I'd like to call the meeting to order at 6.01 p.m. Welcome, as I said just a moment ago, the main purpose of this meeting tonight is to set our FY22 announced tuition for elementary and high school level students. And hopefully everybody received your packet from Tara earlier this week. So we can offer a little bit of guidance about the budget and what we might hope to see next week at our regular meeting on the 19th. So without further ado, our first agenda item is adjustments to the agenda. Is there anything that anyone feels like we need to add, move around, et cetera? If I don't happen to see you, please feel free to just speak up. Okay. So that brings us to our first discussion item, which is the fiscal year 2022 announced tuition rate. Tara, would you like to just share a little bit of information about that? I don't know if we can project that sheet that you shared previously, but that's the breakdown of it. Thank you. Good evening, everybody. So yes, this is, we have to set each year by January 15th, the announced tuition rate that I then send to each of the schools in the state of Vermont that you receive tuition students from. We also have to submit it to the agency of education, which they then release a notification to all school districts of what everybody's announced tuition rate is. So again, this is what you would receive from a student coming to your district from another district in the state of Vermont, non-resident student. So last year, your current year, your announced tuition rate is $17,137, and the recommendation for FY 22 would be based on the current budget that we have projected of $12,026,099, less your offsetting revenue of $1,108,899, less the transportation assessment that you receive of $416,652. For a total of $10,500,548 divided by your equalized pupil of $596 gives an announce, sorry, that should say announce not allowable, tuition of $17,618.37. So I had just recommended increasing that, rounding it up to $17,650. Thank you. Does anyone have questions about that, or does anyone want to make a motion and then we can discuss? So I'll make a motion that we set the allowable tuition or the announced tuition for elementary and secondary to be $17,650. I'll second that. We have any discussion about this announced tuition rate of $17,650? What is the offsetting, what's the offsetting revenue? That's what you receive locally. So we take that out of the calculation to set your tuition rate. We receive that from Bethel and Royaltons. Yeah, so that minus your offsetting revenue, that's what's in your budget that you receive from your taxpayers and Royalton and Bethel and what you receive from the state education fund. So that comes out of the formula to what you would charge sending schools. Is it pretty standard to remove the transportation costs? I mean, it does seem strange charging so much less than we have for people costs. You can set your announced tuition rate where you want to. This is the recommendation based on the formula that the agency of education gives us. The challenge that you run into is if you overcharge your tuition and when the allowable tuition is actually set by the state and if you charge too much, there is a potential that you have to pay back those sending districts, those funds. What is our allowable tuition? Do we know what it was last year? It has not been released yet from the agency of education. What was it last year compared to what we charged? We still don't even know last year's annual. Your allowable tuition hasn't been released from the AOE. The AOE has not released last year's allowable tuition yet. What's the last year's allowable tuition we know? What have been 19? I think that was in, was it on the packet that we had? I thought I remembered the previous year. So we have the announced tuition for the previous years are announced, but not our allowable yet. All right, so in FY 19, the elementary allowable tuition was $21,600. The secondary was $13,394. So the state breaks it up. So if we average that. And you can go 3% above or below it. Is there? Brings you to 17,497. Is there any inclination or sense that in the past we may have gone too low and that might have been one of our fiscal challenges? Well, I mean, added revenues, added revenue. I mean, any secondary student you're getting in middle and high school, I mean, Reed can correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think we're necessarily adding full-time staff for it, right? Like it's really offsetting revenue. So it's good. So the question is, do you wanna get received more offsetting revenue than not? One of the things to think about is is I looked for us to continue to market, Rud, to your sister districts is that the SU and Rud can kind of help try to control costs across the SU. What I don't wanna do is put us at a price point where we're charging significantly more than potentially local schools. Right now you're pretty competitive, right? The Sharon Academy can only charge the state average. And you're less than Thefford Academy and you're less than Harford now.  Yep. Payne Mountains, I don't know. Do you know where Payne Mountain announced? Yeah, Tara? I don't have theirs yet. Williamstown? Because we do compete for Chelsea students. Right. I received today Orange Southwest, which was 18630. Thatford is 19965. Berry is 1682. Hartford is 189. They went up significantly. Yeah, from 172. Woodstock or Windsor Central is 185. Rutland is 167. And I don't think we have any risk of Mill River, but theirs was 166. And Montpelier was 17,000. So those are the ones that I've received so far. We don't have Middlebury yet, because I know Rochester sometimes kids go that way. No, I don't have theirs yet. Okay. It sounds like we're competitive. Having said that, I know that families look less at this than some of the programming. So I think it's really important to think about striking a balance between what we can offer in terms of programming and keeping our costs in line with what communities can afford. All right. Any other discussion or questions related to our announced tuition? Andrew, I don't think that was a satisfying answer necessarily to what you were looking for. No, I think that we have no tuition. I do think us raising it isn't going to cost us tuition students per se. I would be happy to have a conversation with our sister districts about setting us as a spending school and us giving them a lower rate as some sort of deal there where we get more if we charge less. But right now it doesn't seem like we get, it affects our student population one way or the other. So, yeah. Sister districts. We do have a new committee together to try to increase our approach to recruitment of students across the SU. Reed's been organizing that with Owen and Andrew and actually your sister school principals are on that to better support us in regards to how could we better infiltrate and a market, run high school across our sister districts.  They don't have control of it. So it would make sense for us to try to as much as possible, keep our students within the SU because that's something we can control. So do know in other district meetings, I am having those conversations. I'll just, you wouldn't know, you're not there necessarily. So you wouldn't know that, but. Okay. Jamie, do you recognize yourself? Thank you. Go ahead. Jamie, are you recommending this tuition rate? I think it's a fair tuition rate. And I think the more that I can say that we offer a high quality program at a more reasonable cost, I think that we're gonna get more and more buy-in from our other communities when the SU, the other eight, in regards to partnering us with us to make certain that students in those other buildings that the first thing that they're thinking about is RUD because it aligns with the work we're doing, either K6 or K8. And there actually is, I mean, there are other districts who are, you know, they're learning more as we talk about this that secondary tuitions are out of their control completely and it's driving their budget and their tax base. So, you know, I think that they're really starting to wrestle with how can they try to have more control over that. So I think that this is generally a fine tuition. I might increase it a little bit because we do provide some transportation. So taking all the transportation costs out things a little over. So I might make a motion to modify it to 17.8 or something like that, if anybody has thoughts on that. Is there any downside to modifying it to 17.8? No, I mean, I think we'll come in within that allowable tuition. I mean, if you wanted to go 19, I'd caution you because I think we might have to pay back, right? So I wouldn't want you to get to a place where we collect revenue and have to pay back other districts because that does have to happen sometimes. But, you know, I don't think there's anything to modify it at that regard. Okay, so that would involve amending the motion. So yeah, I would accept your friendly amendment to my motion. Okay, to change the announced tuition to 17.8. Yeah, 17,800. Do we still have a second for that? I'll second. Okay, right. That was just a random number I pulled out. So, you know, if anybody has a different number. Well, if we're talking about how transportation, you know, we're gonna be responsible for transportation for these students. How much do we anticipate or what do we usually spend for that transportation? And would that $300 additional really cover it? So what's in this formula is your home-to-school contract amount from Butler? Yeah, so as part of that, we're doing a bus, or at least we were doing a bus from Randall, or Rochester, the Rudd and from Chelsea to Rudd. And I think we wanna do that regardless because we're trying to attract those students. So, but, you know, I don't think it's unfair to include some of that cost of tuition rate. Yeah, and other districts are also sending buses there within their tuition too. Just, I mean, that's part of what you battle is multiple districts are sending buses to those locations. It's not like we're the only ones doing it. Right, so it comes down to convenience and programming for families, I think. How many tuition students are we currently projecting for next year just to know what the ballpark is for at least $1,000 additional, what are we? I'm like 40 something. Give me one second, Andrew, I just gotta open that tab up. Sure, assuming it is around 40, that would be $40,000 for every thousand. So something like one, one and a half, 1,500 would be one cent on our time. I have 35 students built in their revenue budget at the $17,650 in that budget I emailed you that we're looking at tonight. Okay. But I think that that's generally the ballpark. So to lower our taxes at one cent, if we've got the same number of tuition students around about, I don't know that we need to be looking at it. But for some reason, I lost the last part of what you said, Andrew, I'm sorry. I'm not necessarily saying we should be looking at it like that, I just was curious for the tax, like the impact on our part. It won't have any impact on your tax rate. It's only a $5,000 increase. For the 200, Tara, he was talking about a thousand bucks a piece. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. No big deal. Okay. Anyway, I'm happy with the 1780. Anybody have other ideas? Okay. And so that's the motion we currently have on the floor after the friendly amendment. Any other questions or thoughts about that, setting that as our announced tuition rate? Okay. None. All in favor of approving $17,800 as our FY22 announced tuition rate, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. So we have said our announced tuition rate for 2022 at $17,800 per pupil. Right. Thank you. That brings us to the next part of our agenda and Tara emailed us all on the 12th, the FY21-22 budget proposal. And so hopefully you all have that copy from a couple of days ago in your email. Tara, is there anything you wanna say about that before we jump in to that discussion? So again, this is a preliminary conversation knowing that we're hoping to be able to approve the budget at next week's meeting. And so I think Jamie and Tara are looking for feedback on how to prepare a budget for us for next week that most reflects what we want to see and want to bring forward to the voters of our community. And I can just highlight again what this budget does have in it and doesn't, just so we can recap it. And then if I miss anything, Andrew and Reed or Tara can speak to that. So I'll start by, if the board had time to look at your tax sheet, this budget, even though it is down $72,019.48, it's still represent a 9 cent increase in Bethel and a 13 cent increase in Royalton. And that's really the bad news. Your administrators have worked hard on this. They worked hard to prepare a budget that went down without having any detriment to a program. There's some reductions in programming, but there hasn't been an elimination of a program. And I'll talk to you about what adjustments we've made to programming is. We feel like we can still provide a high quality world class education for our students and recruit and attract students with this budget going down. But what we didn't have in our control was the fact that there was a significant drop in CLA in both towns, especially in Royalton. And if you look at that, that impact on the Royalton tax rate is about just seven cents in change alone. My sense is we must be coming up to a point where reappraisal should be happening in Royalton soon because when you see the CLA start to get down in this figure, it usually speaks to the fact that we better reappraise here in the next couple of years. So that's been a huge impact on your tax rate. The yield is about what we said last time in Royalton's close to four cents. And in Beffle, it's three and a half cents. And then the actual budget itself is about a one to two cents, depending on the town. So what else drove it? Well, we did lose some equalized pupils, not a ton this year, thank goodness, just a couple. But of course that, even though we reduced the budget, that is our divisor. So that's your tax sheet, that's where we're at. So if folks are wondering, why are we coming in with a budget under this current year? Well, we felt like it was really critical due to the pandemic and the current financial times to come to you with a budget that's fiscally responsible that didn't eliminate a program and try to keep taxes down as much as possible. And that's what this budget represents. So what you should know though, is that we did increase our outdoor education slightly for the middle and high school as we look to increase pathways programming. I wanna remind you that this does have a full pathways coordinator within the high school budget. That's a new position to help facilitate more personalized learning and get us up to speed and in a more competitive place around other high schools in that regard. We didn't eliminate any of your AP courses at the high school level. Those remained in place and intact. We did choose not to replace the foreign language teacher that left last spring in this budget, but that means that that's not impacting programming from this year to next. We also chose still not to replace a music teacher in this budget, but that still keeps you with three music teachers of which the administration is confident we can meet the needs of your students at. In addition to, we did budget an additional $10,000. I believe it's 10 read. I'm looking for you to shake your head for music lessons. Is that about right? Yeah, 12,000. 12, all right, thank you, Reed. So about $12,000 for music lessons. There is also, you have folks that have provided lessons all along. We've also been contacted by Trey Fisk, who was a graduate of Sharon Elementary and went to Sharon Academy who has an upstart business where he has world-class musicians. He went to school at, was it Berkeley? I think so, I've checked out his website. Yeah, it's B Sharp, it's pretty cool. And so we're already in certain districts and I don't know, I can't speak for Rod. I know at least in Sharon and Tumbridge we already have students connected with lessons with his music teachers. They're virtual, but they expand all different vocal and instrumental opportunities for kids. And so that's an exciting partnership that we're looking to add to the music program. We did slightly reduce foreign language in the sense of at the elementary level. And what that means is we're looking to approach, I've mentioned this before culturally and trying to embed more cultural, world culture at the elementary level, but students will still have full access at the middle and high school level for foreign language. We restructured P and Drivers Ed a bit. It won't reduce opportunities for kids to access. We're just using staff different, but that did result in some reduction in FTE in that area. But it will not change anything about how students access Drivers Ed. It's more about scheduling and being more efficient with the staff we have and the personnel and licensures we have. The other reduction that occurred was elementary health. There is a reduction of FTE there in this budget. And you may have noticed that if you went through the budget lines. And then there's one, we went from five secretaries across the two campuses down to four. Secretaries across the two campuses. And finally, there is a reduction of two support staff across the two campuses. So two regular ed support staff down. This budget represents. And then we had someone leave this year and it was a management decision not to replace them. And that was at the elementary level and they haven't been in place all year. And so Andrew feels confident that we don't have to replace that position. So that position was not replaced in this budget either. So in general, we try to approach this based on what have we already had for attrition. We've known we've been able to do business this year in a COVID-19 year, which is as hard as ever. And staff have been incredibly flexible and strong and done an amazing job. And then we looked at how could we strengthen your experiential learning at the middle and high school, but also invest in what we said that we're trying to do in regards to back when the board talked about personalized learning and PLPs in the fall and the investment in trying to, how do we recruit students through pathways where they have the ability to create individualized plans and really pursue them out in the community. You have a really strong community-based learning program and the idea is that with pathways coupled with that, that students can really engage more in internships, mentoring and demonstrate proficiency in core academics if they choose through that more personalized approach to learning without having to take away with what you should be proud of of all the different AP courses and things that you offer. And then finally, we do, one of the reasons I think you notice at the SU level, the assessment for special ed did drop and that's because we're continuing to strengthen our system of supports, but we also do plan to how do we keep our students home and that could result in potential increased tuition dollars for you. If students across the SU, the best learning environment for them is our Wildcat Institute in grades nine through 12, they will be Rud students and they would access our most intensive supports at Rud instead of potentially accessing it in other providers like East Valley Academy, Raven and some other different programs that happen in the Hartford School District. The idea is that they would access them here. So that's what this budget supports. And so what we're looking really from the board is to see, is this budget at a place that you feel comfortable based on the tax increase laid out or are you looking for us to try to find additional efficiencies? So that's kind of to set the tone for you tonight to give us feedback. So then on Tuesday, we're coming in with you with a final draft. So a couple of questions. One, the deficit, we're not doing anything about that this year. We're gonna see how much comes off and then address it next year. Yeah, so the approach that we talked about the finance committee, Andrew, and I'm still recommending to the board and I talked to Bob about it a little bit too and I have Lisa individually was that, I do believe we're gonna have, again, a general fund surplus this year. I think that we're working really hard. Teachers have been administration to hopefully pay down some of that debt. We'll have a better sense of what that debt would be, that then we would go and get a note or if the debt's at a place where we could just budget it, we could do that, but that we hold off based on the yield this year and the CLA. And I think that makes sense. We pay it off and we budgeted accordingly in next year's budget. So it would be the 22, 23 budget. And if we did have to take a note, we could structure it with the bank that the payment wouldn't come due until July 1 of 2022. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And my other question was with the potential tuition students for the new program, would those be just regular tuition students or do they have like a special rate like Raven? Well, the SU, they could have excess cost. That is a thing. And so once we build the program, we'll have to figure out whether or not there's any excess costs that are aligned to that, but just a reminder that all special ed costs are at the SU. So there's not necessarily a benefit for Rudd even on that because it was excess costs would be then be billed back to this special ed. It's a special ed cost. It's not necessarily a district cost. But I would eventually trickle down to us as a benefit. Okay. Well, yeah, because if there are excess costs, the state then contributes. Yeah. My overall feedback is that I think holding the, our controllable part of the budget level is the way to go. I mean, it seems like, yeah, we're getting hammered with the CLA and the yield. And those are the parts of the budget that we have no control over. So hopefully the voters will see that we've made a good faith effort to keep costs down and we're kind of doing what we can do about it. So. Jamie, I want to ask a question about transportation. Is the vocational school transportation part of the contract and our transportation for athletics and field trips part of the contract? It's included in your contract with Butler Bob, but it's a separate section of the contract. So the transportation that's in your assessment from the supervisory union is the home to school transportation. And that's what you see on your monthly warrants that you're paying the supervisory union for because we pay that on your behalf to Butler. And then that's also on the revenue side of your budget. That's the transportation aid that we get back from the agency of education. We get a portion of your contracted home to school back in as revenue, as an offsetting revenue. The vocational transportation, that's a separate bill that's billed directly to run for how many kids you transport to Randolph and how many kids you're currently transporting to Hartford. And then we also submit and we get some reimbursement for that cost as well. And then your athletics and any extracurricular or any type of field trip transportation is billed separately after the service is provided and it's based on the per mile rate that's outlined in the Butler contract. Are we bound by Butler to transport a vocational kids and do our athletic trips and do our field trips? Are we obligated under that contract to use Butler to do those programs? Well, unless they can't furbish the bus. Yes, right now you're in a contract with Butler. So we can't go and say all of a sudden now we've decided we wanna go with a different company for transportation for like tech. So yes. And typically they give us a better price. So if we were to have a contract with butlers but then try to contract with a separate service for field trips, et cetera, we wouldn't have the benefit of the larger contract, right? I mean, I think like if we went out- Well, I mean, you know, when we go out to bid again those are all things we should be looking at but right now our contract's not up. And so yes, if we do any transportation that we do right now, they are supposed to be furnishing for our contract unless they can't meet the need. And then we're allowed to go seek out other transportation. So Butler had situations this past year, last year, where they didn't pick up kids for field trips. So they didn't pick up kids for athletic events. They didn't have a driver or they didn't have a bus. They just didn't pick them up. What do we do? What do we do about that? What have we done about it? Well, we get grumpy and Reed will probably smile on Andrew and I'm pretty demanding when they say that they don't have a driver, they can't do it. And they've been pretty responsive to me this year. I gotta say they've- Are they breaking their contract when they don't furnish that bus? I'd have to read the contract to know if that actually breaks it or not, Bob. By the way- I don't like the fact that they don't show up. We have a group of kids waiting and just coaches there and no parents. And they don't seem to have any kind of obligation to do it. Do we have a penalty? Do we- Right, I think that we do pay those things based on the trip. It's based on the trip. So they don't provide the trip, we don't pay them, but- Right. I know, but- It does leave us in a terrible situation. I had thought they were doing better this year. I haven't been hearing as much about it as I have in the past. So I guess I didn't realize it was an ongoing issue. Or is it more of a historical thing? I think it's historical, but there hasn't been a lot of sporting trips this year. Or field trips. Or field trips. I do think it's something worth thinking about when it's time to renegotiate that contract because we pay them a lot of money and we deserve to be well taken care of as a result of that. Yeah, part of the bigger issue is that statewide and nationally there's a shortage of supply of bus drivers. So first, which is the other big bus company in Vermont, is constantly advertising in their districts for local bus drivers because they just don't have enough. That's usually where we run into trouble. Most of our drivers are folks who've retired quite some time ago. And so when one of them gets sick, there often isn't somebody there to just step in for them. Fortunately, this year, the transportation needs have been less because many of the neighboring school districts are not in session full time. And so we've gotten a driver out of the Hartford School District pool of drivers because they've got excess capacity. Nice. I don't have any empathy for them at all because they make a lot of money. I think that when they agree to take our kids someplace, they do it. If they're having a tired time getting drivers, increase their pay. You know, it's hold those guys accountable for not doing their job. And they're leaving our kids at a school. I don't know about you, but if I had young kids and they weren't being picked up by a bus, I'd be upset with them. I think the district, I think when I was at Fairhaven, we had three buses. But if we had two buses, take care of athletic trips, take care of the vocational trips, take care of the field trips for our own kids. And don't worry about Butler. That's my feeling. You know, we're thinking that we're saving a lot of money. I'd like to do analysis and find out if we are saving any money. And it wouldn't hurt to lease a couple of buses for the school district and take care of those things ourselves. And when there's only one bus company out there to negotiate with, we're hurting. But if we start telling that bus company, we'll take care of our own. If it's going to come to that, then maybe we'll get a little better service. Are we saving any money this year? We don't have, like Andrea said, we're not transporting that many athletic trips. We're not doing field trips. Are we saving any money? Is Butler giving us any money back? Yeah, I mean, yeah. So that budget line, you won't touch Bob. Like for field trip transportation and sports, we're not being built on those. So when we do your projections for savings, that's part of what we'll project. Are we making any savings when our kids are being taught virtually? What do you mean? Oh, if they're not running their bus for like that week. Yeah, I mean, there's a part of the fee we have to pay still, but then there's a part of the fee they reimburse us. Same as like when we closed. Yeah. I mean, one of the... Who keeps track of that? What's that? Who keeps track of that? We do. When they come in the invoices, I signed the bus invoices and then we review them. Tara and I were just talking to the bus company about invoices, Bob, last week. Are we saving some money? Yeah, no, there's savings, yeah. Are they reflected in the budget? Well, no, next year we budgeted full tilt. I can't project that we're gonna be virtual. And this year's budget. In your budget projections, when you see your projections, yeah, you'll see savings. I mean, one of the things that we had to decide when we had to consolidate busing at the SU level was whether we wanted our administrators focused on hiring bus drivers and doing the things that they had to do before we were working with a service like Butler's, in addition to the fact that there was some savings because Bethel used to run their own buses, Bob. And that was how we did things previous to the merger. So that was a shift for us. And I think that Jamie's been doing a good job of advocating strongly for us. You said get grumpy. I think it's strong advocation. When we are having problems with them, and I'm grateful that, and I know there are less field trips and less sporting events, but I'm grateful that it seems like we are having less problems this school year. That's not to say they won't crop up again in a more normal school year, but hopefully we have more bids to look at the next time we negotiate that contract. When I worked at Rochester, we had three buses. I didn't have a problem with bus drivers or hiring bus drivers or taking care of the buses. I don't think that's a major issue. I think it's, I think what's problem here is there's no competition. That may be. Well, I must hear suggesting that we add something with a budget. Why don't we put this as a future agenda item and we can look up on the next contracts up. Well, I'd like to add something to the budget, but I don't think we should. But if I had my choice, I'd go after it. Well, why don't we do it as a future agenda item to look at that next year itself? Okay, that's how we would comment. That sounds good. All right. Any other questions or comments about the budget that's been prepared? Thoughts about whether we wanna bring this budget forward to the taxpayers with the cuts that are in it. It's reduced from this year by about $72,000, even though we know that based on the CLA, et cetera, the tax rate overall will go up. So what are people's thoughts? I'd like, there are a few of you I haven't heard from yet in terms of board members and I just, I think it would be useful for Tara and Jamie to have your feedback. This is Lisa, wondering if there is enough in the budget for the virtual learning end of things since we're not really sure. Maybe we'll all be meeting in person again by next year, but if we're not, is there adequate funding to support the virtual working? I would expect if we're not in a place to return to in-person, Lisa, that there is gonna be funding coming that covers it like this year and we would approach it from the SU level again and offset what we needed that way. Okay. Other thoughts, questions from board members before we move into public comment? Yeah, I think, looking at it, there's some different areas where things, moved up and down a little bit, but there's no big swings or I don't think there's a lot of anything to really cut in my view. I think one thing we did say that we were gonna try to do on the budget layout was try to put in some sort of comment column because I know under the general education, there's some reduction in salary but then in other places, we might see some increases and it may not necessarily be in that exact spot but I know that there's some stuff where things got moved from one place to another for recoding and stuff and for the public knowledge, that we said we were gonna have some sort of comment column over to the right that would maybe give some just basic info as to what were the core changes that caused whatever the differential is between the previous year and the proposed value, you know, what's the core pieces to that, you know, is it just- I think that's critical why we do our own book, Chris. I agree, because we gotta explain that folks, that stuff to folks. Yeah, so I know we mentioned that last time but it's not there right now, but- I didn't realize, I was thinking, I'm sorry, I thought you meant for the book which it will have it. I didn't realize you wanted- Okay. Yourself's too. I try not to- I understand also I had that written down to do for the town books. Okay, yeah. I think that's, yeah, I didn't know if it was gonna be here too or if what we see here then goes into the book. So I wanted to- No, we'll clean it up a lot and pretty it up and inset. I think it would be useful for a future, you know, when you presented us to have those notes because, you know, otherwise we're going by our memories of what we heard you guys say and some previous thing. Much easier to cut through it when it's not made of time. That's good info, thank you. And it doesn't have to be on everything, it's just the ones that, you know, if it's, you know, tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and change, not a $50 change. The other thing I'd be curious to see would be if we basically kept the current staffing levels and contract and stop and just had the, you know, like health insurance increased and step ups and standard raises, like what, how much do we cut from that level?  So- Way more than two or 3%. Right, so I'd be curious to know, you know, when we're presenting this budget and saying there's a 13%, or 13 cent tax increase in route, then being able to say we, compared to what we would have if we use this year's budget, you know, we cut this much, not just saying like. Right, to be able to show people that comparison just so that they understand how fiscally responsible this budget is, I think is a really useful comparison. I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah, yeah, we can definitely show that because if we had kept everything status quo within anticipated wage increases and health insurance, I mean, you guys, it would have been up, you know, significantly. Yeah, pretty staggering in this particular year. All right, any other board questions or comments before I open things up to public comment? I wanna say something. I talked to Theresa Herrington, a tax collector, and in Royalton, she started the year with $400,000 of collectible taxes. And I must have talked to her a week ago and I think she was between 350 and 300,000, that's still delinquent in the town of Royalton. And I think that's significant. And I think that's, and I'm not sure what that goes. I'm not sure how, you know, I haven't talked to anybody there. But I think we probably should be prepared that maybe this budget is not gonna pass. Yeah, I mean, I think it's worse. I think it's worth bringing forward a budget that starts us at a place that cuts programming as little as possible with the knowledge that it may not pass and we may have to do some different things to bring a budget back. I'd hate to make significant cuts that affected programming and potentially impacted our ability to attract students as the very first round of things, though. That makes me feel like we're getting to a more worrisome place in terms of providing what our students need. That's just my opinion as one board member. I agree with you, Lisa. I think that we should present it in this shape and if it gets turned down or if there's a, I mean, we're obviously gonna have hopefully at least one or more informational sessions for people to present this budget. And if the taxpayers aren't happy, then we'll make cuts from there and they'll see what the ramifications are. But they can see that we've done our best to keep things as they are and have the offerings as robust as they are before we start taking things away. I think that both communities support education and I think if the budget goes down, it'll be because they can't afford it. It's not that they don't support education because I think these both communities have shown in the past that they do, but it may just be in the times that we're in and the number of unemployed people in the area may be just a difficult, difficult thing. Yeah, I agree with you. It's been heartening to see the way that our communities have supported our schools and I appreciate that this budget has trimmed quite a bit to reflect the way that we're, the way that society is right now, the unemployment and the way that families are struggling. I just would hate to take more away than we need to. It's a really challenging situation. I agree. When we're discussing it and with the public, I mean, it might be worth pointing out that if there is somebody who has lost their job or whatever and has not earning the same that they did in previous years that there are income sensitivity options for people, they're not necessarily gonna have to pay the full tax rate if their income is disappeared and they're going to file their taxes and whatnot. Anyway, I don't know if it makes sense to do that or not. Yeah, right, yeah, Andrew. Just regarding the overall budget, I think I've made my concerns, like I'm still a little worried about the music, eliminating the music position and stuff. I think we can see how it goes this year. So those sorts of concerns, I feel like I've made over that when you've been rolling out the budget previously. But on the whole, I support the budget as it is. Other feedback so they can bring us this budget next week on the 19th when we meet for our regular monthly meeting. Just a general question. I sat in on that webinar that was what, yesterday or the day before and then Jamie forwarded out the stuff to us too. Are we gonna discuss that type of stuff at the next, at the meeting next week? Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's my homework for the weekend to watch the webinar. So if anybody hasn't watched it yet and you've received it, I think that's good preparation for our meeting next week. Thinking about the logistical pieces of what's coming up. Yeah, it's interesting. I think one thing we maybe wanna go ahead and do now is do a little bit of legwork and just confirm with the people like Allison Fulcher and Pam Brown and those people to make sure that they wanna continue on doing what they're doing in terms of being a moderator and other positions. Because I guess one of the things that came in that webinar was that those people have to fill out one of those candidate consent forms because they'll have to be on the ballot and be voted on as part of the Australian ballot. So because we would normally elect those people from the floor, but all of that business is gonna have to be on the ballot. So they don't have to collect signatures this year.  So I guess whoever's up for board positions too, you don't have to get any signatures this year either. You just have to fill out the form to get your name on the ballot. But I think we just need to check with those people and just get them to fill out those forms and make sure that they're still good with continuing on doing what they've been doing. Anybody who feels like they have the time to reach out to those people and make sure that they are aware of what needs to be done to be on the ballot. I was gonna sit down with Tara and work on that. Okay. Because I need to do it for all the districts. All right. Thank you, Jamie. I appreciate that. All right. So that brings us to public comment as part of our meeting. We do have some public here. Feel free to unmute or there's a raise hand option on the bottom of the screen. And I think if you're on a phone line, I think you hit star six to unmute yourself so you can talk. Thank you. I usually make that reminder. I forgot, I'm sorry. Okay. So hearing no public comment, I would entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. We have a second. I'll second. All right. And I will see you all next Tuesday evening. Thank you so much.


Welcome to a Market Update. I'm doing an update here on the SPI because the SPI was very bearish today. And this is actually the first time that I've said this in looking at this chart for the last two solid months that I actually feel that the market is heavy here now today because it couldn't rally at all. I mean, actually, if you didn't short the market this morning, you had no entry to go short this market today. And around, I don't know, between 10 and 10.15 this morning, I said the market's not going to recover today. It's going to be red all day and power trend down, and that's exactly what it did. Usually though, when the market trends in a strong directional trend up or down, it will give an entry to take it, whether it's power turning up or power turning down. It'll at least give an entry, a reversal entry. The market did not do that at all today, I mean, literally. So let's go over it. This was a neutral gap, and that's how I read it this morning. And we were actually getting down a couple of pennies, but it was neutral. Closed at 180.709, and we opened, oh, we actually opened exactly neutral. Oh, I'm just saying this now. Oh, it wasn't exactly neutral gap. That is very rare. It's so rare that the market actually closes at the same place it opened, gosh, that almost never happens. We actually were getting down a little bit today, but I looked at it as neutral. I thought we would follow through higher today from the buy setup that occurred and the daily chart yesterday into the 50-peer moving average. Low of this bar is 183.59, oh my gosh, I think we're going to break this into the close. It's only three o'clock. No, this market is very heavy. I have to see how we close here today. It's one hour until the close. What transpires between now and actually 10 o'clock tomorrow morning is pretty significant here with this market, because if this market can't hold this area right in here, it's going to pull in, it's going to pull in down to this area in here, which I thought it was going to pull in when we first started to come down. I was given it to pull in there, but then when we held here so beautifully two days ago, it looked like it was really going to hold and rally back and make new hives. But today, this is very bearish. Very bearish market just didn't like anything today, didn't like that come out with data, didn't like the minutes announced, but didn't like anything, nothing at all. Geez, we're going to break the low here into this close. Here it is. It's going to break it. This is very bearish. This is just selling, selling, selling, selling, selling. This is what selling looks like. This is weak. This is what I'm saying. It's the first day in all the days. All the days that happen here. And it's the first day I'm actually saying this is weak. This is heavy. And if the market breaks this level of support, it's going to come all the way down into here, possibly here. It's just there's no lead up here, 68, 59, no. Very interesting. It's just straight selling, selling, selling, selling, selling, selling, selling, selling. I don't even think the market bounces here into the close. One hour left in the day, it's very likely the market's going to break the low of that tail here today. And when that breaks, because people bought in that yesterday and also the prior day, market's going to fall. Market's going to, it looks like it's going to fall here right straight down, drop down into the close. And this is selling. So next area is far away, far away. This could be a stream of bearish days here to the market rallies again. So the next level, here's all the levels. 180, 180, 40-ish, actually 181, 181.50, 181, 180, on 79, 75, another way down here to 178.50. The market must hold this area here, this bottoming tail at 183.59 today. If it doesn't, it's going to fall off the planet into a much, much deeper support, a very deeper support, because any of the other levels that the market would hold are far, far, far from here. And this really should have held. Okay? It's actually triggering out of the buy setup. So the buy setup triggered here yesterday. Beautiful buy setup gap up, nice bullish gap, gap up, over 185.41 and rally way past where it could have even gone. I mean, I actually went past the target, went to the dream target yesterday for the buy setup. It's a beautiful buy setup, but the market couldn't get going today. Didn't like any of the economic data that came out and just kept, as the selling started to go in and we started trading out into itself here. And as the day went on, and this is what happens, as the day goes on and on and on and on, and the market can't hold, it started to sell off. Oh, this is really tricky. 183.59, 183.68, well, I just don't see any bounce in here before the close, but I have no idea where we're going to gap tomorrow. It depends where we close today. If we close and break the low of that tail there under 59.58, likelihood as we gap down tomorrow, very high likelihood we gap down tomorrow. And could be a significant gap down in the market, neutral or gap down, low odds we gap up. And if the market somehow, somehow can survive here into the close, it's got 60 minutes left though, so doubtful. If the market can somehow survive, not breaking this tail into the close, there's a possibility the market could gap up tomorrow and hold. Although I've got to say for the first time, and I, since I can't even remember, for the first time in the longest time, this looks very, very heavy today and weak in the market. It doesn't mean that we're breaking the overall trend. Markets still in a bullish up trend. I still see the market holding the bullish up trend for the entire year of 2014, unless it does something to tell me otherwise, which is not just one red bar. And not two red bars and not any of this today, but for the intraday for the short-term timeframe, if we break this low here, we're pulling in over the course of the next week to two weeks to a deeper support level, although the market will still be in an up trend. A little surprise though, actually. Market just didn't like anything that came out today on any data at all. And just started selling off right here into the open. And the gap, because the gap was actually not, because the gap was neutral, it should have gone right out of the gate. Here we are. We're going to fall here. It's going to break this. Here it goes. Market's going to break that area. Market's going to break that area. Market's going to fall. Market's going to gap down tomorrow. This market couldn't hold itself up all day today. This is very bearish because it should have held. This is bearish. So I like to short. It doesn't mean you can short everything in the world, just because the market's now going to be bearish, probably tomorrow as well. Tomorrow's Friday, yeah. But the size of the gap down is going to depend how it sets up. I mean, we could actually, tonight, here we go. It's going to break. Ten more cents. Look at this. Yep. It's too late. Too late in the day for the market to save itself now. Market is probably going to gap down. And the thing is, it could be big. So if the gap down is big, we can hold on today. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Look at this. It's trying. 183.59. 183.68. Gosh. All right. Let's look at the one minute here. Actually, let's look at the 15. 15 minute 245. 183.68. Three o'clock bar just started here. Only minute 33 into it. 183.68. Well, the market has to double bottom here in this 15 minute and hold to rally up into the close to try to do something that's non-barish into the close. And I don't see it happening. Now, here we go. We just broke it. Under 68. 66. No. This is really, really, really bearish here. And if you look at this back from the other day, look. Are they going to look great? Even all that stuff that happened are going to look great. Oops. No. We're trying to hold. 65. Every penny counts. Every penny counts in here. But it's just too, too, too late in the day, I think. So if you shorted the market aggressive today out of the gate, which there would have been no reason to do, because we held so beautifully. Here we go. Just broke the low. There. That's it. Ay, ay, ay. Now, look at this. Here's the sell-off. Look at that hard sell-off here. Under 58. Look at it. There it went. No. Market's going to gap down tomorrow. And I don't know what we do in the day, because the gap down could be big. There's no holding here now. None. This is all selling. Selling hard-selling in the market. But we're still in an overall bullish uptrend. OK. So I just want to be clear. I'm shocked at the bearishness of the market today. Utterly, utterly shocked. Because it means we're going to pull into a deeper area. A deeper area that we could have pulled into two weeks ago. And I was perfectly fine with that. But this was a stronghold that set up in here. So it should have continued higher. The fact that it didn't, though, means we are pulling in. No. Look. Just market's going to just fall right straight into the close. No let-up today. I can't wait to see where we gap tomorrow. So we'll have to find out. We'll have to find out. So when you're a trader, you have to train and read stuff in real-life time. Real-life time in here. Because if you are in this market right now, you're going to have to wait for a deeper pull-in. And unfortunately, it's a long, long, long, long way away. I don't see the market bouncing significantly here to the close. The only way we recover from this is if we have some kind of major bounce with the tail here into the close and gap up tomorrow. Doesn't look like it's shaping up that way because we still don't close for another hour. And the market just broke this tail here and it just can't show any signs of life this whole day. So this is Melissa with thestockswitch.com. Very bearish reading the market here today. Very bearish. And I'm not just saying that for the day. I'm saying we could pull in much deeper here now. This is unexpected. I want to be clear. The market is still in a bullish uptrend. We are still holding the uptrend. We're still in an uptrend. We can still stay in an uptrend the rest of the year. This doesn't mean we're falling off a planet, but it does mean we're going to have a deep pull-in now. This should not have happened today. The market does not like anything here that it saw today and is selling off. This is selling. Just pure unadulterated selling here all day long. No entry actually unless you just shorted it in one minute. Only way this sets up for tomorrow to recover is if we close today into a tail, gap up tomorrow or gap up. And we have to gap up like a lot tomorrow to save ourselves from this look here today, which is unbelievably bearish. There is some economic news out tomorrow morning that could make that happen, but doubtful. If we close looking like this, if it was four o'clock right now, I'd say gap down the market and it could be significant because the selling will continue post market. If we end up closing looking like this, look at this. It's just going to fall off sky. Nothing's stopping it now. Man, oh man, oh man, oh man. All right. Have a great day everybody. This is Melissa with thestockswish.com. Look at this market. There's just nothing but selling now. Bigger, bigger, bigger pull-in. Very unexpected, but you got to go with it. And since I love to short, I don't have a problem with this. So we'll have to see where we gap tomorrow. Tomorrow will tell us a lot about the market, but big sell-off here into the close I see. No let-up, no recovery all day. Market has, you could count the green bars in the 15 minute. One, two, three, four. Four green bars in the 15 minute chart all day. Very bearish. This is Melissa with thestockswish.com. This is the first day that I've actually felt a heaviness here in this market. Again, I want to reiterate, this is not mean we're changing trends, but it means that we are going to be in a temporary pull-in that is going to be deep. Deep, and I don't know where it stops. There's many, many different levels of support for this market here. But for the time being now, this is looking very bearish for tomorrow. Have a great trading day, everybody. Tomorrow, this is Melissa with thestockswish.com. If you'd like more information, email me at Melissa at thestockswish.com. Thanks, everybody. Have a great day.


Could you please tell us your name and where you're from? My name is Mary Lou Martinez and I'm from the Tri-Cities. Thank you. Mary Lou, how did you come about hunger generation? And can you share a little bit of your salvation story with us? Okay. So I got invited by my co-workers, Katrina and Vicky. And it was kind of just like, just a casual thing. You know, like, I went to school in Missouri for a year and a half and I just recently moved back. So I was just kind of wanting to get to know, like, more people and I had never really had, like, friends or girls. So I thought it was kind of cool that they invited me to the Valentine's Banquet. So they're just, they're like, well, you should come to the Wednesday service to get to know people. And I was like, okay. So it wasn't really anything. I just, like, I've gone to youth groups, I've gone to church before, but I didn't really, like, expect it to be how it was, you know. Like I said earlier, it was, like, going up, like, to a mountain or whatever. And then, like, I was like, oh, yeah, I want to see the view or whatever. And then they're like, okay. And then, like, let's jump. And then they just, like, let me fall. And I say that just because it was just so emotional for me. Like, I, like, I was dealing with all these emotions and I thought it was just me. Can you tell us a little bit of your background? What family you were coming from? I know you mentioned to me earlier. Mm-hmm. So my mom was pretty much a single parent her whole life and I'm the fifth of six children. And so it was kind of, it was kind of hard. I had a lot of trust issues when it came to relationships, either with just people in general, but mainly with men. Like, I didn't really trust guys. You guys for a very long time, to be honest. Which led me to wrestle and... What caused that hate towards men? So when I was younger, I would see my mom get abused by my step-dad. So it was just something I just, it was really hard for me to let go of.  I did, I graduated, I got accepted to every school I applied to. So I thought, like, after I reached my goal, it was like I was lost and I got into, like, partying and just bad, bad crowd. And you mentioned that you were wrestling. Can you tell us about it a little bit? I started when I was a junior and it was kind of more of a challenge because I wanted to get in shape for track and there was nothing else. I'm not a good dancer, not a good basketball player, so that was my only option. But I really wanted to prove everyone wrong because they just saw me as this fragile little thing. And I wanted it to finish it off and I ended up getting a scholarship my senior year to go to Missouri Baptist University and I ended up taking forth that statement. My senior year just being a second-year wrestler.   I started having to cut weight. I was a starter for my team, so I had to cut, like, 10 pounds every week to make 116 and it just kind of broke me mentally. I had a job, I didn't have a car, so it was just a lot of things that I didn't really put into consideration that would happen being on my own. And I was just in a relationship that wasn't healthy for me and I felt like I was losing who I really was. I was getting into a lot of trouble, so I felt like I needed to come home to kind of re-evaluate my life and see, like, just have more hope. You know, I was fighting depression. I had an eating disorder. I wasn't eating, I wasn't sleeping. Like, in my own little, like, misery, but I was able to, like, get out of it and even before coming to church, like, I was starting to get better but there was always just something missing. It wasn't until I invited Christ back to my life and just started being, I just, like, everything just started changing, like, I began to feel more hopeful. So after you rededicated your life to Jesus, after girls invited you here, what changes you started to see in your life? My spiritual life started to get better. Everything I prayed for just kind of just falls into place. I wanted to go back to school, back to college in Russell and Canada and, you know, I really wanted to go there but I prayed about it and I was just like, if I don't get accepted there, I have all these other options. So I'm like, yeah, that's my plan. I want to go there, but, like, God's plan is greater than mine and He said not to go to Canada and to stay home. Well, we love that you stayed here with us. You also mentioned to me earlier that you were struggling with unforgiveness and feelings of bitterness and resentment. How do you feel right now? I feel like I'm so liberated with every, like, person that has hurt me, like, either if it was my stepdad, my biological dad, you know, friends, just people who, or even just past, like, relationships with guys. Like, I've forgiven everyone for hurting me and I feel so, like, just, I don't have any ties with anyone. I don't hate anyone. I, like, even if someone who has hurt me before in their, like, just come into my life, I wouldn't, like, push them away. I would, you know, I would want to know and wish them the best. That's all. Okay. And what about your college situation right now? I know you mentioned some financial even breakthroughs that you received after you decided, after you were not accepted to go to the college in Canada. What happened? I just applied at CBC and, at first, I was struggling with my financial aid. I wasn't really sure if I was going to, like, get it paid for, but I ended up applying and it kind of took, it was kind of a process, you know. I was just praying about it, not trying to panic. And then last minute, not only did they provide me with financial aid, they also gave me money back that I don't have to pay. So I'm just saving it to pay off my debt for the previous college. Let's put our hands together for Jesus. We thank God for these amazing breakthroughs and changes that God has done in your life. But would you please tell a word of advice to people who may be struggling with rededicating their lives to Jesus Christ? Can you say a word of advice to them? I feel like rededicating my life to Christ was one of the best things I ever did. And with that, I just kind of, I just feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I feel like I belong. I feel like I can make a difference. I feel like even though I'm struggling right now, just that I'm always around people who need help, it just makes me feel so much better.  Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you. What an amazing testimony.


Right, okay, it is the YouTube golf date and I can't wait to get on to that first tee to be honest with you If you can see the amount of people that are gathering behind to say that the driving range a lot of excitement around here A lot of nervous energy and now me on a personal level not used to teeing it up in front of a number of people like this So I can't wait to get the first to get the first tee shot out of the way get into the round Hopefully put together something a bit respectable at least anyway, but more importantly What this is all about it's about supporting the charity. It's about prostate cancer UK I'm gonna put the link down below. So while I go and get my cubs ready Practice a bit of putting make sure you go and have a look at Lincoln do your best and donate a little bit of money To a very worthwhile charity and then I'll see you Over on our first team, which I think is a 16th shot can start. That is the Finish soul, I think I've ever seen on a golf Oh This is our not to it three out Forced it you want to get more money aren't you? we're going to build we're going outside right now just on the right stay big you don't have to worry about a walk up a side oh 2 from 2 when I've been retired yeah I hope he watches just makes a hard go oh jeez I died survived how are you feeling mate? I'm feeling a bit nervous most people I've ever played in front of the right club the right club the wind just took it didn't it if it's having cold slow like last time it would be happy that's it the big reveal that's what's in the bag what's in the bag what's in the bag you've got there I'm in cold slow so we're 5 holes in I'm going to start that you'd expect I suppose started off with a par which was great it was a shot all 3 points and then I've just missed a few little putts which are frustrated aren't they get the ball to the green and then the I've missed 2 very short ones so a bit frustrating but sun's shining warmed up a bit and I think we're all starting to relax and enjoy ourselves a little bit we've just got 2 how old are you? 8 he's 8 what's your name? I'm Ewan this is Ewan and your name?  I just did in the background why is there a B350 or something like that? I haven't really seen it's down there I've already put your name on it what is the plate mate? it's a five it's a layup mate I can tell you that it's a layup just a little punch with a five mate out to the left yeah chippy five down there so do you reckon it looked too big in the air? thank you where is Eric? he's over there mate that's it check out the zoom one on you there he is the man, the myth the legend and he's here Eric and his life mate do you have secondary in this footage? look how cool he is that's really safe this place that could be head safe on the shoulder that's it five minutes that's it good club mate so come on mate talk me through this one you chose the shot seven iron it's on your limit you just got to commit to it right we're going to make this summary to the end of this video very brief it's two days after the first youtube golf date and I'm going to say it seems to have been an absolute huge success from a personal point of view a really enjoyable day let's break it down into a couple of things first of all my own personal experience of the day was really excited I've never played in front of people before in terms of a crowd if you like I spoke to a lot of people after the round they've been in a similar situation for me it's quite a nerve wracking experience but one I really enjoyed that scene in the end it was help concentrate the mind a bit no round I don't think I don't know my final score but it wasn't very good I think it was around 25 points and on paper not a very good score at all but actually on ball striking and watching through the video back actually struck the ball quite well but round the greens was atrocious a three putted on a numerous occasions I missed puts from literally a couple of foot on maybe four times so yeah not a great result but like I said it was kind of a total side issue for me I wanted to obviously play well and perform as best as I could and not make a fool of myself I suppose in front of a lot of people I think I managed to do that at least but I didn't score too well but that's like I said a side issue because the main issue really is always going to be about what this day was about which was about raising money for charity and I think there's a few congratulations in order at first of all congratulating the winner I think he had 36 points Mike Dawson fantastic for him second person I want to congratulate is Big Oggy Golf and that's John Ogden I've had communication via email and messages or whatever with John for a couple of years now since he started his channel and I met him for the first time before the game kicked off on Monday and really nice fella as you see on the camera very genuine he himself like me was kind of nervous going on to that first see I've not spoke to him after the round unfortunately but I know that he won the team event he seemed to perform really well himself so I'm really pleased for you John and I'm glad you got a good round together there and I'll watch your video in here see how that all panned out and finally it's obviously to Rick Shields because to bring this thing together must have been a mammoth task and it was really really well organized it was probably when we got there it was bigger than I expected it to be there was a lot going on brand supporting it throughout the day and different things going on all around the place and I would imagine I don't know that maybe Rick thought this was a good idea a few months ago and then a month later thought my god what have I let myself in for because it's no doubt that was a lot of work and all the people involved have done a fantastic job and finally obviously the big deal really aside from all the fun and games that we had on the day was your support to Prostate Cancer UK because like I said that's ultimately all that really matters is getting it on in your pocket like I said on the beginning of the video the link is down below I don't know whether you can afford anything or not but I would ask if you can then do your best to donate and support the charity and like I say fantastic day great everybody on the day was very positive everybody was great to support a lot of people all really really nice people who got together for a decent cause and made the effort to turn up on a bank holiday Monday play around the golf have some fun and realise that there's more to life than a few birdies like I said Prostate Cancer is what it's all about so go down there get to that given page and do your best my video I'll just finish off it wasn't the best of videos I'm afraid we filmed bits and bobs on the day I hope you enjoyed it but as ever thank you for watching and I'll catch you soon


If you've been watching the channel for any amount of time, you'll know that I'm not the biggest Ganon fan in the world. There are many reasons for that. It's just years of experience of going through and trying to make Ganon work for me just hasn't worked. And that's mostly a me problem. I'll be right up front and say that the reason why Ganon doesn't work for me is just because I prefer plasma better. That's just the way it is. And that's perfectly fine. That's the way Linux is supposed to work. That's why we have choice and why Linux is so amazing. You don't like one thing, go use something else. That's great, right? But Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution out there. I don't care what DistroWatch says. Ubuntu has the most users by far, probably combined. There's probably more people who use Ubuntu or an Ubuntu-based flavor than use all other Linux distributions combined. I would probably say that that's true. I don't have any real numbers to back that up, but I feel like that's the case. With that being the way it is, I feel it's important to think about how Ubuntu portrays itself and puts itself out to the Linux desktop community. Now, we should just say that the desktop for Ubuntu is not a priority. It hasn't been for years and that's just the way it is. If you don't make any money on the Ubuntu desktop, their money comes from the server area. So any changes that go into the desktop are mostly community related. And while they do obviously put a lot of effort into it, the small desktop team does put a lot of effort into the Ubuntu desktop. It's still not the priority of Canonical at large. So the changes that I'm suggesting or more the reasons why I think they should change probably aren't going to happen and maybe they shouldn't even happen. These are all my opinions, so I just thought I would put them out there. So today I'm going to be talking about five reasons why I think Ubuntu should ditch GNOME. The first reason is that GNOME isn't the most customizable desktop out there. In fact, I would say that other than elementary OS, the Pantheon desktop, GNOME is actually the least customizable desktop out there. And I'm not saying that you can't customize it. There's tons of stuff you can do if you work hard enough for it. But in terms of actually wanting to go through and change themes, fonts, cursors, all that kind of stuff, there are hurdles in the way of doing that. And even the tweaked version of GNOME that Ubuntu uses is not as customizable as say something like Plasma. Now, maybe Plasma takes it too far. If you want to customize something in Plasma, you can do so because there's tons and tons of settings and it's very complicated and complex and all that stuff. So maybe Plasma takes it too far and GNOME doesn't go far enough, but there should be a middle ground there. And customizability I think is important after you've been using Linux for a while because once you've used Linux and you've gotten your apps and stuff together, you want to experience the things that make Linux great. And one of the things that makes Linux great is the ability to customize your desktop, make it look the way you want to look and work the way you want to work. And for years, GNOME has been very anti customization. They blocked the ability to use themes because they considered a hack, which it probably is. Technologically speaking, it is. Same thing with icons and all that stuff. They make you install a custom app called GNOME Tweaks in order to do a lot of the stuff that you probably should be able to do right of the box. And that's the same with Ubuntu stuff. Even if they've added some customizability into it, it still hasn't gone the whole way there. The extensions system that GNOME and Ubuntu uses is also very step childy. It's not a word, but it feels like it's the weird cousin that you don't want to talk about and shows up to reunions every now and then. And the reason why it feels like that is that they have an extensions app, but you don't install extensions from there. You have to install them from a browser using a browser add-on with a certain package installed that you install from the terminal. And it's a rigmarole to get an extension installed for the first time.  And for years it felt like GNOME just didn't want you to use extensions at all. And I think that that's true. With the invention of the extensions app, it feels like they're paying a little bit more attention to extensions because they realize that they've taken so many features out of GNOME over the years that extensions are kind of necessary. But still it feels very much like they don't want you to use these things. They want you to use GNOME the way they want you to use it. And for them, there's no other way. Now, moving that into the Ubuntu sphere, Ubuntu has tried their hardest to go through and make GNOME usable for their vast number of users. They've added a light and dark theme, which is not something you get in GNOME without using GNOME tweaks. They've added a few extensions to make things usable like desktop icons and an icon tray up in the bar. These things that all desktop environments have because they're things that people use. And GNOME feels, for whatever reason, people shouldn't have these things. And that's one of the reasons why I think that Ubuntu should use something else because GNOME likes to take features out of GNOME instead of adding features. They're very feature, they're very anti-feature and much more focused on maintaining the status quo. Let's put it that way. So the second reason is that the GNOME foundation is horrible. And this is for many reasons. One of them is that they don't seem to be interested in advancing GNOME in any way. Now, this is more of an argument before GNOME 40 came out. GNOME 40 at least shows some signs of change and progress and stuff, but it's still very much GNOME. But outside of that, GNOME politically, I don't really like talking politics on the channel, but some of their political stuff is just not great. And the fact that they're involved politically is probably the biggest problem. I don't care what their political ideals are, but if you're running a false software system or whatever, don't get involved in politics at all because that's not where you should be. And it feels more like GNOME lately has become a political organization rather than a software organization. And that's a problem, I feel.  And maybe they don't care. Maybe they agree or whatever. I noticed a lot of the people who work on a boon too signed that letter for the Richard Stallman stuff. So maybe they don't care that the GNOME foundation has these political ideas and isn't shy to share them. So personally, I feel that the GNOME foundation tarnishes itself by having political ideals at all. But that's just, again, my feelings. So the third reason kind of relates to the first one I talked about is that cinnamon is better. Now, I'm not a big fan of the cinnamon desktop either, but that's just more of a me problem again. But for people who come from Windows, cinnamon is actually better because I feel that it's more like Windows. If you're moving from Windows to a boon too, they don't look anything alike. And there's a lot of things there that might confuse you. I also think that cinnamon is more user friendly. It's also more, because it's more customizable, it's very good for people who aren't straight out of the box Linux noobs. And they will be able to go through and customize their desktop much easier than they can with GNOME. So cinnamon, I think, is the prime candidate for replacement for GNOME. Now, some would say that that's an argument to use Linux Mint. That's a perfectly reasonable argument. Personally, I think that Linux Mint has its own problems. So we want to get into that. So the fourth reason is something that I've talked about a little bit already is that the GNOME foundation and the people who develop GNOME are not feature forward, they're feature backwards. GNOME is spending time taking features out of their desktop environment while Ubuntu has had to spend time working on extensions and tweaks to their settings panel and stuff to enable features that should have been there out of the box. Other desktop environments like Plasma and Cinnamon and even Mate, which is based on a paradigm that's 15 years old, they spend time putting features in. They spend time making their desktop environments better instead of trying to desperately hold onto that status quo. Now, like I said, this argument was much better before GNOME 40, because GNOME 40 did show that they are at least willing to make some changes. But I've used GNOME 40 and I'm going to tell you right now, it's not a big paradigm shift away from what GNOME has been since GNOME 3 was installed, you know, came out. It's still very much GNOME. It's still this is way you're going to use GNOME and if you don't like it, don't use GNOME. That's the way it seems to be. It's still very much hard to customize. So the fifth reason that Ubuntu should ditch GNOME is performance. GNOME has gotten much better and much faster over the years. It used to be very, very slow. I mean, like, you know, almost completely unusable slow in terms of like animations and stuff taking forever and all this stuff. That stuff has gotten better. It's still not as fast as other desktop environments and even past the whole speed thing. If you're looking at a low resource system, Ubuntu is not a great choice because it takes a lot of resources to run GNOME. Almost always a gigabyte right out of the box. That's idle right after startup. You're going to use between 800 megabytes and a gigabyte of RAM in order to run GNOME. That's just the way it is. And that's the way it's been for ages. It used to be more than that. It used to be well over a gig. So they paired it down a little bit. But again, they did that by taking features out and they're still at a gig. And that's not a great thing.  It has nothing to do with GNOME. You should probably go with something like LXQt or XFCE. Ubuntu probably is, but I mean, those systems are much more tailored towards systems that are resource constrained. So this whole argument that Ubuntu should be lighter on its feet, maybe not the best one. But I feel that even on systems that have a ton of resources, using a gig out of the box is not the greatest thing in the world, especially when it leads to poor performance in other areas, like startup times and launch times with the applications and stuff like that. And that's if all plays into it. And that's mostly a GNOME problem. Now there's a whole SNAP thing that goes on. Ubuntu uses SNAPs for a lot of their programs. And those things are slow and always have been slow. They have gotten better, but they're still much slower. So that part there has nothing to do with GNOME. But add it all together and it feels much slower than it should be. So those are the five reasons I think that Ubuntu should ditch GNOME. I do have two reasons why they should stick with GNOME. The first one is that is something that I mentioned before we started, is that hardly anyone uses the Linux desktop anyways. And the server side is where Canonical makes all their money. So what they choose really doesn't matter. And on top of that, there's so much choice out there in terms of the Linux desktop. If they don't change, and they lose people using the desktop, it's not going to matter to them monetarily. And because there are other options, if you don't like GNOME, you can go use something else. So really none of this stuff really matters. What I was saying is this video is pointless. But what else is new? Also, in a similar point or whatever, in the long run, it probably would seem to Canonical that switching to a different desktop environment would be a waste of resources because so many people, so few people would be affected by it. So the second one is probably the biggest one. The reason why they should just stick with GNOME is that users hate change. If you're using GNOME right now and on Ubuntu, chances are you like it. Maybe you have some complaints about it, but you don't dislike it enough to move away. So if you like the look and feel of Ubuntu, chances are you won't want them to change, and you would probably be pissed off if they did. So those people who don't like Ubuntu and have the same arguments that I have, have probably already moved away from Ubuntu or used one of the flavors or whatever. So people don't like change, and that's probably the best reason for them just to stay where they are. So it's also an argument against them being able to change in the first place. I don't think that at this point Ubuntu can actually change away from GNOME without making a huge political or maybe not political, but public relations nightmare for a lot of the people who they depend on. So those are the reasons why I think that Ubuntu is probably going to stick with GNOME. I gave you five reasons why I think it should get to GNOME. So let me know what you think down in the comments below. Let me know if you think they should stick with GNOME. If so, why? If you think they should switch away, what should they switch to? I'm really interested to know what you all think. So thanks for watching. You can follow us on Twitter at Linuscast. You can also follow us on Facebook at Linuscast, and you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com. Make sure you leave a like, and a subscribe, and hit the notification icon bell. And I'd like to take a moment to thank our current patrons. Devon, Marcus, Meglin, Donnie, Sven, Merrick, Camp, and Mitchell. Thanks everybody for your support. Thank you for watching. I'll see you next time.


Good morning Hank. It's Tuesday and I decided to come out here. It's a reunion spectacular. I mean I look like the hobo version of you. Hank and I are gonna play a game today. It's called Got It. I saw it on TikTok. Now YouTube is just TikToks but horizontal so we're gonna do the game. The rules are we both say a word and then we find the intersection between those two words until we say the same word. I just remembered something important. What? You can only get pizza and stuff for a few more days at Pizzamas.com. Got it. One, two, three chair. One, two, three beach. Dang it. Alright, bud. One, two, three ocean. How is there a picnic in the ocean? That happens all the time, Hank. You do it on a blanket at the beach. What do you think being lost at sea is? It's an ocean picnic. Got it. One, two, three, life raft. Yes! Yes! Yes! This time can we start with two word phrases or is that too hard? No, definitely not. You got to go with one word. One, two, three, universal health care. What? That's three words. No, no, no. It's two at most and I think it could be hyphenated in a pinch. Got it. One, two, three, bed. One, two, three, hospital. Oh, have you been following the cheating scandals in the world of chess? Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Have you been following the cheating scandals I have in the world of poker? No, professional fishing. Oh, yeah. No one trusts anyone anymore and they think that they could just get away with whatever. I'm starting to think that the only thing worse than institutions is a lack of institutions. Got it. One, two, three, oxygen. All right, I got it. I bet you do. I don't. One, two, three, hydrogen. Oh, dang it. I get that. That makes a lot of sense. Hydrogen and fire. I got one. Okay. One, two, three, chemistry. That's better. Yours is better. We have moved to meet Hank's needs to be in the shade. Got it. One, two, three, electricity. Oh, dang it. Why are you sticking with chemicals? I'm trying to move us on. How do I know that helium was involved? There was definitely electricity involved. That's why it blew up. I didn't know there was electricity involved. There must have been an initial spark. How do we get out of chemistry and into like Shakespeare or Jane Austen, Tony Morrison novels? Got it. Got it. One, two, three, lightning. Lightning party is more fun for me than helium electricity. Okay, lightning and party. Three, two, one, indoors. Oh, that is what you should do if there's a lightning and there's a party. You do it indoors. Definitely don't do golf. I've got it. But for the record, I'm going with what I think you're going to say, not with what I think is the right answer. Got it. Then I'll say what I think I'm going to say. Three, two, one, putt putt. Which is outside, but I knew that that was the only... Don't you watch Brooks Holt videos? I knew that was the only golf-related term that might be vaguely indoors that you knew. Hey, leave us ideas for what we should do in our last three Pizzamas videos. I got it. I got it. In the comments. I don't have my Thursday video. That's true. And you shouldn't have your Friday video because your Friday video should be Pizzamas.com, Pizzamas.com. If you don't get this Pizzamas shirt right now, it will be gone forever. Yeah. Or at least until we make a throw blanket out of it next year. John, I'll see you tomorrow. I feel like we're gonna continue to see each other right now. Do you have a Pizzamas dad joke before we go? I have one. You know Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian broke up. Did you hear about it? No. Yes. Pizzamas. Pizzamas.com. Nice.