 We're going to call the Washington Central Unified Union School District School Board meeting to order today, October 18th. And welcome everybody. Thank you for joining us remotely. We have a lot of participants today, which is exciting to see a lot of public with us. So I'm going to start with, are there any adjustments to the agenda? Please speak up for members because I don't see everybody. So if there's any, I don't see anybody raising their hand or saying anything. Seeing none, we're going to accept the agenda as it is. And I'm going to move into the reception of guests and do we have any public comments at just the time limit is strictly enforced as you guys all know, but we're happy that you are here. Are there any public that will like to speak before we get started? We would also have public comments at the end of the meeting. And here's Natasha. Okay. So we got everybody to speak. Okay, thank you, Brian. Hold on one sec. Anybody else seeing. I don't see anybody else. Leslie. Hi, welcome, Leslie. Okay. So let's go ahead, Brian, go ahead. Good evening, everybody. My name is Brian Fisher and I'm speaking to you tonight. As a parent, a taxpayer and an employee of our district. I am concerned right now about the board's initial proposal to investigate a food service management company to replace the wonderful options we already have in our schools. Over the course of the last eight years I have been here. Our labor force has shrunk at you 32 from one director and six staff members to one director and three staff members. At the same time over the last eight years, our breakfast counts went from 12,213 to a record of 51,422. The number of breakfast counts went from 34,677 to a high of 65,405. Right now we are on track to break those numbers as well. With an average of almost 200 breakfasts and 400 lunches per day. The team has been working since August without a contract. And that's a lot of issues for a lot of people in Washington Central, as we can't figure out what the hold up is. All happening while some of us, I'm sorry, while some of the team are trying to refinance homes, move, catch up on bills, buy groceries with an inflation level at an all time high. In addition to all these factors in Washington Central, the board exploring alternatives to the team does not feel collaborative or supportive of your employees who also live in your community. Your food service team spent over six months during the school year in the summer serving the community during the pandemic. The team then served over 1400 meals per day in very challenging environment, meeting regulatory guidelines for food, running into supply issues, while also meeting time deadlines to get the work done so the buses could roll out. We put our community first during the pandemic because we care about every family member in our district serves. This development is very troubling to all employees, because the question is, who could be next janitorial for cleaning service. Typically RFP is for food service management companies is the type of action that is taken when there is a problem. However, I have never been approached with any concern. Our food service programs are self funded, meaning we only spend the revenue we generate. The money we generate in revenue is in the form of reimbursements from the state, federal aid and grants. Those revenues we generate help pay for salaries benefits supplies and some equipment. These funds do not come from the main Washington Central budget. So a food service management company would not actually generate any savings. There has also been a lack of clarity around food service revenue which is not managed by the food service department directly. This goes for you 32 Rumney and Eastmont Piliar where questions have been asked about current budgets and previous years final numbers. We have yet to receive that communication making it difficult for us to continue to manage the financial portion of our work. Without all the information is hard for us to do our job well. I will comment to the bullet points in the Colt report tonight and the finance committee from last week. Number one potential cost savings. There's a lot to cover here but I'm going to keep it brief. Basically, there will be no cost savings is a program itself funded, meaning it doesn't directly impact the school's budget. What does that mean in terms of service to our students. We are you 32 are striving to provide healthy options quality service for our students. Consider what is the real cost and what is the price. Number two improvements to produce products and services. Typically with a food service management company, the quality falls downhill fast. This is because food service management companies are looking to make a profit. And with only $2 and 28 cents for breakfast and $4 and 25 cents and reimbursements. This is because they don't have much room to make their bottom line look good. Therefore, food quality suffers due to lower costs of value added meals. Remember that their most important thing to these companies is to make money, because these companies typically do not invest in their employees or provide benefits leading to significant turnover and staff. Number three efficiencies. The food service management company sees the most of their emphasis efficiencies in reducing labor costs. I use those would be as many pre made meals as they can so they can cut those labor costs. You should know that the Abbey group brought in a product called lunchables by Oscar Meyer this year. Is this what you want for your children. Model professional professional expertise is number four. Our staff undergo eight hours a year of professional development on building relationships with students working in an educational setting. We've had student volunteers in our kitchens and model professionalism we've taught classes for ink, made hot sauces and beef jerky. Students names we smile we're involved in our larger community. If you would like clarifications on my credentials, however, please feel free to refer to the resume I supplied back or submitted back in July of 2016. I'm sure you will be more than pleased with my knowledge base and expertise and food service. Number five additional administrative support. I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you. I just want to give you, I don't wait, wait a minute. I'm going to let you finish. We just have two people, but we've gone over time already. So it just, if you could sort of wrap it up, that would be really helpful. Okay, go ahead. Just unmute yourself again. Sorry, you're muted right now. Brian, you can finish just to mute yourself just wrap it up. Yeah, I only have a few sentences left. Additional administrative support is number five. After speaking with the agency of education. None of this paper will will be removed from the district's responsibilities. In fact, it will probably grow. The district will now be responsible for more than just the month review of the food service management company will still have to submit reimbursements direct certification and harvest reporting. This is all about the social emotional and physical well being of our students. If you think a corporation is interested in this. Interested solely in profit is going to make these things and account your sadly mistaken. If you decide to choose the bottom line tonight, I encourage a further discussion with the current stakeholders that would be the food service workers, the students, the parents, and other customers including teachers and people who have visited the district in order for a fair and just evaluation of our program, not behind closed doors without accurate input. Thank you for your time in your ear tonight. Thank you Brian we appreciate your comments Leslie Leslie are you ready. There, we can see you and we can hear you so far. I think I have my, I think I have my speaker I can't get my camera but that's all right. Good evening my name. You just went out. Leslie sorry. You're going in and out Leslie I apologize but we can't hear you clearly. I am speaking to you our elected board to express my strong objection to any proposal that would replace our current school food service programs in favor of a for profit company for profit companies do not and will not save us money. Don't forget they make money from us for their stockholders that is their purpose. Our food service staff are already among the lowest paid employees in our district. That you are being asked to consider ending our successful and healthy food service programs in favor of a for profit company that would replace our staff with workers paid lower with minimal of any benefits likely poverty level wages is unconscionable. If the board believes this would save us money. It might do so in the short term but for profit companies will not save us in the long term. We should not do this even for a small short term gain on the backs of members of our community. We are better than this. We should be better than this. We have to be better than this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Leslie for our new board members I just want to you know clarify we do not respond to public comment we appreciate the public comment but unless it's in our agenda we don't get involved in public comment at this at this moment. And Willow you have your hand up. If you have a comment that is related I don't know exactly you can speak at your student time if you have some input unless you have a comment related to something else. Willow and do you have a question if you have a comment from the students that's okay at this time too but I don't I see this kind of going up and down with. You're good. We have a comment about the topic going on right now. Okay, go ahead. As students. Go ahead. You can go ahead make your. Um, just. Okay, okay. Just to go up what Leslie said is, especially Brian like. I see Brian, maybe three times every day. And he is the first person people see when they start their day with a good morning how are you and he serves and our staff is really there's not a lot of staff members and so well they are there, like they just do a ton of work and I would like to stop in our school because they do play a huge part of our community. Thank you guys. Okay, we're going to move ahead and start a and start our meeting. Just go back into a the first part of our meeting today is our budget training. So I'm going to give it to Megan and and Suzanne to get us started. So the board is going to go through some budget training today and this is for our new are and all four members. Just to get us familiar is for learning. And here we go. Okay, I'm going to share my screen and take me a second. Sorry. Okay. As floor said, this is the annual budget training pieces of tonight will be familiar from years past it's a combination of process overview a little bit about how budgeting works in Vermont anyway, partially because we have new board members but also we do it every year because it's a complicated funding mechanism so and there's some new information here that we are trying to present to you a little bit earlier in the process based on our reflections from last year. And I floor I'll let you have this one. Okay, so this is our, my one slide. So just as a reminder for all of our old members and our new board members, what our role is in budgeting. So you can see this three bullet points at the very top. This is the part of the essential work of school boards and you have this book with you but overall we give guidance to the budget and priorities, as well as budget parameters because now we work in the budget parameters already. The role is also to pay attention to overall financial health of our district. And last the input occurs through the identification of board priorities and not to the detail level so what a, and the second part of this, a, we added the district governance standards. And the reason about this will be compliant with district governance standards in July 2025. So I wanted to add this here and especially looking at the second quote here is the school district per person presents an annual budget, which ensures compliance with federal and other budget requirements and demonstrates a clear connection to establish to establish goals and priorities, and if applicable to the priorities of the school that this is for as use and we're not an as you anymore, the second part of the sentence. Why is this, why does this matter, because aligning our budget to artistic priorities is because when we the spending is tracked against the district goals the districts and ensures intentional spending and it helps us raise the student achievement. It means that the success of every single student realize on each and every dollar to say it in that way. And then the last thing that I will say is that doctor, when we're looking at this, our mindset should be stay in governance and not, and not politics through board members as in, I don't know how to say this. Good, you know, good governance means looking at the big picture like staying in the balcony we keep saying looking at the big picture not at a particular issue, you know, sort of this quote from 2020 and educational week we had the opportunity to be in a panel with Megan last week with for new superintendents and a quote that they had in their packet grab my attention. And what this quote said in educational week was the survey found that a core lesson school board members learn through their board experience was good governance for budgeting means looking at the big picture not at pet issues or just that one contentious constituency. So I just wanted to share that with you as we get started, sort of have that mindset as we get started. Megan. Yep. Great. So here's what we will do tonight. We will do a little bit of overview of at funding system. We will show the video that some of you, excuse me, have seen before. We will talk a little bit about our own budget design process and how we make the decisions how we enter and how we have the multiple discussions. And then we will understand our current budget realities and affirm budget parameters so that third to last bullet is an opportunity to get more information at this point in the process about where the current budget sits based on assumptions that we're making. And hopefully that is what we'll do tonight. And we will show this education funding video, and I'm going to click this and hopefully you will all see it and hear it. Hey, guys, for real quick, let me give you a tip. I will have to skip this out. You might want to check out on purpose of Vermont's current education funding system. You need to step back. Megan, I'm not hearing anything. I don't know if I'm the only one differences in property wealth resulted in unequal education opportunity for students based on their residents of violation of the Vermont State Council. Sorry, everyone. In response, Vermont's lawmakers enacted the Equal Education Opportunity Act of 1997, commonly known as Act 60. While Act 60 created school quality standards and performance requirements, the biggest change was a shift in responsibility for funding education. The state Vermont now funds all public school district budgets approved by voters across the state. Lawmakers of Act 60 attempted to equalize many factors, student population or school size, local market value of property, student demographics and student spending. Six years later, lawmakers passed Act 68, which modified the funding formula in hopes of simplifying the process without affecting the intent of the legislation. Equal education opportunity for all of Vermont's students. The government pays for education through the state's education fund. There are four primary sources of money that comprise the fund. Revenue transferred from the state's general fund, a portion of general purpose taxes like sales and use, purchasing use and state lottery. The non-residential education property tax, non-residential properties, any property that is not a homestead, businesses, second homes, camps, et cetera. The property tax, paid by Vermont homeowners, which has two components, payments based either on property value or household income for both. In fiscal year 2018, the expenses paid by the education fund totaled $1.58 billion. Now let's focus on understanding how property taxes are calculated as a fiscal year 2018. One thing that happens is each district school board begins preparing a budget in the fall for consideration by the voters at annual school district meetings, which usually happen on or around town meeting day and March. Once a budget is approved, the state is obligated to fund the district's education spending from the education fund. The education spending is the amount of budgeted expenses minus local revenue and state and federal grants, including things like special education reimbursement, transportation aid, and small school grants. Local revenue may include tuition collected, interest on investments, and surplus carryovers. The amount of education spending for each district begins its homestead tax rate calculation. The district's education spending is divided by the number of equalized pupils attending the district schools. What's an equalized pupil, you may ask? The state adjusts the number of students in a district by factors that reflect costs associated with certain demographics. High school students, for example, generally cost more to educate than elementary students, who in turn cost more than preschool students. English language learners and students from economically deprived backgrounds are weighted more heavily since their education costs are often higher. Like many of the calculations, this adjustment is made as a way to equalize the impact of dollars in each district. It's important to understand that the homestead tax rate doesn't reflect the total budget presented by the school board and approved by the voters. Homestead tax rates reflect education spending per equalized pupil. In fact, current law requires that school boards present information that specifically correlates the proposed budget to education spending per equalized pupil. Education spending per equalized pupil for each district is then compared to the property dollar equivalent yield. We'll just call that the yield. It's determined by a mathematical calculation of the amount for pupil spending supported each year by a fixed homestead tax rate of $1 per $100 of value. By way of example, if $1 tax rate would yield spending per equalized student of $10,000 and a district presents a budget that it has spending per equalized pupil at $15,000, then that district tax rate would be $1.50. Oh, wait, there's more. The final step in determining the homestead tax rate is the state's method of equalizing property value by comparing actual sales data to assess values in each town. The result is the common level of appraisal or CLA, a ratio applied to the tax rate to normalize home values. Those are the components of the basic formula for calculating homestead property tax. Education spending divided by the equal number of pupils divided by the yield equals the tax rate. The tax liability is calculated by dividing the homestead tax rate by the common level of appraisal and then multiplying by the assessed value divided by $100. Let's make some sense of this, okay? Meet Jane. She lives in St. Albin City, which is a part of the newly unified Maple Run Unified School District. She's voted in support of the school board proposed budget, as did the majority of the voters in the district. Maple Run's fiscal year 2018 education spending was $37,952,236 for 2,527.3 equalized pupils. So education spending per pupil was $15,016.91. Jane and her friends approved that fiscal year 2018 budget that was 47.8% higher than the yield of $10,160 set by the legislature. As a result, their homestead property tax rate increased by that amount to $1 and 47.8 cents per $100 of assessed property value. So what did that mean for Jane? The house in St. Albin City was assessed for $251,300, where the Vermont tax department established the CLA at 94.99%, meaning that the average assessed value of properties in the city that sold over the past three years was 94.99% of the actual selling prices. To figure out Jane's education portion of her property tax bill, the tax rate of $1.47.8 is divided by the CLA of 94.99%, then multiplied by the assessed value of the house divided by 100, because the tax rate is applied per $100 of value. So her education tax for the year was $3,910.11. Jane knows that's a pretty good deal for the education her kids get at BFA. What she can figure out is why her brother, Dick, who lives a couple miles away on Lake Road, and his kids also go to BFA, paid less in education taxes, even though their houses assessed at a higher value than hers. It's assessed at $258,400. The answer is that Dick lives in St. Albin's town, which had a different CLA. So after dividing the $1.47.8 district tax rate by the town CLA of 103.86% and multiplying by his $258,400 assessment divided by 100, his tax bill was $3,677.21. Dick and Jane know that some people pay education taxes based on income and not property value, like their parents, Barbara and Harold, who recently retired and still live in the home where they raised their kids in Fairfield. Unlike Jane or Dick and their partners, Barbara and Harold are on a fixed income that falls below the household income threshold established by law, so their tax calculation works differently. The household income pensions and social security was $82,275 below the state's household income threshold of $141,000. So they qualified for a homestead tax adjustment. The base tax rate for the income sensitivity program is 2% of income. Like the property value yield we talked about for Jane, there's also an income and the tax rate still depends on what a district spends for equalized people. In 2018, the income yield was $11,099. So the Maple Run Unified School District per pupil spending of $15,016.91 was 25.24% above the yield. Thus, the base rate of 2% of income was increased by the same percentage and resulted in a rate of 2.505% of income. So Barbara and Harold's tax liability is $2,060.99. Their excess value of $325,600 in Fairfield CLA of 94.81%, Barbara and Harold's tax calculation based on property value was $5,075.80. Their annual tax bill was adjusted by $3,014.81 to reflect their income-based tax obligation of $2,060.99. When looking at how these formulas get applied in your district, remember that roughly 65% of homestead property owners pay state education taxes based on their household incomes rather than their property value. You might want to check out whether your own household qualifies. Finally, let's look at the impact on second homeowners and businesses who are taxed at the non-residential rate. Barbara and Harold's friends, Sally and Tim, moved south when they retired, but they bought a camp right on St. Albans Bay so they would still have their connection to Vermont, their family, and their old friends. Their four-acre camp is right on the lake. I'm pausing that because I'm not sure why. I guess it's just another ad. Can we keep going with the rest of it? I think let's move to the rest of the presentation as the people have questions. What do you think? Oh, it's back. Well, no, that's just my slide. Okay, let's just, yeah, let's keep going. Yeah, sorry about that. I guess we should have checked the video all the way through to the end. They have inserted some ads. I'll exclude that because it's a good overview because our funding system is complex. The concepts are still the same. The only thing that was the rest of that video is really just about second property and how they second property owners and how they are taxed. So I think the board probably has enough information about how it's calculated, which is the most important part. So we'll move into just talking about our budget design process starting with the timeline, which the board has looked at and approved, but we'll try to explain what each one of these pieces are. Or is tonight is a training and budget assumption affirmation really because you discussed this at your meeting last month. But again, this year we are trying to give you a little bit more information at a high level about where the budget sits based on our assumptions. And assumptions meaning the things that that we are currently doing what would it cost to do them next year. Our community forum meeting is scheduled for November 1st. So that is an opportunity for public input. We usually call that connecting our vision with budget realities. Some version of that title. So that's an opportunity for us to hear from the community. We also send budget surveys out. We will use thought exchange to do that this year since we have access to that platform. The first draft budget will be presented to the board on November 15. That is the, the budget that is the administration's recommendation for how to implement the parameters that the board has given us. And that will have estimates for salary benefits estimated revenue, based on what we know. The board will discuss. There will be another budget meeting on the 20th. If the board had asked for changes or if there is new information, we would be including that as part of that presentation. Again, the board will discuss. And on January 17 is the final budget meeting. And the goal is to have a final budget for approval by the board and warning on January 17. To have that in time for voting on March 4th and 5th. So 4th is the town is the annual meeting. And obviously March 5th is the town meeting day when you vote. And then the next two slides floor talked about this a little bit in the beginning, but our budget is given to us to be able to achieve our mission and our vision for students. So this is the Washington central mission. We exist to nurture and inspire in all students the passion, creativity and power to contribute to their local and global communities. And as you know, even though this is in draft form and we're in the process of updating it based on input this these are our initial core beliefs that are being developed as part of our strategic plan. We have a strategic plan and action steps that is part of what the board will have to take into consideration when they approve the resources that the district will have in order to achieve this. This next slide is meant to illustrate how we look at the budget and how we look at budget decisions once we have board direction, and we have to develop a budget to match that direction. So these are the three things that we look at together. One of them is education quality and that is what do we need to be able to provide a quality education to students and that includes the education quality standards and just general evidence based practices. So we look at the extent to which we're equitably distributing our resources so are we distributing our resources according to where our students are. And the third though is are we also taking into account student needs. So are there are the needs of our communities variable and are we adjusting. We really look at all three of those things together those are lenses not not any one of them drives the discussion all three of them do and I think that's, I think that's pretty important and answer some of the questions that often come up right the tension between equity and student need and things like that we really look at them all together. So I'm going to flip to the next slide and turn it over to Suzanne she has the next several and she's going to talk a little bit about some information that you'll see throughout the budget process in the context of our own numbers. Thanks Megan. I just wanted noted that that video is so much funnier in person, but wait, there's more. It's very exciting in person so now that we have an overview of Vermont's education funding system. We want to apply it to Washington Central. So this slide illustrates the comparison between the prior year budget to the current year budget so f by 23 to 24. The expenditures are the amount the district plans to spend. The revenues are the amount the district anticipates receiving to offset expenditures and then the net education spending is the amount that needs to be raised by state and local property taxes augmented by other fund revenues. Next slide please. Next we review the change and equalize pupils and the overall impact it has on local education spending per equalize pupil. We know that the equalize pupil number is a two year average of the district's average daily enrollment or ADM adjusted by several factors for pre K secondary students students in poverty and limited English proficiency. The FY 24 25 pupil count will be based on the long term weighted average daily membership calculation, which I'll dive deeper into a little bit later. In FY 24 equalize pupils decreased from 1412.82 to 1376.82 or 2.55%. This combined with the increase in the education spending resulted in an increase of $2,622 in local education spending per equalize pupil, or an increase of 12.86%. The local education spending per equalize pupil is what determines the equalize tax rate. So, yes, you can switch the next slide. Here we see the year over your change in the common level of appraisal for each town in the district. It's important to remember that the CLA is a comparison of each town's total property value on the grand list versus the fair market value of properties. The higher the fair market value of properties in a town, the further under 100% the CLA will be. As the CLA decreases, the tax rate increases. This is how the state provides taxpayers with an equalized grand list across the state. The district saw decreases ranging between 5.19% and 8.95% with the most significant drops in middle sex and Berlin. Next slide please. Here we see the comparison of the individual town tax rates from 23 to 24. After the change in the CLA, factors used to develop the tax rate projections were equalized pupils at 1376.22%, a property yield of 15,443, an equalized tax rate of 1.4908. 15443 property yield was the final property yield set during last year's legislative session. It's important to know that this number is not officially set by the legislature until after town meeting. The property yield estimate used to develop the FY23 budget was $15,479, which means the final tax rates are actually slightly higher than they anticipated. In December, the tax commissioner will provide us with a forecasted property yield to use in estimates for the FY25 budget. Each town started with an equalized tax rate of 1.4908 and an equalized tax rate decrease of about .04. As we saw earlier in the video, the local common level of appraisal affects the actual tax rate, which is why the amounts differ by town. Long term weighted average daily membership is replacing equalized pupils in FY24-25. It's Act 127 legislation that's taking effect. Vermont will change weights, add new categories, and use the long term weighted ADM counts instead of equalized pupils to calculate the tax rate in FY25. So what is long term weighted average daily membership and how does it compare to equalized pupils? Long term weighted average daily membership is the two year average of long term average daily membership plus state place students plus all applicable weights. LTW ADM changes the categories and weights of students for calculating education spending for equalized pupil. The new categories use differing pupil bases, grade level, long term membership, poverty, free and reduced lunch counts, and household income forms reporting families at or below 185% of the FPL. Sparsity or population density, population density, people per square mile applied to the long term ADM. Districts with small schools to your average enrollment of a small school. English language learners or ELL count. What is local spending per average daily membership and how does it compare to local spending per equalized pupil? Starting in FY25, LTW ADM will determine the equalized tax rate. If everything remained the same, including the yield, then the FY24 district tax rate would have been 94 cents instead of 1.4908. Finally, the FY24 spending or long term weighted average daily membership will be compared to the FY25 spending LTW ADM. If the district increases the spending per pupil by more than 10%, the tax rate will be subject to review by a committee. We will all continue to learn more about the impact of this change on the tax rate as we progress through the budget process. Thank you, Suzanne. I'm going to keep going through, but obviously we will have time for questions. It's just easier to do questions when we can see all your faces. The only thing I would add to that is that the change in weights are going to impact us, I would say, more favorably than we originally thought based on estimates that we were given last year. That does not affect our expense side of things, but it does affect our ultimate tax rate. So you'll see a little bit more about that. So, budget realities. These are things that the board has seen last year. Some of them are actually happening this year. You saw a preview of them last year. One of them is that, as you know, this is the last year of ARP ESSER funds. So that will be a big conversation as part of the budget. There are two changes in education funding that's increasingly tie things to enrollment. One is Act 127, where we will have increased long term weighted pupils. So that's what Suzanne was just going over. That one works in our favor. In Act 173, which is special education funding, as our enrollment declines, our special education revenue will decline because special education is not based on equal or long term weighted pupils. It's based on ADM actual enrollment. We continue to be federal grant impacts, partially because as the costs of our labor go up, and our grants stay the same, our grants will pay for fewer of our staff. And that's just a reality, even if the grants as a dollar amount stay the same. We talked about declining enrollment and then just things that come out of our strategic planning process. We will need resources to achieve what gets put in our strategic plan. This is a graph that we've showed the board a few different during most of our budget trainings, you will see enrollment data in multiple different formats tonight is not meant to be an exhaustive look through but this grant this graph illustrates just our overall decline in enrollment over the past five years previewing data you'll see in later meetings, you know we are projected to decline, at least for the next five years before we level off as a district. What are the budget parameters that the board discussed last year last year last month mass meeting sorry. And this is what this is the direction that you give us as a leadership team so that we can bring you a budget proposal that matches these to the extent that we can. I won't read through them because you're familiar with them the only thing that we did add. The board has had a parameter for a number of years to keep to keep our spending under this, what used to be the spending threshold. Even though that doesn't exist, and Suzanne and I both wondered if the board. In some ways we now have a new spending threshold it's very differently calculated. If the board was 127 would require a tax rate review if it was in exceeded 10%. That would actually be harder for us not to meet. We think but we that may be something the board wants to use instead of the spending threshold, which is continues to be suspended. And then I'm going to turn to Suzanne. This is the information that we wanted to share early in the process with you. So we have a projected local education spending currently at $35,782,907. There are still several things that we don't know we haven't finalized all the salaries for FY 25 health insurance rate increases are not finalized. Currently projecting a 15% increase as a placeholder based on information from our health insurance provider. Those are not finalized. We won't have the property yield until December 1. So there's still a lot of moving parts, but we wanted to give you as early of a picture as we could see based on. The ARPS or grants ending and moving all the staff into the general fund for that purpose to pay for those. It amounts to a $4,085,668 increase, which is a 12.89% increase. 1% of our FY 24 budget is equal to $316,972. That's just a nice number to keep in mind and it helps you think about, you know, as we try to move that. That percent ticker need and there's a $3,134,134,751 needed to reduce to achieve that 3% increase in local education spending. And 3% is what we plugged in here based on that possible use of an October inflation rate, but even October's inflation rate is not yet known. So that's a placeholder again. Thanks, Suzanne. And again, this is meant to give the board perspective, the parameter around the October inflation rate. These are numbers that we spoke to last year and wanted to be really specific earlier. So to say it differently, if the administration was to bring in a budget at that October, or at that 3%, it would be just over a $3 million reduction in the budget. So that is what we have to share with you. I'm going to stop sharing my screen. I'm sure there are questions, but it's easier to field when I can see you. Any questions from board members. Carrie. Yeah, thank you. So just to clarify the 12.89% projection is based on current staffing levels and expense projections based on what we understand right now. We're not using service. But that's exactly right. That is as if we do had all the staff, all the things, all the materials that we have right now. Next year. That's what it would cost estimated. Okay. Chris. Hi, Megan and Suzanne. Thanks for the information. What is the. Dollar value for the staff members that we hired with the ESSA funds. That is being pulled into the general budget. I believe it is around 579,000 Suzanne can confirm. Got it. Okay, thank you, Daniel. Yeah, how does this baseline budget increase in expense for 12.89% compare to last year's equivalent that what we used to call the level service budget has what was that increase I don't recall. It was just under 10%. I think it was like 985. Thank you. Our final increase was around 12. Chris, is your hand up again or is just a leftover. No, I'm taking it down. It's okay. It's okay. Any other questions before we move into our student report. Dan. Just appreciation to really making it very clear what that cut is potentially that that's, that's where, you know, my math tripped me up last year. So it's very helpful to see that clearly. As to what the reality is that we're looking at in this discussion. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Can you just say one more time that. That 10% thing that was loaded. Can you just say that again, and then how, how does that compare to the then 3% thing you estimated at the end? I'll take a step. I think that's. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. So the 10% is that under act 127. Increases. More than 10. You're breaking up quite a bit Megan. Then we're subject to a tax rate review. Megan, you're breaking up a little bit. Maybe. Susan. Yeah, I'll just try to fill in some of those holes. The long term weighted average daily membership. The spending per long term weighted average daily membership. Will be measured this year's against what it would have been last year. So that $14,510 per pupil. We'll come up with whatever this year's is compare it. If it is over 10%, then we're subject to a tax rate review. By a committee that is not yet formed of. I believe superintendents and business managers and some other folks will be on that committee, but. We'd have to justify the reasoning for that tax rate increase going above 10%. And then the 3% is based on. The budget or the board's parameter of possibly using October inflation, which is running at around 3% right now. So we use 3% as a placeholder for now. We won't know October's inflation number until November. And yeah, that's right. And then that. That 10% thing we don't know yet either because that hasn't been calculated yet. Right, we don't know our pupils for that. That's that's another piece that we're not we're we don't currently for this year. Okay, thank you. Chris. Yeah. So, 2 things 1 is a Megan, you were talking about the 10% review. Is the new formulation. Likely that we will not approach that. So that we will approach that. And then the 2nd question is in the declining enrollment numbers that that showed on the graph. Are we able to get that over time as opposed to I think that was a 10 year. Look back and how that translates into specific numbers for each school. Sure. Hopefully you can hear me. Yeah. The answer is we you're correct. We don't think that we would hit that 10% threshold because we're it's favorable act 127 is favorable to us from an enrollment standpoint. So we don't think we will fail that test so to speak. And then yes, we do have the ability to show the enrollment data differently, including by school. In the next budget presentation. Okay. Megan, can I add just a little bit to that. I feel like we can't really state for sure that we won't hit that because we don't know what this year's long term weighted average daily membership is. And if you take an increased budget and you divide it by a lower pupil count, because we know it will be will likely be lower because our enrollment is lower. Right now we would be looking at a higher percentage if we use this number. I was hoping Suzanne, do you know when we will know our long term weighted student number. I don't know. I'm hoping it'll be soon. Usually I get equalized pupils. That's one of the first data points I get. So I'm thinking they'll get that one out November. Thank you. Daniel. Just ask that we receive those slides by email if possible. Yeah, you will get a copy and they will be posted online too. Thank you, Daniel. Any other questions. Otherwise, we're going to move into our students with student report. Willow and now are you still here with us? Oh, they're coming in again. They cyberspace is bringing them in. We see Steven and hopefully they will operate in one second. They're there. Go ahead. The floor is yours. Willow and now there. Okay, sorry, a couple of malfunctions. I'm going to get our document up. Can you guys hear us? We can't see you right now. We can hear you perfectly and we can see you too. I don't hear anyone. Oh, no, we can hear you. Okay, sweet. Okay. Hi, everyone. Glad everyone's doing well. So this, these past, since the last meeting, a lot happened. The, so today the conversation, which is a group mostly led by Alice Lam, who works as an intern as a mosaic. And we did a presentation about consent to the middle schoolers. It was great. They were interactive. Everyone had their voice and it was pretty cool to just see what people thought consent was and then see how much they weren't after it. These meetings and presentations were going to be happening in a couple weeks to different middle school groups. Yeah, some of the students at U32 put, well, some female students at U32 put period posters in the bathrooms and it's just talking about like how, like your period can be hurtful, but how it's not supposed to harm too much. Just like kind of just general information that we wouldn't really get otherwise which is interesting. The word of mouth is back. Last year it was read or it was led by Jasmine and basically word of mouth is a independent original piece performance showcase kind of thing where students can perform or speak. So poetry, songwriting, music, creating anything in art and or like even comedy and myself and two other students are bringing it back so we can have it this year, and we will be performing November, I think, 21st. And it's in the, we've put up a bunch of posters and people are here to sign up and we've already got feedback from it so I think it's going to be pretty exciting and pretty big this year so we'll have to so if kids don't want to sign up this time or get inspired, they will be able to So the first sports this past couple weeks, field hockey and football had a combined practice the other day. We were just like field hockey was kicking, like, we're punting and then we were trying to catch them, and football was shooting on some of the goalies. Cross country went to New York City to compete in the Manhattan, Manhattan Invitational. And there's been some soccer games and other stuff like that that didn't go too well. So the girl soccer has officially been defeated. We played against hardwood last night and sadly lost hardwood's a great team they played extremely well, and it wasn't our game there was some controversial things but we needed to get into a new groove and we have our end of our season game Friday, and then we also had our senior nights. Yes, senior night. Field hockey one. I think nine zero. I think pretty much all of the teams one on senior night. It was pretty successful there was good student turnout. It was fun. They were good games. Yeah, a lot of people showed up for all the sports which was really nice to see. And there was a lot of participation in student sections and just supporting each other. So the theater is performing Peter and star catcher and the rumor is that they have to be off book by Saturday. So that's stressful, I'm sure for them. But it should be the show I believe is going to take place the first and second of November. Third. Oh, second third and fourth, I think. Yeah. So everyone should definitely show up for that we're going to try to get a lot of student participation in that as well. Normal seasons are coming to an end for everybody and playoffs are coming up. So I know football is in the rankings I think everybody is I know soccer definitely is for boys and girls feel hockey. We are seed. We are placed in four. So, yeah, looking good for sports. Yeah. And then the most important thing that I think needs to be said is tomorrow is Thursday, but also tomorrow is the most important day for lunch because it's brunch for lunch. Students are hyped. Students are ready to just absolutely devour some French toast sticks, a hash brown some eggs and a sausage and just that is what makes school lunch the best students love brunch for lunch. I know I'm excited. I know a lot of people are excited. So that is the most important piece of information we have for you tonight, but you guys should all come to lunch tomorrow and get some brunch for lunch. That's top tier. That's all we have for you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Any questions from board members after all of those highlights. It's pretty exciting. Jonathan. Yeah, I'm just curious to know how it went for cross country in Manhattan. We are assuming well cross country always does very well. Um, yeah, I haven't really heard too much about it. They don't really have it. I heard the trip was fun. I didn't really hear about the stats, but I know a lot of the students had a lot of fun like hanging out together and I saw a lot of photos posted and everyone seemed like they were had like a great time so I think it was an overall successful trip. But statistics I assume they did well. They usually do very well. Any other questions from Jonathan what I can say my I thought my kids have graduated from that program but their Instagram account was, they did great. So for cross country. Okay, any other questions besides thanks in appreciation for your report. I hope that you guys are staying with us. And we're going to move on into the superintendent and central office and the cult report. Any highlight you want to share with us Megan or any specific questions that board members want to answer please go ahead, go ahead Megan. The only thing I was going to highlight is just connecting the I talked a little bit about grant funding opportunity that we are seeking called project serve, specifically to support Berlin. There's a little bit of information there about what that grant funding is. It's connected to a personnel action that is later in the agenda and I just wanted to make that connection for you. And I did just hear back from project serve. They have a couple of tweaks to our application to send it back out so it's moving through the process. And happy to answer questions about that or anything else. Are you trying to raise your hand. There you go. Go ahead Chris. Megan is the personnel matter that's later in the agenda. Connected or contingent upon project serve or separate. Doesn't need to be done regardless of project serve. We would like the board to take action on it either way. We think it's an important enough resource that we would be brainstorming other grant funds if project serve doesn't work out. We would look to fund it through grants. But it allows us to start posting as anticipated. So we would like you to take action either way. That'd be a preference. Thank you. Any, any other questions for. For Megan. You know, I have another question. Just hold on. Any, any other question from any other board members before so that we. I don't see any hands up. Go ahead, Chris. Okay. In response to Brian's public comment. I didn't see anything in the agenda about a food service. Vote or anything like that. Is there. No, because this is a update from the finance committee meeting a preliminary it's essentially looking to see if it is even a viable discussion to have. So before doing the legwork to have a discussion and bring appropriate information. It's does this even make sense. That's what the exploratory nature of it was. Okay, thank you very much. Any other questions for, for Megan otherwise let's move into the principles report. And principles report is really if you all have questions I will field them to my principles. Otherwise it is there so that you have a little peek into what's happening in the buildings. So I'm going to start with a protocol like what did you notice. What are you wondering about. Because there's a lot of information that they share with us and I, you know, I think we also for the principles don't feel like because we're on ask questions is not appreciated because we really love it. So I would like to continue to say that I love how I continue to see the alignment and the change in how we update in, you know, student, especially in the humanitarian justice how that has grown and align in some ways across our district it looks really interesting. So, so thank you. Or so that do you have a question. I didn't have a question. I'll make a comment that in because they have the academic section, and they talked about some changes to assessment methods and whatnot in response to needs and I really appreciated reading. Yeah, so now we move to the central Vermont a career center report. We just had our meeting on on Monday we are working on budget right now, two highlights to share from from from the career center right now as we continue to work in having the full day for next day for next year, and second all of that advisory committees met this this Monday, which means that every advisory committee to all of the programs meet. They started three o'clock and you can visit all of them but it's like a round table discussion and each individual meets and then the board meets after that we continue to work in our facilities to so the facilities committee had a start we just added two members to our facility committee to continue to figure out how best we're going to be able to serve the needs across our six ending districts in the existing facilities or on a future facility. All of the committees worked in on their smart goals for that. Any questions on that Chris, I'm assuming that's an all hand or is that a new hand. Oh, okay. The next one is the the SBA updates. So I just wanted to highlight a couple of things. The board members that are attending just a reminder, even if you're not the voting member. Yeah. It's a new it's an it was actually a new hand. And I'm sorry if there's any discussion. Yeah, is there any discussion about the mechanism of voting for the career career center budget? Because remember, we had that kind of buy. Two part voting process last year where it wasn't you had to send it out separately. Yeah, we that's going to continue to be the same way that our ballots, because unless we have we did not discuss this at our last meeting but we would have to get all our 18 towns to send their ballots with their with their school ballots and not all of the town send their ballots with their even mail their ballots at all. So, so they are to their two separate districts. And they will be so there's been some talk about doing a special line or something different on that ballot but we'll have more information closer to to that. But thank you for thinking about that. So please, there's a little link on the update that you get every Tuesday but if you just go to the website there's a place there at the annual meeting where you can register to participate in the annual meeting, even if you're not the voting member is great to participate in the annual meeting. You just you don't vote but you can be part of the annual meeting and see talk about the resolutions. The second one in that same update we added a little piece where it says NSBA is having a rural summit. It's a free event so the National Schoolverse Association is having a free event. And it's related to actually carry you had asked about this a while ago, which is why I put this here this is a free summit you can sign up for it is for across the country and it's pretty much resources and empowering rural communities is December 13 from one to 4pm. And it's just a good way to see what's going across the country and you know how we compare to others and I don't know it's it's a good way to learn to. And you'll highlight that in case you missed it and November 14. There's a webinar on tax rates and budgets. So if you it's noon, if you can make it just register for it you will get all the information and you can see it at a later date. Those were three little things I wanted to update on that you guys get the newsletter, read it when you can. Let's move to you or so that education quality. Stop talking on page 14 is our memo to you, the full board on our most recent data report we're supposed to come to you four times a year with different achievement monitoring data reports and this is the first one it was our spring. We had a summary of our 2023 data and we gave you our purpose in charge how we're doing. We gave you some definitions to help the report, which had some graphs in it. There was also a link that went to our full presentation that came to the committee that you could go check out. We had a summary of our analysis that started on page 16. I wanted to get into at this meeting having a discussion about the report this is our hope is to bring you a consistent report format similar to the cool report similar to the principal report on bring you a report in a consistent format so you know what to find and where. And this is our first attempt and we want to get some feedback that we have some guiding questions and the first one is what stands out to you in the report. Please raise your hand and we'll be happy to call on you. All right. Thanks to things jump out at me one is that proficiency levels are lower than we would like them to be in both areas, especially for the students on IEP, but on the positive side there is some pretty solid growth performance. I think the stretch growth, if you remember that is particularly impressive so that that is encouraging press. Hi Ursula thank you very much. Like the format of the report and the definitions, because it helps understand what I'm reading. Is there any based on this report in the findings, any input from the administration on what might be done differently to address to help improve on that are strengths, but also to address any weaknesses. So having like any linkage between result and potential future action, I think would be great as well if if there is that information. And then I just have a couple questions about the change in the instructional and evaluation practices. What are you looking out of the changes. I am on page 16. And I'm wondering if the changes in the evaluation practice change the ability to rely upon past results. That were gotten under a different evaluation process and whether you can rely upon those to continue into the future. And I'm just trying to see how you transition from 1 to the other. So this is our baseline like we said up above this year is going to act as our baseline based on those goals that were set and stated up in the purpose and charge. And so, because we used different evaluation methods, right, we had the aspect, we had different. Evaluation methods and they have been changed. This is our base goal and moving forward. We'll be able to compare spring 2023 to spring 2024. And beyond. Does that make sense. Absolutely does, but does it is there any way to send to the older, evaluative data that we have from using the other evaluation tools. So this would be for Jen or Megan, maybe to answer. I think it's a really big lift work wise from my opinion, like knowing how information and numbers work. They're going to have to correlate those old evaluation methods to a different local evaluation and then try to see how that fits with the new ones. So I don't know whether Megan and I know Jen snuck into the meeting and whether she wants to speak to it. I can speak a little bit to it. So for our local assessments. One of the, especially in the area of reading, we've made such significant revisions to our literacy performance indicators based on newer research and evidence in the field that it would be it would not be comparing apples to apples. So that doesn't necessarily make sense. We do have some previous data from I ready and in fact the leadership team was just engaged in a study of looking at some past data in the past for fall. I ready data to figure out for your next report for the Ed quality committee, how to start building that longitudinal foundation. And I would say what I've heard for the AO from the AOE is there they're working on trying to figure out if there is any way to kind of make sense of the new V cap scores, based on sort of aspect stuff. And that is that is just a beginning process as far as I know I haven't seen that there's anything definitive that can happen if and when there is we are happy to include that information for you all in future reports. Thank you. Great. Thanks for this. It's really helpful to see and I'm wondering and it's probably just because it's a baseline and maybe get this a little bit later but being new. I don't really know what I'm looking at in the graphs, whether this is good or what our goals are what our targets are. So, you know, when I got to the point where it said for stretch growth for more than the national average, I found that really helpful as as context. So, if we could, you know, if you could add something like that in the, in the future, that would be really helpful just to understand the context around the numbers. Thank you. Anyone else. So our next question is what questions do you have about our analysis about the data. Some of those came up already. You can raise your hands just jump in. Our third question is do you agree with the analysis that we made. So we're talking the statements that were made on page 16 and 17 of the packet. And the next question would be what other implications for the full board. Do you see we had a section that talked on implications for the school board, such as informed oversight, and then ensuring that we're allocating our resources to continuing to build and implement our local comprehensive assessment system. Are there other implications that anybody else in the board sees Kari. I think that is that our guidance, excuse me to the administration about closing the achievement gap. I think we want to maintain that as a priority for long enough to see significant improvement. I think the goal that's been said is great but we want to move beyond that. And these things take time obviously so we just want to keep this area focus on our radar for a good long time in my opinion. Thank you. Anyone else press. So, could we ask the administration to identify what additional resources, if any, they would need in order to. Achieve our goals for student achievement. My hope is. Yeah, I guess my hope is that that would come to us in the recommendation for the budget that we'll see in November. Right. That's the hope, but having it, but having it specifically, I said, yes, that's the hope. But having it specifically identified saying with this result, we think we need these types of resources to. Achieve that goal. I appreciate your input. Yeah, floor. Hey, I think, I think Chris that we are at our, our purpose was when we were at that meeting that that second bullet has to ensure that when we're allocating resources to continue to build and implement on the local comprehensive system including resources. Oh, you're right. It doesn't get all of it. So. Well, I'll just say that that was the purpose of establishing that. Budget print was to say we want you to propose something to us develop something. And let's include it in the budget that was that was expressing the purpose of that Chris. Yeah, of that. But I'm wondering if we put it here to as a third bullet, but it's not really related to the it is related but on. I don't know I'm trying to like sort of bring together what Chris was asking and. My question is, is. Chris, are you looking for them to tell you that specific programs and exact. Assessment methods that they plan to use or. Not as much exactitude, but if they have a certain thing in mind and say that they. You just let us know if they need more resources. For a particular type of achievement. That's what I'm looking for. Just that we hope the administration will be frank enough to say this is what we need to achieve to try and achieve. This goal that the data is telling us. We should be cheap. I'm just taking notes. Thanks so much. Anyone else. Any other format comments. Yeah, what one other on format. I think I mentioned this before, but if we could add the, the disaggregated. Graph equivalents. That would be helpful, especially in. Monitoring the second part of the goal that we're going to see an overall percentage of students who are proficient increased by 10% will need to see the disaggregated for that. Disaggregated by. So the two sets of graphs that have been presented are. By FRL free reduced lunch and by IEP eligibility. But I think we want to see it for all students. Without those great doubts. If that makes sense. So a third, a third pair. Like a total of, I'm just trying to understand like you want, because right now those graphs show IEP students against not IEP students or free and reduced versus non free and reduced. You want a graph item that has a total. Yeah, overall the overall students. Yeah, but yes, because I think that's what the goal talks about increasing the overall percentage of students who are proficient by 10%. And also reducing the gap between. Exactly. There's two, two parts to that goal. And Kari, you said that you referred to that as the second goal just so that I can capture it. The second part of the goal. Okay. Second part of the second part. Anybody else. I appreciate everybody's input. And I appreciate the quality members that meet to discuss this in detail. We appreciate you Ursula. Thank you for leading this in a, you know, just for the public that is here. There's a lot of the board members that participate in the quality. So. There's probably why there's a little less discussion here that's moving to the finance, the finance committee discussion and I am going to look for a motion is on page 18. For the capital improvement projects update and approval. Go ahead Ursula. I knew that the board authorized the allocation of $127,502 additional capital reserve funds for the complete board funds to the completion of the projects as identified above and approved. The district moving forward with the document and bidding as necessary. Thank you Ursula. Could I have a second. Thank you, Daniel. Okay. Now any questions and discussion board members for you that are just seeing it now. Hey, I don't see any questions from any board members the table is pretty self explanatory so thank you for reading the packet all of those in favor of approving the motion as read by Ursula and second by Daniel please signify by saying I any oppose any abstain okay seeing none the motion carries. Okay, moving back to sorry, I'm in my digital thing. In page 21 award the exterior doors the bid for you 32. I'm looking for a motion to go ahead Chris. Okay, award the bid in the amount of 117,000 not to exceed 117,254 dollars for the you 32 exterior door replacement project to acne glass to be completed in FY 2023-2024. Thank you Chris. Thank you, Daniel. Any discussion, any questions. Hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed. Any abstain seeing none the motion carries thank you. And now the dental premiums a 6.3 I'm looking for a motion to approve the dental premiums for Korea 25 Ursula. I move that the board set the calendar year 2024 dental insurance premiums as dollars single plan $720 to person plan $1,080 family plan $1,680. Could I have a second. Second. Thank you sec. All those in favor of any questions. Thank you Daniel. Just wanted to declare a conflict of interest as my family pays these premiums so I will be abstaining from the vote. Thank you Daniel. All those in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed. And one abstain just you Daniel. Yeah. Thank you for declaring your conflict of interest is appreciated. Okay. Moving right along. It's back to me update from the configuration study so the configuration study so it takes me a minute and the digital thing to go back and forth. The configuration study committee met just right before this meeting, and they want to, they wanted to share three things with you, we looked at the data. That was in our in the packet, which is available for everybody and we use the protocol to analyze the data what we what we're a, what did we notice and what we were wondering on after looking at the data. And then the last thing that we're going to move ahead and have a brainstorming session at our next, our next meeting, and we asked for a little bit of extra data. But those were the three things that the committee wanted me to share with you. It was a really good meeting and the protocol work really well. And it was with us to help us facilitate the discussion. Now, I'm going to move right into the policy committee. Wait, wait, wait for I have a question. You said the data was the data connected in this in this. In the finance committee. Okay. Yeah, in the finance. Oh, okay. So that's not part of the board packet. No, no part of the board packet. No, part of the back. Yeah, right. Okay. And so now you're on policy committee. Okay. So the memorandum tells the truth that we had did have a robust discussion in our last policy committee. And it was good. And basically around the, the library and instructional materials and the personnel recruitment policies, which are not yet up for the board's consideration, but we'll be in our next meeting. And, but we, what we do have for you today is revision to the transportation. Policy, essentially adopting a lot of the VSPA model policy. And modifying it. Not really much. And so that's up for first reading for your consideration. Do we have any questions about. C 3, the transportation policy that we are presenting. Now, hearing on, we'll move on to C 6, which is our home study students policy. We again adopted the, or recommending that we adopt the VSPA model policy language in regard to our home study students. I think our, the policy that we already had in place, or still having places pretty close to what we got from the model. But we thought the model policy was more directive in citing various statutory provisions. And so we're recommending that we adopt it. And hopefully our next meeting. Any questions about the home study student policy. Okay, that's it. Thank you. Daniel. Oh, sorry. I was curious about. Well, the 16 VSA. Section 166, I just was curious what, what, if any state laws apply to us in terms of making. Course enrollment and co-curriculars and so on available to home study. Students. I can give you a really quick overview. In Vermont home study students are allowed to access extracurricular so sports. The play things that kind of happen outside of school. They also can access classes at school as long as their home study program is. I think it's 60% of their core academic classes have to be at home. And that's kind of to prevent people from, oh, I just homeschool my child in math, for example, it has to be the other way around, but. And we would allow those students to take classes and that's at the elementary school or the high school. That's the quick version. Not required to just. We may, we may make these available. Actually, no, we have to in Vermont. We are obligated to give them access. Sorry. I might not have said that very clearly. Is there in our. If they're in our district, correct. Yep. We don't take home study students that don't that it's home study students that reside in our towns. Sorry, any other questions? Otherwise, we're going to move to our next is the board operations. We're in board vacancies. We wanted to have this, this discussion just to remind people so it's never early enough. But we have a little spreadsheet of people that need to run for the next. I think most of you are aware, but for Amelia, Kelly and sack, you. Sorry, Daniel, do you have your hand up. Did I miss them. No, okay. I think it would be running in, in, in March, which means that you would be submitting all your paperwork in, in January. So just that reminder for that but the other reason this is, and then there's a few of you I'm just trying to open the, just taking me a minute to open the spreadsheet. I have a couple others. I can't really see any other. So if you know that you have to run it, could you please let me raise your hand. Otherwise, this is an opportunity for us to talk about the future if there's any that any of you that is not planning to run for the next in in March, so that we can start planning. Carrie. My seat is coming up and I will not be running again. Carrie. Chris. And I think my seat is coming up as well. And I'm undecided. Thank you. Carrie. All right. That was that that was it for that I would be reaching out to all of you to, you know, sort of help recruit, and it's never too early to talk to others so if you're already thinking of not running please reach out and make up and let's make a plan to make sure that we have it, you know that we don't end up with a vacancy as we start in March. Okay. Thank you. Okay, so moving into our next consent agenda. Oh my goodness. Let's approve the minutes for October. For 2023 October 11, they're on page 28. They have a motion. Thank you, Ursula. Move to approve. Second. All right, Ursula moves it and Chris seconds it. Okay. Any other changes? Yeah. Yeah, what, like to pose one small correction on set second page of the minutes, you know, item five in the motion. I believe it should be the, you know, to stop to sign on be half of you 32 if requested rather than as. Okay. Thank you. Any other changes. Ursula and Chris you're okay with that small. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Hi. Hi. Any opposed. Any abstain. The minutes are approved. And now I need a volunteer that we don't have Lindy to approve our board orders. I know all of you have them right in front of you. Diane is smiling. So should I put it on you, Diane, or otherwise trust trust that Ursula has that right in front of her or Kelly. I'm trying to read people. Okay, thank you, Ursula. Thank you, Diane. Thank you, Diane. Thank you, Ursula. Thank you, Diane. Any questions? Any discussion? All right. All those in favor of approving the board orders, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed. Hearing none, I would be sending you an email after this meeting. Please reply. You know, not really send your. And for the new board members, there'll be instructions there and it's just approving the, the board orders. Thank you, Diane. Thank you, Ursula. Thank you, Diane. Any questions. Any discussion. All right. All those in favor of approving the board orders, please signify by saying aye. Any opposed. Hearing none, I would be sending you an email after this meeting. I would be sending the board orders via email and we'll copy. Melissa. So she, we need at least a board members. Okay. Yeah. And now moving into personnel. Approve new teachers and. It's in page 32. Okay. Don't all run up with your hand. Emilia, do you have it open? You want to do it? No. Okay. I can do it. And then a million can second it. If she liked to. So, um, that's perfect. So I, I move that we, of course, I don't even know what I'm saying that we accept the new teacher. Jen Donovan interventionist point five for FY 24 only. I can. I didn't realize I was muted. I'm sorry. Any questions. Although otherwise all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Any opposed. Any abstentions. Thank you. And we'll come Jen to a new job. And then I can also mention that we move to, uh, accept Mahala. Largents resignation as the school nurse at you 32. And wish her well. Thank you. Second. Second by Chris. Right. Yeah. Both those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed. Hearing none. The motion carries and that's the last of the personnel. And hold on. There's moving to the request for the grand fund on page 34. Could I have a motion and then we can have discussion. I would move that we approve a budget amendment to add a 1.0 VCBA behavioral system specialist position. Pending funding. Thank you. That was you. That was Kili. Kili. Sorry. I was looking down. All right. Any, any questions that memo was pretty clear, but. It's super exciting. I think it is a really good thing. And, and, and. Yeah. And then please come to us if we need to change. The grant fund, you know, whatever it is, please. It's, this is super exciting. You need it. So all the Daniel. I was just curious. The terminology of the position. Behavioral system specialist. Is that terminology that we use in other schools? Like do we have these positions in other schools? And the follow up question is. Do we have any vacancies in other schools currently? Are they all filled positions? Yep. Good question. It is. We do have some similar positions in terms of the behavior system. Specialist. We, however, because of the nature of the funding, this is a pretty specific position to what Berlin needs. Hence the BCBA. And honestly, we use it. The other language so that when we post, we can broaden our search to make sure we get lots of candidates. So it's a little bit. Yes, we have similar positions, but this one, particularly because of the funding source and the, the need that it's serving really needs to be tied to impacted families who are now double impacted. So it is a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's defined pretty specifically for what they need. And no, sorry. Second part of your question. There are not vacancies in those positions in other buildings. And is the expectation. Sorry. Another one. That project serve funded for more than one year. Like is it going forward? So project serve is a 12 month, typically a 12 month funding source from the time. So it is defined pretty specifically for what they need. And no, sorry. Second part of your question. There are not vacancies in those positions in other buildings. So project serve is a 12 month funding source from the time that they fund it. So it would fund it through this year and through part of next year, give or take, depending on when we hired it. So in the budget conversation, if there's some gaps, we either would be talking to you about it from a budget standpoint, or we may be looking at some of those alternative methods of funding to get it through the end of next year. Cause the goal is really. To get it through the end of next school year and then determine if we need it longer than that. So 12 months of funding comes from project serve. After that. Either you'll hear from us in this budget season, because that's next year. Or we would be looking at other grant funding. Thank you, Megan. And thank you, Daniel for the question, Chris. You have a question. Yeah, I do. So Megan, the memo. And it's probably the largest with two paragraphs on the bottom indicate that the position would be serving. Students and their families, but then it also seems to expand it to provide what you say is school-wide support and consultation to increase capacity for all students and teachers in the Berlin school community. Is this position needed more for directed services? Or is it a, or is it a combination of more global support as well? In Berlin. It's definitely directed and prioritized towards identified students and families. It's just that when you bring a position and a professional of that caliber into a system, they typically also benefit. Class, you know, teachers, you know, they do benefit the rest of the school, but the primary goal, particularly in the beginning of the position will be to wrap around identified students. Thank you. Thank you everybody for the questions. All those in favor of approving the motion, please signify by saying hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries. Thank you, everybody. Megan, I'm wondering if you want to share your screen. If I had a chance to have it, otherwise I could, the work plan. I can share my screen. Yep. Hold on. Give me a second. Otherwise, I think I might have it right. I'm in front, but maybe not. I've got it. You got it. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. All right. So looking at November 1st. And that this is our forum, connecting our vision to our budget realities. And that's November 1st. And at quality would be meeting on November 1st. And the next board meeting is on the 15. Number 15. And just a reminder that the first is in Doty. Doty. All right. Thank you, Megan. Okay. Last, but not least. Any board reflections. And then I will open it to. Chris, you have your phone. I have another question. Yeah, go ahead. I just want to make sure. Yeah. So based on our. Recent. Session with Mark. I think it's McDermott. Yeah. Was it Mark McDermott? Yeah. Yeah. And the public comment section of our meeting. I thought he said during that, that session that. Having a public comment as we're discussing an action item. Is a better fit. And so I would move that we, or that we should consider modifying our public comment. Practice to allow for public comment. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point when we're actually discussing an item that we're going to vote on. I think I just offer this part, this clarification. I think what he was saying is the public comment at the beginning of the end in the end are specifically for items that are not on the agenda. And then the board can choose. Not to have another public comment, but if the board after its discussion of something in a meeting chooses to turn to. Public comment and the difference is that. It's an agenda item. So everyone already knows you're talking about it. So the beginning in the end is really on. Things that are not on the agenda. Thank you. Fine, but I thought he also was saying that. True public comment would allow comment when we're actually. Like. Voting on it. During that discussion. When we're going to be voting on an item. So Chris, I think that if you want to bring this, this conversation up, that might be something that we bring up when we start our work plan or when we started retreat. At the, at the next year, or we bring it to the steering committee to, to reflect on that. We could discuss it at the, at the, at the steering committee. I am hesitant to just say, you know, that's what we need to do now because we, it has taken us years to get our meetings back to, like in a way that we have. You know, proper public engagement and also in a timely matter, be able to have a meeting of the board. So that's, I'm happy to have a discussion with you and happy to have a discussion with the steering committee, but that's not something that I don't want to change the process of our meetings. Now finally that we have sort of. A rhythm to, to our, to our meetings. And I'll add it to the discussion of our steering committee. Okay. Okay. And then we don't have a, for some reason we missed in the agenda. It just as a German, but we usually have public comments right after a, our reflection. So I honor that and I apologize that we missed that when we were putting the agenda together. So if there's members of the public that have specific comments, I just want to say, I just want to say, could you please raise your hand so I can get a sense of how many we have. We typically allow 15 minutes for public comments and depending on how many we have is just two minutes. But if we just have a couple of people, we can have. More time for you. I just see one hand up so far. And it's Becca. Hi, Becca. Nice to see you. Please go ahead. Thanks for, hi, everyone. I have a couple of questions, but I also thanks Chris for bringing up the, the point about the public comment. And I, I know you'll discuss this later as the board, but I do think it would feel more meaningful for members of the public to be able to ask questions or make comments during, maybe after the board's conversation with, with agenda items that are being discussed. So I just want to put a plug in for hoping that the board discusses that in more detail and perhaps find some more opportunity for the public to be part of the conversations and be able to perhaps inform and be generative along with you folks in the process. And then I had a couple of questions from the budget presentation. The first one is do we have any, would be super helpful for me and other folks, I think to know how, how the percentage of the budget and that pie chart that you shared, that comes from the general fund has changed over the last, like a decade or so, I know that general fund for education has really diminished. And I'm just curious about sort of what the impact is on how much we're supposed to be, we're trying to generate for the budget from property tax funds and to make up that sort of difference in that change. So curious about how the percentage of general funds has changed over the years and has that data offhand or if that's something that you've shared with the board in another packet or something like that, but it would be I think super useful to understand actually the full landscape when we're talking about the budget realities. So that's question one. Should I go into my second question or. Yeah, we're right. Okay, great. Okay, and then my second question is, do we, I know that sort of overall the percentage of people who property tax owners or property owners who pay based on income is about two thirds of the state. And I'm wondering if we know if that's different in our district or if we're sort of in line. And then I'm just curious, you know, because I know that folks who don't pay based on their income tend to actually pay less of a percentage sometimes of their income. So it's a great deal for people who may choose, you know, it's interesting how that shakes up. So I'm just curious about if we know that percentage, if it lines up in our district or if it's different from town to town. Also, those are my questions. Thank you. We have written down your questions. We'll get back to you. Any questions. Right. Hearing none. I was hoping to. Thank you everybody for being here. Thank you members of the public for joining us unless I'm forgetting something I've been looking for a month should do a journey. I move that we adjourn. Thank you Ursula. A second. Second. Thank you, Zach. All those in favor of being signified by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Have a good evening everybody. Thank you for being here. Good night.