 Thank you very much, Deb. And I second Deb's thanks to you all for being here tonight. I know we have few people, but quality people. So if anybody wants to move further up, because we tend to be a well-mannered and soft-spoken lot, so if you have any trouble hearing or if you prefer to maintain a safe distance, that's fine too. We're very happy that you're here, especially because it's often said, and I think quite rightly, that perhaps the most important task that a school board has is hiring a superintendent for the district, hiring a good superintendent for the district, hiring the best possible superintendent for the district. It can make a tremendous amount of difference for our schools, for our students, and for our townspeople as well. So every now and then, someone will say to me, hey, didn't we elect you guys precisely to make these decisions? Why are you asking me for my advice? And I have two big reasons for this, a whole bunch of small reasons. But because the superintendent is such an important figure in our district, the only person working for the district that the school board supervises directly, the only person we're able to fire if things don't work out well, we need to make sure that we have someone who is in tune with our people. Even though we all have varied opinions, varied priorities, and many different ways of looking at things, I think it's fair to say that we also share something we might call a common culture or common values on similar ways of viewing the world and responding to situations and events that makes it important for us to have, as the head of our district, as the leader of our district, the chief executive of our district, someone who is in accord with this culture and with our values, who will generally decide in line with the way we believe she or he ought to decide. So being able to consult with you is an important part of getting a feel for what we need in that superintendent. And a second reason, which is perhaps more personal to me, I think being able to consult with our people is a great luxury that we as a school board have as a local governmental body. Consult in a way that's natural, we know each other, we don't have to sit in hearing rooms with that intimidating paraphernalia of legislative majesty. You're just here, and we're among friends, we're among neighbors, sometimes even family. And this, I think, allows us to forge that sense of solidarity, which we absolutely need and I think will perhaps need even more, as we're subjected to tests along the way and to crises in society and economy. Anyway, this is not about my philosophical vision of the superintendent. This is about what you want in a superintendent. So with that, Mark Andrews, our esteemed facilitator, will take it away. Thanks, Scott. Welcome, everybody. I have a very minor role tonight. We've changed the format. We're just trying to judge what best format to use to engage you in answering a number of questions to the board, the steering committee, the surface search committee. But because of a smaller number, we've changed direction a little bit. The more important works could come from you from the next 45 minutes prior to the budget meeting happening at 6.30, I believe, so our time is short. We have in front of you five questions that the steering committee, who's charged with coming up with a process to engage their respective stakeholder groups in our five communities, including employees and community members. And then to generate the first round of interview questions for that first round of candidates that are selected. So your input into this process is tantamount to our ability to come up with a list of questions that, in the vet candidates, that make sense to or align with what you believe is important. So your input tonight based on these five questions will be used, number one, to help inform our interview process, and number two, to help vet candidates as we go down the road the next few weeks. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Floor, who will be our recorder. And what we're looking for is not quality, what we're looking for is just to generate as many ideas as you have or priorities that you have based on these five questions. So it's not about debating what has more relevance today. It's really what you're thinking. And then we'll bake this into the overall list of priorities that others have to have weighed in on over the last week or so. And we thought that if the best views of the time have as much effect when we're searching one, but if you have something that you agree with somebody else and don't necessarily want to talk about it, we can just say, can you add a dot to that comment and then we can move on depending on you be our time keeper, right? So do you want to start? Ready? We'll come up with that. We'll probably have, if we do the math, probably six, seven minutes per question, then we'll have a wrap up and give some summary. So what do you think the role of this and then is or should be? We're not talking about the law, but what you think. Educational leadership, vision, encourage academic excellence. A time between the community and the school system. I have a question about equity. If I was going to say something similar about equity, do we mean that there's equity amongst the schools, meaning I'm going to get as good an education for a layman as I would at Romney, that kind of thing. Is that what we mean by equity? I believe so. I would say yes and so between the schools and within the schools. Right, I knew, within the schools, sure. OK. They need good management skills for their staff. I would take a confident delegator of responsibility. So management skills. Well, management, those are the people skills I meant for the management aspect. I think leadership is a separate role. Let's see, budget slash financial skills. Factor roles, accountability for a fair and equal and excellent education. Can you start again? I'm sorry. So to provide accountability for the school district to the community, accountability of the school district to the community. So up in the school district. Four. Four to the community. Two. No, two. Accountability to the community. This superintendent needs to make sure that the schools are providing what they're supposed to do to the community. No one needs to make sense to you. Yeah, that's me. And she's got it, so yeah. So unprecedented. That's what we're happy for, too. To communicate with the community, for students, for teachers. Across the board. Reasonable for that. Reasonable, just to take a minute. Does someone else take breakfast? An encourager for reckless risk. Thanks, Rick. So we just have the amount. Cover all the basements. Accountability for the most vulnerable in our school communities. I'm going to re-soak up on my slide for this one. In our school. Communities. This one needs tweaking before you write it down. But our math scores and our reading scores are low. And I would like the superintendent to be using research-based materials to improve our scores. The best research base. And to keep an eye on that and make sure that they're going up over time at all levels. Research-based, could it be best practices to improve our schools? Or research-based, I don't want to word it for you. I'm just trying to. No, I'm happy to answer you, but you can go to the next one and I'll go with the slides. Faculty development and support. Physical plants. Lancaster. They matter to me, too. Physically. Not at this, yeah. The buildings. Oh, the buildings. The fiscal, too. But I was thinking about all these old buildings. Well, that's how you can expand it. It's the study. Yeah, I got a question. For the piece on the research map, one of the things that's come up is being current in the research. So whatever discipline, math, or reading or science, be just knowledgeable in how to research. But knowing how to take that information and apply it to a set of, just be current in their knowledge base. Like, you've got a quote. Yes. Or we can add to it. Well, it's interesting, some of these, like the role versus then, what are their personal attributes for example, the line, here's what. Cross-over. Yeah. And this cross-over. All right, we can move to the next one. OK. Thanks. Does it matter, the order, or the math? Yeah. Is it up too high? No, it's OK. What do you believe is the direction? Oops, should we go there right now? Yeah. What do you believe is the direction that's going to end up losing the Washington Central Unified Community School District? And besides changing the name, I'm just going to take it. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, I would build on the promote equity. And as a fellow court person, I appreciate it. So building on promote equity makes something about a holder of equity as a non-negotiable goal. Can you define the direction of the superintendent must leave there? So besides not, I don't know, it's, these are related. But that is the answer. Can I ask a tricky question? Yeah. Because we are having our self-defining, what is equity? So in Europe, because I want this to be from you. So but in from you, what do you have for everybody for you? Sorry. Well, there's a question of rate of equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome for different forms of equity, for example. And I think we're trying to suss out. That being the meeting kids where they're at in the same time. I couldn't hear what you said, Al. Well, you should define it. It's a meeting kids where they're at, and understanding that what they need is different based on the different starting points rather than treating all kids that they're in the same place. So student base? Yeah. Yeah, and I think that in terms of building on that one into this question, the direction is that it is a building, a common understanding across the district, across schools for all staff, all faculty, all people in the building, so that people actually do have that common understanding. And how you're putting this under direction, because not everybody may come equipped with that, but they can lead it. Only have a lot of understanding of equity rather than just understanding of student needs. Yeah, of that the, I guess, the importance of equity as the direction that the district needs to move in. Can I add to your definition? Yes. That ensuring equal access to all education. All kids can access their education. And ensuring and protecting them. The other end is maybe where Cindy was going, high achievement and opportunity for students, for all students. I have an interesting footnote to that one, in that we've often talked about whole child education. And so achievement as measured by the state of Vermont can be somewhat a different target than achievement as measured by the people in the community to include, say, like arts education that does not have as obvious an academic target. Tonight, a bullet for liberal arts. A whole child holistic, something along those lines. I think that's enough of a recognizable buzzword. Comprehensive evaluation of the different schools to determine where there are inequities so that they can be identified and addressed. In the use of inequity around it, sometimes just think it's just to have the substantive, this is what isn't being done. And where there are differences along the school. So comprehensive evaluation and that that, comprehensive evaluation, the development plan to address it. Could they get during decisions on that information that they would request, or just comprehensive evaluation of equity across the schools? Would they get comprehensive evaluation of where inequities lie and then any of the companies are planning to address them on a sustained way? Have much resonates? Yeah, that would be different. Implements response to intervention across the district. You can put RTI, implement RTI. And it's not to go without saying, but follow special education law. It is not historically. I'll say that when we had our Romney meeting, I had a lot of problems with this question just on me. What do you mean by direction, really? Yeah, I don't know the word for that. Right, and so I struggled a little bit on it. And it never occurred to me that one of the answers might be, do we move in the direction of lawfulness or lawlessness, right? That's a surprising outcome of this meeting that we have to actually say, let's move in the direction of lawfulness. It is a little discouraging, isn't it? But there it is. Yeah, it's already on there. She just said, let's make a turn. On a different end of things, I think we should promote the direction of connecting students with their place and civic engagement. We've done that in only a spotty way. Right, isn't that even one of the better examples of what's ever even done? Well, some schools have had a stronger farm to school than others. Some have had more service learning than others. I could go on to that. I'm wondering if there's a board on representatives on the steering committee. Is this Stickers? Where's Steven? Is this Stickers? Yeah. I've been away too long, I hope so. Do you want us to move? Well, I'm wondering, this question is a hard question to answer, right? Is it short-term? Is it mid-term? Is it long-term? Is there anything in the audience that's sort of like pops or like, this needs to happen now? And in terms of leading the district, where are you today or in the school year 2021? What needs in your mind? What's the priority for a start, you know? Some of these are, they're all awesome, but some are sort of long-term, right? And some need to start tomorrow. What, is it appropriate to ask that question? Things, so, and actually with regard to thinking about that, if I may, one of them I would say, so I'm the parent of elementary school students, first-graders, so I haven't been in the school system for a long time, and so I'm coming from a perspective on the school system that has struggled with the particular issue of openness, and I don't know how much that has impacted other schools and what they might be looking for, and so I don't know how it applies on the U32 level, but, and there are certainly these issues about why a school system can only be so open with regard to student information, as to protecting and so on, but it feels like compared to the previous administration, there could be a little bit more transparency with what goes on with the school, a little bit more openness in the communication process, and so I'd like to see that pick. That's too much though. I mean, just, well, one is a good context. Right, right. Well, some of that is just more regular communication as well, so. I mean, so that's sort of like an immediate thing that needs to happen, right? So I wonder if we want to highlight the floor, you know, for the dots or something. We had dots. Do you want to use our dots? We want to use our dots. So that might be a short term thing and we really need to pay attention to the board that he's paying attention to now. So here, I put your dot on that, but I know you have a rest of the community. If you're not, you're not. Are there others who, some of these things just pop few more than others in terms of needing to happen like now or next year? RTI, Response Intervention. Sometimes they call it multi-tiered system of support we have, and so we could call it RTI. We can continue to work on that. Yeah, that's fine. The law thing would seem to be significant. Don't come back to that. And we can, if you need time to think about this before you leave tonight or before we transition to the next meeting, you can dot yourself on that would be appropriate on taking time at this moment. Just have one more topic, which is parent and community involvement. Well, I think you'd be saying welcome, parent and community involvement. Welcome. You're welcome to have some invite and courage. You're welcome. Yeah, it feels pretty close. It would be nice if it felt open. Yes. All right, we're gonna move on to the next one before we do. Okay. Yeah, that's my room. What are the most important personal attributes that the brand doesn't most possess? Sense of humor? Like interacting with kids. I mean, I don't want them to stay in the office. Accessible to kids, yeah. Yes. Professional expertise. Phile of math is a lover of learning. Yes. Because, yeah, I think that's as important as being one of the constructs. That's excited about the actual process of learning themselves is able to push that. If I found a learner, what will learn works for me. I broke one. Otherwise, you're gonna write phile of math and you're gonna cry. So you just have to spell it for me. Phile of, like, math, phile of. Oh, phile of math. And then math, like, it's an I in it, but it's not that important. Oh, it's not that important. Phile of math. Phile of math. Yeah. Yeah. Laura, did you mean to put a dot by the last one on the last word to target there? Okay, that's all right. The parent problem. Oh, community organizations providing more support to communities. Thank you. Thank you, yeah. I'm saying a sense of calm. I don't have to say this one either, but belief in research and science. Can I say beliefs, or do you mean that? I would like the person to believe in research and science. How about the belief in the potential of every child? I just spoke first. A good boundary set. And a boundary breaker. Great. The flexible, flexible. Because I've been running my mouth a lot, I was holding back saying, openness. Yeah. But that openness is kind of the flip side of that, too. Boundaries that are not a little too close to the chat. Don't worry about it. Yeah. I was going to say transparent integrity. So it fits in there somewhere. So you know when the boundaries are being broken and you're saying it's transparent. Transparency and integrity. Transparency and integrity. Integrity. Oh, people person, which doesn't mean I have to be an extrovert, but they have to, like working with people. Yes, along with that, I was thinking about approachable as a teacher. I felt like all of our superintendents so far have been very approachable in the last 15 years. And so I'm hoping that continues to the next one. Emotional security. It's there. But somebody who wants to be the host, not the hero. To be the host. Be the host or the convener or the, not the hero. Yeah, the hero. Coming in and having all the answers themselves. So I'm not a pilot, then? Thanks. Knowing that they're surrounded by all of them. I was just saying that. Notice. Sorry. I was so excited to say I'm a host, not a hero. And they, under, yeah, they. Yeah, you totally know what you're talking about. It's not about them. It's about her. And this is a humbly self-confident. Is that a problem? Is that a problem? Combining those so that the qualities enter humbly self-confident. So it's a combination of the two. Again, he did from here, but. And admit and rectify mistakes. Are we grouping these up in front of the chimney? Looking for Mary Poppins? Yeah. We're doing a pretty incredible job of building a unicorn here. Yeah. Supportive. Both of staff and students. Interested in, oh, sorry. What about both of staff? Both of staff and students? Interested in difference and diversity. I was trying to think of the opposite of xenophobic. I'm personable, you said, in the diversity and diversity. Right? Yeah. A couple more. We'll move it after a minute. Can we say feminist or solidarity or morbidly correct? You don't like eyes, do you? I don't think you can correct us, man. We know it. I'm trying to put it. I'm not having no words. We don't appreciate diversity here, so better tell them back down. I'm not a number, I understand that. I'm not a number. I'll walk you in the house, baby. I'll leave you with the next one. Okay, any dots or are you guys doing? Just do that. Do that. I can finish the research-based one now. I think research-based, effective, massive. Maybe just want to say literacy. Research-based, effective. Research-based, effective. So main line, effective, and literacy instruction. And then you can put a parentheses, stamp. Is it? Okay. What are the most important skills and experiences that the superintendent must have? Okay, I have to be the effective communicator. Writing and speaking, listening, just okay. Experience with trauma-informed and trauma-responsive organizations or institutions. Supervision, coaching. Coaching, coaching. Just to clarify, coaching, subordinates coaching on the athletic field or all of that. Coaching subordinates and teachers and students. Okay, just to clarify. Coaching experience on the athletic field is valuable too, but just wanted to make sure. Yeah, that's not what it's going for. Part of staff development. Yeah, professional development. I don't think you need to do that. Life-long learner. Can we just say something like C, direction, like C number? You know, educational leadership experience related to the things that we've put as the direction of our community. And I guess an experience is seeing excellence in those areas. That's maybe more specific than what I said before. So they don't even need to have done it all, but they need to see what it looks like when it's good. Recognizing. Amy can link to it. I think what we heard is just to reference, there's some things on number one that might align with that floor. An experience with newly merged districts. Or maybe not. Yeah, not. Yeah, I can't decide. Have you worked in a war zone? Yeah. The one thing that I'm not, I don't think it's strictly necessary, but it sure would help is actual teaching experience. It is a requirement of licensure in the state of Vermont. It is, have three years of teaching. Oh, yes. Three years of administrative experience. We don't need to write it down. Well, no, I think that's an assumption we should check. As an educator or in teaching? It's fairly vague, it's teaching, yeah. If Lori doesn't say it, I will. Experience as a superintendent. Fair. Is that so you may not be interested in teaching somebody in the history of Vermont? Not this time. Well, that's, I'm reflecting a view. I'm not saying that we're absolutely what we're going to do. We're, this is open. Yep. But that would be the correct inference to draw from that. Experience with waiter? Oh, is that interesting? Yeah, that's an excellent point. Can't ask that question on the air. Miami superintendent whims up here and is like, what the heck, it is, I'm out. Have you driven snow, they said? What type of car do you drive? Yeah. I mean, I think another way to frame that, I mean, I'm just having fun with that question, is understanding rural education. I mean, understanding, you know, what small schools are about, what small communities are about. I'm just going to say it's valid. Sort of a good question to be considering or a big criteria to be thinking about. Small and rural, yeah. Small and rural, both. Yeah. Things you need to have fiscal competency. Kind of an awful lot of money. A minor detail. Until it isn't. Hopefully. What level of engagement should be committed to both in your area of work? Okay, let me see. Okay, what level of engagement should be committed to both in your area of work and the broader professional community? What does that look like? You said, I don't know, that's kind of, where are you at question? Maybe that's, oh, is that, I skipped, level engagement should, as per intended, be committed to, both in the professional and the community. So, what level of engagement should, as per intended, be committed to both in your area, of work and the broader professional community? What might it look like? What do you mean by your area? Right, it can be broader professional community. Well, if you, so if you think about the different stakeholders that are represented in tonight's meeting, community members, parents, non-parents, employees, students if there were any. So, big picture of where you see engagement as being the most effective and then based on what you do, like your role tonight, what would you like to see in terms of engagement with your discipline or your mission that you represent tonight? Is this where we ask if we need a superintendent? No. No. Where do we ask that question? Wait, is that a choice? That's not tonight's meeting. So, for teachers who we've met with, a common one is come into my class and be visible, right? I mean, be, know what's going on with learning, know what I want, I'm challenged by it, I know what I'm celebrating, that type of thing. So, it's kind of like interest with, you're saying what, if you have a particular interest in superintendent, what do you want that? Yeah, I mean, we've heard someone tonight say, I don't want them to stay in their office the whole time. Right. So, what does that mean? It's not just being visible, it's not engagement, what does engagement look like? So, as a community member and parent of somebody in the school system that goes back to something I've mentioned probably on every sheet so far is the communication aspect and seeing more like, I am aware of what's going on in the school because I come to all the meetings. But I know my way, for example, is not, has no idea what's going on in U32 because there hasn't been that broader community engagement and I think that broader community engagement is important, not just for the parents of students that are in the system, but for the rest of the people in the community to understand why they're paying the tax bill that they're paying. And so, I'd like to see a relatively high level of engagement with the community as a whole. And maybe not just face-to-face with communication. Is it like that monthly on vehicles, students? Right, right. Thanks, that was great. And you've brought up in the Romney meeting having a newsletter. Right. There's another way to look at it, if I may, and when you look at engagement, there's different forms, it could be informing just one way, it's informing you, it could be consulting like we're doing tonight, asking you to give us your ideas. There's also a level called involvement. We want to involve them, but ultimately, the decision still rests with another body. And then there's true collaboration in terms of engagement. In terms of identifying what we want to work on together, we make the decision together. So, there's different ways to think about engagement, it's not just one way, it could be depending on what the situation is. Right. Right, and like I'll mention, for example, that in the previous administration, we started doing the school start time investigation. I was involved in it and I have no idea what happened to it, like is it dead, is it just on pause or? It's on pause. So, and it was understandably contentious and on the one hand, who does the administration for starting and involving the community in this big discussion, but then like, it just, where is the situation? So, the follow up communication didn't happen. Right, right. If you're still using dots, I'd put a dot by that one, the follow up communication. I'm not sure if this one really belongs there, but... And if there's, we have like five minutes left, if there's something that you want to add in any other question, under some last, you know, comments, don't feel like we have to concentrate on both sides. So, you guys can all decide where to put it, but supportive or motivated to help increase economic opportunity for our kids. So, that means educationally, you know, being successful and seeking whatever it is they want after graduation, and it's also being engaged in saying, oh, here's career opportunity, you know, the potential for career opportunities locally. We need to make sure our education is doing its job. So, putting in the frame of engagement, making sure we're connected with the business community or what the economic, what are the opportunities for students that, so they'll, once they graduate from high school, is that what you need to be a partnership with engagement with that group? Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's so much the superintendent, but I think it's a direction for our district that we want, not that we're always just focused on career, but that we want to make sure we're both meeting the opportunities that are around us on all levels of education, but for the kids coming out, and then also if there are opportunities, and we're not, it's a two-way thing. So, yeah, it's an engagement question, I don't know where it belongs. Yeah, I think that's right, and engagement with economic actors in our region. Maybe both short-term and long-term, so if there are kids who already know that they're not gonna go on a post-secondary list and it involves some affiliation with the tech center as well. The word that hasn't come up here is vocational instruction, and so somebody that is. Can I understand it? Rears. It's not other rears, it's not, it's not. But the rears are not a tech center, but we're not careers, so there's the names, okay. You can always tell when a name changes like that so rapidly that there's sort of a funny not a stigma necessarily, but a quality attach that is constantly being, the effort is constantly on going to avoid that. To rebrand it. To rebrand it. Soon brought to you by Northfield City, Ms. Megson. Yeah. I think that there are a lot of opportunities for us to engage more with the career center and have more cross-communications to maybe have some of our computer sciences at the career center because they're all sort of shouldn't be a little more integrated. Like you can't fix a car with that stuff. Just a quick question. Are they, they're not part of the district though. I mean, you don't have to go into all the details, but like where do they get? We pay for our students to go there based on the students that, and Stephen can speak more accurately, based on the students that we had the year before is just how the funding works. So it's with saying the Sputland budget, but we are one of the sending schools. So Montpelier, Harwood, yeah, there's. In Vermont, they're regional. They're regional, yeah. So we belong to the career center in Sputland. So I wanted to provide Scott just a couple minutes for wrap up. I know it's close to 6.30. We also would be very welcome, receiving more of your ideas after tonight's meeting. We only had 45 minutes, but you can send them to any one of us, like I suppose on the steering committee, in addition to what you've already put it on tonight, looking at the list. Yes, great. Okay, I guess that's my cue. Although, let me add one more to this. My engagement with surrounding districts. Yeah. Yes. Outside of this union, Scott? Yeah, you're outside of this. Well, if we're fully passing you the baton, I want to just give great thanks to Floor. A round of applause. I don't think you were expecting that role to me. So, thanks so much for your role. I had very good sleep with it, so you're gonna rotate. Thanks so much. And now I will continue the theme of thanking people. Now we know that what we're looking for is Superman or Superwoman. I think we're on much firmer ground. So... Very good. Yeah. We'll tear an all-up and throw it in the chimney. Gonna let the pope... White smoke. Yeah. I don't think he can meet these wall vacations. All right. There's so much heckling for me. That's a good size. You're right. You're number one on the list. It's what we wanted. So, Mark, what are we going to do with all this? How will we... We're gonna roll it up and we're going to... We're gonna break it into some themes and we're gonna add it to the list of what we have generated so far. Great. And do we have email addresses from attendees on there? We don't. We could. Yeah. Would you be interested in getting a kind of compendium of all this so that you can fold us to these criteria as we proceed in the process? Why don't you do that? Does it matter? Do you want to put it in the bag? I don't know what... Just put it in the bag so you can also make it available online. Yeah, let's make it available online. We'll use technology. Yeah. And maybe note that it's come out from Fort Worth all the time. That's a great idea. Thanks. It's what we know it works for. Yeah. Get distracted. Yes. Especially compared to the ones that Steven and Adrian Megida and I would have in the years past when the three of us would be the only ones who would be here. In any event, this is our FY 2021 Board Budget Presentation. What we're gonna do, I think, is just hit the slides and at any point where anyone has a question, please feel free to interrupt and pose your question. If there's anything that's unclear, please don't hesitate to flag it and to ask for an explanation. If I don't know, Flora is likely to know. And if Flora doesn't know, then Deborah is likely to know. And if Deborah doesn't know, then Lori for sure knows. So we're covered. Okay. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Scott, I'm sorry. Good afternoon, little man. Can I start with a question at the get-go? Yeah. I flipped it open and I see Emerge to single district on July 1st, but I thought that was still in port. Oh, is it? Yeah. How did we turn into Emerge District? And where did the name come from? By operation of the name, I guess, came from the agency of education. So. It's redundant. One more reason to answer that. Yeah, right. So I'll just start that little heckle right at the get-go. Oh, no, that's right. That's what makes it interesting. And just on the quick case, evidently, the oral arguments are going to be held on January 15. I don't know if you're aware. In Middlebury, is my understanding. In Middlebury? In Middlebury. In Middlebury, it's at a student center. Do you remember the name of the? In the middle of the day. It's a student center at the Middlebury College, Kensington, Maine. Right. You can look up online at 1.30 for an hour. Wait, did you say for an hour? For an hour. Each side gets half an hour. Usually it's a half an hour. What? Usually it's 15 minutes a side. Right. Schedule list, they double the time. They double the time. Yeah. 15%. Okay. Thanks. So, just to kind of orient you, these are our board goals. And I don't think anybody is going to see anything surprising or controversial in them. Essentially, our goal is to do a good job as a board. And that just spells out three ways in which we intend to do so. Board members, there are 10 of us right now. The board, according to our articles of agreement, is scheduled to expand to 15 members, three from each town. All members elected by all voters in all five towns at once. So, at the moment, I should just mention that we have, in addition to Flora Diaz-Smith here, we also have Gael Pothkamp from Worcester. And Chris McVeigh from Middlesex. Lindy Johnson from Ismael Pylir. And Jonas Inorvan-Cliet from Worcester as well. So, I guess board members make up a significant percentage of the audience, which is good. I'm happy to hear it. Others, the board has, the reason why others aren't here is that this board has had a killer schedule throughout the fall. Policy committee, negotiations committee, finance committee, and just our regular meetings have, I think, tested our stamina. And it's important to stay rested and not burnt out to the extent possible. But not to worry, they're fully plugged in to what's going on here. So, competing pressures. I think, as I survey the room, all of you have had some degree of experience with school budgets. So, none of this will be surprising that it's a tug of war, a push me pull you kind of dynamic process to arrive where we are. And there are always sacrifices. There are always compromises. And there are always sort of, some of the best parts may be left on the cutting room floor. And I suspect that this budget is no exception. So, any questions so far? All right. And this is the flowchart. Rinse and repeat as we go through. But essentially, the way it works is that the budget arises from the administration. Then it comes to us and the board. And we sort of give our reaction to the administration which takes the budget back and then there's this cyclical rotation of documents until everybody feels as though we've gotten it pretty much right, or at least as close as we can. This part here is very important because the budget is still in a kind of malleable stage where we can shape it before it hardens into something more nearly approaching stone. So if you look, and this is where I think it will really be helpful to us for you to be paying attention when you get to the budget scenarios. We want to hear from you what you think maybe good, maybe not good, maybe wondering why isn't something else there. So, that's exactly why we're doing this, is to hear all of that. Can I add something to that? Please. It's student driven. So, because sometimes it kind of sounds confusing when we say, you know, superintendent, administrators and staff get together but it's the center of student needs. Right, so the staff and the administration are basically accounting for what they see, the needs that they see, the opportunities that they see, and factoring that into their budget. So, thank you. Enrollment trends. This is over the past five years and you can see there's a slight dip but otherwise pretty stable. Next year, for FY21, is there, is it inflected slightly upward or is it continuing slightly downward? We haven't received our equalized pupil count for FY21, which is actually going to be determined according to statute by the 15th of December. So, we will hopefully have that information for the board at the meeting on Wednesday. But as you can see, current enrollment, which is students who are enrolled in all of our schools, has been extremely steady over the last five years. Yes. Equalized pupils, however, after peaking in FY18 have been declining since and what makes this difficult is that the tax formula has education spending divided by equalized pupils and then there are a bunch of other denominators below that. But if that fraction, if the equalized pupils are going down then the value of the fraction, which is what our tax rate is based on, that is going up. Even if we weren't spending any more money in education spending, we would still be spending more in taxes because of that decline in equalized pupils. So, enrollment, preserving enrollment to the extent we can is really, is financially, has a great financial effect. So, highlights. As Deborah was just saying, stable enrollments, excellent administration, faculty staff and why didn't you mention school board? Well, because you're speaking and I assume people will understand. Finish that. Huge day. And there's no budget line item for you. We actually have our own little budget line item. We'll get to that. Dynamic student body, most definitely. Educational opportunities and merger are, again, other factors that are very influential in this budget. So, draft number one. And again, I'm gonna be looking carefully to see if I see eyes glazing. So far it seems okay, yeah? Okay. This is the level service, so-called level service budget. Cruise control, autopilot. We just do the same thing next year that we've been doing this year. However, taking account of cost increases from this year to next year. And you can see that in this, the bottom line increase in education spending is 2.77%. What would have been the increase, the natural sort of drift upwards is closer to 5%. Those two, if you look at the budget change percent column and then the two lines right below, it would have been 4.96%. However, because U32 is paying off one of its bonds, the bigger bond, that amount of debt service will no longer have to be accounted for or will no longer have to be paid in next year's budget. So that subtracts 1.36%. What date is the bond satisfied, do you know? We have, at U32, we have two bonds. One is 29th this fiscal year and the other is two years out. On July 1st? Right, so for the next budget cycle, July 1, there's one of the, the $9 million loan will be paid off. On July 1st? 2020. 2020. So. I'm sorry, is this the second bond? It was 3.1 million? Yeah. And that will be paid off within two years. Okay. Two more budgets. Thank you. Right. So this is the big bump downward and it's a one-time bump. So in next year's budget, it won't show minus 460,000 because we'll be operating from a lower base. So, 2.77%. But that's without doing anything different from what we're doing now. And. If you do things different, we just don't have different people doing it, right? We could, you're right Chris. We could within that, that ceiling, we could reshuffle to some extent. Would there be a lot of latitude from that? We could do things differently by changing the focus of how we utilize our professional development resources. If we have some staff meeting by attrition, we could examine the programs that they represent to determine if we want to continue our programs or make a change. Student needs change over time. So even within a level funded budget, six months or a year from now, we may see other opportunities because of changing student needs which might free up more resources in the special education area, for example. So yes, there's many opportunities to make a change within this budget. Right, but not unlimited. No, so, and I know we're getting to draft 1A, but I think that it's important to point out that the board's charge to the administration was to examine our individual schools and ensure equity across each of the schools in the area of opportunities and instructional supports in particular. So once we had completed this draft, the leadership team took time to analyze how we were committing our resources in those areas in particular, and they became a focus of the second draft that you're gonna be reviewing. And we believe the second draft provides, addresses the question of equity that the board had been a desirous of looking at this year. Thank you. Great. Okay, so, any questions on this? It's just numbers on a chart. But it will have more meaning once you get to see the second draft and get to compare it. Next, please. So this is one of those pie charts that shows how the money is actually spent. Or nearly, I look at this and I just think pie, oh, when am I gonna get to eat? But in this particular case, it occurred to me that it's worth mentioning because so much of this budget is paid in salaries and benefits to actual people who live here. This is an aspect of the school as a kind of economic engine for our communities that is important to bear in mind. That schools, even though people are paying taxes and it feels like it's just shelling out, it's shelling out to create something far greater than what we might otherwise have. There's a multiplier effect in here as we support people who are neighbors, who are fellow taxpayers, who buy from us or sell to us and who participate in creating what's best about living here. So this, I think. Yes, I just get it. Well, along those lines, one of the things that might be interesting to break out at some point, I don't expect an answer on it now, but is the benefit component of the salary and benefits? In particular, how much healthcare kind of changes from year to year is really impacting that moment. Yeah, you'll see some of that on detail with the yellow lines, yeah. Good point. Okay, now, if you remember, the level service budget, the cruise control budget, was the bottom line increase, budget change percent of 2.77. This graph shows a bottom line increase closer to 5%. The bond payoff is the same. What's different is the salary and benefits and non-salary items. And the natural increase, subtracting, forgetting about the bond repayment, that's a 7.2 increase over our last, or over this year's salary and benefits and non-salary items. And we can continue. So this pie chart, I defy you to tell me what's different about this pie chart from the last pie chart. Non-salary down in special ed went by 1%. There are always two. Yeah, exactly. So basically, what's happening is that special ed is increasing. Non-salary, well, the whole pie is bigger, but the share of special ed is somewhat bigger relative to non-salary. And I don't know if you have any... I was going to say, I assume that in draft 1A, salary and benefits goes from a 3.97% to 6.11 because you're talking about, in order to reach equity, hiring more staff in some of the schools where there's a need. So, and just to kind of put some flesh on those bones that you were just talking about, the hiring of new staff, this is the list of budget considerations recommended by the leadership team. So I think... I might make an observation and I would invite any sort of corrections or amplifications or modifications to that observation. It strikes me that when you look at this, and thank you for spelling out EEE, that was great. It's essentially foundational. We're shoring out the foundation for what our schools do. The basic idea, the basic problem, let me start putting it that way, the basic problem is that we're receiving in our schools more and more young people who are in some ways injured by the public health and social crisis that's unfolding at this point. So we're finding, and Kelly again, I will stand corrected, but that the number of children coming into our schools with showing evidence of emotional trauma, psychological trauma, is increasing. I could only say dramatically. What happens is that these children have to be taken care of, not only on the basis of pure humanity, but also on the basis that our classrooms become unmanageable if we don't take care of them. So there's both a moral imperative and a practical imperative for doing what we must and what we can to provide the support that these children need so that everybody else will be able to learn in an optimal way. In large measure, my observation is that in large measure this is a response to conditions in society, in our communities, not only in our communities, but throughout Vermont, throughout the country that are essentially forcing our hand. Particularly as higher levels of government tend to step back perhaps from involvement in social supports, it falls increasingly to us to essentially backfill that void. So I don't know. That's kind of part, by way of explanation, part, there's an editorial component to it perhaps, but I would invite anyone to... because, I mean, I would love, for example, to see something new, to see foreign language programs, to see an expansion of the music program, the strings program, or band, to see other sorts of... what feel more like advancements as opposed to kind of rear-guard actions. But I think, you know, the leadership team has put a great deal of thought and effort and heart into sorting through the possibilities, and this is what they're recommending. So, you know, it's not all special education, this is our best practices, and also it's a student driven. So, for example, the interventions that you see here is from our belief that all students can learn, right? So that's sort of what brings in our mind equity. So the structural interventions that we have there have worked with students. It means that a student gets a shot in the arm on math or on literacy for six weeks, and that means that he's not fallen or she's into special ed. It means that all students are getting what they need. But if there's a group of students that can be working while the students are working on literacy intervention, can be working on music or making a ukulele, or that that also is able to happen, we, you know, that's the... I don't want to feel like, you know, I agree with totally where Scott put it. You know, the first childhood experience that we are experiencing in our society are real. But the budget takes care of everybody. It has high expectations for all, right? It's not a special education. Scott, when we had the discussion at the board meeting, I recall that the first three items are not really recommendations that they require. Well, I believe that... Is that what I understood? Given the new, the influx of students, the previous, the budget number one, version number one, the level of service, was just what we were doing this year. But next year, we'll actually have further needs that are... that were required to meet under the law. And those first three items, yeah, are in that...in that category. Correct. Just because the requirement is different than recommendation in terms of budgeting. Yes. So we have to do that. Regardless. Michael. Scott, what's the difference... or what makes up the difference in the revenues in draft one compared to draft one A? I can... It's reimbursements for those top two items on the list that we just added. If you look at the sheet that we have yellowed, do you have the... So that negative of three, four, six, five, eight, three is more revenue. Right. We had $66,043 in revenue generated from the first two items on this list. Okay. I was just confused by the minus sign. But that's more revenue to offset. So it reduces taxes. We're trying to keep this on, Mr. again. They come from the state? Right. Are these positions mostly at the elementary level or high school or is it a total mix? These positions are transitioning to your burden deal. Some are coming from the elementary, but it is six creepers coming in to seventh grade. And then there's additional staff in association with that. Because there's an increase in student population in sixth and seventh. What's the community connections line item? Oh, yeah. How is that different? Thank you. So community connections is a wonderful before and after school program and actually provides a compliment to our preschool program. Beginning in the fall of this year, community connections program became completely operated for the schools in Washington Central. Prior to that, for I think 18 plus years, it had been a combination of or a partnership of Washington Central Schools and Montpelier District. Last year, the Montpelier District chose another route. And we decided to continue the program. But when, which resulted in about 50% of our students' participation being reduced. So this year, we committed to continuing the program. And as the school year unfolds, we're observing that there may be some need for the district to subsidize that program. It is actually a district program. It's always been a district operated program. And we understand that our families really rely on it. And we would like to do whatever we can to ensure that it can be continued. So as we are in this transition year, we are estimating that there will be some subsidy required to continue the program. About what percent of our families are involved in that? And does it vary from time to time, or can you not reveal every two words to reveal which times are not the most advantage? Do you want me to speak? Sure. So we offer a part-day pre-school program. And every student that stays here has the opportunity to go for the full day instead of getting to go to another day here. So about 70% of our preschool students are participating in the, I call it a wraparound program. Meaning they can come earlier? Meaning they can come earlier? Yeah, it's like a continuation for daycare, so to speak. And that's true in every school. So every school has at least one part-time pre-school class. Some have more than one, and it really aligns closely with their enrollment. And enrollment in pre-school is actually the largest increase that we see, which is a great sign because it means eventually our elementary student members will go up as well. I'll just also say that the numbers are slightly confused by the fact that students are not required to go with their own town's community connections. At least our kids, when they were in pre-K, we had two days of remedy, and they did two days in for them. So we think that for a year. That's, I think, a little more rare right now. But there's another component, and that is that we also have students attend high-quality early childhood experiences that are offered by centers off-site. And we have a responsibility to pay for our resident students to do that as well. So there's two ways that pre-schoolers can access education now. Yes. So is this subsidy a way of not, if you said it's because now Montpelier isn't a part of it, so we lost 50% of the enrollment? Honestly, the way that that was calculated, I helped do that with our new director. And what has happened is community connections has been living off a reserve fund over the years. And that reserve fund is getting depleted and expected to possibly be gone next year. So this is the amount that we would have utilized from their carryover funds from the past. So this is so you don't have to increase rates for parents and families? And for the draft 2 budget, we're looking at increasing rates and reducing this number. So we just didn't have enough time within the last two weeks to get that number precise, but we're working on it the next Wednesday. So when you say draft 2, you don't mean this? No, this is draft 1A. Yeah, this is draft 1A. draft 2 is next week. Yeah, draft 2 is a pared down version of this with a bottom line target instead of 4.8, whatever, 4.8-3, will be 3.5. So there is, I mean... More of a fine number. Well, we hope. Thank you for checking. Yeah, and however, I'm happy to hear that that maybe one effect of trying to lower the bottom line, maybe the raising of the rates. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because I thought that it was also a state-run program. Can they not get state assistance or state grants? Some families qualify for a daycare subsidy. Yeah. And that is income-based. And we do offer that we support families and apply for that subsidy when it's possible. That's another revenue stream in addition to fees paid. But being that they accept that, that's not some kind of anything they can use to get a grant because they have... We only see 21st century grants over the years and basically the way that things have turned out weren't no longer eligible, it's a federal grant. Okay. And that's how in the past we were able to build up some reserves. Yeah. By having that as an offset. We've also scaled our staffing down. Our director is now no longer full-time, which has helped some of the costs as well. Okay. And what is the work-based learning coordinator who is on the end of that? So that is an addition to an existing position. We have a part-time position at 60% here at high school. And that individual organizes or identifies mentors and organizes extended learning opportunities for students, which is actually a requirement as well as good practice. It's also a requirement of Act 77 in the district. So we are finding that we have more students that need that support. And we have an excellent person in place to be certified by the state to do that work and we'd like to expand to meet the need of the grant. Oh, right. Is that the branching out program? Branching out, yes. Park. In part. Yeah, CBL branching out, pilot all those programs. Okay. These are all wonderful questions. And I'm kind of curious. You've seen what's here. Is there anything that you think should be there that's not? Michael? Well, I proposed, Anne and I have proposed this elementary strings feeder program, as it is Doty is the only school that string instruments are offered at. And this program feeds directly into the long-standing instrument and strings program here at U32. So students who don't go to Doty have to pay to take lessons. And that's a matter of equity. And it's hurting the program here by not sending many students into the program. So basically every school should be as good as Doty. Well, we'd like to have a traveling strings teacher go around from school to school, a .6 position three day a week position to do lessons and ensemble classes at all the schools so that every child has a chance to participate in this program and not just those who can afford private lessons. Katie? Yeah, I just want to say, I also think that that would be amazing and I understand there's limitations that we have in our communities and I know that we're all, we're maxed out in our budget and we need so many things, but I do think there's a real gap there. And my son and daughter both study strings and they're lucky because I've found a teacher, I signed them up, I pay for that, I drive them, it's a huge amount of time, it's money for our family and I know so many people would never be able to do that. And my son is at U32 now and his middle school strings group has been, I think there were seven students last year total in the whole middle school and I think there are eight this year in the middle school who play string instruments and the high school strings group with four years is a little bit bigger than a small group. And those kids just by chance and by their families initiative are the ones who ended up playing those instruments. But I just think there are so many more kids who if they had the chance could be enjoying this incredible opportunity. It's really like something else for your brain to do, something else that expands your world, another group of friends and peers and amazing teachers in the program you could be involved in. So I just think that would be amazing. Yeah, thanks. It's an interesting dilemma. On one hand, we have these areas of excellence that I mean in the case of the track, for instance, we have a sports program that I think is not just an excellent sports program, it's an excellent life program, an excellent academic program, an excellent social program for essentially shaping good people. Sometimes the best programs proceed indirectly to the goal that we want to get to and support the rest of the academics. Thanks. Any others who see something that they believe should be there that's not there? Well, this is just a short list of the new things. Yeah, there's sort of a longer brainstorming list. The reason I ask is because I don't have in my mind quite everything that's already in the budget, what's already in the programs throughout the system, but one thing that I think needs more attention everywhere is maybe, I don't know if it's the work-based learning coordinator type of work, but alternative pathways to careers, not just for your college. Yeah, it's Cindy Garner Morris who's sitting right behind you. You mentioned this in the superintendent's search forum if I'm not mistaken. Did you not? Am I hallucinating? No, you're not hallucinating. I was making a note and I wasn't really listening. Oh, okay. I'll turn to the past one. I just want to see the transparency that we do. I'll turn to the pathways to careers and other activities that, you and Erica seem to be playing off each other, if I remember. Maybe I am hallucinating. When I asked about ranging out, my son who is now turn 26 was involved in that. He had an opportunity to work with some engineer, I think, at National Life, and we brought him off there, but he somehow got a ride with the teachers coming by in the mornings and made it to school. He also had a chance to take Java in a programming class. And when he got to UVM, he was given the chance for a job because he had Java for one semester. He was offered a job at $15 an hour, whereas his sister who did not have Java and was working with biology was offered a job at $8 an hour as a basically unqualified kid qualified with basic skills at UVM. So those kind of opportunities within the community, I mean, John saw how engineers work and what it's like to get a brilliant job. There are just so many benefits with that. So, that's why we're expanding. Wonderful. So, there's still, John, what else to say, elementary foreign language instruction? Yeah, thank you. Near and dear to both our hearts. Thanks. So I realized your question was about any other line items. I should be included in that. One of the things that came to mind, I skipped ahead just to see if it was there and I realized there's not an easy answer to this particular question, but it is a little hard to contextualize to most citizens what would it mean for another $760,000. And so, when presenting this information, it'd be really useful to say, you know, per $100,000 of house value, this is not what you would expect to access. Yeah, and I know that's... That's Wednesday night. It's different by now than at Solon, but I know it doesn't have a simple answer, but $760,000, not a lot. What does that mean? It's a little too early. We don't have all of the information we need from the state to calculate the taxes. Right, but you could come up with the approximations. Next week. I'll have it on Wednesday next week. You have to wait for chapters three. That's a good question. I had another question about the fiddle program. How does 1% of the kids in Worcester take advantage of the fiddle program? And who provides the little quarter-size fiddles? Like, do the parents have to come up with rental money? Right, so Anne and I have actually reached out to string instrument dealers in the area, and we've gotten a written commitment that they would loan instruments free of charge. They would have an instrument back, and there are also several grants available to provide instruments free of charge to children in need. So as it is, I'm at Dodie as a teacher there for a day and a half a week. During that day and a half, I teach general music to every class twice, and I have right now 12 string students and it's more people are taking on all the time. At the district music day, we had here the stage was filled with kids, I don't know how many, like 100 kids or something up there, kids playing band instruments from all the five elementary schools. Strings, there were about, there were 13 kids and they were all from Worcester. Interesting. And so if you have a dozen fiddle students right now, how many students are at Worcester at Dodie? Well, we offer instrumental lessons to just the kids in fourth, fifth and sixth grade. How many kids are in the school? So it's seven days, something, seven. Thanks. There's still a few slides to go, and no slide left behind. So if you're ready. I wanted a quick question. Is there a homework support club or after school way that if you don't know how to do your math or reading, you can get help with that? In formally, teachers do stay after school, and our after school programs occasionally will provide support for kiddos. And if the high school has a formal anti-school program for homework, how would Steven do you? So definitely the ninth grade teams provide four days a week, because one day a week is their staff meeting, but four days a week, there's after school help for the ninth grade teams. The tenth grade teams have scheduled time as well. And all of our teachers have office hours of some kind. And that's different from callback? And callback is during the daytime. Those office hours would be outside of the school day at the time that's part of their contract. And then I would say, are some of our middle school kids who do our after the bell program receive, I would say minimal support, but some support in their homework. Thank you. There used to be two community connections. There used to be. Without the back wing and all the federal grants and requirements associated with those. See, we're doing more and more on those. Thank you very much, Deborah. So more pies. I think the crucial thing to get from these, which you can look at when you have leisure time of your own, is that the, what's growing from this year to next year is the relative proportion of funding going to direct instruction, as well as to special education. And the lesser funding to support programs, administration, and others. So it's a reinforcement of instruction. We may continue. This is, again, you can check this out. Just this underscores what I was just saying. Direct instruction and special ed are boosted significantly. There are others that are growing up and down and debt service is the big drop that is a bit of a windfall for us this year. Sure. Thanks. So, capital project summary. Now, these are just, these are the amounts that stick from before the merger that stay with each school for their capital needs. And the second and last one is what the school district as a whole has. That number will grow as the earmarked numbers for each school are drawn down for their various projects. And then it will just become a single district. Actually, that is the money earmarked for our building. The job is done. Sorry. In case we have needs. I mean, the building's 10 years old now. Call that. I tried to fake that. That's okay. You did. Put in the future. You're ready. I'm going to come up with a way to track that. Scott did a similar. Okay. Michael. You know, just looking at this bond payoff. And this is more of a rhetorical question. How do you carry that savings on forward? And not be tempted to all of a sudden see this $460,000 hole to be filled. And I'm not suggesting that that's what happens. But a couple of times. This is more than just a one time benefit. This is the paying off of the bond. And that saving savings, that lack of that expense goes forward forever. And how do we always kind of be aware of that? So we don't attempt it to say, oh, you know, I mean, how does an organization, and I've been on a number of boards, but how do you keep that in mind as you're building the budget? Yeah, it's hard. Only through rigorous disciplined capital playing and projecting ahead. The odds are stacked against us. There are various incentives to, you explained to me Deborah, incentives that encourage school districts to go to bond instead of paying as they go. If you're going to bond, that is encountered on your cap. Yeah. But if you, that debt service, as you say, is a chunk out of what you're able to spend from one year to the next for 20 years. And squeezes, puts a squeeze on everything else that you want to do. So my own, and there are different ways of doing this. There are different ways of approaching this problem. But I tend to be, I suppose, a fiscal conservative in this regard in trying very hard to plan ahead and schedule the major capital expenses so that we can build up our reserves to meet them at the time that they occur. So to plan as much as we can, obviously things happen that you can't plan for. You just have to try to be prepared to deal with those. Thanks. But not so much that. It's just sort of like, now we have $460,783 to spend because we don't have to spend. That's how I don't want to look at it. Right. That's why I keep talking about the 5% drift, 5%. I keep thinking of that 5% woe. And then, you know, 7, whatever it was, 7.8%, was that from 1A? Even more woe. W-H-O-A. But maybe also W-O-E, I don't know. I think it's fair to say that the board is focused more on that bottom line number, right? What's the effect on taxes? You know, what's that going to be, rather than what's the pot of money we have to spend? Yeah. That's the counterbalance, is that, at the end of every budget, you get to a percentage. Exactly. And that's what you have to sort of grab. Right. I haven't been doing this long, but my experience with this has been that nobody's seeing that $400 and whatever, $1,000 as an opportunity, right, to go to our wish list. Yeah. Right, and knock things off the wish list. It's just not working like that. I'm not suggesting anyone is, but any organization seeing that would, you know, be tempted if they weren't prudent, which I think we are, to look at that, you know. Okay, thank you. And then just to add to that, we are looking at our buildings, right, because not everybody has been, you know, every single building in our district has different needs. So, you know, saying that we right now have, you know, paid a bond and are off in that area. You know, there's 460. We also know that in our buildings, there's capital needs that eventually are going to need to be addressed. That doesn't mean that we're looking at, we don't have enough money as it is to take care of the buildings. So, we're looking at them holistically. So, we can have a capital plan to not have to, you know, spend too much money. But with the nine in what Scott said, that we won't be able to always do that without going to bond. Do we, what's our, do we have a capital budget item for this year that we're budgeting for? Yes. And what is that? 636. 636. And is that in line with what the adequacy for putting that away over time to take care of all the buildings? It doesn't appear to be enough for the capital plan that we've had a preliminary review of. What percentage of that capital plan need is the 636? The capital plan hasn't been sorted by priority yet. So, it's hard to say. I think we would actually have to do some more analysis of that capital plan and refine the numbers because they were really rough. But as far as the immediate priority, we plan to bring that back to board for further discussion next week. And the finance committee will delve into it tomorrow as well. So, I think there's two stages. The board has asked for a short term capital plan and a long term capital plan. And what we've accomplished is the short term plan that we're working on prioritization of that. The long term plan is going to, we'll have to agree as to what next steps we should take in order to accomplish that and what length of time, et cetera. We have had one proposal that we'll be considering and the board will be discussing in the near future. Yeah, I was just wondering, because I don't understand all these budget things sometimes, so if you could explain to me, maybe in simple terms, why East Montpelier has over $900,000 in capital funds, but they have a big bond that we're all paying for. So is that what this money is? How's that all worth? No, that's the money that they've set aside in their reserve to take care of their own building. Even though they have a $30 million bond in prior years. We've been putting it away for a year so that we wouldn't have to, you know, so taking care of the building. Is that a fair answer? So it wouldn't happen again, Lindy? That's a very fair answer. And it's been over many years. Because there wasn't that to keep the building up. So rather than paying the bond, it makes more sense to be planning for the future and just pay the bonding path. I get that, but then you also... Are you currently mortgage? Are you pre-pay? So that you have to pay them for the schedule. And that's why you get the favorable rates. Unlike a home where you can refinance when rates go down. The bond would not be able to be pre-paid. Okay. Yeah, I think what might be helpful too is like U32 has put away... We were both paying for a bond and that's where the savings come from. But we were also budgeting for about $427,000 a year for capital. And we saved extra monies over a course of several years to be able to do the track project without going to a bond. And so now you see our numbers are back down lower. But at one point in time last year, we had a pretty sizable capital fund. But we had saved over time to be able to do those projects. And now we're back into the save mode for the next big project, the parking lot is probably... But you know, those kinds of things. And so, yeah, it just... It kind of fluctuates a little bit back and forth as to where you are in the savings process. And the big bond 20 years ago that hurt... I mean, we all felt it to do U32 created this facility that has stayed state-of-the-art in a way. And beautiful. And people come here. And before, the air quality was terrible. And it was not a pleasant building to teach in after all those years of thinking the open school concept when it was built was a great idea and everybody built their own little walls that the renovation 20 years later, and I would like to think that's how East Montpelier will be as well, is it had gotten to a point of very cold, very drafty, very noisy heaters and not great air quality. And now it's a beautiful building that you want to be in. And I feel that way about U32 20 years after the renovations that it's still a beautiful building that when other people are here they're pretty impressed with. And just as we are stewards of our financial resources on behalf of the community we have to also be concerned about the quality of the educational environment which our students enroll in school. It makes a very big difference if students are sitting in a room like this which is bright and clean and has a lot of natural light and their ability to engage in instruction and really develop their skills as compared to a school that it may have, as you just described poor ventilation or obvious maintenance needs. It's a change in how they believe in the community. It feels about their education to be honest. So I think we have to be very thoughtful about how future planning for capital budget development is made in cases where we have been such as U32. This building has been maintained well due to the very extensive amount of care and thought that has gone into their capital plan over time. That's what our goal is for the entire district. Thank you very much, Jaya. I have to think that there may be some minimal savings from doing these capital improvements to some of the buildings like in other line items of the budget like the field use or electricity. So one of the projects that was approved last year by the Worcester community, the former school board, was an envelope renovation for Jody's Memorial School and that included siding and insulation and windows. So with the funds that they have and their project, they will be doing that next summer and we know that there will be changes. There will be savings in fuel and electricity as a result. So a very good point. Thank you very much. Now we've hit my hook. I was just following up on something you said about the bond and the incentives on bonding. I'm just unclear about what you're saying the benefit was because I think when East Montpelier was struggling with the taxes in our budget that there was a sense from our board. Linda, you can correct me if I'm wrong. That in fact we were being panelized as the payment for the bond was considered to be education expenses and we were spending all this money based on the number of pupils and we had made arguments at least our board did that that was not fair or proper and the legislature didn't do anything about it. So that spending that kind of money was considered, it came under the educational spending or the per pupil spending. So how, I'm just not sure Scott what you were saying, but how it does I'm sorry, let me turn it over. He's just dying to turn it over. Yes, you're right. So when East Montpelier bond went through the state disallowed 19% of the bond payment from a formula that we run to calculate whether our spending is above a penalty amount. And so statewide though, no one else has ever, that I've seen or heard of have had that same thing and they have made changes at the agency of education. So nowadays when you go out for a building project bond you're able to get the state approval ahead of the game. And when you do that what happens is a bond payment is reduced in a formula that determines whether or not you have to pay $2 for every tax dollar that you need. And so what I think you were referring to is if we just put money in the regular budget it doesn't get deducted for that formula. So if we put money in for a capital budget that doesn't get deducted in this formula. The state law says only bond payments get deducted in this formula. So there, like he said they're enticing us to borrow money to pay for capital projects based on the current legislation. Okay. And you mentioned the excess spending if you were to exceed the formula and you would have a double tax penalty. So it is an important distinction between borrowing versus utilizing your local funds that you save. But our bond didn't have to do with the excess spending. No. That 18 or 19 percent really had to do with a particular little incident at this date and that person no longer works there and we... Not because of us. No. No, just through attrition or retirement. But it really was... It was not fairly done and Floor and other people put a lot of work into appealing it and going to the agency and the secretary and didn't win. But no other school is paying that or having that 19 percent not count in their bond part. So your hard work meant that you saved every other district in the future from having to experience that. Right. Well, the grievances. So, thank you. Okay. Yeah. So Scott, one funny thing is so do we have a sense on what the arbitration decision may... Just because of the impact on potential impact on budget. That's the only reason I think. Yes. Super, Lori? I'm just listening to the fact that you said you have a date. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. Yeah. And incorporated the maximum expenditure in our budget. Oh, okay. So, we anticipate a neutral effect in our... at least for the coming year. Okay. Way ahead of the game. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds good. I know. This is why I'm reading. I know. It's a free record. When this goes home, people are going to look at it and say, Calvin, it's the bottom of the list. Ismopilia. It's the top of the list. And we're already paying Ismopilia's taxes. I'm speaking now for my neighbors. How are you going to to that. But that's not the capital, is it? Yeah, in terms of the size of the capital funds, the residual capital funds, it's really a completely separate thing. Those came from each school, just to be clear. They came from each school, and by law, they were supposed to stay with each school. So that's how much money Berlin put away. How much money Palestine put away. And what it also would do is, for capital projects that are funded through the reserve funds, don't come out of the merged budget. It sounds like it. Say that again? Yeah. So what comes out of the capital that are now capital budgets reserved for each school, taken care of their capital needs, doesn't come out of this budget until those funds are used up. Is that, I think that's the way it works. And they were funds that were for years, how that school district had wanted to percentage into there and voted in. That was what was decided. And so they got to keep it. They expended significant amount of money in the last three or four years on our roofing and on sewer projects. So that's where the funds have been depleted. Thank you. So Stephen was saying about the cycle, of the capital fund, you build it up and then you do something and it goes down and then you build it up again for the next project. And what's that for decades? Yeah. Yeah. But the next build up will be a district. Will be a district. A school district. Why? Right. Nursing. Bicycle. Right. Yeah. So we have actually, once again, I have held my streak of never ending a meeting on time.