school system how we might devote our existing funds and then the next stage will be a long-term capital project review which will be presented so that's only for materials but if you're ready I'd like to turn it over to the procedures sounds great unless there are any questions on October I have one question for each 10 the numbers of students sure under the exchange choice tuition when you're homeless how the total column there's nothing over here on the left and then there's totals of numbers and I just was curious what that is or how that is so we have exchange and choice at the high school tuition is primarily at the high school I don't know if we have any elementary it's on the top of my head we would with act 1 but it's not it's significant and then the last column is the tuition waiver for homeless students so these are really secondary they're not broken out for the purpose of confidentiality we wouldn't identify what town 22 for exchange choice great tuition is 68 that's right and then so those would all be high school from town outside of our pocket okay well the last column just says total it doesn't say anything about U32 so I wasn't understanding these are the numbers so what it is is when you look at the totals there the 7th through 12th from each town those are our kids at U32 so we wouldn't and again in the districts there is elementary tuition we don't have to have that here but that's an option if someone would desire to attend or is not here I'll set you ready? one of the things I wanted to let you know is when you look over at the columns you'll see that the word adjusted budget 2020 at the top do you see that? I'm on page 12 okay so I wanted to explain what that meant what that meant was that when we were a supervisor union we had supervisor union employees paid through an assessment so when we had talked at budget presentations in June I remember Scott saying well we don't have that high a percentage of the payroll and then we had talked about how it was in the contracted service through the supervisor union so what I've had to do as we became a single district is to restate our benefit total to reflect all employees including the supervisor union so you'll see basically our salary and benefit total is about 68% of our total budget which I think in the presentations it was around 50% so having said that the adjusted budget column on that left side does reflect the voter approved budget from June which was the sum of all of the voter approved budgets separately and together does everybody understand that okay we will have a budget training and another date that we can go back through this sheet again so if I move along too fast just remember that you'll have a second chance to go through that training so at the top of the sheet it shares salary and benefit information so for all of those employees that you saw on that page that Deborah referred to where we had the FTEs by school the sum of all of those employees salaries and benefits are in this draft and what this first line reflects is a salary estimate for all staff it represents a 2.25% budget increase compared to last year's budget and there are benefits related to salary estimates like social security and bike attacks that represents a 2.2% excuse me a 2.2% increase in the budget health insurance is expected to go up 12.9% so if you consider all of our employees in their current health insurance elections and I factored in that 12.9% increase it reflects a little over 1% budget increase and the miscellaneous benefit changes our other benefits related to changing health insurance and salaries we've always called it negotiated item subtotal but it's kind of just for future use for all employees whether they're in the union or not it's a 3.49% increase in this draft of new money and does that take into account like some sort of assumed negotiation new contract money after that one of the things we need to know is that this fiscal year the board has approved a variety of positions beyond last year's voter proof budget particularly in special education for care educators and I think at the various meetings you may recall that there was a number of positions that the board had approved in summarizing them it's $160,000 budget increase for next year or 0.47% increase so all totaled for salary benefits the budget is in this draft $1.3 million increase or 3.97% am I going too slow or too fast okay so going down to the next category these are items that are not staffing related these are items that are either contractual in nature or what we have currently for level service so I will take it just a second and kind of review each item as you know we will only have one audit report instead of seven so there are auditors savings due to the merger of $12,985 and a negative means the budget would be going down just saying the board of education VSBA dues and other changes in that budget $8,000 of the savings is assuming that the board does not continue to have dues paid to VSBA in the next budget cycle and that you continue to not be members that is something that's up for discussion but in a level service budget anything that's happening this year is what's in this draft happening next year interest expense I heard you speak about this at a prior meeting we are borrowing less money as a single district so we will spend less on interest expense we will also have less interest income which is at a future line down below and in fiscal software the state has purchased software for all the schools in the state there's an implementation plan the plan is that Washington Central Unified Union would participate in that software in the fiscal year 2021-22 we previously had been budgeting $100,000 a year to save money for software and for staffing needed to convert to a new financial system so we currently have $300,000 in the bank and the level service would mean that that would sunset as the executive committee had expected it to back when we had done our prior budgets so that's $100,000 savings there's a number of items added together for school wide expenses 3K student services for book supplies and equipment that are causing an increase to this draft of $152,940 it's actually using prior history and actually student needs today our food service staff would also incur salary increases and benefit increases but because it's a separate fund it's here under non-salary items because the salary is actually in the food service budget which is not part of this budget only the support to help the program break even is in this budget our bus contract is in year 4 next fiscal year of a five year contract and this is the amount of the inflation $43,535 that by maintaining the same contract it had an inflator in there it goes around 3% of the budget increase compared to the current year we have students who tuition to the tech centers the primary ones go to this falling tech center which is called the Career Center so last year they had inflated their tuition by 10.6% from the participation obviously they're going to have salary and benefit increases so I tried to use that same inflation factor we'll know more when they keep in the budget process and keep updating their numbers whether this 10.6% inflation is sufficient to cover the cost for our students to go there that represented a $50,926 budget increase and then the last item is co-mingling of students needs and for contracted services for special education programs and it's a budget increase of $210,204 and we do receive a significant amount of reimbursement to help offset that cost so I'll talk about revenues in just a minute any questions on non-salary before I move down to debt service under debt service we have a schedule of bond payments and the happy day is that U32's $9 million bond is having a final payment this year so the large reduction here is that the U32 bond is paid off one of them the $3 million bond will be paid off and I think within the next year and a half so I just wanted to celebrate that so it is a $460,000 budget reduction and our capital fund transfer for this purpose we left it level funded in the absence of information Deborah mentioned that at the December meeting we will come back and discuss more information about capital fund needs but at this time the transfer for all the buildings together in this draft is $636,522 so having said that the combined total budget increase is $1.2 million we can read all the rest of that there are some offsetting revenues I'd like to make you aware of so what we've done is listed those below we are projected to continue and I can't say enough good things about LESIL a plant going out and promoting U32 but we do have a significant amount of students as you could see we have 68 students coming through our doors from other towns because some of those students attend the tech center we can only build for 53 students so this represents an increase of tuition revenue and a 2% inflation that we will increase our tuition by so it's a $95,000 revenue source just real quick those students who are paying tuition are there towns paying tuition or again true we have a few private but the primary source is from towns can you off the top of your head how many are private the most we've ever had is probably two or three private because it is expensive you heard me speak about the interest income going down with the interest expense and we've had some LESIL income for reduction for billing that we can't bill ourselves anymore because we have a direct payment system so for instance if a U32 staff member works at one of our schools instead of that coming through system as income it's a direct bill to the school for the staff time and special ed reimbursement you can see the projection for the reimbursement is currently an increase of $253,000 to help offset that $210,000 expense line up above and to also help offset the cost of the staffing changes this year where we added pair educators at our next meeting for information about our projections for revenue and then the last item was one of our schools did earmark a fund balance for retirement that has now gone away so we would be including that as a revenue stream in this budget so all totaled the big number for the net impact on taxes $937,505 or 2.77% thank you very much the last comment I had is for the next draft the state has not released any information yet to run current year tax calculations we could use the old information but it's usually way off December 15th we will have a lot more information about revenues we should be able to run tax information and I guess that's my presentation thank you do you maintain the total tax of equalized pupils for estimates so what we do is the sheet that you see on the page that information plus the equalized pupil formula is what we currently have I do run my calculation to double check especially because we don't want any students to come on this because it's expensive if you lose that revenue so we do have a calculation created in this file that makes that's great do you have any confidence in those to share them with us to kind of give us a preview at least a kind of ballpark sense of risk direction one of the dilemmas we're faced with is that when we have students attend other schools if the school hasn't reported the student to the state yet then our numbers count student so where Michelle is right now is she's contacting those towns that haven't submitted their information at a time of the year and asking them to just load our kids because otherwise we lose a revenue so they have until December 1st I think to pull it all together so a number of our other towns we need to finish their information are those towns in the district or in the towns? oh no be like my failure thank you very much my own take at this point I think for those of you who are not familiar with the budgets this is just sort of the cruise control budget there is no strategy no sort of look at how we might modify the equity or do new programs or change anything and we're basically lucky this year that the U32 bond is maturing otherwise the base increase is pretty close to 5% without doing anything new at all so once again it's like crunch but we're lucky and we should be glad we're lucky and make the best of it and I guess Deborah we mentioned the changes that we're looking at the strategic changes what might we be able to well our budget timeline calls for us to bring a draft for the second draft back to the board it is already in December which follows the 15th we'll have our revenue information we'll be able to provide much more tax rate as well at this time we have been working hard on refining the list or sharing that bringing the scenarios and possible scenarios to if you recall so we hope that that will be your focus for the next meeting however there is a budget 101 training being scheduled we probably will receive those about that I think we heard from 6 or 7 board members so if you haven't yet answered that poll let us know on the 3rd this is likely going to be the evening and that would be about an hour and we can delve into this document in more detail as well as helping you read board orders I believe and a few other items that the board has answered about this is especially important if you have not been involved in a budget development process before and I know we have 3 or 4 board members still relevant on this and Lori thanks so much for these percentages I really appreciate that very helpful that is a new item I like it just a quick process question so for the suggested changes that get brought to that next meeting whose developing those are the principles that are developing them or the superintendent or the finance committee or some combination there is a combination I would say that beginning in the summer there have been some suggestions of ideas or programs that have come from several different constituencies right now our leadership team is tasked with prioritizing and bring recommendations forward and then it will be the board's ultimate responsibility to make determinations about which of those maybe attic or exchanged for other resource expenditures that we have and there will be communication to that community like if there are any changes to programming I think and we are having forums too coming up so that reminds me we do have a forum scheduled for December 4 we have not yet advertised it I am wanting to be sure that the board is ready to ready and willing to prepare and present information that is scheduled to be just before this next quarter an hour prior so do you feel that that would be an appropriate time to share we can share information about the level of service budget and look for feedback would be one way of using that great yes that is prior to the next question for the next quarter when are we going to personally make any recommendations that would be that would be in the next draft this was not December 18 so our if you recall our budget timeline had set it up to have a level of service budget now and the second draft of December 18 so we are using that we are following that time like the board approved back in the summer when do we have to have January 15 so basically we will have the presentation on the 18 and then not another new bill for January I suspect we won't have one over the holidays because we can get a piece of preliminary idea as to what ideas are being traded or loaded in terms of entrepreneurship because we are recording a pretty strict timeline and just have no indication for the 18 that puts us in the board as a whole and then community because I don't know if we'll have another form for the community that we in the next quarter will have but that's still not still a bit forward after we don't even get changes after so is there any way to highlight what considerations what ideas are under consideration prior to that we're not ready to see but before the 18 before the 18 we can do our best for the fourth we can bring some information forward but I'm trying to be sure that our administration has an opportunity to thoroughly discuss and consider all of the various ideas I'm trying to be sensitive to the defense that is the group who the board had tasked with providing brand consensus recommendation we're working with the 18th timeline at a holiday trying to meet more of that conversation I think I think it's more I think community needs to be here just again because this is the first you would have a unitary budget and you know here you can do that we'll do our best and hear what we're thinking yes to be able to influence it because I know that's a big part of what people want to be able to do is have this we say right it's key and the feedback is very important what if we use the to bring them a community meeting if we use the because we're running out of dates if we use the form because we're running out of dates before the budget the discussion the board has made to improve the form and the level and then use the 11th for budget form use the form for our question the other as a date the super attendant form and so because I said it's a good way to engage the community first and then use the and then use the 11th and that would give more time for you guys to to back and forth those ideas that are floating right now and then say 11th we could present the ideas even if we don't have the budget amounts quite yet you're saying from the leadership team yes so then we're not trying to push for the board because we need a date for the superintendent up until tonight we were working on the 18th as the date to present so we don't have to pull back and make adjustments to get a new information together we don't have it we don't need to have everything for the 11th in the 11th could be more of a conversation and on the 18th that budget but use the 4th to engage the community because the questions that we have for the community kind of set the tone for the budget conversation I think we can talk about this at the after meeting but because we're all here together then we're not surprising as far as for the budget yet we don't have a meeting because of New Year's Christmas and January 15 the only one I have on my way we talked about the 8th but it's not in January we'll sort it out we usually do have to add some budget but I see we get something on the 18th of December and then we say yes that's fine on the 15th of January and there's nothing in between is a little not comfortable right so the 8th would be I might suggest you save it with the January 18th anybody want to make a motion I'll make a motion because I'm concerned Lindy and Marilyn moving to add January 8th to the Board of Calendar 6.30pm you want it dedicated to budget dedicated to budget and I think it should be at U32 because the one on the 15th is at Calis do you have hands how many people think you can make it so we have a rough idea would January 8th it's on Wednesday any further discussion on the favor please say aye opposed great we're on for January 8th Kyle just a quick for prioritizing what needs to get out to the community is just if there are any proposed cuts to any existing programs that's what parents like me want to know about as soon as possible thanks alright so what about this level the net impact on taxes of 2.77% does that seem defensible to you I think I think we should really not talk about it yet because I don't think it's going to stay at the point so we're going to do other things so we're giving impulse insurance information in December as well we do have that information that they usually give us but we do have that in the last 3 years the number that they gave us was the final number but I thought there was talk of it not being de-high or some other insurance we're talking about the state negotiations I think that'll be a question mark for negotiations not for the budget because I think we have sufficient funds for what we know today and December there's a timeline for the stage 2 that's what I thought so that would be timely also Laurie do you have a sense the second time we've done an old district budget last time was just adding the pieces together if you added those pieces together in previous years what the year over year percentage increase would be is this in the ballpark it is so at this point what I'm sensing is that we don't want to give Deborah and Laurie any kind of sort of guideline as to ceiling on what we're prepared to accept does that impact on taxes progress that it's more about not cutting the construction on 5 40 at this point one more item from the finance committee please we discussed that in a prior meeting the board had provided the board had authorized the finance committee to approve bids for a specific tractor project but they were wondering if you would be willing to authorize them to address all bids and take action on them because we do have some coming up that we'll be looking at in December and it's an opportunity for that smaller group to look into the issue of debt and make a decision if you'd be willing that was the finance committee's request that the board consider being authorized to review additional bids behind that perhaps all of them we can set that magnitude if you wish what do you have coming up yeah what's the scale of what you just made vehicles they're vehicles I mean you might want to say my topic area for right now helicopter private construction project right actually it's the students I worry about I would have no problem authorizing the finance committee to do something with something that was something so commodified as it was do we have a motion for that I do I do I'll move to the authorized finance frame 2 I'll move to the authorized finance review and accept bids on some vehicles that come before us second just seconds any further discussion favor please say aye opposed opposed any further finance minister thank you very much thank you all right policy so we had two policy meetings on snow days that were canceled so we are scheduled for next week so we didn't have a policy meeting but we are moving requested to cable the policy that we have for reading here because we were the second meeting not to remember the comprehensive sexual health program that we cable that because we presented with a modification of the policy that we have been working with we wanted to take that that over to the next meeting in terms of the I don't we didn't do any further work on the ordinary conflict it's here for the second meeting in the library in the library in motion for the second meeting of those two policies I'll make a motion so Flur moves to approve second reading of A1 board member conflict of interest and D34 library media center selection and reconsideration policies second Dorothy seconds Flur moved and Dorothy seconded any discussion Chris any questions on that okay in that case if you're ready to vote in favor please say aye any opposed none opposed good alright now and C50 is tabled we don't need to go on that just consider it tabled 7.2 is is a revised item on the amicus curia brief for grim versus roster and Deborah handed around you've seen I hope emails on this that I apologize for the latest but that was just the way oh just a copy for me okay okay thanks Deborah made a copy for me she consulted with Scott Cameron which I very much appreciate excellent and let me just read what Scott Cameron has to say it is my believe that the WCUU SD board reflecting as it does the values and interests of the community members it represents must decide not just whether it supports the policy issue presented by this case but whether it support for that issue should take the form of participation as an amicus party I know that the issues presented by Gavin in this case appear to me to be consistent that is consistent with the policy of the state of Vermont vis-à-vis public restrooms absent a review of the decisions of the various trial and public courts to date on this matter it is impossible for me to provide you with a prediction or even an educated guess as to what might happen on appeal I do note that the latest ruling by the US district court in Virginia held in favor of Gavin's substantive claim I have no information about the cost of participating as an amicus in this case are the amicus parties bearing any part of the cost that issue should be clear before the board makes the decision please let me know if you have any questions so I think you've had a chance you've been briefed I guess that the Washington Central Supervisory Union Board did join as an amicus party in this suit back in 2017 Montpelier public schools did as well just as we did with the Crosstermot Trail Network we would be reaffirming a decision made by a predecessor if we were to just renew our participation as an amicus as a friend of the court so what do you think we want to let's do this properly I'm not giving up on discipline how about a motion to reaffirm the Washington Central Supervisory Union board's 2017 decision to join as an amicus curiae on the side of Grimm the blaster so I will make that motion Chris Moos Dorothy Seconds discussion the part Scott mentioned about cost is a concern to me as far as I don't want to just sign my name on something that's coming out of Virginia and I don't have control over or know what we might get billed for so that's a concern to me I don't remember us joining it even didn't that I don't remember it as a Washington Central Board we do not there was no time to get an answer to that question it was not mentioned in the original email and what I would suggest is if you were to me to communicate our decision to avoid the attorney I would just make clear that I'm authorized provided you vote this way authorized to reaffirm the earlier decision on behalf of the new board but I'm not authorized to commit any funds to that we can do it under the same terms as the board did previously and I know we haven't paid any costs since then because no one's presented a bill and it's been two years and they've been multiple fields up and down so and I would I bet this is a representation by Pillsburg and we're going to be ACLU we are assigning those a pardoned case as a friend of the board so that when I was a friend of the board I would be absolutely shocked if any of the costs were incurred this is not a fundraising no connection I was trying to look for the minutes and I'm trying to remember now and we did in Matthew's brother over at that meeting I remember it clearly now because everybody felt it we were at the cafeteria and it was two years ago so the motion Lisa could you read the motion back or Chris if you remember what you said I think I was the one who said it would be to reaffirm the WCSU WCSU board's 2017 decision to join as a friend of the court on the side of GRIM versus cost I was wondering if we had to put in something about cost but if we're reaffirming something I think I'm fine with it I just wanted it clear okay any you want to put on the same terms previously or you don't think it's necessary I think if we're reaffirming that's to me okay great I would just like to note that I became aware today after reading about this that this is November 20th is this is the 20th observance of transgender Remembrance Day which memorializes being killed and murdered so I think it is particularly auspicious to take this action today all right in that case in favor please say aye opposed opposed great thank you very much next moving on to personnel approve hires in your package this evening is one nomination form for a long term substitutionary viewer and three who will be serving in substitute for Samantha Geltman activities not until you're in Calis she's a hard-earned music teacher and the person who is doing the work has both experienced teaching music and drama in students since 1992 we're pleased to have her we're also pleased to be able to invite as a shared or sharing of time and service that some of our music staff from the district particularly 32 who are going to take on the band component of the music instruction we're really pleased that's not a motion that you will need to take this evening but we're pleased that that they stepped up to offer that support so we would like your approval on this long term substitutionary viewer thank you I'll make a motion to approve the hires for long term substitutionary viewer floor goes Chris seconds thank you any further discussion? questions? I have a question how she got her degree eleven years after she had her experience yeah well you could have been teaching before you had your degree you could have been in a private school I don't have a resume she was a teacher at private schools okay so if you're a private school instructor you are required to have a correctional license I saw that and we don't normally see that so I was a little wondering it says she's been teaching since 1992 just a very good question sounds like an interesting person good I think that's probably more common than the arts yes yeah so ready to vote? on favor please say aye opposed? great word operations 9.1 where we delinquents are about to be reminded I started to look up the delinquents take a minute oh I know the delinquents would you like me to follow up individually with word members would you like me to follow up yes there's one more thing Karla asked me to remind you guys that she's willing to come to a board meeting there's several that are delivering her papers that Deborah gave us at the last meeting and she's willing because she needs some of you deliver the documents but had the document that she needed you let us know that we were having a meeting at the last meeting I said to Renee is this all and she said yes you'll hear otherwise so she's willing to come so the question is do you want to come early to one of our meetings and everybody has their document because she needs to verify the document would that be the best or do you guys want to stop individually I'm going to be there one day just a reminder we're trying to okay so Deborah is willing to publicly shame us on community partnerships is that right privately shame yes okay I think it's a weekday in the back we're going to move this around I haven't asked you to okay future agenda items remain in the future except for solar power we finally we have a a bike on that and my memory already is we got an e-mail it's going to circulate yes and we they want to we're going to end one of their meetings yes yeah okay so so that's for the future just for the information of the board I think it's important that that you know that that Deborah floor Jonas and I met with counterparts on the Montpelier board a week ago on Monday just to talk no agenda no agenda in all senses of the term but it just makes so much sense to be communicating and we'll see where it goes with Montpelier thanks right okay yes so why don't we move to the executive session I moved to the executive session I was moved let's yours be second yours Jesus thank you very much everybody