 631, happy New Year everybody, and welcome all of you, friends, colleagues and fellow citizens. I'm sure that most of you are probably not here for the entertainment value as much as for making sure that we, your elected representatives do the job you elected us to do. We're grateful for that. Thanks for being here. I hope that you stay as long as you can because there's a lot happening. This meeting is a bit different because it started off as a budget form, public budget form. But we were snowed out on the 18th of December and in the meantime there was also the episode relating to grade point averages that required talking about. So in this meeting the basic running order after we get going will be proficiency based grading up first. We're planning on about a half an hour for that. Then finance which is largely the budget and we have a little over an hour and a half allocated to that. And then we have a couple of other items including the superintendent interview committee which will be doing an executive session before we finally adjourn. So anyway, any agenda revisions before we get going? I don't see any. Public comments. Now let me just say that the way we typically run these kinds of discussions, the board and administration start off being able to talk amongst ourselves with you of course being our audience. And then we open it up for the public to discuss that particular agenda item. So if you have something to say about grade point averages you can do so when after that first round of discussion amongst ourselves. And then it will come back to the board before we wrap up that segment. So is that understood? Are there any public comments that don't relate to grade point averages or to the budget? Yes, please. I just want to let people know that I'm here. Yes, let me introduce Anna van Dijn of Vermont Public Radio is here. I just might, if you guys are making a comment during the meeting, it being a public meeting, I'm going to come up and record you. I'm working on a story about proficiency based grading rolling out in Vermont. So yeah, just so you all know. Thank you. Thank you very much. Great. Good. So agenda item 2.0, proficiency based grading, GPA calculation discussion. Shall I kick it off? Please do. All right, there you go. Hi, everyone. My name is Deborah Taylor. And I'm pleased to see all of you here for either one of our interesting topics of discussion this evening, which will be this and of course our school budget. In relation to the proficiency based grading topic, as many of you know, if you've been following our work closely, we provided you with a very detailed presentation on proficiency based learning and its implementation here in Washington Central led by our principal and our curriculum director, Steven and Jen. We'll be speaking with you momentarily. And at that time we spoke about the fact that all of our schools in Vermont are required to implement proficiency based learning and graduation requirements actually going to affect this year, 2020. So as a result of about five or six years of work, which included quite a bit of specific research and professional development with our teachers, as well as most recently some of the preparation for the final transcripts for our students who are seniors this year, there has really been quite a bit of in-depth work. And we're very pleased with the fact that that work has been done very thoroughly here in U32. Most recently there have been some adjustments made to the GPA calculation and that resulted in some questions from our community. So our purpose this evening is really to focus on that area. If you are interested in learning more about our proficiency based learning process over the number of years, we do have the PowerPoint presentation cataloged. Just let me know and I'd be happy to email you a copy if you would like to see that. And with that I would like to turn the majority of our discussion portion of this topic over to Jen and Steven who have promised a brief presentation and also time for questions within our time this evening. So thank you. So thank you everyone. So we provided in the packet some bulletin points to some of the questions that you had. So we're not going to read through bullets for you guys. But I think that one thing that we just want to make sure that we pointed out and one of the questions that was asked is why was the decision made so quickly to make this change? And I think that that's the heart of some of the discussions that you'll probably have with us today. One of the things that we realized after vetting this for a couple of years our school profile, our transcript, the information that we were sending to colleges, when we started hearing back information from a couple of these colleges in the early decision, early action process, what we started to hear was they were not able to convert easily what we thought our rigor was to what they considered the GPA system and we used the college board scale as our measure for that since they're generally referred to as the experts around college admissions and all of that piece. And so we really looked at what did our scale show and how would it be represented in the college board scale. We felt like we had increased the rigor so that when we say that a student has reached a three level of performance in a course, which is meeting course expectations, we felt like we fell in that range of a B plus in the old system to an A minus, although we do not use letter grades in any of the stuff that we used but when you looked at the college board scale that was one of the measures for it but we felt like it did fall around that 3.5 as a GPA. That left us room to go for students who got four for there to be some scores above that of course but we also didn't feel like there was any need to go above a four either in our scale or because the college board does not show a scale above four and so we did not see a reason to move above that and so we shifted the entire scale that we have used in our calculations from the 3 to 3.5, 2 to 2.5 and 1 to 1.5 and we felt like our grade point distribution looked pretty similar to what had occurred in the past. A couple of things to point out is the old system was built upon a 4.33 grade point scale in the system before this. A 4.33 was only attainable with an A plus but there's no validity for that in college board calculations. It is not in any publications of the college board that that is a way to do that. They just didn't do it so we weren't going to follow on with that process anymore and so we made the change quickly. We got the information to the person who helps us put together our school profile and we got the changes made. We went through a couple of versions really quick with the school profile but what we felt was making sure that when you see the school profile the GPA summary is a good way for people to see like what range do students fall in and it's not against your peers so I think this is really important to point out is that we break down the categories of what percentage of kids fall from a 3.75 to a 4 from a 3.5 to a 3.74. This is a fundamental thing here at U32. We don't rank kids so all the kids who could be in any one of those categories they could make it there. What percentage of kids fall within a category? And so I think that's another thing that we point out is we haven't ranked kids we haven't offered any kind of weighted GPAs for any additional courses or anything like that so we felt like we were being true to the past in U32 and trying to make the system work so that colleges understood how hard our kids were working in this system. Am I forgetting anything? The only things I think I would add are that I know that the change seemed quick and sudden right before the December break. I'd emphasize again we started engaging in this work especially around issues of quality and coherence and alignment even before the ed quality standards came out in 2014. We were starting, we articulated a version of what we now call performance indicators that back then we called non-negotiables. So the work has been iterative and taking place over a number of years. I think the other thing I'd say is that after we sent out that initial response to families about the GPA recalculation we did hear from families and colleges and students that they appreciated the changes but they did think that the recalculation reflected the rigor of the courses more than the former GPA and that the continued concerns really were primarily around the level four work. And I guess the other thing we'd say is that you have in your packets and we have as a handout over here the colleges that we know of so far to which our students have been accepted and deferred in the early action and early decision process as well. And so we just wanted to update that for you. We don't collect that in any kind of systematic way. We don't have access to that information except that students self-reported for us. So that's what we had so far in order to provide to you because we know you've asked for that. Thank you very much. Members? I have a statement as a parent with a child in this class of 2020 that I mean I appreciate the feedback that you guys have from colleges and you made that change. But I think along the way and throughout the years I've been to multiple coffees and tea with a principal and met with teachers. And along the way we knew there were issues with the GPAs and the way the grading was done. So I guess I would disagree that it was done quickly from a student's standpoint when they had been dealing with a lot of extra stuff during the early decision process. Thank you. Questions? Chris. The GPA conversion that took place, what was it that the colleges couldn't understand to begin with? They had to go back and recalculate the GPA and then use this conversion. What didn't they understand? So some of the conversations we had with one of the colleges was that they didn't see that this was a Carnegie system and they wanted it to be on a Carnegie system. They knew that it was a proficiency system, not a Carnegie system, but they felt like that they couldn't interpret it to that. And so we had heard from one school that they had, and I'm going to don't quote me on this word, but I know. But they said that they had inflated the grades. They had recalculated them. I'm not sure which, I was not the person who took that phone call, but that they had recalculated our GPAs to try to translate them into what they considered the Carnegie system. We felt like we should provide that conversion. If we don't want colleges coming up with their own around all of that, we felt like we should do the conversion. And that's why we went back and said, okay, then here is a GPA conversion to the Carnegie system as best we can do it. Are the GPAs now going to be Carnegie converted into the future? As it stands right now, yes. So when they go out, do you want to have school calling you and saying we don't know what this means? That was the whole point of the conversion, is that it is now shows on their transcript with this conversion and the conversion explained in the school profile. Is this universal to all the schools that have this confusion and problem with the GPA? I can't speak to every school in Vermont, but I can tell you- They're not talking about the colleges that the kids are from. Oh, I wouldn't know if that's universal. I mean it's from those that we spoke, a few that we spoke directly to. Typically, we're the larger state schools that we're having the hardest time with this. The smaller liberal arts schools, when we contacted them, were pretty okay. But the larger state schools tended to have more trouble with it. This being the first year that kind of used the proficiency grading system for college applications, did the- is there a sense, and maybe you can't- don't know, but is there a sense that some students were hurt by the school not understanding the rigor of the academic progress because they're looking at a number as opposed to really knowing U32? I don't know. I have no way of knowing that. Colleges do not reveal how they make their decisions and admissions. So I wouldn't know. I think the other piece that I want to talk about today is there is a difference between proficiency-based grading and the standards to meet proficiency graduation. And U32 chose to do the standards set by the state, but also the 1, 2, 3, 4 for the grades, which I would say that our staff as a whole is continuing on the professional development of understanding a 1, 2, 3, 4. But feedback from students, it is very hard in our reporting system to dictate a student at a 1, 2, 3, 4 when the old system was a 0 to 100. Is there been more discussion about having the 0.3, 0.4, 0.9 within our reporting system for the 1, 2, 3, 4 system? Yeah, I can start. So when we were- we did a lot of research, a lot of reading, a lot of talking about the system and what we wanted to do was be able to create a system that gave families and students accurate actionable feedback and we wanted there to be a level of calibration across classes and across schools. So what we did was a lot of the work that we did was based on a researcher named Thomas Gaspi and we did a lot of work around gradations of grading. And what we felt was that we can give more accurate actionable feedback to kids on a regular basis when we agree how they're doing and when there are fewer gradations in a scale because ultimately if a kid was getting anywhere from a 3.1 to a 3.2 to a 3.3, like all of those gradations the level that- the way that we would describe the work becomes so fine that it becomes hard to distinguish just like in a 100 point scale. So that was an intentional design as was the idea that we also wanted to report on how a kid was doing toward proficiency at the graduation level. We wanted sort of two things happening because we have high standards for our kids for graduation but we also wanted to give them feedback about how they were doing relative to course expectations. Yeah, and I would say that we have had conversations a couple of years ago we brought up the conversation about should we do halves? Should there be a 2.5 and a 3.5? And at the time we felt like we weren't clear enough yet even on a 2 and a 3 or a 4 to say that we knew what a half was. I mean just simply saying that when you're grading something that it's halfway between two other ideas you have to have criteria for why it's the half. And so we are- we just had this conversation again recently. Are we ready for halves? Is this something that we can clearly define? So if we know what a 3 is and we know what a 4 is, can we clearly define what a 3.5 is? It's not simply that you do part of a 3 and part of a 4 because those aren't- it doesn't necessarily translate that it's a- something's halfway between just because it has elements above. And so if we can be clear about what that is which we are not at a point where we feel like we can be then you can have those half gradations and I think that's what Jen speaks to as well is that if you're going to have a 3.1 and a 3.2 then you have to be able to say what's the difference between a 3.1 and a 3.2. And if it's simply because we can calculate to one decimal place or calculate to two decimal places the calculation isn't feedback. The feedback is the rubric itself and what are those categories in the rubric? And so that's why we've been on a four point scale- a four point learning scale, four point rubric scale as we do our classwork. And so that's why we've been on those. So another question with that is again on the professional development of the staff the opportunities for children to get the force because right now that is an issue. So we also, I agree. So we've had difficulty in how do kids get to the four level? We've had these discussions over and over again. We also think that that is more a product of our seniors and the work that they've been doing over the years because what we see is that as we've learned more, as we've done more the four has been more easily defined. And we also, we consider being able to get a four an equity issue because it has to be something that can be accomplished with the materials of a class and it must be able to be accomplished within the teaching of that class. And we think that at times there has been a push to say that no, this is something that has to be done outside of class to get a four and we recognize that that's just not legitimate for us in terms of a scoring system. That very conversation has been had a lot more this year than we've had in the past as we've defined this. And it was an issue early on and I think it stuck with some kids for a while. I think that the ability for a kid to get a four now is much easier than it was in the past when it wasn't clearly defined. Yeah, I need a little more clarity on that because my daughter granted she may be incorrect, you know, received some twos and threes on assignments and I was like, why the two? And she said, well, I couldn't get above a two or she can't get above a three in a class even if she gets all her work turned in. And so that just seems odd to me and again, she may be incorrect in that assessment but I don't know if you could speak to that. Yeah, so I would say that on some individual assignments, like if you're looking at a rubric, there's a lot of information that kids have to learn to move from one step to the next on the rubric and we do know that there are formative assessments that may not be used in the calculation and many times they are not used in the calculation of the grade where a teacher can say, yes, you've shown me that you can do this level of work now we're moving on to the next and doing that. So that does have an informative assessment. Our hope is that there's no class in which a kid can't get a four as a result of their work and that we continue to work on. So would he getting an A in the old system be the equivalent of a four in the new system? I don't know. Because we didn't clearly define what an A was in the old system. I mean, I think... It's got A. Yes? They did. There must have been some type of criteria for... I mean, I don't want to seem flippant about it but we really could not define what an A was in many cases and there wasn't much consistency to it in the old system. So an A could be that I got 90% or more of the questions on the test correct which doesn't tell me how difficult those questions were or what I actually knew. It just told me that the 10 hardest problems on the test could have been the 10 that I missed but it could have also been the 10 easiest problems. It didn't tell me what I knew. It just told me how many I got correct. It could also be that I wrote the essay in the format in a five paragraph form and that was what we were looking for and so you got an A in the class. It could be that I got an A on homework because I turned the homework in not because I actually performed well on that homework. So the A wasn't well-defined nor were any of the other grades well-defined. Because we used a traditional letter grade system for so long we came to trust it as a measure of knowledge but many times it's a measure of effort and what a kid could do. Yeah, I think that some of what's happening I think is the idea that switching to a proficiency based system as we said back in November is probably the most incredible paradigm shift we've made in education in over 100 years and we all went to school under a Carnegie-based system when you sat in class and you did your time and you did well enough to pass the class and move on. This is a completely different paradigm and I think that those questions around equating letter grades to course expectations like you can't even do it really in a proficiency based system is what we're trying to do is ensure that we're giving kids feedback that they're meeting our high expectations and that we're pulling out knowledge and skills from habits of work and transferable skills that transcend. When kids are taking those grades and applying to colleges is proficiency based education nationwide or is it only in a certain few states that students are having a harder time competing against other students from across the country if those other folks are still using the GPA or Carnegie-based grading system? That's why the parents are here I think because their students ran into difficulty or perceived difficulty anyway with the application process and just trying to ensure that there's a fair and accurate conversion of what our proficiency is bringing us into information that colleges actually use when they're deciding on admissions and we're able to move that out somehow. I mean I think so. That's why we made the conversion that we made. There are multiple states that have used proficiency systems. There are schools within states that have used proficiency or competency or standards based or mastery based. So all of those terms are used and have similar systems. So they've been used in other places. The Great Schools Partnership worked with colleges and universities throughout mostly New England but a little bit beyond New England as well to say here's the system that many schools are using. Will you be giving students a fair look if they are in proficiency systems and schools from MIT to Yale and all the way to state schools and state colleges signed on. The last I saw there were 70 schools that had signed on to say yes we'll give kids a fair shake in these systems. We see kids from a variety of backgrounds. GPAs are calculated a variety of ways across the country. There are some places that use quality points instead of GPAs. So colleges see a variety of transcripts. Typically they're looking at more than just a GPA. They're looking at SAT scores or ACT scores. They're looking at the recommendations. They're looking at the full application. We don't always know why a kid gets into a particular school or why a kid does not. I've seen kids with very high SAT scores and very high GPAs who did not get into very good schools and I've seen kids with lower SAT scores and lower GPAs get into those same schools. And so I can't predict where a kid is going to end up just based upon a single score. Colleges really do look at the whole package and we trust that they do because we see a variety of kids get into a variety of schools every year. And I think we are already seeing even in the first round that we've got kids going to a variety of schools and who have gotten into those schools so you need to see the list and so on. It's more of a comment. So when we're talking about the assessments we have moved away from being competitive nice in between and we've moved on about meeting a standard or exceeding a standard. So that's where I get the view. So we're not saying that we're going to have a four and an eight because then we're not showing the growth, right? What we're trying to move away is to make sure that all the students that we're sending out are proficient for a job, a career, we're going to college as opposed to passing that pass with a name and we'll be done, right? That's the biggest change that we've made. So, you know. A proficiency system should show that kids have mastered or proven competent or have reached a level of performance. That means that they're ready to be successful in a post-high school educational opportunity. I mean, we want all of our kids to be able to go to college should they choose. They might not all choose, but we certainly want to make sure that they're all prepared for it. A lot of the comments and concerns that I've heard and that I've read about revolve around incentives, right? Kids' incentives to improve. I think that's part of where the, you know, the concern about gradation, right? And that there's not enough granularity in the system, right? If a kid just continues to get a two and a two and a two and a two and a two, you know, people seem to be concerned they're going to be stuck there and there's very little incentive for that kid to work harder and do more to get a three. And on the flip side, there's, you know, that this system disincentivizes high performers from doing even more, right, to try and get a four because that just seems unattainable. I just wonder if you can talk about the issue of those incentives for students and sort of in the context of, you know, parents and students' concerns that, in fact, there's a perverse incentive here, right, to not do more work, right, and to not achieve more. I guess, Jonas, when I think about that question, I don't know that that's unique to a proficiency-based system. I mean, there have always been kids who've done the bare minimum because that they can coast by, they do their time and they get out and they have a college diploma, or a high school diploma. There are always kids who have been either intrinsically or extrinsically motivated to do the very best that they can do, and there are some kids who have said, you know, I'll get a B, and a B is fine in the old system. That hasn't changed. What has changed is that we have increased the level of rigor and expectation for our kids, so you can't really coast. You have to demonstrate a level of knowledge and skill that I believe leads to a better educated preschool graduate from the school system. Yeah, I would say that the idea that a kid who gets repeated twos in a course, that should stand out to us as a school, as a student who needs additional time and support to be able to do that. And so I think that that's an area where the school has a responsibility to step in as well and make sure that not just the motivation is there, but the opportunities are there for all of that. And I lost my thought on something else. Yeah, motivation is a tricky thing. That's kind of what I keep coming back to is that some kids are motivated by grades and scores. We did change the system on them. There are some kids who are absolutely delightful kids who show up for class every day, do everything the teacher asks them to do, and they get pretty decent grades. They don't always know the material really well. Their effort or their demeanor helped them get a better grade. When we separate out the transferable skills, those habits of work from content knowledge, we really did throw a wrench in some kids' idea of how to do school. We feel like that's something that we have to do better at is to help kids do that. But we heard comments from teachers and kids that they're being asked to do more and they're being asked to work harder. I remember the other comment is that in U32 in the past with the credit system, most of our students, their senior year, was comprised of English and whatever else they wanted to take. There weren't a whole lot of requirements left for them. We have more kids taking math and science this year as seniors because they haven't shown us that they're proficient yet in the standards that we have. I see that as a good thing. That means that we have a little better guarantee that the kids who are leaving U32 are ready for science and math once they leave here as well. And so I think that that's a positive. It may not be for the kid who had to take an extra year of math or science, but it certainly is us making sure that our kids are prepared. Great. Board members, you okay? I just have one comment. Not to speak for Jones, but I think when I was saying that the students need more opportunities in their class time to receive a four or get a four, that's a piece that's still lagging. That's still an issue. They need more opportunities within their class time to get four. Thank you. We're good. Open up to the public. Please. Hi, I'm Jill Olson. I'm a parent of a senior. This is my husband, Todd. I won't name my son. He would kill me. Absolutely. So I really appreciate a lot of what I've heard tonight and some of you have already said some of the things that are on my mind, but I do have a few things left. I think what's really been worrying me about this is that I feel like we are not setting up our seniors to compete in a really competitive process. And I think their GPAs are still not comparable even to the GPAs that are coming out of Montpelier. So Montpelier has a GPA conversion. So kids are getting actually bumped up a little higher, especially at the higher end of things, up to a four at several levels or up to a 3.7. So they've done, I think, a little more to make those GPAs look higher. And it's not consistent from school to school in Vermont, which is probably okay at a sort of inside the school, but when we move into this competitive world, that's what I'm concerned about, that we're not giving our kids the best chance that they deserve to have according to their performance. And that's really where I feel like just the math doesn't work. We've taken a four-point scale, and they calculated the GPAs, like you calculate a GPA under the old system. You add up all the core scores, and then you divide by the number of courses. That assumes that the jumps from one to two, from two to three, from three to four are the same or equivalent as they were under the old system, and they're not. The jump from a three to a four, as I think has really been said, is very wide. It's getting narrower, but it's been really wide, and that is not reflected in the math that's done to produce the GPAs that we're now dealing with. So I appreciate that the GPAs have been changed. I think they were much too low. Now I just think they're too low. So it was an improvement. It was a step in the right direction, but I think there's more to do to convert it so that when colleges are looking at our kids against all these other kids from other places or other places in Vermont, they understand the performance of those kids, and I'm very worried that that's not what's happening here, that the GPAs are so depressed. We'll never know. Part of what's so sort of stressful about it, I think for parents, is that we won't ever know. We won't ever know why they got in one place, why they didn't get in one place. It's always been that way, but we'll never know if this was part of it, especially because our kids have been in the first class to try to grapple with the new standards. So I actually had a couple of other really specific comments. One was that I was a little confused to hear that now 3.5 is a B+, when we had that sort of interim step, we had a profile up on the website for a while that said a 3 was an A, and sometimes a 3, I think is an A, because sometimes a 3 is full mastery of the coursework, because what an A used to look like. So I think there's just a lot of confusion about how to do that translation. I think I covered everything. I guess what I'm really saying is it's not... I would almost be less worried if we were asking colleges to compare apples to oranges. I think we're saying this looks like an apple, but it's not quite an apple, but it's really an apple. That's what I'm worried about. It looks like the number they're used to seeing, it's not the same. That's what I'm worried about. I just like to start by saying I'm not a college admissions expert, clearly, and if anyone here knows more about this than I am, please jump in. But to talk about the competitiveness piece, I've spoken to people at our school, I've spoken to people who work at colleges across the country, I've spoken to admissions officers, and what they've all told me is that I will not be compared earlier. I will not be compared against someone at any other school, but this school. I will not be compared against anyone else in the country. I will only be looked at in the context of this school. I hope that's right. With the GPM. With every other thing. I hope that's right. It's really hard for me to buy that when you're talking about schools that are getting a thousand applications for a spot or a couple of spots, where they must be going through a process quickly in a first round. I am not as confident as I've heard it stated that colleges, especially large schools, are able to take that closer look. I'm worried about Canadian schools that do not claim to have a holistic process. They have a, here's your number and we'll take you if you're above it and we don't take you if you're below it. And I'm concerned about scholarships, which we haven't talked about here at all, that have a numeric GPA cutoff. So there are places where the numbers really matter and I'm not sure that we have fully grappled with that in this process. Thank you, Jeff. Rick. Yeah, Steven, back when this was rolled out, you remember you had two forums in the auditoriums that filled that auditorium on two nights and there were very few positive comments about this and there was a lot of concern on exactly this issue and you told me, I was one of the very first people to ask this question and you had an algorithm to correct this. Now, I'm an engineer and I pretty damn go with math and statistics, but I mean, I couldn't take a number just like Vera said earlier, the differentiation in this is so broad and what, and to not to delittle what the student was saying here, but I am not sure even there were, you know, you have, it's such a clumsy tool for even differentiating GPAs, but it looks like a big herd. I don't know how anybody could take this and turn this into anything short of voodoo and I'm pretty sure that the colleges would look at this, even the changes we're doing now is voodoo, like a scramble to just do something to make this look better. I mean, I don't know, you're telling us, you know, you can't do a .5 differentiation. Why wasn't this homework done before this was ever rolled out but it should have been done under the old system? I mean, essentially I like the idea of measuring on, say, a quarterly base that's pretty much a standard and so you could use the same rubric, the same you know, the same criteria for advancement, but you're measuring, you're seeing how kids are advancing as you present them with information that they're expected to learn. When you're kind of great if this is somewhat of a gradation process and I've seen this with my own daughter, she comes crying some day, she doesn't know where she is she works very, very hard, she's taking four AP classes as a junior now but she can't tell where she is so often and you don't find out until later and this is problematic and it certainly is problematic for the colleges I mean, now we're running into what I said that night and many other students said I mean, I know five people that have pulled their kids out of this school and sent them to St. Jay because of this concern, I couldn't afford to do that I would have done the same and you know, in terms of you know, we, I I'm extremely concerned about the admission process as well because the reality is we are competing about with everyone else in the country on this and I am not convinced, I mean, I've had three kids go to college already and I'm not convinced that, you know, universities are going to take that colleges or private or public are going to take the time and effort to try to figure out something from I don't think they can really pull good data out of to begin with, they're just going to grab the next person in line that they can more accurately they can more accurately predict and I'm not sure where to go with this, but I know one thing every minute we lose we are losing a lot of kids, we're we're changing some kids lives and so this can't be a slow learning process, I personally find it completely unacceptable that we're using demos game pigs and that people are losing, you know they're losing opportunity because of our incompetence, I mean this is something we need to get sorted out and we need to get it sorted out very quickly and accurately Thanks Yes Hi I'm Liz Sharp, I'm a parent to a senior, I just have a couple of comments, I did want to reiterate what Jill Olson said about the merit scholarships and the importance of that kind of money helping families pay for college private schools are around $70,000 each year and families rely on merit aid and I don't know that we will ever know you know whether the merit aid package that we're getting could have been more I only have my other child to compare it to and you know they're not the same kids with the same test scores and the same grades and the same GPA so you know one suggestion I have is I as a parent would be willing to share information with the administration as we get acceptances or rejections and amounts of merit aid so that at least you guys can get a sense of what you know what we're hearing as families back from these colleges so the second thing I just wanted to ask was just looking at this GPA summary class of 2020, I know we're only sort of halfway through the year but it indicates that there's 25% of the students are under a three under the three of proficiency so am I to say that at this moment in time they if graduation were today they wouldn't graduate today and that we're planning on getting them up to a 3.0 because it says here proficiency based graduation requirements you know they deem to have met it will be eligible to graduate thank you so 25% of our kids are not the idea that 25% of our kids are not going to graduate it wouldn't be accurate because there are some kids in their sophomore year maybe and they're really part of their junior year got course scores that were below a three but they have subsequently done some of the work to be proficient so remember the course scores determine whether or not what the GPA is but proficiency overall is across multiple years and a lot of work so so I would say that just because their GPA is below a three does not mean that they haven't reached proficiency in many of our areas already it just means that they didn't do well in their courses at some point in time the hope is that they have done and what we're constantly watching right now is what proficiencies do students still need to demonstrate an understanding of and so that's what we're keeping an eye on their grade point may be below a three overall anyone else in the public yes my name is Alan Mademore I've got a question about I don't know college admissions at all like you I'm not that's not my field I've got weighted and unweighted GPAs and how we handle like I'm sorry I graduated my high school with a 4.2 and it helped when I went to the University of Chicago how do we how do we do that for students who excel we've never had weighted GPAs in U32 so it didn't matter what class you took you were on the same scoring system and our kids have gone to all kinds of schools so it's worked for us not unusual there are some schools that do weighted GPAs and some that don't colleges will typically I mean you have to report that on your school profile if it's a weighted or unweighted GPA colleges take that into account when they're looking at GPAs I would say I mean what we've heard again and again is that colleges want to know what the most rigorous courses are that you offer in your high school and that you have done very well and you've taken the courses and you've done well in them and that information is between the school profile and the transcript it's all right there Eric Benedict I'm parent of some juniors like gentlemen over here I've also been to several sessions for when this is getting ready to be rolled out and what not and some coffee coffee times and each time we've asked about the ranking and each time it's coming soon we're going to have it come in a week or two it's coming it's coming still haven't gotten anything hearing all it's hard to do we can't do you know we've got our boys and some of their friends you know they've sometimes gotten passes or not so kind of it's like okay there is a ranking because they're determining whether or not someone gets a ski pass and you know this year one boy got a pass the other one didn't their GPAs were almost at an ankle so we know where the dividing line is but you know would like to have that ranking to see where they are said people are going to get compared with them in school knowing where they are so that we can have the right pressure when they're doing I've also got concerns about the power law and some of the stuff where one can show improvement I think that's good to show the reward people that have learned but it also they're they're anecdotal again individuals that would kind of lay off slack till the end and then they buckle down and pulled it out and that uptick of performance pushed them up into an A or the four or whatever whereas people that have been performing along didn't have that uptick in performance and so they didn't get that extra little boost doesn't seem that that's happening as much now but you know it's a concern and I'm told it was going to be handled with the transferable skills but that seems to be completely out of the picture kind of going back to the reverse rewards I would say we don't rank students at U32 when we have them the class summary is the pie chart the way that we show where kids followed in the class and so I mean we could produce where it is for our juniors and sophomores at this point in time if that would be helpful for the board at some point in the future thank you was there another, I think it was a gentleman yes hi, Bill Heiges I'm a parent of a junior isn't the whole idea of creating trying to create a GPA which is based on an understanding of an old system trying to apply it to this completely new paradigm seems like an impossibility from the start I think there's a conflict there that's a bigger topic if a GPA is supposed to represent a student's entire body of work what is the logic behind exclusion of some classes from the calculation of GPA the first part of your statement is probably the one that I would love to live by more than anything else is that we chose to keep a GPA in our system because of merit scholarships that was the one one overriding thing that we could not see a way around with a GPA that there needed to be something reported but a true theoretically perfect proficiency system I can't see that it would have a GPA in fact our transcript is a result of being able to is there because in a true proficiency system it would only have the right hand side of our transcript which is how well a student does on standards but we chose to keep in the courses in a course score because that allows colleges and universities to see what courses did a student take did they take the more rigorous courses what were their scores on those so we kept some elements of the old to try to allow colleges a better view of our students I would say the second part of the question yeah I'll start on this one so the transferable skills are intended to transcend content right and so we wanted to always report those separately we also felt like there needed to be a level of calibration across courses if they were going to be calculated in a course score where we report the transferable skills right now is on that right side of the transcript with their important and we show that their students have demonstrated proficiency toward those transferable skills at the graduation level throughout their years and we do that by making sure that the scores that they've gotten when they've been addressed in their classes is reported on that side of the transcript the transferable skills are that is a conversation we are continuing to have there's every system is imperfect and there's room for improvement in every single system and so the idea of the transferable skills and are their performance indicators related to the transferable skills that should be part of the course scores we are continuing to have those conversations at U32 and I would also offer that some colleges will take just the core classes of math science, English, social studies and that's all they'll calculate the GPAs don't recalculate GPAs sometimes so that they only have those so that because schools do have a variety of other courses that can be used for GPA calculations some schools include them some schools don't in their GPA calculations so there is precedent for like some courses we try to include as many any course in which we have a student learning outcome standard is reported as part of our GPA we have very few courses in this building that do not also have what we consider the graduation requirements in them but there are a few and so those do not get calculated into the GPA but that's been true in the past many colleges don't put PE or some don't even put R it just depends on the college and how they want to look at students in terms of their GPA calculations I'm just behind the scene there my question is my understanding of the freshman grades were not part of the GPA calculation is that correct yes can you explain why that is the case I think Vera probably has asked that question appropriately is that the first year that we put this in place there were some courses in which the teachers were thinking this course was a part of a four year progression so a kid should not get a four in their first year and we did not want to penalize kids for some of that thinking early on and so we decided when looking at their scores our students would not have benefited from their freshman year scores and we've been clear with that with colleges that we did not include the freshman year there are some schools that are 10 through 12 only and so they've seen transcripts that way as well isn't that inherent though with a proficiency system shouldn't every kid basically look at it as a sequential process they don't consider themselves done until they say I'm done and that's when their GPA should be calculated when they say you know what I've done everything I'm going to do to prove my proficiency in this particular skill so it's a whole different paradigm you can't even know it's inapplicable and it's frustrating as a parent who mostly forwards her freshman year and she was taking geometry and some of the sophomore level classes and now none of it's being calculated in and it's not being represented and I understand you don't want to penalize those kids who might not have had the opportunity because of the system not knowing what to do but you're also penalizing kids who did really well and by not including them so it's frustrating thank you very much I think because of time what I'd like to do is can I ask one more question what I was going to do actually is return it to the board and basically go around and close it up feel free to start out of the 21 colleges that are on this handout that was in our packet do you know how many students have applied for early decision I'm not sure I understand exactly that there's 21 colleges but I'm assuming multiple kids have applied yeah it was not 20 it was 21 kids that's what I'm asking how many kids I don't have the exact number in front of me and it's self-reported so our school counselors went to the kids who applied early and asked as many of them as they could but colleges don't send us back who they accept we don't hear that from the colleges maybe towards the end some of them will send us a letter but it's all of our data on where kids end up being accepted to, declined deferred and all that is self-reported from the kids to our school counselors I know my last statement is we are where we are today it's been a rough road for the last four years with the rollout and integration of the system and I say that as the parent of a child that's in this class who has done fine and it's getting better each day as a forward member my request is that no student in this graduating class is at a disadvantage for the mistakes and the bumps in the road along the way thank you thank you do I think I want us to make this system as good as it can be I was not involved in the whole process of bringing it to the school system and I don't have a good understanding of why we chose it other than the fact that it was state mandated and I need to do more research to come down one way or the other but it seems to me that we need to work on some things and that should be a priority going ahead I would Is there a way to get the information regarding admissions and admitted to school and out of school in a concerted way like to reach out to students and say we really need to hear back because of this difficulty that we're having this year and it will help with the data to collect data to see what is or isn't working and the other things I I'm going to push for revisiting this issue so that we are not putting kids at a disadvantage which we can't say we did but it sounds like we did because we're concerned the parents are having to make sure that that doesn't happen again just melding the two systems in some way so that the due proficiency is required by statute but then have measures for students that other non-U32 folks can rely on I have admired the goal of this transition and I also appreciate you two being in the hot seat tonight Keith wasn't going to speak out the door it is a little, it's difficult to comprehend to some extent because I come from that old paradigm and I think that it's important to I know as a parent it's frustrating because there's the reporting there's a lot of gaps in the reporting some teachers are great at reporting scores others aren't and so I feel like there needs to be a little more consistency with that and also like a clear idea of what our students need to do to reach those higher GPAs and if college was free I think a lot of this would be an issue pay for or buy it's been interesting to listen to as an educator my other life is an educator and it took me back about 30 years ago when I was teaching first teaching elementary school and we changed from grades in elementary school to standards based and there were pluses and checks and diamonds and it was not in Vermont and you'll understand why in a minute because Vermont would never stand for this the first report part came home and the biggest outcry was because McDonald's gave free happy meals if you had four A's or three A's or something they couldn't figure out what a plus a check or a minus was in order to get your free happy meal and it was a huge we had to send something to McDonald's corporation and I look at it now and I think about my own son who quit taking art classes here and we have an amazing art program because he didn't want to mess up his GPA because he didn't understand as his degree as an engineering as an engineer type how to handle that it killed me because he is so so talented and he's just discovered how talented he is and he's doing a lot of art in his spare time so it's just so hard and proficiency takes us there that's why proficiency is being four points as adults who went through a system we immediately say that F always gets left out but so it was interesting to listen to and to listen to the pressures I also before I was an educator was a college admissions counselor which nobody probably knows so that was interesting too because we had to figure out the private schools the public schools and at that time we had narrative reports and we looked what you were saying towns at a kid and we said yes this is a hard school or this isn't but we looked at the kids so it's just it's very interesting to me and there's a long way to go the state and the proficiency learning kind of left it to schools to figure out and it's happening in all of ours across the state the district I work in the same thing so for all of us who did grow up with the right in the Carnegie system I think there's a tendency to assume that that that was sort of great and now we've moved off of it and everything is up in the air which assumes that all of the grading under the Carnegie system was the same right and that all the teachers were grading the same and that an A in one class meant an A in another class right and that this is you know this school is one star and a huge constellation of high schools right and and educational systems which makes it so important for the school to do the reach out and for the guidance department to do the legwork and talk to the schools and I think it's important to point out that we are having this conversation right and that this correction has this change has been made because it was identified through the competence and good faith of the administration identifying this issue and this issue is not with the students this issue is not with the education the students are receiving this issue is how that is perceived by people outside of this system that's always been a challenge will always remain a challenge but it's good to hear the administration sitting here answering hard questions and talking in good faith and making the effort on the behalf of the students thank you I guess I would like to thank all the administrators for the quick action that they took and owning the mistake and telling us about it and reaching out to the colleges and I also want to say that I know that there's a lot of room for improvement in professional development for the teachers and how we're doing like you were saying it's not really meant to be translated to grading so I know we have a lot to learn but I think we are preparing our kids better than we have in a while and I'm looking forward to getting into improving our math scores and working in the other stuff that will help them get to the GBA knowledge that they need to get into better colleges too thank you I'll go last George I was just going to say we look at rubrics and we look at authentic assessment we're definitely part of this paradigm shift and it's where we want to be and it's definitely demonstrating to our kids what's important and short of having a narrative of a college I want to just say thanks for figuring this out and moving us in the right direction I think that I echo what a lot of you said I appreciate the work that has gone in to make sure that there was quick action on this it sounds like parents still may not be completely comfortable with the actions that have been taken so I hope those conversations are continuing between the parents and the administration so that the children now aren't at the disadvantage for the mistakes that were made along the way we do need to continue to obviously have lots of conversations about the professional proficiency based standards and what we're doing to improve but for the immediate now I do appreciate what's been done if there's more that needs to be done then I think we need to keep talking about it I'm probably in a minority of students in my grade there are many students who have a sub level of concern and I'm probably in a large minority where I've never ever felt that I would be disadvantaged in my college education process I've been at this school for four years now and every step of the way whenever I wanted information there was always someone there to answer my questions and to provide me with knowledge and I am very thankful for the support structure that we have at this school that we have district wide that was really able to show me really able to just ensure that I am never going to worry about anyone in this class being disadvantaged or anyone in this school being disadvantaged and I know that there are there are still things that we need to work on there's things that maybe changed there are a million things just in general that we need to work on and I'm very very thankful for everyone's work in making this school better and I think that I'm very glad that the administration and the faculty are here to support me I am a senior so I am in the class that everybody is talking about and I definitely would agree with some of what the community has been saying it has been stressful I mean as college applications are always stressful but it does feel like there has been a little bit of an extra layer of stress but I think that it's not so much stress as it is unknown as you were saying Jill but I think that that it's unknown like I'm never really going to know but I think that that is powerful in a way so it's not I'm not going to know the proficiencies and I think it's slightly pessimistic to think that it is the proficiencies and I would like to think that the reason that I would get deferred or not get in is not because of proficiencies because I truly believe that proficiencies is the best way for education to go and it is the future and I would like to think that it's because I'm not the best fit for that school and that is how I want to think about the college application process and I think that the biggest thing from the GPA thing to me when I saw I didn't understand what was happening at all first of all but it seemed like a surface level issue it wasn't what I saw as the biggest issue and what I was dealing with in school every day was more of a confusion and a lack of understanding and a lack of clear like clearness across the board so in every class I'm going to I don't necessarily or I know because this time I figured out how to get the grades that I want in each of the classes but it's not a clear straight board of understanding across so I don't think the GPAs was necessarily the biggest problem for me it was mostly just a lack of understanding Thank you Mia and from my perspective I'd first like to express immense gratitude to all of you I'm assuming pretty much everyone out there is a parent but the efforts that you've made the interest that you've taken the commitment that you've made to try to help us as a school district be better that's vital and we can't we're just sort of floating in the void without your involvement on one hand it would be nice if it hadn't come to this but on the other hand when things happen which they always will we really rely on you and people like you to come forward and work with us work with the administration to make it better with floor I'm I recognize how unusual it is for well for any organization to admit on its own initiative that there's a problem and then to come out into the public with it and with an attempt to fix it knowing what's going to happen inevitably that takes that takes bets and I appreciate that with Jonas the idea that grade point averages primarily an external thing it does seem that at this to me anyway that at this stage in the history of proficiency there's a kind of medieval patchwork of different weights and measures from one school district to another and it seems to me that as long as everything is happening within a school district there's no problem is when you try to go and try to make that impossible translation or that where there seems to be no nothing commensurate that's where the difficulties arise so it seems as though we can't be the only ones who are going through this it would behoove us I would imagine I would expect to work with other school districts to try to put our heads together and arrive at an even better arrangement for all of us and the last thing is that although we have a policy on graduation requirements proficiency graduation requirements the board has never has never done anything on a policy on grade point averages it's not our business to get involved in the technicalities of that, not at all but it is our job to give guidance and I can't help but feel a certain self-reproach because I was on the U32 board before this that we never really we never really did that we never really kind of got into it and this is Chris's domain but I hope that maybe we can figure out a way to take a constructive look at a policy that will do what we needed to do we can explore that working with Steve and other districts but we will need have you as guest speakers we'll be happy to again so anyway many many thanks all around and especially to all of you in the audience and I hope that even though finance doesn't necessarily quicken the pulse for many of you I hope it stays it's actually pretty interesting okay so we're now with the hardest of the hardcore and moving into agenda number three finance 3.1 expenditure budget for fiscal year 2021 my turn good evening and everyone and I want to just before we start I'd like to personally thank Stephen and Jen for not just this evening but for all the work that you have put in in the last several years and in particular the last several weeks and the result did we throw in Lisa the plan didn't that do she's a professional development oh she's that's okay we told her we might have to call her we said be prepared for phone she helped a great deal of putting together just give it to Debra she just brought me the copies thank you thank you it's got to play now our first item is the expenditure budget and actually she'll pass the second page there's some other pages so I'm going to run through a very brief overview of the budget and point out in your packet where the detail information is so beginning on page 6 you will find a summary of the changes then there's an insert of some additional information is a memo from myself and Lori on the January 2nd that summarizes the changes in the draft that we're recommending this evening. We'll be talking about that momentarily. As well as a copy of the slide presentation, which you'll be viewing momentarily, and a revised warning. There was a mistake on the warning in terms of the, one of the start times for collections, which is corrective and reverse version, not an aversion in your packet. And then the very last section of the budget portion includes the detailed budget with percentages showing the changes from the prior year. And then finally, our tax rate estimates. So I'll have to cover in a short while. I mean, I asked how much time you'd like to develop for these traffic authority plans, so I will know how to get you tonight. I'll be as soon as possible. I'm a little as kind. So I recommend, since sustained silent reading for 15 minutes, we do read through all the documents and then we can take questions. So hopefully you have a sense of what you have in front of you now and we'll run through this presentation. The reason for women's here is that again, mostly for our media and our audience members that work in these columns shared. But a good portion of this was already provided in our presentation last time. So I won't devote a good deal of time. I will move through this portion quickly. These are slides that we've reviewed in December when we did our first budget presentation. These are the goals that our school board set back in July. Of course, you have our school board members. This is information that shares with you some of the challenges that we face as budgets are developed. See the challenges ranging from the maintenance of our facilities, clockwise manner all the way around to required student services. All of those are competing areas that we need to address in our budget. The budget development process, quite a bit of time before the board actually receives and discusses the first draft of the budget is incorporated into what we call our preparation work. And that's where our leadership team, the central office, business office team and myself review information, our ranging from our student needs to programs that we intend to offer or change as well as any external courses that might affect the budget moving forward. We have, we're now looking at actually the third iteration of our budget draft. And this most recent one has developed based upon feedback that we see from the board. We won't do that shortly. And as you can see, the most important portion of this of course is our voter approval, which will occur on town meeting day, which is March 3rd. Another area of interest for you is student enrollment. There's been a lot of conversation about how our student enrollment has declined. And as you take a look at this chart from 2016 to 20, we have had steady student enrollment and fairly steady equalized pupils. Equalized pupils are weighted pupils. Students are actual students in seats. Some highlights of our wonderful district include our members of students for our preschool through graduation. We currently, or as of this fall, enroll 1,574 students. As you can see, we've had a stable enrollment. We're very proud of our excellent administration, faculty and staff, and our dynamic student body will be represented here by our students who are with us tonight. Thanks to Allison and Mia for being here. Innovative educational opportunities are a very important part of our work. And of course, a fact of the change in governance is the merger to the single district that occurred on July, 2019. So as I mentioned, we are moving toward various drafts of the budget. So this is a chart that you can see in your handout. You can't look at the numbers here, but beginning with the very first column on the left, that is the current year budget. Our first draft and our second draft were noted here. The third draft, the 1B, and then finally the number that we're presenting with the budget we're presenting tonight is called draft two. So you can see that there's a range of, let's see. $100,000? No, $500,000 in each of the lines, but I believe so that you can see how that's varied. And we can try to be responsive to what we feel is the appropriate budget as well as our taxpayers' concerns. Okay, in our last budget discussion, we reviewed the initial draft 1A, and this is now our recommended budget based upon our thorough review of the information that we had, the feedback we collected from you, and also some additional feedback that has come to us. Both in terms of changes in special education, expenditures, changes in revenues, and expenditures that were required to make, such as reduction in the technical education, centers tuition, and increases in grant funds. All of those things brought us to a better result than you would have requested. Your request was for a 3.5% net impact on taxes, and we were able to move the budget to a 3.09%. So we exceeded the goal that you set. Does that mean we get a four, Stephen? I'm not sure. That's seven went three. I'm giving him a three. Back here. Perhaps we'll be raised on ten, eight, eight, eight. Right? That's it. It's not great. It's gross. It's gross. Okay, it's gross. All right, so I think we were going in the right direction in reducing this total number or so. So I won't review each of these items, but is this the same format you've seen before? We divided out by salary, not salary, get service combined to total expenses, subtract our revenues, which gets us to the net impact on taxes, and that's 3.09%. Looking familiar to everyone? Okay. All right. This pie chart provides us with a look at our expense budget percentage in each category. And here, if you can't see the numbers again, I apologize, but the most important thing to keep in mind is that the largest bulk of the expenditure is the salaries and benefits, which is 70% of our budget. And that has been fairly consistent over all drafts and over a number of years as well, and we combine our budgets. So another way to look at our current budget versus the proposed budget that we're recommending is that the pie chart on the right is our current budget, the pie chart on the left is our proposed. And here you can see the variations around the general categories, percentages of expenditures in areas such as student transportation, direct instruction, et cetera. The other way we'd like to portray the changes is to provide you with comparative changes in the budget from the prior year or current year to the proposed budget for 2021. So thinking about this as a mathematical formula, the first item on the top, for example, is that are the direct instruction expenses, which are 13 million, et cetera, from our budget. For the proposed budget last year, they were 12,300,000. So the increase there is $899,879, or a 7.29% increase. So that's the flow of these columns. And the purpose is to show you what the increases are, how they break out by category, so that you can see that. In most cases, they are increases, however, there are some categories where there are decreases. And we have discussed this before. One of them is the decrease in debt service to one of our loans or bonds retiring, and that's one at U32. And another decrease is co-curricular expenditures, and those are smaller numbers, but that percentage is about 6%. And the other is a board of education expenditures, and that has to do with fewer audits. And I think at the time it was also to a small certain extent, fewer stipend costs as well. But that gives you a summary on another form of the differences in the major categories between the proposed budget, 2021, and this current year budget. Questions on that? And if you see the bottom, the note points out that the percentages are expressions of the percentage change for each budget area. Okay, so that's how those percentages were calculated. Debra, the 7.3%, approximately percent, increased in direct in-destruction, and I guess adding in the same sort of the special ed rate, those are far above the rate that the total budget is rising. And I think we all understand a lot of it, because a lot of that is because of the retirement of the bond. But that year over year increase in those two top line items, which make up a huge percentage of the budget. Having, again, this being my first year, is that a typical number? Well, if you recall, we are getting some positions in both direct in-destruction and special education. So that lends itself to some of the increase. And I would have to look at the detailed budget. We will do that momentarily to break that down. The other is the contractual increases in the salary. And as I think we're aware, a fairly large anticipated increase in health benefits. All of those, that information has to all be calculated into that as well. And when we look at the detail, we can try to narrow it down further for you. I think that you're correct. It is higher than it would typically be, but it is because of the additional positions that we are adding, or expenditures for specialist students. So it would be possible to predict this, but would you anticipate that those percentage numbers might be lower than next year? It is impossible to predict that. Yeah, I don't know. I think if there are some factors where I can see that number of numbers continuing to increase, for example, if we saw a very large increase in enrollment, we would have to respond in with more staff. Or likewise, a large decrease in enrollment would cause us to decrease staff as an example. There's many, many factors that were going to that. I'm hoping our health insurance now in a state-wide negotiated plan is going to be more stable. But right now it's at least 13% and we know that there's actually a question as to whether that's even going to be the final number. We all received, I'm not certain that the board has, but recently, Behigh informed us that they're not ready to finalize the number yet. So we need to do that. I wrote a five minute. Yes. Just to address this question on direct instruction, I noticed in the details that there is a much heavier investment in preschool programs for next year, which I think is, you know, just under raw money from is very appropriate. But I think that is part of what is pushing up that percentage. Right, and our population is growing to a larger extent at the elementary level as well overall than it is at the high school. We talked about that previously when we looked at our population and how it was developing. But the fact that we're able to work with our students at an early age and provide them with the support they need to prepare academically and socially for their experiences at school is very positive and should run in its normal run. So we're pleased with that. All right, so over the holiday break, that is the time that we usually receive information from the state on the, what we call CLA or common level of appraisal. So this chart, it portrays for us our estimate, underlying estimate, all caps estimate of the tax rates for next year. And the reason I keep saying it that way is that there could be changes that the legislature may put into effect that would affect our tax rate. Right now this is based on the current information that we have. But there are times when the legislator may say in perhaps May or June, we think we're going to change the amount for the property yield, which is one of the important dollar amounts in our formula that really has an effect on tax rates. So there's a whole variety of things that could go into making this be somewhat different than this portrayed right here. This is the best information we have. So, just as a highlight, because many of you are familiar with your tax rates and your CLA's, you've been working on your either elementary or 32 boards for some time. The CLA for Berlin is very positive. Anything over a hundred is going to reduce your tax rate. Anything below will increase. It won't, it wouldn't add up. So once again, if you follow this chart, we have our tax rates for last year, the projected tax rates in the next column where it says tax rates 2021, and then the increase or decrease depending on which it is. Keep in mind that because we're now in Merch District, we have one equalized tax rate of 1.7934, which is then the base that the common level appraisal is attached to. And that's why there's a variation 10 by 10. So that it's also important to note is completely out of the school district's control. We can't, we don't accept the CLA. It has to do with our, the state examining the sales that occur, looking at the list, et cetera. So that is not something that we can control, but it's a factor that we need to point out. We do have individual information. I think Lori might have brought, or at least if not with her, then we can bring it to you next time. You might be interested to tell the history of your tax rates over time. For example, while East Montpeliers and Calisthenics CLA's are going down more this year than in the past, which affects their tax rates, increases their taxes, little sex and Worcester are remaining stable and or increasing, which has a positive effect on their tax rate. But in the case of Calisthenics Montpelier, the, again, like all of them, it is sometimes instructive to look back and see what was our tax rate like four to five years ago. In the case of East Montpelier, I believe that the 2021 tax rate at 1.912 is actually lower than it was there four or five years ago. Is that right, Lori? I don't know if I wanted to say I had that. We have the detail. So it's, while it's a fairly large increase on this chart, the number is actually lower in East Montpelier than it had been for a number of years in the past. In 19, it was 1.912. Okay, so. And so that's why it's just, it's around the same, but the last year there was a large reduction in tax rate and now it's going back up because of the CLE. Whereas, we won't talk about Calisthenics Montpelier. Well, I have to do, because that's why we're presenting all the information is the CLE and Calisthenics is going to further increase taxes for next year based on our estimates. Right, the CLE and Calisthenics has reduced by about 3% in the last two years, which is causing a tax rate increase in Calisthenics. And there's also the other effect. True, but just in general, that's one of the largest reductions in CLE that we have. So one of the things that I sometimes do if you don't get into this evening is I will reach out to the town managers and town clerks or select boards and I'll mention to them that, with this reduction in your CLE, you do have the option to make it appeal. And that is not something that we can request because the CLEs are specific to the towns. And oftentimes, if the town does that and that is recalculated, it may improve the CLE. So that isn't something that we can do, but I usually will reach out to them and suggest it. So I would do that for Calis in particular because over years there's been a handful of groupers that reduction, I think there's something overall in that timeframe. So it could be looked at again. Yeah. Questions on the CLA and the tax estimates? Any questions at all? What do you think of the new recommended budget amount? This is starting to turn, I guess. And what other questions do you have about that? We'll go through the detail in just a moment, but we just, in general. Yeah, go ahead everybody. The trade became unattended, but under budget. I think we're trying to coordinate. Let's talk about the details. Okay, that's okay. Thank you, thank you very much. So getting back to your packets. I'll get a little up here. Well, there's many of them around, so I'll just hold on. But in any case, if in your packet, as I mentioned before, and I think this begins on page, you see the detailed budgets, and if you don't mind, I thought I'd ask Lori to walk through some of the highlights of that. Of course. Budget detail, and then we'll answer your question for the cap. So I'm ready, can everyone hear me? Okay. So we didn't have a meeting on December 18th, so we missed an opportunity to talk about the three and a half percent. So what I was going to do is just talk about the aggregated change since the last time we spoke, does that work? And I put them in yellow. So I thought that's gonna help, okay? So if you're on page six, if you look up, you'll see the first item, which was a reduction in the budget. And I put on the note, it was we have had a teacher retire and we anticipate filling the position in a less expensive manner. We also were able to reduce the community connections estimate. So that saved 31,298. Does everyone see that? Okay. The second area was we spent quite a bit of time in our office working together to come up with a way to pay for staffing through our projected grants. So it was a lot of new ideas and initiatives. Thank you, Kelly and Jen and even the leadership team. But we were able to reduce the budget and keep the positions, but reduce the budget by 197,000. Do you see that number there? We have more money generated currently from Medicaid. So we were able to take some of the behavior positions and charge them to Medicaid. We also had a nursing position we could charge to what we call an EPSDT grant. And we also had our consolidated federal grant to pay for a position that we weren't sure if we were gonna have to put it in the local budget. So I think that's, does that answer your question? Yes. Okay. So, and we felt pretty confident with the numbers that we have. We won't know final grant numbers until probably May, but based on the information we have right now we feel pretty confident that we would not have to reduce anyone that we would be able to pay for them out of these grants. Can you talk just a little bit because I have vested interest in this, the reduction in community connections? Sure. When we had the first budget draft I had put in an estimate for supporting the programs and I believe it was 60,000. And then I had said we were gonna go back and re-look at how would we be able to complete the program. With more information we have a new director. So we were able to reduce that estimate from 60,000 to 40,000 of support. And then reduction is 20. Thank you. Okay. Does this change the services and the level of services from community? No. We just didn't have enough information when we gave you the first number. Okay. And we're feeling more confident now. Okay. So is everyone ready for me to go down below? To ask some questions, but I don't know if you can answer it. You said there's a retirement coming out. Sure. And you're gonna, can you speak to that a little bit more that fill it with the lesser? Right. When a teacher has been here for a long time they end up as a high cost teacher and our replacement cycle and trending and working with Steven has been that we can hire somebody probably more in the middle of our salary grid. Okay. So we would save money just because of the salary adjusted out. Okay, thank you. Yeah. All right, so now I'm down to non-salary items and the first item that's in yellow is the tech education tuition. When we last spoke we were given estimates and primarily from the very tech center about a price increase that they expected in their tuition and since that time they've been able to finalize their budget and give us a better estimate. So you'll see actually an increase of 25,000 but when you looked at the draft the last time that number would have been almost 51,000. Have an increase. So instead of having like a 12% increase they projected it much lower. So I just wanted to let you know that. Next item. I know Finance Committee heard this when Kelly came and we gave a lot of an update about special education and I don't know if you recall but I said, you know special education can go like this and so one month you might swing $200,000 and you guys all went and I said, yeah, that's true. Well, so for this draft we had had a couple changes along the way. We did have some students move out and we had some better estimates and so we were actually able to reduce the budget by a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Next item. Obviously when you have expense reductions you'll hear me speak later that there'll be revenue reductions as well but for right now we just wanted to let you know that. And then when we had met we had talked about the capital support going into the capital fund and we realized that when we had put together the budget this year we had not included an amount for DOE so we believed we should add that 70,000 back into this draft as an increase. So all totaled and it's on the memo. You'll see our expenses went down 403,871. Okay, so also one of the reasons why December is a busy month is because the agency of education gives out information to schools on our revenues and so a couple things happened. Schools are required to set a tuition rate and so Dorothy, I don't think I can talk to you about this yet but I found a finance committee or anyone I guess so when we set the tuition rate later tonight Debra's gonna go through that but what we came up with was using the state formula. We will be able to increase our tuition rate and it will generate additional revenue. So based on the state formula our revenue is going up 151,000 which is actually only 56,000 more than the last time you looked at this number because we had thought it was gonna be closer to 100,000 because we had had 53 students in here which was a number of projected student increase as well as a price increase. Did I totally confuse everyone on that? You may I just ask, is the 53 students so good? We always underestimate a little bit on our tuition kids so that we're not caught by surprise for that money and so yeah, 53 students. And we currently have 58 but the Rockford students you know are phasing out because they're going to molecular. Okay, down to special ed. You've heard me speak about this and so when we changed the expenses and we recalculated by student the revenues and it ended up being a slight reduction. And then the good news is for those of you who are here when we did the bus contract and I said I know the buses cost more because you bought new buses but don't worry over time we will get a reimbursement rate back it takes a couple years. Well this is the couple years. So we'll be receiving 133,000 in additional state aid for busing and that's based on the current appropriation calculations. So all total the revenues actually let's see, they went up it reduces taxes so by 183,000. So in total we were combined that net impact on taxes was about 1.6 million. The last time you saw this it's a million which is the 309. So did I miss anything on this page or was there anything else we needed to do? I just have a question when we met with the finance committee and I might be wrong about this and so we had to set it everywhere when I used the BSVHers on the budget and then both. We did talk about that to then get into this. Well maybe I'm not reading it right? Okay. No I did not add them back. It has some minus sign. We were still going to vote because it's harder to not have the money than to wait. I think what happened is we haven't met again as a board since that time. But also certainly if the board would like us to move that address but we didn't do that. Or we could add it in as if unbalanced if we're getting in the society to make sense to them. It's a really small amount. It's like less than 8,000 I believe. Yeah. So thank you very much Laurie. Is it okay if I pause for a minute and do a little bit? What I'd like to do is, this is a really good idea of Veras that I'd like to implement for a moment. Is to just hit all the elementary principles and just get your sense of this budget and your part of it and how you see it for you, for your schooling. I know nobody's gonna say, oh it's terrible. Fuck. Yeah. Well they should say that if they can get it. If they can get it. I think it's true. Yeah, exactly. Thank you Chris. Great. Okay. Thank you. Would you like to start, Cass? Sure. I am hearing really confident and comfortable with the budget and the process I'm going to do. I think I spoke to this from my leadership team, poured over some of the numbers. That it was the first time that we had this sort of thing about our priorities in the same way I know our sort of cavalry literally talking to the board in your passing. You folks need to set your priorities so that we can decide what to do with the budget and then come together with some sort of consensus. We had to do that. And that was a really, I think, interesting, not necessarily a comfortable but interesting process. As for Calis, I'm feeling really comfortable with the numbers. I think you probably remember that the first round of budgets, I put a lot in there that I was hoping to see increased at Calis to make sure that the students at Calis were getting what I call a practical opportunities and they're still in there. Feel good, man? Feel good. Happy to hear it. That's great. Casey? Sure. I'm feeling confident in the numbers from Romney's perspective. The changes that are reflected here, we have some shares that we would. Any added positions, we would get maybe a piece of that in coaching, something like that. Triple E position as well. But we feel like we were sufficiently resourced for the most part and especially in perspective of the other elementary school. So it's an interesting process for me, my first time here. But I feel confident in what we're asking for. Great. Thanks. Same for Berlin. Very happy with Berlin what we have talked about in meeting. This is my second year at Berlin and seeing things last year and advocating for some things and now seeing them come to fruition this year is excellent. So very happy about that. And I'll just echo the process, it was new for us. But I think we are such a strong team and there was a nice tone of respect for the fact that we're all in this together now. And it's an appreciation to what we all need for all of our kids. Great. Thanks. Yeah, I think the process for me was probably the most helpful and just the time that we had at the table together to have the conversations in the past. It's always been me thinking about Islam failure and having a slight awareness of maybe what the other schools were going through and what they needed. I think this process led us to more equitable outcomes for students across the district. Some examples of those are around the interventions, looking at special ed at district-wide, thinking about coaching. I think that the end result is going to support all of our students in a way we haven't done in the past. Great. Yeah, thanks. And Stephen, I don't know if you're all talked out. Oh, no, I'm ready for budget. No, I think I would echo what my colleagues have said. It was very interesting to see some of the challenges that the elementary schools face. When you're half of the budget, almost, with U32, it's a very different feeling of how things are done. And it was very interesting to see how we can talk about how we can support those things as well. The operation budget, for me, U32 is in a good place. I think, kind of speaking to Jonas's question earlier, we've been pretty flat in terms of need to grow, because we're not seeing growth in terms of students. So our increases over the years, as Scott, you can probably remember, were mostly due to increases in contracts. So we're in good position. I think we'll be fine. The capital budget, I think, is a bigger discussion that I know we're going to get to eventually. And I think we'll have some more to say about that. But I think the operation's budget's great. Good. Thanks. Board members, any comments, or should we proceed? Or Gareth, did you? No? OK. We have talked about the budget, and we've looked at the tax estimates. So as you know, these are not courses for action this evening. But we would like to bring to your attention the draft warning before town meeting. So if we go back to the topic and to those additional papers that were included, this is actually a corrected warning. It's a loose paper in your packet. And it says, essentially it includes what's required to be incorporated into a warning based upon our Articles of Agreement and the most recent vote that occurred in November. If you remember, we needed to clarify and make some adjustments, such as how we were going to be counting our budget vote, what we were going to be in relation to the elections for officers for the district. So based upon that feedback and the two versions of our Articles of Agreement, this warning reflects. And our attorney's feedback, always helpful. We were able to draft this warning. And you'll also notice that we have some additional positions, board positions. And those were incorporated in Article 4. And because we were a new district, it's not as simple as saying that we have three-year terms. We have three-year terms because for the first three years, we're building into a rotational system, right? So in the materials, in front of you, there was a color chart where I left. This actually lays out all of the terms by town. And with a good coverage, if you look at it, you'll notice it has this color at the bottom. You'll notice that beginning in the coming year, there will be three positions expiring 21, 22, and 23, respectively, for each town, okay? So I just wanted you to let you know that we did our math on this. And at the end of three years, we'll have that rotation that we've been talking about. That's required. So at that point in time, all the terms will be three years. Every year, five positions will be up for election, okay? Just so I hope that's clear. Okay. The other addition to the warning includes, well, first of all, the most important is article six, and that is the expenditure budget that we're proposing. You'll notice here that in addition to the number, the budget number, where required by law indicate the cost per pupil. It's called education spending for equalized people and projected spending for equalized people. The percentage, which is higher than the prior year. So as you can see, our cost per pupil with proposed budget is 19,518, and our increase is 4.61%. That is higher than the total overall budget net after taxes because the equalized pupil costs don't take into account revenues. They only look at expenditures. That's why it's a higher number. But it is required by law, so we have to put them into this morning. The next article seven is, again, in the past, all of our districts have had the ability to hold any audited fund balance to into a reserve for expenditures in the coming year. And that was not included in your initial warning when the body was, the unified district was organized last year. So that's a requirement. Requiring that the voters give the board permission to borrow anticipation of tax receipts is the next item. These are going to be familiar to from older warnings. And then lastly, article nine, which authorizes the district to begin a capital improvement fund, which is district wide. And we'll talk about capital improvements in just a moment. Then we once again highlight our polling places and times and the date for, of course, their voting and the date for our annual meeting, which is March 2nd at 6.30 p.m. right here at U32. And we hope we'll have many more people, as many at least as we have for the GPA discussion earlier tonight. So again, our goal is for next week for you to make a decision about the budget, which will allow us to finalize our warning. And then we'll ask you to sign that and we'll post it and move forward with all of the required notices and communications. Any questions about that? Okay, next, our summer capital projects proposal. So once again, getting back to the budget discussions, we are really at a point now where we have really two ways in which we're counting for our capital project fund, the capital reserve funds. One is by those funds that were reserved by the former boards. So U32 and to the elementary town school boards had set up reserve fund amounts for their capital expenditures. And those, any funds that were available at the conclusion of last year were carried into this year and they're being set aside to continue just for those particular schools. And you might recall that it was pointed out earlier by Lori that we're looking at just over $700,000 of capital fund that we're putting into this year's budget which will then become part of the new district's capital reserve provided that our voters give up permission to initiate that project. So that's just something to keep in mind. So when we talk about these expenditures, we're not going to be moving funds that Romney or Calis or any of the other individual districts had previously. We're only going to hold those for specific use in those schools and then we'll consider how we'll distribute the district wide funds as time goes on. So we're only looking at this in a very small piece tonight and that is summer projects. We're not looking at the long term. The long game is going to take more time. So we're really just looking at what specifically do we need to do for safety, for security and for immediate failures of equipment or groups and things of that nature. So that's how we prioritize these budget amounts. The board had asked us to get some additional support from outside the district. So we have, if you recall from previous meetings, we contracted with one of the architectural firms and Bill Ford who has been the clerk of the works here in this district for many years. And they helped us to identify those high-farity projects. So what you see in front of you is our summary of where we are at the current time. And then as you turn the page, our recommendations for the summer. So we have three projects on the top that were committed by prior boards that are now in process based upon actions that were taken in our December meeting. And that was the Romney Acoustic Project, the Doty Building Anvil Obsciting Windows Project and the U32 Completion of the Track Project, which will occur by the end of the school year. There were other projects in 2021 that were recommended and that our principals agreed were high priorities. I want to point out to you that the, well, we'll get to it in a second, but, so each of these are based upon that prioritization and the principal's feedback. And they do fit into our budget, both of the reserve funds that were carried over in the new anticipated funds that will be brought forward through this budget. A couple of exceptions, you'll notice that there were no immediate needs for summer work at East Montpelier. And that is because they've recently done some major work and we don't have any, an explicit goals or needs right now. And the other area to note is U32. So that will not be a zero. We have, as you know, I'm sure, a large facility and we have the benefit of many years of plans that have been developed. We're looking to prioritize the funds available against the requirements of the facility's needs and we anticipate having that information for you by next week's meeting so that you can make a decision with that input available. We just needed to do some estimates. So we expect that we'll be able to bring that back to you next time before you make an action on this. So the other piece of information that is new here is that we are also going to be proposing that there be a district wide facilities director through our capital expenditure funds or reserve funds. And that decision or that recommendation really flow directly from our finance committee. They have been following along with proposals and looking in great detail at these capital plans and understood that it would be extremely helpful for the district to have a person with expertise to lead and carry out these projects in the long term and help us develop a long term plan. We could certainly hire consultants to do that but we really need someone who's familiar enough with our buildings to make good decisions. So we've got a way to do that within our existing budget and within our capital reserve funds. Did I miss anything from principles if you should feel free to offer or ask questions? Or Lori? No, I would say A plus. Oh, good. Oh, no, I think it's four. It's four. It's four. Don't you agree? I agree. Sorry about that. Sorry about that. Anyone have questions about the capital budgets? Well, I don't have a question or a comment because in Calis, you're going to be placed hard. I went to Calis School today to meet with Pat and Chris Pollard, our maintenance person, to find out since we don't consider any room in our school to be a cafeteria, I was kind of curious what the roof was. And I understand now, basically it's because one part of the gymnasium roof isn't well insulated so we get ice dams and that's solid. What I was concerned about is that when Calis had his own little board for several years, we have been very concerned about the air exchange units which need to be upgraded. And I guess I didn't know how it was decided that the roof thing was more important than the clean air or the Z. How that decision was made. And in the end, what it did for me is realize that we need to have facility councils that include a board member. So we can have some strong, the vocal townspeople can have some strong input on that physical building. Well, maybe some other things, but I was thinking there's a group of people that need to set those priorities because they're building, so to speak, even though it's the basis. Yeah, I would agree. So it drove me to want to ask the board to add to their agenda. Sometimes soon is, I guess we have to have a special item over the next one. We're gonna change what we have to get to something where we have a strong council in each town that includes a board member, at least one. And that's my own preference. So that's where this took me because the decision has been made. And I think, as you said, the principles made the decision about what was most important for their buildings. And I will honor that. I just didn't want to be, I wanted to be sure that that age that was going to be improved sometime soon. Could I answer? Of course. Well, thank you very much. And you are right that the ventilation needs attention. And the difficulty we ran into, you might remember this colorful chart that was distributed, it was a high priority, but we didn't feel we'd had sufficient funds to meet all the high priorities in this coming summer. That's not to say that wouldn't be addressed thereafter. And I think that will be, certainly having a council is an excellent idea. I think it's always helpful when you have board members involved. Right now our finance committee has been doing double duty with both capital and finance work. But if we take this on as a fresh initiative, we'll probably need others who can devote more time to it. So I appreciate you're making that suggestion. And one of the things we looked at as we saw the numbers here, there was some question about whether the vastaments were too low or too high, but we clearly are not funded. We don't have sufficient funds to achieve all of the proposed areas of repair or replacement. And that is a discussion that the board will need to have. I don't know that this evening is the time, but I would be 100% in agreement with your assessment of the situation. We really do need to address all of our concerns, all of the concerns you've mentioned and more. Sorry for that. No, yeah, I agree. Oh, Rick, hey, yeah. Sorry. I work in the world of capital pledgering for Bill Lane City. You know, there are a couple of things that you have to consider. I haven't got to see the capital plan here, but you're right. Fund is always short, so it is a balance of prioritization. A couple of things. Some of the things that you have to fix, right, because you've had deferred maintenance for years and they're failing. You've got to be careful not to get in the trap as you replace things. And they have regular functional maintenance lives. You cannot, you have to, they're actually one of your highest priorities for maintaining them, because if you don't maintain them, they fail very quickly and they become a train wreck later for budgets. And it takes some real fiscal discipline to do that. You also really have to, you look at, as you're probably doing, I haven't seen Black Hover's report, I haven't seen your capital list, but I'd like to see it and go through it in detail, because often you kind of have wish list items and then you've got your really important and critical capital you need. And you've got to keep those separate. And this takes real discipline, because these funds, as you know, get very big. I mean, more over time, you're accumulating money to be able to handle this. And there's this real temptation, say, wow, there's a lot of money there, and we could do this with it. Capital funds don't work that way. So you need to have a very, airtight system for maintaining discipline on the use of this capital fund. Otherwise, it's almost a waste of time. I've watched these go out of control. And I believe in capital funds, that boy, I think you should present, I mean, every year that, not just present, but that capital plan should be the whole capital plan. And it should be visible to the public, because they'll comment on that. They'll see things that look superfluous. And there has to be an explanation for why that isn't superfluous. And I think as well, you know, that you can't just be looking at no capital plan that looks at a five or 10 year window is actually effective. You know, that's just not the way building infrastructure works. Roadway infrastructure doesn't work that building, that's neither. You know, you need to be looking over a lot of years. I mean, in my experience, and I write this law for myself, but I never look in less than 75 years on a building. Because then you, because otherwise, you miss these huge failure nexus points. And once you get within 10 years of that, it's too late, you can't fund up to that. You know, the most effective way to capital fund is really look way ahead, minimizes your cost every year that you're saving for that. And then moving forward. So again, I haven't seen the Black River Report. I've been through a lot of these before. I've worked with Black River a lot, too. And you have to be some due diligence and scrutiny on this yourself in there. And then you have to really pay attention to where those dollars go. Because there won't be enough to go around for them if you don't do it. I will help with that if you want. You know, in the time, like... I think that this initial round was meant to help us identify some of the projects. I think you used some excellent criteria, such as the Americans with Disability Act requirements, which have to do with accessibility of restrooms and buildings, the security concerns, which I mentioned, school safety, IT, health and welfare, fire safety, energy efficiency, any space needs where there's concerns, what might have to do with a population improvement or increase. And in general, all of those are some examples of the things that the firm took into account. I wouldn't have taken this project down without experts who know our buildings. That firm has worked with almost all of our schools regularly over the last 10 or 20 years, so we felt confident that they could provide us with a good starting point. But you're right. This is not a long-term plan. This was an attempt to address immediate needs and then for the board to have time to learn about what those longer term needs are and how to fund a reserve that would provide sufficient resources. So I agree with the points you've made, absolutely. I'll just remember this, I swear to God. One of the most important pieces is, and it's a mistake that is made by firms, it's made by governments, the state of Vermont made this mistake for years. Why their transportation infrastructure got down to so dilapidated, and they're on the way back from that now, but you have part of capital planning is to really, once you redo something, every piece of infrastructure in there has a life cycle in it, and it has not just a life span, but it's got a maintenance cycle, it's very, very important to, they actually, believe it or not, they're actually your highest priorities because you want to maximize the life of that infrastructure because that turns into your return on investment. Every time you have to go out and replace that, it's a huge hit to you. So it's an investment in the future, but it keeps you from collapsing all the way. And that's actually- It's a mistake everybody makes. That's actually something that we have to include in our operating budget. Capital expenditures are typically larger cost items. I know, great capital plans. I mean, I don't know what your criteria are, but many are not operating budget. You get into larger expenditures and they can be easily capitalized. I have no idea what their criteria are, if it's $3,000 or something. But that, it applies to large, to, I mean capital items tend to be your large, and they're not faucets. These are large dollar investments. And so the maintenance on those tends to be, those tend to be large dollar investments as well. And whether you put in an operating budget or a capital budget, it's almost irrelevant. What's important is that you do it. And they actually need to be a bright budget priority because they will, they, it's a guarantee that they will bite you in the backside if you don't do that. Understood, thank you for that. I think, you know, some points, I appreciate it. Thanks, Rick. Yeah. There's a lot of wisdom in this, in our population. The last item before we want to announce tuition rates is some of the letter that I'd like to pass out to you, which is our first draft of our board chair's letter for the annual report. So here we are coming your way. I think it's with email to you. Yeah. But this is a copy of it, just so you can have a look at it. And I don't know if you have one, but there, do you want to come back up? You guys have something to do with it. It's very nice to actually write it back. You can call it out of the book. Great. George, you can come too. And then what would be added to this, depending upon the decision the board made about the budget amount is, did you get my email? I'm sorry, yeah. This is the financial information that they would probably want to incorporate if the board would be agreeable to it when the budget is finalized. So if you want to take a moment, this might be the good time for that sustained silent reading that I mentioned. I want to take a moment to refresh your memory on the letter of the general. And thank you, Scarra, very much for writing this draft. Thank you for this draft by me, so gracefully. Did you guys need copies? Is there any extra copies? Yeah, I heard extras. While you read, I will pass them around. Sorry about that to our fine administrative team. We probably have this in a email. Thank you. Designed to, it goes into the report that says, we're beginning to know our citizens and it's designed to give a state-of-the-stage whatever state of the school district and then a little bit about the budget. That's the purpose of it. Anybody want to look at it? Nice, that's all right. Yeah, you're good. You're good? Any more time? I think we need quite a while to forge some of this in the future. Yes. There's always one. So, we're looking for reactions. What we can do is, if people in the line changes, they can... You don't need to know about us. Maybe perhaps, at least both of us might not want to gather about you. If you're okay with it, great. If you think there's something that really needs to be different. I think that you did a great job explaining what the educators have to do every day to support all children. In a wonderful way, so thank you for really... Yeah, as long as your gaze is sort of embracing. It was a team effort. It was a team effort, yeah. I'd say it's probably two of us that want to work. They're not gonna work, but I usually do them. I guess I think about the fifth paragraph, although that's the reality, and it's hard. I think thinking of the audience, thinking all families and parents seeing this, how might they take that as somebody who might fit this, might it feel awkward for them? Thinking, well, that's me. Just something to think about. I just reacted more strongly to that paragraph, putting myself in the mind of many of my kids and parents who are who fit that, and does it make it feel like, okay, this is for everybody, but you guys are a little bit separate. I think it's kind of a circumstance that we deal with. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. I just want to think about it. Yeah, thank you. Do you feel like the wording could be improved or the general statement? Not sure. I'm just sharing my initial reaction that the audience is everybody, and I read, you know, I don't know. I don't have any suggestions on learning it. I'm just sharing my reaction of not appropriateness, but audience, and thinking of the year around it. As I was reading, I was thinking that's so true. It never comes to, it's kind of a list of, and if I'm that parent that isn't able to care for my children in a way that other parents think is correct or whatever, there's not, so our schools provide that safe environment or our educators ensure that there's a safe environment. Something that we have these kids come to us every morning and we do our best to ensure that while they're in our buildings, they're safe and fed and cared for, but I don't know. I mean, I think that the next paragraph says exactly that, and a nice transition from five to six. My actual, excuse it. Right, that everybody is a part of this community. Everybody is valued, right, and we are, we embrace everybody and we're here to help everybody, and that's why we, you know, that's why maybe exercising the first sentence of paragraph six, and making sort of a more gentle transition. I think Aaron's point is well taken. I think that there's some point in language in there. No more general. Wanted, yep. So detailed. I didn't react as strongly as Aaron did, but I think it's well taken. I think paragraph six gets to, that's why we're here. That's why we're talking about this. Yes. Thanks. In hearing both of them speak, what jumped in my head is instead of us pointing out what they might be arriving without, is just saying what do our schools provide. Provide, yeah. Our school provides, you know, good breakfasts and lunches to those kids who might not, you know, who need that. We have, one of the things that we have in the schools or that we have that we're providing that help meet these needs is the positive side of it, as opposed to you might come to us with this. I agree. Yeah, that's, because I agree with Aaron. I mean, I don't want to, I don't want a family to feel like we're somehow singling them out if I read that and that applied. I mean, we have some families that every one of those categories might apply to them. What are we saying to them? You know, instead, here's what the school, you know, our schools are well resourced and can provide hot lunches, hot breakfasts, hot lunches, you know, all of those kinds of things. Yeah. I have to confess, when I wrote it, it wasn't, and this is my own lapse, I wasn't thinking of these families. I was thinking of taxpayers who don't have kids in the school were wondering, why am I paying so much and trying to provide a kind of compelling case for why it's a bargain. The schools are a place where we are taking care of increasing needs from our students and some of the things that we do for those students are. Thanks to your support about that. Yeah, thanks to your support. Absolutely. I kind of agree with it. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. That's not mine. Good. Thank you. I mean, really, because it's not just going to be a board school. Yeah. Like you said. I mean, it has become much more nice to go out there as a social service provider than what we're doing in there. I think a lot of our students are our dreamers, that is what we do. That's what I think I was trying to say. I think that our demographics are slightly changing and taxpayers need to be aware of that. And especially like you were saying, for the older generation, that this is not the school that does it. We've talked about that. That's a big component of what we do to care for the kids. And it's expected. And it's great. And I think some education, awareness, not education. Awareness is helpful. Maybe a broad general societal ills or societal issues versus like laying it out. If I'm the person who is the addict at home or I'm a single parent who like it's coming home alone, I might be more, if I just saw there's, due to the societal pressure, things that whatever our schools provide. We'll come up with something good. So some of the mails that I thought is that we can talk about the older generation look at school differently. They look at education, but now it's really a care place. Yeah. Almost more of a caring place than an education place. In many ways. Maybe just need to get the care part in. Yeah. And I guess that's what I was worried about, that with the wording of that paragraph or the word made me feel like there's certain undertone of like almost one side and the other side. Like that almost like we have a choice is either, it's not we do this or not do that. It's, and right. Like, and if we're gonna have a thriving democracy, this is what we do, right? We think they all come in and we highlight like see what I'm saying today. We highlight the present. This is what we do at school. And this is why, you know, we have, you know, and this doesn't need to be there. The rule of law that you guys have in the United States. It's not because we are, it's not a choice. It's an investment. It is an expense, but it's an investment in our citizens. And this, when I read the letter, I was just like this continues to have to me an undertone of the halfs and have nots. And that's not why we're here. That's not, that's the beautiful thing about the public school in the United States that it's not that halfs and have nots. It's everybody. This is where we have, you know, whoever comes, we are, everybody can learn. That's what we all believe in this district, right? That every single child can learn. And that's what gets excited. I don't want, because voters, especially voters that like you're saying that maybe have no kids in school and maybe thought that this was not what school did before. Might get like, just like, oh, I'm paying for, you know, for math free and redo lunches. Like, you know, when we were trying to find developers, one day, like, you know, there were a lot of letters and different things about even that we provided lunches, you know, or pre-k, it creates a divide and I would hate to. And I know that that's not what you were trying to read. But when I read it, I was just like, I don't know what I have that's halfs and have nots. And I think that's not what I want. And I know that's not what you were trying to do. Well, no, I think, unfortunately, there are halves and have nots. And essentially, what I'm hearing, if I'm not mistaken, is that it's two-pointed. Is that correct? Yeah. Graphic, in the example. Yeah, two-pointed. Okay. Proposal wording. Details. Where, just so I can. If we're trauma-informed, societal. What are front-based social conditions that students come to school with that we address in order so they can, that's part of our mission? And I think you're right to point out that other areas are stepping back. Because it's not, now the areas of the society are stepping back, but schools are stepping up. I want to give Scott the credit for telling truth. And pointing out the specific problems. Those things are true. Appreciate that. But we just don't want to mention it. It's not going to be here. OK. OK. Yeah, got it. Thank you, everybody. So we'll come back with us, Janet. I don't know if I'm right or wrong. We're going to test the schools in the first paragraph. Sorry? What was that again? Third paragraph down. And this is, OK. Third paragraph? Oh, nice. Taipo. Oh, wait, schools. Schools across your field. Oh, here. OK. Thank you. You never get to come together. I'm cheap. Probably not cheap enough. All right, and then our final item, if I may. Please. So the announced tuition rates are on page 16 for the back of your packet. And you'll see here, this was information received before the meeting, each year we are required to set our tuition rates. And as you know, we do have students who come into the district. At this time, they are all attending the secondary program. They are not. We have no tuition students at the elementary program. But we are still required to set those rates in any case. We use a formula. And as Laurie mentioned earlier, this formula permits us to cover the full extent of our costs. And once we recalculated the number, it provided an increased revenue. We must follow a formula to make this decision. So it's our recommendation that the charges that are noted here for kindergarten, other elementary and secondary be approved by the board so that we can report them to the state. And we'll be coming out. So thank you, Lindy. Last second to accept as crimson. Is that good enough? Yes, it's very good. So Lindy moves. Dorothy seconds. Any further discussion? Ready for a vote? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? None opposed? So it carries. And we move on to item five, select superintendent interview committee members, which is an executive session. So we need a motion to go into executive session. For a personal matter. Dorothy moves. Jial seconds. So all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye.