So the board observed that there are possible benefits of governance merger, but that positive about the relationship among the school districts do not exist. And I find this interesting in the context of what we just heard earlier about in the idea of visit relationships or systems. So could you just speak about that, because it is, can we use adult relationships getting in the way of what admittedly from the board will be actual benefits? So is there any move, and I know you're just joining to try to move some of those relationships to systems back for a benefit to children? Would you like some candid opinion? Candid opinion would be fine. Candid opinion would be fine. Okay, so we have had fair data on this board for a long time, and they're of different sizes. They're brought in different ways, some simple. We have some very strong principles that work very well with their board in the very honest way. And there are boards that like the way it is and don't want it to change. There are other boards, Breptown, Pelgrin, and Buron has this striving towards a more hands-off approach to governance. We want to be, we drive our governance through vision, admission, and policy governance. We want to allow those people that are experts in education to be running our schools and not security members who really don't have the time to dedicate to understand many things like for a different development. There are other districts that have been very hands-on in their governance of the school. They have been during the school day, they've been there in a very hands-on approach to where that's been a traditional model for what they consider to be success or a community-based schooling. And there's a real difference there. And there's no, in the structure that is a super-athlete union where we're sharing our executive officer between districts that have this community-supported school system and in other districts that has a peer-supported, or education-leaders-supported school system where we're trying to leave them in hands of those people. That superintendent is split between two visions and missions, and it makes the governance of the greater surprise region difficult. That's where those potential relationships will seem to be at all. So anything else that, what's that? We have worked exhaustively on this for three years. We have been asked to do what we ask our students to do. We have been asked to solve a problem, to potentially look for a solution that's outside of our comfort zone. And we welcome that and know that we have really worked very hard and exhaustively these past three years. And we appreciate your time and your consideration today. Part of that, yeah. So we've represented to Newberry for today. Okay, let's let, no, no, no, no. And if you could remind us, if you'd like to see yourself for a doctor. Good morning, I'm Paul. I'm the chair of the Newberry Board. Daniel, for a new board doctor. I'm Henry Hausman, new board member. So, and then. And so if you want to just give us your information and then leave us some time for questions, that would be great. Thank you. We even practiced a couple of times. Oh, good. All right. So we'll need the 10 minutes, I hope. Okay, on behalf of the Newberry School Board, I thank you for the opportunity to speak with you about our alternative government structure proposal. And according to that 46, R&D Supervisor Union was expanded on July 1st of this year to incorporate the existing Blue Mountain SU. The Secretary of Education has heard the proposal to unify Union School District by merging the boards of Blue Mountain, Graduate Elementary, Arco High School, and Newberry Elementary. We firmly believe that this is in the educational interests of our students at Newberry Elementary, and Pre-K through sixth grade school, remains governed by as independent school board within our newly expanded supervisory unit. Here are seven key reasons. Number one, loss of flexibility and local responsiveness and educational program, programming, excuse me. Number two, precedent in granting school districts with circumstances similar to Blueberry's independent status under the alternative government structure. Number three, consequential financial implications for Newberry taxpayers, setting conditions for friction within the Merge Board. Number four, disruption of an extraordinarily stable and supportive existing relationship between the school and its community. Number five, limited gains from future collaboration because of effective collaboration in the past and new opportunities for further collaboration under the Just Expanded Supervisory Union. Number six, anticipated savings through avoiding duplication in ASU staffing that has just been put in place under the new SU. And number seven, the likelihood that the neighboring district's actions will cause the proposed Merge District to fall well below the I-46 goals with respect to compatibility in the number of students. Brief expanding on each of these items. Number one, like all schools, the Newberry Elementary sometimes needs a high degree of flexibility and responsiveness to address its unique circumstances. Among many possible examples Newberry has recently had to address a cluster of students determined to disrupt the classroom activities by acting out. Most of these students do not require special education but rather are dealing with social emotional issues. And response to local board, principal, and staff with full parental support have just established a separate multi-age classroom with an experienced teacher to work with this small group of students until they're participating, productively, in a regular classroom. We believe this kind of creative response to an immediate need would be far less likely with a merge board preoccupied with five school fees. Number two, we are aware that the other school districts with characteristics similar to Newberries were not recommended for ASU-46 consolidation. For instance, the secretary did not recommend the merger between Woodbury and Hodgwick because it was not, and I quote, not clear whether there was sufficient educational or physical benefits to do so while the other intertwined relationships continued to exist, end quote. Our Bradford-Newberry situation appears to mirror Hodgwick and Woodbury and that both will remain within the ASU into the future, and both are surrounded by unlike structures, Walcott and Green in Greensboro and Thessalonweights River. Most important, both are of a scale so small that fiscal and educational opportunities can most readily be achieved through closer collaboration and cooperation within the ASU without a unified board superstructure. Number three, Newberry tax payers will be facing honorous increases in Newberry's, excuse me, honorous increases. Newberry's discipline budgeting has resulted in the lowest cost for people at $12,910 and the lowest tax rate of $1.40 of the four towns in the village proposed to district. Under the proposed unified district, Newberry tax payers would be asked to assume long-term liabilities disproportionate to their own modest school debt. In particular, Bradford's continuing $1,150,000 bond will contribute considerably more to the combined tax rate than Newberry's own $120,000 long-term debt, which will be extinguished within three years. Even more important, BMU's teacher contract has the highest staff pay levels of the proposed district and the other schools, including Newberry, will have to assume those levels. All these additional costs were voted on and are being expended by communities other than Newberry. And the facilities and the programming was not intended to benefit Newberry students. The resulting tax bill for Newberry with little or no visible benefit would surely set up conditions for this board among the communities and their school boards, which have enjoyed cooperative relations for decades. The proposed merger, number four, the proposed merger would undermine the stability of the community school relations in indirectly scattered morale and educational quality. Our current school board members have served for 22 years, 10 years, and three years, respectively. Our principal, the 70 years of service, has the longest tenure in the SU. Our town has voted down school budgets only once in the past four decades. Community support has been demonstrated time and time again through programs like RoaRoa, in which home gardeners contribute produce to the school breakfast and lunch programs. We believe distancing the high, local, and often personal contact of the voters with the school in need is one of our school's strongest assets, enthusiastic community support. Number five, effective July 1st, the R&T students' driving union was expanded to include Blue Mountain School with a highly experienced but almost entirely new RoaUSU staff. The administration now consists of the superintendent, assistant superintendent, financial manager, curriculum coordinator, and even a new receptionist. The team is demonstratively committed to fostering further collaboration in fact, the new superintendent and financial manager have moved directly from BMU, thereby guaranteeing familiarity with the district's expansion and facilitating cooperation. We see few of any educational or financial benefits remaining from the proposed merger that cannot be achieved more directly through collaboration. Number six, the expanded OASU has already achieved significant savings, most notably through the elimination of duplicate expenses for the superintendent, the business manager, and other rescue roles. Additional financial efficiencies through the unified union district are likely to be far less material. Number seven, yesterday in the advisory vote, the citizens of Blue Mountain Union District voted 443 to 183 to close its high school and offer school choice if a merger is forced upon the district. Given that overwhelming sentiment, we believe it probable that in the near future the proposed district will fail to meet the compatible configuration and minimum student numbers of that 46. Without Blue Mountain School, Blue Mountain becomes a K-8 school, like our adjacent U-36 Union School Waste River. This K-8 arrangement will be incompatible with the proposed unified district. Only 681 equalized students will comprise of the proposed unified union district, failing the act of 46 threshold. On behalf of our students, we respectfully submit that these reasons, individually and particularly collectively, are you overwhelming for our proposed alternative government structure? Combining our newly expanded R and T Supervisory Union with the continuation of existing local school boards. Thank you very much for your consideration. All right, yes, I'll. So, one of our questions for the board and also perhaps for the secretary. I'm just trying to rationalize, there's a statement in here that the Secretary of Education has further proposed a unified union school district by merging the boards of Blue Mountain Union and talking a little bit about the Blue Mountain Union. But when I'm looking at the report from the secretary, the primary recommendation is a merger of Oxbow, Bradford and Newbury. So am I missing something? Well, I understand that the EMU has recently been assigned to Orange and Supervisory and that occurred after the publication of the secretary's file. But that's just an assignment. Well, we're not, which can be changed, but the secretary's initial recommendation was for the. For the EMU. For the three districts. Until they've got their rights off. Right. Yeah, wait, where's that move? Yeah. But it was my understanding of not absolutely positive. But my understanding was that in the Blue Mountain information, the Blue Mountain was directed to now become part of the course merger. So it was two separate spots in the report. And there are two. Yes, there are two separate spots. But I think they sort of stand independently. I think there are a few different options. So I guess the question I have for you is, if we just leave Blue Mountain out of the equation and let's just assume that they could be assigned with different issues.  Yes. Okay. And I think we sort of addressed that in one of the points, as far as the economy of scale. If you look at other options or situations that have happened like hardwood and where the secretary just points to that there wasn't enough economy to make that push forth it. And our proposal back to the state when we did our alternative governance, we suggested that really our best way forward would be to include the EMU because of that ability to bring in more students to create more of a governance structure. As far as if you're going to look at merging, we see this as really the better way forward if the EMU is not part of the equation and we can be struggled to see why that would make sense. So if the merger included EMU, you'd be supportive of a merger? As long as we can keep our own board. So not necessarily the merging of the entire piece, but rather trying to move this governance structure further would be more attractive with the EMU part of it because of the numbers with just the three of us the numbers we just didn't feel like the numbers bring it with us. Because with the EMU mountain, was it brings the number to 700? Yeah. And we got that heard, it's the 1300. And then we run into the tax implications of that. So it just, when we went through our 7006B study, it became very unattractive financially for our communities. It was fully not. And that's why this study wrote about that it just didn't physically make sense in our tax where they were not supportive. Sorry, I just want to follow up because I want to be really clear on what your wishes are. So if EMU, I didn't quite hear you. I just want to make sure I understand. When you were talking about governance structure with EMU, are you talking about a supervisory union with everybody continuing to have their own school? Okay, so you're not in favor of one supervisory district. But you do, like, many of the S-year including when I was doing that study. Absolutely. But with each, but you still all have your own. Yeah, and our biggest thing is that we just feel right now with all of the changes that we're going on going on. OESU itself has had many struggles for many years. And we feel like we're right now in the cusp of true opportunity. We're at personal. And I feel, I feel that going forward with that course merge would jeopardize that opportunity. And so we feel like that we can all come together under each individual board and work towards a mutual goal. There's a true opportunity. And what's the distance between two high schools? 15 miles, 17 miles. Probably at 50. Probably at 17. But that EMU includes, obviously, rotten and they're much further in and out. So the driving distance is deceiving. I think OESU is in Vermont, right? So you can drive in a straight line, just do a lot of these things. You just want to be in the distance. Doesn't have to be any time. I'm quite good at bargaining. You see what I'm mentioning about the salary schedules. My understanding is that the EMU is part of this blinding at this point. You're going to be bargaining collectively on this end of the road. That doesn't necessarily mean you're in another single contract or even if you're two single contracts, single salary schedule. So you still could bargain in separate contracts because of the bargain collectively. And even if you're in another single contract, you can still have separate schedules to this end of the road. If I'm wrong, there's lots of them in parts here. There's a new superintendent for OESU as of last month. And our new superintendent has to address previously un-compliant mandates like special education and transportation. So I'm thinking about that and I'm thinking about what you just said about the customing opportunity. And I'm wondering if you thought about whether a superintendent is going to be able to address these new opportunities, whether it be multiple contracts. If your proposal stands, or your counseling stands, will your superintendent be able to do the work? I think my concern is, when I hear superintendents having to respond to lots of different boards directives and agendas, can that superintendent be the educational leader that we would like to refer to? I guess I'll address that. Because we were aware of LNICI and the new finance managers coming from BUB, wouldn't there is a tremendous level of excitement in regards to the leadership we believe we now have? Our board, which we're going to submit to you tomorrow, has come up with a proposal that would be used as a process for future ROE issue meetings, which I believe will address many of the things that you were talking about. I think, unfortunately, because of the fact that we have had so many changes and interim people doing the job, I've been on the board. I'm the 22 years. So I've seen a lot of history. And I can tell you that when issues were brought to the board and well-presented by this member of his or her staff, I cannot recall ever having a situation where the board didn't give its full cooperation. I think because of all the chaos and confusion, and we were also in the middle of trying to do a new teacher contract when the special ed information came out, we applied for waiver and tried to put that information off on that decision. And then we were in a position where we had an interim superintendent, which we didn't really determine until already end of the school year. So things were a big tactic to settle these. What we're proposing is through the Act 46, and I have to tell you in front of me, this has been a very long three or four years. But on the other hand, it was the right thing to do. In our mind, it forced us to sit back and say, are we doing the right thing now? And what do we need to do in the future? So I believe with our suggested meeting schedule and how we're gonna put things together, I believe we can change things dramatically. And I believe those issues were got to transportation and special ed. If you put the right people focused on it and the board understands they were empowering people to get this done, then we're gonna solve all of these things. I have complete confidence that we do. And I guess what I need to also say that when we, it was mentioned earlier in the last report by the Oxbow slice draft report, we had two public meetings with those four boards being due, the other boards involved. And we had a lively discussion, I guess we can think of a way to put it together. But one of the questions that was asked in both meetings was please tell us what we cannot accomplish by working collaboratively that would be accomplished in forcing this work. I asked it myself twice. The first meeting I received no answer. The second meeting I received was just easier. Well, if you consider what we wrote and what we talked about in our proposal, we've been working on this for three to four years now. I would really appreciate you giving full consideration to not based on your decision based on what's easier. Because we have worked very, very hard for what we have in new interventions. And we believe we're moving in a very good direction. We would like to continue. I have two. Mark, do you have your visual? I guess you just asked one of the things about what can be accomplished. I think we heard earlier today and we've heard it in previous meetings that one of the things that happens when you bring adults together as one school board as opposed to multiple school boards is that it focuses on conversation more and it allows the administration of the school system to have everybody around the table at the same time. So I guess that would be the answer to that question that you're asking. Yes, and I think once you get a referring to the additional information that's provided tomorrow, you will see in that proposal that that's the time to start making money. I don't think we do enough of that. We have done that in various areas over the 20 years I've been on the board. We were granted a number of points before I sat down at that meeting on occasions to deal with additional topics of interest. There's no reason why we're going to continue to do that. But our point is that we don't believe forcing equity into a version of this is going to make that any easier. We actually need to make some progress. Oh, and if I can say, I'm sorry, I just want to go back to the question about how would it be easier to do this all at once versus sort of spreading it out? I think it was part of the question what we sort of have had these conversations in meetings as far as we have this special ed issue that needs to be dealt with very, very quickly. Our concern as board members as well is there's serious conversations that have to happen if a force merge is set upon us. We have to discuss our agreement. We have to move ourselves forward in a government structure. We have to come up with the voting regulations and how all of those things are going to be set up. Those are intense, very emotional conversations that need to take place. So that support for those conversations is also going to need to be there. And so which one would be more draining on a newly formed SQ staff? Whether, and it depends on which way you look at it. Personally, I think that emotional conversation of Articles Agreement trying to move forward into that is a much harder thing to support and a much more drainage thing. Whereas if we can continue to work the way we have, give them the time to get through the administration staff and then try to collaboratively come up with those things, I think it would be a better option for success. I think we only have one minute left, but sorry. Aubrey, do you want to ask a question? Yeah, really quick question. So how do you propose if you're to continue with independent governance structures to sort of control the variability in your student counts? You mean in terms of the number of students attending member elementary? Yeah, just in terms of within the governance structure, your equalized pupil count, one of the challenges is when you have a smaller governance structure, you tend to have a lot more variability, which sends your tax rates sort of a no-deal effect. So how do you propose to sort of, without the ability to aggregate those students, how do you propose to sort of level off the variability? Well, as a board, we've taken a number of steps over the last few years. One of them was when we had a retirement to the lunch program, for instance, we went and hired the Abbey Group to now provide our lunch program, which has provided savings for the school and now we need the cost down. But we were running a $20,000 a year deficit on the lunch program and not on the paper. We just had a vacancy at a nighttime custodian for the school. We have just gone out and contracted the company to come in and provide that service for us so we won't be paying any additional benefits or the other associated costs for that. Yeah, so it would just be a lot of people. Oh, all right. Yeah, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, no, no, no, no. It's even all the time, a little bit. It's even all the time. I just want to hold back, you have a whole list of people here. And now, if you finish eight, and again, you can take any additional documentation, and so just send that my way and just make sure we're on time for that. That'd be very helpful. We really appreciate your time. Yeah, thank you for having me. This is a big, as you can tell, that I got one card, so I don't want you to pass it on. Okay, I can email this to you if you prefer. Yeah, that would be great. I do want to ask, if you are in the audience, if you can make sure you signed in, if you want co-comments, you do need everybody standing to have a seat. We are, as I was saying earlier, we're in somebody else's house played by their rules, and we are at the State House, and one of the things is we can only have a number of people in this room, and we are getting closer to capacity, so we need anybody that's standing to be sitting down, and if there becomes a point that we need to ask, are we at that point? We are. We are at that point. Yes. If there are people that are not associated with this, if we could make sure to re-allow space for people to be here, if we could step out for maybe just a little bit just so we can take turns so people can get their voices heard, we just want to make sure that we're not over our fire capacity. So, if there are those that aren't associated with the U32, and with mine stepping out to give space to people that are waiting outside, that would be really helpful, and just so we can maintain. And again, if you're standing, please have a seat, and that allows us to just each give the number of counts, and then make them so we can have a number of. There are some seats. Jay, can I have a seat for you? Is that open? Yeah, there's a seat right in the middle here. There's also some up front. I see some to the back. Oh, over on this side, there's a seat on. That'll be very helpful. Thank you. I mean, it's amazing how this thing is looking around, and we want to be excited about education, so I think that's a good start, and it's a hard start. So, let's, I think now you two, you've got the cards, so if you want to keep track for us, thank you. And if you have mine, just introducing yourselves and your nature director, and again, if you have your presentation, you need some time for us to ask a question. Thank you. I'm Matthew DeRoe, I'm the member of the Doty Elementary School Board in Worcester, and I'm also the chair of the Washington Central S.U. Board. I'm Flordia Smith, I'm the member of the East Montgomery Elementary School Board. I'm Scott Thompson, I'm the 32 board from Calis, and Matthew Soraviz, he's at the floor as well. Matthew was the chair of our section nine committee, and Flord, our section six B committee. So, we're gonna take turns, and try to take on more of the presentation. So, good morning. Thank you for the second to ask today. We know that you haven't seen that recommendation in a few days, but we're here today to ask you to review your alternative proposal and deal a little deeper into why you submitted an alternative proposal. It is easy to tell a single story for all districts. You have been immersed in this process for a long time, and we have been described to you as the poster child consolidation. We're here, but we're more complex than what you have seen. We are human beings, and there is never a single story that fits all. In my experience with working closely with our five communities, as chair of the seven of six B committee, and I came to understand that we first needed to build trust between our communities in order to move forward. We had come a long way with this, and we all understand and believe that what we all want is what is best for all our kids across our elementary schools, middle school, and high school. You may be assuming that our request for an alternative proposal is just about the adults and our kids. However, the work that we're doing now is aligned with all the goals of that 46, and it's truly what is best for kids. The work that our schools are taking part in supports a strong multi-tier system of support in all our schools. We all are working hard to make sure that first instruction happens in every classroom, interventions are in place for those who are behind, and supports are in place to help students exceed the expectations. We're supporting strong professional development for teachers, sending them time to collaborate and plan so they can teach with intention. We're starting to see small gains in closing the children in that university. I know that you're looking at some of our small schools, and we believe that organically changes will happen without needing to be forced into something. I hope you do realize that changes will evolve with time, but if the state forces us into a collaboration that's not right for us at this moment, it will put the brakes in all the good work happening now. The children will be the ones that suffer, and our leader 15 has worked so hard to move us forward in the right direction. To give you an example, just two weeks ago in August 2nd, we had our first full board retreat with the majority of our board members across the schools attending. Nate Levenson from District Management Group facilitated the retreat, expanding and strengthening the supports for struggling students. We are already doing a lot of just best practices, and more work is happening as we speak. We came out of that retreat with an even better understanding of our commonalities across our schools, but also with an understanding of all the work that still needs to happen. As board members, we're supporting our leadership team, we're ambassadors for the work in our communities, and we're proposing budget steps to support that work. Our teachers and staff took the best to make sure our case developed and believed the growth mindset. The school boards of Washington Supervisor Union are committed to this growth mindset, too, and will continue to learn to stick in the more best practices and to provide the best education in the region. We will bring something valuable to the table. We will continue to share an understanding of the equity issues across our schools. This group also brings together how Ken and Hart, they focus on the good that we have going on right now, the alternatives and affirmation of that work and is what is best for our schools in New York. Great. Yeah. Thanks, Howard. We're here in the large part because greatly differing levels in attendance as the law would say. It makes it so that a unified union district formed out of our six existing school districts simply cannot meet all five goals of Act 46. We're left with a sole alternative that Act 46 makes room for, which is defined as supervisory union of new districts. This alternative can meet all five goals of Act 46, and this rule, I was explaining, it actually does meet all five goals of Act 46.  There's just too much. I will, however, use it as a nifty asset test of the process of the forward. It serves wellness in this regard because it's objective, it's measurable, it's consequential, and it's demolition and treatment. Over the past three years, it's tripped up way better people than me. Part of the reason for this is that it seems like a lot about to be an issue at all.  It's even in chapter one, the mergers for violence. That's where we end. And what reinforces this idea of, don't ask me how I know that. What reinforces this tendency to view it as basically a trifling issue, is that it's very easy to fall for some of the headaches that were in the law on one that I just mentioned, Section 723 in Title 16, which seems to say, sure, you may solve your debt problem, but then, when you actually try to do so, you find that other parts of the law withhold key tools that you need in order to make a real solution. Our 706B community looked at all of the mergers, the recent mergers, and their handling of their debt issues. And in every case, debt was pooled.  So I'm just likely to consider two approaches that I have encountered in this saga. Approach number one, a state level authority that's used for your piece. And she says to you, your analysis doesn't sound right to me, but I'll look into it. And then weeks later, she gets back to you and says, I can hardly believe I'm saying this, but you may actually be onto something. What can we do to fix it? Approach number two, a state level authority says to you, there's nothing wrong with the preferred structure or the legal framework, it's a metadata. They're perfectly fine, just as they are. The real problem is you, you're short-sighted with those group words. This is why you need to be relegated once and for all to the best fit of history. Now, which approach passes that asset test in your mind? Openness, humility, primatism, or what I'm afraid of feel is to many of us like arrogant, disdainful, diamatism. The first approach was the approach that our legislators took. The second approach you can read in this unabridged version beginning on page 55 of the proposed state-of-the-art plan. And if you visit there, it reappears multiple times throughout the plan. So I know this is very hard. The authors of the plan are nice folks. They're very smart, very hard-working, friends and colleagues. The ones I know, I'd like to. But this is very far from their best work. It's important to grow it to them, grow it to yourselves, grow it, although I need to us, all of us, to cast a cold exacting eye on this plan as if perhaps you were a judge. And considering that in our case, we're looking at $3 million present value in the potential confiscation, looming over two towns, it's not impossible that that might come before a judge. I'm just mindful of time. Yeah, I'm just gonna say, before I head it off to Matthew, may I say something nice about the plan? Would that spoil the effect? It's your time. It's your time. It's your time. Okay. Right. The suggestion of closer ties with Cabot and Twainfield is just welcome. And I think we have a very capable superintendent of court administration who can rise to the challenge of dealing with that. So anyway, thank you Matthew for your return on patience. I'll do my best to be extremely brief in 30 seconds. 30 seconds remaining. I'll just reiterate a point that I think you already know, which is that as others have said, we've worked tremendously hard over the last three years on this issue just to put it into countless hours.  And I think we've tried to evaluate all the different options and issues on the merits. We had a lot of disagreement, a lot of spirited discussion. In the end, all six of our school boards unanimously endorsed our AGS proposal. And to point to you that at this time and under these commissions, we feel like a burden we've had from our school group and our school kids. I think that there's an alternative that would not be less than, I guess. So just to know that we are unifying any enemies in any context, so that's all I'm thinking of. Any questions? I know what we're... Okay, so we have time for questions. So Oliver, do you want to get started? Yeah, so the theme I was hearing a lot about from your testimony was concern of debt and unequal distribution of debt in a merger scenario. And I'm curious, in your 706B study in the process, Act 46 envisioned and laid out in the statute for the voluntary phase of merger a number of supporting mechanisms to assist with that kind of transition. So there were a number of tax legalization mechanisms, et cetera, to help districts come together and bring those varying financial obligations together so that the impact wasn't as great. I was just curious, did you do any of that financial analysis in the 706B study? Oh, yes. We've not just reflected in our section 9 of the proposal. I think it's pages 30 and 33, or they're about separate. They're charts and everything. Yes.  And even with, even in year one, with the maximum tax incentives, there was no lowering of taxes for business for two towns. Magic wand. The debt problem goes away. Just hypothesize that for a moment. Would you be able to merge that one? I think it's a little bit dangerous to engage in hypotheticals. But I guess I would say that certainly if the debt magically went away or was solved in some way, it certainly would be a lot easier for us to consider that as far as idea. So what about the other obstacle? I think the other obstacle, chiefly, that we noted throughout our community engagement process and kind of assessing where people are at on this issue, is that there's a tremendous amount of opposition to the idea of consolidation. We took that very seriously and we felt that not just on its face, but also as a probable impediment of the channel taking what we were doing successfully. So that would be the other piece. For the main and two main reasons. I think these two of you, maybe all three of you, were here during the presentation by Madison Central. And on the face of it, it seemed like their situation and yours are not terribly similar. But for the debt question, there were debt issues there and they were much more manageable. It was opposition. It was skepticism. It's hard for me to see what the difference between the two situations is with the debt and to understand you heard what they had to say. It sounds like their situation sounds like what you're describing. What am I missing? I appreciate your giving us an opportunity to address that. I've said publicly that to the extent that our school boards are made currently, the challenge are not performing optimally with regard to best outcomes or best practices. But it relates far more to what I call culture than it does to structure or systems. There was a comment during the Madison Central presentation for example, I think with some of the board members that systems really help to mitigate or manage or make irrelevant the difficulties that arise from challenging relationships. In my experience as an executive administrator or board member, someone who has served boards, that just is true. Organizational culture which I mean the way that people are getting together for lessons for lunch and at least you can do clients for lunch as well. So there's just no substitute for doing the hard work of building better relationships with across your school system. If you want to implement any initiative that involves change, you will have people who are transparent of use and you'll have to overcome that and your ability to do that based on the relationships that you have and the trust you have with those people. As much if not more in my opinion as the systems that you have in place. So the steps I think that what the Aquarius process has done has really brought us to our realization that our board culture has not been great and we have work to do in building and strengthening and improving the quality of relationships that we're able to achieve together. I have a whole list of things that we've been doing to do that actually over the last many months but so that's my answer to the question is that I'm not sure I agree entirely with any characterized what is brilliant about consolidation in terms of systems eliminating the problems that you have with relationships. I have at least three questions of Peter's review. I'm wondering about community engagement. The 706B committee requested a supermajority vote of time out of 11. I don't think we've seen that before in any of the proposals that come before us and no community's actually voted on any of the merger proposals and that's compelling for us to see in terms of records of votes and what not. Can you explain the process and whether the communities of the actual general populace were engaged in this process and how was that conducted? We're engaged in the process. We're engaged in the process. We're engaged in the process. It's why we've elected officials coming to represent the town stream as a portion and we do have less than two minutes so let's go. There's almost an answer to your question for me. The I don't recall in 2015 when the Education Committee was drafting Act 46 when it was voted on in the Federal Assembly a remark by anyone in leadership at that time that this is such a consequential decision that we really ought to put it to the statewide to see what the people think of that. We were sent out of voter sentiment and we saw it in many ways. I personally spoke to either in groups or individually at least 150 voters in Worcester a small town that's about a third of our electorate, our voting registry voters. We had many community forums we posted every time there was a development we commissioned and paid for rather substantial survey by the third party. But in the end we didn't feel that a vote was required of us to have priority. We also practiced representative government and our voters elect us to do our best and do as our audiences dictate for the good of schools and for the good of school kids. And so that's why we we did not ultimately have a voter night. I guess if there's time I would just have one other short piece which is when I was actually quite a strong advocate for having a vote in our communities to be processed. If you asked any of our 7-6 MPs we'd probably say it was a broken record of the topic. But it wasn't because I felt it was necessary for the democratic standpoint but rather tactically I felt that whatever the outcome of the vote was if we came to the state board with that eventually it would be compelling and virtually impossible to ignore. It's very difficult to ignore. So that's why I was really surprised when the secretary's plan was issued I saw that actually it was apparently quite easy to disregard or ignore a discount of votes that had happened and I felt in retrospect quite glad that we did not waste our voters time by putting them through that process. So okay so thank you for coming in and again that's what I've been thinking about. At this point we are going to just take a quick story. So we will be coming back because we are running a little bit behind. We just have five minutes to look at the break. We'll come back for the 10-35 thank you. We should have people take their seats again we should hear everybody. The secretary and I will come back for the break. We're going to give three more proposals that we're listening to and hear from a bunch of officials. We have public to first. I want to make sure people there is the sign-in sheet over there. Everybody here will sign up for the meeting so we can track who is here. So if everybody makes sure they sign up if you wish to speak for public comment there's also a sign-up sheet for that. And I know I was just looking over there it might be a little confusion about which sheet to sign up on. So if you're here for the meeting 32 Barnard and Huntington or well that public to be heard is at 1130 so make sure you sign up for that public to be heard. So making sure everybody gets time for their voice. So we're coming back for Barnard and we have John who had his time. So if you want to just introduce yourself for the record and we can get started. Thank you. I'm Karin. I'm a school board for Barnard 7.12 and I'm a member of the authority government structure committee at Barnard Academy. I'm Karin Park. I chair the Barnard school board and I'm under that. So we have some comments to take about 10 minutes. It's all a good idea if the school is not a full programming of outcomes and or is too expensive like we saw this morning in the positive outcomes. This is not the case though with our school. Barnard is meeting and in some cases exceeding the five goals of that 46. We need the state educational quality standards have academic outcomes of state averages have her pupil cost in mind with the state average amongst the lowest in ISU and highly significant to our proposal our enrollment is growing. While the secretary's plan uses the concept of policy enrollment as justification a justification for recommending merger for Barnard, actual data shows steady and dramatic growth over the past five years with enrollment growing from 62 to 81 and currently 83 for this coming year. We meet the goals for having high levels of operational efficiency transparency accountability, fiscal responsible budgets and long history of shared resources in ISU. Our principal, Hannah Tynes recently named elementary curriculum coordinator across the SU reflecting another strength that we bring to the SU and a level of cooperation. Beyond these quantitative achievements, our proposal also assumes your capacity to appreciate a concept of education that encompasses the value of relationships in community to student experience. It is difficult to make a qualitative argument with parties that are tuned only to quantitative ones. Those who only discuss education as fundable as a product are deliverable. Meniskisticated educators and policymakers understand the significant positive impact of strong interpersonal ties and of individual attention on behalf of Barnard Academy. The recommended merger decreases our ability to meet and exceed the goals. Merger will force us into a relationship with those who have already codified their plans to diminish our successful school and continue to demonstrate unwillingness to compromise. With merger quality and equity for our teachers, firstly, I'd like to talk about two ways. Firstly, our preeminent four-star pre-K program would be at risk for reduction. The mud voted, the essential mud voted in April of this year to begin offering public pre-K in its member elementary schools only to the degree that it is cost-neutral. Thus, with this unanimous vote, the Unified District has made a decision incompatible with our more extensive 35-hour programming for three and four years. To maintain parity, we will have to cut back a program that offers optimum equity of opportunity, opportunity which advances future learning capacities and which closes the achievement gap for economically disadvantaged students. Our two board members votes to invest in pre-K where we on that board would have no impact on the 16 votes against monetary investment in pre-K. Secondly, Windsor Central Mud Article 15 authorizes the removal of two grades from our school despite a very weak rationale for the choice of our school. Not only would this render us unsustainable but forcing some but not all students in the Unified District to bust elementary school and therefore to have two school transitions in two years is an inequitable burden that solves no problem. Our students face no opportunity gap and we already share significant resources and work together in many ways . The Secretary's plan contains misleading data and information about our school. The annually sourced ADM data in our proposal shows undeniable significant growth, which I mentioned in the enrollment, but in ADM, over five years, the ADM has grown from 16 in 2014 to 76 in 2018. That's a growth rate of 26.67%. The only different growth over that period is a 2.1 ADM increase one year. Oddly, even though ADM is defined on the AOE website as including pre-pay and published ADM numbers include a pre-pay ratio, the Secretary's plan uses a new calculus removing pre-pay to assert a different lower and more volatile ADM. This calculation combined with selective attention to two years leads the Secretary's plan to misleadingly assert that our enrollment has quote fluctuated throughout the school years. End quote. The Secretary's plan appears to have chosen a significant decrease in subsequent return to steady growth out of context to create a narrative of volatility. And then the plan goes on to assert that enrollment volatility can lead to tax volatility. Though this may be true, it is irrelevant because our enrollment and our tax rates have been steady. And that is the significance of Article 15, which I already mentioned, which requires the restructuring of elementary school configurations and recommends the removal of fifth and sixth grades from our school. This article is likely the single biggest reason that our electorate voted no longer here. And we find it to epitomize the unified boards continued unwillingness to create a new definition of us in the last points today. The Secretary's recommended merger encourages closure and leaves us no access to the increased fairness of the draft default articles mentioned at the last SBE meeting in New York. The loss of our school after four years is not a mere theoretical concern, but a reasonable foreseeable consequence of this recommended merger. In addition to Article 15, the current blood article of school was also reported to be a result of the decision that was made to the local neighbors. So we understand that your board will not close our school. It will be a local decision, but it is a highly predictable local decision that we believe that the merger will not only encourage closure, but will actually create the conditions for closure. Ironically, the AOE now seems to recognize that you will vote on or have voted on an entry where you are in that process. We applaud the AOE for recognizing the validity of such concerns, such as protections for small districts regarding school closure and reconfiguration of school grades and buildings, and imbalanced board representation. However, because we'd be forced into an already operational Unified District, we would have no access to these articles, and those votes will be honored to not community sentiment. If your board concurs with the AOE and approves the recommended or has approved the recommended default articles, then your board should not vote toward any NNN into a Unified District who don't have access to those more fair-minded articles. As you know, according to the law, your board must not judge section 9 proposals more stringently than you judge section 5 plans. Your board must not judge section 9 proposals more stringently than you judge section 5 plans. As you know, according to the law about the AOE's recommendation, there's ample evidence that legislative intent was to allow alternative structures for school districts like ours that meet community principles. Thank you. Pamela and I and many other committed representatives of our town have spent literally under the circumstances to meet the goals of that 46th in a way that respects and secures Barnard's strengths and values as a community. We've shown why the theoretical benefits of a larger government structure would not actually benefit our school district on a whole, but rather reduce educational opportunities for our kids. But in addition to providing these evidence-based arguments, we also like to bring something important into sharp focus. Our students today are often accused of being too emotional about this issue, perhaps too insular focusing only on our students instead of all students in a region. But it's both reasonable and important to feel passionate about the threat involved here and to feel protective of what we have. This force merger will damage a school and a community that is currently thriving. Our small communities are held together by values that will be slowly eroded as the school is created from its heart, whether slowly or quickly. Values have to do with mutual respect and support of face-to-face kindness to neighbors, service and gratitude. The school is the heart of the community. It's where we come together in support of our children. It's where we show one another that we care across generations, across economic, political and social divides. By forcing consolidation, you take away the opportunity for us to care for each other in a very intimate way and our community loses its heart. Our children grow up without those community roots so necessary in today's world. Has Vermont stopped caring about values other than efficiency? I hope not. It's vital to recognize that your decision is about something more than numbers. It will show how much we've lost as a state if we've stopped listening to the communities who really care. If we're not listening to each other, especially when we care very deeply, we have a positive heart for Vermont. Thank you for hearing our comments today. I just want to pick up on your comment about educational quality and that your feeling is a proposal that what you offer today in terms of your program meets all of the goals in terms of quality and equity. You mentioned sort of the concern that if you do move into a merged governance structure that there's a possibility that that the school might become pre-k through the second grade and the older grade students will feel somewhere else. My question is when you're speaking about the opportunities that you have available today, how do they compare with what's been proposed for these other structures? Are you looking at a reduction in opportunity if you move to that type of structure or a quick one? I think that my almost a year now on the modified board gives me a great deal of perspective about not just what the 706 came up with but how that's being interpreted this year and will continue to be interpreted and I think that the 706 B committees plan which first was pre-k through the two at Barnard and one other school then through a lot of community pushback became pre-k to four so just removing two grades the original rationale forward that which would reduce two schools two teachers overall was to use the money that was saved by those two teacher physicians to increase what we call specials teaching and equal as them but the plan was considered ill-conceived after the fact because it was determined that there actually wasn't any room in the curriculum to increase specials and that there really wasn't any big enough difference between programming at the different schools so I think it's interesting to note that the original rationale for the plan has been discarded now it's more of an idea among the unified board members of that's still a good idea because we can use the money for something basically but there's no concrete plan you talk about almost the inevitability of the school being closed and I'm wondering we've seen numerous examples of this in articles of the agreement whereby the community has the ultimate decision to enclose the school has that taken root in terms of your well I think we've seen many proposals come before us when they wrote the articles of reading themselves and so in those articles of agreement people have written themselves they've chosen to put in those protections so they're very different around the state and I know it was mentioned though in New York we are reading out the draft articles from the AOE because we're going to use secretary 1 to allow the secretary to review them before they came out but they should be coming soon because they've gone through the secretary and they've gone back to the AOE for drafting and are within the AOE right now looking for those protections so I think the real fear is and you brought up if the draft articles of agreement which one to be using and I think those are good arguments if you are then putting into another group that already has a different set of draft articles of agreement so what you're looking for is protection to make sure that your school is not at the end of a larger board and the bigger question for I think this board is which draft articles of agreement would be used and I would say the articles of agreement that the the modified unified board they're currently operating under them so they're not just in the draft they're sort of being voted on and I'm not sure what they are so if you could tell us what they are and this is one of the things I'm not sure if you can take more of this but that we have in various several different points throughout this past year since our district has voted not to join tried to bring to the board saying these are our biggest concerns is there room on this new board to reconsider these articles because they perform very little for very little protection for the school so for school closure it's a simple majority modified unified board vote and then brought to the electorate but simple majority of the combined electorate so we've offered a few examples of how these can be strengthened to accommodate sort of address and recognize communities that are going to be most impacted and they have found nowhere with us that was in the American movies it's also the restructuring article on the board board conversation board conversation we would like to ideally have a conversation with the unified district about the possibility of a hybrid model I don't feel that we're like you know that's it I think that must do for us but we would like to have the option to just even discuss it because during the 7 of 6 process many of their members were telling members of the public that the only legal model was proportional and we kept trying to say no look here's an AOA memo that's not true but it just we felt that that correct information did not negate to the public but the other third article of agreement that we've been trying to get the board and board members to be open to discussing is this article for removing credits from the Barney School and the Reading School and as a member of the board I can report that they are moving forward with the Reading piece in fact they voted although unsuccessfully to take the 6th grade out this year there's enormous pushback from members of the Reading community but it's on the slate to be discussed again in September so and I can also report to you that after hearing about the default articles of agreement and being sort of amazed at the irony that we would not have access to those because they're exactly what we've been asking for I put a motion forward to discuss just to discuss the possibility of revising some articles of agreement on July 31st and that was rejected so it was decided that in December after the statewide play comes out they could discuss what they're going to do with Barney so I felt that that was a significant statement of where they are and that's the thing because board institutions are interested in that Thanks for those explanations so I'm always interested in what would it take or put it another way what are the one or two obstacles which if they were addressed and authentically resolve would make it really possible what are the key obstacles that if addressed would be possible or is it just not possible? I think for our town, our electorate the main obstacle which was a very real obstacle were these articles of agreement of this particular merger so if there were a way to address those we would be open to coming back to the table that being said there is a large there are many of us that also believe that as we outline our proposal the benefits of merging don't necessarily even beyond that even if the threat of school closure is not as great the benefits of merging may still not be worth giving up that local school board and it's because of many of the reasons you've heard this morning and other times in this room there is a value to the communities real engagement in the school of these small towns and that's a value that I think it's hard to put your finger on pinned down quantified but it is very real for these rural towns it's a reason why my family moved to Barnard it's a reason why many of the town family moved to Barnard many of the new families who have come to our town and impacted the enrollment at our school have come to this particular community because it is one that has this kind of engagement and that's not to say we can foresee exactly what things are going to look like should this shift change but we know what a strong rural community looks like and we do know about the school and that engagement in the school is the heart of it and we do know that engagement in and we've heard it even from Mark engagement in the school processes engagement in education and the care for the children of the town when the management of the school goes elsewhere that really defines it's much harder for people to to be involved to be at the board meetings to feel that they are empowered to impact what's going on at their school and with their children so I think those are still obstacles to a merger especially when you're looking at a merge board and merger partners who share those kinds of values and who respect those kinds of values I think our townspeople might be more comfortable with entering into a merger but for example right now those kinds of values and really our town and our school are being really overlooked and disparaged with sort of a blind eye so I would encourage you to submit anything as you said you're still working on developing between now and the fall and it's happening in October so thank you we can have a planning to come up please and can by us and then just give us kind of a question that would be great thank you Paul Susan Chair of the Hunton School Board my name is Carrie Wyatt and I also chair our PTO and I volunteer to use the week in our afternoon thank you for the opportunity to present our situation Hunton is located 10 miles south of Richmond and here in the most disparately located elementary school which appears Memorial School in Chittany's which presents one sort of backdrop on this another backdrop on this is that we are part of we are part of Chittany's we receive our special education services our transportation services and our administrative services from Chittany's we have no issues with special ed transportation whatsoever we have an issue with administration because we're going to be charging us excessively for the services that the Board receives which appears which we would hope would never change I'm not suggesting they would under a merger we want to make sure they don't change we have a locally sourced food program for our school cafeteria we have an outdoor classroom that was constructed totally 100% of local funds community did that for us we have a Forest Fridays program which implies my entire school through Godamon Center which is located just a couple miles south of Brisbane the bottom line is and I've been in education for my entire life the bottom line is we're talking about children's behaviors here we're talking about their cognitive their emotional their social and physical behaviors that's not going to change with merger there is no way merger is going to help us with cognitive, emotional, social and physical behaviors it is not going to change Huntington in terms of special ed it is not going to change Huntington in terms of transportation the only possible benefit for merger has to do with deficiencies administrative efficiencies and again we have this argument I'm not going to go into it now for questions I'm glad you responded around how we're being charged for administrative services the land was donated to the school 50 years ago the building was the funding for the building was bequeathed in the local family so we start out in a community school and many of the other schools that you hear in the film in 2011, 14, 16 and 18 were votes in Huntington in all four situations the vote was no the total vote was 63% no or 37% yes no question we're talking about a substantial majority of people in Huntington having been presented all of the information and all of the acts and all of the merger changing language is best we possible to put over the years through community reforms in 2017 we had a debate starting in September about whether to want a fourth vote whether we should take a position on merger the board has never taken a position on merger or upon given it to the community yes these are the benefits it's best we possibly could and on a split vote 4 to 1 we decided to want a fourth vote and the reason that one person didn't go for it was because she felt that the community didn't want to come back yet another time to deliver the same message no we did one vote 60% no 40% yes now where are we today well in terms of the report from the AOE it was a good solid report and it was quite factual with one publicly overstating having to do with property taxes we benefited from the reduction in property taxes because of the part of the larger district so the middle school and the high school we received a proportional reduction but we didn't receive the entire reduction there are outstanding issues and I believe this applies to every school that you're hearing from last month, today and next month every school and I just heard it from we have two particular issues one has to do with voting and one has to do with articles of agreement the voting it is not clear to me that there is language anywhere that supports a forced merger without a local community vote for that merger so we don't know if there's going to be a vote we're sitting here in August or November or voting March we don't know whether Huntington would have to vote for that merger I assume they won't but four times no a fifth no would be what would occur statistically and what would happen if the towns vote no so we don't know if there's going to be a vote we don't know how that all works and as to articles of agreement do we have to have articles of agreement on which to vote and one would assume we shouldn't vote in terms of articles of agreement we don't have articles of agreement we, Huntington School there are those who argue that the existing articles of agreement which were in effect for the modified union do not apply to us that's been an argument that's been made so my response was well then what does apply and the response was not something that we don't want but something we're very prepared to do not with taxpayer money if we have to argue about this what are the what's the hang up on articles of agreement who I think is going to happen two, one is a cooperative and the second is a death or debt now the current article of agreement in effect with the modified union have had all of those towns all of which are in America all of the debt from those five elementary schools was absorbed into the larger modified union was all picked up 100% has been an argument that we cannot assume that our debt would necessarily be picked up by the modified union well that's simply a non-starter for us absolutely a non-starter that all of our debt wouldn't be picked up just like it was for the other towns the other question has to do with our property which was donated to the the use of the school within 50 years ago what happens to that acreage how do we do that in vain would we be expected to convey the entire property or could not even keep part of that property etc and that's just two of the issues probably because of the two most salient issues we don't have articles of agreement that we can vote on we would argue there has to be articles of agreement before there's a vote there has to be a vote in Huntington and in the receiving district there is no way that your board is going to be able to make a recommendation on Huntington in time for a November vote it's simply not going to happen how it would happen in any town unless the towns are going to warrant a contingent vote which says something like if the state board says X we'll do Y and that's going to present a real problem to us so we need articles of agreement if there is going to be a merger we don't need articles of agreement there's not going to be a merger we don't know when to start to retain an attorney if we have to do that we don't have articles of agreement should we wait until your recommendation to the home table to be able to do that I think it's quite likely that we do not make an FY20 date on this I simply don't see it because if there's not a November vote the budgets are already in place we would have already put a budget in place for our final plan so we've got logistical concerns so we're not in favor of the recommendation we believe we're meeting the acts of we believe we're meeting the goals of Act 46 just find the way they are right now and thank you very much for this yes about the debt say on a per capita basis is your debt burden significantly different than those of the neighboring communities whose debt was absorbed yes in which direction do you think it's higher than the debt in the other town perhaps two to one maybe a little less than that maybe one and a half to one we did this with Huntington and our board supported the HVAC TFR1 HVAC system 1.25 million dollars installed that last year that's a classy example of a decision Huntington made that a larger board probably would not have they would have gone with a world based or a wood chip based system and saved about 500,000 dollars but our town is very green and is very interested in the geothermal so we've got about 1.25 million on the books from last year to 30 years on and we've got I think a couple others in about two or two and a half million dollars so that's a significant question because if you're in the other towns are you going to go to accept Huntington when you know they're accepted because we're going to say they should have stopped our debt when our debt per capita is more than their debt but we think they should because when the Mount Magansfield modified union was put into place there was lots of inequities in terms of debt it was very high quality to some of the other towns but what they did is they just brought it all in and that was a day day was over and Richard didn't pay any more than he was in the other town I received a public comment one of them talked about how others within the SU right now have intra-district choice and that was something they were interested in but it's not available to them in Huntington and because of some needs of their students they could go to a different school within the district so is there any movement on the board to allow intra-district crossing of students because you're in a peculiar position where you're in a mud where everybody is under some rules and then your students enter with them in middle school so for that early part how are you working with the mud to create those opportunities the choice is a good question and I think movement of teachers the question is all I have in terms of the choice what happens is the family comes to the board and the board makes a decision the family makes a petition to the superintendent's office and it comes to the board and the board makes a decision we're going to pay roughly $15,000 for that student to go to that other school in our district having been here having been on the board since 2014 we've not turned down a family now that's a tough one for us that's a lot of money but you think about it from a financial point of view it costs us about $15,000 to educate a student between 15 and 16 and it costs them out in the district about 15 to 16,000 to educate that student so whether that student is going to Huntington whether that student is going to Jericho somebody's paying for it and the board did that now would we necessarily support every family's petition no because right now we're going on an individual by individual case and I can imagine a situation where the justification is not a solid justification where we merge then choices automatically apply but right now it's discretionary and more important first is just looking at some of your statistics particularly around enrollment, ADM and your costs and your ADM has gone your enrollment has gone down sequentially over a number of years and your costs are going up so if you were to merge into a district you plus moving that debt into the district there would seem to be pretty significant financial advantages to the taxpayers to get that out we have in the first of all the ADM calculation I have to say it's a strange calculation I work in Massachusetts I work in Connecticut I look at headcount I look at how many students we have in school because that's how we're teaching when the principal sets up the number of classes that we need the number of teachers we meet it's not based on ADM how many preschoolers we have how many grade 1, 2, grade 4 if you look at enrollment for us and you can somehow get past the and Barnard talked about it the incredibly confusing calculations resulting from preschoolers a couple of years ago where our numbers were crazy they were up and down we are slightly more expensive we are slightly more expensive, right? than Bolton and the Richmond and the Alterica yes we are but not by much our town budget our town approved the budget is coming here 0.29% increase 0.29% increase for and if there's any way that we can save money during the year if we need to get an attorney because of all of this we won't do it out of taxpayer dollars we will get people who will donate the money they feel that strongly about it so anytime we can go to non-tax we will do that but in terms of the overall financial efficiency when you're on your computer you can do the calculation yes, on a purviewable basis we are a little more expensive and from a taxpayer point of view it would be slightly better off ok? they know that they absolutely know that in Huntington they know they're paying for a quality school they're willing to pay a little bit more and I'm talking a little bit more not a lot more and every time we've gone to the voters they've said no, no, no and no we know it's going to cost a little bit more if we don't merge we don't want to merge that hasn't changed so I can just move on to my second question I just want to pick up on your comment about the boiler and I'm having a hard time rationalizing that decision and it sounds like if I heard you correctly a $500,000 premium over a wood chip boiler how does it doesn't comport I guess it doesn't really comport with the goals of Act 46 particularly around providing greater opportunities for students so I guess what I'm trying to understand is how you think the argument you're making for retaining this control over these types of decisions actually furthers the goals of Act 46 around the issues of equity and educational quality if you had been in our school prior to the installation of our HVAC system you would know why we had to do it the way we did the ventilation units on the floor were so old that mechanicals all had to be replaced that's where we started so everything had to be gathered we did not want to go with oil and there were a large percentage of people in the community who did not want to go with oil nor did they want to go with wood chips for a variety of reasons and we really thought that geothermal was the way to go 100 years these wells will be in existence 100 years you can't say that in any other system okay the electric system that we have those units are good for 20 years so we are good to go the community voted for the HVAC system 80% to 20% 85% to 15% they knew it was going to cost them more $250,000 a year more they knew that they were getting an opinion on property taxes in terms of act 46 we don't believe that the merger with per se the merger per se is going to increase the ability of Huntington's being having more quality more equity etc we just don't believe that but the HVAC system decision was the decision made based on what the people in the community felt was best it's not a dehumidification it's part of geothermal it comes with automatic dehumidification people in town can use booster piers for the first time if they want in the summer time and you're not going to want even if it's 80 85 degrees and 100% community outside you're going to say this is really nice here we never had that before so students are in a building now for the first time in 20 years they educated properly because they have the right HVAC system we would not have had air conditioning with the with oil or with wood and it comes off at the top of the geothermal well hands so we only have about a minute left Peter you were the first month participant as a result of about the 2012 act 156 you kept your local board you had representation on supervisor board but you did not have any representation on the union board that was formed how has how has it impacted your district and are you content with the way it's been set up I believe you were in favor of that of that bill and I'm wondering how has that all impacted you there were there were two towns who voted against Merger and in 14 Richmond voted for Merger that left Tommy to miss that we have I sit on the board I sit on the Mount Mansfield board to listen but not to vote and they do the shit in the east has a board the Mount Mansfield has a board at the same time some of the issues are in the east I'm able to vote on those I have two thirds of a vote the way it's set up now works fine I'm on the collective bargaining committee I'm also on the finance committee we had somebody on the policy committee we had somebody on the assessment committee none of that have been changed so the way it's set up now is fine what's going to happen is if we merge Huntington will not necessarily have representation on collective bargaining Huntington will not necessarily have representation on the finance committee that is really bad I'm on the moral school board as you know the Orwell does not want to be part of the consolidating the state ballot union school district but currently in a modified union school district with select ballot the board split on whether we should merge but not merge so the town voted to consolidate three times on April 12, 2016 it was defeated 121 a re-vote took place on June 21, 2016 the defeat began 166 yes 24 no a second act, the study committee was formed a new proposal was brought forward it was two defeated for Orwell for 137 yes and 219 no prior to the vote numerous well been formed in the meetings were held voters who were formed for the reason of the vote the state asked the towns to vote on these issues three times and communities that didn't have them merged your times the school board is split the town has spoken the state should get the people of Orwell decide if they want to merge Orwell schools currently in a modified union school district and in an excellent working relationship with the slave valley prior to the vote on the second plane this plan contained provisions to enable towns to opt out and Orwell would opt out and not consolidate now it seems the town of Orwell is being forced to consolidate against the town's wishes thus do I perceive we chairs of the bond as being cheated the strong unity is support for Orwell schools tell us about the split what were the reasons given for Orwell against Orwell amongst the board the board itself the board itself is split and we didn't submit the second line because there was not agreement on the board so could you talk about what are those various factions within the board to help us understand that dynamic well my feeling is well regardless of the positive against the merger but either way I feel that the town shouldn't be an merger I don't feel that there's any real benefit to the merger we're already doing almost everything at port six says we share resources we're doing curriculum that's all the saying of curriculum coordinator and I just we just don't see the benefits of actually merging whether that is to say who we are right now so I am one of the three board members that is in favor of the merger I shared the second study committee and my family I understand where the town is coming from but my first goal having just had two students go through the system and when I looked at that I felt that there would be better educational opportunities for students under a merge system that was my major feeling when I looked at this I agree we are sharing resources very well we work together as a district unlike some people I don't fear that our school is going to be closed with a merger I think that in the second go round we addressed many of the concerns that the town had the first merger proposal called for proportional voting second proposal gets a hybrid better for the town has the same say we really tried to tighten up the whole issue to go to school closure so it does come back to the town and requires more than a simple majority in looking at things as a parent both of my children when they arrived at the high school kids were arriving in ninth grade in different levels and I am hearing now that may not be the case but at that time it was the case and that was a major concern for me and the other thing is we are not our community there are not a lot of in town jobs many people have to leave the community for work in looking at the financial things the way at 46 is set up we are starting to feel the pinch now we are looking at a 15 cent increase we will not be capturing for next year on our voter approved budget it was not an extravagant budget it was a level services budget we did not add anything but when you start having the other factors that cast kick in and I don't know how long our community will continue to support the school if we are going to have large tax increases like that at the level it could be the loss the potential loss of the small school grade is significant that is about 5 cents in our tax rate and we all know salaries and everything that went up so that played into my thinking I understand what the people are coming from nobody likes the idea of being told what to do but when I weighed all of the options that was why I supported this the first study committee I was the chair of the study committee and I set back to allow a member of the public to be on the second study committee I thought it would be a better choice to have public input as well my position has not changed as a board member at the time that Act 46 was passed I sat in the legislature and I did not support Act 46 from the perspective of saving money with taxpayers so so for myself coming from a perspective of not supporting and then being the chair of the study committee really trying to be open and see all perspectives it took me a while to get to the place where I did support Act 46 I think for myself the equity piece made me whole again as a board member I represent all children twin boys that did go through the school system and we had some unfortunate situations with ill teachers and it was two and a half years out of three years of education that really was not quality education and I felt as you know bigger district we may have the opportunity to have some full time licensed staff that we could prioritize towards area needs and that seems significant to me also we share a lot of resources with our neighbor town, Benson we share positions such as our teacher's and my concern was that as we saw those other schools merge and work as a unit that potentially years down the road we may be on an island and perhaps we have a great relationship today but I guess part of it was fear on my side they chose to work with the unified union and we lost those shared positions that would be very difficult for us to be able to staff those positions so you know I understand where the town is coming from this is actually really divided our town on many levels our school board leaders have not been the most pleasurable I would like to concentrate on education and what's being offered at our school board meetings and I can count on one hand how many school board because we've had where we've talked about the education that's happening it's mostly been about the situation and what we're tasked with so again town is divided our board was 3-2 in support that didn't come easily it was an hour and a half conversation at our last meeting in preparation for this I appreciate what you all have done I think we're in a difficult position here with where our town stands as well so my colleague had a question before and I don't think we've really heard a clear answer what where is the opposition and I heard there was a response to some opposition around school closure and voting that was resolved in the second study committee but that was voted down again so what is the what else is I guess where is the opposition coming from if those issues were resolved a lot of it's just town control of the school and being able to run Orwell as Orwell wants to run we wouldn't have our school board there at the Orwell anymore you'd be a three person people on a three person board and that's the biggest issue there's no gain in this for Orwell students from what I've seen so town control and running the school the way we want to run our school not the way all the other towns want to run the school with us just I think it makes it harder for people to come to your school board meeting and talk about issues that you have and talk about with five people that you know or 18 people you don't know I think my question outside is the same question why do you folks have a reputation for having to go to school and do things work well we've got centralized services and I'm asking myself what difference will there be in terms of how you're operating well that's part of the problem we have all that so what do we gain by going back by consolidating with the slave valley right now we're doing all that and we're having good results we do send students that are doing good we have one kid in one second in this classroom I have a son that just went through he's doing fine he just went down and started last year I have two other kids in school and they're doing good I don't see that merging is going to improve any of that you're still going to have separate schools we still have a curriculum coordinator you're still going to have differences between student to student that would be the case if you had one school or ten schools because that's the way students are and we just don't see any benefit other than we don't have as much control over school as we do now I think control is the big piece for the townspeople I go back to when we worked on our transportation merger and that was very difficult we've been doing it for years now and I look back and we have an opportunity where we have a ski program at the school and if we hadn't have merged our transportation it would have been difficult to do a ski program because we have two buses up at Killington at the same time we're dispatching kids in Orwell and so that has actually provided more opportunity for us but I think it's hard to see the opportunity there's a lot of concern out there as to our 7th and 8th graders moving down to Fairhaven due to the school and the population and would that mean less kids in Orwell and if we have the climate population would that mean the school closes and so I can definitely see the peace of mind have local control on being able to make those decisions I do understand that if 7th and 8th grade did go down to this concern it's parents and transportation and that's more time spent going 15 miles in another direction I don't know if you were here the Addison Central presentation tell you many of their communities had concern about loss of local control and they've gone ahead with the consolidation and the going hasn't been easy but the results have been pretty promising in terms of the opportunities for students and the improvement of the sending schools to be arriving in high school middle school more or less on the same page in the same regular one of the takeaways from that presentation was that the burden, the hard work falls on the adults hard work adapting to change giving up what feels like control and the benefits accrue to students and it's many years built up to remember that what we all know we bring very different perspectives we bring a very real perspective of the community of all of them and in particular a good perspective of adults you know about and the board brings a different perspective which is our mandate is to look after the education of 76,000 children in the state and to be attentive to the constitutional and legal obligations of the state works on each other among other things means that children should have all opportunities children shouldn't be the victims of where they happen to live and to the extent that children can move across boundaries to that extent we can enhance equity and opportunities for kids and certainly that's been the experience already of some of the communities that have consolidated so I think it's some things to be learned from positive experiences of those who have combined many of the things that people were very very afraid of have not materialized largely because of very good agreements in advance and that in many cases there's a payoff that you were describing we both can see the benefits of students and you can see very clearly the concern of the factors of the adults so can I have a question to the model on so I guess the question maybe I would have the next intro it's just looking back on the last five to ten years have you had to cut any opportunities for your students and with those you're talking about the taxes going up have you been able to increase opportunities or have you gone to meetings we're cutting art, we're cutting music we have to cut this program so we hear current in the last five to ten years have you been able to add opportunities or have you been sitting around the table and figuring out which ones do you part away so since I've been on the board eight years we have not had to cut our town is very supportive of what is in the budget though I would say we're probably pretty conservative about what we ask for as well we've been challenged to put on additional higher opportunities we meet the needs of those children around IUPs but the ones that are selling we've had members come to us asking us to challenge those children we don't have the numbers necessarily to accommodate our teacher but that's not to say the town wouldn't support it if we put in our town is extremely supportive of what we ask and we I've only been on the board in four years now we did add the scheme program which is quite it's just I don't know we have certainly added opportunities we have not cut opportunities for our students there are more opportunities than I personally would like to see added I think that our offer students we really need to start adding stuff along the lines of the scheme program because as everything becomes globalized and our entire world is changing that's going to be a very significant demand for all of our future students and that's not going to come cheap would our community support it? yes yes it may be a financial hardship for some it may not be for others but ultimately it's the children that have to be the first part of it John? okay oh oh I think you said if I got the words quickly let me get the difference between being part of the smaller a small board or being part of the mud board I think you said if you matter five people that you know versus 18 people you don't know and I'm struck by that because I think that's exactly you don't know them yet and I'm wondering if you could comment on the folks with firearms what the how things felt on that larger board and so I guess I'm wondering if there are specific examples of mistrust or conversations that haven't happened or is it just the fear that you don't know them yet? no nothing's happened like mistrust or fear or anything I'm just people are worried more well and so you have a board meeting and it makes it a lot harder for people to go to meet and meet and then you are obviously you will get to know them to a certain extent but they are working castles and you are down that way a lot where you have kids in high school you don't get to know these people as you do the people that you are in the community I'm not saying it's a bad thing to know people outside the community I'm just I just I think it would be harder for the community to be involved the way they can be now and that's one thing that our community likes they're involved in our school they like to be involved in our school there's still opportunities that we can do and there's opportunities that we can do through being in the mud like we are now we can still share and we have a great working relationship which as we always have I don't see why that would go away Superintendent is great and she wants to keep things going smooth on which way we go so that's basically what I'm saying thank you for your support thank you alright so we are so on the proposals that we've heard from first I'm going to go through first the people from those camps just to make sure we get to them we have another set after lunch another time for public to be heard for those we also then have another set after that another public to be heard and then a general public to be heard so I know there's a lot of people who want to speak who want to hear everybody so we are going to do two minutes per person and we're going to try to get through what I'm going to ask is that we have the first person and then we'll have the second person oh okay no so I'm going to ask John again I know it's hard for a few minutes but if you see our schedule we're trying to hear from as many boards as many people as possible so if you could just you know I intend to he's going to flip it over it's actually possible if you go too long you'll get this yeah it's kind of nice to flip it over when in 30 seconds just to give you a warning and just to thank everybody for coming out and just being in place everybody listening I know there's a lot of people taking time off on their day and their work and to comment and give comment and don't get to say everything you would like to say please send a public comment I've got to do this one more time last night they were still coming through so please send those if you want to start say thank you thank you my name is Gail Connolly I'm a citizen and this is Huntington I'm a retired school administrator also I've been possibly impressive anyone here as you think have plenty for sports analogies to do so far so let me I'm the least qualified my mother would not let me play football by 40 years in school I play sports football and high school football games and everybody in the room fourth word this means fourth word and Huntington means we so as you drive by Huntington please imagine all of us holding our four fingers in thank you very much so of course because I appreciate that and if you have Susan Clark come up here for next and then my name is Kimberly Jessup I'm the representative for Middle Sex and East Montpelier I helped organize a letter which I hope you all read it was signed on to by the entire general assembly delegation representing the towns that comprise the Washington Central Supervisory Union and the letter recognizes that the proposal proposal results from considerable and difficult work by community members as required by Statue I attended many of the meetings myself and came away with a deep respect for all the participants by now I assume you're familiar with many of the legal, technical and policy areas pertaining to this proposal like the letter signed on to by members of the General Assembly people find their way through their differences and came together behind this proposal before you so here we are at the end of the day it's my view that we're really left with a fairly fundamental question and that is does consent matter it does very much and for two rather different reasons in my view the first concerns performance if the win-win elements of the so-called preferred model are well suited for nearly all then it shouldn't need to be forced upon communities at the end of a thorough and deliberative process in accordance with Statue that seems like a likely route to underperformance at best and a recipe for potential future failure at worst and the second reason and this is what I view as really one of values is ask yourselves do you seek to stand with communities or do you wish to stand in for them and discard their work product I ask that you respect both the process and outcome and approve the final proposal and then Richard and then Richard thank you I'm Susan Clark I live in Milzex which is Fort Washington Central SU and I strongly support the WCSU board to unanimous decision not to pursue consolidation their decision was based on years of research and discussion and effort our communities have always gotten along well but with our wet issues consolidation would create inequity getting town against town against neighborhood professional revealed the many sophisticated reasons that our citizens really oppose consolidation and those results are on the WCSU website I am very grateful that our boards have spared us polarizing campaigns which inevitably would have ended in failed for monitors have a healthy tradition and cultural for self-governance and as you can hear from today's testimony this passion isn't going away any time soon nor should we wish it for our community has been at the heart of how we make sense of the world in fact it's this sense of connection and meaning of personal advocacy and civic responsibility that we so earnestly want to instill in our high school graduates make no mistake to Vermont communities forced merger is violence it's violence to the democratic process to communities to girls schools and students and as with any act of violence there will be consequences, lawsuits, shore but also bitter repercussions that will likely endure for generations the state board can do so much better you can embrace our rural communities for their strengths and respect their willingness to partner in framing solutions as they have in their proposals so I urge the board to respect the VCSU's wise and well founded decision the last thing we should want is to add to the alienation and anger felt by rural communities it's not good for anyone especially for our students Richard came from Calis school board member in good faith that with the interests of our children our communities, our state our very democracy in mind our five towns each came together to address this issue engineers attorney general prominent lawyers carpenters engineers carpenters farmers to discuss the debate and unanimously reject the preferred model that we're talking about posing down upon our district this same group developed an alternative model which will better serve our needs after thousands of hours of combined effort to do this I've been involved with this since the very beginning and I in my background is in planning, I work with Addison County as a senior transportation planner the solidation works for some communities geographically it works I know that all of those communities still you see towns like Ola it does not work there is not a one-site fits all it has been proven in Maine and other states and if we go down this path we're going to see the same kind of division that has arisen there what we need to do is do exactly like Susan said and it's exactly like really Justin said you have to acknowledge the towns that have gone and done the due diligence these are intelligent people they are as intelligent as anyone in the agency of education who, incidentally, is generally absent from all of these processes very occasionally we see a threat and rarely was any of the feedback considered unless it was to use to plug to basically force them farther into the chute of consolidation we as a town of Calis will fight this we will challenge the legal aid court and we will also even consider our own school closure and starting an independent school too because we feel very strongly this is our innovation right now I'm from Bolton I'm also the chair of the Mansfield Mountain High Indian School District School Board I would like to thank you for recognizing Underhill Central's achievements earlier this morning we had a highly functional school district also led by the superintendent of the year as you know we marched a few years ago we've been focused on students we've offered as was discussed earlier elementary school choice within our district we've started to offer a partnership for our language immersion program and this year we're going to consider repurposing one of our elementary schools we have two towns and three elementary schools we're focused on students and achievement and equity the supervisor union structure that we're still in is a distraction it's not a benefit to students with multiple districts being separate from the rest of the schools they have different priorities continuous progress of students and it requires maintenance of this complicated governance structure and there are costs associated with that the first year that we can track the separate governance in Huntington school district cost about $20,000 last year it was $33,221 to best serve our students in our men's field we must become the supervisory district we have an existing board, we have articles of agreement all we would need would be state boards recommendation would be a positive vote from the members of our class and then Dorothy from Calis I have to put my name on the wrong list okay that's okay you don't have to get the ticket okay then Dan from ORWA maybe I'm a sign-in chief a sign-in chief right up there so if you want to go ahead I'm Linda from Barnard and I was on the ADS community I've also had kids in I've had kids in the school for 14 straight years so I know they'll manage the school very well while I could sit here and tell you many wonderful things about my time at Barnard and its thriving school community what I really want to talk about are the amazing humans that sat here today to defend their ADS proposals not only do these people know their communities in schools but they know education in the state of Vermont and the laws they govern Act 46, Act 49 and all the other older laws of Act 16 Act 68 they are volunteers who work their butts off to find a way to uphold their ideals while still following the law through mind-blowing artwork week in and week out month in and month out year in and year out they are volunteers labored for long periods hours of reading, reading, reading, talking, analyzing gathering data and reading more and then writing and writing again to find a way to do what they know is best for their schools some of them are on 7 or 6 B committees who are tackling the tremendous job of putting together an alternative government structures proposal they have multiple conferences phone meetings, daily email correspondences and many discussions with lawyers as the residents of the town as they represent not to mention the leaders of the Vermont Agency of Education as various state legislatures and many of you all it is outrageous that the proposal proposed state plan before by the agency of education rejects so many of these fiercely crafted alternative government proposals proposals that were labors they ambitiously put together to be accurate admin space documents meanwhile most of all of last year's preferred merger proposals were waived right through with minimal scrutiny it's as if the train must consolidate had already left the station in just a little bump like the section of the state law requiring a fair AGS proposal evaluation was not going to get in its way I ask you all to be careful and judicious, more careful and more judicious as the secretary proposed the plan is please consider what is really right and what is really fair to the students and the town as these hardworking volunteers as well represent my name is Harry Rudondo, I'm from Orwell I have two kids in Orwell a 6th grader and an 8th grader and I also have a freshman actually now a sophomore in Fair A I think the boils down to for our community is that we voted three times and what's critical about that third vote is that it was on a plan that considered us as advisable which created a mud that plan was presented to you guys and you guys approved it and we voted that down the schools in the district then formed the mud which was an approved plan and now you are forcing us into, or proposing to force us into a merger with them on a plan that we rejected not once, not twice but three times if that doesn't sink in what that is is the destruction of the democratic process and an absolute atrocity towards what people committed in terms of their kind and energy to understanding the impacts and the proposed benefits you asked earlier what were the main concerns three of 18 representatives that is a substantial disadvantage it is clear to anyone with paying attention to the democratic process that three of 18 puts you at substantial risks for financial and educational cuts or being up over for other aspects is critical that three of 18 be understood so what I go back to is how we get to the spot and the fact is that you guys are proposing to ignore our vote the secretary's proposed plan considered that community sentiment that is not community sentiment that is community sentiment can you vote on this amendment can you take this position and then a member of the board say you know I think we are going to vote differently that is kind of the community sentiment we took three legally binding votes is that clear thank you Angus Whitman Angus Whitman no Paul Stone from Orwell and then also Scott from Palace so did you sign up to be public is there another Scott from Palace oh no thank you for hearing us my name is Paul Stone I'm from Orwell home citizen of the town of Orwell I have had four children attend the Orwell school and four grandchildren attend the school I've been involved for a while I would like to emphasize what Dan Rodondo just said in that the second article of agreement specifically said and stated in very detailed terms how would be formed and how Orwell could opt out and be in that mud and that's the way the town of Orwell voted and I hope that the state board will respect that democratic decision to do that couple other things I'd like to reiterate the opportunity for townspeople to participate in the school with a smaller school board is much greater and a small school is much greater we now vote by show of hands at town meeting on our school budgets and we have the opportunity to query school board members and teachers and principal and talk about what our priorities are the school budget has passed in Orwell for the last 42 years as far as I can remember without any problem even though we are a rural town doesn't have a lot of money we don't have any ski area we don't have any insurance we will lose a small school grant if we stay in the mud and I just think that's a criminal punishment for a small school I just can't understand why the legislature would do that the ski program is very important to us four or five years ago when we started that the townspeople raised $12,000 to implement that program and now it's funded by the school budget it's an important program all the students go whether they participate in the skiing or not all but six legs here participated and I think it's a very important program it's as important as all the other sports because it's a winter time thing that you can do for the rest of your life and it's taking advantage of the climate in Vermont thank you I'm trying to be there from Calis yes, that's what that last name is yes okay that is you alright we'll come step up right here please on your way do I see a sharing from Orwell yes just so we can try to get through more people it's very helpful to be coming out so the five of you are first and then sharing we have two minutes you can force Calis to go into consolidation everything I've heard says you will don't you understand what you're doing to our school you don't see the consequence you force us into consolidation that means the Calis school is closed understand that in your hearts understand what you're doing to Calis is there a blend thank you very much for the opportunity to speak I speak very quickly so I have enough to say here please let me introduce myself my name is Sherry Young I am a business owner I'm a scientist, I'm a mother I'm a resident of Orwell and I did run a STEAM program for the students of Orwell I should add to the disclaimer here that I am a flat lander I love this state but I first cried for an entire year when I first moved to Orwell because it's a very rural area until my children started in the community school I then found a wonderful opportunity for my children in this school they know their neighbors they partake in intergenerational opportunities within the school day I volunteer hundreds of hours of my time like many other volunteers or Orwell which are not paid for I have found that it would be for my children to have a grateful opportunity to grow and fail in a supportive and socio-economic diverse community I've been an active member of the Act 46 process often attending meetings outside of my town maybe the only person 30 minutes away not even with no one represented from that town I did whatever good good scientists would do once I found out about Act 46 I researched the ever-gloving daylights out of it I called NAME I spoke with superintendent's principals on NAME DC you name it I know them I found with all of my research I have more and more clear vision that the consolidation of the small community school my rural children attend would be negatively impacted during the meeting two years ago with many legislators that are in this room I was assured that what happened in NAME would not happen in Vermont we're not Vermont we would never have a big state that is not true this day NAME model the only way to long-term economic stability needs to close community schools remove rural children from the communities for nurturing and educating them where is the equity for rural children in that have you ever ridden the bus for more than an hour with 50 plus kids it's horrible and I suggest you do it Consolidation in certain communities the big box for educational opportunities may seem like a good deal until there's nowhere left to stop can I be a 40? Thank you I'm just going to be very short and I'm speaking solely as a community member if not anybody associated with the school I think that at 46 have some merit I do feel that everybody feels that this is something to stuff down the throat that being said ultimately I can accept whatever decision is made it's not going to be the be all end all it's not going to end our school but what I really think needs to happen is there needs to be an end to this so that our community can start to heal it's been very divided and we need to hand that over we need to think about the children we need to find ways of challenging our students and taking them to the next level because as things continue to consolidate in the world everything becomes global we are not competing with the kids next door we are competing with the kids from across the ocean and this is we need to move forward challenge our students and get this stuff behind us I'm Lisa Bear and I live in Huntington and I fear that the merger train has left the station but I'm asking this board to please consider I'm here to talk about democracy Huntington voted four times and what is the point of voting in our votes are not listening to the secretaries report the votes plan said community sentiment essentially is irrelevant I am asking the board to correct Mr. Carroll pointed out that this is about the children not about the adults children learn from what they see happening around them if they see their parents and their community voting four times not to merge and what do they learn if the merger goes ahead what they learn is that the people in power will ignore the will of the voters and that is not a lesson that anyone wants children to learn this board has a chance to inject some democracy in this process to inject some wisdom into the process is it wise to force citizens into a district where they will not have a meaningful force is it wise to ignore the people as expressed in four separate elections is it wise to eliminate public participation by moving forward 23 clients from where the people live in the name of democracy I urge this board to reconsider and not force having to merge and then we also have David Carpenter for Orwell if you could come up also I am Kyle Landis my personal capacity I'm the parent of three wonderful children that brought me in middle sex they're here in the back we live right across the street from the school I passionately support keeping our local school boards because that is what is best for all the children in Washington County that's not just my opinion that's the unanimous opinion of all six of our school boards and the opinion of all of our local representatives to understand how passionate we are about this consider the following analogy there are two paths leading out of this room imagine this path is flat safe and clear and you get ten million dollars if you pick this path now look at the other path imagine born in science with potholes, brambles, barbed wire live tigers and not a dime of money we spent three torturous years deciding which path when we started, I had short hair instead of taking ten million and leisurely strolling down the easy lane we took a path with brambles, barbed wire and live tigers and it was every bit as brutal as it looks like it would be we're battered, disheveled and scarred but we made the right choice we know our towns, we surveyed our citizens we talked to them listened to them, we looked at our particular situation at this moment in time and realized our districts cannot merge it will not work this path is what is best for our kids do not pluck us away from this path and send us down the other path we don't belong there we chose against it even when offered ten million dollars to force us there now with no incentives without our consent is unconscionable and it won't work we fought live tigers to get here I'll say I'll tell your stories I'll try to make this as quick as I can I see this as a conflict on how to respond to change either you succumb to fear or you exert leadership and I would have preferred more well exert leadership in this regard and I hope we'll still have the opportunity to do so second I've been on the Slate Valley the mud board with those 15 strangers that we're all talking about and the collaborations have been great they're smart folks they're doing for ways to further the education of all the kids in the district not just their own I'd like to see us follow that beat as well third the concerns that I've heard over and over are loss of control and loss of community I just don't see those closing the school is a fear for sure but a greater fear should be short-sheeting the kids in Orwell because we're missing out on opportunities fourth I have questions about cutting the programs I heard questions about cutting the programs but I haven't heard a lot about adding the programs and I fear that Orwell is stagnating the physical plan to such standard it means a lot of work and there are some issues as well I haven't necessarily been addressing specific issues today fifth I think that there were improvements to education across the board built all the kids we're all ending up with our neighbors kids and Fairhaven we should all be working as hard as we can for the education for all of us and finally I hear a lot about the divisions that this has caused and the divisions that will leave there's no question that there have been divisions and I've had some people in this room and I've had very good conversations and very productive conversations but whether those divisions persist is on the parents and those divisions will only persist if we let them thank you so at this point we are running behind but we will adjourn at this point and just to give a half an hour oh sorry thank you for your attention try to do math and talk at the same time just like to do social studies show right so we will come back in half an hour I need to take a break thank you