 Good evening. Welcome to Channel 17's Town Meeting Day coverage. Tonight we have the Winooski School Budget presentation with me I have Sean McCannan, who is Superintendent of the Winooski School District and Mike DeCarro, who is School Board President. Gentlemen, what can you tell us about the school budget this year? Well, at the outset we really wanted to highlight some of the outstanding programming that's going on in the school district and specifically this year we've made tremendous strides in our middle school and working within a learning model, which is called expeditionary learning. And so we have our middle school students working in teams, working on relevant projects, expressing their learning in a variety of ways and this is the second year that we've been doing that and we're just seeing the levels of engagement in our students is just going up dramatically. Another area that we're really excited about is our partnerships with local businesses and organizations like Waterworks and the Vermont Folklife Center and PCC, Misery Loves Company, in the city of Winooski and it gives our students an opportunity to get out into businesses and organizations and learn about what it looks like to do work in their places of business and build their skills so that they're career ready in the future. Fantastic. I just wanted to mention you can call in any time with questions, 8-6-2-3-9-6-6. That number should also be on the bottom of your screen, 8-6-2-3-9-6-6. Well, do you have a presentation to talk about what the budget's going to be like this year? Yes, after Sean and the administrative team and the staff go through what they need based on all the opportunities that they they have going on they present to the to the board the needs for the year. A couple of things stood out kind of dramatically this year. One is the need for another ELL teacher in the it was in the elementary school. We had a staffing ratio of 1 to 50 in that area so needless to say 1 to 50 with it can't be all that effective if you will at that at those kinds of staffing rates so the need for another ELL teacher and then communications and development director in the school. We have some work we're going to be doing with our capital project that we have we're in the midst of presenting so this particular position will help us do some fundraising and communications work so in total what we have is about 98 percent of this particular budget is salaries and benefits. Our benefits from year to year have gone up nearly 12 percent 11.8 percent just the benefit piece of it and salaries we're still in the midst of negotiation but we we plan on about a 1.15 million dollar investment in both salaries and benefits which ends up being about 98 percent of the total. So as we as we look through that the the tax the expense change is just under 7 percent which from looking at over the past five or six years is right around where we have been and over the past this is about 10 years now average changed about four and a half percent increase in spending so the tax rate change we're looking at here is about nine and a half percent increase but that's very differentiated in in town with income sensitivity from the way the state funding is done the if based on household incomes household incomes are under 99 thousand level it's based purely on income and that'll be about a 2.3 percent increase and just for a reference point for anybody that and we have a lot more information we'll have it on a website but for anybody underneath the 99 thousand household income right right at the 90 thousand that's about a hundred dollar increase in taxes for the year for that piece the other and on the other end from an income sensitivity standpoint is over 147.5 ends up putting you into based on purely property value and at that point somebody I think what was what did we figure was standard about 250 thousand dollar house it was kind of the point that we used that'd be about 350 dollars increase so if your household income is over 147.500 then it's based on property value the average house with these keys of assessed value right not the market value the assessed value is about 250 thousand dollars so the increase is about 350 dollars right for those that don't meet the income sensitivity under the 99 thousand right then you're looking at the 2.3 and in between those two is a mixture of the two depending on on where you are and it's graduated in the middle between income and property value and this will be on the Winooski school district website at some point so right voters will have a chance to see what it is they're asked being asked to approve before they go to right one of the polls on election on town meeting day yeah and on February 11th from 11 30 a.m. until one o'clock there'll be a present a budget presentation at the senior center and then on February 20th a community breakfast down at the O'Brien community center where the budget will be presented and that starts at 6 p.m. right that's a city and the school doing the budget presentation so definitely ask folks to come out and join us all right and the annual meeting which is always the the night before town meeting day on Monday night at the performing arts center starting at 6 o'clock with the city budget presentation and then at 7 30 the school budget presentation on Monday March 4th terrific Mike you mentioned a communications and development director so what is that in the nonprofit world the development director would be somebody who's in charge of fundraising is is that what this kind of position is that is definitely a portion of it do you want to take on the thought yeah I think the we've been looking for in the past few years a communications position so that we could really shout to the local community but also regionally and statewide all the amazing things that are happening in the Winooski school district and during that time we also have begun to embark on a capital project and so the board and the administration decided that this position would be really beneficial and have a great return in many ways so not just in communicating the the great learning that's happening across the district but now we would really be dedicating this position in the first couple of years primarily to the development side of the role so that they could go out locally statewide and nationally to try and raise monies to offset the the cost of the capital bond to the to the taxpayers of Winooski do you want to talk about what that what that bond issue is going to be for or that's still we're still in the middle of developing that piece we haven't we didn't come prepared to talk too deeply about that but one of the the pieces that we've been showing the community so far is just the the infrastructure in the school itself we've been wrestling with the last for the last three weeks we had a water main break about three weeks ago had it repaired but the repair was to a pipe that wasn't willing to be repaired it was rotted so badly but they filled it back in hoped it would last till spring we had another main break just down the road which caused some water pressure fluctuations and broke it again so they went back in and just stopped it at that point we decided to repair the whole thing we had to go from the city valve back to the school and replace the whole thing in the 350 feet or whatever they've done they haven't found any good pipe in there at all so we've had to take that hit but in the school the boiler system you walk into the boiler system the electrical panel in that room i'm told the only way to get parts for it is on ebay and the only people that have the parts are people that have ripped it out put it aside and put in new electrical panel work so there's a lot of the infrastructure not to mention the roof a total overhaul insulations and so we're definitely working through all of that right now so you have some aging infrastructure and facilities that need repair and and accommodations for the for the system as a whole as well a growing student population different needs we're in a very different place from a from an education standpoint when the school was built it was built for a class of 25 looking at a teacher in the front one one subject matter one test for all now it's very very different uh shan mentioned the expeditionary learning the project base learning um i go back to a discussion we had i think it was four years ago now we invited in at our board meeting uvm champlain ccv albany college of pharmaceuticals and we asked them what does it look like to you when students come out of our out of schools what are you looking for interestingly the straight academic piece how are you in math and physics was third or fourth on the list it was can you work in teams can you problem solve can you if if you get knocked down can you get up the grit piece of it and then it was the the the subject matter um and in order to do all of those things in the project base learning in a team you need the space to be able to work in the smaller groups and so in order to do that and accommodate um that in the school there was a restructuring that we did in a couple of smaller additions in a couple of additions in in each building to accommodate the space needs uh one do you work at an office i do okay we have one office space for some special ed folks and special ed with the confidentiality of the reports and whatnot i walked into this room i have an office too i could i always complain that it's small i walked into this space and you literally have to back out to change your mind it is that small there's there's three small desks that they've made to fit and three chairs but to accommodate the growing need of the smaller um a lot of individual work in the in the special ed uh in order to accommodate that space we need to to grow it that we put people in closets we put them in spaces that are not meant to be offices and we need to to get the the staff the space that they need to do the job audiologists working in always that's not a place to do that so we definitely need um need the space and that's pretty much the the net of the capital project i think i miss anything on the basic needs no and there's uh plenty of information on our on our website about the capital project and we just uh sent out a new promotional video that's that's out and about on social media and on our website so people can check it all out there what about the um the question for the school board candidates but i'm going to ask you uh does the district using its funding effectively to address the opportunity gap which is the disparity in access to quality and education and the resources needed for all children to be academically successful yeah that was an interesting question i certainly wouldn't want to be a new school board member trying to answer that question um they're gonna have to yeah no i understand that but i think mine is more along the lines of having to be immersed in it in order to understand both a the opportunity gap itself and then uh be what the school is actually doing um to to fix that or at least to meld in with it i think the answer is that that shon and his administrative team have dot leadership team not administrative team trying to trying to remember um but i think they've done an incredible job understanding what it is this year one ell teacher out of the multitude of things we could have had and the need based on a one to fifty ratio was brought forward but it's not we need eight positions of this we need six of that they bring back the very basic needs of what we need and each year over the last four or five years and that's exactly what we've hit a special ed need because this piece is growing uh ell has come up a couple of times over the past four or five years um and i think that is all aimed at with the with the poverty as well i think you need the the extra one-on-one time um and i think that they've done a tremendous job what is it that we need to close that gap as well as you know what is it going to take what is the commute what kind of community um handle as far as you know the the costs to do that um i imagine everybody knows what ell stands for but for the record would you spell it out yeah i think it i would love to answer that question because a lot of places still use esl english as a second language but i think knowing what i've seen over the past four or five years the ell uh acronym is english language learners a lot of the folks that come to us english is not their second language it may be their third it may be their fourth the home language the camp if they had come through a camp um but a lot of these folks speak more than more than one language so english is a second language is a little in some cases uh i think a slap uh so english language learners are the is the the term that we use so i have to imagine that one teacher for 50 students is woefully inadequate it it doesn't get it done at all in any environment that is way too many way too many students to to try to keep track of and keep moving in a positive direction so yeah that's and uh so i think yeah i think they address the opportunity gap extremely well um so what what else i mean just thinking about you know the capital needs of the district i mean have we covered that subject or you know what else are they going forward well well i think we're in a really interesting time in wanouski right with the uh um it started years ago with the redevelopment of the of the rotary and we know what a popular destination that has become and uh main street is starting to be revitalized and uh you know six or seven years ago beginning with the uh nely may grant that was shared by burlington high school and wanouski high school a lot of work around student centered learning um and uh just a an absolute excitement i think in the city of wanouski around the city and the school district and we're at a time now where um you know this capital this capital project and continued resourcing of the school are really important uh you know uh wanouski school district has traditionally been in the bottom quarter to a third of spending per student across the state and um this board has worked really hard to provide the the resources to to us and to the school so that we can serve kids well and as you heard um you know a lot of that investment is in um licensed folks to do uh highly skilled work with our students and to meet their needs and so uh i'm really excited about uh continuing the work in the school district and in the city so that we uh continue to create a place that people come and they want to stay for the long term and our families um being able to stay in a pre k-12 learning continuum in a single campus is is is fairly unusual in vermont and particularly in shetland county and so i think we have something really unique to offer in that respect and we want to make sure that we not only kind of take care of what we have but that we continue to grow it for the future so that we're offering um you know our families the best that we can do you think you have an opportunity in wanouski because um more people are moving there because berlington is so expensive to live in more housing is being built in wanouski so that you continue to make the school district an attractive place for young families to to move to and send their children to i i do and i think you know the housing is one piece of it but i think that we at the school district we have something unique to offer um you know having a an absolutely multicultural environment for students we are the only majority minority school district in the state of vermont and so the the multi linguistic experience a multicultural experience that all students get really prepares them for the broader world in a way that most vermont schools cannot cannot offer that and um so i think that you know part of the communications position that we were talking about earlier is how do we uh get that word out so people know that um we have something really interesting to offer and we're already seeing parents who have said that they've moved to wanouski because they want their children to have that experience and they know that it's going to prepare them for the broader world in a much better way fantastic what else do you have in your armamentarium tonight we've covered a bunch um let's see shan mentioned the community dinner on february 20th uh six p.m at the abrayan center the senior center um covered most of it i think again if anybody wants to call in uh the number eight six two three nine six six questions for shan mccanon of mike de caro um another question for the candidates uh who couldn't be here tonight um the the evidence of the most successful interventions in the drug and alcohol crisis are coming from community-based solutions so i'm going to ask you if you don't mind you think the city of wanouski has a larger role to play in the engagement of its young people what's working what more can be done you talked about those um programs that involves children uh school children in businesses in experiential learning um that certainly seems like one example yeah yeah take take it at the top and if you can maybe take it down a little bit deeper but one of the one of the things that we've done in wanouski over the last five or six seven years is to ensure that um the city and the and the school are on the same page we meet very regularly to make sure that programming that the city offers is aligned to what the school um is laying out um and so you know the we've moved a lot of the the programming for the kids from the o'brien center which is on the mallets bay into the southwest end of town we moved it into the school so that the kids don't have to after school travel um so that continuity of the kids no matter where they are in in the care of of adults around the city either in the school or with the city is the same to the point of even training the staff in the city as to what the school is doing so that they treated exactly the same way the kids hear the same words so i think that helps a lot for the kids knowing that there is that support group back to the taking it back to the drugs a lot of that helps to have some of that support embedded in the system so yeah i think you know that the school's role um the the greatest leverage that we have uh in that question is prevention um you know as the hub of the uh of the city and having you know uh eight hundred and fifty to nine hundred students in our in our building every day and so at the heart of the prevention is is making sure that uh we know students and their families really well so that when something comes up we know about it and we can we can support them so we do things like in the elementary we have what's called a responsive classroom so there's classroom meetings every day there's tremendous communication with parents on a weekly basis from classroom teachers from the principal so that they're aware of everything that's going on in the middle and the high school we have what's called an advisory where every teacher has uh you know 12 to 15 students that they stay with for a couple of years they meet every day so they get to know each other really really well so when something comes up um they're there to support in addition to um all of the uh more traditional instruction around prevention for for drugs and alcohol that starts happening at the elementary level and uh um uh you know that's all very important and then working with the city to provide activities so not just the school-based activities but community activities so that we can foster developmental assets because the research tells us um you know the more activities that we have for students positive activities we have for students to be involved in and we can kind of enrich those set of developmental assets the less uh probability they have of um either initial onset of use of drugs and alcohol or addiction that uh later in life thank you so the other piece you know just to to continue with that though is is um for the english-speaking crowd you call the parents um you have conferences with the parents and you bring them in you know to have some discussions if you have problems with the ELL population and and the new americans that we have we actually have um I think it's four um interpreters on staff to help us with that engagement of of the new american population as well so that when when needed for for anything so that helps how many languages are spoken there's over 20 languages spoken across the district uh we have uh we have six uh what we call cultural liaisons who who speak uh at least 10 different languages um and then there's lots of dialects within those languages that are spoken in homes and in the in the specific communities and like mike mentioned you know our cultural liaisons are amazing and we couldn't do it without them because they are able to uh you know translate messages so that we can send them out over over voice they can do written translations transcriptions for us and they also just do a lot of word of mouth in the community when they're outside of school um and build trust with uh with the school through those communications and also introducing a lot of our new americans to the u.s. educational system which is oftentimes very different than what they're used to absolutely um can you just uh talk a little bit about what the projections are for student enrollment in in new new scheme and how the district should address those population trends you mentioned there were some a little more than 860 students k-12 in the district yeah and uh yeah so we've uh work with the new england uh school development council school development council and they do a lot of work with the state on projections for for increases hours look to be about 10 increasing about 10 students a year for the next eight or 10 years which is contrary to a lot of what you hear around uh the state for losing students or declining populations ours is actually increasing and it has been for the past few years it uh it's a little bit of growth is a good thing yes radical growth can catch you but small growth and that's that's part of what we're trying to plan for over the next 10 or 15 or 20 years um with the capital project as well as to accommodate the space not only the space and the needs not only now but as we move forward um you know that's that's asking the staff one of the things we challenge the staff with is what does the school look like in 20 years why do the work this year to what you know you needed last year if you're going to have it there for 25 30 years so it became a discussion of you know some some interesting for me that I always think about what does the library look like 20 years from now what does that look like when all the books that you could possibly have are probably electronic um and you know so the the thought that went into the to this capital project in what do we have for a population what is the growth that we're going to do and and just from from a pedagogy what does that look like as you get out a bunch of years so that it's still useful as we get out even toward its end of life so um do you mind repeating what what are those other opportunities to interact to talk about the the budget um you mentioned there's um yeah so so february 11th at 11 30 a.m. until one over lunch at the senior center is an opportunity and then february 20th a community dinner sponsored by the winooski partnership for prevention at the o'brien community center and that's starting at six and includes dinner and then uh on monday march fourth i believe it is uh annual meeting remember that one and that starts at six p.m. it is in the performing enter art center right at the school terrific so plenty of opportunities and if those can't be reached by all means reach out um all our information is contact information you can contact me if you need to so welcome the calls all right so how many candidates do we have how many people are on the on the school board and how many candidates how many people are running this here yep so we have a we have a five person board and each year we have two people do a three in a two-year seat we have matt mcneill running again this year for a for a two-year seat and uh margaret bass is is running for the three-year seat she uh is a newcomer to town relatively um has some past in education comes um highly recommended and we look forward to her uh her presence on the board we have a we have an interesting board we have a great variety of opinions which i think help our discussions greatly when we when we work through um issues policy whatever else um we've got a very broad broad group for for our discussions has worked out really well well thanks for coming and talking about the musky school budget tonight we have shon mcmanon um school superintendent and mike de caro who is school board president my name is alex friend uh please stay tuned to channel 17's continuing coverage of town meeting day 2019 and thank you for watching