 budget update and discussion, and we also have to be engaged in our PCC budgets. Is one of you willing to do the forward evaluation? All right, we do have a time for community engagement right now. I don't know whether you're here for something particular or if you prefer, we have another community engagement after the State of the Schools presentation, which will, you know, so either way, is there something that one of you or more of you would like to say now? Absolutely. Okay. It might take me the entire five minutes. Well, we'll make time for everyone. Okay, thank you. I prepared this because it's been on my mind since the beginning of the school year I've been trying to get this to happen. My name is Kathleen Jeffrey Erst. I am a brain tree property owner and I pay taxes. I've been trying to acquire a bus stop within one mile of our private road. During my quest, I have learned of several currently inactive bus stops within that radius. My concern is such that when my vehicle requires repairs, no children cannot attend school. I have learned through communications with the Vermont Agency of Education that all children residing in the State of Vermont between the ages of 6 and 16 must attend an approved curriculum. If they do not, they are in violation of the law. As I said, I've been trying to get this resolved since the very first week of school. I have gone through all the appropriate channels. I have been to the bus drivers, the director of transportation, the principal, and the superintendent. I have every communication documented as I was advised to do so by the Vermont Agency of Education. They advised me to make my communication to get e-mail because there would be a paper documented trail that way. I have forwarded all of my e-mails to Linda Wubald and apparently they were forwarded to the board. I do not know if that's accurate or not, but that's what I was told. When my request to reactivate the bus stop at the junction of Rolling Rock Road and Brantree Hill Road was denied, I asked for an explanation from the superintendent. On October 15th, I was finally given, and I quote, after examining two other possible bus stops, parentheses, the only that to offer a required turnaround and parentheses, closer to your home, it has been determined that no change can be made. Bullet points. Both myself and the bus director drove the potential routes and spoke with the road foreman on the conditions of those areas in the winter. Bullet points. In both cases, those are not safe for bus travel or do not provide adequate space for the buses to safely turn around. You may continue to drop your children off at the school as you have been doing or to avail yourself of any of the local bus stops in your area, of which there are none. I asked for clarification of what exactly that meant and where exactly the areas of concern were and where I could approach the select board with those particular areas. I was told by the superintendent that the select board has no authority over the school district, but that he would be happy to answer any questions about the road evaluation if and only if the select board would contact him directly. Then I was told, and I quote, the matter at my level is closed. I explained that the select board maintains the Brantree Hill Road and Rolling Rock Road, and that they wanted to know specifically what it is about that stretch of road that is causing it to be deemed unsafe for bus travel. He refused to give me any explanation of how he came to his decision and told me not to contact him again. I attended the select board meeting and I was told that the road foremen said the current bus routes are maintained, plowed, and sanded prior to other areas, as should be. I was also told that if the school board would consider reinstating or reactivating the bus stop at the intersection of Rolling Rock Road and Brantree Hill Road, the select board would be more than happy to examine how to reform the current road maintenance routes to include the activated bus stop location, as it would only take one or two extra minutes of their time. I have not heard further from that, and I have contacted over and over and over again, and my kids need to be able to access the school. Basically, we're trying to find out why my grandparents, I'm representing her husband tonight, why they can't be picked up to where they are at the end of their road. We did receive, prior to the November meetings, some of those correspondences, because this is not on the agenda, we can't take any action tonight. If you want to... I did ask for it to be put on the agenda back in October, I believe, and I was told that there was no room for it, and I was told that I could attend the next meeting in November, which I couldn't do because my son needed stitches. Okay, so... So it was the emergency room. At that point, I guess, prior to the November meeting, we saw the correspondence, your email correspondence. We also were told that the Brain Tree Select Board reviewed the bus routes and what have you, and they deemed that it was not safe for the bus to travel there. That is correct. What they said is currently at those times, because the maintenance schedule provides that they take care of the bus routes first. If they were to extend out and cover the stretch of area that they used to cover in the same bus route, it would take one to two additional minutes, and they would be more than happy to review that. We can review this now. That was what the Select Board had told us at that point. If there's further discussion between you and them, we can review that, but now's not the time... You're not... How do I go about doing this? Because this is not on the agenda. You can request that in the next meeting, which will be January, whatever the second... So in my case, you're still going to go without a bus until January? I'm actually happy to speak, but there's been some misinformation that's been communicated here quite clearly. We did a significant investigation out of the kindness of our hearts to do everything that we could to help you out, including providing you with a private van the first time that your car broke down. That is incorrect. The private van was provided to bring my children to school in the morning, and then it was not able to bring the children home until after 3.45, and I was told by Miss Miller that the children could not remain at the school. You had a good amount of time to explain your side. I'd like to be able to speak without being interrupted. We're in a meeting, it's appropriate, and I'll give you time to respond afterwards. You were given a van above and beyond, something that we wouldn't have done for anybody else to be kind, to be helpful. We had a van that was going back and forth that was serving a special-need student, so it was passing anyway. So to help you out for a few weeks while your car was being repaired, we provided that service to you. You were dishonest with us about the state of your car. It was confirmed with your husband when I spoke with him. He said it had been repaired a long time prior to. I have it in writing. Outside of that, we went up. Danny spent probably about 10 hours at his time driving the area. He also spoke with the Department of Transportation at the AOE. We have an AOE trainer for safety who is actually on our staff who also took a look at the site up there, and it is not safe for a 40-foot, 14,000-pound bus to travel those routes, especially in the wintertime. We also spoke with the select board, met in my office, and with the road foreman, and he was very clear that it was not safe and that those roads would not be ready and they were already stretched to their limits in terms of doing that work. Furthermore, to his memory, in his memory, he said it goes back 30 years, there had never been bus stops up there. I checked with my road crew, I'm repeating what they've said and I've got it in my notes. With my road crew, their memory goes back to 2001 and there was not a bus stop up there. Not for a full-size bus. We went up, I talked with the select board about the possibility of rolling Rock Road. There's not enough space for the turnaround and I can show you why on the map that we drew out and we looked at it. No, you haven't. Let me ask you a question. What's the answer? The answer is that you have a bus stop that is 1.2 miles away. I agree it is a bit far and you get your choice. They are seven and ten years old. You are a parent. You have responsibilities with your children. I am a taxpayer as well. If I could pick up every child at the foot of their driveway, I'd do that, we can't. I'm asking on a public road where there used to be a bus stop. There did not use to be a bus stop? At the intersection of rolling Rock Road and Braintree Hill Road, yes there was. That's Troy Tabor who lived right there in the A-frame just past their driveway. They picked their kids up. There was not a bus stop from us there and it's not possible for the buses to turn around on that. This is not a discussion of this part of this meeting. Can I find out if the information all the correspondence that I did send prior if that could be please reviewed because apparently there is definite miscommunication. And the fact that I was dishonest is completely inaccurate. My husband has been a way at work not here in this area. Thank you. I appreciate your concern and it's something we'll definitely revisit as a board. We'll make sure that we do have all the correspondence. If you want to be on the agenda for the next meeting. Absolutely. Does that need to be in writing? Should be. You can email it to me and we'll make sure it gets on the agenda. And how do you want it worded so that I make sure... Just say you want to be on the agenda for a bussing issue. Okay. Second Monday of January. It's 13th. Yep. We're just looking for an answer to the solution to something. You know, 1.2 miles is the long ways for those two little kids that's 7 and 9 years old to walk across the lake on top of Brincere Hill. A lot of strange people that write that road. Okay? We don't know. It's a risk to take with my grandkids and her kids to walk that far. The meeting house? That would be possible. It is a risk to send a bus on those roads. You've had three people look at this independently and determine that including the safety officer. So I'm sorry that we don't agree. But we've made every effort that we could to accommodate the request. It is not safe. And I will not put students at risk. I won't either. There also is no precedent. You know, there are lots of people who don't live on bus routes throughout this district. So we are far from that. My problem is that it was an existing bus stop. Why can't we reactivate it? Well, we need to look into that and make sure to see what the history is. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? Thank you. First of all, we'd like to give credit where credit is due. That's always good. We'd like to applaud the current maintenance directors Wes Gibbs and Bob Whirly who have done a job well done basically. After several years of asking athletic directors, coaches, teachers, principals, a superintendent and the former maintenance director these two gentlemen took it upon themselves to actually take care of some issues that had been going on for years and not only ourselves, Jessica and myself, but other parents and taxpayers and community members had asked for stuff to be done and these gentlemen were asked about it once. We didn't ask them to do it. We asked them about it and it was taken care of. So we wanted to thank Wes Gibbs and Bob Whirly for actually doing the job that they were hired to do for the public good. And to that we'll go on to the next thing. So I just handed out a definition of the word boy to you folks and looking at the word boy I have to ask you is there any reason why a seventh grade student would be threatened with a detention a double detention or weeks in school suspension if he was caught using this word in a school confines? Seems pretty unreasonable to us. I'm here before you because I spoke with his parents directly and their feeling is that their child may have another five years at this school and they're trying to choose their battles and I asked them if I could speak about this for them and he said yes. So, allegedly in the direction of principal T. Elijah Hawks a guidance counselor did exactly that pulled this individual into their office and threatened him with detention or in school suspension if he was caught using the word boy again within the school confines. This is not an allegation this is direct from the student this actually happened. It was not this individual I know him he's very jovial he's outspoken outgoing and he goes up to his friends and says hey boy what's going on boy what you doing boy so apparently the principal is taking upon himself to make everything a racist comment or everybody's racist it's not acceptable and so that's all I'm going to say about that but I would implore the the appropriate course of action would you mind if I finish speaking first? I'm trying to help you out because you're about to ask and implore me the appropriate course of action is to actually bring it directly to me so I can investigate. I think it should be brought out in the public also so that being said this same individual happens to be colorblind and I don't know if any of you are familiar with colorblindness but they have special glasses nowadays that you can get and a family friend bought this this child a pair of glasses that are over $600 to better the students life and better his education. He was told he could not wear them in school because the teachers and faculty could not see his eyes okay this to me is discrimination okay it's taking away from the students educational experience by not allowing him to wear them and see what he should be able to see so I believe he's being singled out because his public views are far different from the current principal and he's being treated unfairly so I guess you know other than that we continue to see that this principal is continuing to push his own political and social agendas in this public school and we believe it's wrong so we would like it looked into fully and asked for his resignation or ask the superintendent to ask for the designation anything else? thank you so can we follow up because I'd like to get the information and just take a look sure absolutely what's the best way to contact you? 802-775-5500 thank you anything else? yeah I have one thing a little unprepared everyone came with notes if I speak off the cuff here it's my understanding you guys are currently working on next year's schedule in that vein I wanted to bring up I guess concerns that I have first I wanted to point out my review of the schedule and I could be wrong and someone is more than happy to correct me it seems that there are 17 weeks of school, 18 weeks of school in the first semester and only seven of those are full weeks I don't know why that schedule is such but it's concerning to me it concerns me for basically three reasons one is as I understand it one of the stated problems of the school is to provide safe harbor for children in the community they are suffering trauma outside of school having them out of school more than 62% of the time seems opposed to that goal of giving them a safe space the second would be that in a community like ours where being at work is a premium and there's a dearth of childcare not providing a consistent school experience for those children and somewhere they can be everyday puts a burden on people in any way and they're having trouble finding childcare and then I guess just of my own views and I don't know I'm not an educator I'm not trained in it but it seems to me that at least part of the educational experience is repetition and root and rhythm and when you break a child's school experience and consistency that many times over the course of 17 weeks it doesn't further down in the educational process but I couldn't be wrong that's all I wanted to say thanks very much that's not something we typically are made aware of but that's something you know we should definitely look into I think you're correct about the calendar I don't know if you know that Franklin Brookfield do operate a program on the half days for the rest of the day it's not with your teacher but there is a program operating for preschoolers and K6 kids and REC program also operates a program for REC program and up kids and you can the way I remember the calendar and this is what I see in my head from looking at the past there are three half days so that still only counts for 10 and leaves seven weeks where there's either a vacation or one day completely out of school so that's 42% of your time where you don't have a full week which means your children are going two days day off, two days, three days off four days off and so on and so forth and it doesn't I don't know I could be wrong but if one of the complaints of the school year is that summers are too long and they lose ground when they're not at school then you're obviously losing ground a lot in your first semester but that's all I have okay so our next order of business is we have some new folks out we have some new folks out we have some new folks out we have some new folks we're going to look at when the board meeting is coming and we will do better at that next time and if they really could have joined us but it was clearly we've never done preschool through third grade classes maybe we'll split that in half next year I know we'll think about that a lot of people would but it's good to have it be popular I guess the first class everybody has a grandfather and grandfather and neighbors and everything gets true and Erica apologizes for not being here she is so we're here to talk to really about track by progress but we want to give you just a little bit of background information before we jump right into that so we've spent some time now creating a guaranteed curriculum and you've seen some of this stuff before this is the work that we've been doing for years and unpacking the standards identifying the high leverage standards in literacy and math and we've incorporated these standards into different units and really have a curriculum in place that is followed in all of the elementary schools we've worked hard over the last two years creating the common formative assessments that teachers use on a regular basis to formatively check if the kids get the standard or not and if they didn't get it now what am I going to do in fact they form groups they are able to get back and deal with them because they want their children to move forward having the information that they're supposed to have and then they'll get past it again and do the exact same thing that we can come up with when it says before that we are tracking our students and they take different amounts of time and they're a little bit double check on each other and some are only used at different grades at T.S. Walton preschool and the PNOA is for the K-1 twos and there's a new ENOA that was just started to use this year for third graders and we take all of this information and use it to not only inform our curriculum but to really inform our instruction to make sure that we are getting the students what they need it's also important because sometimes we all have bad days somebody may bomb one of the assessments like with shock night progress you can't repeat it once they do it once they're done until they don't explain what we do it so it's great that if they do we have several other assessments to look at and they must have just had a bad day or the little ones are a little too impulsive and they click on an answer really quickly so shock night progress we started we piloted it two years ago and started using it with everybody three through six last year and it's administered four times in one grade one or two and three times a year for grades three through six it's a fun test because it's adaptive so it's not everybody sees the same problems and you can see we'll show you a couple of places where we're going to show you what the results look like to a teacher how the test said oh you didn't get that and then they back them down to a slightly easier standard trying to find where the weakness is in their work and it could be done with everybody at the same time and it's worked it would take a teacher 45 minutes each student and we were doing that a little bit with our fontis and penel and other work and this has allowed us to spend a little bit less time assessing students and a little bit and then when it shows a weakness then we can take one of those other assessments and find out more information it's on the computer that's the reason why sometimes they're a little bit impulsive because they're just used to playing games we tried it in a little bit at the end of kindergarten last year and those kids were just too young so we decided not to use it again it could test, we could split into math, the top part, and ELA this is a student who's doing really well with the standards and if you're used to this only matters if you've looked at our color things before, this is track my progress is order of red, yellow, blue, green we used to have one but it went green, blue and so we after all were having hard heads around me every time we were back in the sun oh no there's so much it was low to high right and so anyway this is a student who's doing pretty well and a student that we might take a look at their weaknesses and see if they can be strengthened or we might say oh here are some things that they're doing really well and give them some extended learning opportunities here's a student not doing as well and so is more likely to spend time with an interventionist getting extra assistance in weaknesses and again not all of them all at the same time take a look at relative weaknesses and what the new learning is and what can be most easily accessed by the student and but this student highly likely to be getting intervention in both math and literacy and the teacher can we'll see in a couple slides like that foundational is read can look and see exactly which standards that is and then know I gotta really pound that a little bit more and spend some more time on that maybe some of the gluiers where they're actually meeting standard rules so here's a year long report for a student of so this is for this year so summer is the one that happened in May or June and so of course I don't even know so this this whole year for us actually for this student if you look across at the same that they're mentioning so those are the standards on the left and then progress goes across to the right exactly so I was checking them for different times in the year and these numbers yeah and here we have them in percentiles and it's one way of taking a look at the scores here this is what it looks like for an individual student you see questions one through eleven and the questions of domain and how they're going along with easy easy easy okay we'll give them a medium on oh no I've got a hard one they missed it so then they jumped them back to all medium let's try another hard one they went back to a medium and kind of found out okay we're stuck in a you can also look at how much time a student spends on a problem because of course you would like them to spend a lot of time and then be successful but you're also okay with them spending a lot of time and being unsuccessful that's okay because they persevere but you don't like to see us oh man 33 seconds I'm out you just know it's just too hard it's really important to type one we had second grade every last year who just decided he's been fool around click click click click click and we could see you know five to ten seconds of a good question and he found it and I said to his mom well here it is he did better at the next time but he was just fooling around but that's super helpful because something's going to be like no no no I tried I really did still committing of four minutes three three minutes and changed on the problems then we have just a few samples of problems you can see at the top so if it's standard the first number is the grade level and then and tells you there's a tells you the level and how much time that the student spent and the correct answer and so just a few samples teacher can also see which one which helps and helps in analyzing the help that they need again here's a first grade problem you know where's that black and white they hover above the little rectangle there it will present three words and then the children need to pick which one is the right answer there are also problems what if they accidentally click the wrong one can they fix it so they can once they've moved on they can't because remember it's adaptive so it's making a choice oh that's fine until they press okay but if they move on they can't go back some problems are timed and the students don't see that they're timed in the sense that they work on them and they put right or wrong answers but if they went beyond the time that was allotted for the problem they don't get credit for it even if it's correct because if they spend four four minutes on a problem that they should have answered in seconds but it gives information and we didn't know that also nobody's saying time's up stop working great I got it right and again more samples this is a third grade math problem second grade medium literacy do they get immediate feedback whether or not is the right or wrong answer they do not the teacher will have to report but the kids are not necessarily the older kids we show pretty quickly but not they click on it and you get yelled at right this seems sociable but there are actually a couple of paragraphs that go with it you have to do a little bit of reading before they can choose a sentence that actually answers the question and this is a third grade literacy problem back to first grade math sixth grade medium sixth grade medium this is hard choosing a sentence that does not match the tone of the paragraph that's pretty difficult it's not like first grade but still I think it's pretty difficult so they have space to figure things out too yeah absolutely up one paper this just shows a report that the teachers can see for percentile you see the percentile below you can mostly look at the scale score which is her right new line right there when they come in the following it looks like they're going down but that also shows the same thing up there and that's just because when they come in and you change a grade now it's so say they're going from second to third grade now it's third grade standards and so they should go down when they first come in it's not tested at the end of the year third grade standards but it's beginning of the year third grade standards which we haven't taught yet so we more look at the scale score which averages all that right and we can also go in and take all the standards listed down for a given student and look at their scale scores to see if they're you know maybe their whole score in math went up but when we look at the scale score they could have still gone down in a couple if they improved and what we want is steady improvement on those it's really important and if they go backwards we want to figure out why as quickly as we can so teachers obviously look at that and we've talked about that before CFAs are coming from their assessments based on that we've been in our internship groups I know in Grangerie we sit down as a team every Monday at 11.30 and we talk about that we look today you're just finishing up the winter assessment right now so we don't have those results for you because it's the testing window still but we are already like in there and you can see the teachers looking at it look at this one and look at this one and if they go up or down or how they do we'll meet next week and look at all that and we have intervention groups here for half an hour in the afternoon and we will change up those groups depending on how they did for the track my progress so they're constantly looking at those at CFAs differently their instructions so the kids can pass them and our NTSS leadership team which means depending on how we get any canceled after school meetings with snow every month or every other month and look at that to help decide our district goals for elementary schools and what we want to focus on and as you know that was one of the areas we focused on for this year and we've also used it to help steer our professional development we've had different people come in here's a weakness in math we have someone come in to help us with problem solving or that was the most recent thing that we did so that's worked for us that was just the last time we were holding problem solving because that wasn't a spec over the problem and last year we had another specialist come intervention to work with all of our interventionists and special educators remind us what NTSS stands for multi-tiered system support it was a program put in so that as students are identified as having weaknesses or needing help the first step wasn't to go immediately to special education services that there are things that every district is supposed to have in place to try to remediate before you get to that step we have I don't know how many 20 or 22 people on that team it's from all three elementary schools representation from every grade every interventionist says guidance the noodles are all there so it's quite an eclectic team and if we have to decide whether we're getting better with all these measures we kind of look at and we decide together are all three schools moving forward have we all made progress in this area and for only two having not one because we're as a team we're an unusual in this district as you know so if one of them is like I haven't figured that one out yet we would all go together and help me figure it out if that's the problem we have our math code term, the nursing code and then our state's systemic improvement plan person comes and works with us on it too the other part of the team continues does one have questions? are you at the point where you can say at the start of the year this is where we want the students to be by the end of the year part of what we're trying to do is as a board we kind of need to be looking at what are our outcomes and we need to know from you all what are some realists what are your benchmark goals for where students are going to be as they move through the year so do you are you familiar enough with this data now to say when we start out with the first grade by the end of the year we want 70% to be in the blue or the blue or the green and does this tool give you sort of realistic when you take sort of the average first grader what to expect at the end in terms of outcomes we did set what we call week goals one of the important goals at the beginning of the year with staff are and so we're trying to have every child to work 10% and we are monitoring that in every school in different ways teams are doing it differently which we want them to figure out how they want to monitor that and so that's something where once you set a goal then it's like we're going to get here this month almost this month and this month and so that's the work that all the teachers are doing in all three schools so that we can bring math up by at least 10% for every child it's not that much wiggle room but everybody else there's more wiggle room to do that and that's part of the reason why analyzing all that data is so important because if somebody isn't getting there that's the meaning, that's the money for branchy that we have let's look at everybody individually now and who's not I think we made it by March our goal was for young ones at least to be 5% and contend by the end of the year because this actually isn't half way through the year as you know so we didn't want to end 5 here when most of the years still have to come but if we're having a child that didn't go up at all or only up 1% then we'd be concerned that we'd look at this intervention group and figure out what to do for that child so that answers a little bit of your question so they're driving for an overall goal my progress translates very well to how the students perform on SBAC it was one of the reasons when the team sat down to decide on track my progress, they picked this particular tool the overall goal for the district is 50% above proficiency as a minimum 70% is kind of the ideal given resources at this point in time this is a tool to help folks drive those in that direction we looked at track at the beginning we needed to adjust their thresholds because they actually weren't high enough to match SBAC thresholds so we raised them so that they wouldn't match so that we would know it should pretty well coincide and match both the outcomes we don't want to be surprised we want to make it look great and then as they know it's not great we need to do the same so we adjusted that and as professional this is a good assessment tool and you feel like we're doing the right things by children are we too heavily assessing are they feeling, are the kids like oh god here we go again you're making me sit at this computer and do this thing or so this is this is not a waste of time assessment it actually is a really good use of time because it doesn't take a lot of time from the kids it takes less time than the things we used to do by hand and it gives us really quick feedback and it's really good feedback it's better than we could do all by ourselves we also I think we reported to you last year we had a lot of assessments but we needed to see how this one was before we dropped any others so we have done some of them less often this year in order to help teachers so we're not in kids so we're not assessing so much all the time but it's really important that we don't get a judge on one assessment this is one, if we get a trigger happy little kid you know this might look poorly and we want other measures saying I don't know what happened that day but other days they're fine they're showing evidence in their CFA's and whatever else that they're doing really well what's a CFA coming from their assessments their local assessments that are created that align with the standards but they do pretty often so there's one problem though it's not like there's pages of it those are quick, those are almost exit ticket kind of problems 5 minutes, 10 minutes at the end of class now we're going to look at them later and know what we're doing tomorrow to actually get it so we can move on I don't know the kids they're so young let's see this out of the testing it's on the computer they kind of like being on computers we have found that for some kids testing in a small group is better than if you're monitoring 20 in the second grade class sometimes we make sure we supply extra adults when we know they're doing that assessment so that we can really monitor like slow down, take your time no worries that kind of stuff are there any other questions thank you David I'll have you see if you can flip over to the other I apologize it doesn't like the windows machine right? I appreciate it I'm sorry did everybody look at some how do you put you on the spot you'd be able to figure it out can you do the neckties here and how to access the thumb drive oh I don't have a right I'm going to apologize for being a little pesky today I've been running on a fever of 102 for the last two days no but I'm wanted to be here because it's the budget presentation which is final I'm trying to watch there you go actually click on that open form ah it's helpful I know I brought it over it's now it's got to be kick the drive out and I'll just load it off my other computer make sure it's on one of those days but it's funny it's like the open forums I've been sticking with high school for a lot of them because I know I can get the technology there two minutes just to copy the file they're beautiful machines they just don't have the functionality I know the problem with the windows is the dongles we have don't always work sure we have me too I'm on sale over that side hopefully I don't get spunked to buy somebody else's whatever there's a little shop there's some big issue that I wasn't aware of run them home and run them right back down yes branches just the opposite pick him up and then I get home and he's still talking but you need to shut that down with the kids at elementary school they're awesome alright I apologize I'll leave that on your desk tonight thank you very much okay we don't have any public to comment the next thing actually is not the budget presentations of the facility monitoring report as far as the agenda is and it should be an updated copy that came around it's got a little color in it and that includes kind of the direct inspection signatures that are on there there's a couple that I'll kind of point out the second one down needed HVAC repairs throughout district that 25,669-08 I want to point this out for a special reason here this is basically the solder, the pipes and everything else that has been required for use by our new HVAC person to do the work that he is doing around the school so if he is spending $25,000 or more on basic supplies you can imagine how much work is happening across the district they're swapping out the hot water heaters and the hot water storage tanks they're going through, they're fixing a lot of the leaks that were there, it was interesting when the town put in a new meter for the district to measure the water use because the old one wasn't working the way that it should we were having about $9,000 a week every couple of months so they were able to track that down he's been able to do those repairs the other thing that he has done is he is separating the high school and the tech center into sections so that if you have to do work in one area you don't have to shut the water down to the entire building to do work in that area so there's a significant amount of progress and it's not just the basic plumbing there's a lot of forced hot water so there's a tremendous amount of work that he is doing in terms of trying to get the heating systems up and into place Raven project I'm throwing that up there they have spent about $190,000 of the $350 that the board had approved so far there's still a little bit more work to do it's almost complete the major thing that they have left and the reason that that's still kind of sitting there a little bit in progress is because that building is a little bit noisy in the workshop area it's got metal walls with insulation sandwich between two sheets of sheet steel so the sound tends to bounce around a little bit so the last thing that they'll be doing in there before this is done is the engineer coming in to try to put in some acoustical tiles to deaden the sound that will save a little for the kids paving loading dock repair work that's going to be going out for bid very shortly that was the one where the leader really misquoted they did a miscalculation in terms of the tar that would be used for that so the board actually approved money for that last year their quote came in so at that point in time I said no we'll put it back out to bid next year plus I wasn't too happy they weren't willing to work with us after the mistake that they made there's still a considerable amount of work that is happening at RES there are a lot of parts and pieces in the heating system in the cooling system that is over there that have worn out due to lack of maintenance so they are replacing what needs to be replaced and they are making sure that maintenance is happening on an accelerated rate until it's caught up to where it should be the ALICE training I just wanted to point that out that is annual every fall especially when the new teachers come in Wes and Bob hold a dedicated training for the new teachers so that all the teachers of the district continue to be ALICE trained and then the roof replacement they are in the process of gathering quotes there is close to four million dollars in the reserve account at this point in time the quote to replace the roof at least the general one that we've got just people eyeballing it not the specific ones that will be coming is about 1.8 million now that includes a replacement of the entire roof plus all the canopals that are on top so usually any kind of air conditioning, air circulators heating elements that are up there they are typically good for 20 years as well which is the average lifespan of a roof and when is this going to be that? soon as we get those those bids in and you guys are pretty less taking the money out we may try to go after this summer to get it done they do have some leaks there it's not bad so they go up and repair at will at this point in time but it is reaching the end of its youthful life as part of that discussion they are going to get a separate bid just to see what it would be what it would cost to put a solar array up there that would serve as much of the district as possible we max out on the size of the solar array that we can put up to serve the district but I think it would cover about 60% of the entire electrical use of the district as a whole so we want to get that cost in and just see if it is reasonable given what the return on the investment is going to be for so the roof is 18 years old right now and it is rated for 25? do they feel like it says and is rated for 25? no they are usually 20 I will double check with them because it sounds like they are feeling like they need to get moving on it I am just curious they cut down the trees that were in front of them and now they are putting new ones the disease they were afraid they would be coming down oh they were sick especially in and around the parking lot they actually felt bad about having to take them down at least the one that was I was glad to see they put new trees up when they took them down I was like oh my god they were diseased there was the concern they would be coming down they also did a little bit of work the gentlemen try to think about the best way to describe it if you think about the entrance that goes in by the auditorium there is that hill there the property there it is an apartment building gentlemen in town owns when they came in they were cleaning up the trees and stuff around all the areas where our cars drive they cut way up his hill didn't realize they were off the property some of the trees were to try to replace some of what we took down so they could get their privacy back the trees that they bought were high quality for him but they are short they will take a little while to grow so I think what I may do is have them go out to try to make things right and put some populars out there which typically grow anywhere over 68 feet a year that was part of that work as well fix them fix them what we messed up wait why wouldn't you just put shrubbery or something there is a tenant that is up on the second floor who used to like the privacy even though it was a lot of just shrub trees that were there at the time she wants the privacy back so the populars are nice and tall they grow really quick so but they might fall down how much of this is out of the budget and how much is going to be you said the roof will be out of the facilities reserve so the only things on there that have touched the reserve will be the roof eventually and then the raiden we haven't touched much the reserve funds at all actually over the course of the last few years any other questions about the facilities report okay next is the budget update okay so this one give me a minute to orient myself here so a lot of kind of work that's been happening kind of last minute scrambling around because of the impact of the new healthcare negotiations which we'll talk about up front those at least the impact on us it may not be true of every district the impact is quite dramatic and so we'll talk about the details we'll talk about the numbers but it has forced us to kind of rethink just about everything that we were planning to do over the next couple of years but we'll start out where people had kind of asked to start at the end of last meeting I think the end had mentioned can we take a look at district enrollments and so if we go back over the last four years this is the enrollment trend that has been happening again we got relatively small grades we're not a giant school so when one grade goes out and another comes in there can be a lot of jumping up and down but the basic trend line is on average we're gaining about eight or nine kids per year over the last four years so what's our total number our total number is probably around 844 for the entire district not including preschool if we throw the preschool in there the numbers go up but we only get a small percentage of them as far as money yeah so like any student that comes in they actually adjusted we're just starting to get some of the state numbers that we need any student that came in last year was worth $10,300 in terms of the state portion of the funding and then anything above that we were paying for kid came out of local it's 10-6 this year for students if a student is coming from school choice we get closer to $16,000 to $70,000 and a preschooler we get $3,300 and that's one of the things when we talk about future of the preschool plan where we want it to go is what I'm going to propose for next year one of the things that we want to talk about is the idea that the state recognizes that there's a need for early act it recognizes the need for preschool it recognizes the need for day care but they haven't changed anything legislatively to help folks out so like if we went to a full day free preschool for 4 year olds we're not getting any more benefit for having them here all day as we do for the 10 hours at this point in time so they need to change some things legislatively if they want to make this palatable to districts around the state that makes a lot of sense you're two big growers right now Braintree so Braintree school right here is pushing 100 we were hoping they would cross the line they're sitting right around anywhere between 97 and 99 we're hoping they cross the line to 100 which will be exciting we'll have a big party when they do but this school alone has been going up 6 or 7 kids per year and what's neat about this again extrapolating is kind of tough but whenever you see data and the data points are like right on the trend line that's usually a pretty good indication that things are going to continue in that vein for a while it's not a guarantee but usually when you don't get a lot of scatter it means we're going to keep going in that direction and you've got more fields as well they're growing they're going to continue to grow for a little while at least based upon what the data is telling us the data points are very close to the trend line one of the things that I do want to point out I've got to explain this graph a little bit and hopefully I do it well so that it makes sense so this is the size of the elementary grades right here and now this year this actually isn't first grade this is kindergarten kindergarten, first, second, third, fourth, fifth our enrollments actually aren't going down they're going up because what happens is these classes move this way this class moves up so you see over the last couple of years this time is going on our enrollments are going up at the elementary level it'll be another year or two and that will fall over into the high school level and the high school will start to increase because of that outside of the fact it's increased because of school choice so we do have a pretty good trend kind of going on here in terms of an enrollment increase and keep our fingers crossed that that is going to continue folks had asked I apologize this isn't a little bigger but I can read some of the numbers off here I can drop this in your your Google folders that you now have which we can talk about at the end this is taking a look back at what the budget was and the population was back to 2016 things get a little complicated in 2016 and before because remember you guys were separate districts and so everything was kind of calculated separately and kind of brought together in some cases the same dollar amounts were showing up on budgets from so it was a little bit hard to pull out but in 2016 131 students budget was 15 154 million 2017 had 802 students so the student population in the district had gone down by 3.6% but the budget went up by 5.8% 16.3 2018 population went up by 6.4% so this was my first budget went up by 2.1% last year we asked for a huge increase and that was to try to get programs in place to start navigating the impact that the students with emotional disturbances were having in terms of special ed to get some programming in place so the overall population again jumps up and down at the district level is 832 so the population went down about 2.5% and we got an 11.2% increase from the community to really kind of help us out and be able to develop the preschools we put the preschools in place to get the program up we got some more special education teachers that were desperately needed and so it's had a dramatic impact that's going to be paying dividends as we go along so just to answer some questions that came up at the last board meeting questions on any of those or thoughts like I said running that fever sounded like groggy and out of it so if I'm not making sense tell me and if there's questions do you get your flu shot? did you get your flu shot? I don't know what it is I don't have any aches and pains I mean I got a little bit of a cough and what not but it's just been weird so the impact of healthcare negotiations as most folks know at this point in time people have been worried about the double digit increase to healthcare every year so a few years ago the governor I believe a part of the legislature left things up in the last round of negotiations left things up to the districts and said what we really want you to do is when you go into negotiations we want you to try to get how much each side is paying to 80-20 having the districts pay 80% having the teachers pay 20% of their healthcare premiums some districts did that a lot didn't weren't able to pull that off during negotiations so to try to get to that goal they put in legislation that allowed for statewide bargaining so you have the union at the state level negotiating with the Vermont school board at the state level to come up with a healthcare plan for the entire state and every teacher administrator support staff person in it now the whole goal of all this was actually to cut costs now we're going to talk in a little bit of detail before we jump back into the budget and what we're attempting to do next year based upon those costs tax commissioners forecast so this is recent in Vermont Dager a few days ago school taxes will rise over 6% but why? because of healthcare the problem with the article that you're going to see when we talk about specifically what's happened in the OSSD is they're right it is going up 6% and most of that's because of healthcare but it's not because of the double digit increases typically it's about a 12 to 14% increase every year that we're paying for healthcare it's because of the negotiations and some of the things that they agreed upon key driver the expected rise in spending is healthcare there was depending upon what plan you were looking at in the health plans the increases were between 12.9% and 14.7% this year last year I think they were about 14% so healthcare increases from year to year the premiums that the insurance companies are charging are quite great but the biggest impact on this number is the impact of state level bargaining so in other words it didn't bring costs down it drove them up to have a statewide... in our case it's adding 740,000 to our budget the details of that that dream budget that I was asking for was about half of that 744,000 that was the everything budget just to try to put stuff in the perspective of this so the piece that's going to kill some districts and not others is right here so what happened is there's two proposals that are on the table right now and as expected the two sides couldn't agree and when they got to a certain point and you can't agree they end up going through fact finding which they did and then they go to arbitration this is binding arbitration so what has happened now is the arbitrator has the best offer from the Vermont school board and also the Vermont NEA and is looking through them and is going to decide completely on this one or this one well it was interesting last week because we got enough information out of them to kind of start picking through the details and there are some areas where they are in agreement in other words it doesn't matter which the arbitrator picks it's going to happen because it's in this one and it's in this one too one of the areas is this right here and this is talking about what coverage is available into whom so from our school board things are going to remain status quo until 1231-20 which is the middle of next year which is the budget year we're currently planning for then all tiers of coverage available to all school employees who meet eligibility requirements these guys are saying the same thing all tiers of coverage available to all school employees who meet eligibility requirements in their case they're saying well if you choose ours then it's going to start first thing next year right off the batch line first both have an impact on next year's budget the one that we're planning now is does it start halfway through the year or does it start at the beginning well why is this important we have 48 support staff employees who currently can only have single person healthcare coverage under our contract with them so what this is going to do is this is going to allow every one of them to have a family option what's the difference in cost between the two single plan for support staff costs us about 9,000 bucks family plan for any member support staff included is a little over 25,000 so we now if every one of those support staff members switched from the single plan to the family plan that's our possible liability just on that one part of the agreement over a million bucks not all employees are going to jump to that family plan it's highly likely that if they're being covered by a spouse for a family plan that they will probably move to the districts because our plans tend to be better than most of what's offered in private industry around here second of all some of them don't have a family they're a single individual in the household or they're a married couple or partners in that case that would be a two person plan so what we've done is best we can as we've gone through and asked people about what their family situation is to try to gauge you know if these folks moved over to the family they moved to a family plan would they be moving to a double plan would they be staying the same and based on that analysis we've got a plan for an extra $740,000 next year if they choose the union's plan if it starts July 1st if it starts halfway through the year right in December of 2020 we have to plan half of this so $370,000 but either way we're going to end up paying the full $740,000 because if it starts halfway through the year $370,000 for this year and then the next budget year we've got to increase another $370,000 to cover it that's a lot of money for a district this size like I said it's larger than all the huge increases that we've been talking about are we unusual in that we weren't covering that so I'm going to give you my best reasonable assumption when I did the comparables for negotiations last year and took a look I think I looked at nine schools there were two of them that offered family plans there were seven that weren't and the two that did were the real expensive districts that could afford it like so so my guess is the impact that this is going to have is that the districts that can lease the for it yes the reason being is because they could lease the for it they probably weren't offering those plans to begin with because they couldn't afford it the districts that are wealthy were probably already offering family plans anyway because they could not saying I'm right just using a little bit of logic to try to think my way through so I don't know what the calculus was I did have the opportunity to kind of ground through the numbers and after the last open forum where we talked about this kind of for the first time with folks to have a VSBA member sitting in my office it was very clear that I don't think this was intended this impact so I don't think they were aware of it the intent that they had was good in going into negotiations it was to cut healthcare costs but the impact for a lot of districts is definitely different different what they said is oh we did include language and this is correct they did include language to allow for cost in in lieu of CIL so in other words if you want to at the local level you can say okay you know if we want to have people not take health insurance then maybe what we do is we build into the contract we'll give you five grand if you don't take health insurance to be honest if we're going to give health insurance I'm going to have to have health insurance I have nothing wrong with folks getting health insurance again it's just it's the way that this came about and the sudden impact that it's happened with a month ago before we have to make budget decisions so again what we have to do is change what we were thinking about in terms of the budget I also want to throw this up here because it's going to play a little bit into our negotiation methodology and it's okay for this to be open what ended up happening as well there was an agreement over the course of time to take everybody to 80-20 so in other words of the overall premium that's paid for healthcare for somebody the districts will be paying 80% of it the employee will be paying 20% of it in our case right now it's an 85-15 split for the teachers well this is going to be really really important because even that switch from 85-15 to 80-20 isn't going to save any money it'll be cost neutral it comes down to the foundation and those of you that were on the negotiating committee may have heard me say this a couple of times last year collaborative collective bargaining is about exchange of value we as a district provide you as the teachers with something of value we provide you with pay and with benefits in exchange you give us something of value in return which is the work that you put in on behalf of our kids and those two things are presumably equal if one side comes in and tries to change things then it's reasonable for the other side to say well you have to change our piece too to make sure that the values remain equal so what will happen and should happen this is reasonable because if everything else remains the same in terms of what we're requiring the teachers they should be getting the same pay next year as they're getting this year with a slight cost to living increase what happens in this scenario is after the switch to 80-20 the teachers are paying 62,000 and these are our district's number 62,000 dollars more for their health care than they were before so they're going to expect to see that money where and their salaries that's the only way we're going to be able to make them whole that's a reasonable argument and it's an appropriate one so there is no savings for switching from here to here potentially for districts that I've seen like in Massachusetts that have manipulated this numbers there is a little bit of the savings down the line because they're paying more of their health care when that double digit increase hits because the premiums go up we're not paying as much of that increase because we're not accountable for as much money overall but that is minimal so one of the things that I think we need to think about is this idea of being made whole when we go in negotiations this is a question I think we're going to have to ask how does the district keep the value exchange equal now that they just got a $470,000 increase $740,000 increase excuse me and some people point it out well this is support staff they don't make a lot to begin with which is true so we may never recoup any value for this dramatic increase to our budget at least value that is in direct service of the kids because of this change the other thing that has happened when they made this decision is that they've accelerated the costs for the yearly increase I'm now paying $740,000 more dollars for health care that I now have to pay an additional 13 or 14% on each year when health care costs go up so just on this change alone it's not, it's bad enough we got to take this but every year that goes by on the average increases you just add another $100,000 to our bill every year because of that 12% increase that's going to happen again one of the reasons I'm testing too is because of this because the full realization of what it means is there it's quite costly questions on any budget and adjustments kind of sounds like the negotiators didn't have their nuts in a row I mean granted, it's complex well that's why I was wondering whether we were one of the few districts that weren't providing that coverage already no I think there's a big awakening I think our district that 6% when we go back to the article I showed there's probably about a 6% in that ballpark so again, the person writing the article is talking about health care but they're not going into the details of where that 6% is coming from either because they didn't dig deep enough or people weren't being forthcoming about it but there's a huge increase coming across this state because of that negotiation so I feel bad I mean the intent was good but the impact certainly is not so based upon this new kind of an increase that we've got to deal with there are winners there's losers and there's maybes the winners are what we're keeping or what I'm going to recommend that we keep the losers are you're out of here, you're too expensive we'd like to do you but with the costs that we're going to have to pay for health care it just can't justify putting the community through it and then there's maybes and so that's a part of the discussion tonight there are some recommendations but the maybes is where I want the board's input this is that book, Snoop Keep now still too much given the overall picture losers middle school the idea of putting in a middle school on model is out for now it'll be at least two years before we can even revisit it and that's if numbers justify it at that point in time and that's if we're able to move forward with the preschool the way that we want to that said those meetings were very good because we still have to do something about what we've got in place now and make it better because it's not working it shows up in the data it shows up in context when you talk to folks about our UHS so we had talked about pulling together a planning team, a middle school planning team I talked with the folks that are starting to to create that and they're still going to meet but the focus has changed they're not talking about bringing 6th grade up anymore they're just looking at 7th and 8th grade they're going to look at the research that's out there they're going to see some schools around that are doing a really good job and they're going to bring back ideas on how we can change what we've got there are two things that are going to happen anyway that I'm not taking off the recommendation list regardless of all the other financial impacts socio-emotional learning training and implementation has got to happen at our UHS one of the reasons that the elementary school is doing pretty well despite the trauma-based behaviors that are going on there is because they brought in PBIS a few years back and that helps mitigate a lot of the low level behaviors that happened in and around the school that interfere with learning for whatever reason four or five years ago when PBIS came in the high school did not adopt anything that was comparable the behaviorally act it's a really good model for the elementary kids they get rewards for behaving appropriately to hopefully try to reinforce the behaviors I'm not sold on it because all the research says that when the rewards go away the behavior stops but it certainly doesn't work at the high school level because the high schoolers are a little bit more sophisticated they see it as being transactional they see it as being bright so it can actually reverse things a little bit so responsive classroom is a model that has actually been in this district it was at the elementary level it still is to an extent we've got to kind of re-bolster that work but it has never existed at the high school level this is responsive responsive classroom also this reward and no it's a different way of interacting with kids when things go wrong it's a much more positive approach to discipline it also affects how instruction is delivered it's a pretty big program to bring in and get people trained it probably will take two years but that should help out with a lot of the climate pieces across the school a lot of the low level to mid level behaviors it should wipe that right out it's not a new program overall it's a lot of research well researched PDIS was a newbie that came along five years ago it was the bandwagon that everybody jumped on across the country there's no research that is long lasting the effects that it has so you've got the elementary school doing that reward system and then they flip over to the middle school middle school high school yeah middle school high school where you're no longer I'm just curious is that not part of the reason why we may because all of a sudden you've taken that external control and you've eliminated it and the kids go they don't know how to internally control themselves I mean that's been my kids will say it drives me crazy the kids don't know how to control their own behavior and so as you're looking at the system are you thinking about what you're doing at the elementary school level because you're taking six years of training of external controlling the system and then you're I mean I would think that you might think about how you might get it all to work together well PB they do have responsive classroom they've had it like I said one of the things that we were talking about and you'll see it when we come up to it was that professional development budget they had a lot of training in it at one time but it was never kept up on so as you get turned over you lose the people that have the skills and the new ones that come in unless you train them to have it it starts to get diluted over time so it's there PBIS they have invested a lot of time the state has actually invested a lot of money in it as well and I'm in agreement with you there is no research out there that shows that the extrinsic motivation that the kid has to gain the rewards turns into anything intrinsic in other words when the rewards stop so does the behavior and you're right that's a good good piece I don't know if it's true but it's reasonable given the circumstances that one of the spikes in behaviors we see is because those rewards have now been taken away when you get over there but again those students at that age level they start to get savvy oh it's just a bribe I know that's the attitude about it and why are we doing this they actually kind of come to resent it a little bit the other piece that would come on a little bit later is training in what's called zones of regulation and that's really teaching the students how to regulate themselves with health in other words are you in the red, the green or the blue right now if you are what can we do to get you back down to the green or the yellow where you can function and it takes a bit of training for that zones of regulation is for the more high level issues that you may be seeing the high level behaviors that you may be seeing so the hope is is that we get in responsive classroom that takes care of the bulk of behaviors and then once those are out of the way then we can concentrate on the ones that have been identified as much higher need for the zones zones is a much simpler process this is a much more extensive training than zones and then the other piece that we've got to keep and this is 7 to 12 is that facilitated work in mathematics, ELA science and reading they've got to get the curriculum in it's got to be aligned they've got to take what they're doing and see how it fits into what they should be doing matching and then they've got to get to the point where the elementary school is where they've got some data that they're collecting on an ongoing basis that gives them feedback on what the kids are learning and what they're not so that they can focus on what they need to adjust to make things better I have a question so is there a tool like the tool that the elementary administrators just showed us for at least middle school so the trap my progress goes up through ninth grade they are using it at the high school they started using it last year the value that it had at that point in time because they were still working on the mandate for the proficiency based graduation requirements and the report cards the impact that it had was the oh my god we thought they were doing better and so that's important because that's what changes culture to develop that sense of urgency so they've got a sense of urgency right now which is good not a long lose that in terms of the facilitation piece so the facilitated curriculum professional development we kind of talked a little bit about that those have got to stay and as part of that professional development piece or what we call these orientation boot camps you have teachers that leave you have new teachers that come on we'd like to put money aside for a week for the high school for the elementary schools just prior to the start of school where the newbies come in and they learn as much as they can about all these things so that they are in cultural sync with all the other teachers in the school doing things the same way speaking the same language for consistency for the kids and it's one of the ways that you don't get that dilution over time I'm going to throw I'm going to throw as we go through this you're going to see kind of two sides of the equation so it's exactly what I call what Robin calls the draft 2 budget and the draft 3 the draft 2 cuts back a lot from what we talked about at the last meeting but in my opinion it's still going to be too expensive I'm going to throw it up there just for discussion purposes so people can see you know potential costs the draft 3 is the one that I'm going to recommend to the board the reason being is it's not going to break the bank as much as this one will so part of what will come off the list is the hope for that 3 full day preschool for all 4-year-olds there's two reasons for that right now unless people want to push back and argue with me I would like to have it happen I'm going to argue it's for this district what we've got going on right now is we've got preschool across all three elementaries parents are having to pay for some some is free but we're generating revenue we're generating a significant amount of revenue if we move to free full day preschool for all 4-year-olds next year we lose that revenue we're a lot of money and the state isn't going to reimburse us for having those kids here on top of that so it's a huge expense actually not that much it's $200,000 to add a whole other grade of school for all the kids that go through here a whole other year of education but what we have now it's up it's running it's working for what it is generating some revenue to help offset costs I have a question so I notice their brain tree house parents can pay for that brain tree they can come over here or they can extend it could a parent who's at Randolph Elementary can they have their kids go over to brain tree what's happening now can Brookfield do the same does the parent have to get out of work somehow and transport them or do they can they go by bus if they were going to do the after school so it gets a little tricky there's after school which is kindergarten and up and then there's extended preschool and so that's for the 0-4-year-olds so this school right now has extended preschool that will continue next year regardless of what we do but if students we're going to come here for that extended preschool suggestion is is that they're here for you the whole day oh so they'd come here for preschool instead of going to the one and the other ones until we use up the slots and do we have all this are we full yeah so there aren't any openings in current closed you know under the current system not under not potentially under the change both schools Randolph and Brookfield both schools have after school program that's a slight pay but that's for the K and UPS Randolph has an after school program but it's run by the so I'm not going to go into a lot to this is what would be required without the middle school move because we've taken that off the table to get the full day for four-year-olds up and running and again these costs have gone up since the last time we looked at it because there's now increased health care costs for the parents so what was I believe it was about 170,000 is now 233 to get the staffing to do this increase if we stay steady state we there's some increase in here because of health care costs that didn't exist before but we also have people that are serving in those positions now that weren't intentionally built into the budget so when we started to build stuff we weren't able to take that into account we did the budget process because the budget process happened a year before we decided to build stuff so they're in there we're using other savings in the budget to pay for them but the appropriate thing to do would be to put them in the budget proper and so this is the cost to maintain what we currently have and again this generates revenue that offsets some of that it generates quite a bit I think we I think we almost broke even last year it was quite good the other thing I've got to point out as we talk about this budget is we still don't have the numbers from the state to calculate our revenues we don't have the enrollments that they need to tell us about and so that damages our conversation here because these costs in the end might not be as great as they're going to look we're just looking at change in expenses we've had increases in enrollments we've had other changes that are bringing in money but we can't say what they are now until the state gets done with its formula with its generating the enrollments for us so currently next year the recommendation is they stay steady state there is no change brain tree elementary we're going to stick with the more expensive draft they really do need another teacher interventionist in here because their enrollment has gone up for almost 100 kids and we've never added a body here to help them out with that regular classroom teacher I'm going to put in the recommended draft not just because of how expensive this is because we've got to do something to deal with the health care piece the one thing that I do want to keep is we have a person here math and ELA interventionist who is still point to entitled the problem is that if that person is entitled I cannot use them to teach a class even though they may be qualified and certified title means that they're doing extra above and beyond remediation work with kids but I can't use them at I can't use them as a regular classroom teacher if I can put this point to pull it out of title get it into the regular budget what I can do then is I can have them teaching math class we've been working over the last couple of years to try to get rid of the multibreed math classes at the elementary because the two smaller schools lose out in terms of time while learning math that they're teaching grades 3 and 4 for an hour Randolph can teach grade 3 for an hour and grade 4 for an hour in this situation would you take the point 2 out of title or would you leave the point 2 in title and add another point 2 in the same person this one I would take the point 2 out of title for this making funds available for other things that we may not be able to meet in this budget that will qualify for title funds I actually had a list of them but they're not on the top of my head right now let me just try to think that could be like almost half yeah so that's 12 so we're not adding this looking at you know, 12,380 there so the total under the recommended budget is 12,380 increase for Branger for Brookfield it's the same situation they have a title interventionist the person is full-time title right now so they can help with the kids but they can't teach a class even though they're qualified and certified to teach a math class if I can get point 2 of their position into the regular budget I can now have them teach a math class so that's the goal there it's that focus on the math piece right driving towards the ends that foundational knowledge so looking and again these are different people so their salaries are different so this one would be 1630 RUHS taking a look at the comparables and the work that Katie Sutton is doing to get her up to the comparables salary remember there was a co-principal there at one time when David left we brought in Katie as an AP this is her second year now she's gaining skills we have her set up with a mentor through VPA as well it's appropriate to get her up to an equitable salary so that's the only change that I'm recommending for RUHS at the district level this has not really changed since we talked about it last but this was a little discussion about professional development you cannot drive better instruction in a school in a district unless you've got the structures to do so typical structures are a curriculum director and a PD budget I've been able to cobble together with the coaches with Dorian Dorfman's position at RUHS a group of people that as a team acts in the same role as a curriculum director they're the ones that are following the professional development plan together the ones that are seeking out the facilitators and generating all those ideas but we still need money to deliver the actual professional development to the faculty so looking for and again a lot of this is kind of one time money to get the work done so we've got to get some curriculum facilitators to come in at RUHS it's 7 to 12 looking at the English language arts curriculum it's looking at the mathematics curriculum K to 12 it's looking at the science curriculum and building a true science program in the elementary schools this one maybe maybe not just looking at middle school best practice just to get some ideas on how to better we talked about hitting the research base getting some better ideas on how we might structure what we have the other piece that's up here as we've been kind of looking at the testing there are some real reading deficiencies across all the grades so bringing in a facilitator to actually work with a couple of the younger grade teachers seems to be an area that needs some focus because they're new they don't have the reading training that our old teachers had that left but more importantly to do reading training with the special educators K to 12 they need some specialized training on how to teach reading to students that are struggling it's not something that they naturally get through their regular program we've identified that if we can provide that we're going to be leaps and bounds ahead of where we are now and again the greater goal is starting to get kids to come off IEPs because we provided the skills for them to do the talent software to support curriculum work there's a variety of software packages out there Track My Progress was one we also talked a little bit about this an $8,000 increase because we had to increase the bandwidth across the district we had federal money that was coming in to compensate for some of that to get it started but that funding is no longer available it was short term anyway so we've got to make up the difference that's an $8,000 increase Athletics we've cut way back on in terms of what the ask was one of the things that I've added was $3,000 to move the athletic director over onto the teachers pay scale the athletic director for a full time which is unusual in most places in the state of Vermont the salary was a little bit low but one of the most important things that happened this year when Steve Croucher went to be down with his wife at an editing position at the Shriners hospital was the fact that we had two or three teachers who would have been ideal to come in and be an athletic director and we couldn't do it because the pay cut would have been so much because they were moving off the teachers pay scale so this would be a step to get them on the teachers pay scale if we have turnover in the future maybe we can pull through with it somebody who already knows the kids who's already been a coach here in a couple of sports for a couple of years we don't have a groundskeeper haven't had one for a while so we have a very limited staff and we're trying to keep it fairly lean on facilities they are doing their best to kind of keep up with things we really should have a groundskeeper that's lines and things for the games we have a different service that comes in and actually does the mongrel lawns and whatnot because it's cheaper to do that than to have a body here to do it and then a little bit of an increase to their supplies equipment and police line so 38-400 for athletics facilities we pulled some stuff off because we do have a healthy reserve fund two of the biggest items that will probably be coming before this board to be pulled from the reserve fund that we're taking off this list from last time was $45,000 for a generator for Brookville power goes out there quite frequently they tend to get the worst weather of the three towns so we already had to move the kids once this year we had to have them down at Randolph Elementary when the power went out for an extended period of time once we've got them you can't really kind of release them until the end of the day because you can't get all the parents available to pick them up and to be with them so it's important we also took $15,000 off of this again that we'll be asking for out of the reserve fund to replace the door hardware for security wait, so you took away the generator you're just going to go into the facilities we're going to come to you in about a month and say after it comes back from mid say we want the reserve funds because we've got about $4 million in there and the estimate, the rough estimate on the roof is $1.8 million so we've got enough so we figured rather than hit the taxpayers we've got money these are a little bit different the reason that I left these on here is because these lines were never where they should have been to begin with these additions are what it's actually costing for rubbish removal especially now with the law that we've got to take the compost away so this is just to get those lines up to what it's actually costing that makes sense special education is what it is it's actually significantly less than the last two years and we talked a little bit about this we are in the middle and the word is going up communications are happening with the staff and the planning is going on restructuring how special education services are delivered at the elementary level one of the reasons is because the model that we've had they never had the staffing to properly serve the students they've had enough staffing to manage the students in other words to get them through the day but not enough time to spend with them to actually change the behaviors or provide them with the skills they need to be independent and because of that again it's an assertion based on reasonable argument and evidence because of that that's the reason we got 21% in this school in Montpelier only has 12 to 14% of its total student body being students on IEPs because we're never getting them off we're getting them through maintaining them on their IEPs providing the services we're managing the situation but we're not providing the skills they need to actually come off the IEPs so the restructuring that is happening at the elementary level this year is designed to do just that so hopefully the goal is and that restructuring in and of itself is cost neutral by the way the goal of that restructuring is to change the focus to one of the independence we're not just recognizing that a kid is struggling putting a para with him and wiping our hands of it and saying we've done our job the kid's being served it's not if the para goes with him the para is only there for a short amount of time while the team gears up its efforts to provide the services to deal with the behaviors or the academic issues that the student has as fast as possible putting a para on a student or if a student needs to be sent out that's an indication that the team needs to ramp up its efforts with that kid to help them be more independent and come back and be part of the regular environment here so that's the goal but we still have some predicted out placements for next year these are students that behaviors or needs we cannot accommodate properly in the district and then the big thing that's happening changeover that's been happening is all the little ones that are coming in who need services and the service that they need is speech for whatever reason whatever is happening in terms of demographics or community other so I'll try to put some other pieces on here so predicted across district salary increase because it's a negotiation year and if we go into executive session I'll explain what I've done with that with a 685,398 for the salary increases and keeping it relatively low 738,000 for health insurance because of the state change that includes the 12.9% increase 11,000 for elementary science supplies we've already talked with the facilitator and you're getting her geared up to actually start her work this spring with the faculty but she has said taking a look at what we've got here she said you want to plan for about 11,000 dollars to buy the supply she'll need to implement elementary science and here is the other kicker is that food service their piece of the budget is always kind of kept separate they're their own kind of cost unit because they generate their own money and try to pay for themselves well their healthcare went up too there's no way they're going to be able to cover the cost above the healthcare so Robin and I were analyzing things we said they're going to need 25,000 subsidy from us to cover the increased cost of healthcare 738 plus 25 that's a lot one year for healthcare you can tell I'm grinding alright so the draft 2 budget and again percentages don't mean much right now because we don't know the revenue side they cancel some of this out so this is all just on expenses the draft 2 budget which includes the full day pre-school and the additional teacher for here would mean a 9.26% increase in expenses for the district as a whole now this is where it gets really fun the draft 3 budget which keeps pretty much everything steady state except for some small additions is a 7.63% increase in expenses now this is what I'm saying it's fun if I wipe out any increases to any school program across this district and we just deal with the healthcare issue that's our cost is that just the healthcare or does it include the teacher's salaries which we have to plan for when we talk in executive session it's what I put in there is reasonable and not excessive but that's just healthcare spend future salary increases so the budget you're going to present is draft 3 that's the budget if folks here are comfortable again it's pretty much steady state with a couple of minor additions along the way primarily to get a PD budget in that's the most expensive thing that's 100,000 106,000 excuse me I think total and the 2.2 is at the small elementary that's all it's at PD you want stuff to advance in terms of academics especially at the high school can't do it can't do it without it but again my point being is that even if we cut everything the difference between 7.49 and 7.63 is it worth it at that point in time for people I don't know just kind of for a breakdown this is by the way if we went with the draft 2 budget which I'm not recommending this is what the breakdown would look this is the increase due to healthcare increase due to salaries increase due to SPED and this is all the dream when we were back on the dream budget basically that's what I was asking for in terms of increase to actually help programs and kids in the schools just so a breakdown so people can see it so again when I say if everything looks the way that it looks and I have confirmed with the person on the negotiating committee yep that's what it is this is decimated other unknown here they still haven't come up with what you're going with so there may be even more of an impact as far as I can tell I can't anticipate what it would be I picked up on the biggest one that's common between the two but there potentially are a couple of other impacts they'll be my or compared to what we've just discussed as far as I can tell but that's the other unknown and we won't have an answer to that until at the earliest December 15 and it won't be until you actually have to vote on this budget in January unless you want to do a special meeting ahead of time that I'll be able to tell you what the revenue side of things are and the numbers for the state they typically come out in the middle of the month too so either I put you to sleep or you're all as grumpy and angry as I am does anyone have any other questions for Lane? alright thank you well I only have the two just to throw it out there so you've got tech senator rehen these are really simple state hasn't worked out on the funding so what we're looking at between last year and this year in terms of tuition it's not what it looks like and I'll explain why in a second it looks like tuition is going to go from $17,925 to $18,402 this $477 increase here per kid for tuition is actually really only $101 increase the reason being is that the state is subsidizing that so what we're looking at is a pretty much a level funded budget for the tech center their increase is 0.5% he did a pretty good job but it does mean we are losing a program which we can talk about and that doesn't save us any money either no because that program was unsubscribed this year so we're still paying a teacher or we did hire a budget teacher this year we are currently paying a teacher even though right now there are no students next year that teacher will be gone but it doesn't save us any money yeah because we still have some health care increases in there and we also have the staff salary and then Raven it's the same the whole budget for Raven was $6 different between last year and this year so there is no impact on tuition for Raven it may actually get a little bit better because we changed buildings the district charge is the Raven collaborative and administrative fee because we do all the paperwork pay all the bills, write all the checks what we are able to charge for that may change, may go down now that we're in the new building the new building should cost us in terms of utilities and all the other stuff but we just can't predict and with that, that's all the budget pieces unless there's questions on anything that's a lot so the expectation unless there's any big pieces of pushback is the smaller of the two budgets is the push I gotta have that PD I don't want to give up the two math parts because we fought so hard and things are improving but if I had to that would be the next one that would be as vital there well thank you so next month we will vote on that next we've got the board members terms it was in your agenda both Ann Howard and Melody are up for election in 2020 I'm not running again I have just personal reasons had a lot come up in my personal life recently and it's been even difficult trying to come to the meetings there are conflicts trying to find coverage so that's really what it is about so be sorry to be leaving you all but now that I'm part of this process I know you all you might see me at meetings wanting to be you know trouble maker thank you and so we'll want to let interested people know that there will be an emergency and brain tree as well yeah I'm not moving how many years are on the board? 12 yeah so thank you both for all the work put in we do appreciate it next yeah you know hopefully next school so the OSSE draft warning was also published this is for the meeting the day before town meeting which is our school district meeting do we need to vote to approve this? we don't have figures in there because there will be the budget amount and if we have any surplus distributed and so that is an expectation generally that we be at that meeting that is the Monday night we had held at RUHS please there was only one there last year yes there was nobody in the audience though there were several people in the audience and a dozen or something like that what were they excited about? thought I was the only one there who presented from Cookfield and Bridget yeah it's right in the middle of school break yeah it was everybody was on vacation I was on vacation we did a three-year town meeting to vote discuss negotiation do you want to do that in the executive session might it be a good idea just because the strategy we talked a little openly about it as part of the budget piece I can tell you about the percentages they set aside and then there's the discussion and a people possibly an unpaid leave request the letter is there I emailed it to them yes it's in the back a maternity leave unpaid sabbatical by one of the high school English teachers so usually they get three months coverage they want more than the appropriate thing to do is come to the board ask for the leave she's looking for the first semester next year so the semester being until the end of December yeah January do we have any other questions for laying about this or discussion I recommend it yeah she's going to be missing the first couple months anyways so it wouldn't almost make it more sense it's in English so English is easier to find than math or physics or chemistry it shouldn't be a problem finding somebody's qualified do I have a move to approve the leave motion to approve second all those in favor aye read as approved then we have two reports 2.4 and 2.5 this is a first read of both of them so we will actually approve them next time do you have anything you want to say yeah these were these were actually pretty short I'll do 2.5 first because that's the easy one that's the succession planning if I get one over by a bus I have a heart attack mental instability that sort of stuff is having somebody who can kind of step in and do their role so I've actually got two in the short term it's rather so like if it's a couple of days because most of what we deal with out of the central office is budget related so she's got a good handle on the operations and everything that happens if it's longer than five days it's Erica so anything extended because she's got the whole ball of wax can step up and do things quite quite wonderfully but there's no reason to pull her away from her principal duties if it's just for a couple of days and I may both do have a letter in there that at worst if it was required for the signing authority there might be an organization or an institute that we have contracts with that might say yeah we just need a board chair so we're trying it as well the other part of that is that in terms of just keeping people up to date and what's going on with the district to make it easier to kind of step in as I do meet individually with each of the principals each of the cabinet members once a week and we also have our cabinet meeting every other week so every two weeks which we're looking at everything that's going on the district kind of brainstorming together checking in on the good works that are in progress and what the next steps are so they're pretty well involved in what's happening across the district and I have a list of questions and then 2.4 financial planning and budgeting the biggest kind of easiest way to sum this up is it's just it's ensuring that we're putting proper thought and research into the budget planning process and making sure that we're kind of anticipating outside pressures like the change in the state of health care as we're planning out a couple of ongoing issues that are now resolved I think it's important to talk about one is the issue with the treasurer folks will remember we had an elected official who was managing the accounts payable and the big issue was not reconciling the checking accounts those checks were drawn from every year and we got a finding in the audit for it because it was an elected official we really had no power other than a little pressure and say please do this which we did but we were able to get somewhat forceful at the end of last year and force a change in that position so that issue has been resolved we did get a letter from the AOE just a little while ago in the middle of November that says help me check things out and we like how you resolve things you're good to go so they have no concerns at this point in time which was kind of interesting that it got on for a couple of years was year after year we were carrying a deficit over for the technical center which under Vermont state law you can only do for three years but it was because of this conflict in the laws on the books they are required to have an assistant director for adult ed adult ed doesn't really exist in the technical centers anymore because the state put in a bunch of adults basic ed offices which drew all the people to them and away from the technical centers but we still have to have the person there so we whittled that position down and the salary down as much as we could we were still meeting the letter of the law but it meant that we always were in a deficit situation at the end of each year because typically that person is generating revenue to cover their position with no people to come in and do it now we did some checking RTCC does have a surplus typically at the end of the year it's a small one, it's built up a bit and it is okay we check with the auditors and whatnot to pay for that deficit with that surplus so we have done that, actually notified the board about it last year so that was corrected at that time and that's how we'll continue to correct it but I'll modify the board each year if we're violating the law in the first place reducing the nature of the way it's set up why don't we violate it by getting rid of it we actually we fixed it before the three years was up so we didn't violate what do you mean by taking money out of surplus in order to pay for it that actually they said doesn't it was kind of interesting and I think it's the shade between meanings we were not allowed to pay tuition money for it but because this was now surplus it wasn't considered tuition money anymore which was the explanation we can't do without an adult ed director still on the books we've talked about this before I brought it, I did bring it up in because I do meet with our local then that's where as our role to advocate with the legislature we should be hammering on them get rid of this ridiculous rule so that we don't have to do this the other thing to add to that list is pay us more for preschool if we have full day preschool we should be getting more than the 3300 so we because in February we meet with them so we should make sure that's front and center two of the things that we should talk to them about so Lane I had a question about the policy 2.4 I think it has a or a or failed to be derived from a multi-year plan and it's always said this and every year I feel like we don't actually have a multi-year plan with the exception of facilities I believe facilities we see, I mean you had it right here you just gave it to us and that's usually a pretty good multi-year plan but I don't see that for anything else and so CIP is what I use yeah but what so as an example your plan to this year for next years was to add the sixth grade to the middle school right but I didn't hear any talk about that last year and it's the same thing with like the preschool I just wonder if you could do a better job in the because in your interpretation doesn't mention at all about multi-year you talk about you know proper physical management which I guess one could assume that you're talking about multi-year planning there but I just wonder if you could do a perhaps a better job of presenting maybe the plan for like I don't know you choose three years or something or I know we have to, in my mind I was thinking that logical choice would be the contract cycle because every so we in this case it's what could be two years for the teachers because the medical plan is going to be two years so perhaps you present a two years over the course of the next two years I think this is what my budgeting might look like you know like something like that that would I don't know at least present us with what you're going to be proposing over the course of the next two years instead of waiting until like October November timeframe and saying alright this is what I like to do and I just felt like it came out of left field so I'm in agreement with you but I can at least give you some context in terms of how things have been happening and also suggest that the strategic planning that was talked about at the board level would be helpful for that what happens in the process that I've been using for budgeting is that CIP plan is a three year plan two to three years it uses data to analyze where the weaknesses are in the district and then I actually state what those weaknesses are and what things that we will be attempting to do so it is stated in there but the other piece that in terms of if you go back you look at the last two and I think I dropped it in the google file you guys can take a look and I'll put the previous ones in there because it gets adjusted every year because then you go back and look at the data again and you might be able to say oh we've kind of completed this one so instead we're going to be doing it now but in terms of that planning process it is not necessarily spelled out what the solution is going to be we've identified this is a problem we need to work on this and then over the course of the communications with the cabinet we start to pull those pieces out as budget season approaches and says hey we've got some issues here and that's where the preschool the whole preschool concept came up and then moving the sixth grade and I see where you're going but there is a process that is related but you're right in terms of the clarity piece I guess for me what would be helpful as an example this presentation just did was great right but I think what would be more helpful for me would be your first presentation instead of being a pie in the sky presentation it would be the presentation alright over the course of the next three years this is what we're going to do so maybe in October that's what that is alright so what we've come up with these are the solutions that we have for the next year to chip away at our three year plan and then December alright this is what we would like to do and I think that for me it would seem more logical because that first one that you presented I thought it was October it was this pie in the sky all the teachers want all of these things and I couldn't put that into context to alright so last year I thought we had the pie in the sky and now we have another pie in the sky and I thought we met a ton of it with the amount of money we tried to put towards it and so I couldn't contextualize it and so I think it would be helpful for me to see alright this is the increase I'm talking about this is where I kind of want to go and that would help me anyway just and I think it's I think it's very good it's easy to do but I would caution that it will be general the thing that people in Pat and David mention a thing that people know we've been working on is the mathematics at the and so we've been I get all that we have been chipping away at it for three years so they'll be general our focus is right now our focus is improving REHS in the middle school but what format takes will change as we're discussing it more detail as more data comes up as we complete some pieces that we're working on and if they have the desired impact so yeah so long so I would it's not a problem at all but just to recognize that it may be general there are some pieces that we have worked out the details on for a while getting those bullets down but recognize it's changeable it's general but if I'm changing it then I should have a good explanation for why exactly yeah no agree and I think that's helpful for people in general to think about these are our long term goals like a middle school for instance is a long term goal and that's where we're working maybe I mean that may change but you can present it as a long term goal that allows people to sort of get their head around it as you know a direction we're moving rather than immediate focus you're right I mean we had the focus of addressing 7th, 8th grade in REHS it was a two year wait because of the other work that they were doing but this was what we were coming up with as things that may have a significant impact the CIP plan is that that's this continuous improvement plan that's generated by the state or that's generated by you so I work together work together with the principals they have school improvement plans the two support each other they have to but it comes from an analysis the data it comes from a lot of discussions at the open forums in terms of what we're getting from community feedback comes in part from you know some of the priorities that the board has as well in this case in terms of your mission statement but that is pulled together again it's got to be database so it says these are our deficiencies this is the reason why we've identified them this is the data that we used and this is what we're going to do about it and you have to give that to the state yearly yeah and you guys usually approve it each year but I did drop the last one you guys have each have an email now there is a google drive that I believe Tina sent you the link to I actually have your Chromebooks as well but I was parked a quarter mile away so making few trips is a little tough to me so what's going forward the policies will be in there all those yearly documents will be in there they'll be in folders there's a folder in right now there right now this is OSSD board meetings and if you open it up it's got by meeting date 12-9 it's got all the documents in there and what we'll do with that instead of necessarily having to email out a giant file so as they're ready before that date they'll drop them in so that if you want to get started reading a little bit earlier it'll be there but any of the documents that I've got that you want just tell me I'll drop them in there it would be helpful for me to put the power points in there I find Linda's email very helpful as a reminder as a reminder for the meeting yeah I probably still will do that but meeting reminder but you don't have to do all that do you guys? so and when you're writing up the evidence you could just list there's the CIP plan in the district office wherever you keep it you don't have to write up the plan in this document well they had talked about at one of our trainings I think it was Val about trying to incorporate the evidence directly into the report so that's one of the reasons why some of the samples in some cases I can't that'll be in the folder well I think this is a public document too and so I think it's important for any public also to be able to get their hands on it rather than have to go to the website so I do appreciate those sorts of things being incorporated into the report but that is a change from previous years that just came out of Val so in that meeting we had the training I think it was last month it was the 20th November it's all running she mentioned something about she thought it was odd that the surplus it was something about title funds you mentioned that we wait to get the title funds and then at the end of the year we end up having a surplus sometimes due to the fact that we had to put it in the budget do you recall what I was talking about and then she mentioned well usually you put that into a reserve so you draw from that temporarily and then you don't have to worry about it or something like that do you recall what ends up happening with us with title funds is we get a significant amount maybe it was state funds there was something you said you had to pad the beginning because the money doesn't show up until so we get a lot of reimbursement right so let's say I've got a student who is going to a special education student who is going to cost me $380,000 and we had one actually the most expensive student in the state for about a year and a half because I know I've got to pay that I've got to put it in the budget to make sure that there's money available for it but what ends up happening is we've got to pay the money up front and then later in the year lots of times at the end of the year I get reimbursed for part of it from the state you know she's mentioned something about there's a best practice of setting that money aside somehow so that you draw from it reoccurring so that the budget doesn't actually increase or I can find out I don't know if that's part of the long term when I was thinking long term if there's a reoccurring expense due to reimbursement yeah a lot of these are predictable the kids come and go that's one of the reasons why it's all so hard to serve them as the transitory but I'll actually check, I'll talk with Robin to see if there are some things we could do that with there's two places that surplus primarily comes from it's reimbursement monies that come at the end of the year that you had to pay for up front the second place is staffing like I said you get somebody who retires it's $75,000 a year and you hire somebody so there's a lot of that that goes on and do it too but I will check so reoccurring reimbursement are there any other questions for Lane on these reports please remember that we will be voting to approve them next time so if you want to see the documentation they are available in the OSSD office and the notebooks in Lane's office okay so next thing we have is to plan meeting with legislators what is Lynn is going to reach out and try to and that meeting will be at RUAHS correct? yes so are we sure we want that to happen in February right before Melody and Ann leave us we get new people in position is it better that it happens then because we have experienced people before well there's a reason why we haven't spent because they're doing their legislations because we want to ask them questions before too long on in the term because when they do the crossover at town meeting week then basically there's no new things there's nothing we can bring up our two things we used to do it in January and then it was budget it was a really long meeting really long meeting February sounds good we don't really want to be here until 1030 for the consent agenda we need to approve the minutes from the OSSD meeting did anyone have any changes on that we also have to approve a professional contract for someone who is already working and we will do this as a slate and then we need to approve the financial management questionnaire which is something I had this thing no, yeah this delineates who is responsible for different parts of financial management in the district so if you want to look at that that's just sort of between the OSSD office and our district so are there any questions or substitutions or changes any of those things do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda as a slate a little bit all those in favor any opposed okay the consent agenda is approved move on to superintendent's reports or anything you want to add I do have a question about the policy policies policy meeting review meeting that happened last Thursday that I did not attend Rachel you were there with Sue Sieglas is there anything you need to do or no or prepare for as far as a board you're making me think back off the couch and stuff to do sometimes we need to review our policies and basically adopt the ones they have on their website so there were two that were just out and out missing and so we talked with her about you know can we do them all once should we do them a couple at a time and I think the best way to kind of start the process through the discussion was to get those two that are missing up and on there right off the bat and then do the rest all at once which responsibility is that to get those two I'm happy to do the writing and whatnot on it the other piece is when the board is done kind of its review process on them they book them and say yeah this sounds okay to us is before there is a vote is run it all through PHO just to make sure it's if it's standard probably the BSBA has a standard wording and all that I think what she said was any of ours a little bit then you do want to send it through council which makes sense there were some specific instances where she said check with your council on this and then a lot of the detail can come out of ours and be put in procedure procedural stuff yeah she said the procedures out of our policies yeah because that's operational that's on the district side as opposed to the board side yours is the overall vision for the policy and what it entails ours is put it into practice and so if you've got that mixed up in the policies those pieces should come out and then that means I'm going to have to go to and check and make sure that all the policies or the procedural side of things are all over so you'll that's your yeah so and he actually does all these state ones because his he just has to make sure they're all up and running we don't do those policies he makes sure we can help him using our ability to use the BSBA to help create those policies but he really he needs to make sure that we have all the most current state policies federal policies in place and that they're up to date because we delegated that to him and that's where the review of those policies came from is when I was going through doing that executive limitation so it's making sure that the board is keeping track of what needs to change and that's what I had the review done last year right they did a pretty good job and hopefully it saved me time and effort to have them do it I can't even predict how long it'll take to update until I actually get started I think the first step just so we go through the process together is that those two that are missing and then once everybody's happy and satisfied with how that process works we just do the same for all the rest of them on mass okay and our packets were also the director and principals reports financial report is there anything that you want to highlight or have us note make note of I had some minor notes but nothing really nothing was critical yeah but the only folks that are spending a little faster than we like right now and they're actually not that bad is facilities just because of all the work they're doing they're spending a bit more than I'd like because of overtime they've lost some folks or done away with some folks and so other people have had to step in because they're hourly to get over time but it is we're 40% through through the school year for the most part and they still got 55% of their budget left so it'd be nice to say they were 60 had 60% work on that so they're a little bit ahead of where we'd like but they'll be fine any questions on the finances last question I asked Robin after we reviewed is are you comfortable with everything in here and she said everything was fine that's a good rubber stamp anything else we should know under incidental some stuff for executive session yeah I think it did pretty well yeah I'm going through it now like the general behavior I mean look at it, it's nine o'clock we're stuck right here we followed the agenda didn't get sidetracked well attended, someone was sick that's going to happen I don't think there were any interruptions I think that Laura did a great job keeping us on track especially with the public comment section trying to keep us on task and holding them to the time limits always asking at the end of every session anyone have any questions, thoughts so I think and it was pretty straight to the point in terms of what we went over today there wasn't a lot that I think we needed to debate or discuss so attentive listening we're all respectful and courteous and I think a lot of trust and openness generally is my overall feel and then just in terms of the governance principles review we did go over some of that actually like the the processes, policies who's in charge of what and just kind of maybe we have work to do in monitoring and improving process I know that you've been putting that on the agenda routinely but that's always something that we could improve upon and I think that we really we stayed in our lane so to speak thank you thanks for reporting and we do have an executive session on the negotiations and on the student issues so we will move into the executive session