 6.04 PM. Are there any adjustments that anyone sees that need to be made to the agenda? We'd like a non-public at the end. OK. OK. Anything else? At what point do we talk about? No, that actually wasn't what I was thinking about. I was just thinking about trying to figure out the right words when we worn the school board meeting and we have different articles that we want to add to it. I don't see that in the agenda. We should talk about it tonight when Tara gets here. Correct. But so I just want to make sure that that's in here somewhere. OK. So should we add 9.2 warrant and annual meeting? Yeah. I mean, we might be able to do some of it before. If it's things that aren't the budget side of things, we could do some before Tara is here. OK. All right. So we've added a non-public. We'll do that last thing after policy review. Does that make sense? And what was the reason for that? I'm sorry, Bruce. Personal. Personal. OK. OK. Anything else? All right. We'll move forward. Would anyone like to act as the timekeeper? OK. I'm not just saying. OK. I can do it. All right. So does anybody have recommendations about times, a lot of different portions of the discussion? Do we know what time we expect Tara here? I don't know what time we expect Tara here. I'd say an hour. OK. I was just wondering if we could go home. Take things by year. Mm-hmm. Because it's not a budget. Right. It's not located. Yeah. It's going to take a while. Yep. OK. So we won't allow specific times, but maybe if anything except the budget discussion goes over 15 minutes, you would let us know. OK. I'll just keep it running. Yep. Stay there. OK. All right. And that brings us to our first public comment. Pressure's on. You have a lot of people to represent today. All right. Thank you. All right. Consent agenda. We have several minutes included in this packet from January 2nd, January 6th, 13th, and 16th. And make a motion to approve the minutes. OK. Anyone like to second that? Second it. There is a small table that carry cold smells wrong. That you spotted? Oh. I saw them. Yeah, there's a carry cold OK. That's probably not really. Oh, and where's that? Which minutes? Front page three under public comment. It's the fourth one down. Which set of notes? Which date? Sorry. It's a lot of second words. I don't know what happened to the number. It really is the third paper in the packet. Oh, carry with a K. OK. And the last name with a K? OK. And I know that there's one more correction on the notes from January 16th. It's Jess Ryan, not Jen Ryan. OK. But I can send those amendments to Christine. OK. Do we now amend your motion? Yes. I amend my motion to accept the minutes to be. OK. Accept it. OK. Any discussion? All in favor of approving the minutes of January 2nd, 6th, 13th, and 16th? As amended, please say aye. Any opposed? All right. Do we have any board comments? I feel like we've been meeting a lot and talking a lot, which brings us to reports to the board, our superintendent report. Just a couple things. Remind all of you that there's a policy committee meeting on Thursday night at the office at 6 o'clock. I'm not sure this will be the last one. I thought it was going to be, but there's quite a bit of work to do on the initial packet that I sent out to everybody. I think we have at least five to seven policies that need to be gone over still. One of them is the social media policy, which I think will require a lot of discussion. So if you're on that committee, please come. I can't really do our work if there's only a couple of you. So the other is I have put out a notice in odds and ends about a committee to hire a new special ed director since Dev is retiring. And I now have 10 people already that wish to serve. I haven't turned anything anybody back. We have one community member, a couple of the principals, a bunch of the special educators. If you've got a burning desire to be on that committee, we'll probably have a meeting late next week to look over the applicants. There are about 10 applicants, 10 or 12. They're from all over the country. Several couple that are currently working here in Vermont as in that role. So I think it's time for us to get going and not waiting any longer. So we will probably post a meeting for later on in a week. And if any of you are interested in being on the committee and can make it sometime between 2 and 4.30 in the afternoon, we'll probably try to stick to that. I don't know whether that's good for board members who are working outside of school or whatever. But a lot of the people that are working in the school want to be on the committee. So I'm trying to balance that. Any thoughts, anybody want to attend? David and Andrew are already on it. So do you do it or not? And be kind to Tara. She's a really stressful time. I'll say this. I'd say this if she were here. She's just been really putting out a lot of time. And we've got two budgets done. And we've got two to go, just what you want to do. She is a pretty tireless worker. But the pace is pretty difficult right now. Negotiations next week. I don't know what day it is, but next week, what are the days? We're going to meet after the whole SU board meets. We're going to take some time and prepare for our first meeting with the teachers, which will be on the 29th at 6 o'clock. And then the support staff will be meeting with them on the 30th at 6 o'clock. That's all I have. Should we skip down to the principal's report? I read it, but if there are highlights. We've been budgeting more than a morning. You might see this in the paper on Thursday, but all 150 high school students went over to the Vermont Law School earlier today to hear the Chief Judge for the DCE Secret Court, who was also the 2018 Women's Bar Association Lawyer of the Year. And she spoke for a little over an hour and took questions. And it was a really great event. That's awesome. Didn't make it into the principal's report. OK. Think ahead. The years passed in a coordinated agreement, such as that, hadn't occurred. So it's neat when it happens, and you have to recognize that. So cool. Thank you. Do we have our district's numbers for the literacy improvements? K through your district? Yes. I don't have that, but I have the SU-wide number. Is that possible of a good our district? Just like we're going to be writing our letter to the community for the calendar. Yeah, I gave Lisa the SU-wide one. And I corrected it later this afternoon. It's 16% of books across the SUK through three. OK. And I don't know. You guys tuned into what improvement is. It's not been identified for a school yet. I mean, we have our own results, looking class to class, teacher to teacher, who were just in a faculty meeting today, where teachers were looking at their first and second grade data and working on reading lesson plans based on this data. So they've looked at their all-in-school-wide data, but not in a percentage growth model and not in a comparison to other schools model. I think we're up across the board. And it's pretty unbelievable after four months. You know, and I think it just comes down to targeting one thing. We're trying to really, really boost. OK. I mean, in the SU meeting, they had the presentation that was broken down by school, which is not labeled. So, you know. Yeah. We're trying not to have schools competing against each other. Right. But I know what you need. And I'll see what I can get for you. OK. And I know why you need it, because it really does show. It sounds like we might have it. I mean, if we have each classroom. Well, Amy has told me that she's been communicating with the principals about it, not with me necessarily, in each of the districts. And that's why I'm asking David and Andrew. It's not an oversight. It's a purposeful strategy not to identify schools that have been saved. Yeah, I know. I can understand that for the overall presentation. But then, I would like to know how our district is doing. The SU-wide improvement is great. But if it's not in our district, then I want to know that. So I think in each individual district, you can go and tell them their results. Well, also having the SU-wide. Right. We don't need. Anonymized. The Royalton Elementary numbers to be pitted against the Bethel Elementary numbers. But if we knew what Y River Union district, what our growth looked like, I think, for our report, that would be really helpful. No. We can do it. Just because I think people will ask us those questions. Did either of you get that from Amy? I have, like, I feel like we have all the data. I can't do every child. I don't want that. But I think we can easily put it into some. Yeah. I mean, she has that number, so we just need to ask her. We have that information, so maybe just, yeah. I think it's important to say that now we have the ability to track every single kid and know exactly what each one of them are doing, which is something that's taken a while to get to and we've talked about. But the data, as it is, now can pinpoint who's struggling and with what concept and with the intent of trying to get that better, make that better. And I would add, I think Bethel and South Royalton have been the leaders in assessment and the assessment that we're using. We started it before some other schools. But even to a greater extent, we're calibrated. We're scoring kids in the same way, so we can say we have apples and apples. And teachers are speaking the same language and all understanding it, which is a great thing. Thank you. And for what it's worth then, we're trying to get a letter from the board to the public to get published. And I think we have till this Friday. So if we had some sort of measurement that we could throw into our document by Thursday, then we could really finalize things. That seems we have a budget before that. Right. Right. If we don't have a budget, we don't have a budget. Friday at the latest. All of the teachers I'm meeting on Friday to talk about those results. So I know we have them and they're broken down. So it's just a question of getting them. And I guess David and Andrew can get that done and get it to you. Yeah, OK, OK. All right. Is that all for the principal's report? I'm wondering if perhaps we should jump ahead to our policy review and potentially non-public before Tara gets here. I hate to throw the non-public into the middle of the meeting, but without the business manager, we're sort of hammered in our effort. We could also work on the warrant in your meeting. There's a number of stuff in there that won't require Tara. Right. I mean, she draws up the warrant, right? Yes. You just have to tell her what you want to. From our notes from the 16th, we had a few ideas of things that needed to be in it, and there might be more. OK. And did we get a copy of Blasters? No. No, was that something we were supposed to? Anybody have a town report? I thought we talked about that, but we might just make it easier. Yeah, that does, yeah. OK. So we can start to talk about it. I just think it's harder if Tara is not here to take her own notes for what to put into it. Mm-hmm. Well, yeah, well, I'm fine if we do a non-public session. So we have the policies to review. We've read them the first time, I think, at our regular November meeting or December meeting. And they're all getting muddy in my brain now. There are copies in here. Yeah, the three are students 18 years old or older. These come right from the VSPA samples. We did add some things in it. You'll see that in bold in that one. Field trips, D-30. The only thing was really a change was they changed the order of two and three. That's all because they felt it ought to be in the kind of order in which you would prepare a field trip for. OK. And the last one is therapy dogs. And this doesn't have a policy number yet. But they wanted us to put in the training and certification. Give you a little history about this, is that we've had some requests to bring dogs to school, therapy dogs to school. And in some case, there's been confrontations. And so we're trying to make sure that everybody passes the same standard. So we put in on the training and certification that they have this American Kennel Club canine good citizen certification and also the Vermont therapy dogs registry. So those two standards have been added. It's pretty straightforward. One thing that I was asked to do was send the therapy dogs policy to Dina for review. I haven't done that yet, but I will. These have been pretty straightforward, though. What your pleasure is, questions? I haven't had an opportunity to look at the Herald yet. But did Christie put the notification that we would be voting on these tonight in the newspaper? No. OK. She has to post all that before you do that. But you ought to be pretty, if you want to suggest changes, you ought to do it so that we can. Right. But I will tell you also, this is going through the policy committee, and I'm hoping that we're happy with them. It says that the request form is attached to this policy. And I have a request form. The therapy dog one. Well, that would be a procedure. Yeah, we don't have one yet. So could we not reference that form if it just feels weird to pass a policy that references a form that hasn't yet been created? I don't know. Maybe that's just me. Or we're going to have a request form attached to the policy, and let's get it attached to the policy before we approve it, either or. Requirements to warn parents that a therapy dog will be in the classroom. Do we have the allergic reaction kind of clause in that? I do know that there's a number of students that are allergic to dogs in elementary school. I don't know about other ones, but do we have a? I'm not aware of some kind of notification. Principles might know more about that than I do, but. Sounds like a good idea, because sometimes younger kids don't really know they have allergies and might rush up and handle a dog. There might be medications that other children would switch to if they knew that there was going to be the allergens in the classroom. And there might also be children that are fearful of dogs that would also have to treat dog allergies. Your allergies? But we don't have anybody right now that's having it. Is that on your questionnaire for medical form? I don't know. But sometimes allergies have a list of various foods and stuff. Does it have pets or dog's cats? No, it's just wide allergies. So it's up to the parent to fill it in. And the nurses follow up with parents. And they follow up with teachers, so teachers know which allergies are in their classroom. And they updated, we just had the updated medical. It's just that I think that most people when kids go to school don't think that there's going to be dogs or cats in the building. So they might not think of it. Yeah, I think it's my question too, is it something that people identify on their sheet when they do it? I mean, not to get any specifics, but they were like, for me, I don't know if I would have thought of that. I would think more of medications and food allergies. I don't know. You've just been lucky. We have not run in here. The guy in the house of his parent dog is going to school and everything. For the sake of, I mean, more allergies seem to be cropping up all the time. It just might be a nice way to cover every base. I'm kind of more worried about the fear, student fears and stuff like that. Like if you let the parents know, then they can help prepare their kids going to school. Is it possible to just think about at the beginning of the school year, when you have the form that says, exclude my child's picture, the opt out from having your picture in publicity, add that from time to time we have therapy dogs at school? I think some sort of disorder. Yeah, through allergies, whether it's allergies or fear, some of them parents could say, no, thank you. Well, I put that note down. So we'll see if we can work it out. I think it's really more of a procedure should be developed. Are we remaining it's a therapy dog, or can they have other kind of therapy animals? Therapy snakes. Let's start the hedgehogs. I wanted to certify. All right. Glory Lee dogs. Go A, D, A. Ostriches. Well, I think we might run. We'll probably develop a change. I think A, D, A has horses and dogs, so we want to limit. That's a good. I don't think we're going to have horses. I'm not saying that we would want to have a therapy horse, but we could have excluded bulls that I have, because A, D, A specifies horses and dogs. As therapy animals. As what's required. Does miniature horses? I mean, OK. All right. I feel like we're getting off this policy. Getting distracted. I'm thinking about miniature horses now. They're cute. All right. OK. So our feedback is that White River Union District would like a procedure related to either allergies or students being afraid, potentially, of dogs. But the policy, I think, looks OK, other than referencing a documentally. Can't see. All right. Is that enough feedback for the policy committee? Sure. OK. So I think that brings us to our non-public. I apologize. Can I just ask you a quick question? Looking at this budget thing. OK. On the very first thing, carry over from the brighter years, there's nothing there. It seems to me that all the stuff that's been in the paper would be plus or negative. Is that because we haven't solved the problems yet? Or is that because there was exactly no carryover or reduction? That's a great question. I think we're hoping to absorb much of the current deficit in this current fiscal year. So we basically, I think we have three years or something in order to make up a deficit. So we want to see how much we're able to absorb into this year's budget by we have the spending freeze in place. So basically this is? No. I mean, at the end of the audit from last year turned up that deficit. And so we've tried to reduce spending this year in order to try and make it so that next year's audit will have absorbed that deficit into what we budgeted for this year. That makes sense. So if we have a corresponding surplus in what we're currently spending this year, then that would wipe out that deficit leaving us not needing to incorporate any in this current year. Does that make sense? So the deficit was for FY 19. We're currently in FY 20. Are there extra? My understanding is the FY is $55,000. Anybody else need to know? It's incorrect last year. That was the correct number. Well, no. I mean, we did not have a budget on the last year. Right, but you're budgeting for these things a year in advance before you know what the result of the previous year. So you don't think of like basically that was coming from FY 18, where we had surplus money from FY 18 that we incorporated into the FY 20 budget. We now have a deficit of in FY 19. And we're hoping that we're taking steps to try and make it so that that can be absorbed in the FY 20 budget so we don't have to put it into the FY 21 budget. If we haven't completely eliminated it by the time we get to the end of FY 21, then we'll incorporate it into the FY 22 budget to make up. That makes sense. OK, just with the numbers in the newspaper, $455,000. You're going to somehow magically come up with $455,000 this year so that it's just kind of a wash. I mean, do you think that's a realistic thing? I think the numbers in the newspaper was referring to the first draft of the audit that hadn't quite been completed yet. So it's completed now, and there's been corrections to those original numbers. So they're smaller than what was reported in the paper. But still a draft audit. It's not completely conclusive. Something like $100,000 smaller. So we're talking $350,000. Of course. I'm going to try to, and I'm sorry if I'm moving slow. You're going to try to figure out how to cut to whenever you stop spending money to come up with, say, $350,000 this year wash going into next year. And when do you determine whether or not you've made that goal, and when does the actual number you're going to do the budget? I think we'll find out at the end of this year once we get, you know. But you're going to be voting on a budget that has not known it. You don't have to make up the deficit. I think we're going to be able to say where we stand when it's time to vote so that the public knows that. And we may not have all the information, but everybody's been very, very conservative really since November trying to make sure that we, and the principals, and I identified about $250,000 that we acted on that we weren't going to spend and have kind of put the clamps on that, beginning in November when we went back through the budget. Do we have to spend this? Do we have to do that? And we came up with about $250,000 there. I think it'll be better than that, but I can't tell you right now. We should, I think, do in our due diligence. We ought to have a pretty good projection when we talk to the voters about what it's looking like right now. And the other thing I would say, like a little slow on this. So when you say conservative, you mean if you thought the budget was going to be $1,000, you might have made it $1,100 or whatever. Well, let me give you some practical examples. Let's talk about the money that would have been used for literacy supplies. We spent $600,000 not in local budgets for literacy materials. And so we don't have to use that money in the local budget because it's already been purchased for all the classrooms 3K through 5 this year throughout the whole SU. But basically what I'm saying is we tried to identify things that we may not need because of other things we're doing, a field trip, grant funds, things like that that we could use instead of local budget money and we could save that. So that's about as practical as I can get you without giving you a list of exactly what I were about. We spent two days in a room trying to figure out what we could do without, without anybody really being in a big need, put off spending on this. And we are still spending, but we're not spending some of the money we identified that we could conserve. And I think that was $250,000 with that exercise and that happened what, a month ago? Probably? Right before Christmas? I thought it was before that. And even just last week at our last special board meeting, we were going line item by line item and looking at certain things where there might have been a certain larger amount of money allocated to a certain expense section that we realized didn't have to be that high because that might have been appropriated towards additional investments due to the merger of the school. So now that line item could be smaller. So as we tweaked it, it even put us in a better position by the end of that meeting. So we've really been looking at every single thing and not trying to take things away from the students, but trying to really look at what do we really need? What was spent last year? What do we need for next year? And what does that number look like? And some of those numbers were a bit higher than what they needed to be. So it was nice to look at that line by line. What I'm concerned about is we aren't kicking the can down the road with IED, got this furnace. One of the things is if you kick that can too far, it's going to be an emergency and then you're going to be borrowing money at the worst possible time. And I think it's better to recognize those things up front than to just kick this can down and we'll band aid the furnace again. Yeah, I think one thing that we've talked about and it's not something we can decide here, it would need to go to the annual meeting is doing something similar to what Rochester is done by moving their school meeting to May. And that's when we'd have more solid numbers on everything. It's a huge shift in thinking, but at the same time, we wait for numbers from the state until after our budgets go to the town, we wait for numbers from the auditor seemingly later and later. So it is frustrating not to have all of those columns filled out in ways that are satisfying. Are we getting numbers from the auditor sooner each year as opposed to even after? We're ahead of where we were last year, but it's been kind of disappointed at the pace of what we've gotten back. When we've gotten back, we've been talking to them. I think Tara talks to them every other day, basically to get what she needs because there are things that voters want to know and we need to provide and be transparent about it. We started earlier this year than we have in other years with them. And, you know. So it's not really the auditor's issue, the auditor is waiting for you to give them the information? It's not only that, there's, and I count every time I say this, I feel like I'm scapegoating somebody else, but we filed a thing called a SEER report about two months and a half ago. That's special education for the fourth quarter of the year. They give us money to make up for what we've spent. And we still haven't seen that. And we, depending on how it is and how it comes in, we're using our best guess in this budget, but we haven't seen the real numbers. We think we know what they are, but they haven't responded to us. They said they'd do it right after the first of the year. And here it is, the 21st, and we still haven't seen it. See me in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year, which closed June 30th. Which would help us if it's a little higher than we expect with deficit numbers. And these are numbers from the state we're talking about. Correct, correct. It's payment back to us from the state. So, as I mentioned, you have communicated with our senators and representatives, and have they been set in front of you and explained why this isn't happening? Not our senators and representatives, but the Secretary of Education. Well, who made the laws? I ought to be able to know that they're not being... I think they're very well aware that they've missed all kinds of deadlines in the last year. I think they should tell me to read in here instead of coming in town and telling us all the other stuff that we don't care about. Maybe now is the time to have them here. They do have one of these... Thank you. Thank you. I guess it's a great idea. I'm done. Oh, okay. All right, anybody else? All right, so we'll enter non-public session for personnel and reconvene. Yeah, it'll be here, but then, yeah, so... Just shut it off and wait, please. This is a non-public session of... Seven, four, 13. We had majors on it in the other room, just kidding, we didn't. Okay. All right, so should we start to talk about the warning? Because I mean, I am all in favor of postponing it until Tara gets here, but in light of the fact that Tara is not here still, and we should move on to the warrant. So... If you have any questions, you can try to answer them from the last year. Oh, we're good, couldn't we? Yeah, we're doing the way we've spent, like, each time. Each time, we're doing a good thing. Yes, and I'm not. Would that have been something that Tara would have sent us? Last year, it came from... We'll be first to hear it. Jane Gatling. I think it's Ginger. On a Z-Drive at the meeting. What are we talking about? I can't get it. I'm getting an example of last year's warning to have that as a template. I've got it from the town report. It's open. Mine isn't open. I can email it. I was gonna try to get that full. Wouldn't that be, if you emailed it to somebody here, could we get a print copy? We could have done it before we went into executive session, but... Send it down, Andrew, or Owen. I'll send it for you. Yeah, I'll send it to everybody. Thank you. Just the warrant, or are we gonna have to scroll down? Yeah, we'll have to scroll down. What page is it on the... I will tell you after I send it. So were there things, specific things that you were thinking of adding to the warrant? Yeah, from the notes, we had a couple, there was a couple things that Bruce had mentioned, that might be new. I couldn't open it. Oh, language for the proposal to change the annual meeting date to May. Yeah, that has to be a conversation with your community about doing that for next year. Do we think it's worth raising that question? I mean, I've brought it up a couple times. The meeting that we brought it up at that was in Royalton, people were pretty opposed. Well, if there was a few sentences to explain why we're thinking of it. Okay. At least it's... It's a bigger forum. It'd be on the floor for a discussion. Okay. Sorry. Did I just kick you? Yeah, sorry. Right, so we could put it on the floor so that we have a broader audience. Maybe... Maybe worth discussing it to, just to maybe bring awareness to some of those issues too, and beyond just inviting legislators to this meeting, but also to have all the people in the community aware of it, because that's one of my issues with moving it later is that our part is just one part of three things, and the other two parts are the ones that are consistently late, but we're on time because we have to be on time. And then the other two parts, the audit and the state, where's the repercussions for them for being late? And I think the worst offender is probably the state. Last year, the audit wasn't great. This year, it's still going slow, but the only way we can change, but in the end, even if we move later, is the people of the state now gonna say, oh, well, now we've got even more time, and we can be even later than we were before, whereas I wasn't here for it, but I know from people that I work with, the guy that I work with, his mom, was the business manager for the Norfield schools for all of her career, and they always had the info from the state in November. And if they didn't get it by Thanksgiving, then the state was late, and now it's like, now we aren't even getting info from the state by town meeting day. So there needs to be other movement just than our own, or else we're just gonna end up right back in the spot again, and I think having a discussion in a larger forum where there's lots of people there to give their insight and thought, but also to be able to, when they talk to the legislators, the same people that we're all voting for, that they can talk about it too, and the theory for multiple voices rather than just one. I do think not just the getting information though, it also be useful having the budget set later for things like if you have repairs that you find out about, you can budget them for next year, and it's only like three months away instead of six months away. The most important thing is if you're gonna move it, need to move it so that if a vote goes down, you've still got time to get a reconsideration before June 30th. So picking a date that's maybe at least six weeks? Six weeks, or yeah, you figure that you've gotta have a warned, you've gotta have it warned for a month. And so, and that's where we were getting with Rochester and Stockbridge, they were going so deep that we weren't gonna be able to turn it around if the budget went down. So you wanna stay a healthy amount of distance between that June 30th drop dead date. So late April or early May? Really it needs to be before May because you need 30 days to warn the meeting and then you need to give rescission for people 30 days to petition and you wanna allow yourselves at least a week in between those two to come up with a sec to ask the administration to come up with a new budget to warn if there's a rescission petition like there was last year. But then you have to work around April break and then are we actually giving ourselves any time versus the upper order or the concerns? Maybe give yourselves five or six more weeks. Yeah. I wonder if like with the first Tuesday in April. It'll be another month anyway. It gives us another month to get things together. Then you'd have two drops before June if you did. So do we wanna just have a discussion about this at town meeting or would you actually wanna have something on that? I think we need to have a discussion on the ball of the entire time. Well the only time we can vote is at town meeting. We can call another vote. A special meeting at any, I mean you can do that. Is there financial impacts of us separating the two? Yeah. I think that mailings have a tendency to cost about $3,000 each time you do a mailing across the two communities. That's the number I remember from the original vote to March. Compared to the cost that we, I mean obviously the cost is something when we add it to the town report, we're taking on whatever pages of being published. I'd be curious what the cost for adding it in the town report versus having our own mailing, how that might compare. I think it would be difficult for you if you don't think this out ahead of time. I think you ought to go to them with a suggestion because if you don't have that, it'll be all over the place. I think they look to you for leadership and I think you ought to try to give them, we're thinking, we've talked a lot about it and here's what we've come up with and here's why and you still might not get it done but at least I think that's what they're looking for is some kind of intelligent discussion based on conversations that have happened before. Well for the warrant deadline, we'd have maybe just a couple sentences talking about what we intend to do and then we'd have a month or so to pull our information together to have something to present because I can't imagine we're gonna get all those resources, all those thoughts together in five or six days. We could at least plant the seed and imply that we'll have deeper discussion and more information to share at the time of the meeting or maybe somehow get it to voters anytime. So do you want the lighters to say we'll bring a poser to you at the meeting? For discussion. For discussion? Mm-hmm. For something like that. There were some email discussions that Andrew and I and Lisa were having with the two town clerks about. Still a little confused about them. About chapter 011 Union Schools Districts and Joint Schools, sub-chapter 004. Basically there's language in here saying that in any member district that elects its representative directors to the Union School District Board by Australian ballot, it basically is saying that the clerk of the Union School District would be the one to, in charge of collecting the ballots and having them counted. And so, which is new, it would be a new action compared to what's been done in previous years. And I can forward that language to everybody but I'm not sure how, I think we need to figure out how we're gonna handle that. Is it new or is it just discovered? Just discovered. We've been doing it wrong. And it's the clerk or her designate, right? Yeah, let me see. So in previous years, you designated the previous, the other clerks. But part of it is that they're supposed to be counted in a central location. So, theoretically, we're supposed to be taking the ballots from each town and going to a central location and doing the count there. So that counting them in separate towns and then. I think the clerk also dissatisfied. What do you mean? Oh, so not on the floor. Not on the floor. No, this is in Australian. Right. And so couldn't they just be brought to the central office? Well, I don't think that that's necessary. I think what you do is just have one of the towns drive to the other town and do the count in that town. So, you know, like, say, flip a coin between Morielton and Bethel this year and you designate one of the, what are they called, the board of civil authority? Yeah, mm-hmm. Designate one or two people who would be in charge of the school ballots. And so the town that's not the central location would pack up their ballots and drive to the other town, do the count there. Yeah, something screams not okay with the driving to somebody else's town to count those ballots. I'm not a board forward. Oh, yeah, like making sure it's gotta be in somebody's possession that. Right, I mean, they said. Give a hand that a ballot's not gonna get lost or misplaced. That's where the language is kind of. So did the town clerks identify the rules of board civil authority that have prevented such? No, I mean, we didn't realize that the ballots had to be counted or were supposed to by law be counted in a central location. So, it does say commingled, but I don't know that that means that you have to, you know, count them, like shuffle them and count them or if you can just do them in a. I'm picturing shoeboxes and we're pulling it. They have to make something, they can't keep track of how many people voted for it in Bethel. Okay. So if we wanna change that, we need to do something to amend the Article of Agreement or whatever. So what do the clerks propose? I mean, I feel like this is much more their. Billy. Right, than mine. Yeah. I mean, last year when the rescission went on and everything, or the vote to rescind potentially, I, you know, called the Secretary of State and followed up and did that work because I felt like that was something that I was tasked with. But I feel like the Board of Civil Authority and the town clerks are the people who typically handle Australian ballots. And I can read this and yes, the words all make sense, but I feel like there's some nuance here that I might be missing because it does feel bizarre to me that someone would expect that your votes all get packed up in somebody's minivan and driven to the next town. Well, I mean, it says the Board of Civil Authority and the transporting of ballots. So they are in charge of transporting ballots. Right. But still, something just feels odd to me about the whole thing. What part of this do you have any involvement in? I don't think you have any. Well, it says that the Board clerk is in charge. Transportation of ballots in its district to a central point designated by the Board of School Directors. The ballot shall be commingled, counting a ballots by representatives of the Board of Civil Authority of the member town shall be supervised by the Union District Clerk or his or her designate. So we are in charge of picking where they're counted and the clerk is in charge of supervising or designating someone to supervise. And if we want to change that, we need to actually do something that's gonna supersede this. One of the clerks did point out that, particularly this year when they have national elections, state elections, and local elections all to count, they can't, the clerks themselves can't be like multi-tasking and doing multiple counts at the same time. So it goes in order, you count the national, or I don't know what the order is, but you're counting one thing at a time. And so, whereas this would be somebody else supervising it, so we could do this count while the other counts going on. And it wouldn't have to be waiting in line. If the clerks are in charge, then it has to wait in line until they're done with whatever other counts were as. Why they were very careful about where we placed our meeting because they knew they had other responsibilities. Right, that was the day, right. That's why we changed the day of the meeting. But if we leave it the way it is and transport, the Civil Authority transports, we basically just, the clerk designates the Civil Authority members to be one of the Civil Authority members to supervise it and we designate one of the other towns, then our count can go on while the other counts are going on and it can multi-task. So I think it's fine. That's a good question. That's what I'm trying to. A lot of times we're using, so the school would use a paper ballot as opposed to using a machine. Yeah, we used a paper ballot. It's done with a machine and then you've got to have some way of separating that. You can't plug the machine down. I guess you could plug the software or something, but that used to be... Yeah, now it's still paper. But neither of our towns have machines yet, right? Where does it, I'm looking at, what's that? Ethel has a machine. Not for the local ballots, I don't think. Is it? I know all the state and federal things go through a machine. Right, yeah, I think the state and the federal ones probably do, but I don't think the local does. I could be wrong. Where is this piece about transporting them to a central location and stuff? I mean, the... 16706W? Oh, W. You look on the Vermont statutes, polling places, transportation and counting of ballots. I got an email that Carmen had sent. I'm looking forward to start getting signatures. Yeah. Landfell's a good place to go. So the board of civil authority has not waited that long, is that correct? Well, I mean, we've had some emails about it with the clerks, and they haven't had specific suggestions. Basically, I proposed what I just outlined, and they said that that would be fine. Well, isn't this related to bond issues? My review, because it says bond issues under 24VSA are to be determined by Australian ballot voting machine. They're pulling police in the district. So, and then it says the board of civil authority of each town, but then the union districts will be responsible for determining that. I mean, it sounds like it's about bond voting. It's not about... Let me go look at the school board. Should we reach out to neighboring union districts and just find out what they do? Similar, I mean, Hartford, I don't think that they bring all their... I could find out that sort of thing pretty quickly. I mean, I'm not sure what the OSSD does if they move all their ballots from Brookfield and Braintree to Randolph. There's, I mean, you can contact somebody at the state, like... The secretary of state again? Well, Emily Simmons, who's one of the people that work with the secretary, Donna Rousseau-Savage, who I know... I mean, I can see it for bond voting, so then there's not finger pointing between communities and stuff, but I don't think... Because if you go to 706K about the election of school board members, there's no mention of co-mingling of ballots and stuff. I think it's just related to bond votes. We're not voting on any bonds, right? Maybe, but I mean, it doesn't talk about how the ballots are to be counted anywhere in here. It just says that it's about the nomination process, but not... And then the length of term. Right. Yeah. So does... And the title for the 706W is Pulling Places Transportation and Counting of Ballots, Not... Yeah, but then it starts off saying bond issues under... True. When Carmen sent me this email, she had another below the 706W. She said, some districts have opted not to do this process. Some districts have decided to count the ballots at each polling place and then transmit the totals to the school district clerk to total up and release the results. This has been done by amending the articles of agreement. Your articles of agreement do not lay out a different procedure so you would default to the above statute. So that could be an article of agreement if we find some common language where we could... That was from the Vermont Secretary of State, by the way. Oh, it was? Yeah. Okay. She had just gotten in there. The election administrator from the Vermont Office of the Secretary of State. Right, right, right. So they're the ones who provided this 706W for counting of ballots. So I'm happy to reach out to Donna Russo-Savage because this doesn't... I mean, it just doesn't seem... It seems pretty foreign. I'll forward you the email from Carmen that she got from the Secretary of State. Is that... She just copied and pasted something. Oh, from J.P. Isabel. Yeah. So I'll send it to you as well if you want. Okay. Russo, but her first name is something? Savage. Donna Russo-Savage. And she works at the Agency of Education. I believe she's an attorney. So do we feel like we know what we want to add to the... Well, if we want to change it for next year to do something like this, like counting each town and then add it to the warning. Like voters approve changing this or something like that. And that's where we need to get the lawyers. For this year, I think we're stuck doing the centralized location. We're stuck doing it however we're gonna be told to do it, but we could add an article of agreement for the following year so that it's a little simpler. Okay. Is there anything else we need to add to the warning? I don't think so. We have just that one, the language where I'm bringing a proposal. A proposal to consider moving the meeting to later in the year. And I think that that should go earlier in the evening or earlier so that we have that discussion about the reasons why we might want to do that. And I sent you all the language from Secretary of State with statute pertains to that and what language would have to be in the warning. Oh, you did just now? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. I wonder if Tara's still on her way. I did get an email saying she was. If we're ready, the principals did additional work today to prioritize the list and tally the non-personnel cuts to add those to the 779 we prevented two weeks ago. Okay. Want to do that? Yeah. So we'll jump into budget discussion. So what are we doing? Uh, we'll see where the current administration thinking is about personnel cuts. Well, before we do that, I think we should just get an overall overview of where we're at and how much we're looking at what's right. You made a difference, right? Did we end up with a total tally for non-personnel cuts? You meant a tally of non-personnel cuts, right? When we get to how, in the last meeting, we provided the tally of non-personnel cuts and that went into draft three. But there was a lot of stuff that was identified at that meeting that was, so, you know, I don't think that total reflects what the actual tally was, so. All right. All right. So one of the questions we have for Tara will be, did she get all the things from Thursday meeting, Thursday's meeting in or not? Okay. I guess one way we could test this, we'd look at the phone budget and see if the phone budget says 23,000 or 25,000. Because that was one of the changes. I thought it was going to, like, 10. It doesn't mean that they all made it. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the, on the first 110, I mean, 1100, the regular ed instruction first page, 568 and 569, that was the tech center tuition thing where it was being double counted and as far as I can tell, that's still double counted. So we'll need an explanation from her on that. Because I thought in her email, she said that, that didn't need to be. Is that on page one? You're looking at, and where's the phone? What page is the phone on? The page is unnumbered, so. Hey Tara. Hey Tara. There she is. The phone is the fourth line down on page 12. Okay. Chair let's. Never mind. What we're trying to do is to have the discussion amongst ourselves. So we'll make it easier to see where we're spending a lot of time discussing our priorities with everybody. And those priorities were in terms of the order in which we would go to reducing staff numbers. If that's what it took to get down to the, pull that while Tara plugs in and we can update the chair. Is that so good? Yeah. We may answer some of your questions. Oh, okay. I just want to figure out. Is that like, wait a minute. Okay. I have a different number than that. Make that easier. That doesn't impact the expenditure report. It's only on the tax sheet. Do you need this? No. I got a copy. Change it. So it's only on the tax sheet, but the tax sheet. So those are, I think this is the story. Can you. Isn't there a place where you can do the full page or? Yeah. You know my full screen? Full screen. You're way over 10. So you don't have to explain that story. You basically haven't done it. That's not significant. Numbers, right? Yeah. Okay. Probably would have been a good idea. You might want to. Well, when you're ready. Well, I'm going to say I want to. You want a pointer? I've got a pointer. Oh, well. Here, let's do the list. David's given the pointer. Passes around to David, please. Yeah. I mean, I needed my laser. So the total of the non-personnel revisions from last Thursday's meeting was 22620. If you want to talk about. We identified the next line, 1270, actually it should be 1274, 11650. We found an extra 29500. We couldn't explain. So that's out now. And then these are the cuts from two weeks ago. Operations and maintenance library. Equipment on the fellow campus. A bunch of stuff. That we had suggested two weeks ago. Such as the two classrooms it's at. The asbestos that was in there as well. So once you do all the non-personnel stuff. Professional development. Then we feel like there are some wise cuts of personnel that put us on a more sustainable financial footing. That really, you know, probably not enough to get us to where we need to be. So we asked for them to be included in so we can start doing the harder work. So that would be the point two for the work-based learning at South Routen. Although that may have been already taken out in draft two. The custodial I think was also taken out in draft two. So those may not be additional. The big one is reducing one elementary teacher from each campus for a total savings of 118,000. In listening to the feedback last Thursday, I've heard multiple people talk about not wanting to get rid of the French program. Or the cost of getting rid of programs at the high school that we have students enrolled in right now. So I, in looking closer at this, found it hard to justify why we would be bringing in a new program that has no students enrolled while we're cutting staff that have students enrolled. So I added the outdoor program coordinator half-time position from the high school to this list. That's something that we don't have anybody. We don't have anybody doing that currently. Yes, we do. We have somebody full-time right now who's working in middle school and developing the high school program. But we don't have any students at the high school enrolled at this time. Okay. We're not sure what that looks like or what it would look like next year. Before you go on, can you remind the board about what the class enrollment for the two elementary teacher cuts would be? How that would change? Currently, what are they? And currently, what would they be? So maybe that's not. I would prefer to approach it in a different way. So there's education and quality standards, which talk about a lot of things in schools and one of them is class size. And I believe it talks about the recommended class size for a K-2 population and then a 3-5 population. And it's around 17-ish, is what you're shooting for, for class size. That's in the window. So I think in all my initial conversations with David, also with his staff about looking at next year, we were trying to say what would be the best configurations so that we have substantial class sizes that are within this window and not. So what are they right now? I think we range. I think we're around like 15-ish if you were averaging. Yeah, there are some 12 and 15. It's about as high as I think it would be in the south broad of the campus. We have a couple of classes of eight or nine. And that's too small. And what would they be with the two classes? How many would they be? Yeah, how would that change? I think it would be around 17. It would be about as high as it would get with the reduction of one teacher. And that's anticipating the pre, or the kindergarten moving up to first grade. That's anticipating that. We are anticipating preschool screenings. With the reduction of an elementary teacher on both campuses, would that provide more room for more preschool? It might make a room available on both campuses for the expansion of pre-K if it was needed. The school quality standards say for if you take an average of K3 classes, the average should be fewer than 20 per teacher in grades K through 3. And grades 4 through 12 on average, there should be fewer than 25. But we're not approaching 25. And we're not recommending it. No, no, no. Thank you. We're looking for a, we told our folks we're looking for a K2 minimum of 15 with a max of 20 and a 4 or 5 minimum of 18 with a max of 23. And there's no way we're going to be perfect with that. Right. Those are averages. Okay. Thank you. There's more to tier one. We came to a total of a half million dollars for the tier one cuts. Those includes some additional money out of the telephone budget. We went and looked at last year's actuals today and they came to about $16,000. So even though we're now budgeted at 20, we can probably cut another $3,000 and be safe. We are under rolled in social studies. So we would take a third of a position from the high school. And I guess that's all that we added to tier one. Okay. Can you? The total personnel impact from the classroom would be three FTEs. And half of an FTE would be custodial. And that would tier. Okay. What's the impact to the programs? How many different classes are we cutting? You say outdoor program, there's one social studies. Are we cutting some? So for the outdoor program, there are no classes at the high school right now. So no students there would be affected. I'm not sure that, I know there's some eighth graders will be coming into ninth grade. I'm not sure that there's room in ninth graders scheduled to take an elective like this. At least not as it's envisioned. We've got a bunch of ninth graders who are squeezing in one more class. And the schedule actually allows for them to take right now. So we're in the middle of scheduling talks too. So it's not clear exactly how that will play out. Is the social studies cut one class or two? It would be two classes. And right now we have one elective that has two kids in it. That wouldn't be offered next year. And because we had staff, we took one freshman class of 15 kids and we divided into a class of eight and a class of seven. So really we could have kept that class of 15 and that would have been a good average size. So we're really not impacting social studies very much. And that class with only two students, that's not an AP class or, okay. For the outdoor program coordinator, I mean that was something that we had in our articles agreement that never got fully implemented and now we're going to cut it before we fully implement it. Or could we say that we're putting it on hold and hopefully implementing it for the following year should funds arise? Because it sounds like you're building it in the middle school and now there's somebody building it in the middle school and with one more year of building it could be even more prepared with more students having been exposed in the middle school than being in the high school. My concern is that if we, you know, for every position we keep we continue to run on the course of being under-enrolled and not being sustainable. That position is really a wish item that if we build it, they will come. I don't have any data that suggests that's actually going to happen that more kids from Randolph are going to move to Beffle or South Royalton to enroll in this program. But we haven't been promoting it so if they don't know that it exists how do we know, how can we measure response? And I don't think it was just for tuition students. I think it was an opportunity for our students as well. And it could be an opportunity for our students. What we don't know right now is whether or not it would be enrolled. Hypothetically speaking, we could take it out of the budget right now and maybe I'm wrong about this so you guys can correct me but we could move forward not playing to have it. We're not funding it and we could see a student sign up for it and we have some plans for what it might look like. See a student sign up for it and we could shuffle staff pay around to see if we can find a way to build it and if it's justified by student enrollment. I think that's a good, I'd like to see that. It could be a contract piece though. We issue staff contracts. So we'd have to make sure that if we move staff around we don't issue those contracts until we figure it out but our hope is ever schedule employees and have students sign up for classes in early March so we should know what our numbers are before the contracts have to be issued. Well and the contract, correct me if I'm wrong, designate which building you're in, correct? So it would be a .5 Outdoor Program Coordinator. Right, so they're in our district. Well the only reason that this made the list was because it was a little easier to do than it may not be the right thing to do but it's a little easier to do than when you're talking about some of the other ones down the list. It's a reduction of course though, somebody's in a 1.0 position. Okay, coordinating for both the middle school and the high school but there's no program at the high school. Okay, but they're not actually teaching the program, right, because as a coordinator you're not teaching the program necessarily. It's the planning and facilitation of a teacher or teachers implementing. So in a sense I'm wondering if we've already paid for the planning to happen this year and there would need to be professional development for implementation. And part of my suggestion that we have this here comes from last year we put this in the budget not knowing anything about how the program would be received. We built it into our program of studies. We had an outdoor leadership skills class. It was offered to the high schoolers and we talked. I spent two minutes talking to every single high school students around Robin presentation and the thing and we had one student who expressed an interest in taking that class. So the challenge is it may be a great program. What we're seeing right now in the high school campus is a lot of students saying well we want to take band in course and we have to take this P.E. class and we don't have room in our schedule just to get the requirements in. Much less deciding on that next class. So it doesn't have to go there, it can come out. Well I just think about the eco program and how we're talking about such success with the eco program and how that's morphing into a middle school scale or approach to being outside and understanding the natural world and I really want to see a farm to school program evolve from all of this as well and I see that as an opportunity for outdoor education and learning and I'd hate to see that momentum get lost and fade away when that was kind of our initial vision of getting the youth, getting the youngest growing and getting used to that exposure so that over the course of two or three years it gets implemented in the higher grades. So personally I'd love to see a placeholder at least gauge interest. Like I said, I want to see both school campuses producing some food for the cafeteria. I want that phase of the outdoor to be part of it too and I'm hoping that that's kind of an ultimate down the road vision as well. It used to exist and it exists pretty strongly in a lot of school campuses and I think we've got I'd like to see things moving in that direction personally as a parent and community member and that's kind of what I was thinking of when I saw this and as we were selling it as we were before the merger of the school we were talking about all this outdoor opportunities for learning and I don't want that to get knocked out and not exist as a potential. Let's just meet. You guys want to go to tier two? Can we answer some? Like I think we need to do a little now that we have Tara here get some questions answered about other things before we you know I don't want to go through a big long list of cuts before we have an idea of how much we need to cut. I totally agree because I think it makes people uneasy I don't need to. So Oh that's enough too. I thought that the tech center tuition on behalf was supposed to. The email said that you took out I removed 201 1100 569 the tech center tuition on behalf not the 568. The 568 has to be there and 569 has to be there per the state's requirements. You have to show both the expense and the revenue. Right but on the this is just the expense portion and we have 568 tech center tuition on behalf of the 167 and so I understand that it needs to be on the revenue and on the expense but it looks like it's on the expense twice still. So where's the other place that it's on the expense? Well it's on 568 and 569. There's tuition dash other which includes tech center tuition. Or had include tech center tuition and then there's the tech center tuition on behalf which is offset by the revenue that we get. Okay. Basically we need to figure out how that's supposed to be working or make sure that that's right. So 569 should be the actual tuition you're paying to your tech centers. Right. So it's not the same. Right, no I understand that. So 568 is the expenditure to match their revenue. Object code 568. Object code 569 is the actual what you're writing for tuition payments to RTCC and perforated green technology center. So we get how much are we reimbursed? Like it's not 100% or 90% or something like that. There's a calculation that we have to submit a worksheet per semester to be reimbursed. So is the tech center tuition like over and above what? So in your education spending grant the state pays tech center tuition half 87%. So that's the expense and the revenue that you have to show that washes each other out. But then you also have to pay your six semester average to the tech centers that your students are attending. So one's a wash and one's reality. Right. But then so if it's supposed to be 87% of that total, like that's a lot more than 13% like the total looks like it's too high if that's the case. Or if it's done differently then Yeah, 13% you'd expect it to be a much smaller number to the wash. On your revenue side 167.332 is what the AOE is saying they're going to pay. That 167.332 is the expenditure to offset that revenue. Yeah, we've got that. The 164.0569 is what you're projected to pay next year to your tech centers for your kids that are attending vocational education. So it's not. It's in addition to the 167. So in total we're paying out over 300,000 dollars. No, because you don't really pay 187. That's a total wash. You have to take 167. You have to take that out of your mind altogether. But the tuition, the tech centers are receiving 300. That's how you require right because that's how they hide per prior business manager's statements. That's how the state hides how expensive it is to have vocational centers. Because you don't realize it in your local budget because you have to wash it in your local budget. So yeah, in reality it's 300 and almost 400,000 dollars for tech center tuition. But you only pay the actual tuition payments to the tech centers. Under 569. So do we never actually charge anything to the 568 then? Is that what that means? It should be the wash based on what's drawn your cash flow statement from the agency of education. That should match. So 569 is our actual and that's the one we have to pay attention to. So tuition other. Okay, thank you. We have 23 students. But it's not on current enrollment. It's a six semester average. And the numbers are driven by what the AOE gives us on that spreadsheet. Which I don't have saved on this thumb drive because I only saved the budget. And you saved the spreadsheet. So it's a number that they give us in that big long equalized people. The tech center one those numbers we get from them. The current enrollment impacts the tech center transportation reimbursement that we get. How many kiddos are riding the bus? So some of the other changes just so you know what I did in this budget draft prior to putting in the tier one cuts on the cuts page waiting for it to open. Oh. I reduced the HRA to 50%. Okay. Reduced the custodial to six FTEs. I added the second tech FTE that we discussed at the last meeting that wasn't in there. The tech budget cuts from Ray. I had already reduced object code 531 which is the telephone to $10,000 per building. Which was based on actual spending in the projection of what you're going to pay for the rest of this fiscal year. And then I went back through the staff sheet. Made the changes that were identified by the principals and again read every single contract that's in your two contract books to make sure that they were in there appropriately. And then I reduced the HRA administration expense down to $10,000 I think it was I didn't write that on my summary sheet here. Because I had a conversation and we paid $5 per employee per month so I just took your employee count multiplied that by five, multiplied that by 12 and used that for the projection, for the administration of the HRA. Which was a dramatic decrease. It was huge. Thank you. I think it was a huge increase from in there for 77, 840. But the SU spend assessment overshadowed a lot of the changes we had made. Where's the SU spend assessment? I believe it is on which page specifically it's on your print out? 11. 32% increase. And I think part of that too is your, in the old budget, the pre-K and the SPED assessment were combined. So it makes it look like your SPED assessment was under what you actually paid last year. So I think that could be part of what's causing the discrepancy, and then I actually moved the pre-K assessment to where it's supposed to be coded. That's some of it. 1,200 is where the SPED is at. Okay. Page eight. Page eight. Top page eight is where the SPED is at. So it's going from basically $880,000 to $1,015,000. But your actual SPED assessment last year was $879,727.57. And the FY21 is $1,015,450. And that's based on the needs of actual students that we have. Right. We actually budgeted SPED appropriately this year. So that's federal law, and there's no flexibility there. Are we going to wind up with a deficit that we have to deal with in FY20 for that? Probably. Next year report's not due for, I mean, this year, February or March. So the part that we sent is that. Right, we still haven't even got the one from last year fixed. Can I ask why the, that also depends on needs? Yeah. And if you have more kids than what we projected for in the budget, and we send out more referrals and more students to special placements, absolutely you're going to end up with a deficit. Sure. You can't prefer senior to senior in here. Right. So I mean they ask you special education budget on a whole and they like our percentage of it change? Yes. You went up to 36 something. 35. Yeah, but that doesn't seem like it would explain 14% increase or 15% increase. That's like 1% and 1% increase. Can I ask a question about 1,400 athletics and co-curricular? Would you mind if we just. Your FY20 sped assessment was 35.2%, 878, 733 and round up to a nearest dollar from what was in the budget. Your FY21 proposed assessment is 36.3%. So it's an increase of $136,717. In your sped assessment, which is the mistake that I discovered today, is not the same assessment that your SU assessment is. Because the boards all made a decision in 2015 when you merged SUs, that the sped assessment was only to be determined by your ADM. And your SU assessment is the average of the ADM in your October 1 enrollment numbers. So that's why for the SU, you're 42%. But for sped, you're only 36% because it doesn't take into account your current enrollment. Only the ADM number. So I had to go back through and redo all of the sped assessments today. Should we have made a different, I mean we were advised by our then business manager that that's how we should do things. There was a presentation in a conference room at the SU. And I'm just wondering if for the future we should look at how we do that. I think that's a conversation that you have to have with your full board. Perhaps. Would you say our actual percentage was again? Sorry. For this year? The 36? 36.3 is the sped assessment. Okay. So cross out the 42.5 and it should be 36.3 for sped. But the total proposed sped budget just to make sure the number on the spreadsheet or the sheet was right is still around like 2.8 million. Is that what? Yeah. 2.797383. Yeah. I'd like to go to co-curricular. The top three items on page 8. 1400. So the supervisor salary went up by 16,660. That was the formula era in the staff spreadsheet. And if you want to discuss any further than that, it needs to go under executive session because there's other impacts to the salary there. Okay. And then there's other salary and then there's health insurance. Health insurance went up by 11,000 in change. Is that a family plan? I bet. That would be a family plan. That's a huge difference. And then can I ask 810 dues and fees basically doubled? Mm-hmm. Right. Yep. Do you guys need to explain any of that? Sorry. I said, can you guys explain any of that? I have question marks next to them on my sheet. I don't know the answer to that. I would need to go back and look at the specifics for those. Yeah, the other part of that from and why they look like mistakes to me. Okay. And Tara, I'm sorry, is the 81 a true number? What we're saying? On the salary. I'm confused as to... No. Okay. That's a mistake. Okay. That was the mistake in the... The formula error. In the formula error that... Okay. So what should... I guess we should... I mean, it's public. It's published in the town report. The salaries? Aren't they? Individual staff salaries. Just this. Just let's not tie names. But at the same time, that line is going to wind up being in... Yeah, let's not tie a name. Like, what should that line actually equal? Yeah, I'd make a suggestion. Instead of having all these side discussions going on, either include everybody or... Well, there's some things that I absolutely cannot say in public session. I understand that. So, I mean, that's the board has to make that decision. I understand that. I'm not going to put my job on the line. I believe some conversation is going to not be able to hear any of it. Sure. Yep. Right now, we're trying to clarify the change in the line for 105 under athletics and co-curricular, which is the 1,400... I think 109 of those. ...on page. So should we make a list of things that we would discuss in non-public, and then at the end, we'll have a non-public session to get clarity on those before we move forward with this budget. Sounds good. I just feel like we can keep a list and then... 109. 109. 109. Our object code, 109. I believe it's the coach's salary, so that's the 41. I did have a question about 352, the other technical services. That one also... I'd made a note before that that looks like it's... Like, do you guys know what that is for? I've got a question mark next to it on my sheet. Which one was it, indeed? 352. PG. PG. Number 352, under section 1400. Yep. Basically, this hasn't had spending in it in previous years. That's not on this sheet, but budgeted for 52,000, and we spent 1,000 in FY19 and 357 so far this year. So, whether the 64, we've spent 357, 65,000. Out of 64,000, we've spent $357. Perfect. Which maybe it is rest and stuff that just haven't come out yet. It just seems... That does seem... It seems a little hard. And we did... Significant. Either things were coded differently in FY19 or we didn't spend in that. Which line are you on? 352. 352. It was $60,000 or $52,000 in contract. There's other technical services. Are there examples for what that other technical services would include? Right, because it's still under athletics and co-curricular. So, there was speculation, maybe it's refs, but maybe not. We don't know. Okay. Thank you. My computer only works so fast. Right. I'm curious about 600, 610 and 611. So, we have athletic uniforms, which drops down to zero, but then general supplies, there's a decrease there, so I guess I don't have a question there, but then supplies uniforms, and that's a decrease also, but what's the difference between athletic uniforms and supplies uniforms under athletics and co-curricular? 600 is the rollout code, and it really shouldn't be under a 600 code. It really needs to be under the detailed code. So, it should be under 611. Yeah, I mean right now that's... So, 611 is the right one. Right. Okay, I just didn't understand that. 600 is the overlying rollout for all supplies, so I roll that all up when I file the STAT report. Okay. Were we also going to look at 730, thinking that we could reduce STAT, that we thought we bumped it for some big equipment purchases? I might be mistaking this conversation, but I thought we had some planned large ticket items at one point, so we bumped it up, but we thought on a near-to-ear basis we didn't spend that, so we could take that back down. Right, that was the... Treadmills and... Treadmills, right. Right. Yeah, I did think that we were decreasing that sum. It was like we discussed that on last Thursday, between the curtain and not doing the Treadmills and stuff like that. So, what's been paid out of that 352 fund so far is your portable toilet. Oh. Portable toilet. That's important, actually, if you've ever been to a soccer game. Light rental? What? Light rental. Okay. Okay. That was... Asbestos awareness. Asbestos awareness in... It's not under 1400. I just looked up Object Code 352. Okay. So, if I just stick with the 1400, it's your toilets and your lights. Okay. So far is what's been paid for out of there. And how much could that have been? My thought is there could have been paid. It's 946 dollars and 68 cents. I believe, Bruce, please correct me or principles correct me if I'm wrong. Didn't coaches or umps and refs, didn't they used to get paid differently than how they're being paid this year? Yes. They used to get paid out of a checkbook. And now they're getting paid by central office. So I don't know if that was taken into account and it's just not being processed. Right. I just remember hearing something. It's just a process. I'm wondering if I'll have her backup for her budget so I can't answer these questions. Can we... If we... Last year we paid 357 dollars out of that budget line and this year our total so far has been... Last year it was 900 and this year it's 300. It's been 300. Could we be comfortable reducing that to... I mean even if we reduced it to 5,000 we'd be significantly over what we're spending. Yeah. I mean that's... We're talking about 352? Yeah. I'm wondering if this is such a big number because it was where the painting of the floors and the colors on the bleachers and... I should have all been under building and maintenance. That would have been... Yeah. Yeah. Not under contracted services for athletics. I mean not. But if the... Are we comfortable going down further or do we think 5,000 makes sense? Or... Just as a placeholder. Yeah, it's a big jump. It's a pretty significant jump already. That's 45,000 dollars, 47,000 dollars. 5,000 sounds good. That sounds like sufficient budget to pay for light rentals and portable toilets. I think we also need to find out what else was put there before you make that decision. That's fine. That's just my recommendation. Yeah. I would hate to see you short yourself if she actually put something in there that she knows is going to be an expense. Well, it was in FY19 budget at 63,000. It was increased a little bit for FY20 and then decreased by 10,000 for FY21. And it hasn't been spent in either FY19 or FY20. So my guess is that we just are continuing it along but there's not anything specific for it. So how would we find that out? Yeah, let's get through it. I think your building administration would need to go back and review the budget that was submitted by your athletic co-curricular director to find out what those expenditures were. You said we need justification or else it's getting out of hand. Those aren't things that I would make up. I think that we can preliminarily cut it to 5,000 and then ask Heidi why we shouldn't cut it to 5,000. Yeah. Because we don't want to cut anything that's going to hurt students. I mean, we want minimal impact on our students. But if it's been over-budgeted for the last three years, I mean, we're still over-budgeting at $5,000 if we spent 1,000. But not by such a huge percentage. And I guess I would like some explanation for 810 doubling, too. I mean, there could be a very good reason that we mis-budgeted last year with the change in how the two schools went together. I could foresee that. South Royalton used to spend 15,000 or Bethel whatever when we put combined. But I guess if we knew why that doubled, that would be helpful. So do we have any... So somebody of the administrators is going to be looking into this, all of you, or is one individual... Where is Heidi's office? Not the office. One of the challenges that the administration has is that we look at the 25-page version of the story. So these codes, when we see them, show up in four different places. So we don't see the total unless we take out a calculator and cross-reference the totals. So they're just trying to find out who's going to take it on. Remember how I taught you how to filter by object codes? Because that's what I just did. With 26 pages of specific line items, we're not filtering every line item to see how they all roll up together. I mean, I think... I mean, you can use the spreadsheet I sent you, though, that has it all totaled, and then you can drill down and get individual line items if you want. Like, I find that that works pretty well. And some of these cuts do equal that curriculum. I mean, you know, if we could cut $45,000, there's our FDE for the outdoor program and not reducing what we promised the community when we started this merger process. I mean, that's a concern of mine. So who's going to take it all? Yeah, so which one of the administrators is going to find out about these discrepancies within 1,400 athletics and co-curricular? Because we identified 352. We'd like to bring that down to 5,000 unless there's some actual line items that are absolutely necessary that we're not seeing. And then 8, 10, we'd love to see... We'd love to know why that's doubled. Yeah, so it looks to me like it was doubled because we were doing equity between the two campuses where there was a lot of dues and fees for the high school, but not much for the middle school or something like that. Or no, it's for co-curricular. So they split it between... Never mind. It's both the athletics and co-curricular. What was that last respect? So with the light rental, is that the drama light rental as well as the field? Soccer light rental, the night soccer lights. The night lights that need to be... Plus there's lights that you do have to rent for your events, that happen in the auditorium or gymnasium stages, so that's all rentals. And that only came to $900 last year? Well, we've paid so far, yeah. But I would also not bank on, probably there was other expenditures that weren't quoted right. Another factor is last year we ran one play and our goal last year was to have two plays and we're a play a improv night and a musical this year we will have a musical and there will be additional expenses it'll be a bare bones budget this year but I've heard from the community that they would like to see the return of the spring musical to its prior glory which will under which will be a bigger budget production than what we're doing this year we have a contract for about $1500 for the rights to this year's play any of the big Broadway shows usually three to five thousand dollars just for the rights and I don't know if that normally gets coded here or not so okay some of this is some of this is merger related because it used to just be athletics and all the co-curricular lines got added when with the merger we decided to have a co-curricular program so you know last year we were chasing games and coaches and uniforms the entire year this year we're just getting a new co-curricular director in place figure and stuff out so Reed is this something that you'll be able to get clarification on for us and I'm I'm confident having had the discussion so far that we'll be able to save the good chunk of money okay thank you I have questions marks next to my document okay we move on to another area yeah we're going to ask questions 20 to 13 staff training what page page 10 thank you we have 138 thousand five hundred dollars for tuition benefit and we haven't like FY 19 basically wasn't used at all and FY 20 it's like I think I think the total amount is still so is the tuition benefit the piece that's contractually obligated for everybody tuition benefit yep that's what that portion is and then the 320 under 2213 should be any professional development that's done by the district so you're in service days and so that's increased from roughly $2,000 to 33 we had talked last week about it was all under all the separate function codes under 320 okay so that's really just representative of pulling together everything so it's not a dramatic increase I think it is I have a question mark next to it it shows up under the 2020 location code because it seems like 2000 is a really small sum for that but 33 set thousand things big we know for sure that there are no plans to bring in trainers or speakers or things like that yeah I'm wondering if it's more of a typo that maybe it was meant to be $3,500 well there are other lines right things that are needed to get rolled up didn't I just read that you all said people to CPI training if you didn't do it as an above and beyond you did it out of there so we don't send them out we have a trainer okay it's more like that I was gonna say maybe I need to switch jobs yeah looking at I mean back to the kind of original thing though I think between those two lines between the 320 and 250 I really I know we've been budgeting in one place and spending another but I think we have both of those combined I agree and did I hear that you had a question mark there too yep so I got lots of notes next to this okay is that something that you could take on as well I guess we're giving everything to you because you're speaking I already looked in the increases they're coming from the Bethel campus so that would be a question I mean I don't it's not from the South Royalton okay okay we didn't put it in so so then so then Andrew I know Andrew or Owen we'd be asking you guys to get clarification on that part so I don't know because I'm seeing this like you perfect thank you just looking at those two codes though right now we have I mean I have a total up by code so the total for like all the departments for 320 and 250 right now is budgeted 220 something for which one for both contracted instructional services and the tuition benefit so that's 220,000 and yeah so just to look at like what we have an FY 19 there it's about a hundred thousand FY 20 so far is seventy eight thousand so I think we can cut us I mean not cut but right size that well 250 if that's contracted that should be pretty a pretty easy number to find we just need to what do you mean if this benefit is a contracted benefit this 138 right I think that that's a benefit that they can access that they don't miss it like everybody's not doing classes every time so you know like some percent it's kind of like the HRA some percentage of it gets used okay so we just need to know that that's a so between the two it seems like we could probably get seventy thousand dollars or something like that I don't know what the appropriate amount to trim it entirely but you know I think that those two we could get a significant so I think I think what the approach should be would be figure out what the total amount we want for those two categories I mean I think that the 33,000 is the easier one to cut so if we had an idea of what we wanted for right but I mean like those basically the two codes are two different things right can I suggest you guys just tell us the categories you like to see the money come out of and tell us how much you want cut rather than you know speculating on some of this well I don't necessarily I mean the thing with this though is that like part of the problem is that it's been coded in different places expense in different places and budget in different places what we want to do is have it so that our budget matches what our expenses are so you know I think between the two codes you want to take out a bunch but then you want them spread out among the different schools and different codes and stuff so that it's where we're actually going to be spending it so that when we get our expense reports later we don't have this mismatch of budget to expenses you know so I don't know what the best way of making it so that our expenses are going to match what we're actually budgeting but that's kind of what I'm asking is like can we take this amount out and then make sure that it's budgeted in the correct lines appropriate yeah thanks to and one of the things that I'm concerned about is like for example with the co-curricular piece I really don't think that we want to see $50,000 worth of cuts if there's $50,000 worth of programming that happens with that money but if it's been over budgeted then that's a place where we could find $50,000 that doesn't hurt our students or our community so I just don't feel like I have all the information to really make a clear direction right now and I think you know we need to be looking at these things to see if there's places that are under budgeted so that $50,000 that was in the athletic budget is actually supplementing some other place in the budget just need to make her and I'm happy to do whatever you all decide you want to do these are object codes that I do not control I know can we move on to another section do we want to do we want to try and specify an amount for them to train that by so between 250 and 320 so far this year it's 79,000 this is a rough estimate 79,000 and last year was 95,000 I think it's important when we think about that tuition benefit okay so 95,000 dollars that represents the whole year but I know that sometimes there are programs like the middle grades Institute that appeal gets written for at the end of the year people are taking it for credit and so I just want to make sure that there's still money in that we always under budget for what the potential is in that category because we know people aren't working on their master's degree all the time how about we say a total of 115,000 for the two line codes 115,000 I think that seems reasonable so that would mean trimming those two line codes by what do we say the total was so if we're taking it down to 115 that'd be 104,000 dollars in savings yes budget savings I see you want to move on to another section I have a question and yeah section page 11 2410 after the principal number 106 we see clerical salary we're in fiscal year 20 there was nothing and now fiscal year 21 we're asking for 162,000 it was probably just a coding those are gonna be for your administrative assistance that's where they're meant to be coded under where had they been before okay I don't think so wait no yeah because the admin salary is where the principles are and that was well I was just trying to look for where that clerical might have been placed in the previous year and this one I haven't found it so we don't have to pay anything into Veeamers for those administrative assistance I'm on 234 well we have had spending in those categories but we think they should be right that's what I thought they're on the same they're on the support staff contract yes we need to add that mandatory contribution for clerical staff that's for the administrative work staff I still don't know where this would have been otherwise though so I don't have any more areas does anyone is everyone still looking I don't have any more areas but I'm just saying that I haven't found one clerical salary was in another place so I'd love for that to be that's kind of a mystery because all you know otherwise the office of the principal is increased by 32% so I do I have your old budget I'm gonna see if I can look it up in here okay yeah ready remember we increased it by position last year during the year and we did add it looks like we talked about the overtime salary line under 2610 I think that's been changed I think you were saying that that was for summer help in Royalton well it's 130 though it's over time salary sure but they haven't that hasn't been coded to that nothing's been really it was like a thousand something which would make more sense for that line code so we think 130 we could probably bring down some as well I mean if we're budgeting it somewhere else if we think it's that either we need to reduce where had been being spent just for those who work here last year last meeting this is a line code that we think we're billing summertime help to and it's titled overtime salary just not yet necessarily overtime correct code for summer help temporary employees which is your salaries for subs but they're not really so great and 107 is technical or summer salary can you create a category for summer salary all it's going to change anyways on July 1st so if we're not using that stick it in other salary 10 grand yeah I mean if we're spending a thousand out of it other lines Andrew no well you know we've reduced a bunch of codes repairs and maintenance and the 420 and 431 codes we've been way over budget on and so we need to go through and make sure that so I don't know if we want to add money to those codes the hard part here is that there's been a lot of one-time expenses it looks like we've added we acquitted it in 420 right we have okay spent 177,000 in FY 19 and 115,000 in FY 20 there so do we add enough the other thing we want to think about is you know I think a lot of these other categories we're finding savings in are probably yeah right and so we got to think of the boiler I don't know if there's a way that we can now we're trying to make cuts but we've also got to be remembering that we have a boiler that needs yeah when was that 12 hours ago okay back to the back of cracks yeah right for one thing I don't really know like 420 is supposed to be but the repairs and maintenance it seems like I mean the 431 you're saying repairs and maintenance or is there yes I still don't feel like I'm clear on where exactly we went over on that if we knew that it was on building or if we knew that it was on things that were truly one-time expenses or that have been expenses rolled out over the past two years then it feels like we could make a more informed decision but right now with the information that I have I don't feel like I can make a good decision 420 and 431 but I'm I'm focused more specifically on 431 because that's an area that we know from the audit the draft audit that we got that we did have a deficit and or where we overspent so I just want to make sure that we're adequately funded in an area but if we can cut because we've done the things we set out to do that we can I'm seeing some things in here that shouldn't be coded here okay I'm looking at I'm looking at 420 and for an example you have seventeen thousand nine hundred and sixty three dollars for sixty five hundred gallons from dead river that has its own object code yeah so this is again where they're being invoices are being coded at the building level under the wrong codes okay they're going to the wrong spot in the budget but it's good information that that was happening yeah the problem is that we're trying like we're cutting a lot of money we're cutting a lot of money and if the fuel oil like we're trying to set it based on what we spent in that point 20 and those numbers wrong and then we're you know we've got to base these on something and so we need to have those numbers from the information we should bring up can you can you export that so that I can you know I can add it to these categories and try to come up with them what were actual there was another thing that we had asked the administrators to look into I guess this is like down the road after the budget I'll just save it for later it was in the minutes last time I think it was just about getting clarification on grounds for plowing and yeah one of you gonna take that I think David said he was going to take that on clarification that historical grounds yeah historical on both campuses and then what's the actual what's the contract now and an idea is that the best way you know one contract for both campuses for snow removal and for a lot of you know groundskeeping is that but we do want to look at historically what was paid in the past so that we can kind of see a South Royal's prior year contract was for $70,000 for both so what our share of this is is in line with what it was okay thank you so from looking at this and knowing how much work I know the principals did in the presentation today I think we need to decide if we're going to ask that be put in the next draft it's hard to know like we need to kind of know how close we are to our target before we can know whether I am my target is holding the tax rate essentially I would like to see a budget with the cuts or the like reductions and corrections in this budget in addition to that tier one work with exception to the outdoor program I think it makes sense or what I'm hearing makes sense at the elementary level in terms of right sizing classes and I'm comfortable with that I'm just I just was thinking about what you said about building an enduring outdoor ed program I don't know I agree and I I think ideally the it sounds like the boiler issue is at the point that it needs to be done and so as soon as we get that that we should essentially put that into a budget as well and I didn't say this but I did talk about this earlier I also think though when talking about potential that's what we should say is that it could be potentially three cuts because I think they should be dependent on our preschool screening so right now about the elementary I'm still talking about but I'm actually saying it should be three because right now we have two preschool teachers in the budget for the back of campus it could be more further savings but we won't know until April 15th so it seems like we should budget for that person but then I think the problem is the your results that you're gonna get from your screening are gonna depend on what the options are they're presented with so if they're given a full full-day preschool option that might change their response and we don't do dogs I think people expected so can I ask again what the board's target is we want to essentially be level-funded but from an equalized tax rate right right that's not like we need to hold the same budget number it's after you do the cat factor of calculation with the change in students in the change in revenue that you want to see tier two so again so we go there I think we need to look at the rest of the tier so we may need to go deeper than what's in the additional tiers if we want to be level-funded okay and I think that's your goal I think you to tell us that we'll do it I feel like we did at our last meeting no more is 2% is what I had circled yeah that's 2% of the royal 10 equalized rate which was yeah we didn't go into that level of detail 2% 2% was that your goal and I interpreted that to me 2% on the expenditure budget okay that was how I interpreted that sorry not on your tax rate okay but at the last meeting we were also talking about the tax rate and so I think that that should also be considered it may have been before you arrived okay do we have the number of what is a percentage on the tax rate is that a terror question that's 1.6 cents so whatever that comes out to 1% so 2% 2 cents which is like I keep forgetting to look down to see if you want to jump in and sorry I mean it's tough to make it into it no I did not well while they're figuring that out did you want to show us tier two and three one two do you want to say because we built tiers two and three with the understanding that the board wanted substantial cuts and some of these are things that could happen as necessity but they're not necessarily our recommendations okay okay on the estimated tax rate sheet it says that we need to get our per pupil cost down to $18,756 for there to be no penalty so what is that one yes I think they're Andrew and I were talking about that when I first got here the formula didn't carry over right it was adding the cuts the tier one cuts that they gave me earlier today rather than deducting them oh my on the tax sheet per pupil isn't quite as bad so you're under the penalty right now anyways at the taking out the 164,000 adding back in 27,000 for the outdoor thing brings it the changes to 164,328 so that brings your per pupil spending to 1861714 and the threshold this year is 18756 okay so you're under the threshold just want to make sure that while we still are getting that 0.04 reduction that we're actually getting that and not being penalized and losing before we move on the cuts can we just look at the revenue sheet real quick revenue so we have 60,000 disappearing from Medicaid reimbursement is that not getting Medicaid funds nobody and is there a reason for that or just federal Medicaid funds you need to submit a plan and it has to be approved by the Medicaid Medicaid group yet can't be automatic cannot be they have to cannot buy this word okay I mean is that something that we can do though like your principles were advised if they wanted to access Medicaid funds they needed to submit a plan by the grant coordinator at the last meeting I think we're also advised not yes we were really we were not money so we spent an awful lot of money on literacy materials so as far as the like Medicaid never guaranteed right reimbursement based on necessity and needs and what we submit up so why I don't understand how we don't have needs any longer needs okay but you don't know how much Medicaid revenue you're going to get until you know what your reimbursement so what students but based on usage of the Medicaid funds in the last fiscal year as we spent it all a we spent it all right and continue to spend it on positions that were promised to be paid through Medicaid funds okay may not we may not get all of that Medicaid money this fiscal year because the Medicaid cushion is gone right so then why would we not apply for more money I don't know that's a good Cynthia question Cynthia's the one that told them we're still getting the money I guess it's just the pot is building where it's sitting right do my understanding that correctly well you're you there's positions that are allocated to be covered by Medicaid funds in the FY 20 budget cycle and this fiscal year that so one of the plans of 173 is to take that Medicaid away and we don't I mean that's a state decision okay about how that's going to go so we're trying to be very conservative and say look exhausted what we have probably more than exhausted what we have and we really can't anticipate that we're gonna have it again until we see it see it and we were told that by the auditors you should not do this right away until it builds up a little bit more before you commit things to that and so so if we are overspending our Medicaid grant then are we lining ourselves up for another deficit it's not a Medicaid grant or Medicaid Medicaid reimbursement reimbursement so okay our Medicaid clerk mm-hmm has to submit quarterly reports to the government and we get a reimbursement a percentage of that back as a reimbursement that number fluctuates based on child count who qualify for Medicaid okay your answer to your question I believe is no however the auditors told us we we've been living on it for the last year and we probably should slack off a little bit that's what we're trying to do okay you know we don't have when Tara's saying we're not we're pulling that back we're just doing what the auditors told us to stay off it and not make commitments right now so still collecting the money not okay fine thank you appreciate that we've got one person in the office that's all she does right but her salaries also be so are we not using grant funds for positions anymore because do you this supervisory union still is doing that it has been a highly high recommendation from Cynthia that when we do our grant plans for next year that we try to take that away and try to find a better way to use grant funds because if you use grant funds to pay the salary then you pay that 19% penalty but you can't right you can't budget locally for a position and then get grant money for it ever again and you can't budget for a position locally and then also get grant money for it because then you're supplanting and that's against the law yeah I just wanted to make sure that we were like we have 19% budget and if our free and reduced numbers continue to drop our grant money is going to continue to drop oh yeah okay unless we can just kind of speculating that's all my statement was speculation but to not think that there would be a change in experience there's some experience now but if we go to ground zero well we already are changing the way the free and reduced applications are being done because we are being made to do so by the child nutrition program so all free and reduced applications have to go through me so when the next school year rolls out there's gonna it will be coming to me not to the schools and I'm going to also be rolling out an online application so I'm hoping by taking that personal person out of the free and reduced process that maybe we'll get some better participation from families because it'd be more private and if we have higher participation then we can do free breakfast for everybody then we can do potentially even free lunch at some point you go to that program okay and it drives our other and it but it drives all your grants right so that would be such a goal back on the Medicaid reimbursement thing I can understand not spending out of that pot of money you cannot budget for it locally and just if we get to offset your local revenue but it seems like that's like an estimate of what you're expecting to get anything at all went to a contest and panel so we spent it on other stuff as you kept the Medicaid money and spent it on contest now which was the benefit of all kids in the entire supervisor sure I'm still confused about how this all works but okay is the tuition number accurate for this year that was adding five at 17,137 that's what we did for their revenue projection based on what we have right now adding five I mean this this number the 499 was basically two years ago right I don't know what number you need to build your budget last year I think we just took the previous years so we don't have an estimate of what our revenue is I did so much of this stuff make darn sure to get that in your count of kids but we don't but I did the revenue last time so we're showing you can can the tuition number be verified for the next draft I'm just wondering so that was adding five kids okay and we think that's safe to add five kids I have a list but it doesn't have a number can we move on to the next year I don't mean to cut you off but I just feel like we need the information on what a percent is on that rate and so tier two adds another $99,000 in personnel these are seen proposed before but just broken out by a priority that includes the one-third of a French position the world language position at the elementary school level five FTE which is the high school family and consumer science program okay and on the tier three by the way those cuts within the tier are not prior to so in other words we're not saying the one that's first is the one we'd like to cut first okay wanted break that down when we were talking about para educators before I mean can can you cut one or two of them or does it all or none so so I I'm curious what just the first tier gets us I don't feel like I have a clear sense of that at this point in time yet minus the outdoor at peace I just feel like moving from where we are now to to a pretty harmful place in terms of budget doesn't make a lot of sense to me if we don't know what amount of money is going to trim a percent from from the actual tax rate it just it feels like a really painful mathematical exercise that I don't know that we need to go through if we don't need to I would say I agree with that I mean you need to know what right if we don't need to make a million dollars and cuts then why would we do that right or even really go through it in a way as if it's somehow becoming reality I know I don't feel like I have a clear enough understanding of the things that we pulled out that we think maybe errors or that could easily be reduced in addition to that tier one minus the outdoor at peace like I want to see what that does I guess and if if that all gets plugged in and it's not coming out as close enough then we could start to I mean I think we would ask for you to start to prioritize based on under enrollment etc etc but I don't I really don't want to be getting to this place where we're here to tier two and tier three I really do not want to have to get there no and we and we don't want to either right we just based on priorities starting with the goal yeah please affect on students try to show you as much money that was possible yeah and just to be clear tier one includes two elementary school students and then tier three includes another two so be a total of four potentially five if our enrollment preschool were low okay yeah and that concerns me also so it was that direct enough I don't know I start to ram ramble after 9 p.m. to be totally transparent you have any no nutrition this year not yet well we may but we don't know about it yet okay um anyone else have thoughts on this I agree with what you said okay I would like to return to the revenue okay all right so looking at your count of students I got just the list that you sent out 43 tuition students for this year and if we multiply that by 17 to 50 well what do we get like if they go to RTCC you don't get tuition for them if they go to Hartford you only get a half a tuition for them so why if they're going to RTCC do we not get like why do they even count towards our on your list so how do we get a list of like how many we can actually count I don't think I've seen I because it's part it's your tuition receivables that I bill right that's where that list come from I remember so are you talking yeah this is tuition receivable students great so this is not that one that was after your response that what I sent you isn't what you wanted because you wanted to know what the actual grade counts were for your projections right no and that's that's what you said so that's what that is my notes as I sent it on 116 and 117 need to give tuition revenue okay that's what I can't find and I can't access that spreadsheet because I can't get into the SU network from here I'm running off a thumb drive for your budget stuff okay so I'm a little cute so this says students receive great I took out all of you that's just for your question when you asked me to give you a the actual grade grade levels so but this includes students that we don't there could be kids on there that they are going to RTCC and you don't get any kids from Randolph we have one that's a questionable residency the other two are swaps we were over projected we are we are have more than what you budgeted that's why we added five nice this year's revenue any other revenue I mean the other part of it is that we're increasing our tuition rates so just like you shouldn't did you count increasing the tuition rate for current like so if you keep the same number you'd have an increased amount of revenue because I think I did that before we said it okay my brain doesn't work after 9 o'clock either yeah it gets late yep so double check that makes me think that once we're done with the revenue piece we need to figure out when to meet again and I feel like always there's a date that's town clerk say we have to have everything in by but then there's a date that they give you on the down low or when they really have to download date from either of your town so January 24th is your date also so that is what they've given me in your absolute drop dead you have to have your warning posted by the 31st of January yeah basically another week if we printed ourselves but statuary requirement is only 10 days prior to the meeting you have to release the information to the public but I mean like we'd have to have the warning but your warning has to be done right but the actual mailers to your town people you as a school board have to pick up that expense that's what your benefit is by going with the town as you get included in the town book and it's all in one night's neat little packet for all the voters but there's several districts that go after town meeting that have to generate their own books okay is it possible for someone from the SU office to make phone call and see if the 24th is seriously the last day yes please actually all right it's not the 24th I'm sure it'll be the 27th which doesn't leave you know just has the weekend separating to feel like there have been years when it's like February 1st which is late I mean one of my other districts just let their town person know how many pages they needed reserved in the book okay and their town was okay with that but I don't know what your town clerks so could that be an additional question if we can tell them how many pages we need if that's close enough do we know how many pages we got 17 here and then we got roughly 10 for the SU and then you got your board letter your SU the superintendent's letter your building administrators letter 17 pages Tara knows is what we're trying to say we're gonna put 17 pages into a town report this is your budget that's what we normally do pages and pages yes yeah and if we yeah okay right so about I don't know have the printer have you all written your principles letters for the town report in my head several times so you however long those are have you written your board but we're working on it so however long that is so you have to total that all up and I think we've done a one-pager classically I mean I don't think we go I mean when we do an overview so when do we meet again I mean I think that's right that's we got to figure out is when can we expect to get the revisions we've asked and you all wrote notes for the revisions that you discussed earlier that I don't know about we didn't you know oh the tier one tier one was already taken into account in your handout what's it we have a number of questions and concerns oh it's tier one was kind of we made some changes in tier one by about a hundred thousand or more but tier one being just those four because this stuff was already part of budget to that's what you and I get on the phone before the last meeting those cuts were already okay for in draft two so that puts in a different way the two elementary teachers were already pulled tonight that was in draft okay that's on your tax sheet on draft three that was the discussion we had where it was adding the expenditures rather than reducing them so I verbally gave you what the new purple spending was was based on those cuts and then adding back in the 27,000 for the outdoor ed that you don't want to take out okay so that puts us in a different place then I think yeah right totally great so I mean unless there's others that you talked about that aren't truly in here and we still don't know what a percent is like in terms of a dollar amount okay so I guess on the tax sheet if you can like with the copy that we've been saying you can sort of hijack the page and just type in like the the bottom line number instead of doing the Psalms from the previous pages well that's what we did on the tax sheet yeah and that's why there's that cut page so that if you want to make cuts we just put it on the cuts page and then it only goes to the tax sheet and then when you finally decide what you want to do then we update the expenditure report which then updates the pivot table when you want to meet we were starting to discuss that so should we try for a special meeting Thursday at 4 I mean I have the policy meeting I'm not going to get this done tomorrow I have the auditors in my office all day tomorrow okay not and on Friday I'm at business managers 101 so it's got to be Thursday you have we have a full-born meeting Monday night I have Stratford Tuesday night that I now need to run another budget for I think we should perhaps have that meeting on Thursday afternoon just to see what we can do well if we're not gonna have new information then it doesn't yeah I mean the only information that we could have there is if the administrators could come up with anything that answers to those line codes yeah and and I almost feel like that could be done electronically yeah yeah have you guys had any discussions with the staff about places that they can save money no I know that they came to one of the previous meetings and right right but you know it seems like if it's more of a collaborative process it might be better than just staff cuts that come down other places that could be savings or something like that just about yeah I think it would be difficult to have staff making suggestions I agree about that I agree but you know if they had creative ideas about ways they could save money that would prevent us from having to cut staff I think asking about since they're the ones who are about the level where money is getting spent to some extent that doesn't answer the question of what our next meeting is no I'm not fine yeah I'm willing to me as soon as we have new information but if we can't have a new report by Thursday then and if we can't move the town deadline I mean I think we're in sort of crisis mode trying to figure out how we prepare a budget and how we get it warned in the appropriate time line and communicate it out to people so I don't really know when our next meeting should be we end up fighting the bullet and saying that we're gonna publish our own report this year but that we need to get the mean does the warning have to go out in the town report it doesn't the warning doesn't have to go out okay so if the rest of you could then you have a core I know it's really exciting I won't be here unless you're doing it I mean I'm at business managers 101 in Berlin from nine to three is class so if we did a 4 p.m. we could start at three and then if we have questions for Tara you could have an exciting commute on speakerphone sorry my prior life is cringing when you make statements like that so we're gonna the principles are gonna meet on with Tara on Thursday at some point right principles in you okay and then how does 4 o'clock Friday work three o'clock on Friday the campus right of service I can do three o'clock on Friday I don't think I can do before 3 30 on Friday you could start without me that's for sure yep about the rest of the board can you guys 3 o'clock Friday so my job usually to pick up Lenny from daycare which okay that's on Friday well they still have a quorum if Rodney can you do 3 o'clock Friday we could also say 3 30 if that's good to be a little bit of a princess Friday is my 40th birthday okay I mean I have to I mean it would have to own I couldn't stay late I mean everyone else needs to stay late right and anticipate having dinner at least with my husband so if if you could be there at 3 and then I'll be there by 3 30 and then we'll still have a quorum we'll take him in and out I'm sorry okay all right and Andrew be there at 3 3 am not me you don't want to see that so to start the meeting it will be Rodney Lisa Jessica and Andrew 3 4 people and then I will be there in time to relieve Jessica as quickly as I possibly can because it's her 40th birthday and I would I would hope so if we if you guys when are the ones the admin team meeting for meeting Thursday I blocked up my entire day out for them for this admin team okay thank you so if we could get the electronic report as soon as possible that would be after that meeting so we can digest the information etc that would be lovely thank you so much so and in the budget year you're expecting us to bring to you has a 0% tax increase just to be our instructions for Thursday minus one well now let's clarify is that prior to the CLA or after the CLA pre-CLA that has an impact CLA pre-CLA equalize people I mean thing is if we hold equalized tax rate flat so I think it find out what it takes to do that before before the CLA okay you lost me 930 at night right yes so we're turning at 934 and our next meeting is Friday at 3 p.m. Royalton campus