 I think it's going to be a little bit of a short talk about 633 the Roxbury Board of School Directors. Thanks for coming out. We've got a short agenda but obviously a lot to talk about and some big decisions to be made. I just want to preface this by at the end of this process when we send something else to the voters or a second vote to the voters likely next election. I think it's going to be a little bit of a short talk about the options. None of the options are good. All of the options involve someone getting something likely taken away from them that is valuable and that they feel is needed if not it would not have been in the budget in the first place. So I just want to acknowledge that the choice before us is tough. This is something we have to do. I think something everybody has to do. And we really appreciate the engagement and the input as we try to make a decision on a timeline and with a process that I don't think anyone in this room thinks is going to be ideal. So we have public comment. We're going to open with public comment. We're then going to get a budget presentation. We're then going to have a second public comment to get some response to the budget presentation. So I do want to give I do not want to police time much but I would appreciate if you policed your own time and are respectful that there's a lot of people in the room, a lot of people who want to want to talk. So I will not time it but I'll ask you to please keep your remarks to around a minute if that is possible. You can certainly reference things that have been said before by saying you agree with someone rather than repeating what they say. That's one good way to shorten it. But if you could please do that that would I think move things along and give everyone a chance to feel like they've both given input this evening and then we don't drag to a place where people are kind of too tired to listen and absorb input. So let's just start with a public comment initially in the room. Remember you will have a second opportunity after the presentation to give comment. So if you can speak twice, if you want to wait and see what some of the proposals and options are and speak to them and hold off at first that's fine too. But you're welcome to speak twice but if you don't speak now you will have a second opportunity to respond to the presentation Livia is going to give. So that I'm just going to open up in the room. I just want to come up one at a time. Please introduce yourself and then again I will not time it but if it if you could try to keep it to a minute that would be great. I will say if someone goes on and on and on I may try to encourage them to wind up at some point. But I'm not going to I'm not going to time the comments because we do want to get as much as much of what you have to say in the record and before us as possible. So whoever wants to go first please do and we'll just wait until the room is exhausted. And if people online could just hit the raise hand function so we can get a sense of who wants to say something online. Please do that either now or when you feel inspired. Yes. My name is Hannah Bryant. I am the parent of a third grader here at RVS and a fifth grader at MS MS. I sadly recognize that the demographic and budget trends make closing Roxbury Village school feel inevitable. However, the push to close the school at the end of this school year only three months away is short-sighted and rushed. Proceeding without a thoughtful plan in place without solid budget numbers and without sufficient time for families and long-term costs, learning loss and further enrollment declines. The district owes its teachers, the voters and Roxbury families a longer runway leading to this major change. Voters deserve to understand both the cost savings and the new expenses associated with closing the school and adding its children into UES. It's misleading for voters to assume that all costs associated with this school will be subtracted from the budget required to close the school year. It's not just a matter of time. It's also a matter of time to make sure that the opportunities are provided for all our kids. Roxbury families need time to plan for the school closure. Families here have built our lives around this school. It's on-site childcare and the network of neighbors we interact with every day at these front doors. Not all families here have the ability to quickly adapt to the closure of this school. Most importantly, our kids need time to plan for this transition. Many of these kids already had their early school years interrupted with COVID closures. They are catching up socially and academically, but another major disruption can derail this progress, particularly if a rushed school closure causes major stress in their homes and families. As parents and educators, we model empathy and equity as we guide our kids to be thoughtful in their actions and decisions. To consider the consequences before acting, we guide them to weigh pros and cons. We owe it to them to demonstrate the same careful judgment, consideration of consequences, and planning for such a major change that will dramatically impact their lives. We only get one chance to do the school closure and do it right. Please partner with us to keep working together as we work together to prepare for a graceful closure of the school and to welcome Roxbury's youngest children into UES. Thank you. This is Mike French. I attended this school when it was a two room school house. Back in the 80s, I think we had a population of 80 students that required expanding the school. We did a huge bond vote. The biggest expenses towns ever had to build this school to make sure that it was staff reductions are reversible. Mothballing a school is not what student enrollment figure makes a Roxbury school viable. This town paid dearly in the 80s to make the school happen. Sixty kids, 80 kids. What makes this building in this facility worth keeping versus not keeping one of the huge challenges we had in the past. We had one year a family of ten students move in. That was like a 20% increase. Then we had a foster family come in and increase the students there. So the two teachers we had and the two student teachers was the entire staff here. I now look and understand because of requirements we have other positions, admin positions, probably per regulations and there's like a dozen cars that are parked out here in the parking lot. But still somebody has hopefully done studies to say what's the population that makes a local small town school viable? I haven't I haven't I'm new to this and I haven't been following what's going on. But you know that seems like a question that needs to be answered. When the town was smaller, we had a dozen small schools and that was managed by one part of the school or adding another school building. I'm talking a hundred years ago. What is the net per student tuition savings that we will see by closing the school across the entire population? I expect it's negligible on a per student population basis. Do we lose our town school to save something like $100 per student in Roxbury? This is the heart of the town. I'm on the planning commission. We're trying to revitalize the town. We're trying to bring businesses. We're trying to bring families. We're trying to increase the tax base of the town by having people move here. Who wants to move to a town without a school? Who wants to transport their students 90 minutes or however long it takes? Because I remember being on the Roxbury school bus for 90 minutes a year. I remember a bus heading to the east Roxbury. You got back roads, go to East Roxbury, go to Northfield and if you're in the vocational program you got a bus down a Randolph, then back to Northfield, then back on a bus. It's like too big a chunk of changes spent just riding the bus which wasn't always the best experience. Again, who wants to move to that they're going to be able to participate in any of the activities that they have to go to Montpelier basically Roxbury students will be disenfranchised because they won't be able to partake as easily as folks in Northfield. So I've listed a few questions you can replay the tape. If anyone has insight now I'd like to hear what do we save by mothballing this building. I'm not even sure this town would know what to do with this building or what it would do to our tax base to have to maintain this building because if you close this school you're shifting the burden of maintaining this school and this physical building from the school budget back on to the taxpayers in an ever shrinking tax base because nobody's going to want to move here we're trying to grow the town most towns are trying to grow or not lose. We have the same number of roads to maintain as the town in Northfield. We have the same physical square mileage square footage square acres that all has to come out of a tax base. And if we don't get folks moving into town then we're going to have less roads to even keep our or less money even keep our roads open to say nothing about paying tuition to some other school which is probably not going to go down. I project that if we look at the tuition basis tuition dollars from Roxbury over the next ten years what are we going to see for savings per student basis? I think that's about mostly what I needed to say. But again I'm coming to this late and I haven't been following things but just some basic questions. I'm not a big fan of consolidation emerges. I've seen it in corporate world and what you get is higher paid CEOs and folks wanting to build big buildings with glass fronts and put them pat themselves on the shoulder and get bigger salaries because they're managing more people. I don't see lower budgets when things get bigger. I don't see those savings realized. I'm not sure if any of the other towns that have been shut down like Rochester if they have seen a savings. My guess is their tuition has got done nothing but keep going up. So I yield more. Thank you. One short statement and I also have a question. Is there a microphone? If you sit at the table there it doesn't work. It just is for that. Okay. Here's my voice. Okay. I don't mean to compare the proposed dissolution of the school with the banning of books which is becoming more prevalent among some red states but I do think they have one thing in common and that's the blocking of vital educational pathways for vulnerable children and it makes me sad. Brian Zajek to see everybody tonight. So I just want to start off by saying I'm sure you've heard a couple already tonight. You probably hear some more behind me as well. Over the last few months you probably heard a lot of impassioned speeches and pleased to don't do this, don't do that. I just want to acknowledge the Montpelier community. Roxbury's rabid support for this elementary school has nothing to do with the fact that we're dismissing the taxes like you got hit with this year. Like I said, we understand that. We've had our fair share of very high tax rates for many years as well and this push is by no means an ask for the Montpelier community to carry Roxbury's burden. We pay our taxes the same. We make the same decisions. We're all here in the same boat together in terms of content. What I would like to share over the years I could tell you this way that way how this school our merger has cost Montpelier community nothing but I can also say that in the world of act one twenty seven the numbers have changed a lot. You know with the skills the school necessarily cost the community anything. No, but it is an expensive school. We cannot deny that. I would argue the board the administration would largely be negligent not to consider big decisions like you are faced with. But I can say we've known about act one twenty seven for a long time. You know this board our school district has done a really good job of engaging the community working very thoughtfully and very methodically about doing things right. The way everything is unfolding right now with the potential Roxbury Village school closure has not been methodical has not been thoughtful has not been planned out well. I'll beg you to really give this effort and the time that it needs to do it well to do it right. There's a lot of assets. There are a lot of opportunities in front of us to go forward well. But I can honestly say like we are not heading that path right now. We need time and we need some really thoughtful joint discussions to be able to really move it forward in a way that's going to be good for everybody. So I just ask you to follow the path that you've gone on before the district making really good decisions with lots of really good input from all the stakeholders. So I hope that the budget discussions and the big decisions we will be faced with go that direction. As always thank you all for your service. So you guys should know so it's Jacqueline Frazier. We've spoken briefly before and I'm sure you'll hear from my illustrious father later. I was the first kindergartener class in this school and I also was part of this particular room when it was K through three I want to talk about the school. So I'm going to talk about the school. I'm going to talk about the school on this side and four through six on this side. So we had the whole school in this one room at this point. My parents own a greenhouse business across the street. I live up the street. I've got two kids in the school and a parent's business. We even get our water from the school. So to be honest like there's no more ways we could be tied to the school. We all see in inevitably the writing on the wall. Nobody's really looking at this as being a potential existing school for the next 10 years. I think there's a lot of reality being passed around between us and amongst us. And by the way, you should know that we've all organized before coming here in a way that we can speak educatedly to this subject so that we don't just go on various diatribes. The ask is that it's done in a way that's really executed clearly so that we don't have a lot of uncertainty. For example, when I relocated to Vermont, I did not plan to live in Roxbury. I mean, I can avidly say I was not keen to live here. I was focused on Montpelier and I was not able to find a home. I landed in Roxbury. Sidebar, Kristen Gettler can speak to the fact I did not give her my number. I did not want to be in this town. She asked me for my number and I was like, you know, no, I'm not going to be here long. Well, I am here and I've landed here and I've been very, very, very shocked at how wonderful it is. What we're looking at in the future and here's the ask is give us the year, right? And if you can't get your constituents to agree to a year, then we want to utilize this building in either school care for the students coming back from RVS, I mean from MRPS or for summer programs. We want to find a way for this school to remain within the Montpelier district for the next year because the town is not ready to decide what's going to happen to the building. We want a thoughtful process as to what we can do with this building moving forward, pending a year extension. We all know that a 24% increase is hard to swallow. I have former Roxbury graduates in Montpelier who cannot afford that increase. And we also know 30% of them failed, right? So it has nothing to do with the school board. It's everything to do with the legislature. That doesn't mean that we don't have a way to present this to the community. I think the Montpelier community could absorb a 16% increase, maybe not 10. Either way, we're going to defer to your decision making process on this. I do feel we're lucky to have the Montpelier board here versus the Barry board or some of the other boards that are really dysfunctional across the state. At least we're not, you know, doing point of orders every two seconds. So I really am going to trust that you guys have our best interests here. But the ask is to think about this building. Think about how we can keep our kids together. And the last thing I'm going to mention is busing, which I know that nobody wants to talk about. It matters. It matters a lot because the busing is a fucking problem. I mean, I don't know how I was to put it. I mean, that's on camera. It's a problem. So we've got 45 minute late buses for kids waiting out at 6 o' 5 in the morning to go on an hour and a half bus ride. It needs to be fixed. Yeah. So thanks for my time. I'll yield. Thank you. You're all good. Yeah, no be a second comment period, so. Hey guys. Nicholas Kofsky. I am the father of third grader and also the president of Rocksbury Community Trust, which is the neighboring church slash wood shop. Um, I don't think I have too much more to say other than we just need the timeline to make sure that this is not going to be going to be a gaping hole of a building in the community. We had a group of folks recently come together to purchase the church as a way to save it, to help our downtown improve what this place looks like and how it's going to grow into the future. A big part of that is the school being what it is right now, particularly with the activity that it has here. And to think about this place being really quiet is tough, it's a really tough pill to swallow. And so yeah, I just want to say that we have a lot of people here that are invested in making this downtown a vibrant place. And we just need more time to think about how this decision is going to evolve for the next two, three, 10 years. So that's it. Thank you. Hi there. My name's Christine Dorman. I have two children in the Roxbury School, and I'm not the best at public speaking. I'm a little nervous. My son Amos is six years old. He has non-verbal autism. And I understand that this will have to close. I get that. But he needs so much progress here, having such a small school and having just like the whole community cares about him and looks out for him. And I just worry about having such a drastic change so quickly for him, and it's very selfish, I know. But he's made so much progress. And I just really hope that you could give us another year just to ease him into it and ease all these kids who love being with each other. And that's the best part is that they're just such a tight-knit group of kids together. And I know they'll thrive and do wonderful at Montpelier. And it's a beautiful school there. And I have two or there looked at it and seen it. And I think it has such great opportunities for these kids too. But I just hope we really do consider why we all moved here. A lot of us chose to come here for the small school for the rural part of Vermont. And if we could just keep that in consideration and how we move forward. Thank you. This is the room. Online, we've got at least one person. Chad? Hello. Yep, we can hear you. OK, great. Hold on one second. Getting an echo. Thank you all. I first want to start off by saying thank you for all the work that you all have done. It's a tremendous amount of effort went into building that budget. And I just want to commend you all for the thoughtful, meticulous work that you've done. I think the second thing I wanted to just say is similar. I'm going to actually echo a lot of what's been said already. So I guess a couple of questions just asking about if work has been done in context of all the work that you've already done to think about the impact of any cuts 10 years down the road. And are we actually going to see savings in a dollar figure amount? Our family, we just bought a house here in Montpelier. We've been here for almost five years. We can't really afford this house anymore. But I voted for the budget. And I did so because I think this, I believe in the work that you all did and are doing. And I also think that this is an equitable budget. I think it really puts the needs of learners and families who need the most amount of support and educational and academic support first. And I've actually been really moved by the comments made so far. So I hope we are considering that. And my question is, in particular for folks who are on the equity committee, if there's been conversations around the equitable impact or the negative impact on families and learners and what that might look like in years 2, 3, 4, and so on. I guess my last point is more of a comment. And I made this comment when we were talking about our facilities in Montpelier and thinking about the things that we need to consider in our climate realities. And thinking about the fact that this just isn't Act 127. It's not about the impact of property taxes. And I hope we can find ways as a district, as a state, to communicate on more of a national level. And I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek here, but we do have the most popular governor in the state, or I'm sorry, in the country, who happens to have an R next to his name, like most governors in the country. And I'm wondering if we can focus our energy and our advocacy towards national conversations around investing in our education systems that are required. We need to have a national conversation. And it's unfair for states like Vermont to carry the burden of the educational expenses that are required. So again, I thank you all. I hope that we'll have some answers to the impact of these cuts on out years. And thank you again. Shea, we have Cheryl. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Hi, I'm a Montpelier resident. I'm also a teacher at Calis Elementary. And my son has been in school in Montpelier since kindergarten and he's now in 10th grade. And I have to say, listening to the Roxbury people speak, and we had moved here from Craftsbury. So I know what it's like to live in a small town. And I know how important that small school is to everybody and they have a lot of good points. It's a vital part of their community and they are trying to build so that people will move there. And the New York Times and many other newspapers around our country are actually reporting that Vermont will be one of the number one places to move to because of global climate change. So we have to start thinking more forward. We need to start building more houses so people can move here because people want to move here. At my small school in Calis, we already have probably like 10 or 12 kids who have moved here in the last few years from California, from the West Coast, from other parts of our country. It is happening and we need to start thinking ahead. And I know that the tax burden is huge, but I just think if we don't start being more forward thinking, it's going to hurt us in the long run. And people want to move here. We've got to think of another way to do this. And the voter turnout was very low. And so I don't feel like all of our voices were heard at this last vote. And I totally agree with the Roxbury people when they say we need to wait. We cannot rush this kind of decision. This is way too painful for that community and those children. And this is not how Montpelier rolls. We are not these people that will rush to a decision that will hurt so many others. This is why I live here. This is a really kind, compassionate community. So please, I really urge us to come to another way and to also work together as the last speaker was saying to find another way to help fund education because we can't just put it all on our property taxes. There's other ways and we need to make that change now too. And it's gonna be hard for us for a few years, but it's gonna be really unfair to this small community. So please, please, please think with your hearts and not with your wallet. Thank you. The very thoughtful words. As Christine is getting set up, I'm sure the board and everybody in the room and on Zoom can understand how hard this has been on our team of the last couple of days weighing decisions. And so the way that I've set this up is to give just a little background in context some information for the board to consider. We have not put, just for the board's understanding, we've not put more fund balance than what was presented last time to you in these scenarios because we don't have the authorization really to do that. That's the board's needs to give us that authorization. So without that, that's not in here. That's not to say the board can't. I'm gonna give you information about the fund balance so the board can decide and have that discussion. But just know that I wouldn't do that without board authorization first, does that make sense? Okay, so Vanna. Otherwise known as Christina, our wonderful business manager back from Florida where she relaxed for a week. Go ahead. So you guys introduce yourself with the, maybe I'm the only, maybe I'm the only one. They're on the microphone. There's no microphone. There's no microphone. We can definitely do quick introductions. I will start. I'm Jim Murphy, I'm the board chair. I'm a mob pillar representative and I want to go Kristin, Rhett and then Skip to let me go down. Kristin Gettler, I'm a Roxbury resident. I am the newly minted secretary of the board and I serve on the equity committee as well as the facilities and energy committee. And I've got a third grader here at RBS. I'm Rhett Williams, I'm part of the board on a bunch of committees. Some of them not fully formed yet including the future of RBS committee which will be important no matter which way these things go. My name's Rhett Williams. I'm from Roxbury. I'm on a lot of different committees including the future of RBS committee which is going to be important no matter what happens here. And I have two kids in the second grade. Yeah, no, and I will add, I have three kids, one at MSMS, two at the high school. He's Jim. I'm Libby, I'm Libby Bonestown, the superintendent of schools. I'm Jill Remick. I'm one of the Montpelier representatives and I have a kiddo at the high school. Scott Lewins, I am a board member and I've got a kid at UES and a kid at MSMS. Hi everyone, I'm Mia Moore. I am a Montpelier representative. I also am not very good at public speaking. I have three kids. That was the part that was hard to get out, Morgan. I have three kids, one at MSMS and two at UES. Jake Feldman, Montpelier school board. I have one kid at Union Elementary. I'm Maryam Sirida-Winston. I'm a student representative and I go to Montpelier High. I'm Laura Cohn. I'm a senior at Montpelier High School student rep. I have zero kids in either schools. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. I'm Lynn Turcotte. I'm a Montpelier representative and I have a couple of grandkids in the high school in Montpelier. I'm Tim Duggan. I'm a representative from Montpelier. I have one child at MSMS and one at UES. Okay, so we have some revised budget scenarios for the board to consider today. And that is Christina, our amazing business manager. Yes. So we're assuming in these tax rate increases, a $10,000 dollar yield, which is a part of the Education Fund formula. Right now, my man Jake says that the dollar yield is $9,785 with all the school budgets that went down. We anticipate the dollar yield going up, but there's no way in this budget climate for us to really anticipate just how far it will go up. Jake works in the Joint Fiscal Office. That's why I rely on him for this. And they calculate that number. It's eventually voted by the legislature at the end of the legislative session, not until May. So we won't know that figure for quite a long time. The dollar yield though, for those who haven't followed these budget conversations has a tremendous impact on what the ultimate tax rate is. So the most basic way to think about it is if the dollar yield goes up, our tax rates go down. If the dollar yield goes down, our tax rates go up. So we all want the dollar yield to go up. So if anybody is inclined to write to our legislatures, that is a good line to use, get more revenue into the Ed Fund to make the dollar yield go up. That is good language to use. Because that is helpful to all of our tax rates across the state. Our FY24 general budget, which is the budget we are currently acting in, this is just information for the board as a reference point, was 28,608,500 dollars. The failed FY25 proposed general budget that just went down was proposed to be 32,046,114 dollars. From that number, from that 32 million number, in order to get a 1% decrease in our tax rate, that means we have to decrease the failed budget by 206,500 dollars. So for every 206,500 dollars we can find to decrease our budget, that decreases the tax rate, 1%. So a 10% increase from the FY24 general budget, that $28 million number, we need to decrease from our failed budget by 2,263,114 dollars. And so the board at the last meeting last Wednesday gave me the range from 10 to 14% tax increase from the FY24 budget. So you can see the numbers that are associated with each one of those, that's what that means. So for a 14% increase from our fiscal year 24 general budget, we need to decrease the failed budget by 1,437,000 dollars, essentially. I will tell everybody, if this is just pointing to the obvious, these are hard numbers to get to. This is a, I've never had to cut budgets in this way. I don't know many people who have. This is not easy to come by, these types of numbers. So Christina, you can keep going. This is just a refresher. Sorry, I'm trying to speak really loud so if my voice cracks, that's why. I haven't used my teacher voice in quite a long time. Just a refresher, this was in one of the first budget presentations for the board. You've seen this chart before. It's based on the 32 million number that failed. But these categories and percentages really don't change a whole lot from year to year. So it's just an idea of where, what categories do we actually spend on inside of our budget? And then we're gonna take a deeper look, a deeper dive into the salaries and benefits part of this pie chart, which I know those, well actually it's pretty big on the board there. The salaries and benefits is 75% of our budget. So we're gonna dig into that a little bit. The reason being is because I gave a survey to our staff around this. We've gotten tremendous amount of input from community members. And one theme that we hear is cut administration, cut central office staff, cut these positions. And I think it's really important to note how those salaries and benefits sugar out. So our instructional assistants are 10% of that final number. Our teachers are about 70%. Our central office non-licensed staff, so like our payroll clerk person who pays our employees. And people like that are 2.6% of that salaries and benefit. Our central office non-licensed administrators, people like our community liaison and our athletic director are 2% of the salaries and benefit part of the pie. Our central office licensed administrator like me and our director of curriculum are 3.3% of that salaries and benefits pie. The green is technology, it's pretty small. It's about 1% of that pie. Our custodial crew are 4.4% of the pie. The principals and assistant principals are about 5% of that pie. And our administrative assistants are 2%. All this goes to say is that most of our salary as it should be is in the people who directly impact our students. That's the way it should be. And we are not top heavy in other types of positions as evidenced by this break up here. So, keep going Christina. I just wanna acknowledge, I know Mike has a question and just sort of, but Mike I just wanna say, clarify that we do a presentation, we don't take questions from the audience at this point in time, but you will have a chance in public comment to come forward with your questions. Thank you for being engaged. Take them down. Okay, so I really would like the board to understand the fund balance use that we've had over time and give careful consideration of the fund balance use to bring down tax rates. Because if you're influxing our budget, I don't know if influxing is an actual word, but if you're inputting a lot of money from the fund balance into this year's budget or any year's budget, you gotta make that up somewhere, right? The next year's budget either needs a similar amount or needs some sort of cut to have, right? It influences and it has an impact in future years. Can I just add? Yeah. Just to clarify, it's, the fund balance is basically left over money that we did not spend in previous years. So we cannot count on that. So when we spend from the fund balance, it is not a ongoing revenue source like taxes or federal grants. So if we put $500,000 of the fund balance in for the budget year, we cannot necessarily count on that $500,000 being there next year. So if that's supporting, say, four positions, we likely have to find another revenue source for those four positions the next year, which is either cuts elsewhere or taxes is generally our choice on that. Yeah. So just for a little history of how we've used the fund balance, just because I know we've got some new members on our board who's asking some questions about our fund balance and just as a refresher, because I don't believe this was a part of any of our other budget conversations. It's gonna be a little fresh. So in FY21, that was the school year that was drastically different. We were potted or virtual school. It wasn't the first year COVID where there was a complete shutdown. It was the year after that. We put, or budgeted $240,000 that year in fiscal year 21 to from the fund balance to bring down our tax rates. It was meant to offset the merger incentive because when the two communities merge, people will remember, Jim will probably remember the exact percentage, but in year one, we got like an eight cent discount, year two, we got a six cent discount. So when you get a discount in a cent discount like that, it's like a two cent increase, right, every year. So that $240,000 was meant to counteract that cent discount that we got. It wasn't used. So we went through the school year and because we were in this very unique situation, we didn't run a deficit. We ran a surplus that year. So we ended up actually adding to our fund balance in FY21. We added $807,697. So we've added to the fund balance. We didn't touch that $240,000. It stayed in our fund balance and we added to it. FY22, the board decided to dedicate $400,000 from the fund balance in the budgeting process. Again, once we got through fiscal year 22, that wasn't used. So we budgeted, things happened. We did not have the exact budget needs that we thought we were going to. So we ran a surplus and we had $111,000 added to our fund balance that year. Last year in FY23, again for the fiscal year 23 budget, the board dedicated $400,000 to it. We used $217,000 of that budgeted amount and the rest went back into the fund balance. FY24, we won't know exactly how much we need until the end of the school year. So that's the fiscal year we're currently operating in. So we're not sure, but the board did encumber $400,000 from the fund balance. And the board has encumbered $475,000 of the fund balance for the budget we are trying to pass now. That is what's happened so far for what the board has decided around fund balance allocation for this year's budget. In future years, for board members who have been around for a while, especially those in the finance committee, since FY21, the board has encumbered the $400,000 of the fund balance towards next year's budget for each year, for several years since FY21, you knew that was going to be put towards budgets, right? As of this year, this year's the last year the board has encumbered any money, has planned to encumber any money from the fund balance. So that's not saying the board can't do that for future years. What I'm saying is you haven't yet, okay? So it's just information for the board to know. The current status of the fund balance as of June 30th, 2023, we just finally got the final audit like yesterday. So this is a pretty good number. We have 3,677,000 in there. Of course, you've encumbered 400,000. We don't know if that's going to be used or not yet because we won't know until the end of this year. You've encumbered 475,000 so far for FY25 for next year's budget. You've encumbered $400,000 to make our track safe at the high school. You've encumbered $50,000 for a net zero study. We've already almost completed the facilities report at the cost of $62,000. The equity audit is almost finished at the cost of $35,000. So that's money that's already been spent. And based on your policy, the board needs to reserve 2% of the operating budget cost, which is $577,000 in your fund balance because it's a rainy day fund. You don't want to spend all those funds. So the balance that's available to the board to consider knowing all we know about use of one-time funding is $1,677,000, okay? So here are some options. The way that Christina and I and the team went about doing this is that we put them, I didn't think it was fair or possible to do this without showing each tax decrease in two different options. One with Roxbury remaining as it is now, functioning as it does now as a current school, and one as busing Roxbury students to Montpelier. Okay, so the board has all the information in front of you on one page of what things would be. The leadership team and Christina and I met today. We made some last minute changes based on what principals really wanted this afternoon. We've thought long and hard about these in the last, I don't know since last Wednesday, it's pretty much all I've really done is as Mia and Jim can attest to me texting them at nine o'clock on Friday and Saturday night, which I'm sure they appreciated. So it's gotten a lot of thought is what I wanna say, and none of this is easy. It's not easy for the team, it's not easy for me, it's not easy for the board certainly. We are in a really tough jam right now. So here are some options. The boundaries that I use for determining reductions to our budget, right now there is no denying whatsoever that we are showing significant gains in our academic and SEL, social-emotional learning outcomes because of our current system and how we're running it. We've made significant, we've put significant human resources into both those systems in the last four or so years and it's working. We have the data to prove it's working, we have teachers who prove it's working, we're doing a lot of really good things with our systems. So one of my boundaries was to ensure the systems can run effectively by maintaining our human resources that are imperative to those systems. So if you see human resource cuts up there, then know that we have thought long and hard about that and that we are saying with those cuts we can maintain the systems that we're running to an extent. We wanna ensure that all MRRPS students have access to outstanding educational opportunities. And we also wanna maintain as much of our current programming for students as possible. So option A is a 14% increase to our FY24 tax rate. This is again assuming a $10,000 dollar yield which is not there yet, but we think it will be around there. A 14% increase means the tax rate in Montpelier would be $1.26, which is technically a 13.95% increase and Roxbury the tax rate would be $1.35 it's approximately a 4% tax increase here in Roxbury. So option one in this scenario would be a general budget of $30,599,000. With option one we would cut $947,000 from the budget and we would add an additional $500,000 to the already $475,000 from our fund balance. So that would be $975,000 from our fund balance alone in this option. And we would be decreasing our budget by $1,447,000. We would do that by cutting facilities by $160,000 that essentially is bringing our facilities budget to safety and safety alone. Everything else would be cut out of our facilities budget. Our school building budgets which our principals are in charge of would be cut by $40,000, not individually but collectively across the four buildings. We have a $30,000 athletic equipment ask in the former budget that would be taken out. Administrative technology which is essentially a lot of communication kind of pieces. We'd cut that by $18,000. We'd cut the Roxbury late bus which is around $20,000. We would eliminate afternoon busing at Main Street Middle School, Union Elementary School and Roxbury Village School to save $215,000. We would eliminate the return bus for co-curricular events. So we would, as an example, we would get our athletes to a sporting event and caregivers or would have to carpool home from that event. We would eliminate 1.5 FTE, so it's full-time equivalent from our Maressa Union which is our instructional assistants to save $84,000. We would eliminate three FTE from the teachers association which would equal approximately $300,000 and we would eliminate one permanent sub in the district. We currently have three at $71,000. That's option one in order to achieve a 14% increase from last year's tax rate in Montpelier. Just a clarification and maybe a reminder it would be the school building budgets that 40,000 is on top of, all of these are on top of cuts we've already applied but just because that one showed up there as well we already have. So that would be a 70,000. In addition to, so it brings it to 70,000 total from school, okay, thank you. Can you clarify on the bus, PM bus? Yeah, so we would get kids to school on the AM busing and we wouldn't run a PM busing route for those three buildings. And there is no busing at the high school already, just so everybody knew it. And maybe just for the application of the Public Chew Vermont law is that schools don't have to provide busing, which is mind-bending however, just so you know. Did I hear a voice over here too? Sorry. Yeah, the fund balance amount, the 500,000 is on top of the 475, was that? Yes. And last week we were looking at like 575. 25, yeah. How are you deciding what's the right amount of fund balance? What Christina and I are comfortable with in light of statutes or other things that are coming down the pike. But the board can decide that, that's not our decision to make, that is what we are recommending. So what would the total fund balance total be? 975,000. So just under a million? Yeah. So I just brought us back to this slide. So you have 1.6 million to work with. So this would be reducing this by another 500,000, right? To get us to about 600,000 total left over? No. 1.2. No, 1.1, 1.1. Okay, okay, okay. Keeping in mind that if you keep adding fund balance money, you need to make that up in the next school budgets. It's one time funding. And Libby, I really appreciate this level of detail, like really, really appreciate this level of detail. For our understanding for the conversation tonight, I'm operating with like fund balance, that's a thing that the board can play with, but we're probably not in a position to tell you, well, really could it be 180 from facilities? Like we should just, okay. We have gone through this with a fine-cheek comb. Yeah, I believe it. Option two would be saving around the same amount of money. We would bust students to attend, who currently attend RVS to UES, and the savings are broken out there. That is primarily staffing here at RVS and pieces at RVS, or other pieces that are contributing to the cost at RVS. So these are not as an and, presented as an and, these are oars. The two options. Am I correct that most of those cuts in positions, you were saying that a lot of those employees could be absorbed by open positions at Union Elementary? For Roxbury? Yeah. Yes. We would repeat the questions over here. So we talked at the last Wednesday's board meeting around the understanding that our teachers and our instructional assistants for that matter and our administrative assistants and tech and custodial staff are all under a union contract, which is run by seniority. So, and the way our union contract works, that if there is a position that is ripped that can be achieved through resignation or retirement, then that is what achieves the riff. So, we have right now four resignations, two retirements, two resignations at Union Elementary School and our K-6 licensure area, which is what the classroom teachers here at Roxbury, obviously they are K-6 licensed teachers, they would slide into those positions. The part-time staff here, we would not have positions for them open currently. That would be a riff. But we did include the four positions you just mentioned at UES, does that include the cut we made in the original version of the budget? We did. No, we have five. You're right. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You're right. Okay. Thanks. Libby, why is there a bus savings on option two? Because Roxbury, we have a bus that runs from Montpelier to Roxbury, and we also have a bus that runs in Roxbury for just the village school. One that is just in Roxbury would not. Right. So, it would like. So, there'd still be a bus back and forth? Yeah. And would there still be a late bus? Yeah. Option B. And we're gonna go one by one here through till 10%. But I'm just gonna say what we've added to the cuts, which are bolded. So, option B would be a 13% increase to the Montpelier tax rate. It would be a 2.66% increase to the Roxbury tax rate. We would cut all of the things from the last slide. But this one, because we have to increase the number cut, we would eliminate all busing for Main Street Middle School Union and Roxbury to say $450,000. Everything else on that list is the same. Option two, we would bust RVS students to Union Elementary School. In addition to that, we would cut two more MREA, which are teachers, so that would equal 196. You see the 8.9 FTE total because that's the Roxbury teachers, FTEs plus the two additional ones. We'd still cut the administrative technology and the athletic equipment to get to that number. To get to a 12% increase, which would be a dollar, or I'm sorry, 1.78% increase here in Roxbury. In addition to everything you've already seen, from the 13% increase, we would cut four FTE from our teaching staff. We would cut one enrichment teacher or one enrichment employee and we would cut our clubs by $15,000. And option two, we would bust students from RVS to Union. We have the two MREA rifts, more MREA rifts. We would include 1.5 FTE from our instructional assistant staff. We would include one permanent sub in option two and we would add a $50,000 cut to our facilities budget. It's a person who works a lot with after-school activities and supports for students. Different position. Keep going, Christina. Oh, you're there. All right, 11% increase to the Montpelier tax rate, a 0.93% increase to the Roxbury tax rate. We would increase the number of rifts in our teaching staff to six in our clubs. We would cut the club allotment to 35,000. Everything else is the same. On option two, we would have a $20,000 cut in the facilities budget and we would cut three permanent subs in the Montpelier schools to save $212,000. And just to be clear, bolded items were added from the previous slide. Yes, the bolded average are changes from the previous slide. And then finally, the hardest to achieve here is a 10% increase to our fiscal year 24 tax rate. So it would be a 0.05% increase here in Roxbury. We would eliminate, to option one, we would have everything that was in there before and we would eliminate the three permanent subs in option one there. And option two, we would increase the MREA rifts, just one teacher, and we would cut our facilities budget $130,000. In that option. So, let me really quickly. You had mentioned in our last board meeting that the paradox of our capital fund budget passing and our general fund budget not passing. And I had emailed you about like, what sort of flexibility do we have in shifting things out of our general budget and into that capital fund budget? Presumably, and the example I gave in my message to you was anything related to the track is facilities, is that not capital fund? And could we shift those to that budget and not have that come from our fund balance? The answer to that I believe is yes, because there isn't a capital fund police that's gonna come see what we use that money for as long as it's for facilities. The purpose of a capital plan is for big time things. So one of the challenges that we have with that, and we didn't put the number for how much is in the capital fund currently, but we have a roof that needs replacing over the cafeteria at Montpelier High School, which needs the capital fund to do that. So it started leaking this past year and we need to replace it with the capital fund. I don't know how much will be left after that. We also have been planning for window replacement for quite a while at Union and Main Street and Main Street. There are rooms in the second floor of Main Street Middle School that probably reach 95 degrees in the warmer months and the teachers cannot open the windows on their own. They have to call a custodian who has to use a special tool to open those windows. And then likewise in the winter, there are breezes that come through. So we have some major window needs as well. So there are major needs. So yes, the board can decide to do that. And that is well within the purview of the board. I'll just say that I would not be doing Andrew, who's our facilities manager, any justice if I did not say that the roof comes first. Isn't it also paying back a bond? Not the capital plan. That's baked into our budget. We can't not do that 270, I think, right? Well, we add 270 each year, but I'd have to go back and look at exactly how much is in it. I think there's about 500,000 in it. I can probably find it. That's just the price of the garage. Yeah, from previous budget, I think. So I was asked to put some options here. Somebody on the board asked if we were to provide an after-school, if we were to bus students to Union Elementary School and provide an after-school option here at RVS. So we would bus students back here for after-school. We can certainly do that. That's not a problem at all. The cost of that would be around $150,000. We know that because we just got a last, the after-school program currently is running on a grant. That is $150,000. So the cost of the after-school program is about $150,000. We did apply for the same state grant for next year for this amount of money. Like I said, the current after-school program here is operating using that state money and we have applied for it. So I'm not sure if we'll get it or not. I'm not even sure when we find out. We have transportation. There currently is a bus that runs after school with Montpelier High School and Main Street Middle School students to Roxbury. So we have that bus already. That's not an additional cost. Students can be dropped off right at RVS. No cost there. The partial use of the building is approximately just slightly less than $60,000 for partial usage in that term. The challenge with this scenario is staffing. Currently, our program has a site director whose working hours are nine to five-ish. That person could work at UES with adjusted hours and drive time and mileage included in the contract to maintain the position. However, the other staff, our current teachers at RVS who would be working at Union Elementary School and the likelihood that they would drive to Roxbury for two hours employment and then drive to wherever they are living may not be very likely. And so we would most likely need community members to staff the program or find some other staffing configuration for the program. For a two-hour shift a day from about, probably be about $3.30 to $5.30, that's a tough shift to fill. The cost without the grant, families would have to pay for the service or the program would have to be paid for out of the fund balance. So I was just asked for that scenario and the cost associated with it. The cost of the afterschool program, would the grant, if it comes through, cover the whole thing? It would be for, I believe we asked for about $150,000. I'm looking at Tina and Shannon in the back there. Tina's not in her head at me. Thumbs up, yes. Presentation that we have and I'd open it up for board discussion. I found the answer to Tim's question, according to the budget presentation from January 3rd, with the contribution that's going in for FY25, the 270 that was a thousand that was approved by voters, there is, and if we spend the money that we plan to spend in FY25, there would be $121,467 left in the capital plan, but there's also a lot of numbers that go into that, so you can find it in the slideshow from the budget presentation on January 3rd, so you can look more in depth at that. It's slide number 29. If we were to use the money in the capital plan for the track, how would that affect these numbers? What is? Well, according to what Mia just said, we would have probably about $100,000 to use. Does that, sorry, does that affect the tax rates? No. No. Oh, right, okay. So we go through the fund balance and slide again, and just, that was really quick, and I'm not sure I got it all of it in my head, and I'd like to better understand what is recognizing that there are certain things you said are already spent. Can you help me understand what's sort of out the door already and what's not? Sure. We don't know how much of, if I just go down the line there, Tim, we don't know. Sorry, for 24, I guess that's the projection. Yeah, we don't get it. But do you have two quarters in? No, fair enough, and same for 25, whatever it is, what it is, I guess it's the other things. So far for the MHS track, we've spent about $50,000 out of that $400,000. The net zero study has not been done, so that, I'm looking at Kristen. That's true. Yeah, okay. The net zero study has not been done, or even contracted out. Correct, yeah, right? So that money is encumbered, but it has not been used or claimed in any way. The facilities report is gone, the equity audit, like both facilities and equity have both happened, and so that money is not available, and then the $577,000 number is not available to you, because that's like the piggy bank. I'd say that's about $2.1 billion above what we've got reserved for fiscal 24 and fiscal 25 and our reserves. We've got about $2.1 million, if we choose to go in a different direction with what's available to us. Yes. Yeah, and just two points on that. One point before, it's a one-time revenue source, so that would be a whole, and the second is we do have potential significant expense. I said one, it's a one-time revenue source, so it would create a whole, and the second is, particularly our high school, was built at the time that PCBs were a pretty common feature in caulking in particular, and we are scheduled to have that tested, and we may have fairly significant remediation costs from that, that if we don't have the reserve for we would have to use taxes for it, or bond it, or what? There won't be any funds for the state unless they change their trajectory, right? No, and at the same time, their trajectory right now is to pause the PCB testing, so there's a plus and a minus there. So our plan is to be clear is to not do it if the state mandates no longer there. Right. So then we wouldn't have a cost. Right. And the state's stopping so that they can get funds to funds remediation if they pick it back up. The House Education Committee is working very hard to pause, maybe not use the word stop, but pause indefinitely the testing requirements until they can find a state source for payment, for mitigation and remediation. I don't know what the, like it's in House Ed right now is my understanding, it will need to go to Senate Ed, which may have a different mindset. I don't know. The PCBs, we don't know exactly what's at the high school but the other tests came in for the other schools and they were negative. Roxbury has not been tested and the high school have not been tested. Okay, and then the other two schools did not have. They had no PCBs. Yeah, and they were built, like U32 was tested and U32, which was built the same time it never shows, does have PCB presence, so they're gonna have to, I mean, it's not the situation that Burlington High School is in, which was, was, there were PCBs, horrible, there were PCBs looking at it. It was not a safe building to be in. And U32, yeah, you do not want PCBs in your building. They're a health hazard that caused cancer and other illnesses. U32's problem apparently is neither nearly as severe nor as hard to remedy as BH, as Burlington High School. And that is the situation most buildings are in. Burlington High School was unique in terms of needing literally to be torn to the ground and they're building another one for I think $60 million, which would not be a great situation to be in, but most of the other, yeah, it's not at a significant expense, but it's not that. Here. If we were to cut three permanent subs, Libby, how would that, I don't wanna ask for your too subjective opinion, but would that be viable? How would that look in the schools? So the reason we have permanent subs is because we know that we have to provide an environment for our teachers where they can teach well, right? And we had a subbing shortage. We don't have, I don't know why, but we don't have lots of people coming to be guest teachers in our school buildings. And so we started the permanent substitutes last school year and they provide relief and for our teaching staff, because if we don't have a substitute, then we have to move somebody, we have to shift things around. So we have to shift instructional assistants around, which means other services are not covered. We have to potentially shift teachers around, they have to cover. So it provides more stress on our teaching staff during the, it has the potential to provide more stress on our teaching staff during the day. This year is a rather unique year in that we've lost a few professionals mid-year and our permanent subs immediately stepped in to have a sense of normalcy for kids in those classrooms. We would not have had that freedom. We would have been cobbling things together for those positions if we had not had our permanent subs. So you'd see from the last presentation, last Wednesday, the permanent subs were in there because they didn't have enough time to really work through lots of options, but thinking about the stability that those positions provide in our buildings, they move down on the list, on the priority list for this presentation. As opposed to non-permanent. Yes, that's why the price tag is so big. Do not receive benefits, right? Yes, she asked about permanent subs receiving benefits. Oh, sorry, I'm speaking that way instead. So permanent subs receive benefits, non-permanent subs do not, which is why they're expensive. Again, they're expected to be there five days a week. And I know from having worked in schools that there are good subs and there are not so great subs and it makes a big difference in what happens in a classroom. But what I'm wondering is, would it be possible to pay part of insurance costs as opposed to the whole thing? Maybe that would be a way to keep them in there. I'm just throwing that out there. Yeah, legally, legally, if an employee works a certain amount of hours during the week on a regular basis, then we by law have to provide healthcare benefits. It's a statewide targeting insurance plan. Okay, thanks. I'll be as one of my coworkers says to skunk at the garden party. I'm not gonna second guess or question any of your options. I know how much time you guys have put in here. So I think the reality is, we have been given a very strong message. We are in a very difficult situation. There is not gonna be, as you said, there's not going to be an easy answer. And there are gonna be a lot of people who are upset no matter which options that we choose. And I do just wanna say for what it's worth for everyone who has been here tonight and I appreciate that very much. There are also a lot of, again, for better or worse, well, pillar residents who have been very clear that they will vote no again if we do not close Roxbury School this year or next year. There has definitely been a mandate from our voters. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, it's just the reality. I just want you folks to know that. I'm actually surprised there aren't more here. So we are being forced to do something. And as we've talked about a lot, a lot of these things are beyond our control. I'm really concerned about the busing. It doesn't sound like the busing is working great now. That's one of the biggest things I've heard. So I'm not sure we don't have a solution to that. But the idea of losing educators and losing buses and starting to sort of chip away every year at getting our students safely to school and having teachers, I don't know how, it's not like we have empty classrooms right now or we have teachers that we don't need in the classroom. So I'm not even sure what cutting teachers looks like either. So I think we're just backed into a corner here and I hope the popular voters will understand how challenging this is and understand that we are doing our due diligence to find something to do here. But I just wanted to make that, I just wanted to start the Skunk at the Garden Party conversation. It's heartbreaking and it's not easy. No matter what we do, we're permanently changing our district. Thank you for being the brave one to come forward and then shoot the discussion. Excuse me. I feel beholden to my community who came out in great numbers tonight and I appreciate all of you for entering the room and sharing what you did. And I know there's more out there in the audience that hasn't been shared yet. And I do wonder where my board members are at in terms of I get the school board emails and if I were to count the number of emails that we have received from Montpelier residents that are advocating very clearly for the closure of Roxbury Village School, I don't know where the ticker would be at at this point. And I wonder where my fellow board members are in kind of receiving that and integrating that into your decision-making now. I think clearly what you heard tonight was a very clear request to stay consistent with how this board rolls, to quote one of our public commenters, which is to do community engagement. And in fact, it's one of our top three priorities that we identified after pouring over that for hours and days and weeks, I would say. And we prioritize that for ourselves and for the community and to quickly and abruptly close the school. It's actually inconsistent with what we say our priorities are. I'm not, a 24% tax rate increase is horrific and very hard to bear. I just want to get these pieces out. I wanted to just go back to, and this preceded my time on the board, there where I believe two separate or maybe integrated efforts to look at alternative uses for RVS, where it could potentially be somewhat repurposed and kind of being an added enhancement to the wonderful offers that MRPS has to offer. It was looked at, could it be an immersion language school opportunity? Could it be almost like a magnet school for outdoor education? I think that might have been in the mix, but it just feels like that work was started, it wasn't finished, and it seems like we would be short changing the process to reimagine what this school could be as an asset to the district. So I just want to point us, that out for us, that resources were spent and looking at alternative uses and that work was not complete. So to that end, I kind of wonder, are we cutting off our nose despite our face? If we're trying to attract new students, again, that would all have to be fleshed out, how much of that is an actual reality? But I just want to point that out for folks because I think some folks are shocked like, how did we get here and get here so suddenly? And that's been really hard for folks to understand, but I do think there were conversations that happened at the board level. They weren't completed processes, and as you all know, we're kind of experiencing like a three-part meteor, there was COVID flooding fires. I can't remember what other biblical things have happened in the last three years, excuse me. But that process was initiated, however it was not completed. And so just to kind of echo the community in terms of their preference for a lengthened runway such that we can really do the due diligence, I know that this board is incredibly equity focused and we have not applied an equity lens to this. And I don't know where it would fall. I'm open to that. But without actually having a process, we cannot say one way or the other. So I also just would like to get at the, the question I think that is coming up for a lot of people is, what is the actual net savings of the closure of RVS? I also, and I'll be honest with you, I find it hard to believe that RVS would survive beyond next year. I understand the reality of the state of Vermont. Thank you, Jay Hooper for being here tonight, who's one of our house representatives. The state is in crisis, the house is on fire. I can't imagine this is the first drastic change that we're gonna see in the next short amount of time. And I think this board has a real responsibility to get engaged with advocacy sooner than later to be a part of that conversation. I lost my train of thought. Yeah, so thank you, length in the runway. So that we can have the fair discussion. I think something that I'm having a lot of concern about is no matter what happens here, our communities are in partnership, no matter where this goes. And I think, I speak for a lot of the Roxbury community and that like, we wanna preserve this partnership. And we want this, we wanna ensure that whatever we're doing can strengthen a foundation to then to also move forward from. So I also would just like to hear what other board members would think about. So if board members, and this is also a process question, does this board have to vote to close the school prior to forwarding a budget that effectively closes the school? Libby shaking her head now. Okay, thank you for clarifying. No, the board would be voting on a budget number. Yeah, yep. So the budget, so 30 million, if it were option A, for instance, the board and what goes on the warning that voters vote on is 30,599,114 dollars. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I guess I just wanna come back to and I wanna make sure that we have ears out to the Roxbury community in terms of the net savings, because I think if this community is gonna experience the loss of this school and the incredible pain and hurt, and I think harm is sometimes unknown because I don't think we have a crystal ball if the school closes, then what opportunity does it become? Undoubtedly, it needs a process and a lot of community input. But I also, if that is gonna be the reality here, I also would like for the board to consider ways in which we can shore up Roxbury and shore up this partnership and talk about the things like increased busing and after-school programming, not only for Roxbury and potentially at RBS, if that makes sense. And I'm interested to hear from the professionals in the room like Casey, like Shan, like Tina and what the sensibility would be in terms of, I hear kind of the logistical challenges of maintaining an after-school program here, but does it make sense to have that at UEA? So added after-school programming, also at the main street, middle school level. If we are to lose the school, I think about our families who have middle school students who are gonna get dropped off and elementary school students. And I think we had a resonance say last week, there's 10 miles of paved road in Roxbury, the bus never jumps off the paved road. So our kids are getting dropped off at street intersections, potentially one to two to three, four plus miles from their home. So I'm just thinking about how we can create more opportunities for after-school enrichment across our elementary and our middle school so we can make sure that our kids are safe. And I just think about the operation and maintenance of this building and if this board would be willing to support a budget that maintains the building for a year so that we could actually have a process. It could be the decision that Roxbury students attend UES and this board could continue a dialogue about what the use of this building is and to maintain it. I've spoken enough, I digress. I mean, I'll jump it. It's a very tough position to be in. And I'll just cut to the chase. My sense is that I think the Montpilier community would support some use of this building for a year to keep it as a community center and to have a longer-term discussion about its long-term use. I do not think the Montpilier community would support the existing use of the school in a budget, especially with some of the other cuts there. I think the Montpilier community is wants to keep relationships between town good and they want to take care of Roxbury to the extent they can. I think the choice of the price tag for its current operation, we've got a pretty clear message that that is too high and that the things I think that we'd have to give up to get down to 24% was, it was a ridiculous ask of our taxpayers given that we already have high taxes. It was a very hard thing for me to justify to my neighbors to ask them to pay that much for an increase when I know a lot of them, even people who appear to be doing well are having trouble meeting that. Just costs have gone up. It's very hard. There were a lot of very soft yeses with that number. I think that, and I think you'll put it out there, I think there's a portion of the town that sees this as fairly or not the largest expense that can be saved with the least educational impact. But I do think that there is room if the use of the building changes and it's very clear that it's going to be a year process to have something like to keep it open for after-school care, to have busing to do that, to have the committee really be focused on what does that after-school care look like? What does the busing look like? How do we take care of the kids who are gonna have that change and we have some time for that? I think Montpelier would be supportive of that and we could probably get a budget closer to the 14% number passed with that. I think the other options, I mean, it's all speculation and if it wasn't, if we had a crystal ball, we could solve this thing in five minutes, we don't. We wouldn't be here tonight. No. Hopefully only till late 30. Yes. Laughable. I think if we had something like that, we could get closer to 14%. I think if we start going into, I mean, I can just hear the screams if we take away UES busing, I mean, day or night. That's 60 kindergartners who, I mean, Montpelier is walkable for about 40% of it and you take it down to a five-year-old and it's walkable for maybe three blocks. So that's my sense. Hearing from people, getting the stuff we had, it's all guesswork. And someone said we had a low voter turnout. We actually had very high voter turnout. We had 700 people more in this vote in Montpelier than we did with our last vote. So it's not that people weren't engaged or people weren't watching. Crystal, one piece that I think I heard you say, and if you didn't say it, then just correct me, but the idea that if we were to bus students from here to Union, that it weren't being used as a day school, that in the district would still own it, obviously, until a decision is made. This, you've met Andrew, you've met Tom, he's here today, I need to bring him down here. This building would not be in district pair. And anyway, Andrew has gone through with Tom and Christina yesterday and today and made a chart of all the ways for operations and maintenance. It is currently, we are currently functioning at, looked at how they would do it if it weren't operating as a school building during the day and what they believe that would cost. It's all a hypothesis based on two days work, but they've done that work to ensure the paths are shoveled in the winter and the lawn is mowed and the building is cleaned and the bathrooms are always clean and the heat still remains on electricity. All of those things are being considered right now by our maintenance crew. So I don't want anybody to think this building would go into disrepair because it wouldn't. If it weren't used during the day and that's being thought of already. Thank you. Can I just, for any of you that aren't fully aware why we submitted a budget that had a 24% increase in the montpelier, it's because there was one version of a law that we made a great budget for and then the law changed at the very last minute and we had basically seven days to rewrite the budget and it didn't feel like there was enough time and this building has always been the elephant in the room. We have an equity committee, excuse me. We have an equity committee. We want equity in the district. It could never happen with this building in full operation because you can't have as many resources in this space as you can have at UES. Roxbury never wanted the same thing as what UES has but there's only one school board and we can only treat every kid the same. We can't do it different. Every kid should be treated as much the same as possible and we could never get it the same because you could never get the same resources in this building as that are at UES. So equity has been a lip service job by this board for years, in my opinion. If this building is no longer used for our elementary schools, we will really, there will be a lot of discussions about true equity. Real access to everything that the district has to offer. And that also means an alternative thinking about how we move our smallest kids all this distance. Not, you know, and I don't know what that means whether there's an extra bus stop at the village mobile and we have a contract with the village mobile so that the kids can sit at the table there and drink tea while they're waiting for the bus. I have no idea. But something because right now there's a bus that goes from Steel Hill up to the mobile and back to Roxbury. It picks up kids here. It picks up kids on the way and then it goes all the way to Main Street Middle School into the high school and it takes an hour and 20 minutes. We can't do that. And it's been harmful on so many levels but we've wanted to keep our school alive because it's the heart of this community. And it's, these are the binds that we've been in. You know, and Montpelier is getting mashed by this tax rate and we don't wanna, we want a good relationship. And I wanna say we deserve a year and of course we deserve a year but I don't think they're gonna pass a budget with our VS in it as it currently stands. What I do think is that if there's a use for the school and the afterschool program works out, that's fantastic. It's a great transition for our kids. I don't think the budget will pass if the building is in it the way it currently is. The afterschool program keeps some life in this building and in this space. It gives us a year to figure out how to transition what this building looks like and what it does for our community. It's a pretty good middle road. It's kind of a compromise. And I mean, we deserve a year but we're just not in a situation where we get what we deserve. You know, and that's just the way life is. I mean, unless the board keeps the school but it's gonna be hard to staff, there are a lot of things. There are a lot of things. There are a lot of things that are small things that can't even be spoken about on a public level that are also gonna complicate the possibility of the building functioning as it does now next year. It's just a really crappy situation. Surrounding the discussion of this discussion, I know there's a lot of uncertainty here and with the adults in the room but also with the students who go to this school. And I know that Montpillar High School is really good at community building and restorative circles and having discussions with students. So maybe that requires conversations with educators here but I would advocate for like, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, a conversation with educators and students together here at this school because I think just because they're at like an elementary level doesn't mean they don't have the capacity to hold meaningful conversations about their feelings and how they feel and it can also help with like eliminating the uncertainty that like kids feel for just like hearing secondhand news from their parents and the community. This is why we have student reps in the board. Acting to the message that we got on town meeting day. What strikes me is, you know, this board put forward a 24% tax increase in Montpillar was a 12th in Roxbury, somewhere around there. Something like that. 45% something around there voted for that in Montpillar and a past in Roxbury. So this was not a landslide election. Respectfully, I just take a different view of it, what the message we had on town meeting day and you know, in talking to folks after I've heard a lot of concern about panicking and making a decision in a couple of weeks that's irrevocable, particularly when there there may be an option through some more aggressive utilization of our fund balance, which is substantial and well north of our policy limits. And I don't think it can be done. I think Jim, to your point, whenever you're gonna use one-time funds, you're creating pressure in the year out. That's clear. And so we're there to be some discussion of busing children in RVS to UES instead. I would be much more in favor of having a year to do it in a bit more of a thoughtful way. It's struck me how many voices from this community I've heard say, you know, I haven't even said don't close. It's just give us the year. Like let's figure out how to do it rationally. And we have the money to do that if we think that or if we get to a collective view that it probably just is the year. That's a tough thing to do, but it would feel a lot better for me to know that we did this in a thoughtful way where we could hear voices and perhaps the conversation is a little less on whether to make the change, but it's how to do it most effectively with due consideration for all voices and with the equity principles that this board espouses at the fore. So I think that with effectively $2.1 million in the bank account kind of having either of these options seems to be a bit of an overreaction at an unduly fast pace. And I would be in support of taking a beat, going a little bit slower and giving this a little bit more consideration. I would be remiss if I didn't say there is a possibility that I know Rhett I believe said in our last board meeting that staffing will be difficult in this building for one more year. So I just want to put that out there that the board absolutely could decide to do that and spend most of the fund balance to keep Roxbury open and I can't staff the building. And so instead of having a transition time from now until August, I'd have a transition time from August until the kids come at Labor Day. So I just, I think that needs to be stated and that's gonna could be interpreted in multiple ways. However, I think that staffing will be a problem if the message has been put out that Roxbury is gonna be open for one more year. I have good teachers here who may not want to be here for one more year. In some ways, I think it's all more reason because the flip side is that we do it right now that those same teachers really didn't have the choice to think and think through those options. I think at this point, giving them the choice, maybe there's someone that wants to get into the district. It's worth taking the shot. My understanding is that teacher contracts are an April thing, right? April 15th. So we have a since then or when. Teachers contracts have to be returned by May 1st. By May 1st. So I mean, I guess I would be a little worried about over, again, that seems to me a little probability that we couldn't staff a school full stop. Maybe I don't know how often that happens, but we came very close last year. By last year, do you mean like August? A few months ago? We hired a, we had our last needed teacher here in late July. It's just a reality that we have to face. And I don't need to be a downer and I don't need to look like I'm choosing one side or the other. Because the board can certainly do that and we will work very hard to ensure but there is a level that we need that I met with the Roxbury staff yesterday afternoon and I will not speak for them because I can't as a group. But we had a pretty frank conversation about a lot of questions. If it stays one more year, can I voluntarily transfer over to UES into one of the openings? Well, yeah, you can. You can request to do that. So there are lots of, the staff is definitely rightfully protecting themselves and thinking through all their options for a year. So that could potentially be a challenge. But for public comment in a minute. Miran, I actually know if I need to be raising my hand but it's kind of an opposition. It's a muscle memory now. I'm trying to look at this from the lens of what our role is supposed to be here which is the best interest of the students. I don't know if I can represent Roxbury Village School students. I probably can't. But I do feel that seeing the testing data that we've seen, hearing about the staffing difficulties here, knowing that Roxbury can't provide the same services and extracurriculars that UES can. I do feel that Roxbury students are going to receive a far better education at UES and I think that's worth saying. I totally understand the loss to the community and the detriment to the students of those long bus rides. And I wanna make sure that whatever the decision it is that we end up making, we have an equitable process to make sure that the students like Alara said understand what's going on and that those bus routes, as much as I know it's not up to us to discuss the minutiae of bus routes, that those are equitable and are the best possible for the students. I also just wanna mention, I live in a middle class family. I couldn't convince my parents to vote for this budget. That's not a good sign to me. I go to the school, I'm on the school board if I can't convince my parents to vote for the budget. It's just that increase, that tax increase is like one less grocery run a month. It's not viable for us. And so I think that busing those students to UES will be in the best interests of those students. I feel incredibly for the residents of Roxbury and I wanna make sure that that change is made as equitably as possible. I wanna make sure that the Roxbury committee is used in the best way possible to make this process as best as it can be, but it's such a painful decision. I really feel for all the Roxbury residents in the room. I'll say just one more. Thank you so much for saying what we all have really struggled to say but needed to be said. I hope that if we do end up transitioning I don't love in the, I really appreciate the forward thinking that you just articulated, Rhett, about how to retain the positive. I do hope that, I grew up in the Northeast kingdom where the school bus had to go through mud season and icy roads and all kinds of things on the back roads in Goss Hollow and they figured it out. So I would hope that if we don't physically have the school here that we would be able to provide door-to-door bus service because it sounds like this arrangement is not working right now. And now we're at the point where it's become this sort of inevitable conflict between the communities which is the opposite of the whole intent of this. So that would be, I think what you just articulated is really well said. I love the idea of using the school for a year as still remaining the hub for the after school and maybe it's, I don't know if we talked about pre-K at all in this conversation. But I'm very worried about the outcomes for students. I'm very worried about even if we go with option one with the highest tax increase, we're still cutting afternoon busing for all the schools. We're losing multiple staff members. We're eliminating PM busing for MS, MS, UES. If we don't, right? So option one under the 14%, we are still creating more hardship with busing, not less, and we're losing really fantastic teachers on top of the teachers we have already cut in our first round of the budget. This community reminds me a little of where I went to a school called Riverside in Linenville for a few years and it was a community run. It was in like an old farmhouse. There were bats in the barn where we did all our plays and the water smelled like sulfur, but it was like the most amazing fantastic community school. And I really do feel like that would be my vision for this community if there was interest in hosting some sort of alternative school here. It seems like there's momentum, there's interest, there's passion. And the reality is if we continue to postpone what feels like the inevitable and frankly has felt like the inevitable since this merger, we're gonna continue to decimate the experience of all the students in the district. We're gonna continue to lose staff. We're gonna continue to bleed services and we may not be able to hire folks to come to work in the building. I don't know, I don't expect the legislature to come to our rescue anytime soon. There's only so much money that all of Vermonters are paying for property tax. So we're being forced to make a really hard decision and I'm just concerned even if we go with the 14% increase for Montpelier and we go with option one, which is cutting staff, cutting busing, cutting all the different budgets, the budget will go down and we will have suffered a significant consequence. So I'd love to see if we could find some way to create the after-school option at RBS to provide that timeline for a transition. I might risk being a skunk at the garden party now, but I too feel that it is important for us not to overreact. We definitely got a clear message on town meeting day that a 24% tax increase was unimaginable and I get it. If we could take a time machine back to approximately five weeks ago when it was our February 7th meeting and we had the option of taking that one week, as Rhett said, and opening up our budget, I was advocating for doing that to see if we could find any other savings because I think it was an outrageous ask, as Jim said. And we also don't know, we know that it was a no to 24%. We last week said, gave Libby the direction, try to get somewhere around 10 to 14%. I said, last week, I think we're just guessing. This is a guessing game. I, and I believe, well I first, I wanna pause and take this opportunity to say, it's hard to look at all the faces in the room, but I wanna say thank you to you for being here and I wanna say thank you very much to every single person who wrote us a letter over the last week, two weeks, one month. We have been asking to hear from our community members and we are hearing from them and I so very much appreciate the thoughtfulness that has gone in to the statements sent tonight and to the emails that we have received. There is real consideration. I fervently hope that at the end of all of this, we are still in partnership, Kristen, as two towns in one community. And for the vast majority of the conversation we've had, I do believe that that's possible. And I think it is also possible to find a way to do this in a non-reactive, more deliberate way. And so the Skunk at the Garden Party proposal that I have, a curiosity that I have is from my fellow board members. What would you consider something like, we look at what it would look like to get to a 16% tax rate increase? Not a 24, still a big drop from 24 and maybe a slightly larger draw from the fund balance in order to give us that ability to be more deliberative. I am not actually, I can get into a lot of trouble for saying this maybe, but I'm not counting on a ticker. The number, because we have a much smaller community here, the number of comments that we're getting, because we have a much smaller community here than we do in Montpelier. So of course the voices, the number of voices in Montpelier are going to outweigh the number of voices in Roxbury. And to that point, we have had voices in Montpelier saying, please don't overreact. Please take time to consider this decision. It's a very big decision. So I don't want it to seem to the folks sitting in this room that it's all or nothing in Montpelier either. And so I think tonight is the night to ask and explore slightly beyond the options, the very thoughtful considered options that I deeply appreciate Libby and your team coming up with. But maybe just to see if there is some way that we can find a tiny little way to thread this needle that would allow us to give us the time to do the deliberation that I think this kind of a decision deserves. Thank you very much, Mia. I really appreciate what you just had to say. What our fellow board members and community members have had to say prior to that. I've been fervently jotting down key words as I'm listening to you all. I think Tim was the first to suggest and then Mia, you reiterated the importance of not being overreactive. I think there was a, I know there was a very clear message in the way that folks voted, but also the way that folks have been reaching out since they voted to say this is the first time that they voted no for a school budget. And the reason was that we did not have any plan for RVS and for the Roxbury students being educated here. I think Jim, you mentioned there were a lot of soft yeses on the budget. I've had six yeses say they would know the second time if RVS stays the same. The private conversations, but that doesn't make me feel good. I also have seen countless messages, both of the board and individually, folks who voted no because we didn't have a plan. Because there hadn't been a discussion about what we should be doing. And a lot of folks in Montpelier and in Roxbury have said to us, take the time, be deliberative, don't make rash decisions. And I was, even before today, sort of sympathetic to that. And I just wanna pause for a moment and share a little anecdote from my morning. I was on a meeting at my house, so I have a luxury one to be able to work for my house. The school nurse's call from UES to let me know that my daughter had an accident, that was about 11.35. And before noon, I was in the nurse's office with my daughter. And at that moment, I thought of, if I was an RVS parent and I got a call that my daughter was in the nurse, would I be in the nurse's office within 15 minutes? If that student was in Montpelier. And so I thought for a moment, again, about the luxury I have, that I live less than a mile from the elementary school. And so I don't take conversations about closing down the school lightly. And so to your question or your call to think beyond the options, Libby, that thankfully you've presented, right off the bat, one, I mean, this is not gonna be a surprise. Like we set aside $400,000 for the track. We have used 50,000. I cannot in all good conscience consider improving a track with that 350,000 left at the same time as closing the school. And so those are the types of creative, additional decisions that I think we as a board need to consider. And so to Tim's point, I do think reconsidering all of the fund balance, the known impacts that we have on that. Yes, there are things coming down the line, but we do have knowledge about some things. We have to make the decision based on the information that we have, right? And so Tim, I very much agree with you. I don't know that spending all 2.1 million is wise and Libby are probably not happy with any of that because it's helpful to have that cushion. And I still think that in some part, that cushion that we've been able to build up over the last five, six years is as a result of the merger. And we owe it to our community to take a deliberative process, use that cushion to just rambling now, so I'm just gonna stop and say. But let's be deliberate in our discussions and in our actions. Okay. Thank you for coming. And I really appreciate hearing about your community and your school. To be honest, I think a budget that uses all of our savings up to lower tax rates is probably not likely to pass. A budget that makes major cuts to the Montpelier schools is also probably not likely to pass. That's what I think based on people I talk to and things I read. And also I was with many other members of the board a few weeks ago, before town meeting day, thinking this can't be a rush process. This has to be take a while to get this right. And so that is the budget that we presented originally. It was, yes, a huge tax increase, but we're gonna take our time to figure out what to do with Rocksbury Village School. That's what we did and that was the best path forward. It got rejected. So those are the, those pieces. I also want, I work in the state government. I'm not at Joint Fiscal Office, which is the legislature staff. I work at the tax department. So with the administration. And I'm glad Representative Hooper's here today. So with Act 46, you know, it says in the intent of the law that it's not to close small schools, but to be totally honest, again, I think it's lame that they would form these districts, consolidate knowing that the purpose, the implicit purpose is to close small schools, but they didn't have the guts to do it, so they want us to do it and that's messed up. Seven years later, you get Act 127, which is what's making our tax rate explode in Montpelier. And in that bill, they say, hey, wait a second, these small rural schools cost more to educate students. So we need to actually increase the tax capacity towards them. Okay, fine, but we don't benefit from that because Roxbury's demographics are blended with Montpelier. So the small school in the rural area is not getting the weights it deserves. So that's strike number two, another mistake. Strike number three is they wrote in a phase in for Act 127, a way to protect the districts who were really disadvantaged by it, like Montpelier, that they figured out in February didn't actually work and had some serious consequences for the education fund. So in the middle of February, they tried to fix it. After we warned our budget. After we warned our budget, after we worked on our budget for months and months, after we came here and talked to you a couple times and we said, we're not thinking about closing Roxbury Village School this year because there's no tax implications, we said that. But then in February, whatever, 22nd, they passed this bill that all of a sudden made it the case that we did again have control over our taxes and we had to reduce our budget to avoid a huge tax hike. It's all messed up, but that is the landscape. So those are some technical things. Rhett already mentioned the last one. And I would like to offer you a personal thing. I mentioned at the beginning of the meeting that I have a student who goes to UES, Union Elementary School in Montpelier. He's a wild little guy. I don't know where his personality comes from exactly, but when he was in preschool, they wanted to kick him out because he threatened to kill other students, which I don't know, not that bad, but they thought it was bad. They said that he should maybe get kicked out of preschool. We resisted that. But then he went to kindergarten at UES and he had the most amazing patient teacher who was so wonderful that it blew my mind. And then for first grade, he has an award-winning teacher who started the ECO program and he writes these nasty little notes and she takes pictures of them and sends it to us and we talk to him about it, but she's amazing. And we feel so lucky that our son gets to go to that school. I'm sorry that it's so far away, but it's an amazing school and it's got great teachers and great staff, a great superintendent and a school board who really cares about the students. So that's all I have. Should we open it back up for public comment? Do folks want to say more? Please go ahead. My friend, it's been 40 years since I took high school calculus, but this is based on math, I think. The budget's about $28 million. 10% of that is $2.8 million. 5% is $1.4 million. That looked like what we were spending on the office of the principals. $1.4 million. That used to be the budget for the entire Roxbury School operating budget. So 5% is 120th of the total budget. It's more of your staffing budget. So if I had to limit my access to 20 educational staff, the principal's office wouldn't even make the list. Think about $1.4 million could keep this open. I don't know what a principal does other than hand out tardy slips. I didn't see a single cut listed in any of the options to that large department of 5% and $1.4 million. Plenty of cuts to the staff that actually do the teaching, but nothing on the principal and assistant principal. What value do they add to the test scores of the students? It's that I would argue it's the teachers that do. So there's no cuts on that. You're looking at cutting club funds in the order of $15,000. With $1.4 million being paid on salaries, I would think that a principal's department would step up and cover those as just a, I'm gonna reduce my salary by that amount to continue to fund these things. I don't know how a department like that gets so high that it's 120th of your total operating budget and 1 15th of your staffing. I didn't have my calculator here to do that number. One other thing, so I loved your point about, if you work in Roxbury and getting to, or live in Roxbury and getting to the school for an emergency, think about residents in Roxbury like I've done before who work 40 minutes south of here in Bethel and getting from your work in Bethel to Montpelier. Or you've got to pick up your kid because he's sick that day. Those kinds of kinds of things. So just I'm very disappointed. I appreciate all the work that you've done. I know this can't be easy, but to see the budget and to not see any cuts in that department and the admin, I don't know if they're untouchable or what that is. I can't fathom that we had principals and assistant principals in this schoolhouse knowing that I was taught, grades one through three were taught by one teacher and four through six were taught by another teacher with some part-time student aids. And like I said, maximum of four cars teaching 90 students at one point, I think. It's just, I'd like to hear from the board why that department hasn't been looked at. That's $1.4 million. I know you can't cut it to zero, but could you eliminate a couple of those positions and cut it to $600,000 budget? That's more than you've gotten your reserve fund, right? Or would significantly improve that. Again, staff is much easier to flex based upon student enrollment and population. You're not opening this building back up if Roxbury balloons to 100 students or 150 students or 60 or 60 or 60 or 60 or 60 or 60 or 60 or 60 or 60. So that's where we're successful in revitalizing the town. And I'm hearing a lot of silence about that budget. Okay, I'll yield the floor then. Yeah, and the transportation is just, it's terrible because I don't have kids, but I'd want to be right there when my kid got hurt. And maybe they are going to be permanently paralyzed because they're that far off. And I happen to have to work south of here. Thank you. Respond, but it seems like maybe we could answer questions that people have because time's running out, you know? Yeah, we can play. I just wanted to, from my perspective, answer your question on the administrative in our schools. Our principals do an awful lot more than handout tardy slips and awful lot more. We have one of the benefits that I have of having kids in the school and being able to have this inside look that I've had on the board for the last three and a half years is to see how incredibly hard our principals are working on being learning leaders in our schools and really driving the culture of learning in our schools and our assistant principals, we ask them to do all of the like conflict resolution and working and looking into when somebody says, hey, I think I'm being bullied right now. They do a very thorough and very taxing and very hard process to look into is that really the case and what should we do about it if it is? And so I just wanted to take a moment to say our principals and assistant principals are real leaders in our schools. That might not be the case all over America, but we are really lucky to have the people we have leading our schools right now. And I'm not trying to say, I really hope I don't sound defensive in answering your question. I just question if they do more work than the teachers do and if it's worth 1.4 million dollars and 20%? They do different work. They do different work. They do different work. And I think we should honestly entertain any question people are bringing because now is the moment if we're not going to do what I'd like to do which is make a more, take a more deliberative approach to this. I really think we should honestly entertain any question somebody has. And my perspective on your question is that they do yes, different work than our teachers, but they have a big job. There's also a statute requirement that principals need to have their contracts renewed by February 2nd. Which means it's already happened. Which means it might be something to consider for an FY26 or future budget. If declining enrollment happens, maybe we don't need that many administrators, but it's not something we can consider for the FY25 budget. Yeah, and I just want to add, the average tenure for a principal is three years. The burnout rate is very high. It is one of the hardest jobs in the future. And they do wonderful work. Can I also say that the principal in this school from September to December and September there were kids meeting the standard in reading or excuse me, there were 70% of kids were not meeting the standard, right? And then in December, it was 45% were meeting the standard. So it was a swing of 25%. Is that? Can we fix that? Is that? Hi. Hi, Katie. Thank you, thank you. That didn't sound right when I said it, but a massive increase, right? A massive increase in only three months. And that is, yes, because there was very little other change except for the previous. Hi, I'm the principal. 5% of the salary line in the budget. It is not 5% of the budget. It's 5% of the salary. The pie chart showed the whole budget. That pie chart showed salary and benefits. That was just that. Yes. There was one that showed the whole budget. The next one showed just the salaries and benefits. My name is Heidi Albright. I first want to say thank you to these two excellent people who have done a fantastic job of representing our community. I'm sorry, I'm very emotional. I also want to thank you for responding to my email today. You're the only one who did, and I really valued hearing back from someone because I felt heard. I want to thank Mia and Tim for what you said earlier. I want to encourage the whole board to please find a way to give us one more year to figure out how our community can move forward from here. Without our school, we have families that will be really struggling. This isn't equitable. To listen to only the loudest voices coming from Montpelier means you're not hearing. We're kind of quiet in Roxbury until it comes right down to defending our kids and our way of life here. We really, really need the time. And if there's a way, a creative way to dig a little deeper into that fund, let's try. I think our community deserves it. I think our kids deserve it. It's just not right to close the school without giving us time to prepare. Thank you. I'll speak one more time. Thank you. I just wanted to reiterate that you guys weren't the only ones calling each other and texting at nine o'clock at night over the weekend. We had hundreds of phone calls. The power was out here all weekend. We were running generators. We were calling. We were texting. We had 32 people on a Zoom call last night when the town didn't have power. Folks were rationing their batteries for two days and running generators just to log in. We did some huge heavy lifting. I can tell you that three days ago no one would have been telling you just give us one more year. Like, that was a really painful place for people to get to. That's not what we wanted. You know, people want this town to have a school. We did a lot of work. We came to you in a spirit of really, really sacrificing, really. Like, we brought to you the best possible deal we could come up with and we're just asking you to please hear that. Please give us one year. You are hearing from folks. The busing is not working. Like, seeing busing eliminated on there is terrifying. Like, that's just a deal breaker. Kids are coming to school hungry. They're exhausted. They're cold. You know, they've missed breakfast. They're late to class. They've been standing on the side of a highway. They're getting dropped off three, four miles away from home. You know, sometimes without their parents, like, kids get on the bus accidentally when they forget that they're supposed to go to an after-school activity and they get left on the side of a highway. And there's no phones. There's nowhere to call. You know, there's no cell service. So, we've got to figure out the busing and if it was easy, you would have done it already. So, give yourselves the time to get it right. You're going to really hurt people. You know, you don't want to hear about accidents. You don't want kids getting hit on the side of the highway. That's what, it's a real risk. So, give yourselves time to do this thing right and recognize that we will partner with you and if you can give us the time, we will be your allies in the community and we will make sure that these relationships are not damaged forever. You know, we're still healing from the merger years ago. That has created divides in this community that we're still working to merge and to heal. And so, just please, it's not just the building we're talking about when we talk about revitalizing Roxbury. It's the community and there is already harm here and we're trying really hard to repair it, but we really need you guys to be our allies here. So, please, can you come back with a budget that doesn't talk about everything as cuts but deferring for one year? Can you dig deep for one year? I think you can. I think you can really sell that to your Montpelier constituents. There's a great example on Front Porch Forum today from Northfield. You know, the Northfield PTO really went to bat for their budget and they talked about why they thought this budget was so lean and it was so good. That's a great example of something that we could do as well. Right? But we, you know, I think you can market this. I think you can sell it to the Montpelier folks that one year and then they won't have this expense to worry about anymore and I think they will support that. I don't think you need to be quite so dramatic as cutting it right away. So, thank you very much for listening to us all. It really means a lot to us that you all came out here today. I'll be tired of hearing my voice at these meetings. I hear some positive things from board members about what our people have asked for. They've put a lot of effort into putting this presentation together to get one more year. Well, I don't think one more year is good enough. As several people have said tonight, we had a two room school here and graduated great kids one through six in two rooms. And now they say small schools don't fly. They don't work. It's because state law has changed and changed and changed to the point where really nothing works. I mean, you all think UES is the be all and end all and it may be today but you don't know about tomorrow and you don't have I don't think any right to bus our kids five year old kids from Roxbury to from Steel Hill, let's say or from Thurston Hill here in Roxbury to Montpelier. I went back and re and reread all the minutes from the merger committee and I could see right from the very beginning that the handwriting was on the wall that this school was not going to last more than four years. In fact, Miss Muncie, I think her name is she proposed that not be closed after four years and then later on she changed that and said, oh, no, it has to close absolutely after four years and we have to have the option. You have the option to close the school. You don't have to listen to us. You don't have to have any input. You don't have to have anything. You nine people have all the power. We have none. We gave that up last July when the town vote was taken away. So really everybody that gets up here thanks you and thanks for a great job you've done and how hard you've worked. Well, I'm Mr. Negativity. I don't think you have done a good job. You presented a budget in the very beginning that was a 12% increase and then you got sucker punched by the state and turned it into a twenty four percent and then somebody put out there and I think it was the superintendent that it cost one point eight million or one point five million to run the Roxbury School. Well, of course, Montpelio is going to jump on that. They're like a robin on a worm, you know, they knew damn well that they wanted to close the school. They didn't want to close the school but they wanted an easy way out and that's what you gave them and they've been playing with that number ever since and the main driver is this guy Richard Shear. I have no idea who he is or what he does or what his background is but he's taken that number and run with it except that in his op ed in the bridge he said the actual savings if you close Roxbury School is only four hundred sixty five thousand dollars. It's not one point five million but yet everybody in Montpelio has one point five stuck in their brain and they can't get it out because they don't want to think about it. They just want to get rid of Roxbury. Save one point five and be done with it. They're not looking down the road to next year. Who are you going to get rid of next year when you have a budget shortfall you tell me Roxbury along for our little school like mentioned earlier five hundred twenty two thousand dollars from the district that we pay the district for this little school five hundred twenty two thousand dollars. And if you close the school that five hundred twenty thousand dollars twenty two thousand dollars is going to go right back to Montpelio and they're going to pay it. We've been paying your debt. I've said this before we have zero debt when we went into this merger and we signed on to our part of the six million dollar debt and we've been making debt payments ever since. It's like paying for a car you know but this one is unfortunately running without any tires. You guys you know you haven't really done the job that you should have done. You gave a huge increase to the teachers because oh they had so hard of time in covid. Well I got news for you everybody had a hard time in covid and then on top of that you've got a teacher's contract that is causing this deadline that we're faced with tonight because you have have to give out rift notices in a short period of time. Now I just hear that the principals get their contracts in February. No contract should ever be signed that before town meeting because you have no idea what's going to happen in town meeting that just guarantees those people their pay. There's no chance of cutting cutting anything in there in there. You've got I don't know ten people in the school system making well over a hundred thousand dollars a year and yet you get eight percent increase and you should have known that the health insurance was going to go up sixteen percent. I mean that's a failing on your part I believe and so that's what that's partially what's put us under the bus that and throwing out this one point five million dollar figure that people just cannot get out of their head just can't do it. It's like it's like seeing somebody squashed on on the highway and it's in your head forever. You just can't get rid of it and I fought you for that the board for not taking taking the position that that was not necessarily the way we want to go and just rolling over to Richard Shear and his four hundred cohorts and throwing this school right down the drain and the village along with it because like you look at this audience how many young people are here with kids you think they would have moved here if they were going to school. I mean I don't know but it's a it's a good question. All right. Thank you. And I'm in third grade and I'm Hazel and I'm in third grade also. Brian and this we know that a bunch of these kids in the school this school means a lot to them and me and Ophelia will spend all the money in our piggy banks if this school can stay open. A lot of kids think it's special to have a school here because it has not too many students and it's really fun to be at all the teachers are really great and I'd be pretty bummed if the school was closed. That's all. My name is Jim Rogler. I have no kids in school system long gone. I was looking and I'm going a little bit by memory your expense pie charts up there and one of my beliefs said labor was roughly 52% is that close. Sorry. Does that do benefits or not. So I worked in a several financial positions for several corporations. So I'm part of the evil corporation. You guys can put that on. I could be on your ass list. But anyway, part of the largest component of our expenses was labor. Same thing here. Right. And I saw you had cuts for teachers. Right. Which is probably a tough one to do. Am I correct? Does that are these is this part of attrition or these no new hires or no new backfills or how is it how's it how's it playing out. Yes. All the above. Yeah. So we have so when you see to FTE both of those could be accomplished or attrition. Okay. We would eliminate that position, but nobody would be filling it next year or nobody would be in it to break. And that's what is that what the majority was. I think he had six. I don't remember all the options up there. But when we start getting to six FTE and our teaching staff, then that is not all for attrition. Okay. So the no new hires and things like that. Roxbury and Montpelier schools. That's everybody. It's across so our our teaching staff is under one unit one unit. It doesn't matter what building they work in. But riffs happen according to licensure category. So it could be. So let's say an English teacher at the high school decides to move to Colorado and we we can't riff a K six teacher and say it's taken care of by the English teacher leaving because it's a different licensure category. My wife where I'm going is I think labor obviously is a huge and Tom mentioned I can't believe what the increase was. Maybe I'm not that close to it. Was it 8% increase dare you to mention or find any corporation that's given 8% increase to any of their workers generally. And if corporations aren't doing well, which seems to be the case right and I know a lot of stuff was thrown on you in the last seconds what's commonly done and what you're doing is some cuts in people which is a hard thing to do to try to balance the budget and apparently doing that which is so I commend you on that which is not an easy thing to do. I guess I'm curious might where I'm going with this is have you looked at at all the possibilities for this type of because it's biggest expense you have right that and apparently the busing isn't so great but that's got to be a pretty huge expense for you all to and I would implore you which I think was echoed by most of you guys don't rush into something like this. I mean I'm I've been in town for 30 something years and I understand the importance of the school in the community and we got a great bunch of young families here and it probably could be my kids for that matter but I think the positive energy that these people are bringing to town I'd hate to see him get kicked in the gut with this and your husband and the group over there and we're slightly involved and we do we do what we can but please don't make any rash decisions here because these guys move to the community Roxbury's a really cool place nice and rural we don't have some of the issues maybe that my failure have but we other ones we have okay every town has a situation so I would implore you and Tim great job in your description let's be real sure about this and it's not going to impact I'm going to be long gone probably by the time this really hits the town but you also mentioned future thoughts and where we're going with this and my right wife runs a B&B we get more people especially post COVID from Boston and New York who just want to sit on our back porch okay we can look or they complain how can you sleep here it's so quiet or you need more streetlights out there that's why people come here right to get away from that kind of stuff so I don't have a lot of skin in the game but I do please and I think you guys have explained yourselves well and I'm too involved in this but I implore you don't make a mistake and hustling through this thing because of some legislative issues that you had no control over and I didn't either so hoping for the best Jenkins terrified Courtney Jenkins I just had a suggestion I have no idea how the system currently works so forgive me if I'm misunderstanding but is there any way to offer some sort of a benefit if we were to keep the school open one more year for the teachers who were to stay to then have a position at a Montpollier school afterwards to incentivize them to stay for the year that we maybe were open one more year. You can go back to your seat if you want to or you can say it's fine either one looks like you're just it's it's seniority right so any kind we have we have teaching riffs they go by seniority as to when somebody was hired so there is no promising positions for one more year because we're in a unionized contract it's so anything is based on seniority and also getting to your suggestion which I think was maybe reconsidering the 8% the 8% is also governed by contract and contract to agree to I also stand very strongly behind the 8% it's our teachers deserve it they do a great job and I know Joe has the figures on the top of his head even with the 8% increase most of the districts around us gave similar increases we are in about the middle of the pack in terms of our competitiveness with that 8% increase with surrounding districts and obviously if there was a possibility of bringing that down it would make us less competitive which would you know which would mean that we probably lose people anyone else in the room before I go online yes I don't have any skin in the game anymore my kids left for college one of them is working at Burlington high school as a construction management my main thing is we were forced into the merger and this is not for many for the board is more like a venting we were forced into a merger then we were forced into equity and now we're being forced to not have equity because our kids have to be in the bus you know when they force the merger the state said we'll give you a little bit of a discount on your taxes that discount will go down and the first year the taxes dropped a little bit not much but from then on it's been a kick in the teeth every year the taxes go up and every time every year goes up and it's not sustainable in that sense we're not attracting more young people by doing that and by not attracting more young people we lose kids in our schools and by losing kids in our schools and families in here we're get screwed on a tax bracket and I would use a much stronger word on that sentence so I think it's it's not your budget is not somewhat of the problem I think the legislature is the problem just like you guys said before you had you got thrown a curveball by having a change in law in February you know I think that a lot of the negative votes for the budget was a representation of that that they're not happy with what's going on in Montpelier not with your school but with us with the legislature I think that won't change a lot of the mentality because they will always think that you guys are doing a terrible job you're not you're trying to balance a budget that it's 30 million dollars I'm sorry you know we'll all suffer but I think the leg we should all force the legislature to come up with an actual solution to a problem that we knew that we were going to have 10 years ago population decline aging and does people age fix incomes they're going to vote no because they can't afford it and our tax went from 28 hundred to what it is now fifty five hundred so that's all I'm saying thank you for your work and please keep the school open give us a year it's rushed if we close anything okay thank you one last time even though I've testified many a time my name is Ben Pinkes I'm also a proud graduate I've mentioned before with Mike when Roxbury Village school was a true room schoolhouse raise your hand in this room when you went to the school as a true room schoolhouse maybe no one okay but then raise your hands if you went you didn't our children your children did that right raise your hand if you went to Roxbury Village school a couple more hands great awesome so just super quick just because I don't get a chance to quote it much my third grade Christmas pageant was right there I'm gonna try to remember it here with everyone must go to the place where he has been born to be counted and recorded by the order of the emperor so my acting skills and grow I admit but my sense of social justice and also curiosity that was of course the story of King Herod which and slaughter of the innocence which wasn't very accurate but that being said historic that we won't go to biblical biblical history in two minutes but I just want to mention that at Roxbury Village school what is so special about small rural schools like this is that the teachers really fostered a genuine sense of curiosity and I think a genuine sense of social justice came with that curiosity and so I think what this really comes down to in the end is our ability to advocate for this school is for us to go to Montpelier to reach out to people of Montpelier in any way we can this is your school budget so hopefully you could also advocate for maybe that compromise of the 16% and also what I heard I think you had mentioned that if there is a plan and if that plan does necessitate the closure of Roxbury Village school in one year I hate to frame it that way but perhaps between those things a reduced tax cut from 24% to 16% advocacy on the part of all of you public forum I know Jim I know you went to the forum with Richard Shear and I was just wondering if you folk or any one of you would be willing to also be an sort of an expert witness or to clarify things and if perhaps we the Roxbury folk could have also have a public forum perhaps at the library in Montpelier and perhaps and just one more thing I've reached out to some folks and friends in Montpelier and they have been swayed when they hear what is actually happening and when they hear advocacy on the part of Roxbury people so it is possible to meet folk halfway I think ideally there would be polling right if we had more time and more money for that what would Montpelier voters take but anyway I just want to put that word out that in the end here with everyone must go to the capital city of Montpelier and do our work for advocacy. Thank you. Hi my name is Katie Swick and I'm the kindergarten teacher here at Roxbury. I also have a student at UES and an MSMS student eighth grader and I love working here. I think we have a wonderful team. I love this small school and the and the students and I went to a small school as a child in Maine and I know UES is a good school. MSMS is a great school that kids will get a great education there. I also know the benefits of kids going to a small school and what they gain at a small school in the community here. And so right this whole situation I feel both sides of it being a Montpelier resident working here at Roxbury. It's very challenging to be in a situation and I know that I'll have a job either way and I know that not all my co-workers will and I can't speak for all my co-workers but it's definitely stressful over the last few months as you all have enjoyed the stress too. If you want to put it that way I guess that's not the right way to put it. But yeah it's stressful not knowing what's going to be happening next year or the year after and that's hard working here of course we continue to put all our best into the students and we know how to be flexible here and we're figuring it out but I guess I just want to I don't know what my message is I don't even know where I stand I guess is my point anymore because it's so hard to be thinking about all the situations so I also appreciate your work. Thank you. Just a quick thought I just had my crunch. There was discussion about it may be difficult to find staff to take a position at the Roxbury School for one year and being a new hire they would lose their job because they don't have seniority. What I would advocate for is to try to find the most senior folks in Montpelier see if they would be willing to transition for a year so there is no worry of job loss should the school close in a year. Sounds like Montpelier is a very attractive place for teachers so you should have no trouble filling positions in the Montpelier district with a new teacher. The challenge is planning a teacher in Roxbury doesn't mean that you don't put in the work to do that. We can be creative about who you put here so that they don't lose their job and you may have Roxbury teachers here that have low seniority that would be willing to make the transition already to Montpelier and you swap some staff don't have contracts allow that or if you'd have to incentivize it. But I'm sure there are some teachers that possibly came from a small town like Roxbury that would be willing to make that move to make this happen for an additional year. Holter I have a just about ready to graduate senior at Montpelier High School and another out in California who graduated a couple of years ago. I I just want to say that the how whatever happens the how needs a lot of work. And and Rhett said it really well when he talked about equity. My two high school students did not find the transition to Montpelier High School easy. They didn't they didn't they weren't seen by everyone. They were seen by wonderful people but they weren't seen universally and helpfully as from another community that's part of their school district. So from my opinion or from my observation from the merger until now we have been really doing a pretty terrible job at the how we merge two communities that are 20 miles apart. This was we knew this wasn't going to be easy. But we did sign on to do it and we could be doing a lot better and we're going to have to do a lot better because we're talking about really little kids now whose lives will be shaped. I mean I am willing to bet everyone in this room has a memory from elementary school that actually shaped decisions they made as a parent. I have a couple growing up in a small town in Wisconsin. So my point is that no matter whether we're talking about a year or three months or a couple of years we have merged two communities. And if we're going to stay merged we have to figure out how to merge with with respect for the diversity of these two communities. And I am a person who ran my generator to watch your four hour school board meeting from last week because I couldn't watch it last week. And while Malpelier had power so the entire experience of most of your school children is completely different than this small population you have got to figure out how to deal with that if we're going to stay merged like wherever whatever buildings were in. So my plea is really just about how and I would also say that you have the legislature is who I and you know Jay already knows who I am. But like they're the ones that we need to go to say this is not okay with us. And in my opinion you have an ability and you've got two shots at this if I you know took good enough notes when I was watching the four hour meeting from last time. So why do we have to go you know I guess my point is you could make an attempt to see what the voters will go for and then you know you do it all over again. I know there are huge implications for that but there are huge implications for this too. So I would just encourage you to be creative and I was here when the merger was happening saying the same thing. Can't we be creative like I moved to Vermont 25 years ago thinking this was you know there are a lot of creative people here. I've been super disappointed in the legislature and I've been super disappointed in the way schools deal with what they've been thrown thrown like we can be more creative. We can be more thoughtful about our values and what's important. So I would just encourage you to do that and I don't know what that will end up being but whatever ends up being put in front of the voters next time. We've already screwed up by making it about Roxbury Village school is the problem. So you've already got a lot of work to do to undo that and if you don't think that every five to 18 year old who's in your school system from Roxbury is impacted by that you are mistaken. So I think that is my the how. Let's do the how better. Thank you. Say the reason I said don't clap for me when I showed up is because indeed this is all the fault of the legislature the truest thing from a legislative perspective said tonight was that there wasn't the political courage when Act 46 was passed to do this hard work ourselves. This was probably inevitable and I wouldn't say it's a conspiracy of the Montpelier community to at some point within one to five years shut this down this building down for certain. That's maybe not reasonable but the point is that these legislative directives are going to continue to come because consolidation will have to continue. I mean we're we're talking about education spending always going up that is probably always to be true right for reasons that are beyond our control a 16 percent increase in health care costs across the state. You know for Montpelier to be contending with 75 percent in costs to faculty and administration and personnel that is a high number but it is true in all districts that it's more than 50 percent and this notion that when property taxes when when education spending goes up property taxes due to that is also a fact but that's one fact that needs to change and that's a failure of the legislatures and I'm really hoping that this year because of this pressure not just in this scenario this is a particularly difficult one right here between your two communities will give us the the spur that we need to actually dig into changing you know Act 127 was not the wrong thing to do. It was probably rolled out the wrong way though. I mean equity is something that we should be in hot pursuit of but if the formula itself will become so expensive that it actually becomes that it implodes it becomes bankrupt then we do not have this democracy anymore you know what's the worst-case scenario my mind is private interest coming by our school system then we don't get to decide how we educate children. So I say to Tom for example you know these folks maybe didn't do it perfectly but blame the legislature sooner than these than these good servants because they're doing their best I mean I hope I hope and we aren't we are not in the in the capital building. So I to encourage this board to really think strongly about what it looks like to go to 16 percent whatever the compromise has to look like where you got to borrow money from maybe we can try and figure out how to compensate you. I'm sure Libby will be testifying again in house education soon you know these are discussions that we have to really start to have in earnest sooner than later but you know like I say we have a formula that we know doesn't work it functions but it becomes more and more expensive every year and it has been for so many years running that the consensus out there voters in Vermont all across up and down Vernon to Alberg will tell you that property taxes are too high and they continue to climb and the irony here is that 127 was a product of Act 175 which included in it a study committee which came out with a report in December of 2022 which is a lot a lot of days ago what it looks like to go to an income based formula so we can continue to use the mathematics that we have the variables by which we determine how to equalize per pupil spending from district to district that can still exist but we need to figure out a different way to come up with that money. Can I interrupt you right there? Please can we think about applying the equation by town and not by district we sure because there's a lot of big there's a lot of big districts with a lot of different towns with a lot of different demographics and when you you know if you want equity it just needs to focus in a little bit more because this has been the opposite of equity for us and I know the intention of the law but when you just it can it can zero in a little bit and also true was what Brett said earlier it's to stimulate equity to levelize opportunity for students no matter what they look like where they come from but then we turn around and say oops we just realized that this is going to be absurd it is absurd to ask in school district to pay 21 fourth of what they paid last year additional 25 24 percent is absolutely absurd and we did that to do we did this 850 was a band aid to like try and encourage school districts to go back to get people who build budgets to go back and do their work over it's just also ridiculous to do that so I guess what I mean to say when I stand here is keep working and the thing that I'm trying to do is is help my colleagues understand just how true this is the political will needs to be cultivated to like go a totally different direction we don't have to abandon the good work that a lot of smart people did in recent years but we do really need to shift gears and before I leave let me ask you all a question who here believes in local control it's a joke it's a joke it's a myth doesn't exist there are no two budgets we believe in it that's done yeah but there are no two budget votes that don't indirectly impact another district's tax rates that concept by itself is unsustainable and it's like you said it best we just I was in college when that I like to claim that I'm going to vote for act 46 I probably wouldn't but I'm really not sure I wasn't there I did vote for 127 because I was told that we're working right but here we are talking about 2025 26 figures and you know we've known anybody who says oh we didn't know it was there's too much data we're waiting on well I was quoted in seven days I can't read everything I said so I think you know what I mean so I appreciate you all listening to me tonight and do be in touch I know I'm not recreated responding emails my phone number is the best they get in touch with me again I'm pillier I hope you have it in your hearts to figure out how to give these guys more time because they need it here you go to the room there was online gym like invariant hey folks just checking to see if this is working yeah great all right thank you everyone I'll try to be brief I want to start by saying that you know I'm a Montpelier resident I voted for the budget I sat through all the meetings and I believe was a good budget and it's certainly unfair what happened at the last minute with the Legislature that really really just put things off the rails I grew up in a rural community in New York that's not dissimilar to Roxbury and I spent an hour on the bus for every bus ride I ever had and so I know what that experiences like it sucks and I still got a phenomenal education getting to go to the wealthier suburban community and I think that it frustrates me that we might have to eventually close the Roxbury school and I like to give them as much time as we possibly can just another reason I voted for the budget even though that it's going to personally cost me a lot more money but I'd rather invest in children than in other things and so I think that if at some point we have to close the Roxbury school then I really want to amplify what Rhett said because I did not know that we were just dropping kids off at some random locations and it wasn't door-to-door busing blue collar family growing up my parents were always working and the only way it really worked is that I could walk down our quarter mile driveway stand at the end of the road get picked up on the bus and get taken to school and then spend an hour you know back on that bus at the end of the day and get dropped off at the end of my driveway walk the quarter mile back home and there you go I think it is unacceptable if we're going to say hey we're going to bus your kids to UES and we're going to drop your kids off in these locations that are not right next to their homes and I think that I think that most people in Montpelier would find that unacceptable and they'd find it in their hearts to dig a little deeper to make it so those kids could have safety and I think that maybe needs to be part of the sales pitch is that if we're if we're going at some point hoping give them at least another year to you know to have to close that village school which again hope we don't have to do but if we have to that busing needs to be superior and it needs to be frequent one of the best experiences I ever got out of being a rural kid but getting bus to the nicer school was that I got to participate in sports I got to participate in clubs and the only way that worked is because there was an after school bus that allowed us rural kids to actually do a sport do a club and have a way to get home because my parents are working there was no way they could have done their jobs and ferried me around anywhere so if if we're talking about you know at some point that village school has to close I think we need to have a strong commitment to superior busing to really really make that equity happen and I really hope that we can all find a way to big beat to give Roxbury more time to to have a real fair process to figure things out so for all the folks in the room please know that not everybody in Montpelier wants to close your school down a lot of us love your school and grew up rural and really appreciate what that's like and we want to support your community thanks everybody it's Jamie right but it's me this time Jim can you hear me okay okay first of all I just wanted to well first and foremost a shout out to the student representatives on the board of all along been thoroughly impressed by you two and tonight especially blown away by the thoughtfulness of your comments so great job a thank you to the entire board and a call out to everyone it's been hinted at a few in a few different ways tonight but I just want to really underscore for all my fellow voters forgive me I'm it's James Ray I have two kids at Montpelier High School I'm a Montpelier resident but I want to really underscore for folks the unbelievably like swiss cheese of lattice work that this board is having to work through to try to make things work picture any of you for any of us picture if in doing your daily job you had what three or four different bosses all of whom we're layering and a bizarre maze of interconnected deadlines and demands on you none of whom are accountable to each other that's kind of what our board is fighting against whether it's the legislature the healthcare system union contracts and other things that I'm sure I don't know I'm just unboggling maze that these folks are having to work through and so I just want to shout out to the board for that and a shout out to my resident my fellow voters to direct energies that might be frustration aimed at them and other directions and I'm going to come back to that in a second but what I really also want to encourage folks to do as you see these numbers is to I don't want to be I'm sure many if not most folks have already done that but to the to anyone who's sort of seeing these large scary percentage numbers and not actually doing the math on how it really might translate to a monthly bill for example to go ahead and do that because I think some of these numbers no none of these increases are comfortable or good for anyone and I know more so for some than others but my back as Libby was going through option A, B, C, D and E is that the incredible pain difference to the school district and the schools represented by that scale going from A down to E huge amounts of increasing pain with not an increasing amount of pain on what would be our monthly bill to pay for that difference so my point is I would just really beg folks to back away from sort of the scariness of large percentage numbers and really look at what it means to your budget and then for all of us to have the courage to go as high as we comfortably can with that number again no one wants higher taxes but for all of us to go as high as we can for that number to get the best school that we can for our kids and I say that for a couple of reasons one and I said this in a previous meeting a few months back but study after study after study links the quality of a town and the quality of a community to the quality of its schools so we owe it to ourselves whether we have kids in that system or not to ensure the health of our school system and I would say to I think all of us to act as if the quote I would say is act as if and I would say that to all of us Montpelier residents looking at our colleagues and our friends over in Roxbury because you know we are there's a lot of talk about two communities ultimately we are now one community by by virtue of our combined school system and I think we owe it to each other to treat ourselves as one community and act as if their kids are your kids and making these decisions and doing the best we can by all students and I would say to all of us who have the option of Montpelier voters who don't have kids in the system to please act as if their kids are your kids many of you if you don't have kids in the system you might have grandkids you might have nieces you might have nephews and other locations picture them in these schools and vote accordingly please it's for the good of the entire community thank that representative for saying this is to direct the tremendous amount of energy and emotional energy and sort of that we all have around this toward the powers that are putting this situation in place talked toward the legislator toward the governor's office toward I don't know who we can start to fix the healthcare that are coming down on these boards just to take the political energy that this community has around this topic you know let the school board know what you're thinking obviously but focus any of that intense emotional energy on where the problem is really coming from which is not the school board it is the legislature it is the governor's office it's the healthcare system that's putting us in this bind so again thank you all for listening I apologize yes okay great hi I am first I just wanted to thank you all so much for your thoughtfulness on this and all of your hard work it's incredible what you're doing and what you have to do and I really appreciate it I also just wanted to say you know I'm a solo parent I'm a full-time student I also I'm a school social worker internet UES right now I have a I have a student a son that goes to UES you know I'm hearing a lot about equity tonight and which is ironic considering this legislature that was supposed to be equitable that is really feeling highly inequitable and I just wanted to be a voice that maybe I really haven't been hearing in this conversation it's a voice of lower income people renters in Montpelier you know I really really worry about property tax increases at this really high level I worry about landlords increasing rents to a to a place where it's not attainable it's not it doesn't feel feasible and you know I also I just I just want to say that I I really appreciate Lynn talking about this last week briefly about the fixed income and her worry about this same thing and I just really don't feel like it's been in this conversation enough I also just want to say you know it can make a really big impact these numbers on lives in our communities and you know with a lot of students that I work with on a daily basis and it worries me a lot so I just wanted to add that voice to this conversation and I also just wanted to say you know every day being at UES I see the hard work that the faculty does and the teachers do and how sin-stretch they are already with you know IA's and subs and cutting those positions really really worries me also so I just sort of wanted to add that voice to the conversation thank you so much I'm Frandad I live in Montpelier I'm a Montpelier grandparent of one child that one grandchild at UES and another one coming next year to the same school I want to first express appreciation for all the work that I do I I can't even imagine how much time you spend on this so I appreciate that couple of things I want to say well several things I want to say one is I don't think that we can count on the legislature to improve things within a year they made a recent attempt to improve act 127 and instead it made Montpelier who knows what will happen in the near future second the emotional decision would be to keep Roxbury open forever or at least for another year and I appreciate the the pull towards that because I I've been listening the last few boards board meetings and hearing that I don't know if that's the best decision for the system as a whole including the Roxbury students future so I think it's very important to make a rational decision about all this and one of the concerns that I have is the idea putting a lot of fund balance towards this that you have to then increase property taxes next year to make up for what you don't do this year by keeping the school open this year Roxbury school obviously another concern I have is how much would be cut in terms of support staff and other staffing in Montpelier that will affect both the older Roxbury students and what there is to receive Roxbury students next year on the elementary level I think it's really important to keep a good support staff in place because there are a lot of very good people who work there now who can usher students through and I imagine that at least some of the Roxbury students would move this year with the students and I really like the idea that they would have each other that the students would have teachers even if it wasn't their own teacher that they would be in the building and there would be familiar faces and I really want I really hope that the next couple of years and what viability the the schools have to function well and to continue to function well I really support Rett's ideas about an after school program at Roxbury if that's at all feasible and keeping that building open for planning year and I appreciate the Roxbury parents that that might be a viable option to seriously consider so I just asked the board to consider what is actually better in the long run and how will it be better next year and how will the budget be passed next year if too big a hole is dug thanks friend we have Chad Simmons thank you again everyone thank you again everyone it's been a really informative and I would add emotional conversation so I again I just want to share my appreciation for all the work that's gone in and the thoughtfulness that's gone in I'll just add a couple of things from what I said before and echoing a lot of what's been said in the room already I really think we do need to look at the equitable solution in terms of how this will impact families and and learners I I really applaud and want to advocate for that creative curious solution of looking at what a slightly more a slightly higher tax rate would look like like a 16% I think was mentioned I would like to see that those options considered and give our communities another year to figure out how a step down what a step down would look like and to Caitlin talked about that housing impact I work in my job is affordable housing our family was able to to buy a house in Montpelier I should start off by saying I have a third grader at UES and I just put her down to sleep and told her you know what this looks like for kids her age who are having to contemplate and families having to contemplate going to another school and our family really can't afford increased property taxes but I think we can as as a community thinking about this as a community an active community so I would again echo what others have said is kind of encourage our advocacy up not just to the legislature I heard a lot of energy go towards the legislature and I think that is a great avenue I know Jay's in the room I know Kate and Connor have been active in these conversations so talking with our legislative folks about the impact and seeing if there's creative solutions in the next couple of months but I do want to advocate for some more time and a longer runway and I agree with a lot of what's been said in the room thank you Melissa Starr can you hear me okay thank you spoke last time I have a second grader at RVS I also have a fifth grader at MSMS I can say unequivocally that the relationships built with the families at RVS are the only reason the logistics of sending Roxbury students to Montpelier is possible without those relationships formed with the children when they're at RVS and the parents is the only way we can make the terrible bus scheduling and the bus route that we all agree does not work to make it work for our families is because of that support system I also think that the transition that we allow for our fourth graders to have between RVS and MSMS inclusion of the UES kids takes months of planning and every year it's evolving to make it better and I agree wholeheartedly that that still has to continue however the timeframe given right now to do that for kindergarten through third graders who there is no plan in place something that we have evolved for years on making it the best opportunity for our fourth graders we would not afford to our kindergarten through third graders and that's extremely unfortunate especially trying to explain to my second grader why he can't go to that school anymore I was humbled when I came to this district as my daughter was a kindergartner we live almost on the Northfield border I sent her to Northfield preschool logistically it worked for our family I sat in front of this board when the only member there still there is Jim and pleaded for my daughter to go to Northfield not Roxbury because it didn't work for our family and I had not heard good things about the district granted the merger was happening that year she's a fifth grader now I'm not the person standing before you saying I'm going to take my child and go to go to Northfield my daughter is not necessarily I wouldn't say thriving at Montpelier but she's learning her way it is spent a long road since September when she arrived but she's slowly gaining ground I can't imagine what it would do to my third grader the humble opportunity of ES and realize on the first Thanksgiving we used to have an all family Thanksgiving in that little room that you're in and having Tina stand up and tell all the families in very more eloquent words than I can say if you who was receiving your holiday meal or your gifts or your gift cards that were going to make your holiday season a little easier for your family they were available out front this community when I realized two-thirds of our families were picking up those bags and leaving our school was humbling to me to realize that as a middle class family I'm the minority in that school with those kids and I don't mean that in any context putting down those families they're doing what they can for them rushing this situation and forcing parents to come up with other alternatives whether it's changing jobs buying second cars all the things I'm hearing from Montpellier residents about the increase to their taxes ours went up as well you're just passing the buck unfortunately onto these 36 kids or 42 kids worth of families to figure it out in a very short time frame and we all know the bus doesn't work 6.30 in the morning and 50% of those stops that that bus makes for RVS kids are not on the MSMS bus or Ministry High School bus that leaves Roxbury you're adding 50% more stops to that bus which takes time so you're going to take that 6.30 and push it back even farther for a kindergartner that is just ridiculous in my mind that we would think that one bus in this budget if we were to close Roxbury would work and that is extremely short-sighted thank you I think that is the end of the public comment in terms first of all I want to thank everyone for for both showing up and for speaking very eloquently to a lot of really complicated and very difficult situations as I think helped us all obviously it's going to be a very tough decision but this input is helpful to do this and get it but taking taking the time to be here late tonight and to hear from everyone is very helpful and I know that fan is probably not helping the audio I think in terms of next steps what I've heard is we want to probably have a representation of what we got it sounds like we want a 16 to 17 percent scenario with a large amount of fund balance used to get there also shown, mapped out because two or three members have expressed a desire to at least see that and then maybe also build into one of the 13, 14 percent the cost of an after-school program at RBS with moving the K through 4 through RBS does that sound right in terms of what we want to see on the 20th? That would already be in there that's what the 14 percent represents okay I feel I want to just mention that looking at option one on the 13 percent increase and option two it kind of looks like it says if you get your school we won't bust your kids back from Montpelier if it's if it's an if it's an either or and I don't think it's an either or but maybe I misunderstood the or the 14 percent increase eliminate PM busing and RBS that was from Montpelier to Roxbury those two things aren't together they're separate okay gotcha so the school is here but there's no bus home from here not from there right I didn't understand I felt like that wasn't didn't seem right so I'm sorry I apologize and I'll tell you one thing that at least I'm very committed to yeah regardless of if if we do end up moving K through four from Roxbury to UES we will spend the next several months we've got a committee set up ensuring that we do I think we can to make transportation is easy for those kids and to make the integration as easy for those kids I mean that will be the highest priority at least of me and I think of the committee we set up if that ends up happening and if that ends up happening a year down the road that will also be you know I think a high priority because I I hear you on transportation I mean there is a reality of living in a rural place that you're going to have longer bus times but we need to live as easy as we practically can to that end I'd like to add you know in the new numbers that we see next week what it would look like to add an additional A&P and bus that comes up to Roxbury 75,000 75,000 okay so if we were to send two buses to Roxbury both East Roxbury Central West Roxbury Central something like that it's $75,000 per bus yes okay well thank you everyone can I have a motion to adjourn second second all those in favor aye great thank you all sorry about that