 Or the media folks are ready for us to begin. Beautiful, thank you. All right, welcome to the regular meeting of the Rockbridge. Rockbridge. Stockbridge, the Rochester Unified District regular meeting here at the Rochester School. Having a quorum, I call the meeting to order at 642. Adjustments to the agenda. I have added two board comments by myself on both of them. We'll take about two minutes. Does anyone else have any other adjustments to the agenda? I think Janie said in her email that there's a second session. I need a non-executive session. Right, even though she's going to be late, she wanted an executive session. And that is Janie's. OK, and that would be an executive session for personnel. For personnel, all right. OK, so we've added board comments 6-A and B. We'll add that under 13. We'll call that executive session personnel. So while we were waiting, Ethan, as our usual timekeeper, we went through and we figured out a bunch of times. So the first public comment will be 10 minutes. The consent agenda will be three. My board comments will be three minutes. The superintendent is said he will take five without the business manager. I don't know how long she's going to take. We think 20. She's on her way. I'd say like 40. She's on her way. She's just following me. The principals need five minutes. And we're adding them at 7.3. Is Carrie not? Oh, Carrie's here. Carrie is here. Carrie needs 10 minutes. Yeah, Carrie needs 10. Policy review without policies listed, or are there policies in the packet, actually? So we can skip number nine. The annual report update, Ethan, how long do you think that will take? Five at most. OK. Facilities, projects? Probably five. All right. Community engagement update? Building. How much is the building committee? I said 10. Do we have? If we're new, the community engagement update, and then that, too, let's make it 15. 10 for community engagement. Oh, so 10 for each. 10 for building and 10 for community engagement. OK. Action items. The last public comment will give five. Janie wants an executive session. We don't know how long that'll be. But I think that's our list, which is very good. I have a nine o'clock phone call. I'm supposed to be participating in, hopefully. All right. So I guess let's begin. So public comment? Macy? Yeah? I had a couple of quick things. Prior to the merger, first you might remember, one of my questions was, what are we going to do about transporting the children? We moved forward. And it seems like we may have missed a little bit of a window on receiving grant money from Volkswagen. But I wanted to bring it to the attention of the board that it's kind of sad to see other SUs moving quickly on this issue. And where are we going to go forward? I know Bruce and congratulations on retiring, but I'm hoping, well, moving on then. But before you move on to leave a legacy with us, I sure would like you to get horn in on this and see what you can make happen for our school. We have how much time left on our contract? I don't know, two years or one year. I think this is the second year is the one that we're budgeting for this time. So I think one more past it. So but certainly, could you be nice? Well, I would reach out to them and find them if they're doing anything in terms of hybrid. I did ask Paul where is that one point, whether this was going to be something that they would get in on with us. And I didn't get a whole lot of good feedback. I don't want to say that. Bruce, I can't actually hear what you're saying. I said I did ask butlers if they were open to this. And I didn't get a whole lot of feedback as a private carrier. I think maybe some of the districts that have gotten in on it, owned their own buses, cut through a lot of things. But I'll check and find out. There's probably certainly going to be a little bit of that. Our attention on the subject of electric items, did you ever get a chance or maybe Bonnie's helped you with what happened to the Rochester electric trimmer? Can't find a basis. Can't do a walk away. I understand. These things kind of walk away sometimes, these tools. So we don't own one anymore. That's my understanding. We do not. We do own a gasoline trimmer. How did that happen? We went from an electric trimmer to a gasoline trimmer? All I can say is that it was here when I came. It's still in service of the condition we needed. But we don't have any history of what happened. I don't. Just to remind the board, that was a big development back when that trimmer was purchased. It was an issue that a lot of parents were involved with. It wasn't just me. Thank you, Bonnie, for the signage. I really appreciate that. As I mentioned to you earlier tonight, this morning when I went to work, it hadn't been put out yet. When I came home tonight, it had already been pulled in. And we kind of missed a little window because I know there's this issue about where to place it. And back in the middle of December, the town of Rochester dug up the whole front by the pipe. And it was a great opportunity. We should have just thrown a post in the ground four foot and put a platform so that we can put the sandwich board on it. And then if we need to, take a bicycle lock and lock the signage on it so that some of us who work in hours that are not school hours can actually see it, have a 48 hour thing. The ground was not frozen. So maybe we could put a four by four post in the ground four feet high and put a platform on it so that you can see it driving. And just beyond the fire hydrant or someone right there, it's a solution to be able to leave it out. Can I ask a follow up question? Go ahead. Why does the sign have to be brought in? Sandwich board. Because of where we have to place it, if we get snow in the night and snow allowing it's being done, then that's going to knock it over. There was also concerns because it sits right basically right on the sidewalk that vandalism tampering would happen with it. So the custodians bring it in when they leave at night and we put it out first thing in the morning. OK. He did make the cut. Do we have any idea why they can put the public skating sign on the light pole and we can't put anything up there? I have no idea. I'm guessing it would have to do with size. The public skating sign is big. But they had the big Winterfest sign was up there too. I don't know. OK. Interesting. And is that town poles or is it the power pole? It's a power pole. Most likely it does mean state standards under 100 to have the skating sign stuck out into the road. If you're in a bus, then you have to look south. Even that small of a sign is blocking the bus drivers for any signs on that. Just to say again, that is one of the issues of placing the sign on the other side of the driveway. It gets up to a certain height. It's going to block the view. Even that small sandwich board sign, it's going to block the car coming south. That's why I'm suggesting, by the way, that fire hydrant in, we can quickly throw a post in the ground when they dug up the whole thing. But we see the ground sign frozen. Four foot. So it's easy enough to put the sign on it. Maybe a way to tie it down so it doesn't blow away. And I'm not saying it works for everyone, but a number of parents did stop in and thank us for having the sandwich board sign. So people are seeing it. I agree. It is a way that is conveying some information to people. Quick question now. I missed a few meetings a while back. When we were in this space, we talked about when are we going to remodel it so it reflects the merger? To me, it's housekeeping. It's just, like, what's going on. I would honestly say as someone who's one of the athletic directors during the merger over in Bethel and Wilton, that it's not an easy task to just take these down. There's some people who would have some different feelings about that. I think there's some things that I could update, but I'm not sure. So again, we've had a merger. The board has not given direction to take that stuff down yet, but from whom? The board has not given the principal administration direction to do that. We've not asked them to do that yet. We've not had that. I thought that would automatically happen if in the process of being a merger vote, that this is now a merged school and this is not appropriate. But that's all we have. Thank you. Well, thank you for sharing your opinion. You know, the board has had some brief conversations around some of the historical artifacts that are in this building. And we've in general terms discussed interfacing with the Rochester Historical Society and the Select Board. And I'm sure that will come up when we start having community engagement meetings about the buildings as well, which is coming up later in item 10.4 and 9.4. I think there are numbers here. Yes, so it's. Box it up. Just box it up and properly store it so that these kids today feel that this is the beginning of their. Sure. I certainly hear your opinion. And the board, like I said, the board has had some conversations about it, but we haven't figured out how to move forward yet. And again, I think a lot of our thinking has been that having a community discussion about how this is all treated and handled is perhaps at least the next step forward. Any other public comment? I'll be. My name is Rachel Cunningham. And I've handed out a little flyer here. Just an update. This is a news report that came out early this afternoon. Plenny, Jean, and Katherine Shanklin worked very hard to get us on the map. We are one of the finalists for a grant. And it's a multi-community effort for community development. And later this summer, we'll find out. There's another process later. We'll find out this summer if we actually earn this grant. But the details are in there. Viv and Katherine will come out with more details for the board in particular. So you guys can maybe think of some of the things that we can work together on to that. And on the 13th of February, if you'd like to mark the calendar of the schools. So far, we do. On the 13th of February, Division Rochester is hosting a community action workshop that will feed into this grant process. So part of what we're trying to do is reach out to the community, particularly the school, and to work with the school board on ideas about facility management and different ideas, programming. We have some things coming up in the spring and then also in the summer. But the community workshop is happening on the 13th. It's in the evening from 6.30 to 8.30. It will be at Pierce Hall. And we would love to have representatives from the school board there so that you can sort of interact or answer any questions that the folks might have in the community. The workshop itself is to develop an action plan and prioritize some of the projects, including the school building that's empty and how to rework it, how to use it, and to work hand in glove with the board. So we'd love to have reps there, principals and others other there, including folks from Stockbridge. So please come because this is we're all interconnected. So that's happening in February. Yeah, also to duck telling that I've been talking to Annie Makai about this as well. And it is really not just about our building over there. It's really there's a lot of different topics that are up for discussion with this community agriculture, infrastructure, recreation, and outdoor activities, housing, local housing, or commerce, or arts and culture. From what I spoke with her, the idea was to sit down and try to get all these ideas out that the community has and then try to focus some smaller, some of the top four things that possibly we could really do in the community at this time and really create steps, an action plan going forward. Yeah, I was being really brief. Well, I just want to also say that this workshop is a culmination of all the work we did last year. So there's a whole series of brainstorming that various elements from the community came together last year. So we're prioritizing those ideas now across sectors, definitely agriculture, definitely recreation, definitely education, whole slew of things, economic development. But your point's well made, Amy, because the goal is to feed into this so that we can really pinpoint what it is that we need as a community so we're competitive. Great, and this is just one source of funding. There are others that I spoke to the Federal Reserve in Boston today. They said they're very interested in working with rural communities in Vermont. So this is a high priority for them. Very high, so. So when it's White River Valley, it's not White River Valley School, like SU. It's just White River Valley area. Yes, different communities in it. And again, Vic and Catherine are gonna come out with all those details, and they'll release a press release on that. And I'm happy to grab your email so that they make sure you can receive that. And who was in Vision Rochester? It's a community-based organization that will be focused on working with the school board, with the town's left board, with local businesses, with local community activists and others to help create a space for dialogue that's independent, that's based on research, that's based on a lot of networking and brainstorming, and we've been working since last year. So. And I believe it's also to help really get people together who maybe wouldn't necessarily have ideas and how to help focus on ideas, actually create action plans of how to attain some of these things that maybe just brainstorm with the people's minds. Yeah. Yeah, so we share resources and energy. There's always so much all of us can do. Well, thank you very much. You're welcome. Barry, did you wanna have a bubble? Yeah. Just really quickly, I shared with Bonnie today a little bit, waking up in the middle of the night and having major anxiety about middle school, which is totally new for a lot of us Rochester folks that they're having to think about in high school. But I just wanted to volunteer to help any one of you, maybe that's Bonnie, that's Lindy, I'm the sort of person that I'm gonna literally be building a spreadsheet of like, these are the schools, I mean the questions I have, how many kids are in the school? What grades? What transportation is available? What times are those buses? What extracurriculars are available? Are there, is there transportation to the extracurriculars? What's the start in times of the school? Unless it's something you're gonna create. Well, I mean I probably would on my own just because I'm that sort of person and for me especially, I think when you have three kids and you're thinking about potentially having an elementary, a middle school and a high school kid, I wanna live here, you know, and so I wanna figure out how I can do it and be saying anything. If you're willing to share that type of information, I think that's wonderful. We have some of it and we do do, as I was sharing with Carrie this morning, we'll do another middle school fair. So we invite all the schools from the area to come. Some of those questions that Carrie answered are, that Carrie asked are answered at that fair. But as we talked this morning a bit, it seems to make sense that we would gather from those schools print types of materials that we can put together into this type of a packet that we could actually give parents in addition to the school fair that we do. Right, because I mean some parents just don't even know what questions to ask. What should they be looking for when they're looking at their middle and high school? And it is just very new to us. I know this is old hat for Stockbridge so I appreciate your patience with us learning all this. That's why we like the idea of the schools coming here to meet with parents because it sort of generates questions that they might not have thought of asking, why is there a late bus for sports? Is there a transportation back to the town after school? What fees are being looked at? Student fees are being looked at. Student fees, what do you have to pay to do what? We had back in the day in Stockbridge, I don't know if it's in how much of Michelle Richie's files you have, but there we had, it was an 11 by 17 brochure that basically did that. That just said, you know, Wiccum Bethel, here's the sports they offer, here's, you know, the buses come yes or no and they kind of put those all out and then said here's the guidance person or the person at each school to contact and then we did the same thing. We had the representation come one Thursday evening and I think we had like a spaghetti, the PTO put on a spaghetti dinner. And I think it was similar to what was done here last year. Right, the feedback I got from last year is there weren't a lot of families but to invite fifth and sixth grade parents. So parents can start to, because I'm not even really thinking about it. I would love for my child to visit some different schools and that can take a long time to sort of facilitate and settle in. Yeah, there are middle schools that have open houses in the spring so I'm knowing that that's available. Right, I'm knowing when they are. Right, yeah. They're very helpful. They typically send those days to us and we typically share them with sixth graders. Now sharing them with fifth graders is a new idea that I don't ask me why I didn't think of sooner. But so we do get those days for those open houses. And then I mean, I don't, I guess I've been thinking a little bit about this. I'm not sure that this is actually a good idea for a community but just throwing it out there. I think a big part of the anxiety about moving on to the middle school is that our kids do scatter, you think of everywhere. And so I might choose a school that no other family's chose. Right. Which I think is the benefit of choice, but choice, but I also wonder if there's any benefit to designating a select few. Full waiver policy, you know. But steering families towards two or three options, just so, I don't know. I think that would keep kids to, you know, our communities together a little more. I don't know if that's a really great option, but. I know it sounds like to me, the feedback I get from sixth grade parents is it's about transportation is obviously the biggest piece and the direction they are traveling for work. So when one component doesn't work, so it just depends on which north, south, east, or west you end up going to work. Maybe you know, if you designate a school, you tend, I guess my only thought is maybe that school would be more likely to have a leave us or our kids if we were saying, you're only one of three that we're gonna, I don't know. They have to be very careful to do for all their partners the same. Same. And that's a lot to do with. The only one that really has a pretty liberal way of doing this is Stratham. They designate that for Academy, but the people who can find a reason to want to go somewhere else and they state that reason to the board are likely to get an opportunity to go somewhere else like Hannover or Kimbley Union or one of those places. But they have had a relationship with that for Academy for a long, long, I'm talking 80 or 100 years probably of that. So. Well, anyway, so I guess I don't know. Good idea or not? We're just trying to get it. It's over. Okay. It depends over. Well, thank you. I'm sure Lindy and Bonnie will follow up with you. Moving to the consent agenda, we have a packet with minutes of the special meeting and minutes of the regular meeting. I would entertain a motion to approve those as presented. I so move. Do I hear a second? Second. A motion has been made and seconded to approve the packet of minutes. Any discussion or amendments? Hearing none, all those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? The minutes are approved. My two board comments are very quick. First of all, I sent the board and the principals an article that I found very interesting about a pre-K effort in Western Kentucky in the Appalachian region where they took a small school bus, outfitted it as a pre-K-style classroom, and took it to communities to offer pre-K in areas that are underserved by registered pre-K, and use that as a way of doing outreach, a way of identifying children and getting, they found that they got more family commitment when the family saw the way that a three-year-old, grandparents saw the way a three-year-old four-year-old engaged and learned instead of sitting at the grandparents' house. So I'm not saying we should do that. What I'm saying, it's an interesting article and something I think we should read and think about the advance of our retreat, looking at how rural communities are serving a dispersed population, I think is something that would be valuable. The second thing, and then after that kind of hopeful note, the second piece of news I wanted to mention is, I was mentioning to Bruce earlier, one of the things the legislature is taking up this year is discussion about reinstating a share of the funding for school construction and renovation being paid out of Montpelier, like it was up until about 13 years ago, I want to say 2007, 2008 it stopped. And one of the things that I was hearing that may be tied to that is that one of Governor Scott's initiatives in the first year of the biennium was to push for a 5.5 to one teacher or a staff to student ratio. And when that came out, the numbers for our districts were not anywhere near that. There were about three in the BT Digger article. And the people that I was talking to were saying that they were hearing about it as a volunteer, as a voluntary offer, you would be eligible for state aid if you agreed to get a state incentive if you agreed that your school or your district would conform to staffing ratios, but the other thought was that it might be mandatory. So I'm not trying to say that we all need to start writing letters, but I think it would be interesting, and I don't think we have to rush to do it, but just in terms of general strategic planning, if we had to conform to Phil Scott's ratios, what would that look like? Carl, I'm sorry, I'm misheard. What's the ratio that's being flowed? 5.5? To one? Yes. 5.5. And there's a formula for it on the AOE, there's a document that goes through, I want to say we're at like 3.1 and you're at 3.5 or something like that. Okay. I mean, they talk about who's exempt, like I don't think cafeteria workers count, but I think Paris do, but. If they follow along the same lines and move forward to anyone with a license, is what they do. Like I said, when I was hearing this, I went and looked back at the deepest thing I saw was the Digger article that gets into it and references an AOE thing. And like I said, I'm hoping it's not something that we're gonna have to address, but I think it would be good to know where we stand. Yep. Phil, I had board coming too. Okay. The Stockbridge town clerk had emailed in regards to what to be putting in the Stockbridge town report because traditionally Stockbridge town report and school report was in one book. That's, that hasn't happened for, I mean the, what? It's still in the book. No, last year the only thing that was in the book was the SU paper. Right. So that's the question is that the SU. Yeah, the SU shouldn't be. And I think that that should, I agree that it should not be in there. I think it's confusing for people. I was wondering, Jenny had made the comment of possibly just for the last page, making a quick letter that just says your school information was gonna be shipped separately in another month or two, and the date, excuse me, the date and time location of the annual meeting. I thought it was a great idea. I thought it would be helpful if we're Stockbridge residents just to, when they get to the back of the book, they go, where's that? Sure. I mean, I should probably be saying a similar page in the Rochester as well. It has never been enough. I take that back. Traditionally it has been a separate report. We have the school report and the town report. So it's been separate for many, many years. Right, we were always separate until they moved us to the same day, and then it became stupid to mail two things. Right. And we've been on a separate day for a number of years. I mean, I don't know, anybody can comment on how many years. If you don't think the Rochester booklet needs it, that's fine. I'm gonna talk about town meeting under a building committee. Is that something that you could write up, or just something quick that? Yeah, I can write it and send it around to everybody. And it is, it's kind of the, they are trying to get their book out to print. I think there's, it was due last week to go out to print. So again, just something very quick that just says. And make sure, and if you guys can make sure that we don't put the superintendent. I think I'll send any of my stuff. There was a superintendent's letter that got sent over to her. We can not go to stop printing. Okay. So when you reach out to her, just make sure not to get any of the information. You both did tell her not to put anything in, other than what happened. Yes, but it seemed like she was questioning it again today with the email. So we'll clarify and get this over to her. Okay, so then, next I just wanted to say that we've been working, Bonnie has started to work on senior scholarships this year. So hopefully we'll be able to move that forward and be able to have that offering again this year. I just quickly, I don't know when, but I asked for an executive session. I don't know. Yes, yes. You've got that. I can't put it. We put it under 13 for other. Okay. We are over time, Mason, as you're putting it, Jamer. With the Rochester, if we haven't published, if it hasn't gotten to the printer yet, why not put in a similar, because of all the transformation activity that it would be a good positive mention if it hasn't gotten to the printer yet. Yeah, that would be the exact same thing, right? Mm-hmm. So if it hasn't gotten to the printer yet, why not? All right. Thank you, Mason. Bruce. Several, a couple things. Bruce, can you just speak up? Yeah, we've started a search for the special ed direct. We have narrowed from about 12 down to five, and we're going to be conducting interviews on Valentine's Day all day. I'll fit it. Oh. Are you going to be on the committee? Sped love. We have about 12 people, actually, on the committee. And I think the executive's... Do you want to be asking who are the people on the committee? Are you going to have me tell you from the memory? Most of that, I can tell you their roles. Most of them are special educators. Okay. Some of them, school psychologists, Bill Ketter's on it. There are two principles. There's one parent who wanted to be on it badly, and she's been invited. Couple people didn't show up to the first meeting, but they will be there for the next one when we actually interview people. Three of the special ed director candidates are practicing special educator directors in Vermont. So there's some good experience at the table. We also have two other people whose resumes look very, very good. So we'll see what we get. I feel pretty fortunate to be in a position with that many candidates to interview these days. It's hard to do that. The next thing, I think Bonnie and Lindy will talk about lead, but I want everybody to know that there seems to be a resurgence or a conversation taking place at the state level about literacy improvement, and I think Phil Baruth has been talking about it. I think the Secretary of Education has been talking about it and kind of feel like many districts are a little behind us for once in this effort now. And I'm hoping that the more conversations that happen, the more possibilities there might be for grant funding. To add to what you already have. So, which would be very, very nice if we can do that. So I guess you keep your eye on that. And I did look at the principal's report and they are gonna talk about the lead results. And so I just wanted to mention that that's important to talk about because we have our reports back now and they're gonna talk about a game plan for moving them forward. Pretty much everybody in the SU that is involved in a school was affected. We didn't have anybody that said, you know, everything's fine. They had made their, the window so small that somebody had to do some work on their plumbing and that kind of thing. So I'll let the body and the dean talk about how it affected up here. So, okay, I'm good. All right, thank you, Bruce. We decided you had 20 minutes. Well, that's a good point. Let's let you go, Carrie. We're gonna jump in like Carrie goes so that she can go. Because there's no way it's only 20 minutes. I tried to tell her it's a little 40, but. Thank you. I'm trying to save you, my dear. Maybe she wants to start. I can put my kids to bed. Yes. Okay. Well, I just thought I would do a quick update for you about one planet. So, we've had a great year, both Stockbridge and Rochester One Planet. We have all returning psych coordinators and head teachers and that makes a huge difference just the fluidity of the program and the consistency of it. Both sites, we've seen an increase in enrollment. Stockbridge, we are averaging about 11 kids a day. And that's up from last year in Rochester, we're averaging 19 kids a day. And that's also up in numbers. Traditionally, at both sites, increase in the spring because we run it, running programs that are kind of an addition to our normal programming. So that's great. Just to highlight a few things from the summer, I don't think I've done a report on some of the summer, but we had maybe an average of 25 kids a day during a summer program, Rockbridge Summer, which takes place at the Stockbridge School. We did amazing mosaics. Each week we have a theme, all of our programming goes around that theme. We did amazing mosaics, team building, eco kids, and Hawaiian hella blue. All the kids did two weeks of Red Cross, swim lessons about the pool. And then as a new addition, we did a fifth week kind of a specialty camp that was a mountain bike camp. And we filled up the program, 15 slots, we had kids from six different towns. So I thought that was very cool to have it bring in such a wide range of kids. Some highlights from this year, so far for after school in Stockbridge, we've done archery, we did an improv class, and we're doing drama right now. Those are all things that we've never offered in Stockbridge before, and we've done really well. In Rochester, we did mountain biking in the fall. We did filmmaking this winter, and we're currently doing, I don't know, film with the U.S. in the fall too. Currently doing a robotics program, which I've been fortunate to participate in and watch the kids, and plenty of guys. It's like, this stuff is amazing. I mean, it's just amazing to watch kids take this very complicated, huge box of pieces and put together a robot with moving parts, claws that can pick up things. They can use to do it manually, and they're just starting to do the programming. And they can make songs the other day. I programmed mine to do a Star Wars theme, so it's pretty good. And just wanted to mention some partnerships. So we've partnered with Finding Our Strive in Rochester. They provide us with a stipend to pay running coach to work the kids in the spring. And then we work with Orange County Sheriff in Stockbridge. We're offering a program called LEED, which is Law Enforcement Against Drugs, and it's a free program that they offer to our kids. We've partnered with Rasta in the summer and in the fall. Well, and I should also mention Green Mountain Bikes. We've been working with them to have a trailer use mountain bikes available for our kids, and they allowed us to use that trailer every week for six weeks for free. So it's like at least 600 bucks worth of equipment. For money, the Rochester State Predator applied for a mini-grant. So for money is a financial literacy program. Of course, they make it a lot more fun than that with kids. The kids have fake money. They learn about the budget. They decide what to buy. They've got a certain amount of money. They've concealed something, so they've got to buy the items they need to build it, and you know, a set of it. So we've been offering tutoring during the summer. We offer tutoring both at Stockwood and Rochester. So far this year, we've done some tutoring in Rochester. A lot of kids have been involved with that, and most of our tutors are school day teachers. We do have a couple of care educators too that have been tutoring. And then I just want to mention our free reduced lunch rates, this fluctuates a lot, but what you want to see is that the kids participating in our program, that free reduced lunch rate matches the school-wide rate. You don't want to see that, you know, we only have 15% of our kids qualify for free reduced lunch, but, you know, 50% of the school. So right at the moment, 70% of our participants in Rochester qualify for free reduced and 40% in Stockbridge. And I'm thinking that's pretty on par with our school-wide rates. And that's it. The only other thing I wanted to say, and I know this is on Donnie's radar, you know, as you go through the building committee work, and we think about rearranging kids and spaces, and just to keep in mind, one planet, I mean, I always advocate for the best spaces available for those kids after a long day of, I mean, I always think about it as like, what do I want to do when I get home from work? Well, I want to put on my sweatpants and my sweatshirt, I want to go land couch. That's what those kids want to do, too. They want a soft, warm, comfortable, welcoming space. So that's, you know, basically what we're hoping for. That's it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Is the bus, like when they go to swimming, is that in your budget? Is that the budget for all kind as well, or is that in your participation? Yeah, no, it's part of, maybe for summer. Yeah, yeah. And are all the kids together in the summer? Yes, they drop the kids. Yeah. And where do they go? For swimming lessons or for any... For their daily, yeah. So, not just your kids can be dropped off here, and then they're buffed to Staff Bridge. Okay. We use the main whole-purpose room space, and we usually have to go to classrooms because we have access to it every week. We have field trips, so they could collect an adventure center, and so play, and UD, and... And then all of that busing is not in the regular budget. That's in your budget. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The one-plan entry. Yeah. Yeah. In summers, it's hugely expensive, but I think it's also hugely important. Oh, I'd like to go. Yeah. Okay, thank you very much for all your hard work, and always your engaging kids. Thank you. Good night, Jim. Good night, guys. Put your kids to bed, Harry. Put your kids to bed. Yes. All right. So, in full disclosure, no one has seen this. Oh, I see no one. Looking the principal. Oh, boy. It's good. Because I finished it at a little after six. Oh, boy. So, this is truly raw draft one. Who wants extra? Here's a bunch of copies. It's a wet over here. Make my dough. We already got one. Thank you. We got one of these, too. One of the packet and one of the shoes. Yeah. All right. So, first draft of the budget represents a 3% increase in salaries as a placeholder until negotiations are done for 12.7% increase in the health insurance, and at a recent meeting with the Vermont Association of School Business Officials, the high shared with us that the Department of Financial Regulation has requested a re-review of the rates that were filed. So, there is a potential that those rates could go up yet again. So, we do not have the finalized rates yet at this point. That's the 12.7? Yep. Okay. And that's an average. I would highly doubt that they would go down. I'm just trying to be optimistic. You are welcome to be as optimistic as you would like. The 12.7 was the average, depending on what plan they were on, one went up 14%, one went up 12.9%. So, that's... Is that the largest increase yet? Oh, I don't think so. Well, I'm not totally up to speed on the high, but I know... It's up there. In my prior career as a commercial insurance agent, I saw much larger health insurance rates in the open marketplace, particularly in New Hampshire. There is a 65% funding on the HRA total exposure. So, we're speaking of just a little bit. Sure. A6, did you get the first page? Because I'm reading right off my sheet too, so that you can... This one here? Did you get this page of the notes? Thank you. Sure, here. Thanks a lot. So, when I went to a state meeting with the auditing firm, what happens to also be our auditing firm, and talking with other business managers throughout the state of Vermont, several of us all had the same challenge in our budgets when the HRAs were initially put in place that it was post-budget cycles being done and just basically under budgeting for HRAs. So, the recommendation at that point was to do a minimum of 65%, but obviously you as a board can decide what you want to do and what you don't want to do. There are some districts in the state who budgeted for 100% of the HRA funding and have created a special reserve fund for HRAs so that as they build that account up and they get a better historical understanding of their utilization, that they can change their budgets higher or lower if necessary. As of December, we were projecting between a 43 and a 45% utilization rate in our HRAs. Like I said, that was just through December, so that will change based on the year end results and what's been submitted. And there's generally a one to two month lag in plain processing between the carriers and the HRA. So, we use 65% as a budgeting factor. I updated the tuition expenditures to reflect the FY21 announced tuition rates if I had them. So, Rochester has, according to my sheet, which may be off one or two students, Rochester has five 12th graders and you have eight sixth graders. This is for FY21, so that's this year's juniors and this year's seventh graders. No, that would be this year's seniors. This year's sixth graders. And this year's sixth graders who will then transition out. Your seniors will transition out at the end of this fiscal year and your sixth graders will go into your tuition pool. All right, I see. Okay, I see what you're trying to get into. So, there's three additional students. So, I put one in private and two in public at the highest rate for placeholders in the budget and Stockbridge had three 12th graders and six sixth graders. So, I did the same there. I added three students to the current tuition, one in private and two at public at the highest rate. So, with those changes and then what the administration put into the budget for their request, this budget draft is a budget of $4,657,214. This represents an increase of $248,652 or 5.64%. This puts your per pupil spending at $22,949.08 which is over the threshold of $18,756. In order to get you under the threshold, you will either need to add revenue or cut expenditures and it can obviously be a combination of the two, $327,397.41. So, some points I want to point out in the budget, revenue budget. So, if you go to page 10 of the book or close to the end, second to last page. Looks like this. Got the red line. The one that doesn't have a surplus. So, yes, we did not put any surplus in there because you will need to instruct me if you wish to do that. And I would in hopes thank you Amy so very, very much for getting involved today because we couldn't get the audit finalized until we got the information that you provided. I have been able to get it for months and the town treasurers have been unable to get it for months. So, by you doing what you did today, I got those out to the auditors and they made these bank statements. So, we were missing the bank statements for the three special funds. Therefore, they couldn't wrap up your funding balances. It has taken many, many months to get it switched over from the old people's names, the old treasurer, the old principal over to the new, and I've just been persistent and been on it. So, your work definitely paid off today. So, my conversation at the end of the day today with the auditors is that they will get the final stuff wrapped up and I should start seeing reports over the next two days. So, as soon as I get that, I can give you your additional information that you requested in your email, your fund balances, where you ended for FY 19 and we can get that stuff wrapped up. So, in draft two, if you would like, we can add in revenue from any surplus that you have and there's some changes that, Lindy, I will leave for you to also talk about that we need to do in this budget, particularly the farm to school money because we have to be able to sustain that locally. But some of the other things that, one thing we added this year that I didn't see in your budget last year, so I'm hoping particularly those of you who have been on the board or been involved in the school for a long time may know, both Rochester and Stockbridge are recipients of the Green Mountain Forest Grant money. So, when I talked to Dan at the Treasury this morning, he confirmed that they haven't got the numbers yet but based on trend that we should project a 20% decrease in the amount. So, I've added that into your budget here, that's that $6,099 on the revenue side. I don't know historically if you've kept that in house or you've given that to your towns. We've kept it in house. Okay, so it wasn't in there before, so it's in there now. Okay. At the $6,099. So, this is a grant that was given, it is given to the school, but you're saying the school could choose. And sometimes like some other districts who get it, gave it to their town to maintain roads and whatnot. Because it was a specific thing, like the town was doing that that could apply to. Yeah, so, but last year they decided to keep the money themselves too to help offset their taxes. So, I put that in there this year. In the $9,000 on the trustee fund, trustees of public funds, I believe that only represents the Stockbridge side. Correct. So, if you're gonna go- That's been an annual thing. Disbursement from funds of the trustees of public funds, the funds were given directly to the school district. And so, they manage the funds and they disperse, they disperse the payment to us. As I understand it now, there is not a Rochester specific trustee of public funds for education, though the Rochester trustees of public funds in the past have given money to the school. That's correct, right? Yes, so, and Bonnie and I actually sat in on a meeting with the trustees of public funds. We're hoping that maybe they'll be here tonight, but I think we'll reach out to them maybe at the, as well, but- So, if they will give you funds, we can also add that in here as local revenue to help offset some of this. Just keep me posted as far as what you find out on that side of things. And then, tuition for what you're receiving, I updated that based on current enrollment that you're getting tuition receivables on and I just bumped up the tuition rate for your announced tuition rate. So, that was a small increase there, but obviously if there's a decrease or increase in the kiddos you're receiving in for tuition, that can change that number. And then, the rest of it is the wonderfulness of your tax rates and how that all breaks down. So, a couple of things that Linda, you had asked me about. Yes, and yes, I've built in all those things for you. And then, no, she, it's an email that she sent. We've got to be in response to you. Because we were emailing that, like. I was with the safety auditor. Right. She was on the budget. Yeah. So, I will let Bonnie and Linda speak to this because I was unable to attend. The Rochester Stock Bridge was awarded the Farm to School Grant. They're my only district within our Supervisory Union who were awarded. So, that's very exciting. And they went to a day-long training last week because I'll let you guys talk about what we need to do because that is not currently allocated for in here. So, we were awarded $20,000 for Farm to School. Nice. It was the most that any school got, right? Right, most that any school has gotten, or school district has gotten ever. And so, we will get 30% of that to get things started this spring. It comes in increments. So, 30% of the, am I right? 30% of it. She's the numbers first. I know, that's why you're doing this. Yeah. We'll come before this fiscal year closes. So, we'll have to start the process. But one of the key pieces is about how we're gonna sustain this. And one of the ways we have talked about it is in working with the current Stockbridge physical education team from point four, but using some other days and building her into the food service budget. So, she would offset, she would work with both lunch ladies on nutrition planning and making sure we're preparing the right local foods and they're being put into the lunch menus as well as educating kids on nutrition and healthier choices and healthier options. So, we talked about that being like a day that she would do that with both Julie and Pam. And then a day where she's working in the classrooms with kids on cooking and recipes and nutrition. Does she have a history of, she has a strong health and nutrition background and something that she's very strongly. So, we'd be using this, the part of this grant to, maybe we're talking about increasing her FTE or we're talking about a one-time training. It would have to, you have to sustain it. So, it can't be a one-time. Okay, that's what it's for. Right. And then using her also to, I mean, just the paperwork and the implementation piece and take some time. So, one way Tara recommended it is that we'd love to add that into our food service. You don't vote on your food service budget. It's a separate budget all on its own that doesn't go into your general fund. That's all maintained through the enterprise fund. You do, however, allocate funds from your general fund into your food service program. I think it was $28,000 per campus on the last fiscal year. So, I just copied that over to this fiscal year. So, you can specifically, we should specifically identify what you want those funds to be utilized for. My understanding is historically it's been to help offset salaries and benefits of your food service personnel within the food service fund. So, that is, you know, you can increase that transfer over or you can specifically allocate that money to go towards this program, but it's one of the placeholders that we could put it into the budget. I just don't have any concept of the dollar amount. I mean, do you have any? So, we go to the chancellor. And had a chance to even look at what we would need to use for funds to stabilize that and sustain that program. So, with this grant, to sustain it, they're looking for how personnel can sustain it or they're looking at how we can continue to provide farm to school food. It's both. It's both. Okay, so it is the actual purchase of foods of how going forward after this grant, we are going to be able to continue to purchase farm to school food. Right, and someone that oversees that. They'd like to see it. This is the money get into your budget that would sustain it going forward once the money's. Right, so by setting up a system now is what they're saying. Use this money to set up your system, including buying food. And one of the, one of the main reasons. We'll use $6,000 on it, right? 30%, she said. Yeah, we'd get three payments of six and then the fourth payment would round off whatever the rest is. One of the things we want to do is build, identify, build and be able to sustain a network of local providers. And one of the exciting pieces about the grant is that we get to decide how to define local. If we had to define it just in the Rochester Stockridge communities, there probably aren't enough providers for us to do that. So the grant recipients staying sort of true to their value statement, identify what is local. So one of the first things we need to do is tap into some expertise. And there's a fair amount of expertise that comes with this grant to figure out where are the providers in the state of Vermont in our area that we can access. And one of the things they're encouraging us to do is to look for providers that we get into a commitment with. So for a small farmer to grow an extra, for him or her to grow an extra, I think potatoes, we used as an example, 100 bushels of potatoes. That's kind of an iffy expense for them if they don't have someone on the other end that they know they're gonna be able to sell that to. So we would be hoping to establish this network where we say, okay, if you let our youngsters come to your firm and help you put these potatoes in and come back in the fall and harvest them, we'll buy that 100 bushel of potatoes for you. That's the kind of relationships that we're hoping to be able to set up. And then the other key piece that Lindy spoke about is to have someone back at the school who's helping maximize the benefit of that local food that's coming in. Teaching youngsters why it's healthier to choose A than B. Helping youngsters make recipes. Running some, one of the things that's coming out in the farmer school sort of a scorable look is that families oftentimes need help learning how to cook local foods. It's not something they've done a lot with. It's not something they have a lot of experience with. So we're hoping to reach out to the families of our youngsters to do some activities there. You might want to reach out to Deborah Aldridge. You work with her a little bit because she does some things with the food shelf and you guys, this kids have made some, it's Aldridge, A-L-D-R-I-C-H Deborah. And she has done and written grants for and done this with the food shelf. She's organized it with Willie, who I hear is leaping, but she has a whole network from Bonner to White River Junction to Lebanon that she orders and does that with the local economy. She also wrote a grant where 12 families got a food processor and every Sunday she had recipes and they came together and cooked and did it. So she could be a valuable resource. The other connection we're fortunate in making is a lot of school garden, school local produce initiatives sort of aren't successful because there's no one in the summer to maintain the garden. And one of the connections we want to make is with Cary and the Water Planet because those youngsters are right there at Stockbridge and to set up sort of a summer gardening experience is a win on both sides. We've done it at Stockbridge off in Donogallon. I spearhead a lot of problems with that with Betsy Shands as well. I can't go as a question, Carl. Do we have any sense of the schools, how much hamburger, how many potatoes per year so that I could, because my brother has a big network of farmers, meat producers all around the state. And he's talked before that he's single-handedly probably wouldn't be able to handle the amount of hamburger you call on Bonner. But if he was, if he knew what the total was being able to pull it in from a network of farms. Because there's a lot of producers right now of beef and pork in the state. I think that's one of those things that part of the reason I am encouraging this position is because the work that it takes to reach out and document all of that and sustain it is above and beyond what it takes to preserve to make sure food is ready every day for kids to eat on time. But they have a purchase, we probably have a purchase list, right, of what they are. We could do that, but in terms of making them and maintaining those connections and working with that. I think it takes more than the staffing we have right now to sustain effectively. So if it's an ongoing process, we're adding how much FTE, what are you talking about? How do you do that? Do you think it's going to be a day a week, a half day a week? And is this just in the thought stage? It is in the thought stage. I mean, we just probably came back from this meeting, so we're trying to sort of, okay. So maybe understand we have to come up with this. So we should leave you alone for a little longer. Right, so let you guys boil a little bit more. Okay. More budget? Yeah, it is very good news. So just to confirm all this, Tara, what you said, get by me a little quickly. We are currently over the threshold. Is that correct? Okay, so, and you said we have to, and I'm just not sure looking at this, which numbers tells us how much we are over and how much we have to either cut or raise. Very bottom line on this sheet. Say a little tan line on this sheet. So we're over by, is that per student or is that? If you look, this is the number, if you look at my single sheet, that last line, the 327, 397, 41, a combination of either adding additional revenue or cutting expenditures will be what we need to cut. So that's pretty significant. To get below the threshold. So we've got a problem. But it's also your first one. Right. Yeah. I'm just trying to get the clear picture. We're missing a lot, we're missing, yeah. Is this like, I mean, is this like a normal over? Yeah, it can be, especially when there's not, there's not an identified deficit. And we've been told repeatedly that we have a surplus of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The question that we've had is that, is that surplus of hundreds of thousands of dollars actually funds that have never been spent but were allocated into special accounts? Like the special account at Stockbridge for building repairs, a special account for educational purposes at Rochester. So because we don't wanna count those as surplus funds and they turn around and find out that, oh no, because of crummy accounting in previous iterations of our business office, we actually just spent the, we just actually spent the college fund on a vacation. Very colorful, I think that's an advantage of this. So you're saying, so that's, Carl, did you just say for public comment that somebody just spent on a vacation for college funds? Well, no, I say we don't wanna spend the college fund on a vacation. Great, I just wanna make sure we get our, you know. It has always been very helpful. Wait, but can we, that figure, do we know what that surplus figure is? No, that's what I'm waiting, because what Amy gave us today is what we needed to get Rochester Stockbridge FY19 audits done. Right, that's what I'm waiting for. They would release any of the fund balances to me until they had those banks. So even tomorrow you might have something or how soon do you? So, but that number, do we know that that big number, that may or may not have included special or reserve funds? Do we know if that big number was accurate? I do not believe it was accurate, but I have not received any physical documentation to verify that. Okay. Because that didn't include the SU deficit assessment that had to be done. That did not include the fund 12 cleanup that needed to be done, which is the build back fund from the SU for the shared positions within the supervisory union. So all of that had to have been done after that December number. So a lot of that SU audit report was just inaccurate. There was things in there that were not done, which is why I kept saying, I am not comfortable with these numbers and I am not verifying these numbers until I physically have documentation and verification that are accurate. Okay, I mean, the big thing is, is we've been told we had a decently large surplus. And I want to know where we think that surplus, because you're predicting $320,000, $28,000 that we need to get under the panel. And there's this thought that I have, is that, well, we have this surplus that we've been told we have, we have. Where do we think that is? Do we think that that's going to cover? I do not think it's that large. Okay, do we think it's half of that? Potentially. But here's the thing. I mean, we're talking, this is a budget. I'm not getting back into a corner of parallel, I'm sorry. No, no, no, no, I don't think, I mean, I think responsibly, we shouldn't necessarily be looking for bailout from a possible, you know, bonus somewhere along the line. This is our budget, these are the numbers, right? Shouldn't we be going ahead as if this is the numbers we have to deal with? We still need to see where we ended last year, to be able to know as we're proposing this amount for this year. Okay. Is that a lot more, you know, is that, do we only use a very small amount and what we're budgeting is a very big amount? You know, what do we actually use on that line item? And is that, when would we have that? For FY20, I'm talking about right now. No, no, we'll get FY18. For 19 years. 19, 19. 19 million. As of this afternoon, they told me I'd start getting reports within tomorrow and the day after. Okay, and then you load that into. Then I'll send it to you and you as a board, I don't make that decision. You as a board have to decide if you want to utilize their surplus funds. No, I understand that. I was, well I'm more looking at the actual other column that shows me my proposed 19 and then my actual 19. Those columns are extremely helpful when looking at, and once we have the actual 19. Right. Wendy and I will be able to go through and adjust. And adjust. We're caution on you to give the board is that we have to be, and I don't know what that surplus number's gonna be. We have to be very, very careful about using surplus funds because all that does is kick the camp. Right. That's exactly my concern. And you're using a number that is two years old. Right. Regardless that the number's only released right now, it is based on budgeting and factors that are two years old. And at the very beginning of every single audit, and this is what the auditors are saying is wrong with the statute and why it impacts every district throughout the entire state who utilize these surplus funds. The very first step in every audit at the beginning at the end of every fiscal year is to review and restate your prior year AP, which is accounts payable and your prior year accounts receivable. That one process alone impacts what those surplus or deficit funds were that you then allocated and potentially end up harming yourself if you utilize full funds that potentially may not have been available to use to begin with. I think that's actually the bonus. So that's the second, that's the second problem is because we're still sorting out where our reserve funds are. But one of the rules of thumb that, oh, I don't remember which business manager said a long time ago back when we were Windsor Northwest, but when you're looking at a budget gap of a quarter million dollars, that's when you start cutting people. And right now we're looking at a budget gap of a quarter million dollars and we're looking for that means. Do we know, I think for the SU budget, you started to give us some areas of where this came from, this extra amount of money that over what we, is it, what's going up, is it all health care, is it all health care? Was the HRA not being appropriately budgeted for? Can we put a summary from, just a brief summary from Lindy and Bonnie of kind of the direction you gave of different areas that may have changed, increased or decreased? We can give you that, Jenny, but we've just seen it tonight for the first time like you told us. So I think it's the first draft. We don't tell people to ask for the minimum right now. We tell them to ask for it every single thing they think they're gonna need and now it's out of different ways. Gotcha. Just looking at this. So you guys need to review it. Yeah, right. And then we need to be raw. The audited numbers in from 19 and then we need to meet again. So, and I don't want to be overly optimistic. I don't want to be overly pessimistic, but the HRA statewide are causing huge difficulties with school budgets and a number of districts, it is costing them positions. So, that's just the reality. Going forward, if these HRAs are gonna maintain. They are. Would it be more equalized in next year because we're used to it and we would know what it was? I mean, as a board, that's a decision you have to make is how much each year you want to fund for these HRAs and as you get more years under your belt, you get more reliable equalization. You can see more data of how much people are using. The problem with the HRAs was that we did not settle the teacher's contract until after you passed a budget. So, we couldn't know exactly what we were gonna have to budget in that because it wasn't until later in the year that we do. I think one of my biggest things I've learned about being on the school board is how much speculation is involved in this process. It's incredible. It is gambling and it really is to some level. It's really trying to take the best information you have at a snapshot in time and projecting from there and there are so many factors that are thrown into the wrench that can totally derail a situation and totally derail a budget. I mean, it's just in the statewide negotiations for the health care. I mean that we are now moving forward. Whatever happens there is what we get and there is no give or take from that. We are mandated to use the same that was determined by the state. The point I'm trying to make is there's no way you could have been in the care. No, no, no, that's fine. I'm just, no way. I'm a little more aware than I was last year about the budget. It's just set up. Can we set a meeting for after you guys have had a chance to get this and the next round? How soon do you think you'd be able to get us, get us some feedback? Well, we're going to need the audit from... Tomorrow morning? Seven a.m. Yeah, seven a.m. I can be here. As soon as we can get the audit, we'll leave the lights on, sorry. Yeah, thanks. Actually, we won't because the cost might be high. I mean, the other thing is we can sort of take a little breath here because we are a ways out from our deadline. So I'd rather take a little more time and have us get your numbers. Oh yeah, I'm totally, whatever you need, I'm just... That's why I started with the disclaimer. This is a total draw, draft one. So the HRA is a health reimbursement account? Yes. And does, right, so when, and I think you explained it once already, when we budget it, does it automatically fill that person's account? No, okay. Because if you're only budgeting 65% of the total exposure, that's all you would be putting in to that as a budget item. So if they are a professional staff and my back's to you, I'm sorry. That's great. Per the state contract, it is $2,100 for a single and $4,200 for any other tier. So that's your employee plus spouse, employee plus children or a family. Support staff get $2,200 for an individual and $4,400 for all other tiers of enrollment. So that is the exposure that has been agreed upon for FY21 at an 80-20 split, which we were already at as a supervisory union within our district. So that didn't impact us as it did for others. So we were lucky there. But the difference with the HRA, you can prorate premium. You cannot prorate HRAs. So if they're only a half-time employee, they still get the full benefit. Sorry, can you say that again? So right now, if you have a 0.5 employee, the premium share that you as a school board pay is reduced based on being a 0.5 employee. As opposed to a 1.0. You cannot do that with the HRA. So if, regardless if they're a 1.0, a 0.5, a 0.2, or a 0.3, they're getting that full funding amount available to them to utilize for their claims. The first split that we have right now is off the table. We fund it first dollar. So right now, the employee was paying 40%. The board was paying 60% up to the first $1,000. And then the HRA would pay to the HRA was exhausted. That's gone. There is no longer that. So that additional money is the responsibility of the board from the get-go. So that also impacts the utilization and the funding into these HRAs. Wasn't there to talk about, and maybe I'm missing this, that there was just going to be one contract or one health care contract for everybody? That's what this is. That is what this is. So why are there separate negotiations? Is it separate negotiations for the salary and the benefits? Yeah, we still have to do our own negotiations. And this is all new just in this last week. But health insurance is now no longer on the table for negotiations. We have to go with when we're in the future. The only thing we control is the percentage at which we fund it. No, that is also mandated by the state. 45%? 60-65%. 60% for the HRA. Yeah, the HRA. The HRA, we can decide. Because I remember that was that from Bethel. Let's cut it down to 45%. Yes, I had some districts that decided not to utilize the 65%, and because of their budget constraints, they did drop down to 45. I had another one that dropped down to 50, knowing that there is a 10. We can actually see maybe when we come back to that and see what those numbers were. Absolutely. That's what happens next. We decide what they can live without. And you as a board now have to give us directive as to what your expectations are. I have to be careful. These are decisions I don't make for you. This is for you. No, I understand that. You as a board with your administration need to decide what you want. And then you tell me and I just run the numbers. Cool. But both professional development and HRA, it's a benefit you can get up to a cap. And if we wanted to be completely fiscally prudent, we always say we're going to fund that 100% because that's our full exposure. But not everyone takes their full professional development. So you kind of throw some money in there based on historical performance. And then hope it works out. And we're pretty good. And we've done that with professional development for a long time. We have a fairly good idea of what the staff takes on that. But HRA is not sure at all. And we literally only have a year and a half of utilization. That's really because of everything that happened in the year between future planning and data path. And pretty much can disregard utilization for FY18 because it was not accurate. So you really have FY19 eight months or maybe 10 months out of that that could be legit based on all the transfer. And then what happens in FY20? So we're just starting to be able to see some utilization trending. Okay. If you fund it at a higher rate and you don't get up to that rate, you can use those savings to reduce it in the future. So... That's a great thing. I remember from the SU meeting was that it does carry over. Which is really useful. Yeah. And it's very handy. Whatever we don't spend goes on. You don't know what you've got in there versus what you need to budget for in the future. So it automatically carries over. It doesn't go as part of our fund balance that we decide how to do it. You right now ends up in your general fund. Okay. And we would just track, this is what we budgeted for and this is what you used. Okay. You do have the option in what some other districts have. And I say this with the disclaimer that Dina said, we have to talk about this in more detail before we do this. There are some other districts who have gone to the extent of creating a special reserve fund for HRA. Is that like a truck fund? Similar to what you do, rather than going to the voters and saying I want to take $10,000 out of my FY19 surplus and put it to the building reserve fund, you literally just pull it out so it's tracked separately from your general fund. So revenue and expenditures would just come right out of that one fund. So every year when we're budgeting money it would come into that line item and every expenditure that's coming out would come right out of that line item. So it's truly tracked separately. Would you recommend that? I'm going to stick with Dina's recommendation that we need to have further conversation. It makes sense to me, yes, but if there's legal ramifications around doing so, I need to know that before I do come to you and say everything that this is what we need to do, but know that it is a discussion that I have had and have listened to other business managers discuss. I'm sorry, I recall that the HRA would be handled kind of like the launch fund or whatever. Yeah, but it's not, it didn't happen. It didn't happen. It was supposed to be that way. It didn't happen, I don't know why. Just to tell you, Carl, we've been on this a half hour. In terms of who you knew I was going to be. Yeah, of course. Yes, I wanted to keep you up to date. Well, yeah. Well, now it's just a discussion. No, no, no. Just to let you know. In terms of a meeting, I'm going to make a suggestion that maybe we watch our emails closely and work with our calendars to understand this is a priority because I don't want to set a meeting now and have these reports come sooner so that we could reset the meeting sooner or have them come later and thus not ready to be set. So I'm going to suggest that you kind of stay on your emails watching closely and as soon as we can get the reports and Terra authorizes them to us, that Lindy and I can start looking at different line items in this budget. I don't want to be the gloom and doom person, but it is unlikely we will get to a $300,000 mark without some sort of structural change. Yeah. And I have no idea what that might be. Do you need some instruction as to that tonight? Probably not, because I don't know the scope of it. Once we know the scope of it, then it would be more realistic to ask for that. Because right now we're just going to be grabbing from here. I do know that Lindy and I didn't put enough money into this budget to get to that number with any great ease. It's going to take some, like I say, some structural reorganization of something. Two things. One, I think possibly for our pie chart that HRA might be a really nice thing to be able to see. How much of the total benefit package is the HRA? I'm not sure how many pie charts you're doing and maybe it's some further discussion. It is one of the discussion items. If you write, because if we're looking at the total budget, how much of it is our HRA? I think that's it. Okay, got you. Got you. How much? Which is different from health insurance. So it's kind of like a slice of the pie that's similar but different. As of right now, at the 65% funding, the HRA is $64,805. $64,000? And is that somewhere in the budget? I just rolled up the Objects Pro 211 to give you that number. Sorry. It was in her spreadsheet that she has on her pocket. Got you. Only I filtered just for that code to give you that number. The guidance council of the HRA Entry is special under the guidance session. The teachers are under regular ed. Got you. That's broken out. Your budget is broken out by function and then each object code is under each budget function. Object code, sorry. That's the three digit code. That's when you're looking at your sheet, that 101 is salaries, 102 is HRA salaries. Okay, you're coding. I know. Your blue one. I don't know. The purple one. That one. So when you're looking at that, the function, you'll see that very top one is 1100. That's the function. Thank you. This is a very good definition. And then each code underneath it is the object that supports that function. So your salaries, your benefits, your supplies, your books. Yep. Each of those numbers. Those are all the numbers that I get to change as of 7.1, courtesy of the state of Vermont's Universal Charter of Accountants. Okay. Object and function. Great. Before we put this discussion to bed, when do we think just for general planning sense? So you think you're getting something in the next day or two? They can be. So we're thinking the end of the week and you're going to think about it in the week. So we should be thinking about the end of the month. Does that run into? Does that run into? We hope that we do. Arsut. Arsut, February break. Yep. And also our next meeting, we need to change because it's on town meeting day. And we're, I mean, we can have it, but we can't be able to be here, right? Because you're going to be at other town meetings. My town meetings are in the afternoon. We're usually done by 6.30. Okay. So a nice long day. You don't mind coming to us? I do 16 to 18 hour days right now anyways. Okay. Well, I don't know. When is Stockbridge's town meeting? In the morning. In the morning? Ah, Rochester's though is in the evening, right? I have three in the night. Arsut might be in the morning. Four. I don't have this year's, bro. It looks like in the church later on Monday. Monday. At 7 p.m., so. Okay. I don't mind them. If everybody's cool with that. And then it's back. So we're looking at the week, the week of the 18th hopefully. The week of the 17th of February, we've got somewhere in there. Hopefully by then. Maybe the 19th is looking like the best. The 13th? Wednesday. Wednesday? All right. So. What's the name of the film? As long as it's wise. Your current film? It's going to be the first step this year. Okay. So there's it. Okay. One. Ten. Yes. I'm sure the tenor can tell us. Because I would be very useful. A color. A color. A color. Cool. This is why I'm sort of hoping. Yup. Yup. All right. You have a question? Sure. Under operation of building in Salongli, it comes to like 610 and 733, general supplies and furniture and fixtures. What function code are we starting with? 2610 on page 811. 2610. Operational building 610 and 733. And determining that, is that based on an inventory of what we own? Sorry, 733, use that furniture and fixtures. That such stuff needs to be replaced for furniture and fixtures. That's normally what drives that number? Replacements. I'm just curious at what point do we maintain an inventory list so we know? Yes. We have a fixed asset list. We'll have to import it every year when we're on it. Oh. But I was missing. It's for real quick. Expensive trimmer. Part of your audit. I'm increased. I definitely look forward to seeing the audited numbers of what we did in 2019 for replacement. How much we cost of replacing fixtures? Parts fixed. I mean like the grounds. We have repairs and maintenance. 4,000 and nothing for the next budget. The building is separate from the landscaping issues. Basically most of that was an old code from the Rochester High School when you had to maintain the baseball fields, the soccer fields, they had to be lined, they had to be mowed, they had to be all that stuff and that's just gone. We don't have high school fields that we need to maintain anymore. And at some point a previous board had asked to have that cost broken out. What was it costing to maintain the high school fields? So like the ownership of the marquee, we could put that on eBay and recuperate and maybe buy a couple of fixtures for the lead problem. I mean what do we own that we can get rid of? You, Mason. Yeah, me. Public audits have at least rolled up the list. I don't think they have the individual. You've got 67 mice, 43 keyboards, two ergonomic keyboards, you know what I mean, a Betamax player, but there isn't at least a general thing. And I believe you roll that up from some sort of asset list. Yeah, we've made it in the foldable. So there's a fuller list we can probably get our hands on. If you send us an email, we can see what we can do about that. All right. What we've already talked about, is it was all the same type of fixture, meaning literally all those automated hand washers that you see in the restrooms, like the staff restroom or the automated ones. Those are like the new ones, right? It is, but they were not manufactured in a place that followed the lead. Oh. They were the cheap ones. So we have a quote for moving forward that what we do know about this is you're supposed to save your receipts so you get reversed for anything that hit as high. And then there's the custodial closet, as well as the sink in there, which you've got a whole different conversation if you're filling up your water bottle in the custodial closet. It's a little bit. You've got to have some fun with it. So that's where we're at. We have a quote. We're scheduling the work. Do you need a motion from us to approve it? It's under the $5,000. But I didn't know if there just had to be something officially noted for the reimbursement or whatever. Not that I saw paperwork. And notification has gone home to parents as well. And they're safe folders. And we specified specifically that which hand washing stations it was because I didn't want anybody to think it was a water fountain. There's more than one quote. It says, Dave Plummer has come and given us the quote. Does that mean there'll be other plumbers giving quotes? At the time this report was written, we weren't sure what the quote was going to come in at. It was going to be over the $5,000 amount. We learned with our plumbers and electricians that some people, especially if they're local, are quicker to come and do the work than other people. So that's a bit of a factor too. And supporting the local. And we basically followed the same procedure during the notifying parents, et cetera. Our results were a little different. So we're more of a mixed bag. We had five locations that were above the four. I learned a new term, PPP, parts per billion. One was a drinking fountain in the preschool room. So we automatically shut that down the next day. And there's an alternative water source in there. Another one of ours is a drinking fountain over in the high school, in the part of the high school that we're no longer using. That's also shut down. Waters turned off and they're signage. One of the new ones? It was one of the new ones. Hand washing sink in the art room which we left water turned on to. No one drinks from there. We have to leave it on because it's the only sink to wash your hands after you use the bathroom. And then we have two other sinks. Plumber came in last Thursday. We're still waiting for our quote to see what he's estimating there. It appears as though we will completely replace the drinking fountain in the preschool room. And then it looks to be like possibly faucet replacement for the sinks. One of the good things about both schools is that we didn't, they do two draws. They do a first draw which is after you immediately when you turn the water around. Then they do a second draw which is 30 seconds after the water has run. And the point of that is the 32nd one is you get a sense if it's the problem further up in the system. And for all of ours the water cleared significantly on the 32nd draw. So they believe most of the problem is in the faucets and the solder used to, I know nothing about plumbing so I'm out of my elevator, the solder used to put those faucets together. So we will retest once we have all these installed. And as Lindy said, the state pays up to a certain amount so we'll process through that. Make sure we get as much reimbursement as we can. And then I said, like I said, there's a retesting process that we'll take on our five sites in your four sites. Four sites. How's the roof? Sorry. How's the roof? The roof seems to be doing fine. Knock on wood. Plastic. Plastic, sorry. Knock on something. But the roof is doing fine. At this point we haven't had any major leaks. We had one minor leak. We believe we can continue to move along with that. Okay, thank you. Great. And then the only other thing I would say is I spent my day with a representative from this bit and by my day, I mean my day, ah, it's our insurance care. They send a safety consultant around to do, to check your, anything and everything you can think of. What's an example? Is this just a bridge or did this happen in Russia? They come to their different sites with it. Coming next week. Right. I'm going to do better than Wendy on the test because I'm asking her the question before you go. Nine to two-thirty-two. But it was very informative. We went over any like safety concerns from exterior doors to shades to recommendations to update to safety plans. Did you notice the push bars out of the multifunction room and that it needs to be replaced? That's not even high enough on the list. I'm sure he did. I haven't seen his full report. He talked about a lot and he takes a ton of notes. It's really informative. We can report out on it once we have it, but it has to be done in an executive session because it's considered safety planning and you don't want anybody to learn all your secrets. Yeah, so they can be safe. Exactly. And you had to keep a straight face while he said this. I was wondering, should you be washing your hands in lead water? I don't know what I am. I'll tell you the honest truth. I am. Just FYI, this bit is actually your insurance company. It's a Vermont school board's insurance trust, ESBIT, and they come around and do these safety audits of schools to prevent anything they can prevent from occurring. If they can help us fix something that's got a potential liability so that liability never happens. And their grant money ain't tied to it so the advantage of doing it was that I kind of went in with some of my concerns and he actually brought them up before. I could even get them off my plate and if it's in his report, then there's some grant funds to support those changes. That's great. This one really has a good track record of being proactive. They rather give us $1,000 to fix something before someone falls and gets injured and is being at a several thousand dollar price. I did want to comment on the performance that was here. It's on your list. I was here and it was a really great performance with Rochester and Stockbridge winter concert that Mallory put on with the kids. There was singing. They did rock band. They did bass guitar. They did electric piano. Percussion of humans. I saw the set up. It was an amazing set up. I had to leave to go out of town, but it was an amazing set up. I'd never seen a music concert set up quite like that before. It was great. The kids were excited about how it would win. One Stockbridge jester and one Rochester jester who roam particularly close. Whenever we have these events, they're together a lot. They came up and they said, we look like a real band. And they did. It was quite an elaborate set up. It was really great. So I wanted to give a shout out to them. Thank you. Okay. 9.1 annual report update. Yes. Jenny and I are making a good team and making a lot of progress on this. The main thing I wanted to bring up to you and we are going to have color coding but the main thing is the difference in price and I got this from Penny today. We're talking roughly, if it's a thousand copies as it was last year, the difference of $1,488 was last year's black and white, $2,268 for four color. Is that four pages in color? Or what is that? I didn't understand what that meant. I don't know what 4-4 is. Is that like four ink colors? Yeah, I think something like that. Yeah, four ink colors. So that's just four pages in color. Yeah, I think it meant the total thing. So there's four color printing, which I think it says four color printing. This is color throughout. So it's four color throughout. That means it's not spot printing. You might use a particular green for your logo and just have that be the only color and that's a cheaper kind of color run than a four color color run, which is what that is. Yeah, this is a four color color run. So I wanted to just give you the idea of what we're planning, which is definitely color. And we're going to get better at these pie charts and putting them in my computer sort of messed up today. But also the graphics and the information. But I wanted to make sure the board know that we were to do this the way we want to. We are spending $600. Is it $600? No, it's $700. Almost $800 more. Before I go any further, I just want to make sure that this is something we want to do. Some of your ideas are to do color pie charts. Also, what we're working right now is that there are eight colored sections and literally one from the introduction to the warning is different. And that comes in. They have a header on top of each page. It's a different color. And then there's another header. It didn't come out. I didn't get it. No. I have a couple. I didn't print out enough for everybody, but people wanted to just take a look. This is also not as... It's not anywhere close to done. It is broken up color-wise, but it gives you some idea. And I haven't here... Different sections in each section is called the... I can pass along just the idea of the map. And sections. Yeah, I think... I mean, we're just... We're trying to get it so much more informative this year. I just have... Here, pass this along and just look at this. This is sort of a rough idea. I'm not crazy about the exact way we did the map. It is amazing to look at this SU on a map. You realize it's three valleys with almost no way to get from one end of it to the other. Bruce, I don't know how you've done this. I think we should not show a map to anybody who's applying. We still need to see where we ended last year to be able to know as we're proposing this amount for this year... Okay. Is that a lot more... You know, is that... Do we only use a very small amount and what we're budging is a very big amount? You know, what did we actually use on that line item? And when would we have that? For FY20? I'm talking about right now... No, no, no. We'll get FY18. 19. 19. 19. As of this afternoon, they told me I'd start getting reports within tomorrow and the day after. Okay. And then you load that into... Then I'll send it to you. And you as a board... I don't make that decision. You as a board have to decide if you want to utilize their surplus funds. No, I understand that. I was... I'm more looking at the actual other column that shows me my proposed 19 and then my actual 19. Those columns are extremely helpful when looking at... And once we have the actual 19, Wendy and I will be able to go through and adjust. And adjust where you... The caution I'm going to give the board is that we have to be... And I don't know what that surplus number's going to be. We have to be very, very careful about using surplus funds because all that does is kick the candle. Right. That's exactly my concern. And you're using a number that is two years old. Right. Regardless that the number's only released right now, it is based on budgeting and factors that are two years old. Right. And at the very beginning of every single audit, and this is what the auditors are saying is wrong with the statute and why it impacts every district throughout the entire state who utilize these surplus funds. The very first step in every audit at the beginning at the end of every fiscal year is to review and restate your prior year AP, which is accounts payable, and your prior year accounts receivable. That one process alone impacts what those surplus or deficit funds were that you then allocated and potentially end up harming yourself if you utilize full funds that potentially may not have been available to you to begin with. I think that's actually about the stress. So that's the second problem is because we're still sorting out where our reserve funds are. Right. But one of the rules of thumb that... Oh, I don't remember which business manager said a long time ago back when we were winter northwest, but when you're looking at a budget gap of a quarter million dollars, that's when you start cutting people. And right now, we're looking at a budget gap of a quarter million dollars, and we're looking for that means. Do we know, I think for the SU budget, you started to give us some areas of where this came from, this extra amount of money that over what we... Is it... What's going up? Is it all health care? Is it all health care? What's the HRA? It's not being appropriately budgeted for. Can we give a summary from... Just a brief summary from Lindy and Bonnie of kind of the direction you gave of different areas that may have changed, increased or decreased. We can give you that, Jenny, but we've just seen it tonight for the first time. Oh, okay. So I think a caution is, it's the first draft. We don't tell people to ask for the minimum right now. We tell them to ask for every single thing they think they're going to need, and now it's out of different way. Gotcha. So just looking at this... So you guys need to review it. Yeah, right. And then we need to draw the audited numbers in from 19, and then we need to read again. So... Assume probably. I don't want to be overly optimistic. I don't want to be overly pessimistic, but the HRA statewide are causing huge difficulties with school budgets. And a number of districts, it is costing them positions. So that's just reality. Going forward, if these HRAs are going to maintain... They are. Would it be more equalized in next year because we're used to it and we would know what it was? I mean, as a board, that's the decision you have to make is how much each year you want to fund for these HRAs. And as you get more years under your belt, you can see more of how much people are using it. The problem with the HRAs was that we did not settle the teacher's contract until after you passed a budget. So we couldn't know exactly what we were going to have to budget in that because it wasn't until later in the year that you... I think one of my biggest things I've learned about being on the school board is how much speculation is involved in this process. It's incredible. It is gambling, and it really is to some level. It's really trying to take the best information you have at a snapshot in time and projecting from there. And there are so many factors that... It's thrown into the wrench that can totally derail a situation and totally derail a budget. I mean, it's just... In the statewide negotiations for the health care, I mean, that we are now moving forward. Whatever happens there is what we get. There is no give or take from that. We are mandated to use the same that was determined by the state. The point I'm trying to make is there's no way it could have been prepared. No, no, no. That's fine. I'm just... No way. I'm a little more aware than it was last year about the budget. It's just sort of... Can we set a meeting for after you guys have had a chance to look at this? How soon do you think you'd be able to get us some feedback? Well, we're going to need the audit from... Tomorrow morning? 7 a.m.? Yeah, 7 a.m. I can be here. As soon as we can get the audit. We'll leave the lights on for you. Actually, we won't, because that costs money. I mean, the other thing is we can sort of take a little breath here because we are ways out from our deadline. I'd rather take a little more time and have us get numbers. Totally, whatever you need, I'm just... That's why I started with the disclaimer. This is a total draw draft. So, the HRA is a health reimbursement account? Yes. Does... Right, so when... I think you explained it once already. When we budget it, does it automatically fill that person's account? No. Okay. Because if you're only budgeting 65% of the total exposure, that's all you would be putting in to that as a budget item. So, if they are a professional staff, then my back's to you, I'm sorry. Per the state contract, it is $2,100 for a single and $4,200 for any other tier. So, that's your employee plus spouse, employee plus children, or a family. Support staff get $2,200 for an individual and $4,400 for all other tiers of enrollment. So, that is the exposure that has been agreed upon for FY21. At an 80-20 split, which we were already at as a supervisory union within our district, so that didn't impact us as it did for others. So, we were lucky there. But the difference with the HRA, you can prorate premium. You cannot prorate HRAs. So, if they're only a half-time employee, they still get the full benefit. Sorry, can you say that again? So, right now, if you have a .5 employee, the premium share that you as a school board pay is reduced based on being a .5 employee. As opposed to a .1 employee. You cannot do that with the HRA. So, regardless if they're a 1.0, a .5, a .2, or a .3, they're getting that full funding amount available to them to utilize for their claims. The first split that we have right now is off the table. We fund it first dollar. So, right now, the employee was paying 40%, the board was paying 60% up to the first thousand dollars, and then the HRA would pay until the HRA was exhausted. That's gone. There is no longer that. So, that additional money is the responsibility of the board from the get-go. So, that also impacts the utilization and the funding into these HRAs. Wasn't there to talk about, and maybe I'm missing this, that there was just going to be one contract or one healthcare contract for everybody? That's what this is. That is what it is. So, why are there separate negotiations? Is it separate negotiations for the salary and the benefits? Yeah, we still ask this. Salary, wording? Yes. We still ask supervisory confusion. That's what I'm looking for. That's what I'm looking for. And this is all new just in this last week. But health insurance is now no longer on the table for negotiations. Got you. We have to go with what you said. The only thing we control is the percentage at which we fund it. No, that is also mandated by the state. 45 percent? 80-20. 60-65 percent. Oh, wait. We do for the HRA. Yeah, the HRA. The HRA, we can decide, because I remember there was that from Bethelman. Right, but if we... Let's cut it down to 45. Yes, I had some districts that decided not to utilize the 65 percent, and because of their budget constraints, they did drop down to 45. So I had another one that dropped down to 50, knowing that there is a... That's again, we actually see maybe when we come back to what those numbers were. That's what happens next. Yeah. Bonnie and Lindy review. They decide what they can live without. And you as a board now have to give us directive as to what your expectations are. I have to be careful. These are decisions I don't make for you. Gotcha. No, I understand that. You as a board with your administration need to decide what you want, and you tell me and I just run the numbers. Cool. But both professional development and HRAs, it's a benefit. You can get up to a cap. And if we wanted to be completely fiscally prudent, we'd always say, we're going to fund that 100 percent because that's our full exposure. But not everyone takes their full professional development. So you kind of throw some money in there based on historical performance. And then hope it works out. And we're pretty good and we've done that with professional development and we have a fairly good idea of what the staff takes on that. But HRAs we're not sure at all. And we literally only have a year and a half of utilization. That's really because of everything that happened that first year between future planning and data path, we pretty much can disregard utilization for FY18 because it was not accurate. So you really have FY19, eight months or maybe 10 months out of that that could be legit based on all the transfer. And then what happens in FY20? So we're just starting to be able to see some utilization trending. If you fund it at a higher rate and you don't get up to that rate, you can use those savings to reduce it in the future. That's the great thing I remember from the SU meeting was that it does carry over, which is really useful. And creating whatever we don't spend goes on. You know what you've got in there versus what you need to budget for in the future. So it automatically carries over. It doesn't go as part of our fund balance that we decide what to do with. You right now ends up in your general fund. Okay. And we would just track this is what we budgeted for and this is what you use. Okay. You do have the option in what some other districts have and I say this with the disclaimer that Dina said we have to talk about this in more detail before we do this. There are some other districts who have gone to the extent of creating a special reserve fund for HRA. Yes. Is that like a truck fund, you know, like you do in the town? So no matter what you do, it's rather than going to the voters and saying, I want to take $10,000 out of my FY19 surplus and put it to the building reserve fund. You literally just pull it out so it's tracked separately from your general fund. Okay. So revenue and expenditures would just come right out of that one fund. So every year when we're budgeting money, it would come into that line item and every expenditure that's coming out would come right out of that line item. So it's truly tracked separately. Would you recommend that? I'm going to stick with Dina's recommendation that we need to have further conversation. It makes sense to me, yes, but if there's legal ramifications around doing so, I need to know that before I do come to you I would think that this is what we need to do, but know that it is a discussion that I have had and have listened to other business managers discuss. I'm sorry. I recall that the HRA would be handled kind of like the lunch fund or whatever. Yeah, but it's not. It didn't happen. It didn't happen. It was supposed to be that way. It didn't happen. I don't know why. Just to tell you, Carl, we've been on this a half hour. In general, you knew I was going to be more... Yeah, of course. I just want to keep you up to date. Well, yeah. I was just... No, no, no. Just to let you know. In terms of a meeting, I'm going to make a suggestion that maybe we watch our emails closely and work with our calendars to understand this is a priority because I don't want to set a meeting now and have these reports come sooner so that we could set the meeting sooner or have them come later and us not getting ready to be set. So I'm going to suggest that you kind of stay on your emails watching closely as soon as we can get the reports and Terra authorizes them to us that Lindy and I can start looking at different line items in this budget. I don't want to be the gloom and doom person, but it is unlikely we will get to a $300,000 mark without some sort of structural change. And I have no idea what that might be. Do you need some instruction as to that tonight? Probably not, because I don't know the scope of it. Once we know the scope of it, then it would be more realistic to ask for that. Because right now we're just going to be grabbing from here. I do know that Lindy and I didn't put enough money into this budget to get to that number with any great needs. It's going to take some structural reorganization of something. Two things. One, I think possibly for our pie chart that HRA might be a really nice thing to be able to see. How much of the total benefit package is the HRA? I'm not sure how many pie charts you're doing, and maybe it's some further discussion. It is one of the discussion items. If you're right, because if we were looking at the total budget, how much of it is our HRA? I think that's it. Okay, got you. How much? Which is different from health insurance. Health insurance. It's kind of like a slice of the pie that's similar but different. As of right now, at the 65% funding, the HRA is $64,805. $64,000? Is that somewhere in the budget? I just rolled up the Objects Pro 211 to give you that number. Sorry. It was in her spreadsheet that she has on her pocket. Got you. Only, I filtered just for that code to give you that number. Right. The guidance council of the HRA entry is special under the guidance session. Teachers are under regular ed. Got you. That's broken out. Your budget is broken out by function. And then each object code is under each budget function. Object code, sorry. That's the three-digit code. That's when you're looking at your sheet that 101 is salaries, 102 is teacher salaries. Okay, you're coding. I know. Your blue one. I don't know. Staple one. That one. So when you're looking at that, the function you'll see that very top one is 1100. That's the function. Thank you. This is a very good definition. And then each code underneath it is the object that supports that function. So your salaries, your benefits, your supplies, your books. Yep. Each of those numbers. Those are all the numbers that I get to change as of 7-1 courtesy of the state of Vermont's Universal Charter of Accountants. Okay. Object and function. Great. Before we put this discussion to bed, when do we think just for general planning sense? So you think you're getting something in the next day or two? They tell me. So we're thinking the end of the week and you're going to think about it in a week so we should be thinking about the end of the month and does that run into? We hope that we do. Arsut. Arsut February break. Yep. And also... Before that, right? Yes, I hope that we'll be able to do that. Yeah, and also our next meeting we need to change because it's on town meeting day and we're... I mean, we're going to have it but we're terrible not be able to be here, right? Because you're going to be at other town meetings. My town meetings are in the afternoon. We're usually done by 6.30. Okay. It's a long day. You don't mind coming to... I do 16 to 18-hour days right now, anyways. Well, I don't know. When does Stockbridge's town meet? In the morning. In the morning? Rochester's, though, is in the evening, right? Night. Arsut might be at 9.04. I don't have this year's, bro. It looks like it's churchly on Monday. Monday. At 7 p.m., so... Okay. I'll remind them if everybody's cool with that. So we're looking at the week, the week of the 18th, hopefully, the week of the 17th of February, yeah, somewhere in there. Hopefully by then. Maybe the 19th is looking like the best... The 13th? On this end, Wednesday. Wednesday? Okay. Um, all right. So... What's that? You don't mind if you're wise? Um, your current balance? Sounds like we have the first staff this year. Okay. Our staff... So there's a... Okay. Um, on 10... Yes. Okay. I'm sure that Tara can tell us. Yeah. Because I would be very useful in, uh, a code that you can even color code. Cool. This is why I'm so... Yup. Yup. Yup. All right. Um, you have a question? Sure. Yeah. You know, under operation of building in so long, when it comes to like 610 and 733, uh, when it's... general supplies and furniture and fixtures... Hey, sir. Sorry. Oh. What function code are we starting with? 2610 on page 8 of 11. 2610. Operation building 610 and 733. And determining that, is that based on an inventory of what we own? Sorry. 733, use that furniture and fixtures. That such stuff needs to be replaced for furniture and fixtures. That's normally what drives that number? Replacements. I'm just curious at what point... Do we maintain an inventory list so we know? Yes. We have a fixed asset list. We'll have to order it every year when we're on. Oh. Well, it was missing. It's for real quick. Expensive trimmer. I just want to say, you know... I definitely look forward to seeing the audited numbers of what we did in 2019 for replacement, how much we cost of replacing fixtures. Look at the hard specs. I mean, like, uh, on grounds, you know, we have repairs and maintenance, uh, 4,000 and nothing for the next budget. I mean, the building is separate from the landscaping issues. Jason, that was a... Most of that was an old quote from the, um, Rochester High School when you had to maintain the baseball fields, the soccer fields. They had to be mined, they had to be mowed, they had to be all that, all that stuff. And that's just gone. We don't have high school fields that we need to maintain anymore. And at some point, a previous board had asked to have that cost broken out. What was it costing to maintain the high school fields? So, like, the ownership of the marquee, we could, uh, put that on eBay and recuperate. Maybe buy a couple of fixtures for the lead problem. I mean, what do we own that we can get rid of? You, Mason. You. Well, the public audits have at least rolled up the list. I don't believe they have the individual. You've got, uh, 67 mice, 43 keyboards, two ergonomic keyboards. You know, an old Betamax player. But there is, there isn't at least a general thing. And I believe you roll that up from some sort of asset list. It's made, yeah, we've made sure to fold up. So, there's, there's, there's a fuller list we could probably get our hands on. If you send us an email, we can see what we can do about that. Um, all right. Uh. Which we've already talked about. Um, Stockbridge is, it was all the same type of fixture, meaning literally all those automated hand washers that you see in the restrooms, like the staff, staff restroom or the. The automated ones. The automated ones. It turned, it was. Those are like the new ones, right? It is, but they were not manufactured in a place that followed the lead. Oh. We're nine. They were the chief ones. Uh, so we have a quote, we're moving forward that what we do know about this is you're supposed to save your receipts so you can get reversed for anything that hit as high. And then there's the custodial closet, as well as the sink in there, which you've got a whole different conversation if you're filling up your water bottle in the custodial closet. It's a little bit, you've got to have some fun with it. So that's where we're at. We have a quote. We're scheduling the work. Do you need a motion from us to approve it? It's under the $5,000 amount. So. I didn't know if there just had to be something officially noted for the reimbursement or whatever. Not that I saw paperwork. And notification has gone home to parents, as well. And we specified specifically that, which hand washing stations it was, because I didn't want anybody to think it was the water fountain. There's more than one quote. It says, Dave, the plumber has come to give us a quote. Does that mean there'll be other plumbers giving quotes? At the time this report was written, we weren't sure what the quote was going to come in at. It was going to be over the $5,000 amount. And what we've learned with our plumbers and electricians is some people, especially if they're local, are quicker to come and do the work than other people. So that's a bit of a factor, too. That's part of the local. And we basically followed the same procedure during the notifying parents, et cetera. Our results were a little different. So we're more of a mixed bag. We had five locations that were above the four, I learned a new term, PPB, parts per billion. One was a drinking fountain in the preschool room. So we automatically shut that down the next day. And there's an alternative water source in there. Another one of ours is a drinking fountain over in the high school, in the part of the high school that we're no longer using. That's also shut down. Waters turned off and they're signage. Are those the new ones? It was one of the new ones. Hand washing sink in the art room, which we left water turned on to, no one drinks from there. We have to leave it on because it's the only sink to wash our hands after you use the bathroom. And then we have two other sinks. Plummer came in last Thursday. We're still waiting for our quote to see what he's estimating there. It appears as though we will completely replace the drinking fountain in the preschool room. And then it looks to be like a possibly faucet replacement for the sinks. One of the good things about both schools is that we didn't, they do two draws. They do a first draw, which is after you immediately when you turn the water around. Then they do a second draw, which is 30 seconds after the water has run. And the point of that is, the 32nd one is you get a sense if it's the problem further up in the system. And for all of ours, the water cleared significantly on the 32nd draw. So they believe most of the problem is in the faucets and the solder used to, I know nothing about plumbing so I'm out of my element here. The solder used to put those faucets together. So we will retest once we have all these installed. And as Lindy said, the state pays up to a certain amount. So we'll process through that, make sure we get as much reimbursement as we can. And then I said, like I said, there's a retesting process that we'll take on our five sites in your four sites. How's the roof? Sorry? How's the roof? The roof seems to be doing fine. Knock on wood. Plastic. Plastic. Sorry, knock on something. But the roof is doing fine at this point. We haven't had any major leaks. We had one minor leak. We believe we can continue to limpel on with that. Okay, thank you. Great. And then the only other thing I would say is I spent my day with a representative from this bit. And by my day, I mean my dad. It's our insurance care. They send a safety consultant around to do, to check your, anything and everything you can think of. What's an example? Is this just Dr. Bridget? Did this happen last week? Just, they come to, they're different sites for this. Coming next week. Right. I'm going to do better than Wendy on the test because I'm asking her the question before you go. 9 to 232. But it was very informative. We went over any like safety concerns from exterior doors to shades to recommendations to update to safety plans. Did he notice the first parts of the multifunction room and that it needs to be replaced? That's not even high enough on the list. I'm sure he did. I haven't seen his full report. Talk about a lot and he takes a ton of notes. It's really informative. We can report out on it once we have it, but it has to be done in an executive session because it's considered safety planning. You don't want anybody to learn all your secrets. Yeah, so they can be safe. Exactly. And you had to keep a straight face while he said that. I was wondering, should you be washing your hands in lead water? I don't know what I am. I'll tell you the honest truth. I am. Just FYI, this bit is actually your insurance company. It's a Vermont school board's insurance trust, ESBIT. And they come around and do these safety audits of schools to prevent anything they can prevent from occurring. If they can help us fix something that's got a potential liability so that liability never happens. You know, our insurance rules please stay down. There's grant money tied to it. So the advantage of doing it was that I kind of went in with some of my concerns and he actually brought them up before. I can even get them off my plate. And if it's in his report then there's some grant funds to support those changes. That's great. Mr. Ruelly has a good track record of being proactive. You know, they'd rather give us $1,000 to fix something before someone falls and gets injured and you're looking at a several thousand dollar price. I think you're rocks I have to make a comparison. They're too close to actuals. I did want to comment on the performance that was here. It's on your list. I was here and it was a really great performance with Rochester and Stockbridge. Winter concert that Mallory put on with the kids. There was singing. They did rock band. They did bass guitar. They did electric piano. Percussion instruments. Percussion instruments. I saw the set up. It was an amazing set up. I had to leave to go out of town, but it was an amazing set up. I've never seen a music concert set up quite like that before. It was great. I was either excited or excited about one Stockbridge jester and one Rochester jester who roam particularly close whenever we have these events to roam together a lot. They came up and they said, Mrs. Boyn-Rump, we look like a real band. And they did. It was quite an elaborate set up. It was really great. So I wanted to give a shout out to them. Thank you. Okay. 9.1 annual report update. Yes. Jenny and I are making a good team and making a lot of progress on this. The main thing I wanted to bring up to you and we are going to have color coding, but this is the main thing is the difference in price. And I got this from Penny today. I just sent it to you. But we're talking roughly, if it's a thousand copies as it was last year, the difference of $1,488 was last year's black and white, $2,268 for four color. Is that four pages in color? Or what is that? I didn't understand what that meant. I don't know what 4,4 is. Is that like four ink colors? Yeah, I think something like that. Okay, so it's not just four pages in color. Yeah, I think it meant the total thing. So there's four color printing, which I think it says 4,4. This is color throughout. So it's 4,4 color throughout. Right, that means that it's not spot printing. Like you might use a particular green for your logo and just have that be the only color. And that's a cheaper kind of color run than a four color color run, which is what that is. Yeah, this is a four color color run. So I wanted to just give you the idea of what we're planning, which is definitely color. And we're going to get better at these high charts and putting them in my computer sort of messed up today. But also the graphics and the information. But I wanted to make sure the board know that we were to do this the way we want to. We are spending $600. Is it $600? No, it's $700. Almost $800 more. So 80 cents more of a book. Yeah, before I go any further, I just want to make sure that this is something we want to do. Some of your ideas are to do color pie charts. Color pie charts. Also what we're working right now is that there are eight colored sections and literally one from the introduction to the warning is a different. And that comes in. They have a header on top of each page. It's a different color. And then there's another header. It didn't come out. I didn't get it. I have a couple. I didn't print out enough for everybody. This is also not as... It is broken up color-wise. But it gives you some idea. And I have in here... Different sections in each section is called the... I can pass along just the idea of the map. And sections. Yeah, I think... I mean, we're just trying to get it so much more informative this year. I just have... If you pass this along, just look at this. This is sort of a rough idea. I'm not crazy about the exact way we did the map. It is amazing to look at this SU on a map. You realize it's three valleys with almost no way to get from one end of it to the other. Bruce, I don't know how they've done this. I think we should not show a map to anybody who's applying for this job. Oh, we should. We should show it big. Organizational chart. Yeah, the organizational chart is Jenny's idea, which I think is great. Some of the stuff, too, is just getting what we need to describe and figuring out, right now, even at this, we're talking more pages, too, than we had last year. We have last year. There's 24, as I remember, and we're talking... So, with each page, it's going to increase the price, as well, because... Yeah, it's going to be... I wouldn't be as surprised. At 26, we're going to be looking probably 25. I mean, it is our major... You know, we're looking at this as an informational booklet, not just, you know, that they're going to... Jenny's thinking is that this is a resource that they're going to want to keep around with stuff to look at for the future. Right, explanations. Yeah, explanations and contact numbers and all kinds of things. So, it's a bigger deal, but that really is... whether you want to go forward with the board wants to go forward with this kind of thinking. I certainly like it, but it is, you know, when we're talking about $300,000 plus dollars in overages, an extra, you know, $500, $600 in a manual budget, maybe we could do it in black and white and make it work with pie charts and things like that. What's your call? I like the way this is going. I think that anything that makes our information easier to understand is better, but I agree, you know, think about the tabular information. We could also mail in black and white but have it available. There's all kinds of... not that I've gotten in Excel, there's all kinds of different charts you can use. Bar charts can sometimes work better with colors and they even talk about this little tutorial I saw says, depending on the kind of information you're dealing with and how close things are, you may want to go with bar charts or different types of charts as opposed to pie charts. That's just one option. So it really, it comes down to, I think this is also going to be our first stab at it, that I think we'll get through it and we'll realize, oh gosh, we forgot. The main thing I want to do is get a template out and this is where Joni and I are getting at. We're getting a template of what the whole thing looks like and then it's really figuring out how much information we can put in and what to explain. Sure. Because there's only so much room and you could start writing. I wrote a page and a half just on the SU and I suddenly realized, ah, it's probably too much. Right, because you want to suggest... So all the stuff I got from voting when we went to vote on the budget at the full SU board meeting, there was a lot about, at least I want to put in there the details of when the vote happens, who's voting on it, because I think that's a lot of people. Last year it was like, these numbers, why aren't we in control of these numbers? That's a very good point. I look out and keep us in the loop. Cool. Thank you. Put the colors of the charts or the pie charts and stuff on a few pages and then at least you'll have some of it. Well, that's it. It's almost like you're in the penises of the pie charts and that would be the color for color. Right, so it's not like the whole book be color. That's certainly an option. I mean, it may be... C and figure four. I mean, it's obviously much better if it's way lower than the information. Right, and how is it bound? Because maybe there's a cheaper way to have it bound. Because the idea is the material, getting the materials easier, but maybe the binding can be cheaper. Oh, it's that. Well, that's true. You know, this adds money if we notify in white. The color doesn't add. We have less student art, but we have more information. Right. So the priority would be probably toward information over creative. Well, we could still put black and white student art on too if somebody drew a pen. Well, sort of like the stuff that the Herald does first. Right, exactly. What the Chris was saying. Just one thing, Bonnie, I did put it out a while ago about art and I saw your thing to Jane about pictures. I haven't received anything from anybody. So if I could please, from both schools, please. I have a question She does a website where they she uploads the kids art to it and then you can order that art on any brand or art Sonya. Yeah. Great. Can you send that to me? Okay, that was her question. Send it to me so that I can, yeah, I can let go. All right, good. One other thing to think about just the idea that popped in my head based on Jenny's comment. You know, when you say, okay, well, we could mail in black and white or have a PDF. We could also think about if the mailing, if the mailing referred to if we did have, you know, we savvy our communities are in the main. And I know for me as, you know, the techie guy, any of them about maybe mailing less and putting might be, might be some can do that. I don't know. That's what I mean. I'm pretty sure that there's a, there's the bits of information that the report have to contain. But doesn't, you know, doesn't necessarily have to contain student order pie charts or whatever. Right. But I think we definitely need to send it to people because there's a lot of people. And maybe in another year you could send a postcard along the head and say, if you turn this or whatever, and then you only maybe have to send it half of them. I like that the way you said that too is that you have to give them an incentive by getting it early. Yeah. You know, or something like that. Right, but you, you return the card if you are declining a paper copy and sending back the email. That's a good idea. But then if somebody doesn't send it back, we still automatically send them their papers so we're not providing it for everybody regardless. In order to save money, right? Yes. And the trees. As I say, we're talking $600 is not a small amount of money. It's different. It's for color. So I think it's, we'll definitely take it in consideration to try and figure out ways to, all right? Thank you. People that would do it, if you look at it at home. Oh, yeah. I think you're right. I think it's a good start right now. Facilities price and work group. So, Carl, I'm just thinking about this. I'm going to ask that we defer that to the next meeting because I think it might change when I meet with Elizabeth, you know, so I can pass on that to him. Okay. Great. Still working out what information since we don't really have a consensus, I think we need to have to have one more meeting about that. But I think what's important is that we do not let the progress of the building committee stop us from being able to hit some milestones about getting this community engagement process begun. Because really where the building committee is is in just, you know, what do we say about these numbers? Do we want to pull out these numbers this way or do we want to look at those numbers that for the most part? And do we want to talk about some of the, you know, some of the assumptions and conversations that we had during the building committee meetings, germane or important to be, to be brought forward as part of the report, whereas things that we'll talk about again in a different context at a community meeting. I think that it's very important that we have, that we as a board, because the board is the person that's in charge of this process, that we as a board are able to have information. I'd like us to have, you know, not in the town booklets, but I'd like us to have handouts at town meeting that summarize what the process is and what's, you know, where we're going and where we want to have community meetings. So I think we need to sort that out, I think, as a board and then the building committee will say what the building committee says and we'll go from there. But we need to, I think, we need to move forward and I think the ability to have information about the next step in the community engagement meetings at town meeting in March is what's going to drive getting attendance to those meetings. So we need to, I think, as a board figure out when do we want to have those community engagement meetings. Do we have any information on that media? Well, as a building, we as a committee, I mean, putting the building committee hat back on, I don't personally think there's more information that we could, I don't think there's more things for us to understand in that report the contents of that report. I think that... The report out is where is the debate. Right, correct. And there's been several online back together to confirm draft. Right, but I think that... A report out from the from the building committee. But what you're saying is there's really no more information that we can get out of Black River that would change what we've discussed. Right, where there's no more, there's no more information that we're going to get out of. At one point in time we thought it was very important that as part of the building committee report we had the information on the building cost per building. And we've been told we really can't get that without a lot more work so we're not going to have that in this report. We wanted to remember with one of our early meetings we thought it was important to discuss how much propene is used in each building. Can we get an answer to the question about what the community engagement really is? I think if we're... Yeah, we have a whole board. That's the next solidarity that we're transitioning to the next. Carl, you say you want to do this in a different order? No, what I'm trying to say is that as part of the board we need to get to one of the things that the building committee discussed at great length was what does this report mean that we need to bring to the community? What do we need to engage about? And then we said well, but our charge is to analyze the numbers of the report. It's not to analyze the politics or the community feelings or the sentiment around the report. It's just to analyze the report. And so some of the discussions have been back and forth about well, do we talk... do we bring up in our report some of the questions that we had going forward that the report triggered? Is that part of the report or is that part of something that just gets brought into the conversation of the community update meeting? What's really important is that we don't... we could say okay, the board still had the the building committee still hasn't... so the board can't schedule a community engagement meeting. I think the board needs to... I think part of what I'm saying about the building committee update is while we have not produced a formal report I think our work for the most part besides creating that report is done. I don't think there's more training out of that. How can the board distribute to the community that the board hasn't heard what's going on? Right. Well, I'm not saying we should... I'm saying that... Okay. I'm not explaining... Well, here's the thing. I've been looking at the last notes and said Rob Garner volunteered to write a narrative of the building committee update. He wrote that? You can see about that. So that is not that's not ready to be presented to us. That's correct. Correct. Because there's other narratives that are out there that other people have put together that say other things. Right. So the committee needs to come back together and inform... But these are clearly the political issues not the financial issues. Right? We have the financial issues. We... Yeah. I'm just saying that these different drafts take a different political take on this issue. Right. Or they include political information or they don't? Well, how about we get to look at all of them? I mean, I don't know. I mean, how about one year for them to... Well, that's what I'm just saying. I think maybe it's time for us to just read some of this stuff and then be able to talk about it. Because otherwise, it feels like we're almost... We're hearing about this turmoil and we're not actually seeing something to make a decision about. And so I think if you give us these reports, we can then say those of us on the board who aren't on the building committee can say, this is what we like. Do more of this. And then we can give you a clear instruction. Follow-up. We have a final read and we... and two people were missing. So we agreed it was all good and the two people that weren't there decided that that wasn't going to work. Yes. What? I think, I think... The minutes did not indicate that there was a vote. That's true. We didn't have minutes. The next step clearly is that we can decide what draft we want to read or what we're going to read. That's what I want to hear about. Then I want to see several drafts and make a decision about which draft I think is right. But give me copies. There's one there. I think the concern is also the... getting this information out to the public. And what the... what we're presenting to the public is very important. There's... that is a December draft. I have a January draft. There's four drafts. No, no, that's fine. I'm saying I... let me know when we have all the different drafts and then I could... we can read them and compare them and say which one seems the most like what we're at. I mean, clearly what's been coming through from lots of this this is a very contentious process. Right. And that we may not be able to make a decision until we hear from this community. Right. And I think... And as we talked about last time and this is why I'm a little surprised in some ways that this is so contentious I thought it was pretty clear after our last meeting with the building that we have a basic question we have to ask first to our... both of our communities is it do we want to be together before we make any decisions about these buildings. And so it seems to me we have to get there first and that's where this comes to because I don't think we can make decisions. I mean, and maybe we did jump the gun by having this whole report done before we knew that answer to that question. But... Right. Because the building committee was not charged with... in this report there's nothing about whether to be merged or unmerged. And so this committee should not even be looking at that. No. I don't think that is really a question. We need to look at what's actually in this report. Just report the facts. The only thing I would add to tonight's budget helps us maybe move this lens of what these communities want. Yeah. I would also offer that once we figure out what are the two or three possibilities they might want additional information that lets them determine can we actually afford what we want. Yeah. I mean, we're looking at a budget tonight. We want it. So... What I hope I'm trying to convey is that we have to figure out what is it the community wants and then we have to do the work to say, okay, this is what it's going to take because I think to not do that if I believe people would avoid of the costs. I've also heard you I've now heard you say this to me like three or four times and months have gone by with the building committee and stuff like that and understandably people are impatient. I mean let's do why have we not scheduled a community forum. And that's what I was just saying. We need to have some information I think to present a town meeting with the community gathered and a lot of people that don't give a crap about do not give a lot or care directly about the school. Apologize for that. But let me finish. So having you know having something where we at least decided on some dates where we have some idea about whether or not there's going to be a mediator or if we're going to work on that we'll call them we're going to get information on that now but I think what's important is that the building committee will say what it says and we can look at all that information except a report from the building committee that has two conflicting reports that's fine. My point here is that we need to I think we need to as a board put together an agenda and be able to say at town meeting that we're going to have a community the first community engagement day is going to be March 23rd it's going to be April 1st but I mean we need to I think we really need to get off the Schneid so we had a meeting with a community yes good thing our facilitator she has since retired from the business well because she was she told me I had a time she was retired so I knew that but she's been through several she's worked with a lot of small towns and she gave us pointers on what to do what not to do and she gave us two recommendations and her two recommendations of what who to use as a facilitator she gave two names who we have not pursued but we can pursue your mission but her recommendation is the and in speaking with these facilitators you can be guiding through the process but she comes from the experience of administration and community facilitator and board members so she was able to offer quite the insight she's seen ones where community engagement fails is where and her recommendation was to have multiple very specific times first starting with a vision and then the facilitator works with the board and takes all that data from the first meeting and then starts to put dollars on what that would take which is what that building is going to help us do she was coming off a successful community engagement at the Bristol Mount Aves School District and basically said because they don't want to be reactive and encouraged to start and think out the process she also said they were all separate events they were not with something else they were not with town meeting they were not with a school board meeting they were not with anything else but the community engagement runs the whole process well walk us what to do and it's only as successful as we as a group will find out the facts and present the facts back out hold on to that specific time that they only set out right and each of the facilitators have their own effective strategies for making sure really versus you know I show up because I really like something Lindy shows up because she really doesn't like something that doesn't give us broad representation for our community okay so they're skilled at doing that and it would have worked first on how you want to go about doing this and investing in this because this is I would like to make a motion that we direct our principles to follow up on this oh just one true I was just like to say show me the money what the people are going to want to know the money first not three meetings in because that is horrible okay I mean that's my opinion that's how I feel I sell cars that's what people want to know how much does it cost me right because they have to fit the budget well and that was the other suggestion it wasn't just like here's the big total this is why break it down to taxes so people know what it's gonna and that's fine but they gotta know ahead of time they're gonna be mad after meeting three so that might be a decision for who we go with of these options is somebody who can understand that we need to deal with money first okay do you need a formal vote or can we just what part of the money can you deal with though is my question can we make one suggestion first perhaps it should be a board member or two with these two I'd be happy to I'd be happy to I'd be happy to and we're just assuming that one or the other of them is interested they may all be booked up there's a lot of community engagement so the first question I would have is based on what you've heard from that person is the timeline of being able to at least announce what's going on on a meeting day reasonable I don't know how soon if either one of them are interested develop a house right but there also seem to be a piece a component of before they started doing community engagement they would want to spend time with the board so it sounds like there needs to be some front-loading to be either additional meetings or looking at schedule and can we get that all organized so that we because the worst thing would be to say no you wouldn't in here if we're meeting let's just go ahead I think let's go ahead and interview these people and I'd be happy to be on the committee to interview these people and then come back out and report to them and let's get this moving because yeah it's time should we have an idea of what we're going to present yeah I think we need to get the ball rolling on getting the person to facilitate I think it's two conversations being I thought that was a whole plan yes I'm just saying I want to get the structure we could have gotten together in in Eugene here we could have you're right and we can what I'm trying to say is I want us to get the structure of the ball rolling in the community meeting we can have if we're going to have another building committee meeting and ask this out more we can do that we can do that but I want us to not wait to plan the community engagement stuff until the building wrap it up in one meeting can we officially we officially instructed you good just keep me in the loop with that does that enough do you want anybody else is there someone else on schedule I can I'll see if I can arrange things to do it but I would be happy to yeah good so the for the meeting yeah the community oh no not even we have to interview who we're using and then that's going to be their protocol for how this happens whoever we select so for the meeting for the meeting that you're announcing this day hopefully hopefully we won't know until we talk to these people and find out what their schedule is like you're hiring professionals it's not going to be immediately yeah it's definitely not going to be immediately this is an ongoing process so am I hearing that there is sorry am I hearing that there is another and then out of that will come some sort of combined even disagreeing report is that correct can you do that if that's the will if that's the will of the restaurant I mean there's only three of us here yeah I would like to see right well there's four of the five of the committee members are here no I'm saying the board the board says that Rochester likes already music more than stock that's pretty much the difference in there okay let us let us read these reports then if they're disagreeing reports then I want to see both of them but I think by next meeting can we say we would instruct you to have a final report whether it's agrees or disagrees a final report from the building committee sure is that reasonable building committee yeah we need to we need to we need to the next meeting is on town meeting day so if we're going to be announcing our public meeting without having a budget meeting in February before the February break so we can certainly we can certainly be chatting about it then okay okay all right let's see what the building committee wants to do right can we set a meeting right now or is that let's go through and do our executive session and finish up finish up these things join are you pretty much so next week is the 10th you're not available the 10th or the rest of this week all right um oh yes can I speak oh of course I'm sorry I know me too um is the proposed budget or the draft yes thank you very draft draft yeah oh 10 draft draft draft is that is that proposed meeting upcoming is that open to the public yes okay you may in another room having an executive session discussion in HR matter or something okay they are always open meetings okay that's wonderful I so for this um sorry I'm really tired too can we set a date now for that or after your executive meeting um we'll be setting a date when we talk to the other committee then for the building committee meeting yes we have that'll be something if you give me your email it just notes shall we say that is that is just one of the many drafts because there's many drafts going around and nothing has been agreed upon or or sent out yet and I understand the sensitive so this will stay with me with that process wonderful absolutely and you know I certainly am hoping that I could make some time on the 13 I was going to say uh Annie had asked if I would be a warm body in the room I did tell her that I was not going to present anything or I was not going to lead any discussions but I would happily be I'd just be happy to be there be the warm body and great there's two more things right here alright um that's it make it the leg is right here the leg is right here like and they kind of keep me late because so long they just switch sides I think yes if I may can I just say very supportive doc's thank you very supportive I think you're very smart to see that we're in for ya you're about to go into an executive session to discuss a personnel matter so we'll be wrapping up this recording I mean I hate to do this because you're now alternate but I looking at the negotiation schedule it's just I just can't be your alternate for that it's just it's it is it is fine there will be probably some that I will just miss on purpose because a lot of it is a lot of labor negotiations are kind of choreographs sort of bureaucratic kabuki dance okay that's a great phrase by the way we all sit there as board members and our lawyer says here's our position and they take a piece of paper and they say these are the things we are proposing these proposals set and the lawyers read them then their lawyer says something and then we all go and talk with our lawyers separately and then we come back and converse kabuki do we need an alternative still well I mean I don't know that's the thing I think let me get the lay of the land because the first couple sessions really after you get rules down we're going to get an idea of how much traction the next meeting would probably be okay to figure out I just think we've made our proposals yeah there are no lawyers there is no UNICEF director it's all teachers and us board members anything else can't come in because it's done with that so now it's taking what's on the table well I'm also the other part was I'm hoping to be on the search committee for unfortunately for your replacement and that's going to take I'm sure the number of meetings and sessions and things like that so I just what it is is I finally realized looking at all these things I realized what I'd signed up for and I'd never really had any clue before that it's too much I mean you should be doing that when you look at it on the calendar that was the other part and I just wanted to make clear what I commit to I do and so executive alternate absolutely and this board I can't negotiation and at the at the as a ripple effect of you I am going to resign as the alternative member of the SU school board I will remain on the Rochester Stockwood school board but I will resign as the alternative Huzzah Huzzah Excellent Thank you Janie You're very welcome Thank you everybody All right thank you everybody our next meeting will be meeting day at 6.30 in Stockbridge unless an earlier meeting for budget That's the next regular meeting Yes next regular meeting Right The budget a budget meeting may be scheduled Watch your papers and websites It didn't get I'm sorry it didn't get on there but I guess retreat is done I thought I was supposed to I sent an email to somebody for agenda so we not doing a retreat this month Oh but now I filled out the Google poll Yeah I know Only three people filled out the Google polls Yeah You and Lindy and Bonnie did I'll check my spam there Which poll was it? Uh Google Sorry No we messed up on that Why don't we try it again Let's try it Because I For March didn't get it Well March retreat I think No idea Well do we have Can we still do fair I would love to have our retreat after we have hired a mediator and have a final building report and maybe have a more final budget I think those three things should be in there before we have the retreat So I think we're looking at least mid-March Okay Yeah Let's if everyone if everyone can go through and can you resend the doodle polls I'll do another one because that one only went through that and let's try to all let's try to all commit to doing that so we can finalize that date at our mid-February budget Okay Thank you Right So moved Second day Okay Emotion's been made in second into insurance Thank you everybody All in Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you