 want to introduce myself. My name is Richard Scheer and I am a Montpelier long-time Montpelier resident district too and I do not sit on the school board. I never sit on the school board. Next to me is the school board chair Jim Murphy and he's been the chair for how long? Since 2018, so six years I think. He's paid the big bucks to make those decisions. How much does the school chair make? $200 a year. That's the big bucks. Orca is filming this tonight and I'll ask that if you have a question please identify yourself, wait a second so that she can kind of swing the camera around and tell us where you're from. If you're from Knoxbury or from Montpelier tell us please and we do not have a moderator tonight for a reason. We know each other. We've been collaborating for years. We've been not collaborating for years but I can tell you that this man answers each and every email I send in a very respectful and very complete manner. Jim is going to represent the board and the upcoming budget. He's going to advocate for it and I am going to oppose the upcoming budget for very particular reasons and they have to do with fiscal management. Keep in mind this is not blood sport. You know we're going to ask everybody to please be respectful and not come to guns about blazing but feel free after we've sat and made our short presentations to ask any and all questions and we will attempt to answer them. Some of this is going to be really technical particularly when we're going to open up with Act 127 and 127 is floating as we speak. You know it's very fluid up in the state house and it's going to require something that only a few in this room probably understand and that's the concept of CLA. The concept of how property is appraised and I want to get two things down at the very very beginning of this. One the Roxbury tax rate is not half of the Montpelier tax. It's a complicated story as to how they arrive at a different tax rate than we do but they're not getting a tax rate that we're not getting. So I want to get that down right off the bat so that's off the table. Second there is a quality education to be had at Union Elementary School. I will testify to that. Our son went through Union Elementary School. It was absolutely a great experience that helped to shape him not only educationally but as a person and we do have room at Montpelier Union Elementary School for more kids without adding staff. So I want to get those two off the table and now we're going to turn to what could be a very very difficult discussion Act 127. Start with the history please. First of all I want to clarify a couple things. I am not here to advocate for the budget. I'm here to explain the budget as a board. We do not tell you how to vote. I will tell you that the the budget was passed now honestly by the board. The board took a long time to consider the budget. We considered it for about two months under a very fluid situation with the state which was Act 127. That situation is still fluid. We cannot tell you how that's going to end up. We can't tell you what it came at us one way. It changed midstream. What the effect of that is going to on our tax rate is going to be is is hard for us to know. That is because of a very complicated formula and a lot of dynamics that that happened with Act 27. The bottom line is what the board focused on was the educational needs of our kids. We have focused on systems that want to achieve academic excellence, support the wellness, the belonging, and well-being of our kids and staff, and keep our facilities at the level they need to be. We passed what is essentially a level budget. What I mean by level budget is we just basically continued what we were doing from last year. We actually cut a few positions and we reduced some spending, some kind of discretionary spending to try to control costs. The overall impact on local taxes, we cut some positions, but we also moved to some federal positions into the local budget. The local budget was basically kept level, but the overall effect was that we reduced some positions. We felt this was the best thing for our schools. The questions we asked our administrators was what do you need to do to make sure that we have the educational excellence for kids that that our kids deserve. There was nothing new thrown in. We did not throw in any new projects. We did not put bells and whistles on. We did not add positions. Again, it's a net reduction in positions. We went on what our administrators told us was the best thing to do. The question of Roxbury Village School has come up. I'm not here to advocate for or to advocate against Roxbury Village School. The school, as I think Richard is going to point out, is expensive and there are some educational challenges there that I will not dispute at all. What we decided to do, what the board was reluctant to do, was to close that school, which has been the centerpiece of the Roxbury community for a long, long time. It was a very important part of that community, was to take this year and by the next budget cycle, which starts in fall, form a committee, which we've already formed, to look at that school and see what the best course of action is, including closing that school and bringing the kids to Union Elementary School. We want to do it in a way that's fair and inclusive to both communities that listens to the voices of Roxbury. I spent time in Roxbury. There's a couple members from the Roxbury community here. I have not gotten any sentiment that Roxbury residents think that UES is a bad place for their kids to be educated, but they do like, many of them do like their school. They like having a small, local school and I think they want a fair discussion about its future and I think there's also the possibility that many of them may think that UES is the best option. That's a discussion we want to have. I just want to bring, when small schools are closed in Vermont, this is the type of study. This is a small school that was closed in Mattsfield. This is the type of study that takes place. We did not have time to do this type of study. We did not have time to look at the numbers to get the public input. That's what we're committed to doing and I understand two things. I understand one, we could have started this earlier and there's reasons we didn't, but some of them are excuses. We could have started this earlier. We'll just concede that off the bat. Two, it would have a difference on our taxes this year, but the board very strongly felt that the timeframe that we had to make that decision was simply too short. We could not hear from the communities and we could not move forward. I can either give you a moment or I can dive into Act 127 and why it's a bit of a question. Well, I have a question on 127. What was the legislation? Again, I was hoping you'd give an overview of 127 and then I was hoping that you would speak to 127 next year, the following year, the following year. Is this a one-year phenomenon with the district having to nip and talk to meet? Well, 127 was really passed was the crux of 127. The education formula is complicated math. You could teach a course on it. I think all of you could spend a semester in a college level course on it and still have questions about how and why it's structured the way it is. On the most basic level, the administrative formula came out of Act 60, which tried to equalize spending. It's essentially a combination of a state education fund that's distributed to schools and then local tax payers pick up the remainder of what the state education fund doesn't allocate. The state education fund is distributed based on what's called a weighted pupil scale. So weighted pupils are they take all the students and then they assign weights to them basically based on their education items. What happened with and then districts are assigned a certain number of students and that certain number of students basically determines the amount of money from the state per pupil that that district gets, which is called the dollar yield. The more money that a district gets, the more students a district has and the more money per pupil that the state gives the district, the lower the property tax. The fewer students a district has and the fewer dollars that that dollar yield gives to the state, the higher the property tax. So what Act 127 did on its face was it changed the weights. So for instance, a student that might be weighted, no very fewer weighted of one to one, might be rated say like a 1.1 became a 2.5 and some that might have been weighted like a 1 went down to a 0.5. So that weighting shifted and it was based on need and the districts that that gained under that were generally in two categories. Some of our more urban districts with a higher diversity population, particularly students who have English as their second language because it's very resource intensive to educate those students. Winooski for instance gained greatly under this and the other were some of our lower income rural districts who also have a lot of students who are more expensive and have higher needs to educate. Montpelier lost because we actually have most of our students, not all of our students are not as high needs as some others. So that number of pupils as a result of the act went down, which means again our pupils go down, local taxes go up. We expected that. What the legislature did to try to, so what they realized is that okay, some districts are going to gain and some districts are going to lose funds. The districts that lose funds we want to blunt the impact. So what we're going to do is we're going to cap the amount of property tax that those districts can have. So even if the shift would result in say a 12% increase in property tax, we're going to cap that at 5. So what happened is all the money from the ad fund, which is, you know, this size shifted over this way to the districts that gained, but what happened with the districts that lost, and I hate to use the word lost, but the districts that were disadvantaged is the state said we're not going to shift all of that proportionately to your local income tax. We're going to backfill some of that with the Education Fund too. So the Education Fund got stretched in two directions and then on top of it what some districts did was they said, great, our local property taxes tax is capped at 5%. What a great year to put in a bunch of projects that we otherwise would have to bond or put on our local property taxes, but now the ad fund is going to cover it. So the state's going to cover it. So a bunch of districts did that. So between it being stretched just by design and then stretched by people saying, hey, it's basically a free lunch. I'm going to stuff my pockets with as much food as possible. The ad fund got stretched hugely and that dollar yield, that per pupil amount from the state plummeted. It went from when the legislature finally realized what it did. It had plummeted. It was heading towards 50% of what it was the year before, which means all of that money that the state was giving us the year before shifted from not affecting our property tax to like, okay, now the citizens of Montpelier and Roxbury need to make up that gap, which is why we had the huge numbers we did. So basically we had a level funded budget and the increases came in two places mainly because it is an increase, but again, it's not because we added stuff. It's because we have increased expenses. And those two things dropped are number of students and the amount we got from the state and they both dropped significantly. So basically the state piece of the pie went like this, which means that the accordion side on the local property tax went like that. And the two areas that influenced most of our spending increase, we gave our teachers, as did pretty much all districts across the state, a sizable adjustment in their compensation of 8%, which was done with the fact that verbata as a whole was lagging. We need to stay competitive with other districts and our teachers are very valuable. They are getting to the point where like, let's be honest, a teacher is going to have a hard time living in Montpelier what most teachers make without a second income. And the second part was there was a 16% increase in healthcare costs. That is most of what the increase between last year and this year is, but it is not because we added things. I agree. Jim, could you speak about the cliff in 1430? So, okay, so here's what I didn't explain. So what was happening with the cap, and this is where the legislature came in and changed things, was it was stretching the education fund this way, but the cap was supposed to stay in place for five years, which meant that for the next five years, people were just going to continue devouring the effort. The legislature realized that and realized that that would be catastrophic. So what the legislature did, and they did this very recently, it was signed into law I think last week, was they got rid of the cap. And then they replaced it for a few districts with a extent decrease that's going to phase out over a few years. But that sent decrease is not a cap. It's just however much you want to spend, we'll diminish it a little, and then we'll up it over the next few years. So most of the spending increases that districts have taken on, they're going to have to bear. This is good news and bad news. It's bad news this year because what the cap was going to do is, is if the cap stayed in place, we'd kind of do this at the 5%. And then we hit a point where like the end fund was done at year five, and then we'd have a huge spike. And the spike was showing that unless we were cutting like four or so million, which just for to put it out, there's like 40 teachers. We were 4 million out of what's the total school budget? 32, yeah, which is like 40 people. That we would have an enormous tax increase at the end because the end fund would be toast. What the removal of the cap is of the bad news is we have more of a hit this year. The good news is that that flaw, that flaw of eating the end fund is not going to happen. The end fund is going to stabilize. And actually one of the reasons we can't really give a fair estimate of what the tax increases is because now that the end fund is now that the cap has been removed, a lot of districts, particularly the districts that put in a lot of bells and whistles and are now having to either get rid of those costs or pass them a lot to their taxpayers are removing those bells and whistles. So that dollar yield that did this is now starting to creep up again. And we don't know where that final number is going to land. We probably won't know till May or June. But the further that goes up, the lower our taxes go up. Right now, if it stays where it is, our taxes are going to be they'll hide. The other thing applies to their taxes, the CLA would give that like 23, 24%, which makes my heart stop. And I get why everyone is freaking out about that. I'm freaking out about it. I don't like it. We expect that dollar yield to go to keep going up, which means that that tax number will go down. Where that ends up is really tough to tell. Again, that depends on what the other districts, because a lot of other districts right now, again, that inflated their budget are reducing it. So that amount of reduction is going to influence that. And also, the legislature understands the situation. So there have been promises and we all know what political promises are. We wait until we see them in print. But I think there are a sincere desire, particularly on the part of the Washington County delegation, to find as much money right now to put in the ad fund for this year to make that better. But the good news is that five year spike, because the formula has changed, because the cap has been removed, this is really going to be the year of a big hit. And then it's going to stabilize. Yeah. Because that cap's not there, because it's not going to be drained. So it's a good long term move by the legislature. It makes this year more meaningful. The question I think that I have is next year. And then we don't know what next year is, but we know that it's not returning to the level it was two years ago or last year. We know that our count, you know, our funding is not going to return relatively speaking to the level it was. I don't know if we know that or not. I think it might be, I think the state education fund might be similar to what we end up seeing this year. And again, it's not what we were seeing in the past. It's not what we were seeing in the past. No. Can you explain CLA just briefly why that tax rate is different than Roxbury and that it is in Montpelier? So the CLA is called the common level of appraisal. And with the caveat that I'm not an accountant, this is my explanation as a layperson on the board. What it attempts to do is to take the difference between the appraised value and the market value of your home. So every 10 years we do an appraisal. And here's where Montpelier is getting hit. So with our recent reappraisal, it actually kicked in so the benefit was seen last year. Right now we have a, let's get up the math right, we basically have a CLA at like 113. Which is based on our reappraisal and then increase in market value. So what we're seeing is we're seeing a big bump because of that reappraisal that's essentially creating an automatic 100 to 113, an automatic 13% raise in taxes. If we didn't add anything to it from the budget, we've got like a 13% raise banged in. So that's just because of the adjustment in property values due to the CLA. Roxbury does not have that going on because their appraisal cycle is different. So that's the CLA. That's the other big piece of our tax rate that we really can't do anything about. I mean, if we did everything we could to I mean like cutting like millions of dollars in the school budget, it would be very hard to get below that 13%. Hold on. We'll come back to it. You'll be able to ask questions, all the questions you want, but let's continue the flow of this so that we cover what we... Yeah, I'd also want to be transparent too. Like Roxbury has historically had a lower tax rate than Montpelier for a variety of reasons, but data historically had a lower tax rate than Montpelier. I'd like to open on 127 dealing with the revenues, the surplus that the reserve funds that the board had. Basically the 1.9 encumbered for the high school track that was less than $400,000 so that they could have a safe track. The idea, how much of that reserve was used to balance this budget? Just under a half bill. So basically the budget was balanced at under a half a million. I have a concern not that I wouldn't have supported that had I been sitting on that board given the same circumstances with the 1.5 million staying in the budget initially, I probably would have used that reserve as well. I would have questioned that, but I would have used that reserve instead of chopping teachers. Well, I mean I think there's two things. One, you don't want to chop teachers. We talked about using more reserve. We decided against it for a couple reasons. One, we are hoping that fund stabilizes, we're not sure that fund stabilizes. I think it's been it's been a service at the legislature with Act 127. The other thing is we have, we realize right now that the budget is tight and we really want to contain costs while continuing education excellence over the next year. We've got PCB tests at the high school. We definitely were sobered by the fact that U32, which was built very much at the same time, Montpelier High School, has a PCB problem. If we've got reserve funds to deal with that PCB problem, we don't have to bond it, bonding that's going to increase taxes. So we wanted to keep a little bit of money around for the next few years for, because they're going to be tight years for unanticipated fixes. We know we've got the PCB thing working. And we're hopeful that Act 127 is going to stabilize and that 850 did what it needed during our Act 50 did what it needed to do. We're not sure. I have from the paper, I have an authority, I'm going to quote now, spending it all now is not going to avoid everything we talked about for the next five years, said Murphy. That's it, Chief. And then Mia Moore. But was this pre or because a lot of things were said when the cap was around that are not necessarily stopped. Mia said, if the district spends that money now, then it's gone. We don't get to use it again. And I agree. I mean, even now, that's very prudent. It's not a, the thing about revenue is if you spend one time money on ongoing things, you just buy yourself a year. Joe Remick on the board said she hoped the district wouldn't continue to a death by a thousand cuts. And that's everyone's fear. That's that's the educational quality that you speak of. When I present my side, I'm much more fiscally cautious than this approach. I'm much more aware of if things do not go the way that we want them to go, that we have not only a full reserve, but we have passed a full reserve, that we have a million dollars passed after we've reinvested the 500,000 that we spent on this budget as a hedge against future budget cuts that appear down this road. We want to keep the budget stable, the quality stable that we were purchasing before Act 127. We want the quality that we had. We're in a world of diminished resources now. And basically what I am saying is that 1.5 million to support 40-some-odd children. Now keep in mind it's not 1.5 million because you still have to educate those children one city union. You have to net that out the cost of their education at union. But we're talking approximately a million dollars net for 40 children as a buttress against educational cuts. And I'm not going to say for Montpelier children because it's not Montpelier children. It's Montpelier children at union Roxbury and Montpelier students at both the high school and the middle school. And I'm going to return back to if we're done I'm going to return to Act 46. And Act 46 was the Act back in 2017 that passed 83 to 50 in the House. And basically the Joint Fiscal Committee said that the legislature spent 31 million dollars in property tax breaks to support the merger of those districts. 206 districts in 185 towns have formed 50 new union school districts. A reduction of 158. And basically it was an attempt that the state legislature's attempt to bring rationale. It was not the first attempt. I mean they've been doing this gradually over time. They've been trying to shrink the number of union school districts that we have simply to get rid of the administrative overhead if nothing else. But also to deal with the micro schools. And that was a very very controversial part of Act 46. But there were hours of testimony on what would happen in those communities to the micro elementary schools. And basically what happened was that the legislature decided that they would do a not so much for us. It was it was almost like the stick. If you were under a certain level you really were asked to dance in the merger dance. Districts that were above a certain level were exempted from this particular or deal I suppose or challenge I suppose is a better word. And basically what the legislature decided to do is to sweeten it and give us incentives to bring about and rid inefficiency economic inefficiencies in the system while trying to keep up educational quality. You know it was it was a push me pull me. But what they did was it was signed in 2017 and we have not one but two people in this room who actually were in that room that go from possibly three like Nancy. Right. So we have three people in this room who were in that room negotiating this. And basically in May of 2017 a formal 23 page report that they drafted went to the board of education was approved went for a vote and both the town and the city approved this. Yes. In 2018 if everybody's following me in exchange for that approval our tax rate was not ten cents. Ten eight six. Then in 2019 it was eight. Then in 2020 it was six. Then in 2021 it was four. In 2022 it was a mere two cents. And then the state subsidy disappeared. And it was easy. People sit and approach me and say in 2023 where are you saying this school is still in the budget. You know. And basically no one was noticing it because June brought in a budget in 2023 at one point eight percent. And then the state tacked on another nine percent nine some odd percent. And it went unnoticed. And it went unnoticed simply because the budget was born to that level and it accommodated to that level. However this budget is not accommodating to that level we've had a C shift. And basically the C shift is such that we're laying off teachers. The C shift is such that we're buying out our most experienced teachers. Yes we have offered to buy out to our most experienced teachers. We have we have done that but I mean there's there's other factors apply this is this more complicated than but it is. However when on the bottom line is the bottom line is that we have to we have to balance a budget. Now that's not to say that I'm criticizing you for doing that because again we're that one point five million frozen in that budget and forcing these kinds of decisions. I would likely have joined you in these kinds of decisions. The question now is when the town of Rocksbury was sold this budget in 2017 they had according again according to the paper they had gone to Rocksbury and Rocksbury had said now we're going to take questions later. I know but it's kid after seven. Oh okay. And so would we absolutely absolutely Rocksbury very fascinating but I think we'll need to talk about what's going on now. Okay Rocksbury was told that in essence that this might not be forever and in that negotiation in the document is written that Rocksbury can purchase that school for one dollar that is written into the negotiation and it was written in with the notion in Rocksbury that that there was a strong possibility that this would indeed close someday in Montpelier. There is a strong possibility that this will indeed close someday. Pardon? There is a strong possibility that the school of which is what the board is looking into right now. The question is we all took that tax break. We took 10 cents, 8 cents, 6 cents. It seems like we had a community understanding and I looked at the paper I looked at the contemporary records there was no record of this school being sold as staying open past the tax break that was offered by the state that was subsidizing it. So basically what I'm saying is that 1.5 million for this year I've read that the school is closing in a month it wouldn't be closing in a month it's going to be open the entire school year it would be closed it would be closed in September it's six months away and basically I am saying that the 1.5 million dollars would be an excellent hedge for us in the district for our school children to protect future budgets from cuts and that's all I'm going to say. And I'll just I'll just say three things because we are where we're in an uncost engagement. Yeah as I've stated you know the board and I'll give a little history there there are two things agreed upon and the rock about the rice variable of school and the merger that it would stay open for four years and that the town could buy it back for a dollar if they've ever closed and the time offered it. There was no promise of what was going to happen beyond the four years. There were talks in 2019 of putting together a committee to investigate the future of the school and to see its viability. Then if folks remember we had a pandemic this chewed up enormous school resources including the board. Those conversations got pushed back when we finally started coming out of of the the pandemic what we what the board embarked upon was a values and mission driven discussion because we frankly didn't have it in writing with the idea that we would have the Roxbury Village School for two of a conversation driven by those values that we put together and put together a great process. We've done that we are now moving to that part of looking again at the future of Roxbury Village School for next budget. So there's three things that there are three cost containment potential cost containment things that the board is seriously looking at because again like we see the numbers and we're worried about it. It's 7.15 can Dean Wiggy here be allowed to ask the question? Please don't. Well this is important. Everybody who's here has studied it carefully or they wouldn't be here. Then what are the three things I'm going to say? I don't care. I want people here to be able to ask questions. I think other people might care. How many people here want to ask their questions? So the three things we're looking at are sending Roxbury Village School people to Roxbury Village students to Unilot Bay School in a way that ensures that those students in that transition is best for the students and the families in Roxbury. Two, we have declining enrollment and we are going to be continuing to look at staff reductions. And three, we have reached out to our neighbors in Washington Central. We want to have a serious discussion about possible murder there because that could also be a big potential savings. We don't know but we want to look at it. We have those answers. Those are three things we're going to do within the next year. I think all three of them meet the goals of maintaining educational excellence and cost containment. So with that I will open up a person who said I definitely want you know time for feedback but sorry if I was a little short there but I think that those are important points that I think people in the room want. If people stand up and say where you're from. Questions? Oh I should someone's got a question. So my name is Ben Hinkus. I'm a proud graduate of Roxbury Village School and I sent my sons to Roxbury Village School a number of years ago too. So and I've returned to Roxbury but father passed away some 10 years ago and I know there's a lot of people who might want to speak so I want to make this quickly but it's really important for me to make it. I'm a little bit upset about the format of this. It feels kind of one-sided sided a little bit like Richard. This is kind of your show if you're advocating for the rapid closure of Roxbury Village School and you said some things in the editorial that I'm really upset about. You say the million plus subsidy is not an educational decision made by the board the school board I assume you mean is instead a defiant political statement on rural social justice. We just a couple of words about Roxbury. I love my town. I grew up there and not one thing Richard in this in your editorial if you communicate anything about our community and how important that is. I'm speaking from my heart. We're a struggling community and there's so much about subsidy subsidy this subsidy that in the editorials it makes it seem like you're dismissive of the fact that we do have high needs you know we're a poor town in a relatively poor county. To dismiss this as something negative to have rural social justice is hurtful. It's insulting for struggling working people in this in the state and in the town of Roxbury. I you know I also want to say I think Union Elementary School it's a wonderful school as is Roxbury I'm up here in high school in no way am I critical of those school choices so I agree with you Richard. They're wonderful choices but I'm concerned about sending a five-year-old almost three-hour trip round trip by school bus a five-year-old child from Roxbury that that's concerns me. I've no note let me finish. The only time you mention anything about anything personal or compassionate about our community you say Roxbury parents have nothing to fear and fully integrating into our district this fall. I'll tell you what I fear I fear having a young child have to travel that far. I fear the breakdown of the cohesion of Roxbury as a result of the school closing fast. I have no doubt the school will have to close but I just plead with you all please tell your friends vote in support of the school budget just for this year I have no doubt that the school will close but we just need that one year and I don't know Fred you know we've been working the one question is what would this make the difference in your taxes I don't know six percent for one year increase to sustain Roxbury Village School but I see some head shaking that I just want to let you know one point there were 11 school districts in Roxbury all these many little schools that was the nature of New England schooling at one point. I went to Roxbury Village School when it was a two-room schoolhouse Mr. Smith and Ms. Hanna and a Morvan and Rich Smith and I'm proud of going to one of the last two-room schoolhouses in the state of Vermont and then around I think 1980 the renovation happened expanded it. It's small rural schools everything I've been doing research on property values within proximity to the school when the school closes how powerful that is for property values all I'm asking is for that one more year and all I'm asking for is you all to vote in support of the school budget for this year and I just I feel like we're a community we have history and there's a the pan-African proverb it takes the village to raise a child it's a global proverb and in with the breakdown of village life and community life as a result of modern America our village is really our public school system that's where we meet we connect with parents we we provide a support network when our tunes are troubled this is the center of our community so all I plead is just don't take that away from us so quickly thank you excuse me the only way that I can respond to that is to say that a number of communities across the state face this same challenge the district spaces challenge well I mean again this is this is the study that these communities go through before they make this decision they don't do it but they made that decision and they made that decision and here we can make that decision too at a cost of 1.5 million dollars you're minimizing the value of 1.5 million let's let's hear from some people in the in the audience please yeah if you'd stand up and say who you are please or who are you who are you pointing to go ahead why don't you go ahead okay I'm from Roxbury and your name is Tom Frazier thank you and I've been to these meetings and spoken several times about this and it's to absolutely no avail but rather than take an emotional approach to Roxbury which is you know us losing our town center I happen to live right across from the school and I was instrumental in building the school and rather than do that I want to use your own numbers okay so these numbers are from the school board's budget on page on slide 14 k through 4 us 332 kids on slide 16 rvs 42 kids school it's uh it's expense per school rvs slide 20 okay rvs 37,426 ues 32,600 32,368 that's a $5,000 difference okay now take a little further 32 and and what 332 plus 42 374 students from slide 20 the cost per student is uh right no if you take the total cost of the ues program at 332 students at 32,000 32,368 comes out the 10,746 dollars 46 and 176 dollars 30 10,746,176 if you do rvs plus you ues at the 32,000 dollars which is your number for your to educate a kid in ues that's on slide 20 don't don't interrupt me it's slide 20 it's it's there the number is 12,000 12,105,632 so 10 million from 12 million leaves you 1,359,456 dollars which is the increase to the to the ues budget over to take in our kids it's not 1.5 million and the cost of our school is not 1.5 if you take the 13 million or 1.359,469 from 1.5 your savings gets comes down to 140,000 dollars you can look at the numbers i'm using the state numbers and they're on the state site it well it's then you better look at the bottom the monthly or board numbers sir those aren't those don't do it for it sorry they're selling this on a per student cost everything is per student it doesn't matter if you've got you know and i i believe those numbers they're living provided at the sub one but the overall cost it is around 1.5 million and i it's not 1.5 million how much does it cost it cost a per student cost the educated kid in ues how much is it see it's 32 million well it's slide 20 go home and look at slide one and now i mean both the business manager and the superintendent have broken down the math it's it's it's 1.5 i mean we can we can you're not going to you have to make the merits of the cost but the number the number has been confirmed you have to spend it at ues though how can you have how can you not say that you're not you're not going to educate those kids you're going to put them you're going to put them in a closet and not spend any money on yeah that's basically what you're saying because it's not going putting 42 kids in that school is not going to increase your cost at all 36 it's just unbelievable it will increase costs it we can absorb those students without any staff not on a per student basis it's still going to come out to the same number i just i just told you yeah there are other expenses involved it is i mean i this is not a dog in the fight this is just this is talking to the business manager talking to the superintendent seeing the numbers out then if the business manager and the superintendent have so much on the ball why would they put these numbers in that in that hand i i i don't think they've been broken down exactly as it comes out i think you're looking at numbers and you're making extrapolation no i'm not you i i don't think you yeah you are not going to save 1.5 million dollar it's just an absolute fiction right behind the gentleman from rockstery would you stand identify yourself in what city you're from place dip sergeant montalier um i have so many thoughts rolling through me um um phil scott signed a bill enabling schools to to postpone budget votes why has montalier not considered that we didn't consider we decided not to do the reason that we decided not to use that point earlier um we felt that we had made the reasonable and responsible cuts that were given there was not there were not obvious places to cut uh we did not want to cut the rocksbury village school in we had essentially we had essentially eight days to make a decision or we would not be able to make reduction in forces which would basically be the closure of montalier or rocksbury or any other reduction in forces given our union contract which were locked into we did not want to make a decision this large and i think some of the reasons that that the rocksbury community which are our neighbors and our friends and which we four years ago jointly agreed to enter into a district with as neighbors and friends i think they feel they deserve that conversation i think they feel they deserve the study they deserve the conversation they deserve the time to think about some of those questions we were not going to make that decision unilaterally in eight days otherwise there wasn't anything that we cut and it would have been the same budget so we put it forward i understand that there was the issue of the pandemic and and that was certainly has certainly been an ongoing issue but but compacted with our schools and rocksbury being part of that um why are you using that as a reason to not ask them to follow the original agreement what why are we not asking them to follow it i as i as they did not agree to close the school they never the students were supposed to be coming over here within three three years maybe maybe it's four or five but has it not been five years the the only thing we agreed to was that the board did not have the power to close the school for four years there was no there was beyond that four years other years yeah but there's it all that all that happens is past four years is the board can close the school we didn't agree to close the school we didn't say we were going to close the school um okay we there was no agreement there was no agreement you know i mean quite honestly if this if the purpose of this merger was to close rocksbury village school i think we would have done it at the time of the merger that was not the purpose of the merger the purpose of the merger was to to achieve other savings i as a member of the person on the committee i think there was a hope that we would find a way to keep the school viable and open long term and i see tina nodding her head that was that was hope we we knew the school had challenges uh we wanted to give it four years and and see what happened and then have a discussion as there was no agreement i did not understand that i'm sorry but that is not what i understood and as of my period senior with limited income fixed income one of my fears is we are going to lose a significant number of people in this town because when the the uh repraisal and the tax rate come about we are going to see a lot of foresales sign coming up this summer after that happens and rocksbury people are somebody else who's going to come and buy those homes because we're going to lose a lot of our population because they're not going to be able to stay here in my period and that's tragic and i'm concerned about the tax rate too again but and that's largely out of our hands i mean it's largely it's you know most of the factors impacting the tax rate are beyond one point five million like no it would help i don't think it's it's not on the track on the on the budget on the track we the track is not but also i mean if we want new families in if we have dilapidated schools that we're not funding that's not going to help either under the under the um school that actually meets the needs of our elementary school students at our middle school students would help taking that money and applying it to those things because my grandkids can't even go to the playgrounds after school cause act two or whatever it's called kick them off the playground because they needed the playground and there's no other playgrounds that money might help in recreation in my period when my kids went to school here because because they went off of the system they could go to the recreation department after school and do all kinds of activities at for one fee for the year i was on the rec board so it wasn't part of the school system at that time there are all kinds of things that this community needs that i'm not sure having roxbury as part of us is going to help if we have to keep funding their community center keep funding that school somebody else needs to find oh what what i think that the speaker is referring to is jim's statement in the press that um the committee will explore the option of moving rbs elementary students to union elementary school in the year 2026 and repurposing that building in a manner that is most beneficial 2025 right there was 2026 but it's 2025 actually and repurposing that building in a manner that is most beneficial for the town of roxbury is the board proposing to go beyond selling that to roxbury for a dollar to actually repurposing the building before and having the taxpayers pay for that repurposing uh no i mean i don't think we're we're planning on i i think in terms of that it's you know does the town of roxbury want a buyback for a dollar we can't make them if not i'll pay the dollar if they don't you know give it to him uh i it doesn't say offer to richard cheer it says the town of roxbury um so i did it i think we'd want to work with the roxbury community and see you know if we were to sell it to someone else making sure that the town of roxbury had a voice and who that was and what they were planning to use it as beneficial for the town of roxbury i think that's part of the process like i don't we don't just want to leave roxbury in the lurch and and give that school up because it's it's it's a nice building and it should be part of a vibrant roxbury community um seeing that doesn't mean that we're promising to to incur additional expenditures may that happen but i think we want to be partners in the next step on that building if it does close we have another to make sure it's useful yes and hi um hi i'm fenevon barry street um i'm i'm not a citizen and i'm getting ready to vote for the first time in mulpelio i'm very excited about him great um anyway um i'm also a teacher in public school i teach at brain tree elementary um which is just down the road from roxbury um and um obviously hiring season is coming up for um school districts um march and april is a time when people tend to come in then notice for the following year um and it's really hard to find good teachers right now there's a shortage i teach in preschool it's really hard to find people who will stick with it um covid has changed a lot of things in schools you know we we we've heard this evening about um how our tax rate was what it was and now it's different um budgets have changed the needs in schools are more there are more behaviors that we're seeing there are more needs we need more resources in schools basically um anyway um my question is i don't really have a sense of what happens if the budget doesn't get passed other than students' educations and the quality of the education being disrupted somehow can you speak to what the impact will be if this budget doesn't get passed if we vote no uh we will have to go in and find some cuts i think by law we're required to cut at least a dollar and uh set it back to the voters and see if it passes if it if it doesn't pass a second time then we go into a very kind of um contingency land that i don't think we want to be in that i don't fully understand but it's kind of we run on like an emergency bare bones budget so the consequences of another budget i believe if you work on the same budget that last year's was it wasn't it isn't that the school doesn't get any correct yeah might i take it from a political sense if this budget were to go down 52 to 48 in Montpelier i assume it will pass in Rocksbury if it goes down in Montpelier 52 to 48 that is something completely different than if it goes down 60 40 or higher in which case taking this back to the Montpelier voters with the Rocksbury Village School in it will go down to defeat over and over and over i assume that if this budget goes down significantly in Montpelier that the board will seriously consider removing that line item in which case i believe and i would encourage people to vote for that budget i am not going to in any way shape or form or no one that i'm aligned with is going to in any way shape or form save what to do with that 1.5 million because that's an educational decision that should belong to the elected board that includes Rocksbury as well as Montpelier but that i think is is the fate of this thing it's going to be determined if it passes then it passes if it goes down the question is how heavy will it go down and i can guarantee you that Montpelier would not be the only town that rejects this school budget across the stage on town meeting day i think a lot of school budgets will go down i mean i i am hopeful that the citizens of of Montpelier will will understand that we have a a serious and thoughtful process in place about the future of Rocksbury Village School and that we that there is a substantial chance that that process will result in in Rocksbury elementary students going to UES starting in 2025-26 and that that is the compassionate way to handle that issue with our neighbors and it is also a potential cost containment device down the road i am hopeful that people will get that one more now that's you hi Dan Jones candidate for mayor i am um one thank you uh jim for uh including the issue of joining and exploring with u32 i think that's an important piece that we really have to be much more aggressive on secondly um i'm coming at this from both one of my critique is in our town government and uh to some degree the schools i think we've over bureaucratized a lot of things we we're uh we have many people at uh certain levels of management and i i was told this story about Rocksbury in comparison to the Elmore schools by ken jones so i i will reference where it came from said Elmore has one of the most cost efficient small schools about the same size as Rocksbury in the state because they basically have the special needs students go into Morrisville for care and two they don't have a principal i mean they have one of the teachers acting as principal from what i understand the work we're forcing Rocksbury to have a principal and um that we are uh you know so i would like to see us be able to look at more a wider range of options in terms of management not only for Rocksbury but across the board because i think as was pointed out here we have a lot of citizens who are really feeling the pinch this year on the tax i'm just hearing it all over so i understand you as you are i mean it's uh you know it's like holy crap what's going on so you know but i also listen to the Rocksbury parents in the same way that i was in Boston during the 70s when they had the boat busing crisis and they were destroying the community schools in order to try and equalize things which to some degree is like this funding mechanism under 127 so what has happened was you found the core of the communities in the schools destroyed because they were being busted around town and so i hear the the pain of the Rocksbury parents in saying you know shouldn't we be doing something to keep that town center going so like i said i really encourage you if the citizens decide that the school budget is not passed to really take a look deeply at what your management choices are what you were demanding for management because i think we're getting overburdened just like we are on the health care sector just like we are on the higher education sector with too many bureaucrats and not enough teachers uh so i'd like this to be a little bit behind the gentleman you had a posture thank you did you have a posture um i did not but i'll ask one on this for the moment i'm steve seaside of the Montpelier and thanks for this forum and um started with a two-part question a if the if the vote went against the school budget significantly could the board find an equivalent million and a half other than closing the Rocksbury school if that it seems to be a target secondly what happens if you do close the Rocksbury school what happened to that school what happens to the teachers how does that get them from them let me like to know how that works on the ground if it happens uh i i believe the administration has a contingency cut plan i'm not sure that it's exactly 1.5 million but i think it would entail some potentially painful cuts that happens i mean if we're forced to cut we're gonna have to find cut somewhere um but the you know the recommendation right now from the administration is that any any further cuts from what we've done would would be rushed and would impact educational excellence and our ability to teach our kids uh you know if the Rocksbury Village school did close i mean i am not comfortable answering that without having the superintendent and the principal at school really talk about what happened but uh you know those those students would you know they they'd end up at UES at the beginning of next year you know how that transition would take place what support would be given to the families i don't have the answers to those questions and what what would become of the building not have the answer to that question could we pull those teachers into UES still continue to educate those kids uh with the help yeah there would probably be a reduction in force we have quite a few teachers who are leaving this year yeah retiring so we have spaces for yes Rocksbury teachers i believe you had a question i just want to say that i am i'm Katie Swick and i'm a mom pillar resident and a teacher at Rocksbury and i just want people to know that Rocksbury school has very high quality teachers and a high quality education in UES UES if any of my kids go there um it is not necessarily better a school that Rocksbury is very good school too and kids are getting high education high sometimes in the paper it doesn't sound like that so i i want to put it out there in the back that's you uh yep i'm Phil Dodd living Montpelier just quickly on act 46 when that actually passed the legislature Montpelier was not required to merge it was a lot designed to close small schools but that was not a requirement if we had not voted as a town to to merge Rocksbury would have been forced by the state to go with somebody else i doubt they would have linked them up with us um my concern when we did pass that is you know what was going to happen down the road and now we're down the road and we've got a tough choice here um i i'm i guess you know facing this big 24 percent increase or whatever it ends up to be i don't know how much confidence we get out that actually will close in a year i mean i understand there's a committee for it's got representatives 50 50 and the people in Rocksbury were very passionate about keeping their schools so i don't i don't have the level of confidence i'd like to have that it's going to get changed in the future i mean i i can't guarantee what the result of that is i mean i can say we you know we do have cost containment issues that we need to deal with um you know the act 127 even with with the fix is going to uh going to result in in cost containment we have not faced and we're going to have to look at ways to figure that out and and have educational excellence um yeah i i completely agree with with katie that that there are kids there that are getting a great education and there are some over there that are fantastic katie's fantastic the principal's fantastic the staff there is is great um um it's an expensive school that is going against the trend of what is proving sustainable in in the state and and i think that's just a fact we're going to have to grapple with this as we look long term um we know we're having this process to have this process but uh there are a lot of trends out there that the board and the administration are very aware of and um i think we'll we'll make the best decision even if it's tough decision but i yeah i we're having the we're having the process to get to that decision so i'm not going to say what it is until you get there but you know the the the trends are there to see if you want to if you if you take a look one final one nathan in the back place well the stage of maintenance i think that the sooner or the paper will clear um i think that what i'm struck by is the where we are we will kill you rocksbury are in this we're in the strange full from position where the decisions the school board made and our district made about the needs of our students happened with their best understanding of what act 127 would mean with the best interest of the students at heart with a sustainable model for our district and then the state legislature realized they screwed things up and they changed the game and we are still as a community two communities faced with meeting the needs of our students and i'm i trust that the district in fact i watched that the school board and the administration shaped this budget and voted and i think that those needs have not changed and the good responses that they've had in the budget have not changed and so as a community it's not our fault that the state hasn't figured out well how to fund education despite tinkering with it and so i hope that uh we give grace to the folks who are leaders in our district in our work that they've done and uh so i thank you both for being here tonight but especially jim who's been doing hard work like that i want to close just one comment this is being held in the haze conference room of the kennel on hubbard library i would urge everyone watching this who lives in my failure to vote yes for the levy that supports the kennel on hubbard library and allows it to hold meetings such as the civic meetings and be truly the heart of our community uh thank you very much for coming tonight and make sure that you and your neighbors get out and vote no matter how you vote get out and vote on town naming day yeah no thank you for coming