Thanks everyone. Opening the meeting of the Montpere Roxbury Board of School Directors at 6.32 p.m. Glad to see so many people in the room as you probably got from our notice. We have some very important budget topics to talk about tonight. I just want to kind of preface it that tonight is really about information. As you know, there was a change in the law Act 127 that is designed to change how students are weighted, which is a very important part of our funding formula in terms of how much we get from the state versus how much the town is asked to pay. There is, as Sylvie's going to explain, there's some phase in provisions that have pretty serious implications, but the overall message is that we're in a situation where we are likely to face several years of cuts or exorbitant, and I mean exorbitant, tax increases, and we're going to have to figure out how to deal with that. Tonight is not about figuring out how to deal with that. Tonight is about assessing the situation, asking some questions for the administration to come up with some various scenarios so we can chart the best path forward. I want to make very clear that this law is very well-intentioned. It is meant to get more money to students with higher needs. That said, as you're going to see, it has very real implications for our town and for our ability to provide the educational services that we want to provide at the level of affordability we've been able to in the past, and they're very real. I also want to stress that this is something we have very limited control over, and I mean very limited control over. It's something that unfortunately we are in a more of a reactive mode than a solution mode, so we're going to have to work with what the legislature gave us unless the legislature changes its mind, and we are not going to count on that at all. So we're going to have public comment up front. We're also going to have public comment after the presentation. If a lot of people are wanting to give public comment, I'm going to limit the time, and I'm going to do so in a way that makes sure everybody has a chance to say something succinct, but not to go on and on and on. Not that anyone does that, but occasionally it happens. But I want to make sure everyone gets heard. I also just want to again say that we are going to have several meetings where we're going to absorb what we have tonight, come up with proposals. Tonight is not the only time that you have to say what you want to say. There's going to be ample opportunity both to give commentary when we have more information, when you've absorbed the information. And I also want to say that what is it? School board at MPSVT.org will get an email to all of us. We read our emails. We respond to them. It's a very effective way to give us information. So if you want to sit with what you hear tonight, think about it, come back to us with an email. That is a great way to do it. And again, we're going to probably add a meeting in December, just given that this is a very unusual budget this season. We'll have listening sessions and meetings in January. We have about two and a half months to consider this. So it's a long process. And tonight is really just absorbing the situation we're in. And that's what we're going to focus on and then move to next steps, which are some scenarios and eventually making decisions. So long process, I hope you all stick with us through it and give input. It really helps us make decisions. But this is a situation we have not been in, certainly in my tenure on the board. And I really can't remember one, even just as a parent and caregiver in the community. So it's a unique situation. It's not the best situation. But together we will find a way to ensure that we meet our educational goals, do what we need to do for our kids, and do it in a way that is bearable for the taxpayers. So with that, we're going to have initial public comment. Again, we are having another public comment section after the financial presentation. So if anyone has something they want to say before then, maybe on a non-budget related issue, please either come up to the front or if you're on Zoom, please use the raise hand function, which is in your reactions button. Great. Seeing none.  Okay. My name is Tom Frazier. I'm from Roxbury. I've lived there for 50 years and was intimately involved in the rebuilding of the school when it started out as a two room school and a town hall that was falling down and rat infested. In the 1970s, we took a major step to rebuild the school and keep it in the middle of the, in the village so that the town would always have a town center, a town soul, if that's what you want to call it. A lot of people wanted to close it down, move out, move it up on the road, up on the mountain road, lots of other things. We decided at that time to keep it in the village. And since then it's been rebuilt, it's been added on to a couple of times and it's a very nice facility. And now I feel like this board, because you have to come up with a savings of X amount of dollars, are going to throw Roxbury under the preferable school bus to save that money. When we vote on a school district, on a school budget, it's a district wide budget. We have no separate vote for Roxbury and Montpelier, but yet you have come up with a $33,000 per student cost versus your $24,000, $9,000 for 40 kids, that's a lot of money. But if we didn't have your, as I understood when we signed on to this merger, we became part of your $9 million debt. We had no debt. Our school was built and paid for. So now I wonder whether or not any of your debt is it is part of that $33,000 per student. There's also transportation costs that we didn't have back in the day, that we now have because of this merger. And those are also part of that $33,000. A lot of us were against merging with Montpelier. I mean I think it's worked out well for the students. And you know I have grandchildren now in town that are going to be going through it and I think that you know they will benefit in the long run. But I'm not sure our town will benefit from losing at school if that's because that seems to be the way you're headed. The transportation costs according to the budget that I looked at was $600 plus thousand dollars a year. You know that's a lot of money and it all relates to transport, not all of it obviously, but you know a large portion of it is having to come to Montpelier and back however many times a day. If you close the school, if you take the students out, you're still going to own the building and you still have to maintain the building, maintain the sewer and water system that go with it because you have local residents that are part of that system. You have a bus busing situation that it's not that cost is not going to go away. So I question how much you really would save by closing our school when you consider the cost that would actually be to the town itself and to the town's you know sense of being.  You know I don't know I don't know how you figure these things. I look at your paperwork. I don't understand any of it and I don't pretend to. I'm just looking at it from a very practical standpoint and what the town has put into this building and into this merger and we feel like you know we're getting the short end of the stick, which is what everybody expected would happen sometime down the road, but you know I feel like today is more like April 1st than November 1st something you know we're just we're just a lot of people are really upset and we understand I mean I knew this back last year that that that there was nothing that we could do about it. We have two votes out of nine. It's not I mean I realize it's all based on numbers, but it really doesn't really doesn't do much for for anybody saw peace of mind. So that's all I have to say. What else before we go to consent agenda? Do you have a motion to approve the consent agenda? We do it. Include a co-curricular. And we need to consent agenda with co-curricular included. I move to approve the consent agenda with the addition of the co-curricular. Do I have a second? Positions. Any discussion? All those in favor? Hi. Any opposed? Consent agenda passes. Jim, can we remind people that you also offered to open up public comment after the discussion? Yeah, no I said that. So now on to board business, which is finance committee update and potential approval of first-quarter report and then the budget presentation. Anything from the finance committee? The report, particularly the first-quarter report. The outstanding part from the finance committee is the costs of repairs from the flooding and that so that's an unusual piece of the current budget that would normally be there but the everything's being reversed including FEMA will cover deductibles. So that's all seems good and then there's some work from FEMA to do some improvements with the electrical panel that maybe moved out of the basement in the high school here. Other than that there's we had the fund balance still has the track money, $400,000 that we agreed to make available if needed for the fiscal year 24 budget and then there was we're sort of projecting another 400,000 that may be available if needed for the fiscal year 25 budget. Any of that any of those things could change any of the general fund figures are remain to be actually spent? I'm guessing we're going to probably want to take all of the all of the reserve fund we can to help with the situation I guess is that just because I know that's gonna come up but that is probably an idea that we will float seriously. I think Christina said that last year there was only about 78,000 used of the 400,000 that had been earmarked so that's been the situation is likely to change. Yeah that's definitely something we will consider because I know that question will come up. Sure do you have a motion to approve the first quarter report? Second. Any discussion or questions? I was in favor? Oh, we got Jake. Oh, hey Jake with the late, late I. Jake is not feeling well. Okay, I'll share my screen here. I want to start before we get into any of the numbers recognizing that the information in tonight's presentation is very hard it's hard to hear it's hard to provide you as the superintendent and Christina business manager who might want to come up to the table over here. Yeah, Christina Kimball our business manager and I can say that Christina and I with members of our leadership team have well Christina and I in particular and we've dragged our leadership team into it have done little else but think of this process and these pressures for the last three weeks losing a lot of sleep over these and so because we just were trying to get it right and understand everything this law is complicated there seems to be limited direct information as to how we apply the law so Christina and I have been down probably 500 rabbit holes and continue to uncover them even this afternoon when we had agency officials on the phone and I talked to probably five different superintendents and Christina talked to five different business managers just this afternoon as we uncovered another rabbit hole that we didn't quite understand in order to try to understand it all I'd say now I'm pretty confident I'm at about 90 percent of understanding because there could be information that one quite honestly we're wrong and two we just simply haven't understood yet because it's so complicated so I just want to put that out to everybody just in recognition that that this is hard stuff and it's complicated stuff and it's a very different way of doing things and that we have to get used to that the new language and what it all means so moving forward the beginning slides here and if people in the audience do not have the presentation there's some on the back just a little reminder for any budget year this one the past five that we have done there are things that the school board and administration can control which are in green on this slide and there are things that we have no control over whatsoever in the budget and that's in red so you'll notice that the red far outweighs the green the non-tax revenue is in yellow simply because we have some control over that and the agency of education has some control over that so we it's not a total greener red piece just so just a reminder one of the big pressures is Act 127 that was a law enacted last year that Jim referenced in the beginning of our of the board meeting tonight it's a act that's intended to provide educational equity and quality to students across our our state it's a good law and the intent behind it is a good law some of the pieces I wish they had reconsidered however the idea that our weights were outdated and did not do what it needed to for students is they were right on with that that scenario that's going to influence our district in a way that's hard however the the the purpose behind this law is as is intended is good so just keeping that in mind there is a link to the to it there if anybody is interested in reading all the legislation there's a glossary of turns I'm not going to go into it totally it's just for people's reference these terms now roll off our tongues and so if you need a quick definition rabbit ear this page in the presentation so getting into the waiting on the left there there are the old weights you can see that there were just five of them and on the right hand side are the new weights looking they went the the state and the agency of education went through a long study process with you vm to to come to these weights about what was fair I will say that I honestly wish that I had been more understanding of it because I think they overlooked some things with these weights so you notice there's no mental health concerns with these weights there is no intervention it's making the assumption that elementary students do not you need intervention or remediation services it's just there's a lot of assumptions here it does make the assumption that a student who is multilingual needs more services because that's accurate right that's an accurate statement and so it did make some assumptions it didn't make all the assumptions now that these numbers are becoming a reality it's a little bit we can understand that a little bit better but these are the weights that we have currently in the new act 127 so there are always typical pressures on our budget and 127 is adding some additional pressures and so what used to be called equalized pupil is now called long term weighted average daily membership or else LTW ADM I'm going to use the term for this presentation is equalized pupil simply because that's the term I'm used to and it's the term the board is used to it is pretty much the same thing it's just different weights and they named it a different thing okay our our school district will be disadvantaged in this in equalized pupil because of act 127 financial decisions from school districts across the state will impact something called the dollar yield the dollar yield is not unique to 127 I don't even know if it's if it's mentioned in 127 but the dollar yield is always part of our budgeting process it always influences our budget one way or the other and it has to do with how flush the Education Fund is and how we can Jill can make it even better than I can but make it so worth a dollar is worth a dollar in the eyes of the Ed fund so the new weights will result in more equalized pupils across the state this will impact the dollar yield most likely in a negative way because we'll be drawing more from the Ed fund since we will have more equalized pupils so the dollar yield will lower it will come closer to that dollar this number three while it's a typical pressure in our budget it's not going to come into play too much in this presentation and it's not going to really come into play if while making some assumptions there but the the CLA did some wacky things here in Montpelier this year that were unique to this fiscal year and it was unexpected this isn't going to come into play a whole lot we thought it would but with better understanding it's not so CLA is the common thank you Jim is the common level of appraisal it's how our houses are appraised at versus what they're selling at or what they're actually worth and so the CLA I'll just go through this quickly but again it's not really going to influence our budget tax rate this year for reasons I will explain in a bit but the CLA here in Montpelier was really low when we passed our budget last year we passed our budget last year in Montpelier with a 74 CLA 74% CLA between the time when we passed our budget and when your tax bills came out here in Montpelier the reappraisal had happened in time for the new CLA to come into effect for the FY 24 budget all the things we're talking about is FY 25 so I we made the expectation when we passed our budget last year that the CLA from Montpelier was going to help us this year because it was going to go skyrocketing right but that didn't happen that actually helped you helped you as taxpayers this year in fiscal year 24 because it went from what we passed as a 74% CLA in March to 113 on your tax bills 113% so that skyrocket happened this year which is great it was a lower tax bill however FY 25 the CLA in Montpelier is expected to drop so when it drops from year to year that comparison anytime it drops that's going to increase our taxes a bit but again I'll explain why that doesn't have a significant influence as it would in a typical year and the reason we're focused more on Montpelier with the CLA is because that is having a bigger impact in Roxbury it's not having as it didn't and won't have as big of an impact yeah the CLA doesn't move as fast in Roxbury as it does in Montpelier okay so Act 127 has some pieces in it that just that has more to do with just than just the weights that add some additional pressures and some additional reliefs it should say and I'm sorry if I'm talking really slowly it's just because it's complicated and I want to make sure that I don't just run it off our equalized residential tax rate which is the tax rate prior to the CLA being calculated in according to Act 127 is capped at a 5% increase through FY 29 that's a relief for our tax-paying base because that's a cap right that's saying it's not going to go above the 5% for for spending and so that's a really good thing for the next five years so this is in place for five years until fiscal year 29 the ed fund the Education Fund will make up the difference between what we pass as a budget and what that 5% cap is so they'll pull that in every district from the Education Fund according to this law in order to get our tax rate in fiscal year 30 to a reasonable and responsible fiscal number we will have to continue to decrease spending for the five years so that in fiscal year 30 we are not really hit with an enormous tax bill we think that could change the cap this 5% cap will hold and we can rely on it as long as our our equalized people or our long-term weighted average daily membership is below 10% increase from the previous year should we come over a 10% equalized spend equalized people spending the secretary can it's not the secretary shall but the secretary of education can look at our budget and what we've spent to determine if it's excessive spending or not whether or not that will happen is up to a big debate in all kinds of forums right now where superintendents live but it is in the law that the secretary can make that determination if we come in over 10% equalized people spending if they determine if we say we're doing it we're coming in over 10% and the secretary determines that it's excessive then our taxpayers will be on the hook for the typical tax rate that is not capped at 5% the cap goes away and that's significant so the tax increase will be significant so this is kind of the biggest slide and thing to understand in this presentation right here and I know I've had to explain it out loud about a lot at this point and then still I'm trying to figure out the best way to explain it but it's just kind of to get it down and bullets and go for it I'm actually gonna ask Christina to talk to this slide one of the things I asked Christina to look at and I want to say to make it really clear we are making a lot of assumptions here because so many numbers can change between now and five years from now you know we could have middle-income housing projects go up at the Elks Club or wherever and lots of families move into that and increase our enrollment we don't know what's gonna happen in five years the legislature could change this law in five years and change the weights the like the dollar yield could do whatever the dollar you we don't know what the CLA is gonna do so I just want to put that out there that there are so many assumptions that Christina made on this slide that and at the same time I still believe it's an important slide to show simply because it shows that over five years we can't keep spending the way we're spending and have a responsible tax rate at the end of five years so Christina you want to explain what you did in your nice loud teacher voice good evening everyone so in this slide what I did I I just projected that we're gonna add two million dollars to our our general fund budget for each year the blue line shows you currently from FY 24 to 25 what a five percent cap tax rate would look like so that's so that's what the blue line shows you is just our five percent cap we were able to to stay under the 10% and spending her equalized pupil the orange line shows the new weights so again I made a lot of assumptions here I'm assuming what we're adding to the budget based on salary benefits inflation those types of things also I'm assuming the CLA I'm assuming the dollar yield every factor in here is an assumption but just based on a trend of adding two million dollars each year we get to FY 30 and our we won't have that cap that protection so our tax rate would jump from $1.62 to $1.84 and that's a pretty significant jump compared to our trending tax rate increases Nick's you're standing can you go shut the back door for me thank you so what does this all mean and again I want to just reiterate and reiterate or iterate we are making some assumptions here that could change they could change for the better they could change for the worse they could change but one of the things that Christina Mia and Jim and I decided very early because of the impact this has on our on our tax-paying base on our staff on the school board and what the discussion is going to be we want to be as transparent as we possibly can be from the get-go with this conversation and get as much input as possible so so this body can make really good decisions with that we are making assumptions okay so we're making projections off of our assumptions a lot of our assumptions are pretty good assumptions when I when I say we've lived this for three weeks we've lived this for three weeks they're pretty good assumptions the budget process is always filled with assumptions there are there are numbers that can change we do our best historically we've done a pretty good job of arriving at assumptions that are within within the range of where the true numbers are yes so one assumption we are making and the assumption is coming from direction from both colleagues at the tax department and the Vasbo which is the Vermont's business managers association who work directly with the agency of education finance department we're making an assumption of a dollar yield which has a significant impact on our budget and our tax rate of nine thousand six hundred eighty seven dollars to give you a sense last year's dollar yield was fifteen thousand four hundred and something dollars okay so that this is a precipitous drop in the dollar yield something that I've been superintendent for six years that type of drop has never happened it typically increases quite honestly so this is a much different drop but this is what they've told us to plan with is this type of drop the dollar yield we're supposed to get a notice from the tax department on December 1st sometimes it's a couple days late but our first board meeting in December is December 6th so fingers crossed we'll have a realer number is that a word realer a more real number for that board meeting on December 6th so that's when we're supposed to get it but right now we're making an assumption here 15,400 change okay so we could increase our budget by two million dollars you heard Christina reference that number that reference wasn't just pulled out of the sky we need an anticipated approximate two million dollars to represent just the salary and benefits increase for our staff for the staff at Montpelier Roxbury that's of course an approximation we don't know who's leaving we don't know who's coming that kind of thing but it with our staff we have now it's approximately two million dollars for just salary and benefits no other programmatic shifts no other increases to the budgets but salaries and benefits we do have the solid increase in benefits for next year from the high not solid but we have anticipated from V high which is the letter we use and the increase to all of our benefits here in the district is sixteen point four percent increase five percent increase from last year that's the largest increase it's been in six years so it's a significant increase we knew we had we anticipated and we expected from three years ago that we would need to move about four point five FTE from that are currently in grants as a grant being one of them Medicaid fund balance grant being another one we knew we'd have to move those positions into our local budget this year this is not a surprise and wasn't unexpected and we had planned for it it's approximately five hundred thousand dollars and we had a plan to do that however there's still this two million down that you know it's like decrease five million to get to the two million if that makes five hundred thousand to get to the two million if that makes any sense but I did want to just put that out there in terms of transparency this was an expected thing we were going to have to do in our district so with the projections and that's underlined and if I should have put it in like a bigger font with projections and assumptions of the dollar yield and the CLA the ad spending per modeled long-term weighted average daily membership or equalized pupil the increase would be beyond that 10 percent if we put in two million extra in our budget and just to reiterate the two million is not right right it's not we wouldn't be adding any programs right programs it's simply what we promise it's what we promised it's you know it's raises it's increased in benefit costs and it's you know moving some positions from one source of revenue to another yep it's not adding anything new but it's also not taking anything exactly it's just presenting yeah yeah it's moving forward right so in in red there up on the slide that could and capitalized could trigger the potential meeting with the secretary of education regarding excess funding if we came in at that number the projected equalized residential tax rate which is the tax rate before the CLA is factored in could be capped at five percent if it's not determined excessive if it's excessive it also could be eighty four point two one seven percent an actuality with our assumptions so that means that difference between the five percent and the eighty four percent would be made up by the Ed fund every district would be doing that okay so like every district in the state would be pulling more from the Ed fund than we typically do and that's a big if that is bolded and it's underlined if MRPS is determined to have excess spending then the cap is lifted and the projected residential tax rate with no cap and after CLA could be very very large for Montpelier it could be 108 percent or three thousand six hundred fifty dollars increase on a three hundred thousand dollar house in Roxbury it would increase eighty four point twenty one percent or three thousand two hundred ninety on a three hundred thousand dollar home it's significant if if the secretary would come in and determine our spending excessive and that's a big if right it's a gamble so this is clarified that that is not taking into consideration the homestead no it's not taking into consideration the hometown practice property which you know the percentage of voters in Montpelier don't you totally put you on the spot there I'm sorry and for some perspective the increase on a three hundred thousand dollar home last year was like two hundred eighty dollars you know one thousand and ninety five home stats twelve hundred our income sensitized when they pay their taxes two thirds in Montpelier and then for Roxbury there are two hundred twenty two home stats and one hundred forty of them qualify for income sensitivity and that's where you receive a credit on your tax bill based on your income Montpelier was two thirds so another scenario is to increase our budget by approximately eight hundred thousand dollars assuming the dollar yield assuming a lot of things another way to put that though is that if we need two million dollars for our salaries and benefits things we've already promised to our staff we'd have to decrease our budget by one point two million this would not cover our projected costs for salaries and benefits for our staff currently employed at MRPS and we the leadership team would need significant direction from the school board to determine how to target that decrease if we did this then the ed spending this I played with the math until I got the closest to ten percent I possibly could without going over and we're around eight hundred thousand there we come in under the ten percent so we'd be kept protected by the cap they would not look at our budget at all they wouldn't have a reason to and we and so it would be capped at five percent which is why you don't see the third row there because it's a moot point it wouldn't come into fruition with this particular scenario now I want to reiterate though like the the message that is very easy to get from this is oh we need to cut one point two million a lot of assumptions are in this slide there's an assumption on a dollar yield we don't know there's an assumption on the final LTW we don't know there are some assumptions here that we still don't know however they the assumptions we've made are pretty good assumptions they're not exact but they're pretty good so so to get to as close to the ten percent as possible we'd have to significant we'd have to reduce our budget that that is a statement that I feel very confident making so I Christine and I are suggesting a timeline revision in love I guess it's the board policy for budget for budget development typically just so the audience knows who don't live and breathe this stuff we typically present our first initial budget in the first board meeting in December to the school board we provide a second draft based on the feedback we received from the school board in the second meeting of December we hold a public forum in the first meeting in January for anybody to offer feedback and then the board votes on the budget final like what gets sent to the printers the second meeting in January that is the typical process we are suggesting this instead this is a bit this is a budget meeting we don't normally have in our budget cycle so it's kind of kicking off now the next board meeting on the 15th we'd like to give the board in the community time for this to percolate and time for people to think on it and provide the board with feedback and so we're going to go ahead with our fall data presentation on the 15th of November the first board meeting in December we would recommend that the board have discussions regarding the direction that they would like the administration to take in generating that first draft of the budget and then presenting that first draft on the 20th I am also anticipating as our Jim and Mia that the board may need some additional meetings to have discussions with the public in between those meetings in December and possibly January we need to have a budget finalized and approved by the board by January 7th the January 17th board meeting so Christina can get it prepared and sent to where we need to go and that date isn't even our policy that's long right to get in time for town meeting right you have to have it 30 days and I have 30 days before town meeting by statute so right now in this moment I'm going to reiterate what Jim said earlier this is not the meeting to discuss strategy this is a meeting to ask questions and try to understand a very complicated law and its impacts on MRPS I think all of us need to recognize that everybody in the room and on zoom and who will watch this at a later date recognize that this is not easy and it will not be easy for the foreseeable future unless we have made drastic mistakes which I'm not going to say that that can't happen educating our communities regarding the influence of act one one twenty seven will be paramount in the coming years and this is the time right now to ask questions and if Christina and I can't figure out the answers we will certainly find them for us for the the community and the board and with that I hand it to you Jim so what we're gonna do is take public comment and then have board discussion could I see a show of hands of people who want to make comment in the room two three four and on one so we've got five to two six seven eight any others on online I'm gonna give a quick call because it'll influence how people eight total and anyone else want to give public comment going once I mean you come on up and ask it yeah yeah so nine okay let's do a minute each let's start in the room first would you like me to answer questions as they come or or tough to answer questions if I can if they come or would you like me to write them down and then answer them all together that way they're fresh and people don't need a reminder so I'm going to time folks I've got at least for the people around two fingers for ten seconds one finger for five so that way it doesn't surprise you you can wrap up and just form a queue and go Joe so good evening I'm Joe Carroll I'm the president of the Montpelier Roxbury Education Association our local teachers union as we begin this long complicated and challenging process around how to deal with the budget constraints we're facing the MREA wants to emphasize three things that we hope will be at the forefront of your thinking first the MREA is a stakeholder group in the school district and in our community is looking forward to a transparent and democratic process if really hard decisions have to be made those decisions we hope will be made in partnership with those in the decisions effect achieving the best possible outcome from this situation necessitates that all school workers students community members and stakeholders have a seat at the table and these decisions are made in other words nothing about us without us second we also want to emphasize a reality that needs to be centered no matter where this conversation goes students are coming to our schools with many complicated and hard to meet needs meeting those needs is very very difficult a quick look at the youth risk behavior survey or other data points okay thank you as the conversation unfolds we can't emphasize enough how important it is to recognize that cutting any position that directly faces students and meet students needs might be short-term solution to a budget crisis but would be a very serious mistake long term finally given how complicated financing education is we invite the board to a longer-term discussion with the union on how we can advocate to the state for a more equitable funding of schools I'm sorry I went over thank you so much for serving on the board I know it's a lot of time and a lot of work and really appreciate everything you're doing to keep our schools running just a comment we you know it's important to get good information out there I know you all are trying and in this in this slide the increased two million I know you referred to it verbally but we should not be talking about what potential rate increase looks like for a home without mentioning whether these people are income subsidized they're not like someone's gonna see this number and get really upset if they're low-income and we just got to be super clear in that because once numbers like this get out there they start circulating all over the place and people get really upset about it and let's just be sure if you can just be as clear as possible I think it would take down everyone's anxiety a lot not everyone's here so again thank you so much for doing all this really appreciate it I just have a question about the act 127 cap page of the presentation with the two two points the long-term weighted average daily membership for people needs to be below 10% I'm not clear about 10% of what 10% increase from the year before okay so the budget generally increases every year but if increase is below 10% thank you yeah your school board school board thank you for doing what you do my name is Nathan Souter a parent of two students in the district among other things I think my main question is that I'm assuming that this law is an attempt to rebalance based on needs as though in Vermont every Vermont child is our child and we should distribute resources appropriately to their needs okay so one implication is that we have been benefiting for years from the waiting and that it's our turn or something like that is that accurate and not not the latter thing that's editorializing but this is a rebalancing of how the statewide funding of education is used that is accurate I don't know if you can say we've been benefiting benefiting from it I don't know if that's an accurate statement or not it's just the way it was you know so yeah yeah yeah it's a it's a redistribution I mean I think there's a question of whether the redistribution means that the districts that don't benefit from this need to be put in a tough spot or we just need to rethink how we spend education period but that's a question for the legislature okay and then and quick because you're yeah I'd be interested to hear you all reflect on what other factors can we influence how can we you know what would in enrollment increase do etc yeah thanks again good thanks next please in the room any others in the room yeah Tom Frazier again I just wondered whether or not there was any thought of giving the renegotiating contract with the Union to affect savings in most industries as big as an education industry they do that in a private sector private sector I realize you can't just lay off a bunch of people like they do it acts or someplace else but usually they ask the Union as a buy-in for the cost of doing business and maybe that's something I mean I I just quickly proves the salaries in the school district I don't think anybody's starving it might be a good idea rather than having the close facilities or or cut programs yeah no thank you and again we we have you know this is this is the information session this is not I'm back nothing as of yet has been put on the table I don't know are there others or it's yours it'll be very quick and it's really just a question about where we can send questions I have a several I wouldn't want to bother folks tonight with but is there a formal process or place to send questions on the process is it simply sending to the school board email I would send it to the school board email and then I'm on that as well and if the school board doesn't mind if it's a question I can answer quickly I will answer I will answer it and I should put I me personally it's not wouldn't be expecting an answer directly from your pride it's more putting them into the hopper I can answer it I will thank you thanks anyone else in the room moving to the screen this is doing in order Jacqueline please again introduce yourself for the camera and when you're ready why don't you appear with the mute button off and I'll hit the timer did you hear that he called you to speak why don't we why don't we go to Lisa and see we can we'll come back Lisa yeah sure thanks for taking this I have two questions for y'all first of all will there be any public availability of the questions that other people send in in the answers or will those just go into like a private discussion so that we other people won't know the answers I'm saying if you know 20 people write 20 questions will you post those questions in the answers to Ms. One question and the second question is if our fund balance has been growing and growing and growing and we know that 1.9 is set aside for the track of force and it came in way over budget the last budget before the flood was close to 2.4 million is it safe to assume that the track on the is now that money can be spent to alleviate tax burden or will you be going ahead with your track project thank you again we haven't made decisions this is new I think it's pretty safe to assume that that two million dollars is certainly going to be a big part of the discussion to alleviate this burden but that's a decision to be made later but I would be surprised if it was not made so thank you and thanks to the MRPS staff and the school board for facilitating this meeting tonight I'm Zach Porter and I'm a Montpelier resident with the Union Elementary student for a daughter and I am just wanting to ask a question which is that you know the presentation tonight and I realize that you know there's probably going to be more kind of strategic considerations brought up at future meeting so maybe I'm getting ahead of myself but the way that the presentation was given tonight and I don't mean to presume that this was intentional and at all it put the focus on the teacher or faculty or staff you know pay increases as kind of where the issue is that that's the money that we need to be looking at here and I guess I just wanted to put the question out there are there other areas where we could save money so that we don't have to you know hurt our amazing school staff in any way and I would just let you know like to see at a future meeting options that could save our school system the potentially necessary funds that we need to save but that don't come out of the really important salaries and benefits for our great staff so thank you I think the $2 million presented as just a reality of kind of where of the costs that we have already committed to I mean I want to say I was part of the negotiating team that worked with with Joe and the teachers we as a board are very proud of the the raise we gave teachers we thought it was very due they are the the bread and butter of this district they make they make a tick they educate our kids we value that that is simply a number we are committed to but we honor that commitment and that is a commitment that the board was very glad to make our teachers got a bump it is very well deserved it was probably very long overdue especially as we saw the the heroic efforts they did during COVID so that number was not meant to present that as a problem at all just simply an obligation we have and a number we need to take care of but I think I speak on behalf of all the board members when I say we're we are very proud of the commitment we made to our teachers and they deserve every every cent if I may jump back in just to say I was not trying to suggest there was intent in any way to put a spotlight on that so I didn't mean for it to come across that way I just want to make sure that all of these potential options are considered in the future so that's all thank you okay no thanks i um someone whose name is not on the screen but uh is not check okay thanks um yes uh thank you for allowing me to speak today um I want to just bring up that because there's a lot of assumption it's really hard to say through a presentation that is based on a lot of assumptions and I know that some of it is out of your hand and I just really want to encourage a transparent democratic process as well um I am thinking a lot about the teachers but also thinking a lot about Roxbury student who some of these policies or like these laws are also for them so I just want to I'm a little concerned that that's where we're going to jump and that we're talking a lot about these assumptions and I know you're not bringing a proposal today but I would really love to see um a process that is transparent for all of us educators students and and uh families and also to ensure that uh the the presentations are a little more plain language for some of us that don't understand a lot of the the numbers and things I think it's still up it's still up here and I think I um I think we can benefit from lowering that threshold and I just want to appreciate all the the educators that work so hard for our students and um hope that they are untouched thanks okay um Jack on the view you know fix your audio problem here we go we can't hear you are you muted Jack Jacqueline can you hear us so my Anna behind the scenes thinks that you when you connected to zoom you didn't connect to the audio part so can you allow zoom to connect to your microphone that might be the problem or just sign out and sign back in yeah usually you usually cover over the controls and in the bottom left there would be like a microphone looking thing and a little arrow and you would click on the arrow and it would tell you you know you'd have options of how to join audio or just address the board the email the board yeah you email the board or we could read it out loud even okay and that seems to think it's an odd issue for sure sometimes it's headphone related too yeah I think we can start the board discussion again if the definitely comes back in that we can certainly cover the bottom uh so not sure how to start this um yeah one thing I don't think you want to get too much into problem solving would I like to direct it's kind of more things we would like to see from the administration in terms of scenarios uh for next time and um and also just overall thoughts on kind of where we are she back yeah okay I saw connecting to audio so yeah but can you hear me yeah there you are Jesus and I'm like I'm I'm you know supposed to be tech savvy my generation is a little younger I've done this 100 times sorry my son's gymnastics meet aerogenesis class my question is about the timeline why is it so short and is there any you know um kind of three pre-existing scenario in which legislature has reconsidered a timeline I mean because it just seems really tight we have to have the budget to our voters 30 days before town meeting day so that's the reason why and it has to Christina get the board votes on it Christina gets it has to put it together for the tax office I'm looking and that and so there's time there needs there's needs to be a few days for that to occur um so that's why that's in statute we can't change that but assuming that other communities are having this same kind of shock scenario I'm assuming that across Vermont every other superintendent is like what is happening is there no way that we can as a community or group go back to ask for more time or a way to this is a big cut and it's not just us you know we're not alone you're right on that we are not we are not the only community or school district who is um influenced in this way so um you are right on that and I think Jim has already asked our legislators to come meet with us yeah no I've asked our legislators to meet with us um I mean I the way I would take it I urge everyone in the room you know who our legislators are if you want their names you can email me I'll provide them to you uh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a timeline we have to work with unless people who are not us change it uh so I think that we need to assume that that this is the timeline we need to operate under you know as as Libby showed uh the consequences for potentially thumbing our nose at at this are huge um and I definitely agree with Peter's point that there are a lot of people who uh are income sensitized and and the ultimate number won't hit all of them but a number will hit most and a large number will hit a good number um and that's that's a lot of money to make a statement so um that's certainly something we could do but uh the you know we're we're playing with with people's money who is not our own um and then that's that's a big deal so I would certainly urge everyone to to reach out to uh the legislature and let them know that this is a statewide problem that's um I'm not sure reflexive of what this law was was intended to thank you I'm just going to make a suggestion for how to manage the board discussion which is maybe just like start at one end and give everybody a chance to ask any questions they currently have and then maybe if Kristen asks the same question I have I you I get me um but just to like we all I'm sure we all have questions yeah absolutely um just go on down the line yeah this is two top top questions and and reactions and then we can do a little more around Robin so start with Kristen yeah I think it's been a hard week I think everybody up here I think our leadership, Libby, the uh just it's been a really hard hit in the last week just trying to integrate this information I'm feeling for all of you and the mind-bending nature of uh school budgets is really challenging and then you know what this added in it's um even that much more complex um I would wonder what analysis can be done in terms of what exists in any and all rainy day funds that we have um while maintaining our fund balance that's required by our policies but just you know could we analyze our budget and see where do rainy day funds exist and what do they amount to and how do they um how do they measure up to the savings that we think we need to achieve at this point based on all the assumptions um I would also wonder and I think it would be helpful to us and and likely the public just in terms of when we can uh expect certain assumptions to solidify um when we know we're actually when we're dealing with real numbers um you know obviously we're we're talking about cuts but um I think when we have more slowly around those numbers would be really helpful um and yeah I think there's just like a lot of shock and awe here and I think that as a board I mean I can recall when we had uh the consortium of folks that came to us about this act and that I think we all believed in it in spirit and concepts and I think we voted to actually join that group and I think we do very much believe that you know equity should be front and center in terms of our educational priorities um you know being from Roxbury and you know I think the big elephant in the room is certainly you know what is the fate of rvs this has been on people's minds for since the beginning of the merger and leading up to the merger and I think that the idea that that could be considered uh as a viable pathway and that we are looking at a potential timeline of I mean really we're talking about six months to cooking a budget and if that could be something that's considered and decided upon for our community it feels outrageously fast uh and I I don't believe we can have an adequate process um that involves you know community engagement um and you know I mean I think oftentimes you know there's there's decision a and there's decision b and the best decision often you know was somewhere between c and z and so I'm I'm concerned that you know this incredibly quick timeline is going to undermine uh the outcomes and I think it's not how this board likes to do business I also understand we have some very significant possibly repercussions if we don't um comply with the law in in their time frame um but you know I appreciate it think it was joe's comment is there something that we can collectively do um on behalf of um on behalf of the district I find that it's very important right now for us to reach out to their legislators I do not believe that you know if we were to talk school closure uh for the community of rvs and I know we're not getting into um you know solutions and strategies tonight but it's an elephant in the room and I feel it needs to be addressed and I don't think that we have time to waste um but if that is a potential consequence I think our legislators need to be aware that the act uh may have a very unintended consequence even just for consideration but they need to be aware of of that potential and I think it's a disturbance to them to not inform them of it I think for now I'll leave it at that and pass it towards thank you um I have the benefit of peppering about a half hour's worth of questions on Libby right before the meeting so so so um yeah I I want to reiterate so one thing I actually I think we're dealing with a lot of uncertainty which is different than assumptions um and the I I think it's really important to not act too quickly and to not make big decisions with so much uncertainty in the air um the the largest being the legislature um our senator um Andrew Perklick is on the ed committee um and the the the the law is a product of the legislature the legislature changes its mind all of the time and it's influenced by its constituents and so I just want to reiterate the importance of communicating to our legislators um particularly those on the senate and house education committees about the potential impact of act 127 and to go back to the uncertainty thing the the Libby we're not the only ones you mentioned there's a bunch of other districts big districts in the state who are dealing with the same issue um who again are telling their constituents the exact same thing um and so I think it's important that that we recognize that that the act as it is now is not what it's going to be necessarily in one or five or ten years um and so it's it behooves us to to influence the direction before you go yeah Kristen did have a question in there oh around um when will numbers solidify right yeah so I just want to make sure that that gets out there so Christina has all of those dates yeah good let me mention earlier we'll get a yield notice on December 1st and they can change that yield and they usually do by the end of the legislative session in May so we'll have a pretty good idea at the beginning of December again likely to change by May the CEO I want to I want to reiterate on that that is always an assumption the board makes when developing a budget because it is not solidified in law until May which is passed after the after town meetings so go ahead start so and to add to that in in my 17 years of doing this um yield has always gone up by 100 maybe 200 the last couple of years that it's gone up a couple thousand dollars is quite unprecedented in my experience um so the fact that it's going to drop so drastically is also new to me um the next factor that we look at is the pupils and the pupils are usually given to us um in December but then we get version two version three and sometimes version four in January so right up to the 11th hour when we're sending it to the printer these factors can change um the next thing that we get is well the next factor um is the CLA the common level of appraisal we get that typically around the 15th of December right I'm glad that right um and that will be set uh that will not change hasn't changed unless it was a reappraisal so this was my first year seeing a reappraisal in the middle of the tax year so those are the three factors that we're waiting for and those are the dates that we'll get them thank you Libby and Christina for putting all this work together I also want to say thank you to everyone for showing up online and in the room because um we asked you to be here and you showed up and that's pretty cool let's go leave it that I have some um numbers questions for maybe Christina maybe Libby if if the budget were to increase by 800 thousand dollars why would that be a 10 just under 10 increase on a budget that is actually like a 26 million dollar budget because 800 thousand dollars isn't 10 percent of 26 million our budget is in 26 million it's 28 million okay so 800 thousand is even less of a fraction of you're thinking you have to it's not oh go ahead yeah Christina's gonna be a better person right I'm asking somebody to walk me through that map yeah just stay just stay well I just think that it's good to walk us through that because this those that 10 percent is an important 10 percent yes yeah so it's not 10 percent of our budget the 10 percent increase looking at the long-term weighted average daily membership right the at spending per let's just say at spending per equalized people so it's that's the 10 percent it's not 10 percent budget to budget right if we looked at an increase budget to budget just looking at the only factor that the board has control over that increase of 2 million I'm not going to use the 800 thousand is 6.92 right that's the actual percentage increase just budget to budget right so that that answer the question yeah I just wanted to make sure that that was all put out there because it's not totally reflected on this slide and it's helpful to understand why we would need to make a cut when you know when somebody's just looking at like oh you're just talking about two million two million dollars on a 28 million dollar yeah so you're taking the one factor that you're in control of right dividing it by our pupils and that's the percentage that they're looking at and I would say on top of that some communities talk about just the budget to budget percentage increase and they don't go through this whole exercise with all these assumptions so when you're reading things in the paper you know it's it's important to know what percentage or what factor they're talking about one two three or four because it's it's explained differently in different communities so if I'm understanding it correctly that whatever our budget is right now 28 million divided by whatever our current equalized pupils are that's a certain number yep and then for FY 25 if we were to add the two million that we need to add and then divide it by the new equalized pupil that's a new number and those are the percentages that we're comparing to get this to keep an eye on this 10% I'm looking at Libby because not exactly it's um we've we've walked through this quite a few times um it's not apples to apples to come cross so we're just trying to because the weighting is different um so the the equalized pupils that we use in this current year 1220 right just going to keep it a simple number compared to the 1146 that we have they're not the same thing so we can't really compare those two numbers okay that number is they've gotten to by different weighting formulas right okay I understand that and so this was the rabbit hole we went down when I say Cristina and I went down a rabbit hole today this is it okay um of trying to figure out exactly which number to use for the long term weighted um for people so um that's what we called brand james about who is the person to call at the agency of education um and he told us to use the number we have been using for this calculation the the new number which is the 1100 it is the long term weighted average daily membership from FY 24 multiplied by a factor to get it to apples to apples for the equalized pupil okay and and that in and of itself is why we need to consider such a big cut in our budget is because it it's not just the stuff that we can control it's these other it goes through all these different formulas yes and um that so the the weights and the caps are the things that act 127 influenced or those those showed those were in act 127 right yes the dollar yield was not in act 127 correct is that correct and the dollar yield is the other the decrease in the dollar yield is the other thing that is significantly impacting our budget currently yes continue yes and the cln right yeah right which we're expecting to not have that big of an impact on our budget it's dropping if we're capped if we're capped it won't have as much as much as the impact the dollar yield is significantly impacted and this was something that i don't think those of us in the field were aware of when the new expecting that's better yeah um when the new weights were announced the dollar yield to fall so so so big right um and the dollar yield is impacted by 127 got it it's not it didn't show up in the law but it's impacted yeah by 127 yes okay okay those are all of the questions i have for right now i'm trying to wrap my head around that in a month the administration is going to need some kind of direction from the board and i can't quite figure out like what i need yet to know in order to be able to as a board member provide direction um so i don't have any more questions on that front i think i'll just say i definitely understand the frustration felt at this table and in the room and online and by the people who are watching at home and i i understand the design the need and i think i agree with the need to educate our legislators about this i don't think it is realistic to expect act 127 to change certainly not in time for us to establish a budget for f y 25 no and i also think that given the purpose of act 127 and the fact that we as it was being um designed said we absolutely positively believe in the need to equitably educate every single student in vermont not just every single student in montpellier roxbury i would caution us to from going to the legislature and saying you need to change this bill because it is negatively impacting us this is really hard but it's also the right thing to do and so i'm not ready to like join the torches and pitchforks yet headed to the state capitol and say this law has to change yeah it will set me up i i think it's the right thing to do i'm not sure it's the right way to do it i have questions about uh i think another political problem we have frankly is our governor who i don't think is going to be sad to see districts cutting for education um he may have been a little smarter than the legislature was on this one which i fear um that's a rabbit hole we can go down later um i think you're right we are stuck with one 127 um and yeah it's it's the reality that we have uh you know in terms of things i'd like to see and i i say this as someone who uh was on the merger committee who's drawing support of the merger committee who um you know got to know members of the roxbury community and know how important that school is to the community but i do think we need to see some scenarios of how these cuts would look including um changes in facilities and also changes in personnel uh and not just how they look from a monetary standpoint but how they look from an educational standpoint because one of the places i do not want to go is strain from i think the the systems of support and the progress we've made in closing the achievement gap uh over the last several years um so my bottom line is is to ensure that we keep the systems of support can keep and ultimately grow the systems of support we have for students and ensure that students have the type of opportunities that they have now and with with options to increase um i think a sad fact of that is is we might have to look at some facilities changes to achieve that um and i'd like to see how that looks um as well as you know other scenarios uh and you know your assessment of how that that impacts education including you know things like like you know money we're spending on transportation um not just between the two towns but within the towns we expanded busing in mob piliar is that something we could look at um all tough but i i would like to see something like that you know in the next meeting or two i mean a question i have if this is if this is a distribution the the towns that are getting more money what does it look like in those towns and then second is there if if the ed fund if the ed fund is making up the difference for us for the next few years we stay under 10 percent that seems to be a drain on the ed fund is is that being made up at another place or are we a place in five years where we've got a state ed fund that's grossly depleted that is the question that i have asked several several authorities and nobody can answer because i have the same question i mean it's it's not within our purview but it's if this starves the ed fund that's bad for the whole state and that's bad for the students it's intended to help and just going back to the support you know we need to keep classroom teachers um um you know the positions we've added that are the positions that that benefit i think the students that this bill is intended to to help um and there's a real fear that you know if if we're forced to starve ourselves that's where the cuts will happen and that's also seems contrary so i mean got a lot of questions for the legislature but those are the questions i gave or the questions for us um i'm happy with the intent of this law the way it's playing out does not seem like it was all inside jim can i really really quickly jump in i want to say i apologize if i incited put your pitchforks away right don't go down to andrew's house just yet i agree with everything that jim you just said and me i appreciate um the passion that you you shared i also was a staunch supporter of 127 i think slight tweaks to the waiting can have huge impacts on district budgets that's that's where i think the legislature needs to think about all right so these waiting maybe we can change them slightly to better reflect what it actually costs to educate all of the students in our state um and the other thing i want to just double check as i understand it this whole conversation really comes down to if and only if the secretary determines our spending to be excessive and a six percent increase year to year on a budget passes the straight face test for me as not excessive but we're not the judge of that and and the cost the cost is high and and it's and it's phil scott saley um so i'm just trying to stay calm um and you know i think as all of the information has sort of flooded over me i'm just trying to remain calm and not overreact and i want to be thoughtful and deliberate and for the board to consider like every possible path forward um i really want to thank joe carrell and all the staff that's present in the room as well but your eloquence really simplified something for me you said um nothing about us without us and that's been sort of resonating in but not in such elephant language with me all week as i've been considering all of this and you know i i'm really thankful for the community that turned out because i think that's what it really really boils down to is we need to hear from the community they need to understand this and they need to signal to us what you know what they want how they want us to move forward on this um it's going to be a collective decision and it's going to be a collective impact um i think you know we have a strong diversity equity and inclusion policy and and the board stands by those values i believe and we signed on as a board um to the coalition for vermont student equity that was supporting this legislation so we supported this legislation but as all of the information was coming to us uh nobody ever said well just by the way it will also increase taxes by 100 percent i mean that number was never floated to us so i'm you know i think the pressure does need to be put on back on the legislative legislators not to repeal the law necessarily but to figure out how you know how to guide the districts that are facing a 100 tax increase we're not we're not we could as peter said earlier we're not but we could and yeah i mean it's again back to my stay calm and not overreact but but also not overreact in like hey we're gonna have to cut the budget hey we're gonna have to close rocks very right like also it won't directly cause a 100 increase to taxes for everybody necessarily so in in all ways just to try to stay calm and not overreact um but just you know as a board i just want to make sure that the public knows that like we were educated a little bit about this and none of these numbers were floated in the way that they're being presented to us tonight in fact there was an article that i read in september in vt digger um just a couple of months ago a month and a half ago where they said that the they reported that the champlain valley school district would likely face a 16 percent budget increase and so then we're looking on this on this piece of paper at a 84 percent budget increase so those numbers just don't make sense to me i don't understand how in september yes an answer okay so the the quote from vt digger was that their budget is increasing 16 percent is what i heard you say okay so it's budget to budget is what they're looking at so our budget would increase six percent our budget's only increasing six point nine percent if we were to add two million dollars okay and the percentage on there is the tax rating this is where we all need to go take a little math lesson well that's what i was speaking to earlier that's what's frustrating is yeah because people people would hold different things right and and that the messaging is out there and it's easy to misinterpret um that messaging so that was one of my questions thank you you're 100 correct for that but it's easy yeah it's coming out in the papers well and and have any of the legislators responded and said yeah we ran the numbers and we knew that this would be the impact and so i'm not sure that i have not if they did that i want to be clear if they did that i have not heard them say that right so i just want to be clear on that so i'm just wondering if this might also be sort of new information for them you know i'm thinking this might be slapping a lot of people in the face right now um so i had a question about the weight increase on the chart the graph and how it increases every year so i guess i i'm assuming that i have a misunderstanding about it but if we're losing 76 pupils because of the new waiting how does that keep increasing every year are we likely to be losing pupils every year or will the impact in years two three four five be less because we're we're taking that initial cut of 76 pupils this year and then in the following years it will be less yeah so historically we've lost pupils right we always talk about declining enrollment um this is a big hit but then i think your next year it'll be you'll still see a small decrease um it just won't be such a huge hit like it is now we're in a transition year right so we're going from apples to cucumbers and it's a big change and then when we go cucumbers to cucumbers we're going to be a little bit better off so can you explain i mean this is the first time i'm seeing the graph but can you explain why the new weights number just keeps going up at the same rate that's not the weight number oh i'm sorry which slide it's labeled it's orange and it's labeled new weights it's the tax impact yeah the new weights it's not the new weights going up it's the tax impact with the new weights that would go up okay so i guess that's my question is if we're losing the 76 pupils in the first year why would the tax impact of the new weights go up every year at the same rate so with the new weights um i'm just increasing the budget two million dollars each year so that was one of the assumptions um i'm sorry there's three assumptions when you're looking at that orange line there's an increase to the budget um there's a change in the yield there's a change in the cla um so your your tax rate's gonna go up every year as you're increasing your budget naturally so well most likely so you'll increase our we'll increase our budget most likely each year the dollar yield will most likely decrease each year because we're pulling from the ed fund just what jim said and the cla most likely will decrease because how often do we do appraisals every 10 years every 10 years so the cla will most likely decrease when the dollar yield decreases and the cla decreases tax rate increases when your budget increases and dollar yield decreases and cla decreases your tax rate increases so that that line can will continue to increase so what's the difference between the five percent cap and the new weights like what are those why are those two numbers different because the increase from fy 24 to 25 is more than five percent so that's why the orange line is higher um because we benefit so what this is really demonstrating is um we're going to be capped at five percent for fy 25 26 27 28 and 29 what it demonstrates is when we go from 29 at 1.62 we're going to jump up to 1.84 and because the cap goes away because the cap goes away so instantly your tax rate you have to pay what you really need to raise in taxes so when we looked at this um and assuming just adding two million dollars a year um in fy 30 we would need to cut five million roughly five million dollars to get the tax rate from 162 to 170 rather than 162 to jump way up to 181 and 84 cents semi kind of i might need to spend some time with this to totally understand it um if let me say it another way if we wanted to maintain a five percent increase in our tax rate the very bottom number what you get on your tax bill after all the factors are in if you wanted to maintain just a five percent cap because we've been doing right we've been capped at five percent so let's just stick with that right um we would have to cut five million up to roughly five million dollars otherwise the cap goes away you're going to have to pay a dollar 84 in order to raise all that money for the budget that you've created in six years from now which is way beyond five percent i guess my question is if we're if we lose the 76 pupils this year and we um we increase i forget what the percentage was per pupil we keep it just under that 10 percent per pupil the next year wouldn't we like only be facing more typical numbers of loss of pupils and not in the 70s yes and so wouldn't the loss be a lot less in the second year than this first year well the i mean yes it except that well what i think christina and libya are helping us understand is one of the reasons the the it's not so much about the loss is less in the second year but that the tax rate isn't going to go up so much in f y 26 is because that cap is still in place because even though our pupils will only decrease by a small amount from f y 25 to f y 26 we still have what we still have have a quote unquote bigger budget after all of these factors are put into place than this then um without the cap then like i don't know whoever deems as we should the size of the budget we should i don't know who they are but um that's that's why the cap for this year is so important is because without it our tax rate goes sky high and would that not happen in year two no what i'm saying is it it would if there was no cap it won't happen in year two because there's a cap but in order to be able to get the cap of five percent we still have to keep the budget low like right but yeah i guess i i guess i'm not understanding like you would imagine that the 76 pupil loss is basically one grade level in this school district that if we're losing that many students in one year that that's going to have a huge dramatic impact in the first year of this five-year plan and i'm not seeing in the numbers that reflected like i think one misunderstanding there is that an equalized pupil is not a kid with their butt in the seat i understand that okay all right so like one but still it's equivalent to right i think 76 pupils that makes i see i see now what you're asking i think what the thing is that we are not making up it unless we were to really dramatically cut our budget like right now we're talking about maybe cutting it by 1.2 million dollars in order to get to that under 10 percent but because we're not doing a so so much of like an even bigger cut than that we still have a quote-unquote gap to make up yeah in the subsequent next like year two year three year four that's why we haven't totally we're not totally making up for the 76 losing losing or dropping 76 pupils in one year the cap is backing us up to keep us from real our budget actually matching so if we weren't looking at the numbers with the cap and i don't need to spend that much more time on it if everybody else understands it then we can move on but where we say you know capped at five percent the increase of eight hundred thousand dollar page right and it says capped at five percent or a 75.71 percent difference so if we weren't talking about capped numbers would we see a huge decrease in that number in year two three four five i guess i'm trying to imagine this as like a long it seems like a five year plan yes and i'm trying to imagine it that way and trying to understand what the impact is in the future years and that's not clear to me now and i'm seeing it for year one of the challenges is that that five year plan i agree with you i that we do need a five year plan and we're making a lot of assumptions and the five year plan that are hard to make right now there's too many influences on there um however with the assumptions that we've made it and this is one of the reasons why it's hard for me to wrap my head around this is because it's unfathomable to me that in five years our budget is a sixth less than what it is now like that's unfathomable i can't wrap my head around that um and so it's irresponsible because we wouldn't be able to educate the students in our district the way that we really need to so that makes me question whether the you know like then it it just that logic just translates to the first year also where it's like it's irresponsible i understand the phase is a brief that you are in right now because i have been there myself well i don't i don't know that it's necessarily a phase of brief i think it's like just logistically that doesn't make sense to do that for five years agree so well i think i was doing this spreading one big chunk of pain over five years yes and then it's like you know you said it great i know it's saying that we're being protected and buffered by that 73 people lost over five years with the cap it's buffering us from that um you're not paying the full uh cost the full tax rate that needs to be generated to raise those taxes so it's a it's a five-year protection plan and then then you'll see the big if the weighting is the same yeah yeah of course i'm gonna i have follow up questions but i'm going to i'm gonna i'm gonna take too much time i i have spent my entire professional career for 20 years working at the agency of education and at the tax department so i feel like i can wrap my brain around this but i still was really surprised and disappointed when i really was digging into the actual language of the bill um i do think that and i realized we are this is the first stage right of denial um i think the legislature obviously had very good intentions and frankly in the same way that we're kind of looking at these weights and really feeling the weight of it there are districts across the state that are celebrating that they're finally getting this acknowledgement right there are districts that really had very little weight for multilingual lingual learners who are who have been suffering for a year so i do understand that so this is not a statewide angst this is very much like some districts are very happy with the results of this this weighting and some are in our position um i think Montpelier Roxbury uh is being punished doubly in the language that i read in the bill um i was like well i would think well we would at least get to have some of the sparsity weights or the small school weights for roxbury school certainly we fit into that category but the sparsity is district-wide not based on the actual school building even though it's about geographic distance and it also explicitly uh says that since we did cooperate with act 46 and voluntarily merged and are receiving the merger grant we are not eligible to receive some of these other weights so i think that those two things should have never been conflated the merger act that that we carried out six years ago that has let us have the grant has nothing to do with act 127 of of now and i think that was um a pretty terrible concession that the legislature made that i'm sure we're not the only schools basically we got punished for following the rules and and consolidating and um and now now we are not therefore eligible for some of these weights that very much should be designed for exactly a building like roxbury that has the distance and size that are that these weights were designed to help um i also think montpellier roxbury is being punished because it's sort of the reverse goldilocks right we're the middle of the road as far as spending we're the middle of the road as far as our size we don't stand out as any of those outliers like some of the districts do so because we're like just right we are not benefiting from these weights either and we're also not getting um and we're also it does feel punitive um i would also say that uh montpellier roxbury is also part of the center of our career center which i'm your representative on i'm also a state employee and the health insurance increase is significant and as hitting everyone statewide and i do think that when we're looking at the salary and benefits i think it's really important to remember that that is another there's a huge component of that that we also don't have any control over there's a statewide health insurance plan that we're given the number and that is the number and that is not up for negotiation and that is hitting districts across the state not just us um i'm incredibly and if anyone's curious the merger grant that we get is 80 000 a year i don't know if we didn't get that if the pupil weight would be more money i'm assuming it maybe it wouldn't be but that's kind of an interesting question that i kind of i'm going to try to kind of figure out because i do think that those two things should have been kept completely separately in that because we followed the merger process correctly and voluntarily we're now not eligible for some of these weights and the last thing i think that is really scary is the secretary discretion on excess spending the secretary of education position is a political appointee the language i just double checked allows the secretary if they do find that it's very sort of up for interpretation language that it was for good cause or not for good cause that they that a district went over the spending then a committee of business managers and superintendents would actually review and judge their colleagues that feels incredibly um unhelpful and wasteful and politicized and um against the spirit um one last thing and i realize this is not a these are not questions but um i kind of might have a question when i'm finished my statement um and then the last thing is is just um i'll see now i lost my train of thought this is very upsetting um where was i merger grant tax rate review committee um okay politicized um health insurance all right sorry i lost it um yeah you said you might have a question yeah i i um i one of my questions was about the merger grant so i was able to find that in our budget numbers i i'm dumbfounded that the yield is anticipated and i know that this is like i should understand but to go from 15 000 to 9 000 is like a massive statewide impact and i just don't i don't understand why that number would change that significantly my understanding of it and that could be wrong is that one there's going to be more long-term weighted average daily membership more equalized pupils um pulling from the education fund and then the second factor is the the behaviors of districts who are going to be capped at five percent all of us regardless of whether your advantage or disadvantage could be capped at five percent right that that makeup we're pulling from the ed fund to get the rest of our operating budget from that's going to just like what jim said deplete the ed fund which the dollar yield will be closer to a dollar um by doing that so that's my understanding of it which is enough to be dangerous but not truly wrapping my head around it thank you and your the behavior was my last and final um the vermont education property tax system is considered an incredibly fair and equitable way of doing this vermont is like lauded for having a statewide education property tax system but the legislature has added these incentives and penalties to so many degrees in order to try to manipulate certain behaviors for districts to make this spending decisions or to be disincentivized from making spending decisions um that really so much of it every year feels more and more out of our control so um you know so for example it's it feels really strange to me that there was an incentive to consolidate and merge and now there's uh incentive to reward or to change the weights for some of the districts that that didn't do that but then penalize the ones that did even if they otherwise fall under those weights so the the layers of what we as a board in a district actually have the ability to impact is getting smaller and smaller every year and i would like to um i would like to advocate to the legislature to stop using these various incentives and penalties to try to adjust behavior but rather be more straightforward about the goal we're actually trying to achieve the weights are absolutely meant to direct the resources appropriately but when you i think that five percent is a concession to districts like us that we're going to lose out in this i think that was what that was is like well we'll throw them a bone and say they won't get penalized too much or it'll happen over five years which we'll happily take but again there are very few parts of this budget that we can change and i feel as a Montpelier resident for 20 years and a parent of a student who's now been at three of the four schools in this district that this district does not excessively or irresponsibly provide services to our students i think we're very um responsible and very much middle of the road as far as our size and our spending and and i i really feel like we operate under no frills so i'm i'm disappointed that we are being i feel penalized for that goldilocks line we are threading where we're just right and that's not working for us and i'll stop thank you yeah thank you i want to echo that i mean that's that's my sentiment i i mean i strongly support the goal of this bill and and i know that there are districts out there that need more support from the state and i'm glad they're getting it but i also feel we've been an extremely responsible district both in terms of our spending and also in terms of of really building support systems for the students that need it and for the students that i think this bill is trying to benefit and you know the the sausage making of this bill to to put a district like ours in the position we're in uh seems like a very unfortunate and sorry results and i know we can't control it but it's it's not where we we should be it's where we are but so we should be heard a lot of people making the case a very strong case that our spending is in no way excessive in no way could it be considered excessive and you know there's nothing in this presentation about the next five years it's it's there's a little bit on the graph but i heard last week at the end of this we're looking at a seven million dollar cut now i'm hearing it's five million dollar cut a lot of numbers are changing as this understanding evolves um you know are we basing the five to ten percent on what our equalized pupils were in 2024 or are we basing the five to ten percent people equalized pupilized chain um calculation based on numbers that are where we've lost 74 students i don't i don't know whether those are whether you and i hear that there was a factor in there so i guess it's kind of the same if that factor is involved um but if we're looking at you know one to one point two million dollars needed every year for the next five years why on earth are we talking about dramatically harming my town on year one in a two month in two months two months we're going to talk about killing rocksbury village school irreparably it's never going to come back in two months when we're talking about dealing with a problem that is prolonged over five years we're going to have pain over five years why would we consider closing a school in a two month time frame when we have to deal with equal amount of pain next year and following year and the following year and the following year that does not make any sense to me except that rbs is extremely difficult it is extremely difficult difficult to run a school with 40 kids it's extremely difficult to to provide the kind of multi-tiered you know levels of of remediation i'm sorry that my and then acronyms are not flowing right now it's really difficult to to run that school it's really difficult to get teachers to build the skills to teach really effectively to a one two classroom that has some kids that are at a pre-k level and some kids that are in a fourth and fifth grade level those are really hard things to do and so the other the other factor is there's a greater proportion of kids in rocksbury that need more support than there are in Montpelier there are a number of kids in Montpelier that need additional support but there's a greater proportion of that 40 that need more support in rocksbury and so when you look at the scores in rocksbury it's going to stand out and what would happen if those kids were at union it would just dissolve all of those problems would kind of dissolve and it would look it would look great from an academic achievement perspective it's the it's the lowest hanging fruit for a number of reasons but if we pick it it kills a community and to do that in a two month time frame when we're talking about dramatic pain over multi years is irresponsible and i i think that there's a lot of factors in that that suggestion has come up and i and i it's a hard school to run i understand that and i don't think that it should it should be you know not be a possibility it should certainly be a possibility if we have five years of pain then we have five years to decide to move kids from rocksbury to union and maybe it's decided over one year but over two months is unbelievable that's that's what that's my that's my position but i just want to appreciate and echo what red is saying right now i think that the amount of uncertainty that this is already just created in our community is is untenable um this timeline we are literally talking about seeing our first budget scenarios come before us in the beginning of december during the holidays everybody knows how busy you know that time of year becomes and we're going to in six weeks we could potentially make a decision to close a school that has an unbelievable historical value a current value i mean schools uh the top order of course is to educate our students none of us can deny that schools provide an unquantifiable value when it comes to the fabric of the community the connections the ability to go to your school to be seen to be heard to be known to be supported in a rural place that is geographically dispersed and has the challenges that we do we need a community hub should this process play out and we decide that that building could become something else and serve that purpose that is one thing but the idea that we would make this decision in six months and i echo what ret says it's forever you can take that piece out but adding it back in i do not have much confidence that that would happen and the damaging effect to our community is it's it's just it's not palatable in any way shape or form i think that in talking to the previous board members who were here during the merger and after the merger there was a shared there's there's the document that i call our our marriage contract the merger document okay that it says that after four years of the merger the board could take a vote and vote to close the school okay like we signed on to that however in the time of the merger my understanding jim you're the last person standing still on the school board and thank you um that also shares that you know collective memory but the school board members of that time recall the conversation was that we would never close that school based on budget alone it's not written in the document okay but i think if we are to to entertain this idea we have to be able to show and ideally we would never entertain at year one but we would have to be able to show the roxbury community that there is an educational benefit to moving our students from roxbury to union elementary school i don't know that we can show that in a matter of six weeks with everything else going on with this quagmire so um it's been a very difficult time the last five days i am grateful i think at a meeting that he mentioned tylenall pm i don't know what i would have done in the last five days without it um i just feel that the position that we have been put in is just it's it's outrageous and untenable and i feel for our districts who in vermont who very much need this funding and needed it 10 20 years ago that is not something that i i don't want to shun shame or discount that in any way shape or form but this can not be ignored that this act could kind of prioritize the decision of the closure of a school in a six-week time period being repetitive lin i was thinking that um we really when we're thinking this out it is a five-year plan right it's not a one-year plan and so um i think we're going to have to put a lot of effort into very carefully looking at how to make that work for five years you know we might be able to fix it year one by getting rid of roxbury right but then we've got four more years where we have to figure this out so um i just want to no no no i you know so i just want us to be thinking long term when we look at how we're going to make this work are you calling on me yes yeah okay great um hi sorry i'm not there i'm pretty sick um so i'm at home um my name is jake felvin i'm the newest member of the school board and uh my day job is at the tax department doing education funding among some other things and i've been doing it for like 10 years um the commissioner's letter that was mentioned earlier that comes out on december 1st i've been putting that together for eight years um i was also involved in act 127 um with modeling quite a bit um so um i understand this stuff pretty well um and i understand the new law really well and there's a lot of people still participating in this meeting 65 it looks like on on zoom um and also maybe a lot of people in the room not really sure but um i think that um you know um uh i don't think that the situation as is as dire as it feels to people um our district is going to be insulated by this five percent cap um we're not going to be able to um you know we're not going to have a a level tax rate um that would be i did some back of the envelope stuff here at my desk and we would have to cut like a third of our budget to to have a level tax rate from fy 24 to next year so that it's kind of like you know not not feasible um frankly so i'm not even sure that i would ask um christina and and liby to even work on it because it would just it would look so bizarre um so the five percent cap was designed for districts like us um and and i think that we should um leverage it basically um and then as far as like planning for five years um trying to manage the vermont vermont's education fund or know what's going to happen for five years is impossible um i've tried it in the context of you know some governor's proposals in the past and it's like not really not doable um so i'm i think that in the short term we should leverage the five percent cap and we should kind of see what happens um with the new people waits and and also you know how districts react react to them um so i am not as worried as others in the room at all um and and i think also a proposal that came out the beginning of the meeting to try to try to understand this stuff as well as we could before we started thinking of solutions or budget ideas is a good way to go um i think that um getting a handle on the on the numbers and just some basic education funding stuff is important for us before we talk about budgets um that being said um you know the five the five percent cap is going is going to be what what um you know we experience and and yeah that's that's what i have to say i appreciate the sentiment that you don't feel it's as dire and that you're not as worried as some people in the room um that gives me some relief i'm wondering your when you say we are insulated by the five percent cut and that we should leverage that are you cat cat yeah sorry the cap um are you saying that we should look at at the um 1.2 million dollar decrease or 800 dollar 800 thousand dollar increase or that we should just move the budget forward uh you know at a more reasonable place which option is your favorite there's there's no there's no way to to to have like a normal year over year change in equalized tax rate of like one percent or two percent you're never going to get there you'd have to cut millions and millions of dollars um so what i'm recommending is to proceed as normal like if if you ask Libby and Christina to prepare some budget where our equalized tax rate was the same right next year even though the yield is going down by a third you would be so shocked to see it that it would you know it's it's kind of nonsensical so what i what i think we should do is is sort of carry on with you know providing the great services that we do um into next year and then is my understanding that we would put that budget forward to the voters they wouldn't know what the secretary's decision would be on whether they were going to deem it excessive or not at the time that they vote for the budget so we would just be sort of crossing our fingers and hoping that the secretary would deem it reasonable yeah the 10 percent thing that's that was mentioned earlier um i you know again would offer to work um with Christina and Libby um oh on this a little bit um i don't see how we're going to hit that um i could just sort of back of envelope i i don't i i would need to see the numbers but i don't see how it could how we could be going 10 percent year over year um and that being said like um after act 46 they put in a very similar um provision on rate review and no no districts were subject to this rate review um so that that happened in eight years ago in act 46 um and and i just don't see how this group is going to convene it convene and review districts budgets between when the yield bill is passed in late may and when the tax department has to give town tax rates for their bills on july 1st like it doesn't seem that like that's even going to happen um and you know we're not we're not proposing anything crazy that even would as far as i know that would trigger you know somebody's scrutiny like you know from what i've heard so far it's like regular you know run of the mill salaries and benefits are mostly the cost driver so um i'm not concerned about the 10 percent and i i do want to reiterate my offer to work on the math um with christine and liby on that because remember when they compare the 10 percent change you can't it has to be apples to apples so for fi 24 you can't use equal well pupils in fi 24 and long-term weighted atm for fi 25 as a denominator because those are different things so what it says in the bill is when we look at your spending per pupil in fi 24 we're going to use long-term weighted atm for that too and that makes it apples to apples and that's why i don't see us going up by 10 percent i said are you suggesting the numbers that we were presented are inaccurate what jake is saying is what christine and i dug into today and asked grad james specifically which number to use and he pointed to the number that we're using yeah so i would say send me the numbers um i want to i want to see what long-term weighted atm for fi 24 isn't for fi 25 is um because i haven't gotten up for grad james but um you know i i i would like to to check it and i don't what what what factor were you calculating for our year over year increase what do you mean which factor jake you calculated some year over year increase in per pupil spending i think that's based on the raises that were just negotiated i think there's an 18 percent increase in health insurance costs that is also part of it and that's basically all of the additions that christine and liby added to the budget it's just we gave raises and teachers i love you you deserve them um and you know we gave raises to liby the year before and i'm so grateful for what liby's doing with the with the district as well there's an 18 health insurance rate increase 16 so 16 still still pretty massive i think that those are the only increases that's not like we're adding any positions doing any dramatic anything um there's no way i think that we could possibly be considered excessive yeah and i don't trust i don't know that these everything's changing so fast i think i think we we we we were in a tizzy and we need to take a breath uh we definitely need to figure out and make sure you know if you're right jake that there's something in the calculator that we can just do the two million without hitting 10 percent i think we have this year's answer um but i think i think we have to be damn sure of that if if we're gonna i mean i do not want to there's there's huge consequences of uh hoping this committee doesn't come together and doesn't find that more than 10 percent is excessive without knowing that for sure well we have we have a good chunk of time we do well we have we have a chunk of time i don't know if it's we have a chunk of time this this particular math problem you know shouldn't be too bad at all and um yeah so i'm happy to take another look at it and um students and any of us well enough yet to talk about like the technical stuff um um i am also trying to stay calm and mostly like very overwhelmed by all this but i do want to say our role here is to try and represent somehow all the students in the district i don't really know how to do that but even just with the students at Montpellier High School i have to say um this makes me really worried obviously for all the reasons that everyone's worried but also because my like group of students has been through a lot in the time that we've been in this district i don't think i need to list everything out i think people know what i mean it's been an interesting time um and so for that reason i'm not excited um also um along those lines i totally understand the practicality of using the track money to help with this that seems totally practical it's also really disappointing i know that's something that it's a project that would have a massive benefit to the students in this community and the whole community so i want to make sure that i don't know we at least don't move ahead with that decision too fast yeah i just want to make sure that i don't know just to state the obvious any decision we make is going to have a massive impact on all the students in this district and yeah i don't think it's a prospect any of us are too excited about and i certainly am yeah um i agree with everything miriam said i think when christin was talking about like community and belonging i think that for me that is my teachers are a part of that um they've helped me through a lot personal academic i think if my teachers aren't at their happiest i don't know if i would be because the classroom really does reflect on the students and um i was just wondering was there any discussion on how this decrease would impact students or like the classroom and if there was like what did that look like so to be clear there isn't a decrease okay we haven't made a budget yet so all we're talking about is the pressures on the budget yeah um and potential scenarios that could potentially happen um so there hasn't been those discussions because we haven't made any decisions at all we're really we're going to need direction from the board yeah on that so we those conversations haven't started happened because we haven't made any decisions okay but they will happen yeah so i know we've done a lot tonight that's quarter to nine um i think we've got most of what we need out there uh i think one thing we should talk about i think it'd be a quick discussion um our next schedule board meeting is 15th then the 6th and the 20th if i'm correct um i think we need at least an extra board meeting if not two the the 29th and the 13th seem like obvious dates to prep put something on a calendar um what if folks think about that do we do a lot of schedule two the November 29th um which is not Thanksgiving week it's the week after and in terms of do we want two do we want one do i put two see if we need it i think scheduling two and then we can determine you know really forward if we if we need it you know i also think about this board that works incredibly diligently on the committee level and with all of this going on i just think that we also really need to get primary focus to the budget right now um i mean there are weeks that i spend hours on committee work and it just feels like we need to relax that right now while we give this the focus it means yeah i i think this is our primary focus for the next two i mean as we've seen tonight there's a lot at stake there's a lot of moving pieces there's a lot to get our head around um scott um i think i saw in one of the principal updates um meetings have already been scheduled with Truex Collins is that correct for the community visioning um and so yeah i'm i'm just wondering how much of this conversation will inevitably filter into those conversations and if there's a benefit to holding off on that process do they does Truex need to have those meetings like next week and the and the couple weeks after we have to change our agreement with them which i don't think they'd be opposed to i'm curious why we would i i i'm just wondering about the two timelines overlapping and potentially like they're very different conversations in some ways yes in other ways i think they're connected yeah so i think understanding if we want them to be connected or not and if we don't want them to be connected to separate them in time if we do want them to be connected then then yeah then i think that's that's different but understanding the impact of one process on the other i guess is it's just i'm just trying to acknowledge that i mean i love to hear your thoughts i mean one thing i think you know one thing that's really resonating with these yeah i think it would be ideal if we have to make big decisions about a building like roxbury that we have time to do that i think the Truex Collins thing will i mean they'll buy ourselves another year on that that could be great and the Truex count Collins thing i think will help us with that and i think if that gets off more slowly that might give us less information you know if we are bought an extra year to think about that to you know we i would like to see the process we also have to you know figure out do we have expenses around this school that we have to to budget in because of a flood risk so i mean yeah i think we could probably weave in some things from this budget conversation as the Truex Collins things go but my my preference would be to to keep that going i don't know if others feel different yeah i'm i'm saying you know it's all happening at once but i think whatever comes out of the conversations about facility and flooding and long-term planning will absolutely impact how i'm looking at the five-year ten-year budget so i i want that to happen i don't think we'll have that information by january no we won't we'll have it in March yeah right and so we yeah i'm sorry it's not okay so i think the sooner we can see that the better the more time we'll have to use that information but yeah i hear what you're saying we don't want that to get side railed by the immediate budget conversation either or overwhelmed by that or yeah and from my perspective that process that facilities process is is part of what i believe that all everyone needs to have an opportunity to engage in so that there's openness and transparency and and a dialogue with the community and the prospect of closing rbs as a as a as a as a budget decision completely let gets destroyed there's no there's none of that and so i really hope that the Truex facilities thing can be really successful and i'm not saying that you know hard decisions don't have to be made and they're gonna have to be made now and next year in the following year i just really want those hard decisions to have as many voices involved as they can i think we have two community engagement sessions planned with Truex and i think both of them are going to happen at Montpelier high school and could we also plan for one to be held at Roxbury village school i can ask them they're all virtual as well but i just think with the nature of the conversation here it would be ideal if we could create some direct engagement opportunity in in Roxbury and we can we can structure something else to do that too Truex talents can get to them and bring them into that they would do bring them in virtually and do something with us so jim you were suggesting two more board meetings putting on the calendar yeah put it on the calendar if we don't need it but you know sticking with what's the 29th and 13th sure are there any objections to that and also i mean you know if one or two of us can't make it one or two of us can't make it so let's let's do that right i'm sort of hoping that um we can that somehow there can be some sort of avenues forward like a variety of avenues forward that the board can look at like what does it look at if we spend if we don't change anything what does it look like if we if rbs students are at ues what does it look like if we find a way to use the the the fund balance you know in year one or in year two and the other the other factor though is how to what do each of those pathways look like in year two and year three even though it's impossible to predict that um but it feels like having some things to really look at with as the best numbers that can possibly be brought together would help us sort of put these decisions in context jake did you that's not jake uh do you want to open up but we have a hand do you want to open up a comment back up i don't think so i think we we've got plenty of time we have plenty of meetings so you can you can email us a question or yeah we we have two sessions i just i just i just had a real quick comment um you know it's i've been on the board since march 2020 which is a really funny time to start serving on the board um certain things become a lightning rod like i i hear the emotion and like response and i'm i'm heartbroken to hear that people have been so upset because i feel like this is like step one so but i i totally get it the same way that like the track like it becomes like a one word everyone it becomes like a lightning rod but the actual solution and where some of us are at is much more nuanced than that i really want to hear selfishly what chrux cullens has to say about the middle school because i feel like our teachers don't have what they need at the middle school so like i i don't want there to be an assumption by anyone that we're all here like oh this is going to be an easy we're just going to make a swift decision i think there's a lot more i just want to be clear that we're i don't think we're all universally focused on those two lightning rod items and then that's it like i just want to be really clear about that but there might be a lot more going on yeah and i also i mean we want to be as deliberate as we can i don't think anyone on this board wants to make any quick decision on anything uh rvs included in a particular again i want to stress i mean i was part of the rvs community i was very supportive i i'm very supportive of that school as a school i have i have no desire to close it and close it quickly in the yeah and i want time for that discussion uh but i think we have to get a very clear sense of what our situation is what our options are um and and i'm going to be honest that's one of the things we're going to have to talk about uh and you know like to be quite honest this this board has has brought that up but you know taking on the discussion of making sure rvs is in a viable position so we didn't have to make a rash decision on the budget and i think it's partially on this board to say we've we kicked that conversation down the road and we're now at a point where we might have to have it more quickly than we want to which i think is unfortunate but no one wants no one wants to do that um i think myself at the head of that and clearly you know i know i know what it means to that community i know what small schools schools bring people together uh it's you know they bring people together rocksbury uh they bring people together in mom piliar um they are staples of communities and um no one is going to make a rash decision about a centerpiece of a community any more quickly than we have to um hello could i'd like to say something can you hear me yeah we can hear you um yeah okay i'm jay and i just wanted to say thank you all for your consideration um i've been in rocksbury for over 50 years now seeing how the school has had developed and grown over these 50 years my children went there years ago i i just wanted to thank you for your further work that ret and fist that are doing for the school and for their fashion and i feel and i want everything to work out i'm not good at learning about tax information but i've been really i've learned a lot from your discussion today so i just wanted to thank you and i think it would be wonderful to have a discussion given rocksbury um in these next few months if you've got the time and inclination so once again thanks a lot yeah thank you and since the the floor opened i'm to be fair someone else wanted to get a word in as well please please give it to you know under a minute if you can i was just gonna say i i sent an email as well i i think it's my fault i haven't attended before in a budget meeting and so wrapping my head around what the budget process used like was before the changes and absorbing all of the information that's happening now if there's like a budget 101 meeting where there could be some like more information to give time to digest what that was before and all the acronyms as they through to the slides to understand that a little bit better that would be helpful yeah i do want to say the the agency of education or is it bsba has like kind of a bsba bsb has like a schoolhouse rock video type thing of the budget i'm also going to say i've been on this board i've been on this board since 2016 i cannot tell you that i've fully wrapped my head around what the budget process means it's it's very busy um so we will try to make it as simple as possible but it's it's not it's it's not a simple formula um let's let's do the policy monitoring uh and then adjourn we obviously have a lot to talk about over the next few months any final comments um i just i just hope everyone has a good night's sleep tonight and especially the rocksbury community members um you know the the meeting to i was hoping that the meeting tonight would give me a lot of clarity and it has in some ways and it hasn't in other ways but as an individual board member i can only speak for myself but i would not be interested in supporting a budget that would close a school you know this quickly so i you know i want to explore the other options and in most interested in jake's perspective of pushing a budget forward that's more reasonable and expecting that that will be deemed reasonable by the secretary and i know that that's you know going to require a lot of education so i'm i'm looking to the community that's in the room to support us in educating other people so that the budget is not voted down if we do go that route tylen lpm sold at cps i just before we move on to the um budget monitoring to say i think where we've landed is we've heard initial thoughts from board members we've answered some questions and um retz's request i was gonna also kind of recap it in the same way ret did which is like let's see a few general scenarios the next time we come back to the budget one that is the like we do nothing one that is the um you know what are the all the cuts we could make um that feel reasonable what is the really like really like really hard one you know like let's let's see a few paths not with any specific details but what do the number how do the numbers play out i think that's what you were saying right and i think that is the logical next step after today yeah i'm not gonna ask us for that as well um and i think another thing too um tom i'm you've spoken twice plenty of meetings ahead i'd appreciate it but please i think an email um um and then also getting together with jake and um and uh do some do some math and doing some math yeah tom did me to cut you off i appreciate all you've brought to the board tonight but um i think we do need to to limit comment and and you have spoken and and the other people had had not a chance to speak which is why why opened it up but you can send us an email and um i certainly hope that you and everyone else you know a lot of us would be lingering around after them yeah for questions and again like remember we we have not made we've not made any decisions and just and also just made clear just because we look at something doesn't mean we're going to do it i mean we need to look at a lot of things and most of the things we look at we are not going to do um uh the policy monitoring report uh do the motion to approve so moved a second let's just further i could say are you doing all three at once emma oh yes policy monitoring d4 the agenda open i guess they see em and f20 there you go i'm so moved second a discussion i was in favor i i i moved to adjourn second second i was in favor i thank you everyone