 Good evening. My name is Howard Wooden and I'm here to help coordinate and moderate the South Burlington School District budget presentation. I want to introduce who we have on our panel here tonight. I'll start with the students here because they're right here. My first student here is Cole Patno. Patno and you're a junior, correct Cole? And then this is Arnell Husserevich. Yes, exactly. And I was working on that one for the last five minutes and Arnell is a senior and then we have the we're lucky to have Elizabeth Fitzgerald who's a school board chair here tonight and the business manager Amadee Denton. I said that right, right? I did, thank you. And of course Superintendent David Young who has done this for a while and we know each other pretty well. David, I'm going to turn this presentation over to you, but I do want to remind our viewers that if you would like to call in a question, we do have a way that you can call it in and all you have to do is dial 862-3966. That's 862-3966 and we'd love to get a live question. I'm sure these folks would too. So David, I'll turn it over to you. Great. Thank you Howard and thanks again for Channel 17 hosting us. Again, we have a lot of folks here, but it's obviously important to us and we're going to walk you through our presentation. Each of us will have a few things that we'll share and we do want to leave a little bit of time. Hopefully there'll be a call in and we also have a few questions if there's some time that we can respond to that were kind of our frequently asked questions. So this is our 2020. It's hard to say that. Seems like time is really flying here, but this is our budget information for 2020. I'm going to hope that I can move through this without error messages. But first slide is our recommended budget objectives. And one of the things when we first start out, the school board provides some directions to me and then we formulate kind of our objectives for the year. And what you see here are just a kind of a quick outline of the things that we're considering around building the budget for the future. And the first out of that is just opportunities that we want to make sure that we sustain for the year ahead for our students. We know that opportunities both academic and other kind of co-curricular type events are important. So this budget works to achieve that. Also our continuous improvement plan. These are kind of our plans around how we continue to improve. We look at assessment. We look at professional development. And lastly, also about making sure that students and staff feel safe in places where they teach and learn. So those are, again, quick overview of our objectives of our budget. And I know, David, that you guys have an incredible process, very inclusive process to even come up with these things. So it's kind of amazing to me. Right, right. So next, as a student outcomes, we want to let both Arnell and Cole take the lead on this one. Yeah, so I'm obviously in my senior year now. And I've gone through all 12 years of Chamberlain school to FHTMS, to high school. And so I've really gotten first-hand experience of all the programs and amazing opportunities that our schools offer. And obviously, I've now been able to get accepted into my top choice in college, which is American University in Washington, DC. So I really attribute that to how our school has helped me get to that point. And I always talk about last summer, after junior year, I went to a Vermont boy state in St. John'sbury, Vermont, where we really got to experience kind of a political climate and working with all boys around the state. And I know there was a girl state as well. And that wouldn't have been possible without our guidance department being able to help fund us that and help get us to that point. And that was obviously a turning point for me. And obviously, as I've gone, I always talk about Chamberlain school is where I started. And that was always a place where I always felt really welcome. And I mentioned how it's helped me for college. But there are a lot of opportunities for students that aren't going to college after high school. I know just recently there's a lot of workshops that are Career Development Center posts for students who don't maybe see college as their post high school plan. And so there's always kind of movement around how to help students in any way. And then also I always talk about how there's a lot of dual enrollment with college classes. So we can take classes at UVM and that CCV for free. We get two free vouchers and I know Cole takes that as an advantage. And you can talk about that. Yeah. So as a high school student, you get two vouchers for dual enrollment and you get to take two college courses for free. And then you also have the ability to take early college, which is where you're taking your last year of high school and your first year of college simultaneously. And so I know a lot of our students here at the high school take advantage of that. Our school has a huge spectrum of our after school activities that get funded. And so I myself, I'm the student school board representative. I'm the junior class secretary for student council. I do so much with the drama program both at the middle school and the high school. And when I say the middle school, we have the Career Development Center at our high school where they help you with like getting internships in fields that you might want to go into. And so one of the internships that I've done is I help mentor middle school students with their drama department. And so I like to help them with scene changes and learning their lines and all that kind of stuff. And then I've also done an internship in our school as a teaching assistant because I think I want to go into education. And so I was able to be a teaching assistant in a math class. And so that was a really great opportunity that our school provides. Something that's like a big draw to our school that's like awesome is that we're ranked one of the like best high schools and like best districts in the state. And so like it's just cool to like have that on your back. Like being able to be like, I go to South Burlington. And so it's cool being able to say that. So I'm going to recap briefly what our budget looks like for the 2020 year. We are asking for a 4.15 percent total expense increase. Some of the key contributors to that percentage increase. We have a $1,018,993 benefit and salary contingency increase for the upcoming year. We are currently collectively bargaining for three of our employment groups. We have an 11.8 percent healthcare premium increase. So that's a large part of this. Something that's not really in our control. We have $538,074 an increase in our continuing services. So basically things that we do today, moving to the next year. Agreements for tuitioning students out of the schools in special needs. We have a bond principal payment for the first time on a bond that we started in last school year. Contracts with vendors for preventative maintenance service agreements. And vocational expenses are increasing. And we have a larger number of students attending vocational services. So it's part of that increase. And we have some lease payment obligations that are in that as well. And then we have an additional $717,301 for recommended additions in our budget which we will cover in the next couple of slides. Also one of the parts of our budget is revenue that we get not from taxpayer dollars. And unfortunately in 2020 we're going to see a decrease in that revenue coming into the school district of about $746,154. Some of the key contributors are the very large key contributor to that is Act 85 was the healthcare recapture rule that resulted in a loss over a two-year fiscal year period of $468,000. And so what that means is we spent down some of our fund balance to cover that income that wasn't coming from the state, from the Ed Fund. So our undesignated fund balance is now at a reduction of $386,000 from prior fiscal year. There was a couple of errors in revenue that was projected for 19. That is not going to happen in 20. So that was $190,000 loss. And the larger remaining piece of the reduction is special education revenue is predicted to come in at like 237,000 less than our current 2019. Let's largely do in fact to the way the funding model is changing in the next fiscal year. There are going to be higher thresholds before they reimburse you at a higher percentage. And yeah, so things are changing every evolving in schools and the financial part of that. So I go on and just pause for a second Howard and say that first of all, there's a lot of information going before viewers. Important to note that we have all of this information on our website along with all of the kind of the school board meetings that have happened in the past, but hopefully people who if they wanted to get a little bit deeper and review it, they can go back there. In addition, we also have our budget book that's available both online or if people want it, they can let us know and we will send them a hard copy as well. I want to move on just to talk a little bit about the recommended additions. Again, Amity alluded to those additions just a slide ago. And so we'll just do a quick recap of some of the things that are different that are being added to this 2020 budget. So first thing, Tripoli, which is early essential educations for our youngest learners. We've had a program at both our Orchard and Chamberlain schools, and this addition would bring it into our Rick Markott school, which is over by the city center. So there's some staff being added to that particular area. And again, a big part of Tripoli or all of our early childhood education is really to ensure that there's a solid foundation for our students. Obviously, a solid foundation allows for things to happen positively after that. Because of that and not paying out to some of our providers, there's going to be a reduction because that revenue will stay with us. So that's that second bullet. We're making some changes in the delivery service at the school level. So some pair educators are being reduced and we're adding some additional special educators. Again, wonderful people. We have a good number of pair educators that support our learners, but nonetheless looking at those that are compensated to help do the necessary work that's needed. 0.5 guidance at the high school. We have obviously a good number of guidance counselor. We have some that have been fractional or not quite full time. This brings some of them up to full time. And the main purpose there is that when your counselor isn't there on, you know, a Thursday afternoon, that's hard for or two days a week. That's hard. And so this will increase some of that. And then lastly, is security. Safety officer is actually what we call this position. And this is unfortunate. I mean, these are some of the things that, you know, we wish we didn't have to include. It's a public related safety issue. But nonetheless, the school district is has that we currently have three, this adds another for four. And these are individuals that are typically in our front entry ways of our buildings. We have five buildings. So we'll be figuring out how we will get, you know, all five covered as well. In addition to what David had just finished reading, we have other asks for the budget. And that is an increase or an additional time position in the operation and finance office where I'm working. We've undergone a lot of state initiatives and are continuing to move in those directions. There's going to be a new chart of accounts and a new fiscal software that is being, you know, rolled into our job. So we're trying to do our daily work and learn a new software and build these new. So there's just a really large need. And we've had a few other new softwares from the state level that have just created a lot of extra work. So we're asking for a little part time position in our office to help with those needs going forward even. We are adding for 0.1 to FTE assistant student mentor coordinator, which is a position that we currently have. It's being funded by an outside source. And in order to maintain that position, we are asking for a small $4,000 increase in the budget to just maintain that position. And that person works coordinating mentors with adults in the school, students with adults in the schools. We have a citizen's budget advisory committee. And one of the desires of the committee was because we're spending down our fund balance due to that loss of revenue from the state, they felt it was important that we put a little money in as a contingency in the event something like this happens that we might have a little bit of a cushion. So we are going to add $100,000 for that just as our contingency plan. We do have $134,941 in the budget for facility stewardship and maintenance projects that are planned. They're not our large projects because we have our master planning and visioning program going on right now, which is looking at the needs of the high school and the middle school and where those buildings might be headed. So we're doing what we have to do to keep our buildings safe and secure and operating for our students. And then the other three other schools also have some projects in them. This also includes the lease purchase of two new school buses. Each year, as part of our stewardship plan, we do have a rolling cycle of replacement on school buses as they get past 10 years, we try to replace them. So these two will replace two older buses. So that total additions of what Mr. Yang covered and myself is the $717,301 for additions. So moving right along, this is again, this is a quick, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on here, but this breaks down on the expenditure side. Obviously, you can see the revenue. On the expenditure side, you can see that the larger buckets that add up to the $4.15 increase. There's some obviously pretty significant increases that look on the percent-wise, but when you look at the total dollar amount, $4.15, again, as Amity said, on the expenditure side. I do want to just make sure that, you know, Amity mentioned the budget advisory. The school board really has been great to, you know, look for participation from the community. We welcome folks to come to the school board meetings, and the budget advisory group has been a really good arm that supported the administration and also the board in bringing perspective from the community from where they see it. And that's always, that's been something really, really strong that actually Elizabeth was a strong advocate on that way back a good number of years ago, 14 years ago, Elizabeth has been on the board. So anyway, this is a quick, just a quick pie chart that gives a little bit of, you know, visual on where the budget is spending. Obviously, a big chunk of that is the salaries and benefits. This is our, again, kind of a quick overview of our budget, how that tax rate gets made up. Lower left-hand corner is about our equalized pupils, the number of students that are actually counted, not seated, but students at the high school get a little bit more than the elementary. Top left is our overall expenditure, which you've heard Amity talk about earlier in the slides. The top is our revenues. And again, you've heard Amity talk about that and that reduction. Our yield, which is set by the state and the common level of appraisal set by the state, all those factors go into that property tax. I might add, though, you can't do the up and downs across around those circles and think you're going to get to the percent increase. And we'll show you that in just a quick second here. This actually is a really good process for folks if they want to know more about how education funding is done. It's still kind of complicated to explain, but the math here is, I think, really helpful. So our expenditures of the 51 million is subtracted by our local revenues, which, again, was what Amity went over and told you that there was less. That then equals our ed spending. That's divided by the number of students, what we call equalized students. It's then, that equals what we call our ed spending per equalized pupil. We then divide that by the property tax yield that used to be referred to in the past, our base education amount. It's now called the property yield, again, set by the state. And that equals what we then call our equalized residential property tax rate. That's then divided by how homes are being sold, which is called the common level of appraisal. And for us, it's 93.28%. And that gets us to the tax rate of $1.6026. There's a lot in there. And again, I would refer people back to, you know, look at this presentation. And there's a lot also in the budget book to help folks really understand that and what goes on there. A little bit on our staffing. Our staffing, obviously, and our enrollments from last current year to next year, and our current staffing levels really are unchanged. We may need to move some staff. These are core teachers that are, you know, in the classroom. So again, just making sure that folks are aware our enrollments going up projected a little bit, which is different than most. And our core staffing are staying the same as well. I'm going to just spend a minute looking at some tax rate history, which again is available on the website and I think helps frame things for our community members. But if you look at the last five years of tax rate history, we have seen three years of declining tax rates. And we are seeing an increase this year, which is still lower than the 2016 rate. But that's largely driven by the factors that Emma and David have gone over in terms of decreasing revenue, but also some strategic investments in some areas that we believe really will benefit our students. Can I just speak to the anomaly in 2019 too that so folks can understand that yield comes from the state and last year at the very end of the legislative session, they raised that yield. So that significantly dropped the tax rate. When we were proposing our budget and sitting at this, you folks were sitting at this table last year, I think the actual tax rate was almost identical to what it is what we're asking for this year. So just to put that in perspective for folks, it's a challenge for us because when we come in these big large swings, you know, it's a tough sell sometimes. And that's why that happened. The state actually gave a one-time funding into the education fund to help bring it to a healthier place. This year we have been told it's a much healthier fund because they've changed how it's funded. It comes from sales tax revenue and lottery revenue and things. So it's a little bit healthier than when we've started in past years. So I just wanted people to understand why the big dip in that tax rate. That's a great description, Amity. Thank you. And as far as looking at one of the questions we often get from community members is the disconnect between the expenditure increase and the tax rate increase. And as Amity mentioned, there's a number of variables that are outside the school district's control. And David went through that complicated formula. But what we wanted to show here is really a multi-year history. And if the average taxpayer will look at this, we looked at five and 10-year averages. And in terms of proposed spending increases, the five-year average is about 3.2 percent, the 10-year average is about 2.2 percent. And that translates into tax rate changes that range from anywhere from negative, you know, 5.98 percent to increases of 3.3, actually the highest was 6 percent. But that in 2020 of what we're asking for is 3.36 percent. So again, I think the process we've gone through is very fiscally prudent and really focuses on what delivers a quality program for our students. This slide looks very complicated, so it's tough to see. But it just overviews the city and the school budgets and the tax rates associated with each of those budgets. And one of the questions that we found was very common was, well, the city's budget is increasing 12 percent, but their tax rate is only 4.79. They have some footnotes as to why that would be, and they have a lot of offsets to their revenue, by revenue, like we have some, but they have a significant amount more. So it only really results in a very small tax increase from their side. From the school side, again, we have that 4.15 percent increase on the total spending. However, the loss of revenue makes our tax rate up a little more than normal, or not normal, but past history. But it makes up a bigger chunk of that 3.7 combined tax rate increase. And the lower half of the chart that you can see online, it just shows a taxpayer's rate from last year versus this year and what they might see as an increase in their tax bill. And then the second column shows the value of the average condo value for South Burlington, and the third column shows the average home site value in South Burlington. So you would see a $178 increase if you had a condo at that $232,000 and a $259 annual increase in tax for a home value at $337,000. And those averages, I think, are important to remember. I mean, that's just what the averages are. And again, people who really, we want not to be deceptive because those could change to be more favorable or less favorable. It's really important. Not $100,000 is to do that assessment based on that. But that concludes Howard, our presentation pretty quickly. And again, on behalf of the school district, and you know, I'm extremely proud. We have a school board that has been steady with us, and we have worked hard, I think, as a community to really, you know, support our students and also be sensitive to the financial burden, which you often hear our school board, particularly as we talk about that delicate balance. Well, perhaps I could ask a question, is that since we didn't have anyone call in with one, and you still can, 8-6-2-3-9-6-6. But for example, if the budget is increasing by 4.15%, how is that the tax rate is increasing by a smaller percentage? I mean, I think people want to know one's higher than the other, and how does that happen? That's a great question. So we've kind of covered it, but again, the property tax base is, the rate is not based upon our total expense budget. That is a variable in it, but it takes that total expense. Then our net revenue of local non-tax payer revenue is reducing that expense budget to give us what's called our net-ed spending per equalized pupil. And from there, the schools are funded through the state education fund, which again, we were talking of that fund is fairly healthy this year, so that yield plays a factor in how the tax rate is calculated. So because the yield is a little higher this year than it was in historically, it brings our tax rate down lower than our budget increase, even though it is, even though we have a loss of local revenue, it still brings the tax rate down, increase down below the actual rate of our budget increase. That's great. Well, I think we're just about out of time, so I want to thank all of you again for showing up this year, and good luck, Arnell. Thank you. That's great news, and Cole, maybe we can see you again next year for this. We really appreciate it. Thank you, David, again. Once again, a great panel and very, very interesting stuff. Congratulations on another good year. Thank you. Appreciate it. And again, folks, tune in to Channel 17 anytime. You can find us online, and you can also find the South Burlington links to South Burlington's budgets there as well. And don't hesitate to contact these folks if you have any questions. Thank you very much.