 Great, so we're going to call the meeting to order and we're going to be talking about the budget, but before that, is it in the opening that we can add some items to the agenda? Yeah. So where would you like to do that? So these would probably be a part of the consent agenda and, you know, we can have discussion about what they are. We had got the results from the new state-led testing law. We hit some issues at Randolph Union. Letters have gone out to folks to kind of describe what's happening. But we want to do the repair works as quickly as possible. We want to access the reserve funds to do that. So one of the requests is to tap into about $19,000 of facilities reserve funds to replace the pipes, the sinks, and the faucets. Because one of the issues was in the kitchen at the RUHS. And so part of it is we had designs on replacing a lot of the equipment in there because it's getting older anyway. And so it seems like we're going to have to rip everything out as well. We may as well replace everything that's attached to it at the same time. The second comes from Danny from our transportation coordinator. They got a notification that the cost of buses, because the supply line issues is going to go up dramatically in the next week or two. And so we decided it was probably better to try to scramble to get the money for our normal bus replacements early. And so one of the pieces is looking to tap into the transportation reserve fund to replace two of the oldest buses in the fleet, as well as a 14-person student van. That's usually used for our students that go out to outplacement. The two vans that they have, it's actually going to be replacing two. One of them the transmission is shot and the other one is just getting so old that it's not reliable. And then the two buses are, again, the oldest in the fleet, over 100,000 miles, and they rattle over the old back roads. So typically we try to replace one of the two of them a year, always the oldest. And I should know this by now, but I don't remember. In order to use reserve funding, we need to vote on that separately, or can we? You could do more to add it to Consent Agenda, and so it would be a part of just voting on the Consent Agenda. So do we have? Again, we'll move to add the bus addition to the Consent Agenda. In the lead. In the lead. In the lead. In the lead. Now it's out of place. Eight seconds. Thank you. If anybody is interested, these are the quotes. All those in favor of those? Yeah... We're in here. So all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. I need to have someone do the meeting evaluation. All right, we're going to have them. Thanks, Megan. Megan, do that. Megan, do you have a copy of that? Yeah. Is it usually in here? We're going to send it out in the packet, but it's not a big deal. I think it's obvious. Okay. All right. So we're going to move on to public comment. So do we have anyone either online or in the audience who would like to move to public comment? I don't have anything on the budget. This is just general. It's just general, anything. I guess I have several issues, I'll just check on one or two and make them short. The masking of children in school. I think the board should really consider doing away with it. I know it's against the guidelines for the state, which is a CDC study that came out that said that clock masks are not effective against COVID. I know I saw an email about the ordering of 2,995 masks for the students, which could work, but a rate that children touch masks. I've actually seen several of you touch your masks since we've been here. Introduces virus and bacteria to the child's face. It creates a situation where they could actually introduce virus. There was also a UVM study last year, which showed the incidence of COVID infection. It was almost insignificant between maskwares and non-maskwares. In fact, maskwares had a slightly higher incidence of infection. Again, I believe that's because people touch their masks all the time. The study proposed that the higher incidence was due to people being too close to each other, not paying attention because they thought the mask was a crutch and relied on it too much, but it's the only part of the study I disagree with them on. I think it's from people touching their masks and it actually transmits virus. It's like rubber gloves for a surgeon. Every time you touch a door handle, if you're not cleansing your hands before you touch your mask, you're introducing stuff to it. You can put N95s on a kit all day, but if they're not cleaning their hands and then keeping their hands out of their facial area, those N95s are going to be ineffective and they're going to burn them through them in no time. Any time they touch it, they should be disposing of it and putting another one on. In my profession, I also wear N95s occasionally, and if you don't have them fit properly and wear them properly, they're useless. They're no better than this thing I have in my face, which does nothing according to the CDC. There's huge detriments to children. They can't visualize other children, their facial expressions, just speaking. Young children, they develop speech by watching people speak and the movement of their lips and their faces, and masks really are a detriment to that. I would highly recommend that even though the state says you should wear masks, I don't think there's anything that really says the board has to follow. And I would propose that you get rid of masks. Just on a real basic science thing, it's a virus. You're not going to stop it. You're just not. You can't. We don't stop the common cold. We don't stop influenza. We've had viruses and live with viruses on 53 years old. When I had chickenpox, the whole community came over, started rolling around on the ground with me to spread the chickenpox because they really wanted to get it when they were young. There's lots of viruses that damage us and hurt us, and that's just part of life. The best thing we can do is, quite honestly, for children, just concentrate on them keeping their hands clean, keep their hands out of their facial area. But masks are really not a big contributor to helping them out, keeping virus free. I guess I've said enough for tonight. I'll say that's off for the next time on here. Thanks. I just want to let you know when we do public comment, we don't get... It's not a dialogue. I understand. Just the way it's set up. That's why you're not going to hear a response. Okay. Well, thank you for coming and thank you for your comment. Okay. Can I have a quick comment? Sorry, I didn't see you. It's okay. It's quick, it's short. I just wanted to say that I think the wording in tonight's board meeting materials did a much better job of explaining the lead issue in the water. I just wanted to share that observation that I got an email as a parent today that felt like the email was a little bit more alarming. And then when I read that tonight's meeting materials, there was something in the way it was presented. I think it had to do with what locations tested high versus just barely high. I think that was really helpful that I didn't get out in the email. So I just wanted to share that observation. When I went back and read the emails from the principals, there was nothing wrong with it. I just felt like it came across as a little more alarming than maybe it really is. So I just wanted to share that in case you get feedback from parents. That's all. Thanks. And they can raise their hand if they want. So if you're online and you want to say something, there shouldn't be a hand symbol that you can click on. So we can see that. Okay. So see no other comments. We'll move along to the annual report. So this is the report that gets put in the town. Town reports. And also in the glossy. Annual reports of the district. This is last year's. It will go in there as well. This is from the board as a whole. And hopefully you had a chance to read through it. Chelsea and I met with Ben Merrill to sort of discuss what we wanted to put in there. And that was after we had previously discussed it as a board also. So I just want to express my appreciation to both of you for doing that, for taking the time. Thank you. You're welcome. So are there, as people have reviewed it, was there anything that you wanted to add or any edits that? I thought it was great. So we need to approve this annual report. So make the motion that we approve the annual report as written. We have a second from Ashley. Any discussion? So all those in favor of using this annual report? Say aye. Aye. Okay. And it passes. Okay. So you all got the message from either from Linda or from Jackie. And then from me. Jackie, because of her own need to be able to take care of someone with some health issues, she wasn't feeling comfortable coming to meet with us in person. And she didn't feel like it would be a useful training if she wasn't here with us in person. So that has now been postponed. So hopefully she said, you know, by later in, you know, after our March meeting, and we reorganized that, you know, at that point, hopefully things will be in a better position and we can be ready to work with her. Hopefully by then the COVID stuff will be kind of dying back down again. Well, we may have new members. And we're going to have new members possibly. Yeah. Okay. So are there any questions about that or concerns? Because I was just letting everyone know. Next up we have the monitoring reports that we had, we've had for a while now. So one is the financial planning and budgeting. So Lane, do you want to, do you have anything you want to sort of further share with us about? Some of it's a follow up kind of from the discussion at the last meeting. So again, this is financial planning and budgeting. It's about ensuring that the budget aligns with Board's ends. And that the practices that we're using are always putting us in the black at the end of the school year. Those are the basic requirements. And making sure that, you know, we're making our predictions based upon reasonable data that's out there. We had that financial questionnaire that comes up every year. And so I went and did a little bit of research on it. It's one of those documents that really has no place. But I can give you kind of the background on it. I did add it as the evidence in support of the limitations report. It looks like it was created by the Secretary of State many years ago. In response to a need to strengthen oversight in terms of financial operations. It's really, I think, intended from what I could tell to make sure that the boards are aware of who's responsible for what. And then what the basic processes are that are going on within the decision. So that's kind of its purpose. One of the questions that came up at the last board meeting, I think it was actually ended, put it up as pretty astute today. You know, it says that, you know, the board's not receiving financial training. Are we supposed to? As far as we could tell, there is no requirement. But the BSBA does offer, you know, financial training for board members. So just to kind of follow up on that. And I do report compliance in terms of executive communications policy. Okay, so as board members, as we are looking at this, again, what we're looking for is, you know, what were his interpretations of the policy reasonable? And did he provide sufficient evidence to show that he was in compliance with those interpretations? Does anyone see anything that they were concerned about? All right. So do we have a motion to approve the monitoring report on financial planning and budgeting? I make the motion that we approve EL 2.4 financial planning and budgeting as submitted. Any discussion? All those in favor of accepting the financial planning and budgeting monitoring report? Aye. So that passes. And then the next monitoring report is on emergency superintendent succession. So that's where, well, we'll let Lane explain. This is basically just in preparation. If something were to happen to him, sort of making sure there are things in place so that someone can fill in his duties right away. And that's really what it's about. It's just making sure that the district can operate on kind of an extended temporary basis. We should the superintendent become incapacitated. At this current point in time, there are two central office members that have sign sealed and delivered and notarized letters from me granting them my authority. Should that happen? One is Kayla Lane. The other is Robin Pembroke, who are, since they're in the central office, they know most of what's going on. The cabinet is in a good position to be able to help. Should anything occur? We need at least twice a month. We go over kind of all the things that are pertinent that are happening in the district. We do all the policy discussions and the planning and whatnot so that everybody's in the group on that. And then as we kind of move over into the budget discussion in a little while, we'll talk a little bit about the potential for the assistant superintendent position, which would help further kind of fit into this executive limitation. So that we've got somebody who's really trained and really stepping in stuff up. They do report compliance. Okay. So again, are we comfortable with Lane's interpretation of this policy? And has he provided us with enough evidence to show compliance? People feeling comfortable? No concerns? Okay. So can we have a motion to approve policy 2.5 monitoring report, emergency superintendent succession? I'll move. Oh, Megan, sorry. Megan will move to accept 2.5. I second. Ashley. Okay. Any discussion? All those in favor? Say aye. Aye. Aye. I'm assuming those are ayes. Yeah. Okay. So next we have the warning for the budget. And Lane, did you want to speak to us a little bit here about what's going on? All right. Let's go. Part of it for me, I got to pull up our presentation here in a minute. Part of it is because when you hit that consent agenda, there's actually a lot of little separate items that you're voting on that are related to the budget. There's three separate budgets that you would potentially be approving tonight. There's the Raven budget, the RTCC, and then the overall OSSD budget. So we'll talk about those in a little bit of detail. There's also a discussion about what my recommendations are to do with the surplus. And that happens every time this year. And then there is also, I don't even know if there's much of a discussion, but under the state law, we are required to announce our tuition rates. Basically based on the timeline at this point. So I'll go over what we projected those to be. Just a moment. Hey, it actually comes up. Can you see it from here? It's prescribing what you're saying. Oh, yeah. That's this new function they put on. And I actually don't mind it, but it's irritating because if you're talking, and you're looking at it at the same time as this child. So we'll talk a little bit about the Randolph Technical Center budget and kind of two slides on this. A little bit of where things are at. And in the second slide, I'll talk about kind of the causes, why things have shifted a bit here. So if you take a look over on the left column there, right, the current total budget, that's the year that we're living in right now, is about $2.9 million. What we're requesting for the next fiscal year, next year, is $3.1. The total change, the total increase is $143,000. That has an impact on the tuition rate. The current tuition rate this year is $17,679. The tuition rate for next year would be $18,670. So it's a fairly significant change of $991. And you guys interrupt me at any time that there's questions. Talk a little bit about what we call the summary of cause here. Based on how the state funding formula works, it's really weird. They have a six semester rolling average that they use. They check the enrollment each semester for six semesters. They do an average and they say this is the number of kids that we will support you in. Well based upon that, we will receive funding for 128 students for next year, even though we'll be providing services to approximately 145. And so there is a good reason why you're seeing this increase at this point in time. That eventually will catch up in the averaging but it will take a little bit of time. Just to be clear, there were no new staff added. The increase is due to three sources. The first are the supplies and the services for additional students. The second source is the contractually agreed upon salary increases for the staff for next year. Those are things we don't have control over. And then we had a number of new staff come in that were taking a higher level of insurance than the staff at Exeter. And so that had a dramatic impact. In fact, if you take a look at the pie chart there, about 84% that is up there. That's all contractual stuff. That's all due to health insurance and salary increases. The great part is what's left over for managing the additional students that we have. Thoughts, questions on tax revenue? This, we did check with where some of the other technical centers out there. It puts us expense wise probably in the top third. But we are a little bit different. And this is where some of the discussions are coming in with police at this point in time. We're different in the fact that we are a full day program. The other programs are half day. We provide the additional courses and classes that students need to take to be able to graduate from their home school as well as make it through the RTCC program. And that does add a significant additional expense. I mean, we've got potentially three teachers there that are providing those services and each of those teachers, you know, between salary and benefits are about $100,000 a piece. So it's a significant portion of the budget. There are discussions about kind of changing that moving closer to a three quarter or a half day model so that potentially in the morning the kids would receive their instruction in their home schools and then come maybe an hour later and attend our RTCC. But that's a future discussion. That is something that, you know, Felicia may talk with her advisor about over the coming year. This is kind of when you're at this point. Also remember that throughout the budget inflation was what? They were estimating 6%. It's actually closer to 8% this year. So, you know, even just normal supplies and services that we are ordering, you know, for students, those have got up dramatically. So you've got to tell them what you've got. So, Lane, you meet with the other superintendents. Do you ever ask them? So we're looking like, you know, our tech center costs are going up for these particular reasons, which I'm assuming other superintendents would understand. Do you ever sort of see if that makes them leery about? There are at least one district that is trying to build programming in-house to provide a little bit of the flavor of the tech center without having to send the kids to the tech center. But technically under the law it is illegal for them to try to twist students who want to go to the tech center. They're not supposed to interfere with that if that's what the students desire. I think it has an impact, but I have not seen it in the data. Our numbers are up, and I expect they will continue to be. Felicia was doing a pretty good job this year. She had advanced when they are trying to get their enrollment numbers for next year, trying to get the signups going, and the numbers appear to be high. So I think we're going to be in good stead. Another question. With the tech centers that happen to do a half-day program, is that also partly because of transportation? I was under the impression that for our tech center because of the transportation, it makes it really hard to do a half-day. I would argue it's possible. Sometimes what happens in districts is, we're one of the few districts that actually provides our own busses. These districts with RTCC, with the tech centers however, they bus the students into us. If they are using a busing service, if that same service has multiple contracts with multiple districts, sometimes they have to tear their scheduling so that they can deliver the kids for this district, and then once that's done and they can move on, and so sometimes that might have an effect. I can't say definitively, but it is certainly a possibility. In those districts that are half-day, the salaries that the teachers are making are either equal to or greater than what our tech center teachers are making for that time. What they do is that it's a half-day for the kids, but the teachers are there for the full day, and that's their planning and their prep time, and their meeting time, and all the other duties above and beyond that they would normally do, and it sounds like a lot, and then the light bulb went on for me when I was thinking about it, well, let's compare that to a high school teacher. Well, the high school teachers have a seven-period schedule, right, and they teach five of them, so they've got a significant amount of time off during the day for planning and prep, if it's not being used up with duties. So it would put them, depending upon how it was balanced out, it would put them in the same category for having planning time, that's what our high school teachers do. Again, I don't know how serious the discussions are about it, but as we look at the budget piece, that's a possibility. When you're dealing with small numbers of students in a school, small changes have a large impact on the budget, which is just the way it is. But she's done a very good job of putting things together while building the program. And remember, they put in additional programming this year. They've got the dentistry program that's in there. They revamp the electrical. They revamp the digital media. So there's been a significant amount of work that's been done to be able to help draw in more and more students and keep closing doors and stuff. Eventually, even if the student counts stay the same in the 145 range, if that stays steady, that averaging will catch up and the tuition will go down. It's just a matter of that additional funding for that average process. Last question. And you probably don't know the answer, but judging from the state of the state and sort of hearing what both parties in the state legislature are talking about job training being one of them, any word yet that they might be building some money into TechEd? The state of Vermont has always expressed extreme support for this type of training for students and this type of education. So it was a little shocking when there wasn't a significant amount of support when COVID hit. You know, it was really geared towards the regular schools. They did get some money through the gear grant the government, the governor had done some discretionary money through it, but they did not get the kind of support that the other districts did during COVID. And so that was a little bit of a shock. I don't know if it was just an oversight or with everything that people were trying to balance and manage if it just got overlooked. But I think much more could have been done. But I have not heard anything. A new legislative session I think just opened up this week. A lot of it, most of the discussions, at least with the superintendents, has been around the Act 173. You know what's happened with the special education money in the block grant system. Raven, we spoke about before nothing has changed since the last time that we talked about it. Raven is a specialty program for students with certain types of disabilities that we manage in-house. We also accept tuition and students from other districts that take advantage of this program because it's a really good program that Jim loves. So what we're looking at is the current budget is $266,000, requested for next year is $252,000. It's gone down a little bit and the reason that it's gone down a little bit is, again, mostly due to one of the staff members over there. There's only two changing their health insurance. We moved to a lower plan. So the tuition is actually going down by a significant amount. That was dropped by 1452. These students, when I was doing some research a couple of years back to see what this program was saving the district, these students, if they were sent anywhere else would cost anywhere from $6,920,000, not including transportation. So it really does. It's a great program that helps the students out but in terms of costs, it's an incredible cost effect. And the numbers are still good there. They turn students away. They typically run around 14 of those 14. On average, three of the kids are ours. The rest come from other schools. There's always folks asking for more. We had tried to actually expand the program when we moved into the new building for them with the idea that if we had to we could blow the north wall out and extend the building that way. But we couldn't get a second body who had the skill set we needed to be able to do that expansion. We tried for two years and then we finally just cut it out of the budget. It makes me a little bit nervous. The folks that are running it are awesome and hopefully they've got a lot of years left. But should they retire, we might be in a bad way for them. I'll make sure I've got all my parts and pieces because there's some details I want to make sure that's explicit about here for folks. So prior to COVID, we kind of talked about this last year. We actually kind of achieved it last year was this idea of getting to what's called a level service budget. Getting all the structures, all the resources, all the supplies that we need, and get the programming in that we want that is supporting the kids towards the ends. And then once we get there, we move into what's called level service mode. In other words, it's not keeping the budget the same every year, but only allowing it to go up enough to maintain what we have. And so usually it goes up usually to 2%, somewhere between 2% and 3% between having to pay the additions, the salaries that are in the contract, inflation, things like that. But obviously COVID has changed quite a bit of our calculus here. And so this particular budget is designed to allow us to adapt to the new needs that were created because of the COVID pandemic. And a lot of those needs are in the form of unfinished learning. And we have a whole new, we talked about trauma-based behaviors that interfere with learning in the past. A whole new type of behavior that we're seeing in the kids that is completely separate from what we were experiencing. There is a significant amount of aggression. And I guess the only way I can describe it is the students fall apart over small things. They drop the pencil on the floor and then it's immediately in tears or running out of the classroom. It's at that level. And so those are the things that we're trying to plan to mitigate, to mediate. The budget's also designed to allow us to go after all of the ends. We had spoken earlier about the high cost of trying to pursue everything at once. And since folks actually, the board, seemed open to doing this, this budget will provide the personal and resources needed to also pursue those final perspective ends. We called them perspective because they were ones that were set for the future and the resources to them. And those were primarily the foundational knowledge ends and social studies life skills. And so that's kind of what this budget is designed to do. And so I'm going to freak you out up front and then it's going to look really good at the end. And the reason that that's going to happen is because we're going to talk about expenses first. And the reason we talk about expenses first is because the voters vote on the expenses. There is a significant amount of revenue that is going to offset a lot of this. And so that'll show up when we talk about what folks' actual tax rates will be a little bit later in the process. So what we're looking at, we're looking at an increase of about a million dollars in expenses for next year. About half of it's due to new staff. These are things that help support the ends and help to support the work that we've got to do because of what became manifest under COVID. We also have an increasing population in the elementary schools. We've expanded the preschool program considerably. We have full-day preschool for four-year-olds, and we're trying to expand the three-year-old programs as well in the coming years. And so there's a lot that's going on there that we're trying to make sure that is supported. Half of the increase, half of that million dollar increase is for new staff. The other half is for what we call mandatory things. We've got legal and contractual obligations under the staff master agreements that we have to make sure that we honor. The other piece that we'll talk about a little bit, and you can see that on the right column down at the bottom, that special education act, that Act 173 that is changing how the state funds special education students. In our case, at least with the generic formulas they gave us to try to plan this budget, despite the fact that things may change in this coming legislative session, it hit us for $200,000. We're losing $200,000 in support that we normally would have had from the state to support our special education students. So we have to make that up somewhere because the need is still there even though the funding now is not, and so that's going to come from the Ed fund now. And so that's kind of the breakdown here. So I kind of break this into discretionary and what I call mandatory. So the discretionary stuff is what's in purple. That's the new staff. It's like, yes, we could live without it, but there are significant needs that these things will fulfill. We did whittle back from what our original asks were for when I did that first budget presentation two months ago. So OSSD discretionary go through the details of this. One of the first things that is on there is the assistant superintendent and that would be a full-time position. And basically if we want to be serious about proving academics and programming for our students, which is the general goal, collective goal of the ends, this position is essential. You know, we made the joke kind of tongue-in-cheek at a previous board meeting. People said, well, what districts have these? And I said, well, the successful ones. And there's a reason for that. Main duties of an assistant superintendent with center on curriculum development and implementation, student performance data analysis, student support systems, creating and implementing a K to 12 staff professional development plan, grant management, the most important piece, because all those pieces support each other is tying those pieces together so that we have one cohesive learning program for the district K to 12. And that's a big job for any one person. They would also serve as the district's equity coordinator. Blaine, can I ask you a question? Sure, yeah. Interrupt me anytime. Just in terms of the jobs market, how difficult do you think it will be to build that kind of... I mean, that's a lot of experience, a lot of special expertise. If we get the right person, it'd be nice to have somebody who's got all the expertise coming in. If we get the right person who can learn, who can interact very positively and collaboratively with the teams that are already up and running and build the other teams that we need, we're gonna be okay. I'm an expert in all those things. One of the issues has been that I haven't had the time because I've got 220-some-odd staff members. I'm managing all human resources for. I've got the entire management of the district on top of it. I've been trying to do some of these pieces that are in this as they can, and it's just, it's too much. And so it's kind of better if we can get that second body in here to cover that piece while I keep them running. I've been trained. I have actually developed these programs for scratch in two of the highest performing districts in the country. And I just need the time to sit down with somebody, talk them through it and get them on their way. So it's not like on hand, off of it. Right, right. It would be nice to have somebody who has the skills. But if not, as long as they have what I call the traits, they got the behaviors of mine, the characteristics of personality that are conducive to this, the other stuff can be trained easy enough. And the other piece is that, if we open up the position and we are not getting people, I'm not going to hire somebody until I get what we need. I'll sit on it if I have to until the right person comes along. We potentially, no one has expressed an interest since we've talked about it, but there are potentially people in the district who might be idealists. And so I think, you know, we'll see what the candidate looks like with the budget classes and just the kinds of possibilities. But I think it's critical for where we're at at this point in time if we want to take that step. You see some preschool parts and pieces up there. You know, the coordinator to oversee the part-time three-year-old and the full-time four-year-old programs as well as working to kind of expand the three-year-old programs. It's been Pat Miller. She kind of retired and then picked up the part-time that we're paying her for now to get these programs up and running. She is exceptional. She spent ages pouring through the myriad regulations that go along with programs for younger students and they are legion. And she's done an exceptional job. She's probably one of the best in the state at it. And we already have the teacher that is doing the work in the preschool program up at Brookfield. It's just that they're being funded by grants and I'm trying to get them over into the regular budget so that we know they're there in perpetuity. I'm not sure if it's true. It hasn't been a problem. But administration's changed. Things happen. I don't want to lose this that we built because this is fundamental to a lot of the N's work. If we get that additional year, year and a half of education for students in those fundamental years, that's going to be key to their success throughout the rest of their years with the district. Technical support specialist and district of 13, 13 or 31 students. Every one of them has a Chromebook. Every teacher has a laptop. We have probably 50 or 60 different software platforms that we are running to support education within the school. It's not possible with the three. How the heck they've done it for the last couple years? I don't know. But we're looking to bring a fourth person to be a part of that program. There's two pieces to this. The main piece is that we're in a position where we need to start looking at a new website. We need to bring that platform in-house so that we can manage it here with our own expertise. That's what we need and whatnot. And so this person's primary responsibility would be that. And in the time that they have left over they can support, you know, the other three texts that we have within the building. The other piece that I am hoping is that, you know, Tina was actually brought in, originally not as a tech director, but as an integration specialist. And other ones, someone who takes the technology that's out there and matches it with the needs of the teachers and the students so that it can be used to enhance their learning. And I think if we can free her up, because she really does enjoy working with kids, I didn't realize she was a music teacher one time. She's been driving the robotics. That's awesome. She's been driving the robotics work that's been happening around here to a great extent. To be able to free her up to do a little bit of that would also be incredibly beneficial. The library in time is primarily a brain tree in Brookfield Day. Each in there just one day a week is trying to get them in for two. There's a variety of reasons for that. The first is that, you know, they are the primary deliverers of the digital literacy curriculum and they need more time to do that because we did start doing some work on developing a digital literacy curriculum. But they don't have the time to deliver it in the way that it needs to be done. They also kind of like Tina as an integration specialist, they work with the academic teachers that the teachers are working on projects and things. These are resources that they can go to that can help them identify the materials they need and some of the technology they need that's going to be useful for what the teachers are trying to accomplish. And the last piece that I think is most important given, and this is more a little bit more COVID related is the elementary schools are a little bit different animal obviously than the high school. They don't get the planning time that the high school teachers get. And so anything that we can do to give them a little bit more planning time, where they can connect around the needs of their students and adapt to that the better off everybody is going to be. And so while the librarians have the students that's going to free up the elementary teachers to be able to do that work that's so necessary. So a lot of that is a support for the support for the other teachers and the students by providing extra time. In terms of a classroom teacher R-E-S I got my numbers here. R-E-S is actually at a six year high in terms of its enrollment right now. Matter of fact, our elementary schools are at a six year high in terms of their enrollments as a total with most of those new enrollments in grades K to 4. And they're at a point where they're first in that this seems they need a new teacher because the classes are just getting too large. The nurse the nurse is already here. This is getting her off a grant and into the regular budget because we need the additional support at the high school and R-T-C-C that's been kind of ongoing since COVID has been there. We have no idea how much longer COVID's going to last. I have a feeling it's with us forever. You know what state or what format we'll be in I don't know. And so being able to have that extra medical person on hand who can help with testing everything else has been incredibly beneficial. I'll just look at that. And then a math teacher at Randolph Union they have done some pretty significant curriculum revamps and curriculum rewrites and working together as a team but probably one of the things they need the most right now is just an additional teacher to reduce the class sizes so that they can spend a little bit more concentrated time with the students as the class sizes go down to a certain point on learning will increase and so that's kind of the goal of that position. So these are the discretionary pieces that we're adding that half of that million dollar increase. I'll shut up for a little while in case there's questions. And you guys are up to speed on a lot of this stuff because we've talked about it but a lot of this is also for folks that will be watching on cable the next week or two. All right. Local taxes. What we're all paying for our tax rates. It's important to recognize that taxes at the local level come from two different sources. One of those sources is under the school's control one of them is not. And most people are familiar with lived in Vermont for a little while what these things are. The things that are controlled by the district is basically how much the schools are spending to do their job relative to the revenues we receive. That's within our control. What's not in our control is this common level of appraisal. What happens in the state and it's built into the tax formula is if the values of homes in your town have gone up over the past year then this common level of appraisal the CLA will change so that you are paying more in taxes. Makes sense if the value of your home goes up then the state feels that you should be paying more in taxes because that value is going on. The CLA has to do with the changes in the value of real estate in the town it has nothing to do with the schools and what we are spending. Now this is important if your tax rate were only based on the school side of the equation then your tax rates next year would go down by about 7 cents per $100 of assessed value or about $200 for the year for an average price. It's just the school so we've done our job but I should give you an indication that there's a lot of revenues that came in to offset that note. This slide takes both elements into account we've got the school impact and the CLA impact and it provides what next year's tax rates would be in each town if this budget is approved. If you're living in Braintree you would see so an average home this year is $281,000 in this area so on an average home you would see a decrease in your annual taxes of $216 in Brookfield you would see an annual decrease in your taxes of $9 in Randolph because our property values went up the most of the three towns in the last year you would actually see an annual increase of $82,000 questions on when you're paying $4,000, $5,000 already it's horrible to add more but by the same token relative to the $4,500 it's not a lot. It'll probably change next year when the CLA changes again the CLA has had a big impact on what the tax rates are. So questions on tax rates and I talk about it in fairly simplistic terms because Vermont has one of the most complicated formulas I've ever seen I almost think it should be unconstitutional if a person with an average education can't calculate what their taxes should be based upon the state tax formula they're the problem there So move on to the next thing that we're going to consider here and things that you have to vote on will be a part of the warning that the bounce folks will vote on in March. There are surplus in their reserve surplus those are monies that remain at the end of the budget year. We're in a current budget year right now at the end of the year if there is money left over that is called surplus. Yeah we have surplus and we can convince the voters to put that surplus into a reserve fund for us and later use that money for the purpose that they allowed us to put the money in the fund for. Transportation fund means if they approve money for the transportation fund that we will be spending it on replacing buses and other vehicles in and around the district. A couple of things this conversation can get a little confusing because we're actually potentially talking about three different fiscal years surplus comes from last year right it's left over at the end of the last year's budget we are in the middle of managing this year's budget right so let's keep on this up and running and we talk about it in various aspects of the meetings and then you are in the process of voting on next year's budget so I'll try to keep keep things a little bit separate. The big thing about surplus monies is if the town votes to move them into a reserve fund this is where the board would have to vote to allow the district to access that money and that's something that at the very beginning right we were talking about the buses and we were talking about the lead that is part of your oversight duty that's why you vote on it because we guaranteed you the town we would be using it for these specific purposes your job is to make sure that the district does that and that's what that board accomplishes. So 2020-21 so this was last year and last year was the grant monies that came in they had weird rules that allowed us to do things that you normally can't do with federal funding and one of the things that allowed us to do was to supplant in other words if we were spending money already on something we were also allowed now to apply grant money to it in other years you're not allowed to do that typically if you're spending grant money it's for things that are above and beyond what you can do on your own and so the directive kind of came down from the state to make this extra one money spend it on your needs for mitigating COVID but then if you have money that's left over above and beyond on that spend it on your normal and that's what we did and in doing that right we still had to we still had to ask for all the money that we needed for the year up front because the grants are reimbursement grants you have to have it and spend it first before you get it back into this year and we've got $2,072,997 in surplus that are sitting there which is awesome, we can do a lot of things with that and so my recommendations for this and there's two of them is that we do what we did last year and I'll show you how this looks is that we take a million of that $2,000,000 and we use it to lessen the tax burden on the taxpayers so we take a million of those dollars we divide it up into three equal amounts of money the first will help folks for next year the next chunk will help folks for the year after that the next chunk will help folks for the year after that so that's my suggestion is to help subsidize things, help ease the burden on taxpayers for the next couple of years now there are some foreseeable things some of them are a little bit scary that are coming up that makes it kind of an imperative to put some of this money into our reserve funds and I'll talk about what each of those things are when we hit them so a couple of things to kind of remember so we had surplus from the year before last and remember what we did it was like $1.6 million so we made a decision at that point in time we said heck you know everything is unknown in terms of COVID we don't know what's going to be happening with the education fund and so let's plan on trying to help the taxpayers out as much as we can and so we decided that two years ago was at that $1.6 million we were going to use half of it up front right and this year that we're currently in the subsidized taxes to lower the taxes that people would have to pay and then we'll take the second half of that equal sums and use that in the following two years to help folks out so what I'm proposing for this year is that we take that million dollars divided into three equal amounts also use that to subsidize and so what you'll see is that this year we subsidized we helped out the taxpayers by generating $826,000 in revenue to offset taxes $746,000 the year after that $746,000 I'm calling this $333,000 right now but the odds are we'll have another lump of surplus because of all the federal funding in S or 3 that we're going to have to spend now that we'll be able to do this again and there's a couple of reasons to try to spread it out over three years instead of doing it all at once if we do it all at once we don't know what's going to happen in those future two years and we know that COVID is still with us we don't know if the economy is going to crash it's going to be strong or what and so this allows us a way of buffering things the other thing it does is it doesn't set us up for a cliff we spend it all up front all of a sudden the next year it's like hey we still want to do everything that we've been doing we might have to ask if the ed fund doesn't increase the way that we hope it does we might have to ask the taxpayers for the money to have to keep us where we're at and so what you'll see what this does is this kind of gets things to a steady level and if the ed fund starts to increase we slowly wean off this as the ed fund goes up and hopefully everything's balanced and there's no cliff that we have to deal with if I'm making any sense a little bit and so this is what I'm recommending for the plan and I think the taxpayers have helped us out an awful lot and this is going to help us keep faxes as low as possible while we're still building adding and creating what we need to reach the next so questions on the sub-summitation piece is there any concern that the state might come in and say hey you've got this big subsidy they, it was a big surplus you know you should give it back to us there was the first couple of years there was actually discussion about it one year but it was side discussion I checked with PHO this feeling is under the law they couldn't even if they wanted to okay and so I think that's a good thing a part of it is that you know we voted in good faith for this money the voters voted in good faith to put into these reserve funds for these specific purposes and they followed the law to do that so that would take a huge huge act and they the amount of political fallout they would receive would be tremendous it was a real concern my first two years as I was trying to understand the budget process so we'll talk a little bit about this about where things currently stand in terms of you know first student spending total budget including grants remember we have to say everything that we're spending so that includes our grant monies those don't come from the taxpayers but because we're spending it and they're voting on our expenses we have to include it as part of the budget so 22,165,294 the plan is to use 746,503 in surplus some from you know this year surplus from some from the reserve fund to offset the budget this keeps us below the spending threshold and it provides a $418 for student buffer so right now the property yields they did really well in terms of the education fund the property yields are up over $1,000 $12,937 for student when I started here it was down around $10,000 so it's gone up significantly over the time and so the property yields the dirty way to think about it is this is how much you're getting from the state for student it's gone up by about $1,000 for students this last year right now our cost for student with this budget is $19,559 and taking a look at what these numbers are for other districts around the state in previous years where we stood next to them in previous years we're in the middle of the pack we're not at the top, we're not at the bottom if this is the middle we're like right about here so we're not out of line there is a threshold this threshold has been waived for this year but they did put a number out there of what it would be if it didn't count what happens with this threshold is if you're spending those above that there's penalties and all the money comes from local whereas the money underneath here comes from the ed fund which means all the taxpayers in the state are paying into it so it's kind of an interesting system so we're in really good stead you know technically if we were really trying to leverage stuff and the town was on board the best thing to do is to push as close to that darn threshold as you can get without going across to each year because it's kind of other people's money some of ours but a lot of it's coming from taxpayers across the state so questions, thoughts on this before we move into reserve funds? I apologize but there's a lot of pieces here that you guys are voting on I want to make sure that have you looked back to see sort of our people spending over time do you keep that? yeah it's and again it's quirky because it depends on the year depends on enrollments it can change it's been between 17 actually last two years we were pretty stable it was 17 something but it was close to 18 but I think you're going to see this is the case what you see happening with us you're going to see this across the state because we're all in the same boat that was one of the reasons I think there was a lot of concern that a lot of people would be actually over that threshold this year which is why they they don't usually do that so the other pieces we've got this million we're going to want to use that to subsidize subsidize the budget so the taxpayers aren't paying as much but we've got this other half a million and this is how I'm recommending that we break it down in terms of the vehicle and the bus reserve fund so I call that the transportation fund we use it to replace buses, vehicles, whatever is wearing out we currently have over a million dollars in there we have 100,000 that we budget every year anyway within the normal regular budget that supports this so our average spending each year is about 100,000 dollars we don't really need to add more to this at this point in time building and maintenance is fairly high right it's 2.8 million that's in there right now but there's a reason for that if we get any huge projects that come our way we don't have to go out to bid we don't have to ask the town to take a loan or the district to take a loan to go out and get this work done because we've already got the money to replace the building on the roof on this school you know last year when the time came when I ever happened to go and ask the town for it but I'm going to recommend that we add a half a million to that fund and the reason being is because we have a great unknown out there right now and in addition to the lead testing that folks were required to do we were also required to do PCB testing that came out in the last legislative session so the reality is is that any building that is older than 1979 or has parts of it that are older than 1979 is almost assured to have PCBs because they were ubiquitous they're an insulator they're used for electrical and thermal insulation and everything else right down to the caulking that was used in Windows and so the odds are that we are going to encounter some PCB issues when the testing happens and we're going to guarantee it but it's likely and we're going to need to remediate and so I'm thinking it's important to put in a significant amount of money to be able to cover that if it wouldn't that time come legal fund we had $42,000 that have been sitting there for a number of years I'm suggesting putting in another $48,000 one of the reasons being is as we talked about you know my candidate for assistant superintendent I expect with the exodus that seems to be happening right now in personnel trying to get out of the education profession I think people are tired I think the burned out it's happening across the nation I think they're realizing that you know having to encounter COVID every day coming into the buildings and having to work in a congregate setting during COVID is not where a lot of folks want to be and so I think there's going to be an exodus and so what that means is the quality of applicants that we are going to get the pool of applicants that are out there is going to go down and typically when the quality goes down you end up with many more human resources issues than you normally would and a lot of human resources issues need to be cleaned up with help from the district legal council and so just in anticipation of that possibility I think it's wise to put a little bit of money in there the special education fund we actually created this probably about two years ago in anticipation of this eventual switch to the block branded funding under Act 173 right it used to be we get a kid that comes in when we got him in we knew the state was going to reimburse us for part of the expenses of that student what the new system is is that they basically look at the population of your school and say based upon you know the 850 kids that you have that actually live in your three towns you get a lump sum of money here you need to make it last the problem is you get that lump sum of money up front what happens if I get a kid that comes in in the middle of the year which often happens it's costing me $300,000 between the services that we send them out to them in transportation I've got to be able to cover it without decimating the budget and so we've been building an education reserve fund for those scenarios if we have two or three kids working with severe needs I don't have to decimate the rest of the budget to be able to provide that they do have what's called I call it circuit breaker that used to be the federal name for it they do still reimburse for some students that are very high but you got to pay this much of it and then they'll reimburse you for you know the top portion of it so there is some reimbursement there is some circuit breaker help if needed but not what folks are used to so I think we got a plan for it and so that's the reason for that and like I said you already saw even on this switch that they put the formula they gave us to use while things are still a little bit up in the air we lost $200,000 this operational fund this one's a little quirky so I may want to actually go back to my notes to make sure that I state all the parts and pieces right this is where we put the money that we use to subsidize the budget in later years that's its purpose and so there's the 826,000 that's what's left over from last year we're going to split it into two chunks over the next two years so I'm suggesting that we put 1,666,000 in there as well and that number seems a bit high it may not make a little bit of sense but let me explain it so we talked about that first million that had nothing to do with the reserve funds a third of it is going to subsidize next year that's already there we can do that we don't need anybody to approve us to do that the 666,000 that's left over needs a place to sit so that we can use it in the next tax years to subsidize taxes so 666,000 of that is from that original million that's separate from what we talked about for the reserve funds that's just sitting in here so that we have it available when the time comes to subsidize taxes the remaining 250,000 above that that I'm asking to put in there is for three things and again anticipating the future here which is what a lot of this financial planning executive limitation is about is because of the failure of the financial software to launch that the state was trying to put into place they had under the law they were required to put in a statewide financial software system that all districts would use because it makes the transfer of data between the state systems and the school systems much easier they can just pull what they need because everything's in the same place when the computers are looking for it that sale here was that software was a dramatic failure it was supposed to go into place in our district four years ago they've been heaven and hawn trying to decide what to do about it they signed a contract for it and so they're in the process of breaking the contract and we don't know what the outcome is going to be but what I guess is is that they're going to turn around and say districts do what you want as long as it communicates with the state the state systems which means that they were going to pay for the software for everybody but it may end up back in their laps and so that transition for our district alone is in the $150,000 so $250,000 going in there $150,000 of it is to make sure that we're potentially covering if we've got to cost on a new financial software package the other portion the money that remains would go towards creating a new website and creating an in-house platform that we control right here and then the other piece that's becoming vitally important is we need an archival database that can digitize all our paper records everything this district does almost is done in paper I have classrooms at the high school that we cannot use because they are filled with file cabinets of 65 years of student records that we have to maintain employment records a lot of parts and pieces of them have to be maintained forever financial records have to be maintained for at least 7 years we have whole areas of buildings in paper that are these records and the best thing that we could possibly do is get it digitized get it into a database so that anybody can do a Boolean search on it and pull up what they need when they need it and then to claim back that space for other purposes so part of that money would be used to begin that investigation and see what kind of a package would be made a lot of actual questions on reserve fund and the logic behind why what's going where do you have any hands people are people are running around trying to get their caffeine so they can stay awake for your mind I don't blame them and then the last thing that folks you'll be voting on potentially tonight are what we call announced tuitions the vote on what they will be for students that come to our district for Raven we've already talked about that that would be the 25241 for the tech center that's what we already talked about the 18670 at the elementary level if they're coming and attending our elementary schools from outside it would be 15670 actually here's your listing of what it's been an REHS it would be 18609 again school school choice and tuition and students this is what the cost would be it is not nothing in there is padded it is based upon what we would be paying for our own own students this question we currently actually do very well in terms of the students that are coming in from the outside we're generating 350,000 a year in revenue for students and we're going to cover a little bit of business so we're going to do a good job unless there's questions I can go back to anything that was a lot of information to digest but it sounds like you've you've put together you've got pretty strong rationales for what you're doing and why you're doing it and it doesn't seem like it's going to be a huge it's actually the smallest I've been here anyway Randolph was usually Randolph was interesting every year Randolph was usually the CLA was right what the town assessments were they were usually right so there wasn't a big fluctuation up and down in terms of the CLA's they finally got hit this year it was usually field and brain trees that were always swinging up and down do we have any questions anybody online have any questions participant okay then I think we will move on so do we have to we have to vote to approve the warning right and the budget right some of it's actually in the consent agenda let's see so you would need to do a separate vote right now one for the OSSB budget one for the Raven budget and one for the RTCC okay it's with the budget okay so okay so we need and we need to do that during this portion of the meeting or do we do that in the consent agenda reserve funds and stuff okay so we're going to be doing the budget so and I need someone to give me a motion I move we accept we approve the OSSB this is her budget and OSSB warning as enclosed with our materials and presented okay okay and is there any discussion so all those in favor of accepting the motion to accept the budget so there is our OSD budget and warning and then can I have a motion for the Raven I will make the motion that we approve the Raven budget um warning as submitted in our packet Brian do we have a second Megan will second any discussion or questions all those in favor I okay and then we need to also approve the RTCC budget I make a motion that we approve the RTCC budget as presented this is Ashley do I have a second and a second any discussion none all those in favor say aye aye so next on the agenda is the financial reports so so November one is there the December one she literally just completed nope sorry I missed we haven't yet talked about the COVID operating changes that was a fun one this time around so near the end of vacation the state directed districts used the Vermont Department of Health's guidance that was based on the updated CDC changes so we revamped the COVID manual about that it really it changed basically two of the protocols the first that it changed was the protocols for what to do for close contacts if you're vaccinated and without symptoms you don't need to quarantine that's been the case you've got to wear a mask and you should be tested on May 5 if you're unvaccinated or outside the booster window so in other words if you had the Johnson & Johnson more than two months ago and haven't been boosted or you had one of the MR&I MR&A vaccines within the last more than six months ago and haven't been boosted then you fall into this category you must stay home and quarantine for five days folks can leave home on day five if they have no symptoms have a negative PCR test after day four or two negative rapid tests and if they wear a mask for the next five days afterwards and so this is all in the handbook it's easier to read it because folks won't remember what was also interesting was they put the burden of close contacts if it happened outside of school on the people that potentially were K-0 so in other words if I found out that I tested positive then that becomes my job to call all the people that I was in close contact with another person for those that test positive and this is the one that was in the news a lot in the last couple of days if they test positive for COVID they must stay home for five days and away from family members they may leave home on day five if they are no longer symptomatic and if they wear a mask through day ten and they did add a little bit more guidance about that and this is one of the questions that the school said because the guidance that came out was kind of for the community it wasn't school specific was this idea that well if you got to wear the mask through day ten and you're never supposed to take it off how do we manage kids eating in the cafeteria you know who might be on it if we got 60 kids you know it's one thing to have one kid eat in isolation if we got 60 kids that are in this category we don't have that kind of space so that's something that we're still waiting for kind of clarity on but those are the big changes and again those have been communicated in the community how long way after they came out I mean these have been quiet case rates too since we're on it right now I probably should check my email I'm probably going to curse things by saying this but we have a couple of the staff out at the after school program one of the small schools and we had one student today and that's it so far we're still waiting for Tuesday's surveillance testing to come back what they've been finding at the other schools who tested on Monday was that when the surveillance testing came back they had a whole bunch of asymptomatic individuals running around in some cases as much as like 30% of those who got the surveillance testing but they're all asymptomatic so it's just it's kind of an interesting change to things we've been experiencing I don't know if there's other questions on COVID no questions now we'll move on to the monthly financials so the November is in there and like I said it when we changed the when the board meetings were occurring lots of times they're kind of early in the month because they're closing out a month it takes some time so you may have a month lag between when you get them but this is the November she did get the December data done but it was literally just before the meeting as a matter of fact we got the final data for calculating the budget and tax rates just a day or two ago so accommodations out for Robin for helping scramble around and figure over parts and pieces out here one of the ones that's interesting on there is under the food service is always one that's a question with the board saying it's 96,000 in the whole it's actually not the reimbursements that we get from the state because it's a federally managed program can't come in sporadically we are actually in the black for the first time we are above and above we've got more money coming in that we're spending on it and that's never happened there and you'll see that the technology on the expense side is low the reason that that is is because we purchased a lot of computers and we tried to maintain a lot of the new software packages that we put into place to help out with the remote sessions last year and we're waiting for grant reimbursements for those things so you know we spent the money up front so we kind of overspent the accounts but we've got the E-rate money that should be coming in and extra money that will cover it as part of the reimbursements the percentage just so that you know it's showing 400% there it's a calculation area in that box it's actually 61% which is actually really good and then again the general rule of thumb if you've got 12 months in a year and everything is linear and it primarily is except for a couple of the summer months we should be spending about 8.3% of the overall budget each month which means that at the end of November which is the form that you're looking at we should have spent about 58% of the overall budget we actually have only still have 67% left so we're well in the black and again I expect as more reimbursements come in especially under the SR2 funding that's kind of controlling this year is that we will probably have a happy start in the next year normally on those reimbursements it depends you know like the title funding you spend it you put in the request for what you spent you get it monthly sometimes it's quarterly these have pretty much kind of been a lot of them have been monthly which has been good the reimbursements on the food food stuff is sporadic I think that's more our fault I think it takes them a long time to get through the receipts and actually do the submissions I think that's one of the reasons it's more our fault than the states they do a pretty good job so it sounds like you're confident in where we are quite happy so we're going to move on to the next policy decisions for our board governance and we need to have a budget information meeting and we need to set that date and if I remember correctly ten days before the vote ten day window it's always very February okay so how do we want to make that date do you want to do a recommendation Linda? yeah well I don't have my computer with me whatever night I guess when I turn that week I can go to the counter I think it's usually like a Wednesday or Thursday or Tuesday there's a basketball game on Thursday night okay so we'll avoid that one I don't know if the girls played with the boys have a basketball game that night it's going to be a very great and we usually do it in one location and anybody from each of the towns we consolidated what's voting day this year March? March 1st is town meeting now it'll be the budget vote it's got to be within ten days so it could be probably that week of the 21st through the 25th yeah that yellow week on there so the 22nd is that Tuesday? you guys get to decide this one but not in me I don't have a lot to show my phone so I have no idea my schedule so I think I'll be alright so somebody want to make a proposal? can I make a motion that we have our budget hearing for voters on Tuesday, February 22nd at the RUHS auditorium correct? yeah this could be in the media center we have our annual meeting in the odd RUHS yeah and then depending of course with COVID we haven't had a lot of folks but the early years before COVID it was usually right on the auditorium sometimes it conflicts with plays but with COVID that's not as... would you do a powerpoint that would be yeah I don't necessarily have to but I've been doing it just because of the people that show up and it might be given March if we've got a surge with the SambaCon if it passes in February a lot of folks are predicting there might be people that are quite happy to show up let's do the auditorium so people can spread out what time? 6 we'll say 6pm okay any other proposals? any discussion? second we need a second seconded by Brian any discussion? all those in favor say aye okay so we've set that date and you have all the details okay so next up on the agenda is some district governance and Lane if you can start us off with just just sort of what you're looking for and maybe a little bit about why you're asking us to do this so I've talked with with Pietro a little bit what's happening in the world on the legal front and part of the executive limitations kind of they put me in a position that I've got this responsibility it's the right position to put me in to protect the district from foreseeable events so after talking with Pietro I'm concerned that without a specific policy that reserves the right of the district to choose which flag it will apply we are leaving open the possibility that we will have to accept all requests for flags that go to 25 so this is not this is about potentially creating a policy and there's lots of ways to do it but my recommendation with potentially Pietro helping in the wording is it's a policy that puts the power of the hands to make the decision in the hands of the district in the hands of the board you can put it in my hands I don't care which but as long as there's a policy on there that says who has the power we're protecting if it's left wide open if there's no policy that governs it then technically to a certain extent that those flag pulls then become an open forum for anybody who wants to post on it and so we want to be able to have some reasonable control over that and the way to protect ourselves from getting sued if we say no to some groups and yes to others is to say hey nope we have a very secure policy that was voted in through the proper channels that describes you know the authority rest with us even described you know some of the processes that we use to make those determinations and so this isn't meant to create a policy here and now it's a meant for me to kind of air after talking with Pietro and doing some thinking the fact that there is a you know potential foreseeable event out there that we might be able to mitigate if we have this policy in place down the line if I make a sense in trying to be politically well spoken as I present it So are there questions for Lane in terms of so and Katja and I also had a conversation with Pietro and my understanding from what he he said too is right now we don't have a policy we basically it was either last year before sort of pushed it over to the administration to decide and without the district taking the way the law is from what Pietro was saying I'm not a lawyer so I'm trying to we asked him a fair number of questions to sort of understand it but without the the district as the governing body and the we sort of are the government we can have that ability to decide what flags are going to fly whereas pushing it over to the administration and then having having Lane figure out or sort of have different ideas about how to decide who is he's sort of left without a lot of guidance and the issue has been coming up I guess in other districts also where it's making that flagpole become a public forum and therefore you run into freedom of speech issues where you have to make sure that everyone has access if you're going to make the flagpole a public forum and so that's kind of the thoughts I did a little research there are a couple of districts out there Colchester being notably they do have flag policies out there that guide the decisions they are flying flags but they have the ability because of their policy to say they will be protected and so I just think it might be a wise thing to pursue the other piece that's a little more philosophical I guess is I was looking around the decisions that have been made most of these decisions potentially are highly controversial and what makes the decision controversial is the fact that it can be reasonably argued from both sides and so when I was looking at it it was at Yale 2.0 and 2.4 I think it was or 2.1 you know the two of the global constraints and then the treatment of you know I could make an equal argument on both sides of the Black Lives Matter flag for example that would meet the reasonableness flaws but yet both can't be right in terms of the intent of the board as the governing body and so it kind of in a way I don't have enough guidance in terms of I'm happy with the decisions that was made for myself and I can justify and the reasonableness that I would have to do under those policies but I could have easily have gone the other way and justified it as reasonable to say no and so there's not enough guidance there for me to say okay in terms of the board's intent as the governing body what should I do or what should I and again this is a kind of a little bit separate conversation but what I'm saying is I don't have enough it's not specific enough you know you got a really general policy there that can be interpreted in a million ways reasonably maybe this one needs to be a little bit more specific and maybe that this piece will help with that I don't know so what you're asking for the board to decide is do we even want to investigate this is do we want to look into creating a flag policy as a board I think I think well you can I got to look at the excuse me one minute I think our procedure is that if we are going to vote on something we can have you provide yeah in addition the chair will ask for comments on agenda items before action is taken by the board so at this point we aren't going to take it well do we have to have make an action to investigate it to proceed I would say yes if you want or you could table it until let's think about it for a month and let's table it until the next meeting and then you can also add a public comment that's another possibility yeah this is actually my public comment for next time so so what you're asking for us to do now then is to decide if we want to if we want to go down the road pursue the possibility you're not saying you're going to necessarily do it you want to see what a possible policy or possible policies could be and just investigate it is what I would argue at this point okay can I just interrupt for a second I have to leave because there's some kind of emergency just down the road a little ways so I apologize for that and I will try to get filled in if that's a thing that can happen in the next week or so sorry I hope everything's okay yeah so does the board want to have any discussion or have some discussion about whether or not we want to investigate it then we would have our public yes I'm wondering what the board would like to do at this point and do we want to discuss it I don't think it would be a problem to have it at least have them what policy would look like and then we can make that decision next month or whatever if we really want to enact policy or kind of finalize it I don't see a problem with doing it this way seems like given what we've heard it would be kind of foolish not to look into it at least you've been looking into it with the library board or maybe not but a similar type of issue right not directly just the whole freedom of speech surrounding freedom of speech in public places but I agree with Rachel that exploring it as an option is definitely worthwhile any other discussion do we want to hear I think we ought to go ahead if there's no more discussion from other board members let's hear from our I guess my question would be would the superintendent of the board allow me to flag Gatson flag alternating months of putting it above and below the Black Lives Matter flag the Gatson flag is right there don't tread on me flag oh don't tread on me so I would my comment I guess on this would be this is like nativity scenes that towns have dealt with for a long time and towns that allow nativity scenes also are allowing now satanic whatever they put up and this is the problem you face I don't know that you as a board setting a policy that you're in control that helps you any when it comes to that lawsuit because that freedom of speech is always going to be there no matter who makes the decision so my recommendation to the board would be to not allow any flags other than the US and the state flag on public buildings you just you are opening such a can of worms for yourself by allowing not just the BLM flag but any flag I could ask you to fly a Christian flag or a thin blue line flag or a satanic flag and if you start telling one person no you're going to end up in a lot of trouble at the school board or as a superintendent because somebody who has some money is going to sue you and you're going to lose and I agree almost completely the purpose of the policy and again PHO would be the best guide to be able to say the purpose of the policy is to make it clear that you as the government body which is what you are have the authority to make this decision what that does is it takes away the arbitrary and capricious nature of me saying no to one person and yes to another if there's no policy that guides it even though I may have them follow a process and I may have a protocol if there's no policy that exists there is a good argument that can be made that he's being arbitrary to his decisions because what's he basing on and yeah we would lose but the policy wouldn't lose even if the board voted on it what's that like you said if you leave it to the board without the guidance in the policy of kind of a procedure to approve or some type of language in there would be approved and wouldn't be approved and so I would say that PH opinion and then PH would be the person to confirm or deny is this idea that you are the government as far as this is concerned when the board chose not to make a decision you said a precedent and the precedent was that it's in the superintendent's hands as the final say it was actually in the holding level of hands that particular decision will use that as the example but it was in my hands and that's put it into the hands of a person who has no policy to guide what I should be doing and again like I said let's go back to the second part the more philosophical argument that I had was when you put it in my hands you do have two executable limitations that kind of speak to that but I could equally argue from both sides and so if I can argue equally from both sides then there's no clarity there there's no direction of what your intent is of the board because I'm your agent to carry out your intent and so it's just it's very interesting and the more I think about it but if you guys had made the decision as the government body it probably would have been a little bit stronger but they could probably have said that it's in your hands as the voting and the representatives but still somebody could easily make the argument that you're being arbitrary and capricious because you don't have a set way of that's what I was saying is in the policy does the policy have to have some guidance of how we make our decision on what would be acceptable depending upon what your policy would be if you make a policy that that is for government communication can be up there so that would be the state and the federal government then that's just what it is if you make a policy that yes we will consider but we have the final authority then typically there's a protocol that's developed that people have to hop through to have it be considered and then as long as we follow the same protocol for each one that avoids the capricious potential capricious and that procedure doesn't necessarily have to be in the policy but we would have to have some type of in that case lots of times what you do with that is you guys develop the policy and that's where you would say as part of the policy and the super and talent will develop the protocols about what hoops people have to bring it to the board and again our conversation isn't a perfect one because we're talking on the fly of the PH would be the guiding person on this so would you would the next step be that if you and PH would bring in some policies policies and I connect with PH to see you know give us a variety of possibilities out there and what is your recommendations and why maybe you haven't come and talked to the board about it because I emailed back and forth with him a little bit and I spoke with him and even because and it's not black I mean the law it's not black and white as much as we would think it would be but he did state to me and I don't have it memorized but basically that even the board can run into an issue with if of course he would be guiding us and trying to create a policy that is protective but if the board does go down that road of wanting to be the arbiter of what flag gets to be then in some ways we then create that same public forum issue again but again you know we would at least have it in policy and he would be helping us and guiding us but you know it is a pretty big can of worms and and in the environment that we're in right now I think it's pertinent that you know we at least investigate it and I was I mean did some things happen that made this also come to light I mean just because I know one of the things you're concerned about is just the climate overall climate in the schools community to make sure that everyone is feeling the amount of divisiveness right now people are a lot bolder people are willing to be threatening, be on the verge of threats and I'm trying to be sensitive to the fact that people may push things that we may if we don't have a policy that we may have to do that are going to cause even more divisiveness and I don't want violence in my schools you know maybe it's a little bit selfish but I don't think it is I personally would like to get back to the days where schools are about educating kids you know we have other things that we have to deal with that are in society that are important to educate students about but I don't want to be a grounds or a forum for political discourse if people want to have political discourse that's what your legislators are for go camp out in front of their offices and get them to do their jobs but I want to be in charge of managing the school and helping kids learn and grow and I don't want to shy away from top issues and conversations with students and things like that but I worry about that divisiveness and I worry about it spilling over disrupting the operations of the school or spilling into violence that's the way at this time of night I can say it okay so as a board we need to then make a motion as to whether or not we want to have Lane and Pietro meet and bring forth some policies for us to consider and look at so can I have a motion to that effect? I'll make the motion that we have Lane and Pietro research a potential flag policy for us in the district and present it at the next board meeting second from Megan any additional discussion? seeing none all those in favor please say aye aye okay so we will we will do that so Lane you know what you need to do next up student behavior plan collaboration and staff training so this is a lot for you and I'll kind of explain things where this is coming from so every couple of years you get an audit this was from the special education audit they identified two things they said hey you're kind of missing these things that we'd like you to see under policy the two things that they listed and we've been trying to get clarity from them are very cryptic they can't explain them to us well they can't provide us models of what other districts have and it doesn't actually look to me like it's a policy it's a protocol which would be my responsibility not yours but because of the lack of clarity and because typically we have Pietro or his wife who also is a legal counsel that's more on the civil rights side of things craft the language I've reached out to Heather and say hey do you mind connecting seeing what you can get out of them as somebody who crafts a lot of the language around these things for the state anyway and see what they're talking about and so she's working on that right now is it a policy which would be a board piece is it a protocol which would be my piece and is there a model out there and if there's not a model be specific with this about what it is it needs to say so that Heather can craft the best language and so I'll say this is just an update right now because there was no details that they could give us I also want to make sure I'm not throwing the AOE under the bus I don't want people to think that I think they are responding to changes that are happening in terms of the federal laws for grants and things and so they're trying to create this stuff as fast as they can as things are changing very quickly and so I think that's a part of the problem is we're trying to understand these things so that work is there I give Heather a lot of credit she responded immediately before vacation working on it but of course with vacation I put a lot of people who are out of commission relaxing as they should be so it kind of slipped me down a little bit so if that ends up coming out that it is a policy piece I will bring that in front of the board when it's in a full format as Heather suggested all right and then Linda you wanted to tell us about where things are so so Jeff Francis just got back to me I think it was yesterday because he said another reminder how he can't attend the meeting and now he's usually the one that does the majority of the talking so I don't know what you guys want to do about that he has another commitment Mark McDonald said he could come Larry Satovich can come and Jay Hooper responded that could come I don't know if that's Sue from the VSBA yeah is she still there in that there were transitions going on so I don't know I sent it to her she didn't respond but so I don't know what your pleasure is guys could go and do it in February before John meeting so if you want to mark Larry and Jay come they will but Jeff can't we do as a superintendent group I give that Libby I feel a lot of credit she has set up the meeting between the superintendents and the legislators for I think it's February 11th in mock appeal you know so we'll be going to that I'll be able to bring back at least notes about the conversations and what people are most worried about in terms of what they're talking about with that new registration and if that's helpful what is the board does the board feel like this is helpful information in terms of sort of knowing what's coming down I mean a lot of times Lane is providing us with that information so and I mean when we think about sort of what we're what we're tasked to do in terms of you know sort of monitoring the district and looking at our outcomes I mean it oftentimes what's going on in the legislature gives us an idea of sort of what the emphasis is or a financial impact but usually give us that information I don't know folks feel like they want to have that time with the legislature or the legislators ourselves or if we feel like we have issues we want to make sure that are related to the district from the board perspective because that would be I have always found that Lane in his monthly reports is that he's touching on the topics that are you know happening in law failure, happening locally and I do feel like our representatives are available to us outside of that meeting so I don't I don't feel strongly about having the meeting with them Mark was by the central officers for the holiday and in the past Jeff Francis had a lot of detail where the legislators have been they've been there for any questions more willing to answer questions but they haven't really gone in detail like Jeff did Jeff has a broader view typically the legislators typically sit on a specific committee so they'll have a lot of details about that maybe not as much so again we as a board we need to think about whether or not that's worth our time and given the limited number of meetings that we have and the business that we need to to be focused on is that a good use of our time for that meeting or do we want to I agree with Ashley I just wonder if it would be odd to rescind the invitation we've reached out to them some have accepted I mean it's fine and again I do agree there won't be a short talk it's time instead of with Jeff but I can explain I mean they know Jeff does most of the they're pretty lucky or we could just say you know Jeff couldn't make it so we're not we're going to decide it we're not going to do it this time I mean I can take care of that I mean I think that's I'm out of here that's fine so disinvite disinvite disinvite okay so next up were to be the consent agenda listed here we have a lot of items on here and again Lynn because we you already went over the the lead mitigation costs and you guys voted to add them to the consent agenda they're already there okay so we can can we then take this whole consent agenda and and vote it as one slate unless you guys got questions are there any questions on the consent agenda items I had this sabbatical request me too yeah that's what I was referring to so I'll tell you the so the teachers in their CBA are allowed a sabbatical and the past practice has been that it is always granted and it's on a first come first serve basis and so the teacher that is requesting it is the person who has requested it there are no real requirements on that teacher under the CBA so I'm sorry there's only one teacher who has requested it there's only one teacher who has requested it and it's usually the board who has requested it they grant one and it's always been first come first serve oh I see so we're not we're not talking about the teacher we're talking about are we going to allow there to be a sabbatical yeah I think you're kind of locked into doing it it's part of the collective bargaining agreement we can't in the CBA we're only after one a year right and then this is the one potentially if there's I have to go back and read it if there's a second there's a possibility of a second either but I think it has to be unpaid so that's my question like logistically they're paid their salary for the year the work that they do there's no requirements around the work that they do and how they bring that back so it doesn't have to be it can be whatever they want and then the district it has the liability of paying for that long term sub for one year for the coverage of the person to replace them for the year so that was 74,000 of that increase and benefits for the year for the required yeah so we're voting on it what would be a reason that we would not approve it I mean it can be and I'm not saying I need to or want to we don't know who it is we know we're going to send one why in the world would we think under past practice I don't believe you can deny it I mean can we ask for like reason or are they getting you know containing their education or is it for an extra year vacation I don't believe so give me a second to see if I can find it guaranteed in their contract if it is typically they're not deciding who gets it then why are we why are we it's a pro forma so I'm an agreement that this is language that should be changed and I tried to change it but again they have the right to say no it's ours and we reject now can we delay this request they get one a year I guess it's not the January it's the school year correct there is a time frame when the decision has to be made which is I'm just saying if we don't get one a year and we don't have any information on this one do we need to approve it right now I would argue you need just a moment so 13 maybe another one would be you guys are the first folks that have actually asked questions about this don't they have to come back for two more years they have to come back for that's the one requirement is that if they go off on sabbatical they owe us two years again it's not it's logistical I I don't want to go down a road where we're talking about the contract the contract is the contract and approve one a year exactly I'm thinking like if we only approve one a year is this the one we want to approve this year or is there going to be another one now it's always been first come first served so there's a there's a date that it opens up for people to apply so whoever's got the earliest time stamp on it okay so Lane do we typically have one a year we did until covid started okay I just don't ever remember talking about this in the past no because you guys were under covid a lot of you sabbatical lead with pay shall be granted which is pretty clear as long as they've been employed by the district for 15 consecutive years which we did check out 15 consecutive years upon completion we did check out 15 consecutive years upon completion upon completion sabbatical lead a teacher shall be obligated to teach for two consecutive years any teacher who fails to complete said years shall reimburse the district Lane so for it to get on to the consent agenda those boxes have already been checked no more than one shall be approved in any school year I can make a motion to approve the consent agenda you can't even walk that so hold on the OSSD board shall have the ultimate authority to grant or deny or may delegate that authority to the appropriate local board which that language doesn't make any sense anymore but your past practice has been that it's always been accepted and it's always been first come first served should be interesting but thank you for reading that and they get 50% of their salary for the year but the person who's replacing them gets their full time person okay so we had a motion on the floor from Ashley to approve the consent agenda we have a second over here from Megan any discussion further discussion all those in favor of passing the consent agenda you say aye okay so the consent agenda passes thanks for coming yeah take care be safe so we're down to our closing any things you want to point out from just incidental information about what's going on in the district unless there are questions on the lead just so folks know I actually David's comment earlier was good we actually tried to add a couple of bullets there's a standard form the state requires just to send out if there's a lead hit and yeah it does it doesn't have a lot of information so we tried to put in a couple of bullets to say hey mostly sinks like Brookfield it was a sink it's never used for drinking water anyway plus the fact they're not drinking any of the water there because we're supplying bottled water for all of them had been for years because the water's not palatable it's safe but not palatable the high school just so folks know my understanding is that the smaller schools have always been tested for lead and copper it's a requirement because they're under well water because Randolph high school and Randolph elementary are under municipal water there was never prior to this law change there was never a real requirement to do as regular testing on it as was done at the smaller schools so it's ridiculous it's a ridiculous law because the lead doesn't come from the water itself it's the piping and the fixtures in the building or the transmission but it doesn't come from the well for the water itself and so people aren't freaking out the majority of it was classroom tanks that aren't used for drinking there was a spigot there were actually three spigots in the kitchen only one used from consumption and that one was borderline so in other words 15 parts per billion is the EPA actionable limit state limit is 4 parts per billion this was that 4 parts per billion when it came out so it needs to be replaced so I don't want to minimize it but it's not like it's just in the fixture so it's not a huge issue just change the fixture out and should care the problem but it is a template that you have to send out but David I agree with him 100% we did try to minimize as much as we could we had a few bullets in there but it wasn't enough okay so just a recap we've we've approved the budgets and warnings we've set our budget meeting for February 22nd Tuesday in the media center or no in the auditorium at 6 o'clock Lane and Pietro are going to get together some flag policies for us to take a look at and hopefully maybe Pietro can attend to just sort of help us walk us through that maybe and you're going to follow up with Heather on the special education student behavior planning and stuff and let us know if we need to make a policy it's easy when stuff is clear because you can just do it but this is alright and then Megan you evaluated how we were doing yeah I thought it was a good meeting well attended any questions, comments overall good awesome alright so we are going to no we're not going to adjourn this we're going to go into executive session for labor negotiations information so Rachel and Kat you're going to switch over to the executive session motion well we have to have him he's got to get his stuff there'll be a vote afterwards executive session for most likely now I was assuming it was Orca who did I but now that they're not there okay so now we're back in regular session do I have a motion regarding the bus drivers contract yeah with Megan and I'm going to make a motion for it to approve the contract as written and that we would authorize Lane to sign the contract after the bus drivers signed the agreement I second this is Ashley okay any discussion alright all those in favor of the motion please say aye or raise your hand hi thanks looks like the motion passed wonderful so Lane you'll take care of that then do I have a motion to end this meeting so move seconded all those in favor hi thank you everyone good night we don't have to we don't have to we're out of executive some people we just voted on the contract right but we don't have to vote do we have to vote our normal we don't necessarily do it not a board of this size in some cases it depends on how many people are on the board