 The first thing on the agenda, as always, is adjustments to the agenda. In our regular meeting, we did not make it to our executive session to discuss an upcoming real estate transaction. So we will be adding that to the end of the meeting after public comment. We also did not get to public comment in the initial meeting, which means that we will entertain public, the presentation video that we'll play in a minute talks about how we're only supposed to be talking about the budget meeting in public comment, but the public comment at this meeting will also include the topics at the regular meeting, which included the interim board position, the COVID-19 reopening plans, as well as the third item that I close the agenda and can't remember, but I will review that when we get to that point of the meeting. So without further ado, Ray, can you play the video? Greetings and welcome to the Rochester Stock Exchange, Unified District Budget Information Meeting Exploited. Before we get started on the details of the review of the budget, a couple of housekeeping details about the vote. The polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, August 11th in conjunction with the Vermont primary. Rochester residents will vote for Rochester High School Building. Stock Exchange residents will vote at the Stock Exchange Town offices. Absentee ballots can be requested online at the Vermont Secretary of State's webpage or by calling the Rochester and Stock Exchange Town offices. Note that if you requested an absentee ballot for the primary that's been done, automatically get your absentee ballot for the school budget vote. That is a separate election requires a separate request. Our agenda is the same as our first informational meeting. We're going to have a general overview, revise our budget, have some board comments and then we'll make questions and comments from the public. Before we begin, please remember that the board bylaws have rules about limiting public comment. Each resident of our district may offer one comment or question and comments are usually tried to be limited to five minutes. Board bylaws have rules about discussing private and privileged information. And this meeting is to discuss the proposed budget for our district, not building usage nor merger consolidation concerns. Our situation is this. The Rochester Stock Exchange District Board organized a one-time Australian ballot election on June 30th to get a budget in place for the upcoming school year. That budget vote failed by, or that budget failed by a vote of 141 to 110. At the Rochester Stock Bridge Unified District July meeting, the board did formally move to discontinue use of the Rochester High School building that's effective this school year. And finally, again, without a past budget, the district is limited to borrowing only 87% of last year's budget. Why is 87% funding a big deal? Because the board is limited in where budget cuts can be made. Items that cannot be cut include the SU, the special education and our middle school and high school students tuition, the tuition we pay to the schools we send them to, which is 44% of our total budget. The 3% expected pay increases for the union personnel cannot be cut as the 13% health insurance increase cannot be cut. But 87% does mean that $573,000 would be need to be cut from our local programming, the only parts of the budget the board can control. The revised budgets highlights are this. This budget spends $36,612 less than last year's budget. This budget spends $19,175 less than the voted down budget proposed in June, because we've added preliminary operating cost savings from mothballing the high school building to this initial proposal. The resulting 1.1 cent equalized tax rate increase raises the annual taxes on a $200,000 Vermont homestead by $22, if the taxpayer is not subject to Vermont's income sensitivity program. And finally, I wanted to give some historical context to the RSUD budgets as have been proposed over the last three years, the last three budgets that have been the unified district budgets. The history of those budgets are this. Each year the board has presented the taxpayers with a $140,000 to a $235,000 surplus, money that we did not spend in the previous year's budgets. Our expenditures in the two year program, the first year we proposed a unified budget we asked for $4,251,494. Two years later, we are only asking for just a little over $120,000 more, $4,371,950, which is just a 2.8 expenditure increase over that time period. When you look at the tax rate that we paid when we remove the merger incentive numbers, the initial tax rate in the past fiscal 19 budget was $1.68.76. Again, removing the merger incentives, the adjusted budget for fiscal 21 is $1.70.54. This means that our tax rate when we adjust for the merger incentives has only increased 1.1%, from the first RSUD unified budget through this revised proposed budget. The board is really proud of being able to hold that tax rate line, and is really grateful for all the work that the administration did in consolidating costs and finding economies of scale to bring our two schools together after the merger. Thank you. So first I want to apologize. The audio and the narration was a little more broken than I would have liked. I was having a very hard time getting YouTube to be cooperative with me. So instead of getting like a nice fade with a music and a sunset, you sort of got a cutoff. But I really do want to emphasize the point that I was making at the end of that conversation, which is, we entered into this merger to try to have the best educational opportunities for the kids in our two communities and to try to find economies of scale and try to find ways that we could consolidate costs and share costs and do a better job of making sure that we got all the dollars we could in front of the kids. And I think that last slide that points out that our very first budget that we proposed to the budget we're proposing for this year going forward, the three budgets, really when you take out that it was eight cents off the first time, six cents last year and then four cents this budget we're proposing now, really we've gone up 1.1%. We really have found, despite whatever disagreements you may have over the way that we've handled tried to be prudent and cautious around the buildings, I really do think it's important to note that the board's efforts have indeed kept the tax rate pretty flat. 1.1% increase over two years, I think is not something you'd find in a lot of other communities in Vermont, especially communities that are in our geographical and socioeconomic circumstances. Does anyone else on the board have anything they would like to add to the conversation or the administration? The principals have worked really diligently with the board. I've come into this game late, but I believe that this budget supports what we need in order to educate our students this upcoming school year and that certainly the administration's going to be continuing as we get ready to launch into a budget process after a hopefully an approved budget here next week around 2021 to look at how our system of supports can continue to find efficiencies at the local district, but also at the SU level. So those are all things that we're talking about already as we get ready to prepare for the budget process for 21-22. Carl, were you gonna be getting into the discussion we had earlier in July about the Rochester building and not using it for the educational purposes this coming year? Absolutely. And actually, I think the board is very clear that from our point of view, it's not going to be used for regular educational purposes at all. The administration is figuring out how best to, I guess Bonnie and Linda can chime in with their comments, how best to move the resources they need out of that building and get, I mean, a building changes or not. This year, this upcoming year is going to be a unique and odd year just because of the way that COVID and our circumstances have things going. I'm comfortable with the leadership that Jamie's given us and getting information from Bonnie and Linda about how we're going to make that transition and get what we need out of that facility and established into the new facility as best as possible. But I mean, I don't think we, I have not heard a lot of detail about that, but that's not, you know, it's not my job to micromanage. Bonnie, do you have comments? Basically, Carl, we're waiting to see, so the answer would be yes, we are not using that building for any ongoing educational purposes. Of course that for next year is a move point because with the pandemic, we couldn't go to the art room and music room. We're looking at how to bring those programs into the classes in the elementary building. But right now we're sort of needing to know how many kids are going to choose the online option and how many youngsters are going to choose the in-person option. Then we will know exactly what it is we're trying to plan for. Right, I guess the part that I was hemming and hollering around is I know there was some conversation about if there were things that we could store over in that building to make more usable space in the elementary building I know that there's, I'm sure, Rochester's family that want to know how that space is going to be configured and used and I don't think we have answers yet or do we? Well, we definitely have stored some things over there. There are a number of items stored over there. There will be a few more items going over there once the teachers come back because we need to move stuff out of our classrooms to provide a sufficient space for social distancing. Our largest group at Rochester at this point is 15 kiddos and that pretty much takes up a classroom. So, you know, things like bookcases and tables and things like that, they're going to need to be stored in the high school. Right, okay. And I mean, and that doesn't, well, we'll address that as we get to that because that's certainly a valid use of space. Does anyone else have any questions or comments on the board or in the administration? I'd just like to say that we are doing due diligence about taking care of the building. Jamie gave us a report earlier in our meeting about meeting with some specialists about mockballing the high school building and we are proceeding in a confidential as is appropriate manner in discussions with the town of Rochester Select Board to create a framework about a possible transfer. So just that these actions are ongoing, we'll be talking about that again tonight. That's what the executive session is for and that these, you know, we're very serious about moving forward. Thank you, Ethan. Okay, are we ready to go into public comment? Does anyone else on the board or the administration have any last thoughts? Okay, the way we're going to do this is I'm going to open up the list of everyone that's here, what I see for people on the phone is I see your area code in the last two digits of your phone number. So I'm going to go down that. I'm going to ask you to identify yourself in the town that you're a resident of and then you can, you know, you can make a comment. You can ask a question. It really needs to be relevant to the concept of the budget or the things that we discussed in the initial meeting which were labor negotiations and coming to an impasse with the professional staff, the process for getting the interim board member on there, developing the interview questions, the fact that the board committed to holding an election to fill that seat concurrently with the presidential election on November 3rd, Lindy correct me if I got that wrong, on November 3rd, but then that will be scheduling those interviews with the board's intention of getting that out of the way and making a decision by their regular September meeting for the interim resident of Stockbridge who will fill that position until said November election. And then we also discussed the COVID-19 task force as well as Jamie's comments around the next steps in terms of mothballing that building and getting that ready to go. So those are the areas that we can have public comment around. So I will start with, and again, everyone is entitled to at least one comment. We are at pretty good time. This meeting was, you know, warned for an hour at least and we're only at 7.23. So we certainly if we get through everyone's questions in a timely fashion, I'm certainly willing to stay here for a while longer and take a second or follow up questions. That said, we can move right into questions with the caller that is 802-STAR-38. Start next one. Stockbridge. Ah, is this you, Keith? Yeah. You having him? Yeah. Hello? Yes, I hear you. You're calling. The board's been very careful about using the phrase educational purposes when discussing the high school building. So my first question, which is a pretty simple one, will that building be used to any purpose whatsoever, whether by the school district or by another entity? Yeah, we just said, for example, we're going to be storing a lot of the spare furniture from the elementary school in it to get it out of the way to make room to have social distancing in classrooms, which means, for example, we have to have a higher insurance policy than we might if it was empty. Okay. But I noticed that the school is going to be used for voting. Why not use the other school? In other words, why not as the phrase that was tossed around more falling the high school building? To me, when you more fall something, you close it down, you keep the minimum, the heat, whatever you need to do on a minimum. Granted, you're going to use it for some storage which that storage is to the benefit of the school district. So that's fine. I just want to know for the record that no other purpose, that building is not going to be used by another entity for anything. The board did not decide whether or not they were going to use or refuse the space for voting. I can say that in general, at least in my mind when we were discussing that piece of it where I was thinking about regular educational uses, what I was thinking about specifically at the time was it gets used for a Suzuki Music Education Camp in the summer that has very little, you're not turning on heat, you're maybe opening some rooms and cleaning some rooms and saying that it wasn't going to be used, period, seemed like it would be, it would be hard to go back and say, well, for this purpose that's being done in the summer where the expenses are small and we're getting an income for it because they're paying us a fee that we might want to keep that opportunity open. I think that, again, as far as voting was going, if that building was turned completely off and it had to be turned on part of it to vote, I'm sure that whatever negotiation was done between the school board and the civil board of authority at Rochester to have that expenses paid for, the cleaning paid for. I know that I don't know how elections have ever been held at Rochester, but back before the Stockbridge Historical Society was renovated when we held elections in Stockbridge, the town of Stockbridge paid like a hundred bucks for the cleaning guy to come clean it afterwards. So there's at least some precedent of if a building is used for a municipal or civil purpose, it's not being put on the school district's tab. But I think that, again, and you can, your personal feelings maybe that I'm using weasel words, what I'm trying to say is that... I didn't say that. You didn't, you didn't. I'm sorry, I shouldn't be editorializing. What I'm trying to get across is the idea that we're trying to say that we will not be using it for schooling purposes while still giving the school board the ability to use it for something like a Suzuki camp or if the civil board of authority said, we'll pay to turn that on because we're concerned about COVID infecting the elementary school and using that for an election on a Tuesday when you might be operating school, something like that. I think it's really not trying to be vague or wiggly. It's trying to say, we're not gonna use it for school and we understand, we don't wanna just turn it on to have like a dance or something silly, but just that we understand some municipal asset that we might need to use for a town for a beneficial purpose that we obviously get money for. Okay, so for the Rochester town. Okay, then just a question. Rochester town would pay the school district. If the Rochester town had turned on the heat of that building, I would assume and we haven't made any agreements yet. So I'm certainly just talking from what I would expect in a reasonable conversation, but we would expect them to pay a fee to use the building just like we expect the Gaysville church to pay a fee to use the Stockbridge cafeteria for their church breakfasts in the past or hunter breakfasts or whatever. Community wants, we have policies and procedures in place to cover doing those. And I would assume that any use of that building by community groups would still fall under the existing or perhaps modified because we'd have to consider if it was a flat fee, I don't remember what our document is but if it was a flat fee, we might have to raise that fee to bring the heat up or something. Okay, is there a public viewing of that document so one can read it? Our policy, sure. Bonnie, do you have that? Can one of you email that to Keith? Should be on the policies and procedures, Keith, but I'm happy if Keith, if you email me, I can send it to you. That's fine, what's your email? Ray, well, you can't. Jay Canarni, K-I-N-N-A-R-N-E-Y at W-R-V-S-U dot org. And I just want to put out there to the public. I am totally open door. So I've met with the community. So please feel free to email and I'm more than happy to get any information folks need. All right, and my final comment is that I know everybody thinks it's just about the money. It's not just about the money. I'm not so upset with the $4.3 million budget that you're putting forward and see the caps that you've been able to put on the tax rates by your efficiencies. That's all great. I guess the point that I'm trying to make is the district right now is responsible for over 60,000 square feet of building. We have a student population of less than 140. I would love to see the high school closed down, take the same money. I don't care if you save the money, put it towards the students, open up new programs for the students, but to just maintain a building that by your own report needs a lot of work. Why not give it to the students? Why keep this ongoing process of maintaining that building? At the student expense. We get that. And that's our ultimate goal. I just don't, I'm feeling like we're not getting there nearly as fast enough as you'd like us to. But thank you for your comment. And I do appreciate your patience. And I have to say, I personally appreciate the fact that you've taken the time to engage with us versus just complaining about us behind your behind the background, Facebook or whatever. Thank you. Okay. The next caller is 802-star-star-4-8. Star-6 to unmute. Hi, can you hear me? We can, thank you. I'm assuming you were just referring to me, but... Yes. I just like to say that I agree with Keith and I think he made a really good point. And it isn't about the money. It's not about the money for me right now. It's about the promises and to shut the building down, get rid of it, whatever, because we just, the money should be going for the kids. And that's it. And that's all I'm gonna say, because I agree with Keith. Thank you, Keith, for bringing that up again. And thank you for doing it in the process that you did evidently. Other people don't. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm sorry, which town are you from? Was that you, Caitlin? Was that Joanne? That was Joanne, as if you've never heard my voice. I know, I know, I know. Julie recognized your voice. Julie was like, that's not Caitlin, that's Joanne. But thank you, we just need to have that on the record so that we know that you were an official speaker. And thank you for... And I'm just curious why in the meetings, when we're doing this, the public names or at least acknowledging that people were on the meetings aren't listed. They don't actually have to have their names, but maybe if there's 20 people that show up, you could say with 20 people responding or in the meeting as well. Because in 20 years, if someone looks back at the meeting... That's an interesting idea, I haven't... Well, I mean, it would be nice for people to know that people are engaging with this and are concerned with what you're doing. Correct. And you're correct in that, at a physical meeting, we always pass around that piece of paper. And we should be passing around the virtual piece of paper. Right, and it doesn't have to be names, but you could say 20 people were there or whatever. Yeah, I have a number listed on the top of the culture, and I can add that. My only thing about adding some people that aren't, but don't talk is that we don't have everyone's names on the numbers, but I can add in, I see 19 showing now. I can add that into the notes. Okay, thank you very much, Jenny. Bye. Thank you, Joanne. The caller at 802-star-star-53-star-6-don-mute. Okay, the caller at 802-star-star-68. Do you have anything you'd like to add to the conversation, star-6-don-mute? Thank you, the caller at 802-star-star-97. Do you have anything you'd like to add to the conversation, star-6-don-mute? Thank you, Beth Dolly. Do you have anything you'd like to add to the conversation? Can you hear me? I'm having trouble. Hi, Carl, it's Beth. I'm curious about the tents. How does that all work? Beth, you're asking about how we're paying for those. Are you asking why are we using them? I'm asking, I mean, I have in my head a picture of easy ups with sides and the kids are meeting there for their classes. That is correct. Okay. Of course. So that we can social distance outside and as all the research is pointing to, that's a much safer way to have interactions. And the idea too is that we can social distance and that would allow students also the opportunity to remove masks appropriately. So does that mean they'll be heated in the winter? No, that does not mean that. What we're looking to do is learn from these first several months when we can be outside, there will be times that instruction still does occur outside in the winter. We're also working with some other organizations to gather winter clothing. But the idea would be that we're preparing for moving inside after the first trimester based on information we've gathered throughout the fall months. It's an ease in transition. I think that it ensures that we have appropriate procedures in place for in-person learning to continue indoors because we know we will be transitioning to that as it becomes colder. I just thought it was a really interesting concept. And of course the tents are up but the buckets of sand aren't holding them up and we're looking at maybe some high wind tonight and hoping they're not flying across the parking lot. I hope not. The tornado did not hit, right? And the tornado warning didn't hit in Stockbridge, I believe, because I see power plants in the house. They're still talking about high winds later on. Are they? If I can just say a few things. I've been working with Bonnie and Linda and Janet and the rest of the staff, office staff at the two campuses. These are steel frame tents, 20 by 20. We have a number of them. And the idea is they have sides and we'll see. We really never know what kind of weather we're gonna get, whether suddenly we're gonna get a ton of snow late October or whether we might get the use out of these tents well into December. That will sort of depend on it. The buckets, we're getting filled and the buckets are over and the... Free, free. You're breaking up, I'm getting nothing. Okay. Yeah, Ethan, maybe try and see if that improves your audio. If you're all frozen. You hear me now? It's a little better, yes. Now, would this be regular curriculum or is this a specialized curriculum? Nope, yeah, I'll jump in on that. We are looking to implement our regular curriculum outside. And so we're definitely consulting on it with outdoor educators across the SU about how do teachers go about setting up appropriate routines and expectations so that we can implement core content both inside and outside. And so teachers are gonna receive professional development in that during in-service to ensure that they have the appropriate expectation set up for students. It's not just about outdoor, it's about core content being delivered outside as well. I actually appreciate that you asked that question, Beth. All right, thank you. Thank you, Beth. Brenda slash Steve Hillier. Brenda, do you have anything you'd like to add to the conversation? Okay, thank you, Brenda. Janet, oh, there you are. You seem to shift, are you there? Brenda, go ahead. You're muted. Control D or command D or star six? There you go. Hi, Carl. I don't have anything. No, I'm just joining for the first time. I happen to be off and awake. It's all interesting. And I wondered about, I wondered about the text. You know, I wondered about the tents and the budget. So I'm all new to this again. Thank you. Well, thank you. Thank you for your, Brenda. Okay. Okay, let's go down to Janet Whitaker. Janet, do you have anything you'd like to contribute? No, I'm all set. Thank you. You're welcome. That brings us to the end of the list. So if anyone else has anything they'd like to say, you know, where we can do this for another, we're expecting to do this till eight. So we certainly have another 19 minutes in this. We also have an executive session to get to. So we would also appreciate if... This is Joanne. I have a quick suggestion. You know how you talked about, we can't have the meetings inside or whatever. Wouldn't it be cool to maybe use the tents and have a meeting where we all can get together under the tent? That's an interesting idea. Yeah, certainly, especially if we're gonna, you know, as we move forward with community conversations, those would work a lot better. I tend then over a screen like this, where I'm looking at a bunch of, you know, initials and phone icon. Carl, one comment, hopefully I'm not... That's a very good idea, Joanne. Thank you, Ethan. Thank you. Yeah, just Joanne, I don't know exactly the configuration Lindy's planning for in Stockbridge, but I do know that in Rochester, two of these 20 by 20s will be put together. So there's one 40 by 20 space for some bigger class gatherings, but that certainly would be an option for a outdoor meeting for all of us. Thank you. Thank you, Joanne. Does anyone else have any comments they'd like to add? Okay. Hearing none, thank you everybody for attending. Thank you for all your continued support of our school systems. I really hope that we see you all out of the polls on the 11th, to be honest, you know, exercising your democratic responsibility to vote is important, whether you vote for me or against me, I really appreciate we all, us all participating in our democracy together. We will now adjourn for an executive session. If there is any action that comes out of the executive session, which I do not believe there is going to be, that will get added to the recording, but otherwise, Ray, can you give us an executive session meeting group that we can all go to? Yep. Just a minute. Okay. In the meantime, so everyone on the board and obviously Jamie and Tara and our principals look for Ray's executive session, Google Meet Invite for the rest of you this meeting, or I would entertain a motion for this meeting to be adjourned. I guess we actually, technically we cannot adjourn this because we have to still have the executive session. We're going to drop this meeting and go and have our, correct. Thank you everybody.