 Hello, and welcome to Town Meeting TV's coverage of Town Meeting Day 2023. My name is Bobby Lucia and I'll be your host for tonight's program as we take a look at the proposed budget for the Champlain Valley School District. This program is one of a series of forums we're hosting in advance of Town Meeting Day this year, in which we invite candidates and municipal officials to unpack the items and races that you'll see up and down your ballot this March. So we'll dive in in just a second, but before we get started, if you're tuning in live, just so you know, we welcome your questions anytime at 802-862-3966. That's 802-862-3966. You can give us a call and we'll hear your question live on air. So with that, I'd now like to introduce our representatives from the Champlain Valley School District who are going to walk us through the proposed budget tonight. Here in the studio we have Gary Marcus, the Chief Operations Officer for the District. We have Rene Sanchez who is the Superintendent of the District and Angela Arsenault who is the Chair of the CVSD Board. So thank you all so much for joining us tonight. Thank you for having us. Awesome. And Angela, I'm going to hand it right over to you to tell us a bit about this budget and what voters and families can expect to see this year. All right. Well, thank you. First of all, I do want to say a sincere thank you for having us here. You know, getting the word out about the budget is one of the most important things we do as a board and working with the administration to come up with that budget is, you know, some of our very, it's kind of the foundational work of a school board. So having opportunities like this to talk about it is really important. So thank you for providing that opportunity. I'm not going to do a lot of the talking this evening because we have our experts with us in Superintendent Sanchez and COO Marcus. But I just want to say that we'll be rolling through some slides so that folks will have a couple ways to see and hear the information and, you know, kind of that we'll start with our mission, which is something that we hope people see often in our school district and understand that we work very deeply to live up to this mission and the budget is a reflection of that mission. So you can see it here on your screens. I think the mission is to develop citizens who learn actively and collaboratively, think creatively and critically, live responsibly and respectfully, contribute positively to their community and pursue excellence. We've also got what I would love to have Superintendent Sanchez say a few words about how do you describe this? So these are our priorities. So you'll see in this in this graphic, this is something that we worked on as a leadership team this summer over the course of the year in preparation for going into this year. And so what we recognize is that our priorities really needed to focus on academic growth and belonging. And so academic growth and belonging can mean a lot of things, but we knew that at the core of it is really teaching and learning. And then when it comes to serving all of our students and all of our teachers, we know that we also have to look outside of teaching and learning and take into consideration identity, connection, direction and proficiency so that that way we have some guideposts along the way for these priorities. Yeah and we've been coming back to that, those priorities all year as a board and again an opportunity to share that as often as possible with the community is really helpful. So just a quick, I'll say a little bit behind the budget maybe, what's behind the budget are what we call our board budget goals. We really look to, we task our administrators with developing a budget that first supports the implementation of the mission and vision. The vision both are currently a work in progress, which is a little bit of an aside if you ever want to talk about our strategic plan we can do that too. But if we have time at the end. Yeah that's something we're working on. So the board also focuses on meeting or exceeding education quality standards also known as EQS. We always want to be mindful of implementing any initiatives, new initiatives which we will get to but this year we don't really have so much and we'll just can talk more about why that is. We implement and continue to improve the budget process really with a focus on community input. This has to be our community's budget and sometimes talking about a budget isn't the most interesting thing understandably but it's important for very clear and obvious reasons and we always welcome community input and we want to integrate that community input as much as possible. And finally again focusing on the community we want to do all of this and build a budget that our communities can support. So our budget work really is year-round so we're hoping that common town meeting day that our budget passes but as soon as that budget passes we're on to the next components of next year's budget. So this summer I'm sorry beginning in May and this summer we'll start having meetings aligning our goals to what our expectations are for next year. But within those goals we know that we're we want to be able to measure them meaning we're going to have to figure out are these goals sufficient and if they are then we need to make sure that we're going to fund them properly moving into the future. So we'll take feedback from the principals we'll take feedback from the community we'll make sure that we're monitoring our quarterly statements so that that way we can see if we're on track or if we need to cut back or we're allowed to be able to do a few more things within the budget this year. And then one of the things that we really enjoy is when we have events for the public to provide us the feedback that we need. This year as we were doing our strategic plan feedback sessions we incorporated information about the budget so that that way people could understand that as we were planning for our strategic plan that it was also at the same time you know if this is what we want to do we have to be able to fund it as well. So this next slide talks about the our American Rescue Plan ESSER funding. So due to COVID we received and and lots of other and other districts in Vermont received three distributions of ESSER funds and so we are on ESSER three now and we have that money for one more year and one more summer. And so what we are planning on using this money for is to make sure that we're recovering from the pandemic and the goal is to make sure that we are able to spend this money about four point three million dollars and we want to make sure that we're spending it on the things that the students need whether it's academic recovery or making sure that we have personnel on the campuses to help the students feel like they belong feel like they're able to readjust to coming back to school. So it's not going to recover or the amount of money that we received is not going to cover everything but we're trying to find out what the best practices are so that that way if we need to we can continue it out of our general fund or we can seek other grants. So like every year we're gonna have some components of a budget that are you know kind of good things and some things that aren't so good so and what we've done is we've summed it up this year in our budget headwinds and tailwinds. So the headwinds that we're facing many of which everybody else in Vermont and almost across the country are facing. So inflation, a tight labor market, the rising cost of health care and there's and the disappearance or shrinking of grant funds but at the same time we also have some good things going on as well. So between the strategic plan and an equity audit that we that we had last year and our and our planning for this year we've really begun to align our district goals to create a coherent plan for moving into the future so that that way we are efficient in our spending. We also have a very talented and committed workforce. We're very fortunate that we have wonderful teachers and staff and administrators to help support our students on a daily basis and we're excited that they like to come to work every day and that they that they support our students. And then finally we know that our Act 173 implementation that's effectively where we got our academic growth and belonging language from as we have planned for that already so we are our budget our budget is allocated for it already. So SR3 as I mentioned earlier is currently in effect we're in its last year. We want to make sure that we are utilizing it for the COVID recovery largely through counseling and social work. This year is going to be the last year. We will have a little bit of money in the summer to help support high school and its activities. Act 173 is in effect now so we've transitioned the special-led funding from one of a reimbursement to more of a census funding so we were fortunately positioned well so we didn't have we weren't we are we are not going to lose money we're actually making almost six hundred six hundred thousand dollars as a result of the transition. And then but one of the things that we know that is coming pretty soon is Act 127 which is the the the waiting study that University of Vermont and the legislature did a few years back and so we have to be prepared for that. So we know that going into this year day one after town meeting we will be meeting to discuss what the impact is going to mean for us and it will it will come into implementation in fiscal year 25 which is not this coming year but the year after. So one I guess Angela alluded to it earlier that we didn't really add much. We made sure our school board asked us to you know keep it in this keep it in the same ballpark effectively. Don't add a whole lot if you have to add you're gonna have to find the money within the budget that exists already. So we do have some instructional program budget neutral enhancements so as I mentioned earlier we had an equity audit and our equity audit is recommending that we focus more on data we focus more on communications really make sure that we are aligning what diversity equity and inclusion means to everyone in the district but then also to recruit higher retain and develop a high quality diverse staff. So we know that we're gonna have to do some extra work but in order to meet those expectations but we have it in the budget so that we can. We have reallocated some of our K-8 essential arts programs so that to take into account that essentially equitable funding across the district so if we had a school that had a little bit more another school had a little bit less we want to make sure that based on student population and the demographics of that student population we were able to to make it more equitable and again no significant programmatic or staffing changes as a result. Yeah I think it's important to note that we've kind of shifted into an equality based budget where like each school got this same amount of resources for the number of students that they they had in their school to more of a need-based where we're targeting our resources toward the needs where they are. So our operations budget highlights other than the impact of inflation on the operations budget we we did not increase that part part of our organization's funding. Our operations budget covers facilities you know maintenance and operations of the facilities our transportation system which is quite large and it's we're one of the few districts in regionally that own their own fleet of buses so that's a big big part of that budget our food service technology and the administration of the central office. So this is kind of a year-to-year review this is how we got from from a little over an eighty nine million dollar budget to a just a little over a ninety six million dollar budget and they're broken down by categories. Here SPED means special education and we we kind of separate these out so they're more easy to understand we don't want to double-count things or make things confusing so these the two million dollars listed here is is salaries without special education. Health insurance is another place that increased about a million dollars totally beyond the district control that's a statewide health care system and it increased by twelve point seven percent for fiscal year 24. Other benefits like dental life long-term disability there's a fairly significant increase in costs there. Our supplied materials and energy kind of went up like the CPI did around seven percent as our estimated cost we used six percent where we could and then the actual data for the energy sector to build our budget. Our debt service our annual debt service it went up the short-term borrowing interest rate increase caused that to go up by about sixty two thousand dollars for FY 24 and then special education which is a big part of our increase and that's excluding the health insurance because we included that all in one tranche just for explanation purposes. That went up over two point five million dollars two point six actually and really it's a result of our service plan where we're where we plan a need-based budget for our special education services and we have found for sure statewide that since the pandemic started in 2020 the need for special education and additional supports has increased tremendously. Coming back it was a you know it was a very difficult time for all of America and and our our actually all the world but our children and CVSD are experiencing the challenges of reintegrating and making up for for educational loss. So again we'll look at equalized tax rate this is prior to the common level of appraisal this is some call it the base tax rate so in FY 23 like it was a dollar 39 so and there's a formula by the hundreds dollar hundred dollars of home value you multiply the base tax rate to get your base tax liability so that from 20 FY 23 to FY 24 it actually decreased by 9.3 cents for the Champlain Valley School District. So that's the good news with our expenditures increasing by seven and a half percent with all the factors that we talked about and the headwinds and headwinds part of the previous slide are tax rates still decreased the base tax rate by 9.3 cents. This comparatively the budget from a base tax rate is about 1.2 percent below the statewide average for spending per equalized pupil and about 1 percent below the statewide average for a spending increase. Okay so that that is the that is the positive side of the story the difficulty in the challenging part from from a from a taxpayer from a citizen standpoint property owner standpoint is that the common level of appraisal which the common level appraisal tries to equalize what everybody pays proportionally across the state based on the value of their property that they're paying their tax liability against and that for all of our towns except st. George significantly increased the actual tax rate because the property values have gone up so rapidly especially 21 22 and so far into into 23 the appraised value of those homes are undervalued compared to the sales actual sales in the market across Vermont and across our towns so to equalize that they they put this equalization factor and they decreased significantly from fiscal year 23 to fiscal year 24 so those decreases if your if your home is only worth appraised at 77 78 80 percent of of the actual sales value to equalize that you have to you have to use that percentage as a divisor against that base rate which which increases the base rate so in the end our estimated tax rates you can see them with CLA applied in the in a center column from that $1.30 base rate they've all gone up you know 20 to 40s almost 40 cents so that that equates to in most of our towns we had two towns with a 5% change from fiscal year 23 one Shelburne with a 6% increase from 23 st. George did decline a little a little bit they I believe had an appraisal more recently and then Williston only increased 2% and you can see that translated into the dollar value change per hundred thousand dollars of assessed value on the right hand side so we had some favorable conditions pre CLA but the home values did increase tax rates tax rates in four of the five towns that last column there that's the change in the tax burden or that's the change in the appraisal value no that's the change in the tax burden per hundred thousand dollars of property assessed value so in summary the budget that that we've presented shows our continuation of commitment to our CVSD students and so there are the these factors that we've had to take into consideration for the present the presentation of this budget so we've mentioned that the that there was significant inflation about 7% for energy goods and services the mandated health health insurance increase of about 12.7% and then the competitive labor market driving salary well needed salary increases across all positions and so that's that is the the result of going from eighty nine million dollars to ninety six million dollars that being said with our we used to be a supervisory union prior to 2018 and so we had six or seven districts just within our within our purview since then we've consolidated and each year since 2018 our tax rate has consistently gone down so even though our tax rates are they seem they are significant this year they would be even higher if we were still a supervisory union so we can shift a little bit into the articles that will also appear on on on ballots that people be seeing either in the ballot box or early voting which we can all do now which is really great I guess we always oh we always could but it's more common now and we do have an informational meeting that folks can check out on mark 6th at 5 p.m. that is on zoom I believe and we'll talk about the the articles at that meeting but if we have a couple minutes we can get into them a little bit now so we have article 7 which is the budget that's the big one and there's a it's all it's written out very clearly on the ballot so folks can can be sure what they're voting on and then we have article 8 which is asking the voters if the the if we can spend some of our fun balance to draw down well we have to draw down the fun balance and apply it to revenue which keeps the budget you know just that much lower and then article 9 folks in our district might be very familiar with this I think it's an annual request to purchase school bus replacement school buses this year I believe it's one three three buses see I told you they're the experts but we that is something that we're we have and Gary could talk about this but it's an annual life cycle replacement plan usually around 12 years life cycle replacement plan I like that all right tucking that away and I will let Gary share the good news about the property tax credit so I will say that that many Vermonters don't pay taxes based on the the value of their property or at least the full value of their property so this is last year's data I don't believe that the ceiling has been updated for this year I believe the legislature will set that later in the session but if as a general rule if you make less than a hundred and thirty eight thousand five hundred in household income you're eligible for the Vermont property tax credit program which you pay you pay based on a percentage of your income as opposed to the full value of your property at tax time when you file there there is some required to documents that you have to file my homestead declaration and I can't remember the title of the other one but if you qualify based on income and you file those you can get a credit on your property taxes which can really significantly lower your your tax liability and the link is here for the the property tax credit and it's on the state website and so as I said we do have our annual informational meeting coming up on Monday March 6th which many people will recognize as the day before town meeting it's 5 p.m. at CVU it's hybrid it's hybrid yeah we'll be offering that on zoom as well all of this information is also available on the district website maybe that's how is that coming up CVSDVT.org no harm in saying it twice and as I said you can vote on or before March 7th and if you're interested in requesting a ballot you do have to request a ballot and remember that school budget ballots are separate from town ballots so you have to contact your town clerk or go to mvpvermont.gov to request your ballot online but I think that's an important point to reiterate that there are two separate ballots and in order to get both you have to I believe you have to talk to your town clerk so yeah then I was gonna ask if you wanted to lead us out or absolutely I think that about wraps up we have maybe a couple minutes left if you have anything quickly you'd like to highlight but we're going on the school district otherwise we can wrap it up but I'll share a little bit of space to highlight anything that you're working on right now before we close out sure also on our website if you go to our strategic planning page you'll see that we've got a our draft strategic plan up on the website right now and we're asking for community members and teachers and students to provide us feedback as we as we get closer to presenting it to the school board as a final draft later on this semester so if you have time please go to our website cvcv sdvt.org awesome thank you so much today thank you Gary thank you Angela for joining us tonight and thank you for tuning into town meeting TV's ongoing coverage of town meeting day 2023 or you'll continue to see ongoing coverage of local candidates ballot items and budgets in advance of this year's town meeting day you can find this form and others on our website ch17.tv or on our town meeting TV YouTube channel thanks so much for tuning in and have a wonderful night