 of the Board of School Commissioners of Montpelier Public Schools. Our first item is public comment. I have a member of the public. But I think this is Mr. Post, who I believe is here for agenda item four. Okay. So you don't have to speak. You can wait until agenda item four. You can wait until your agenda item's up. All right, so next consent agenda. We have the approval of the minutes of the May 16th school board meeting. Approval of warrants for payroll and accounts payable for June 8th. Approval of the quarter three financial report, which we reviewed at the last meeting. And approval of the resignations of Jessica Cobb and Barb Austin Hutchins. I move to accept the consent agenda. Second. All those in favor. All right. Steve is coming. That's it. And now Peter's here. Look at all these board members. Yay. All right. Our fourth item is a limitation psychology 2.3 financial condition. And we have a parent request for tuition meter, which was briefly described in the superintendent memo. And apparently we have Karen to tell us more. Would you like to come up? If you can stand or sit, but either way, if you could introduce yourself, I'd be great. I'll see you if you don't mind. Make sure you're less nervous. So I'm Rob Post. And I wanna thank the board for its time and allow me to come and have a discussion about this issue. I really appreciate that. As just mentioned, I'm here to request a tuition waiver for my two daughters who are in the Montpelier school system. I have equals 11 in the fifth grade and Main Street middle school. And Holly who's seven and in union elementary. Dr. Rickard knows a lot about this already. We've been talking over the last couple of weeks. So he's gonna hear a lot of things twice. So before I get into sort of the meat. I was totally used to that. Yeah. Holly. Before I get into the meat of what I wanted to explain as far as why I'm requesting a tuition waiver, I wanted to start with an apology because when this started for me in early January into February into early March when I moved out of town into Randolph, I had not notified anyone about the removal of my children. And there are some reasons for that. And really it was a mistaken judgment and good judgment is something I'm usually known for. So I'm a little embarrassed by it. So I just wanted to bring that up first and offer an apology for that. A lot going on at that time. I had moved, I had started a new job, same day actually March 1st. And it was one of those times in life when sort of I couldn't take any more stress or unsurity. And so I was a little bit afraid of what would happen if I had to move my kids out of school because I had just lined up after school care here in Montpelier. There was none available in Randolph at all. And it was just a big transition time. And I made a mistake and I should have done it differently. And I just wanted to acknowledge that fact before I started. So in early January, I had been notified by my landlord that he would be moving back into the rental home that I had up on Prospect Street. And this sort of started this process. And we began to look for a place to move in Montpelier. And if you'd ever moved in Vermont in the winter, you will know that options are limited at best. And I did a really diligent search around here and I couldn't find any suitable housing for my family at that time. So I was forced to move to Randolph where suitable housing could be found. Now this move for me in Randolph is temperate. It was not something I wanted to do. It's something I don't want to do now. It's just something I had to do. So this forced me to move myself and leave my kids here like I just explained. And that's where I am now. So it's very important for me to have my children stay in Montpelier school system for the rest of the year for a couple of reasons. One is the educational continuity of having them finish up the year. At least the older one I know is in the middle of final projects. I would love for her to finish those. And I don't know where the Randolph school system is in curriculum. I can't imagine it's the same. I don't know how closely these things are aligned, but I have a hard time believing that they'll walk into the same exact place they are now in school. So that's one thing. And the second thing would be the social aspects of this. They have been in school with these kids for a couple of years now and we're coming up at the end of the year. And I personally find a lot of pride in finishing out something I started with my friends and classmates and coworkers and to pull them out of school at this juncture when we're so close to the end, doesn't seem quite right to me. And it strikes me as nothing of their fault and as a parent, it just sort of hurts me to have to do that to them. So Dr. Rick has explained to me that they can stay in school if I were able to pay tuition, which is something I simply can't financially do. So I'm left with two tough choices. Come up with money I don't have or pull them out of school and put them in Randolph Elementary for the next two weeks until the semester's over. And that is really the longest short of what I had to say today. It's really all I got. So if there's any questions, I'd be happy to field them. Are you trying to come back to Montpillier for next year? I am trying to come back to Montpillier for next year. I couldn't say with any surety that that will happen due to various circumstances. I own a property in Bennington, Vermont that I'm trying to sell very badly in order to come up with some equity to purchase a home. That is not quite happening. We are looking for rental properties up here in Montpillier. As of right now, my children are enrolled in summer camp in Randolph for the summer, but it is my intention to come back up to Montpillier as soon as I can. I work here in Montpillier at the judiciary and my wife works in Barry at Washington Mental Health. So living in Randolph isn't exactly ideal for us. So I'm very much hoping it's temporary. Any motion for discussion? So the normal, the regular, what's the standard policy? So because it was the procedure F20 that was a part of the packet states that when a resident student becomes a non-resident student, the superintendent has at his or her discretion up to 90 calendar days to waive the tuition, which I have. So that started on March 1st, but it ended with 18 days left in the school year. So the consideration for the board is what to do about these remaining 18 days. Essentially, the policy doesn't allow Ryan to waive. Yeah, I understand. I can't do more. It comes to us at that point. I also forgot to mention that I wanted to thank Dr. Ricker for waiving those 90 days. It was my pleasure. Much appreciated. It's my pleasure. I'll just put a motion on the table so we can discuss it. I move that the board waive tuition except for $500 for the remaining 18 days of the school period without really feeling strongly about the number. But just to get something out there so we can talk about it. I was just going to say, friendly amendments. Oh. Accepted in the other direction, probably. Anyway, will someone second it? So we can. I'll second it. I'll second it. OK. So Brian, what's the family rate? So if we were to straight up charge Mr. Potez and post in his family, the total cost for both children would be $2,427.12. And I spoke to Grant recognizing that it's a substantial amount of money. And Mr. Potez and I have had a good amount of communication since this came up. And we thought that it would be appropriate to cut that in half since it was just one family. So we've halved for lack of a better word. That's the half of what the full cost is, the $2,427. We thought one family would be reasonable to halve it. $2,427. Halve it. I mean, it sounds to me like this is a difficult situation. I certainly want these kids to be able to finish the school year. What a terrible time to have to play with kids at school. And even half is a lot of money for a family that's trying to deal with moving. So anyway, I'd probably be comfortable with a lower number, but I wanted to put something on the table to see where people are. I'm all for this. You know, I mean, I understand. I just worry, what happens if we do this as a precedent? I mean, that's my only concern. And again, this is not fair at you. I'm not saying we're making some. This is not fair to you at all. It's the argument I would make if I were on the side of the table. And so for context, we're kind of drowning in tuition and favor requests. And this could be, and I'm not thinking we're going to run through the doors and ask for all these, but we need some kind of criteria. And again, no offense, Mr. Post. Someone saying it's hard on them. I believe everyone who says that, no one. But we need some kind of criteria to make these decisions. Otherwise, some of them will be treated unfairly. So I just am asking, what are we going to use to evaluate this? I will say the last two that we have denied, one was for six years of tuition, and one was for 26 years of tuition. So those were really in a different. Yeah, I understand. Well, I'm just trying to find what our criteria might be. And those seem to me very different. And the one that we're looking at this evening, again, is another six years of tuition. So I mean, I would think we could almost add a dollar criteria. If you're asking for more than $40,000, that's a very different conversation than if you're asking for less than $5,000. Or you could look at it. I don't think there we draw that line. Or you could look at it in terms of the amount of time. The reason that we're doing this is 18 days. And you could say the last semester or the last amount of time that would be fair for students. So you could do it either way. I agree. So 18 days or then the next one is 25 days or 30 days with no. Could you do a semester? Could you do a year? I mean, could you use a set time? I'm also personally more inclined to look favorably on circumstances in which the kids are already enrolled in our school. Right. Right. But the question is how much, what if they asked for six months versus five and a half months? I don't know. And I'm not saying I feel bad that he's our. He's our guinea pig. Very nice man. He's our examiner, not even our guinea pig, because we even have to have this discussion. But how do we do this where everyone's treated fairly with criteria? Can I ask a question of grant, which you may not know the answer to? And that is totally fair because it's coming out of the blue. Is there a point at which these actually affect the budget in terms of the equalized pupil number and what we get from the state? This situation would impact tax rates because the equalized pupil count is based on the count and the standard at the beginning. You know, I'm totally right. So the tax rate was already set before. That's true of anybody who asks after the tax rate is set. Right. OK, but still, I wanted to know that. In terms of revenue received? Not an impact for us, because we're talking about a student who is our student, so there wasn't an expense. And there isn't a revenue either. There was a tax rate that was calculated. So when we're talking about a student that was ours, that it has left, there's no budgetary implication other than if there was a charge. Well, there's a couple of things. So can I interrupt for just one second, Grant? So waving tuition versus paying tuition? Very different in terms of their? Very different. So if, for example, I gave Ron discussing whether to allow a student to attend a different school for years and we would have to pay tuition for that, that's a big question of information. In this case, if we had five fifth graders leave, and then maybe what we could say impact our head is, well, maybe that would have impacted our staff, and maybe we could have got away with one less teacher or something like that. But really, in this case, with one student in each grade, it'd been with us all year. There's not really a budgetary implication in this situation other than the fact that if tuition is charged and it becomes a revenue to offset our expenses. Another child in a different situation, however, which might be a child that costs us more money with some services that they might need in the same situation would be more of a cost. Well, we can't go around that road. That's not a conversation we can have. But to add sort of Peter's question together with Bridget's question and send it back, how far back in the school year would we have to go to run into a budget impact? Well, I guess it depends on the kind of cost that we're dealing with. I mean, if there were other costs other than just permanent staff, if there were staff assigned specifically, if there were, once again, to go back to Tina's point, I mean, if it was outside of placement, if you were incurring that cost, then there would be a budgetary implication. But I agree, you can't really get into that because it's personally unappliable. So it's not like you can ask those kinds of questions. But I like this and think, if we're waiting 90 days, another 18 days, isn't that big of a deal if you want to just be able to show that for future reference, if it ends up being 100 days, and it really is significant, it would be at least have a precedent of charging some kind of nominal amount. 100 days beyond the 90, you mean? Or 100 total? Yeah, I'm saying, if it was like in the first semester and somebody was behind it, I agree that maybe we should be thinking about setting a bar of some time during the second semester. We also have situations where somebody's like, and Mr. Post may well find himself in this situation where he's living in Randolph, but he wants his kids to come back to Montpelier schools in the fall. He knows he's closing on a house the 1st of November. Can he get a waiver for the incoming, you know what I mean? In that case, he can get 60 days. 60 days. We have had that kind of a request in the past. Peter? So for me, me personally, I don't mind digging into the reserves to find the money. There's an economic hardship if someone's really going to get worked over. So I'm more or less obsessed about the days, but I just want there to be a fair system, because everyone deserves a fair check. The one thing we should never be accused of is being biased or unfair if one of our friends is up there. Is there a way, without really making too hard on our superintendent or our staff, to have some kind of application for hardship and have it be confidential between the applicant and the staff? And so when we get our note saying, I believe this person passes the criteria for an application for economic hardship and so that the money should waive it. So at least we could always say to the public, well, there was a process, and this person made the case for an economic hardship waiver, and we are going to grant him or her the amount they need. And then, at least, we could say there was a process, and we trust that the superintendent made the right decision. But then what you're saying. I think it would be simpler to choose either a point in time, either a number of days or an amount of money, rather than trying to ask the staff to analyze people's financial situation. Well, I'm not saying he's going to go into taxes. I mean, unless you just get it based on their adjusted gross from our last taxes or something. No, no, not that. We're not going to ask. I was thinking something more along the lines of someone writing a letter saying, I'm asking this waiver because I have to move unexpectedly. My bank account was emptied because I had to put a security deposit down. If that sounds compelling to you, I'm assuming people are going to be honest, like that. OK, I just wanted to say you could say you're being biased for that reason. You're being something that we have. OK, I'm not super obsessed. I was just trying to think of a way that we could have some kind of criteria that the staff could evaluate to allow us to make a decision that would be fair to everyone. I think it's easier to look at the 18 days. And that doesn't have to do with necessarily hardship. So if you look at a time period, and the reason we're doing this is because you don't want to start a kid in Randolph with 18 days left, and they do field trips, and that's it. So that would be, in my mind, a cleaner way to do it, is to just look at the days. Now maybe then you have to make it fair because you're right, we need to have a system that doesn't look like it's biased. We make a calendar to say either the semester or halfway through the semester. Or at what point, if you'd asked for it in January, it would have been different. So can we say there's a time? How many days in a semester? 90. Proms-Millie 90? Rough. I mean, 180. I would say what's compelling here is that I've also, I don't think it's necessarily been with everyone who's on this current board, other factors that this board could think of in terms of consideration are the year that the child is in school. If it's an eighth grade, or if it's a senior. I mean, I think there are ways that you can say thoughtfully. I agree with Nancy. To me, especially at this time of year, 30 days and under, I think would be a reasonable place. At the same time, I do feel that it's OK to ask for some nominal portion. You can waive. And the only reason I say that is because of the earlier conversation, that there are other people that are coming that are asking for waivers. They may be different in nature, and they may be different for different reasons. And I think it's still appropriate for this board to be able to say, we were able to waive this given these circumstances, days, time of year, student, grade, et cetera. And we still asked for X. $500. I'm not going to weigh on that part. I think those are some good perimeters for this. So, OK, still have a motion. We have a motion on the table. I would just say, given the very short number of days beyond the 90, and the fact that it's the end of the year, I'm comfortable with $500. I would be comfortable with waiving at all. So I'm sort of where. If someone wants to, if that's where the board is and someone wants to make a friendly note, that's fine. Or with a nominal amount, I'm OK with that, too. I'm not sure I'm prepared to decide exactly where the line is, but I feel quite comfortable that this is on the grant side of the line. I agree, and I would think it might be important to keep track of the decisions we make and why we make them, and so we can at least begin to collect the data about the decisions so that we can track it. And then that might be the beginning of setting up a precedent. We've not received as many of these in the last five years as we have in the last two weeks. All the more reason to start collecting the decisions and the reasons for the decisions, and then maybe a pattern will arise out of that. But in the meantime, I would support a $500, which was, I think, the original proposal. Tina? Yeah, I'd support it, too. I'm wishing it was clear what we're doing. I agree with Peter, but Peter, do you have another solution? Not on the fly, that's fair. I mean, we can also, as we make the new policies for the new district, I don't know if we've gotten to that one. So this is an amended policy, and F-14 was rescinded from being a policy when you went into policy governance, so it's a procedure. You could still address it as part of budgeting. I mean, we could amend, we could do something to put something in writing in regard to a policy on that. Can I ask a question? Yeah. So when I was thinking about this, the one thing that I was mostly concerned about was that my kids remaining here in school would be costing money, and would justify me paying tuition as opposed to they were not budgeted for already, and now because of their staying here, now there's additional funds. But what I understand from what Eric, you say, was that this tax code was already set. So they're not really costing any more money to remain. Is that right? Correct. Correct. There's no budget impact. Yeah. Yeah. So my inclination is to amend the motion to waive the tuition entirely on the basis that Bridget gave of it being less than 30 days into the school year. Can I only think, I was thinking about pertaining to that, is that is the precedent piece, that this sets that something was paid, and that in the discussion, when you ask for some other reason, if it's 25 days or 30 days or something, that there's a precedent of some amount in your keeping track of, I guess that's the only thing I'd say. I think that's fair. Peter, where are you on that? Because I think it's two between them. Oh, god. No matter what we do, it's going to be arbitrary. That's the process. Whether we charge Mr. Post $500, $200 or not, it's arbitrary, and we have no rationale, right? We can make the case to the next person that comes, that zero is the right amount. So isn't that $500 there? I mean, I'm inclined to, because it's not having a budget impact, anything we say is going to be dangerous, because we've already given them 60 days. Well, we've given them the 90s, so far we've stuck to the procedure. Right, which is still we don't have to do. We chose to do it. So it's arbitrary, no matter what we do, you know? I don't know why we ask for anything, but Brian, what was your rationale in your memo for, do you feel comfortable talking about that? Sure, I think the president, honestly, would be a dangerous one to set. I think that others who are not charging anything. I'm not charging anything. I think others who are not as honest as Mr. Post could potentially take advantage of the board. I will tell you, residency occasionally, and sometimes more than occasionally, pops up, where people have moved, are not as honest as Mr. Post, and take advantage of the fact that that's a very difficult thing to have to track down. So they move to a place where they are non-residents, and they continue to send their children to school. Yeah, oh yeah, it's a common thing. And so I reach out often. We only find that out, but it's like, really? Try to connect. Occasionally we'll send Officer Nizely to do a residency check, to be sure. And so this is a hard part, because in a sense, we are quote unquote punishing Mr. Post for being honest. And that's why I stated something. I think the family should contribute something, not the whole amount. I will be honest with you. That's a lot of money for 18 days. And I understood when Mr. Post wrote back to me, when I offered him the family amount, and said that he wanted to come here. As a dad, I would totally understand that. At the same time, I think it would be too dangerous for the board to say nothing. So could you say something like, I know $100 is still a lot of money, but. We should at least lay the groundwork for giving us a lot of things to write. I know $100 is a lot of money, but if we have to charge something, I mean, is that the least we could charge, where it sounds like something? I don't know. It's OK with me. It's OK with me. Do you want to move to another question? Me? Can I? I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. I don't think I can. I'd like to move to Amanda Bridget's motion that the charge of Mr. Post's family $100 for the remaining 18 days tuition for his two children. I'll second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Then we have to vote again on the motion as amended. Oh, really? Honest. She was so mean. OK. So we've approved the amendment of the motion. Do we have a second for the amended motion? I did second the amendment. OK. OK. Great. All those in favor? Aye. Thank goodness. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for coming to us. I think that was a fair outcome. OK. And I appreciate you thinking that for not only for me, but for whatever comes after me. Thank you. Good luck with the move. And good luck with the move. Thank you. I commuted from Randolph for a long time. It's a long job. Yeah, it's not great. Hopefully by the end of summer, I'll figure it out. And it'd be like they never left, which is really my goal. Thank you. Good night. All right. Can I hear a motion to adjourn? I move to adjourn. Second that. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. OK. Bridget, it's all here. Do I have to move or can I stay? No, you should stay there.