 Welcome, I'm Diane Meyerhoff, host for Town Meeting TV's presentation of the Burlington School Budget, part of our ongoing Town Meeting 2021 coverage. The show is being aired live on Town Meeting TV and streamed live on our YouTube channel. We welcome your comments and questions. If you're watching this program live, please join the conversation at 862-3966. I'm joined by Burlington School Superintendent Tom Flanagan and Communication Specialist Russ Ellen. Thank you both so much for joining me today. Thank you for having us. We're looking forward to the conversation. I'm sorry, I'm looking forward to knowing what I need to know before I fill my ballot out. Absolutely. So I'm going to turn it over to you two. I know you have a presentation already prepared for us and I will ask probing questions as we go along. Excellent. That sounds great. Russ, are you sharing? Okay. Okay. All right. Well, thank you again, Diane, for having us. It's great to be here. Looking forward to the opportunity to explain where we are with our proposed FY22 budget and to hear thoughts about the budget that are out there and have a bit of a conversation. I'll lead the discussion part of the presentation here and Russ, Ellick, our communications specialist will help me fill in if I'm missing any pieces or help me get back on track if I go astray. So thank you, thank you for having me. It's my first time on CCTV, so that's exciting. Welcome. Welcome. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. And also my first budget cycle and I'm honored to be here, to be on CCTV, to be in Burlington. I love Burlington. The family loves it here and I'm just honored to be able to have this opportunity. So thank you for having me. We have been focused in our budget development on equity, engagement and deep learning. Three priorities that we set when I first came on and they were a part of my 100-day plan and they came about as a result of a number of conversations that I had with folks in the Burlington School District and around the Burlington School District and led me to believe that my beliefs about education and philosophy for education really aligned closely to those of the Burlingtonians and so our budgeting process and we've been really grounding ourselves in these three priorities and our budgeting process was also grounded in these priorities of equity, engagement and deep learning. I've been really excited about the engagement that has happened through this process. We have a really engaged community. I heard about that before I got here and it's one of the reasons I was really excited about coming to Burlington and we saw the engagement throughout the process. We've done a number of different types of outreach. I do have a couple of advisory councils, students, families and teachers and I use those as opportunities to receive feedback and then we have some other formal areas, roads for feedback throughout our budget development process. Really the overall overarching focus for us has been around maintaining programs. The school board was clear that they didn't want us to cut programs. They wanted us to maintain programming and so in that we are also avoiding layoffs. So the budget looked really challenging this year as we were starting the process and so that was a really important tenant of this, maintaining programs, avoiding layoffs and finding reductions. So we really had to look hard for where those reductions are. I'm really happy with this budget. It really prepares us for next year, for fiscal year 22, but also has an eye toward the future where there are a lot of important and exciting projects that are coming our way. So if you look at sort of the way we developed these, the budgetary assumptions that we made in developing the budget, the first is that there's a $2.8 million. It's $2.8 million to just continue to run our district as is in terms of wages and benefits and some of the basic things that we need to provide each year as a district and debt service. In addition to that 2.8 million, which is just the year over year cost, we had to look at, we were looking and have found, thankfully, a place for Burlington High School and that is now called Downtown BHS. And we had to put significant funding toward Downtown BHS to make sure that we could get fit up done so that we could get into that space during the school year and get into the school over the next three years as we work on BHS, the old BHS, and to better understand what's happening at that building with the PCBs, which is why we're out of the building because we found high levels of PCBs in the air and now we're learning more about those PCBs and what the causes and how to remediate those, those all have significant costs. And so we're including some of those costs in our projected budget. Those are costs over the next three to five years. And so this contemplates that this our budget here contemplates that in FY 22 with an eye toward the future. And when will the school downtown open? Is it already open or? No, well, we're moving in now. So we're on winter break right now. And so the first day of school is the fourth. So yeah, on Thursday, staff are sort of in between the old building and the new building, getting getting things in. The new building just looks great. It's really an exciting opportunity to have school downtown. And and and so we're excited for that, but it was a cost and it was an un a cost that we didn't plan for. So there's a there's sort of a reality there. And then the other pieces, most people think about BHS as the high school, but we also have Burlington Technical Center, which is just a wonderful program serving half of the students in BTC or our students. And the other half come from sending districts in the region. And we just have amazing programs there. They were able to find space right away because they were able to use nontraditional spaces. So when we closed the high school down in person this fall, they are our director there. Jason Gingold got on it right away with with our team and found a bunch of spaces that were possibilities and then got got students into spaces. So we're in a number of different spaces, but that will continue into the into the next couple of years, just as BHS will that work around sort of the next step for BHS facilities. BTC is a part of that conversation. And in addition to BTC on top, so we have an alternative program for for students that's over in at Rock Point right now. And so we're paying we're we're needing to budget for rent for those different programs. So you can see when we were starting our budget planning process, Diane, we knew it was going to be a challenging year because we had these were the upfront costs that we were dealing with right right out of the gate, essentially. So in December, the state sent a letter around saying what they were projecting the state education fund would look like and what that could mean for property tax owners. And when we received that letter, we did our calculations based on these increases we were projecting and we were initially struck by the fact that if we were to operate business as usual, we might be looking at about a 13 percent increase in taxes for those who pay on their property. So so Tom and the board and our finance director and leadership team, we all felt like this wasn't something that was palpable, especially not during a year of coronavirus where everyone, a lot of people have been hurting and we knew that was going to be a tough ask. So we got to work and we really wanted to work to bring that number down. Yeah, and just to add to that, one of the reasons that the number was so high, it actually it includes the move of BHS and BTC and the facilities issues that we were having. It also includes the pressures on the state ed fund. And the the tax letter told districts around the state that to project on average a nine percent property tax increase. Hours was a 13 percent projected increase at the beginning because of the nine percent plus the debt service and plus downtown BHS and BTC. And so these were these were issues that we knew we needed to wrestle with and and and address immediately because we knew that 13 percent is not not that we cannot ask voters and our citizens to to to pay 13 percent. And so there's a big reveal coming here. There's a real I wouldn't call it a big reveal. I think you're supposed to say spoiler alert, Diane. I'm hanging in there. Good. Hang in there. So we did a lot of work. This is this is, you know, December work that we're sort of talking to you about now. And so we started looking for savings. So first we went to our board and talked about ideas for how do we start to address savings, which is where we had the conversation about making sure we keep programs. But we and we and we made sure we got community feedback to hear, you know, where are the areas where where we should be building building program and where are the areas that we can look to reduce program. And and then I also met with my cabinet. So we have a group of about 27 people, directors and principals at the district office, and I asked the whole cabinet to identify savings. Where where are their savings? And as we did that, we were also looking at enrollment trends. And so our enrollment has been trending down are not not a huge decrease in enrollment, but some decrease in enrollment over the past four or five years. However, you know, so we looked at that carefully. We also know, though, that we also believe that enrollment is going to tick back up because we think that immigration policy, we've already we're already seeing some changes in the way that immigration policy is being implemented. And so we're anticipating those enrollment numbers to to to move back up. So we wanted to make sure we're using data to make these decisions. And then I also asked the cabinet to look for savings within their programs and budgets. So the first the first thing that that happened, which is really the big area of savings for us this year was around operation operating reduction. So we did a line by line review of our budget. And we looked at and we just analyzed where we were over the past couple of years where where our spend was trending and and we ended up identifying a million dollars in savings. And none of these savings directly impact programs or people in the next in the next fiscal year. So that was important. So you'll see on here, health insurance utilization and health reimbursement and FICA, those are some of the heavy hitters are some areas where we were able to find some savings and contingency reduction. So these are just areas where every year we budget a certain amount, not knowing exactly what we will spend. And we were able to go back and look at the historical trends and make reductions in what are in our projections and still give ourselves a little bit of cushion. So we reduced contingency by one hundred and thirty eight thousand, but we still kept a little bit of contingency. We reduced health insurance utilization by two hundred and twenty five, but we still increased health insurance utilization and we will be OK there in terms of our health insurance and HRA and FICA. So these this is just a right sizing, essentially, of our of where we are in our budget and we were able to find a million dollars in operating reductions. And then we looked at cabinet and the school level budgets. And this is where we did. We analyzed enrollment data and and wanted to wanted to dig further and see where are there other places where we need to be finding savings. And this is a practice that that we've done in the past. And I want us to do every year, where are their savings and where do we want to add programs and how do those two conversations and and decision points align to our strategic priorities. So this is an exercise that that we'll do we'll do every year. And so so this year we we found that there are a number of paraeducator positions that are vacant this year and have and that we always carry a certain number of vacant paraeducator positions in case we need additional paraeducators in certain places. And so we're still going to maintain some additional paraeducator positions and but we are able to reduce some of those paraeducator vacancies. So again, this is an area where there were some questions, but this doesn't impact any any this doesn't impact people right now in positions and there are also still a couple of vacancies that we are currently hiring for in a couple of our elementary schools and in other places in the district that are paraeducator vacancies that are assigned to a classroom or a person. And those are not the positions we would be reducing here either. We're talking about eliminating the vacant positions that have been carried over year over year. And then we've asked yes to interrupt you a quick site just so you know, we have a time check. We have about 15 minutes left. OK, sounds good. We're we're we're into the meat. So I think it's good. So the other piece of the cabinet reduction ideas came from just budget just people looking at their line item budgets and reducing, you know, staples and ink and paper and places where you you know, we can make some we can make some easier reductions at each individual level. I think that's a really good example of the leadership team working together for for common good. You know that we have a number of departments in central office. And and so when someone wants to eliminate $10,000 at a time or 20,000, it might not look like a big deal. But when you're able to come together and say, OK, everybody, what can you get? You know, we were able to get another $100,000 in reduction ideas. So it was just really good exercise and teamwork and trying to roll the boat in the same direction. So that's the hard stuff. Do you want to talk about the fun stuff? Yeah, so we did. Oh, go ahead, Diane. No, no, please, let's talk about the fun stuff. Yes. So so we only have a little bit of fun stuff right now. But it sets us up for future fun stuff down the line, I believe, strongly. So we did add $120,000 to the proposed budget to make sure that we're able to communicate and support our students and families, our multilingual students and families, 12 months out of the year. But currently, our multilingual liaisons are not 12 month employees. And and we want to make sure that we're able to. And so there's a there's a gap in service for our our our popular population, our students and families who, I believe, need us most. And so I wanted to make sure we wanted to make sure aligned to the the priorities of equity and engagement and deep learning that our multilingual families are supported year round through interpretation, translation, getting them the information they need, but also running programming. And so this is something that we're that that, you know, is really important. You know, I would say this is this is actually a base expectation. I think it's really important. I'm glad that we're doing it. And I think that it's just something we really should be doing. The second sets us up for our strategic plan. So we have an implement where we're in the fifth year of a five year strategic plan. And we know that we're going to be developing a strategic plan this spring and that we're going to need to make some decisions about how to fund priorities in that strategic plan quickly. And we don't want to have to wait a whole fiscal year to be able to do that. So we put a little bit of funding in here for those immediate needs that may arise and immediate activities that we can take to action as a result of the development of the five year strategic plan. So those are the additions. We kept the additions additions tight. We want to be disciplined here. We want to be responsible and we want to keep programs. So that was the that was what we did. And this is sort of the this is the bottom line. This is how this is the overview of the summary of where we landed. And again, balancing fiscal responsibility with continuing programs. The the baseline budget, which is the FY 21 budget, the budget from this current year was ninety one million. If you add the debt service and operations of two point eight plus downtown VHS and BTC relocation, that brings you up. And then we we bring down. We we we subtract the operating reductions, the first year impact of state support. So one thing to note here is that we I met with the governor early in the in the winter or late fall and told him we had a big problem and we really needed help and we couldn't we couldn't take it on all by ourselves. And he said he wanted to help us. And so we I asked for three point five million dollars and he put three point five million dollars in his budget. And that budget now has gone through both chambers and we're awaiting signature. So we we so that that will be a reduction. And I'm very grateful for the partnership with the state and for them, for the governor, understand his team, understanding our need and stepping in to support us. I thought that was really, really important. So you so we landed at ninety five million for our for our school year budget for fiscal year twenty two. So one thing to know is that, you know, as we as we do our budgeting, there is there is movement in the numbers as we are budgeting. And because we're in we're currently in a fiscal year, right? So one way the budgets can budget can change and has changed a little bit so far this year is that the Ed Fund projections shift. So the Ed Fund is looking a little bit better than it was originally. And so that has the whole state feeling more optimistic about the budget. In addition to that, we have a surplus. So we have been fiscally responsible for the last number of years and are projecting a six million dollar surplus in the budget. This is due to that fiscal responsibility, but also due to not being in person for a large chunk of the fiscal year because of being on in out for COVID because of COVID. And so that creates a significant surplus. And so we're going to apply that surplus, about four million dollars of that surplus to reducing the tax impact that we knew we had to get the tax impact down to a to a percent that was manageable for our for our citizens. And we wanted to and the board and our team wanted to apply the surplus to that to the to reduce taxes. And then there's another about two million dollars that we will carry into fiscal year twenty two to and and and beyond to help us with PCB related issues. So all the mitigation and remediation that needs to happen and all the facilities issues that we know we're going to need to deal with. We need to we need to be identifying funding for those to support those those costs in future years so that tax rates don't don't balloon. Yeah. So this was our sixth consecutive year of having a surplus. And the nice thing about the way that we've used this is you can see that we we are going to attribute about one point one million to our general operating budget. And that's pretty typical for what we've done for the last three or four or five years. So that feels good to us to be able to continue on that path and then be able to use the rest of this money really to set it aside to make sure that we are getting as much help with these building projects as we can get. So the next two slides we're not going to talk too much about. But this is just for folks who want to see the slideshow and want to learn a little bit more about how your tax rates are calculated. What are some of those factors that weigh into what you see on our bill. But I think Diane the next slide is the one that you are waiting for. So here we drum roll. All right. Here we go. Oh, it didn't work. There we go. You heard it? All right. There we go. Yeah. So as you can see in in we were the homestead tax increase was projected for for BSD at twelve point eight percent. And that was the original estimate that we spoke about earlier. And through the process that we talked about, we were able to get that number down to six point eight eight percent. So close to where we've been last where we were last year and really being mindful that we needed to get that 13 percent down significantly. And so through the use of surplus through through operational savings and through some savings in our in our in our own sort of cabinet and district level budgets, we were able to get that number down to six point eight eight percent. So what that means for someone who is going to be paying based on the price of their property for a typical homeowner who might be paying taxes on a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar homestead. That means your taxes will go up by about three hundred and fifty dollars next year. However, we know that a large amount of Berlin Tonians do not pay based solely on their homestead and particularly this year with covid. So there will be a number of people who will pay school taxes based on their income that number is slightly smaller. It's a it's a six point four seven percent tax increase as opposed to the six point eight eight. And so what we have a couple of scenarios here for people to see. But if you are if you have a household of fifty thousand dollars, that means you're going to pay eighty one dollars more in taxes this year. And then you can see we have a couple of different scenarios for people who are paying based on ninety thousand dollars of income and one hundred and twenty thousand dollars of income. And I believe that when you get to be about above one hundred and forty thousand is when you start paying based on your property taxes again. So those are a couple of scenarios for people who might not be paying. And Russ, this this information this this presentation as well as this information is online on our website in a couple of different places. That's right. Why don't you just tell folks the general site that they can look for the information? So that's going to be WWW dot B S D V T slash budget. Here you go. Thank you. V S D V T dot org. Sorry, everybody. And we have a slide at the end that you can leave up for for a minute or so for people to take that URL down. Good. Thank you. So Russ, why don't we move to the ballot language? Let's do that. So here's the. Yeah, go ahead. Talk it out. So this is what you're going to see when you, Diane, you said you wanted to be prepared for filling out your ballot for Tommy. This is the language that you're going to see. So some of those numbers, I think it's important to point out are a little bit different than what we've showed here. And what we do for the ballot language is what the state tells us that we have to put on the ballot. So shall the voters of the school district approve the school board to spend 95 million, approximately 95 million, which is the amount that the board has determined necessary for the ensuing fiscal year. So that is the language that you're going to see. And hopefully that this is the information you're going to need to make an educated decision on whether or not to support the budget this year. So this is the website I was talking about. B S D V T dot org slash budget. We have a comprehensive budget document, including a line by line item budget. We have year over year budget comparisons for people who really want to get into this development process. We have all of our presentations that we gave to the board, as well as a timeline and a really easy to digest one pager. So I definitely recommend visiting that website. And of course, if you have any questions, you heard Tom say at the beginning, one of his priorities is engagement. So we have you can send us an email any time our goals to respond to every question that we get. And we really want to help people make informed decisions and be transparent and good communicators about what's going on in our district. And Tom wants to share one more slide, not necessarily related to budget, but sort of related to budget. I mean, it's all about it's about our health in general as a district. Well, and this is what the funding, this is what the budget will support, right? So there's there's a lot of really exciting stuff happening in Burlington. It's been a hard year for our country, our city in many ways. And we're really fortunate to be in Vermont and to be in Burlington, to have really amazing schools. I am just continually impressed. I have three daughters in our schools, and I'm just we have a lot of work to do. And we have a lot of amazing things happening. And so one of the things is that we're I mentioned earlier, downtown BHS is opening March 4th, faculty, families and students are very excited to get back in person in a more regular way. The equity work that we're doing, I committed to doing race and equity work with our leadership teams to start with is moving full steam ahead. We're fully engaged in that work. Our equity office is working across the district to support our efforts here. We are also digging into our programs. What does our literacy program look like? We have a goal of third grade reading that all students are are reading at grade level by third grade. And we need to really look at what our what our literacy programs are looking like, what our curricular materials are looking like, what our pedagogy looks like. And also reviewing our special education services. That was one of the issues, one of the things that I heard loud and clear coming in was people wanted us to really look into our special education services and make and do the best we can there. And then we're also starting a new five year strategic plan. We're going to be developing that this year and we're going to look for engagement. As Russ said, we're really committed to hearing from the community, hearing from individual stakeholders, both families and students and teachers, but also community members who don't necessarily have students in the in the school district where we're here. We want to want you to know we're available for for any questions, thoughts, ideas, feedback, please reach out and look forward to seeing you all again. Fantastic. Thank you so much, both of you. I we were talking earlier. I haven't heard too much about the school budget, honestly. Generally, Burlingtonians have a lot to say about the school budget. But I'm wondering, has it been fairly well received, at least from what you all can can tell? Yeah, this is my first year here, but we haven't we haven't heard. I mean, I would say we took we took a sort of conservative and disciplined approach to the budget and didn't and maintain programs. So I think that helps. People know that, OK, we have a lot. We have a lot of resources in place. We're in a good place as a district and and we want to continue and do better with the resources we have. So other than the paraeducator, so we did get questions about the paraeducator vacancies and and what was up with those. And I think we've helped people understand that those are positions that we value or we value our paraeducators. And we are we are not making decisions that are impacting anyone in those positions or any any other people at this point. And so that's something that was the one thing that came up. And I do believe we've answered that question to to to the best of our ability. And I think that's helped with the way that the community has received it. And I think we I think we for the last couple of years, we've made really strategic investments based on our equity work, our need for sustainable finances and facilities. But we have come with asks every year. So I do I do think that we've tried. We tried really hard not to make additions to the budget this year. And we wanted to be really clear with the community from the beginning. From December, you know, Tom's messaging was we're going to have a conservative budget and we're not looking to add a lot to it. So I think adding $200,000 to to a $95 million budget, you know, I think he and the district and Tom sort of stuck to their word. We're not looking for major major asks from the community this year. We're really grateful for the support for the last five years. And and so it's been that that's where we're at right now. I think it has felt well received to us. So that's good. Yeah, we hope. Yes, right. Of course, keep your fingers crossed. I want to thank you both for taking time out today to chat with us. We appreciate it. And of course, all the viewers who watched watch now or watch later, because this will be available on demand as well. And we should also make sure we tell everyone to make sure that they vote certainly via early ballot. And if you're using your early ballot at this point or beyond, you want to make sure you drop that off, not put it in the mail. We've been told that the date is past now for putting things in the mail. So but you can also vote on Tuesday, March 2nd. And most importantly, perhaps you can watch our live results show beginning at 7 p.m. on town meeting night. So I hope that you guys will you too will join us, as well as all the viewers out there as well. So when you miss it for the world, X, that's what I want to hear. Thank you there. Thank you. And I look forward to seeing everybody very soon. Thank you. And goodbye. Thank you, Diane. Good to see you.