Hi, everyone. It is 6.30 and looks like we've got a quorum, so I'd like to get started on time. Nice to see everyone here. Just focus of the meeting tonight. We're going to review our budgets, Raven, RTCC, and the OSSD budget in general. We will have questions and presentation by Lane around the budget for questions. We also will hear about our strategic planning process, and really, we don't have too much more going on, which might mean for a short, make a short meeting. We will also be talking about tuition, announce tuition, and we will, instead of having policy governance training after the executive session, we will be sort of reviewing open meeting laws and executive session use and things like that. So, first, I'd like to assign a meeting evaluator. As one of the board members have not done it recently, I would love to have you do it. Any volunteers? I can do it. It's Meg. Thanks, Meg. That would be great. Linda, I believe the evaluation sheet was attached to our agenda. Is that correct? Okay. Meg, you can find that as part of the agenda packet. Thank you. Before we get started, I just wanted to open it up for any public comment or question. Is there anyone public here who would like to start the meeting off with a question or comment? Okay. Hearing none, we'll get started. First, we've got the strategic plan update, though I do not know if Anne Kaplan is on here yet. I do not see her name. Anne, Kaplan, are you here? All right. So, let's hear from Anne after this, then. Next, we have the Raven and RTC budgets. Do you want to start with those, Lane? Yeah, I'll throw the presentation up in just a moment. Anne should be here. She was emailing me. There she is. Just a little while ago back and forth. So, she literally just logged in. Anne Kaplan, are you ready to give us a brief update about the strategic planning process? Yes, I am. Sorry about that. I was just finishing up my dinner. I lost track of the time. So, we are going to be starting up on January 18th. And I did have one question for the board. So, in looking at the folks that were on the list, but the criteria or the people that Winton wanted to have in the group, the design team, he had indicated somebody from the tech center. But in thinking about that a little bit more, I was thinking because the tech center is sort of separate from the three elementary and the middle and the high school, and they have their own advisory board. And they have students from other schools. I wanted to just make sure that I was clear with Winton that we as a board want to sort of focus on the five schools that make up the Orange Southwest School District because even we send over students to the tech center. So, I just want to make sure that was what we were thinking. Because we don't have anybody sort of representing or, you know, with sort of that point of view on the design team. So, I'm just curious. I thought Jeremy Nifford was on the design team. No. I also did speak to Lane about it. And he was sort of agreeing with me that perhaps we should focus on those, the five OSUD schools. So, I just wanted to make sure that was whether or not the board was in agreement with that. And part of the thought process when Anne brought up a good question, they're kind of, they're a separate entity. Their goals and their needs are somewhat in a lot of ways strikingly different than what the Orange Southwest School District is. And so, while I think you guys are geared up really well for OSSD, if you want to incorporate the tech center, it might need to be a separate process just because of given how discreet these entities are from one another. But again, we talked and said that it was a decision the board should probably make if they want to try to do it all together or try to do two separate processes or just focus on the OSSD. It seems to me smart to focus on the OSSD. I mean, we've got other schools involved. Really, it's supposed to be in board membership for the RTCC center. So, really, the White River Valley School District and the Northfield School District, et cetera, should be overseeing in part RTCC. So, it doesn't really seem appropriate to be creating a strategic plan that would also incorporate the tech center in my mind. Are there any other concerns and for the design team that we should be thinking about? No, that was the only one that came up. We also, we have, we don't have a teacher from the middle school or high school, but the way the process is going to work, we're going to be gathering feedback from the staff at the middle and high school. So, I think we're okay there. When I asked Lane again about that, he indicated that Elijah had said staff were kind of feeling tapped out at this point. So, I think that'll work out okay. And we'll be getting started with the design team on January 18th. So, you heard from all the members and everyone will be there? I'm assuming so. I haven't heard back from everyone, but I didn't tell them to email me back. So, and Wynton's going to be sending out sort of the whole sort of explanation of what this is all going to look like. He's redone it so that it's starting on January 18th and then he goes through the whole process from that point. And I think we finish up in May or June with sort of the board, you know, finalizing and voting on the final plan. Great. So, I saw that sort of an accelerated timeline. It looks like you'll have two or three meetings before our next board meeting. So, next, our next board meeting you'll have plenty to tell us about. Yeah, great. Sounds good. Thank you. All right. Next, Lane, we have a presentation of the Raven and RTCC budgets. And just a couple of caveats before I get rolling here. If I'm looking off to the side, I got a second computer up and running because what happens is that if I'm presenting, I can't see anybody. And we have people that'll log in a little bit late and I'd like to be able to let them in so that they know that they can get into the meeting. So, I'm going to apologize for that ahead of time. Other thing to know is that we actually got a lot of the final numbers that we needed to do tonight's presentation to give you a finalized budget for your approval tonight around noon. So, we were scrambling around right up till 5 p.m. tonight to revamp and revise everything. You're going to see that the Raven recommendation has not changed. Tech Center recommendation has changed. And then there are major changes to the OSSD budget, right? Because you vote on three separate budgets. As part of the process tonight and Laura, you can help me a little bit with this. Based upon the agenda, it looks like we should probably be voting on each budget as we hit them in the presentation. Is that what you would like to do or would you like me to go through the whole presentation first? I guess it makes sense to just vote on each budget as they're presented, if that's okay with you. Okay, yeah, no, that's fine. I just, I want to make it comfortable. And I want to make sure that people get a chance to kind of answer questions as they need to. So, give me a second here to get things set up in the present view. That one. And just so everyone knows, after each presentation, there will be a time for board members to ask questions. And then if anyone else, any public would like to make it have a question or comment for Lane about a certain budget, feel free to do so as well. I'm going to apologize. I got to log out, log back in, Google just froze on me. Be right back. All right, let's try this again. All right, can you guys see the presentation and gals? Yes, we can. Perfect. And I'm assuming I've got my microphone on and you can hear me. So, there are three separate budgets. And we kind of talked about this last time that you'll be looking at tonight. There's the Raven budget. There's the RTCC, the technical center budget. And then there's the big one, which is the overall district budget that encompasses our elementary schools in our middle high school. The Raven budget from the last time that we spoke about this in December remains unchanged. If you look at our current year 2020-2021 versus what we're proposing for next year, the actual cost of running the program has gone down. But the number of students that we serve has gone down. It's typically around 14. It's down around 11 right now. And so what that has done is the cost of the program has gone down. But because this is a tuition based program, right, it's all funded by the tuitions that we bring in. The tuition has gone up. It's gone up about $2,000. Now, a couple of things about this, that seems like a lot of money. Recognize that the students that we are serving through Raven next year for $26,693 a student, if they went to anywhere else in the state to get the same services, the tuition alone would be $60,000 and that wouldn't include their transportation. So it is still a tremendous deal. The other thing that needs to be said about this is that while we set the tuition at $26,693, if we get more students and we expect we'll be back up around 14 next year, right? Enrollments are down a little bit because people are nervous about COVID. We can always reduce the tuition. We can't bring it up after we've announced it, but we can bring it down. And in the case of Raven, just like the technical center, if we've overcharged, we have to give all the 3% of that money back anyway at the end of the year. So this is the Raven budget. I can hear you even though I can't see you. Are there questions? Lane, this is Ashley. Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. How many students do we have in Raven this year? Can you remind me? About 11. Okay. Thank you. The other thing that happened to, if people remember, that goes into a little bit of the cost reduction as we changed buildings. We had the very old building that was out beyond the technical center. We actually transferred them into a new building here by central office. And so there's been some efficiencies because of that. And these are students that typically would be in an out-place program. Raven for especially the newer board members is a collaborative. We run it here through the OSSD. So there are students that come in from the same sending schools that we receive students for from the tech center. It's a self-contained program. A lot of the students do get the skills and the independence necessary to eventually join the technical center. When I was doing cost analysis last year, we typically on average send between two and three of our own students to Raven each year. If we were having to pay for outside services at another location, that would cost the district about an additional million dollars every seven to nine years. So it is saving the district quite a bit of money by having this program here. So all the stuff. So laying one quick question, it's Brian. The staffing and programs, everything is just pretty much similar to you had last year. It's just the difference is just because of the number of students. Yeah. Like I said, it's typically around 14. Now it's down around 11. We had been trying to plan on having two full-time teachers there in the hopes of actually expanding the program. The one problem that we've got is the current space that we're in is a little bit smaller than the old building, but we do have plans if we ever get the opportunity to expand the program with more students is we can blow out the north wall and expand to the building to the north to bring in. So one of the other changes, we were trying to get a second teacher. We've never been able to do that. We can't find one that's either qualified or willing to do that position. So we've been running it as we always have with a teacher and with a paraprofessional. It's a good question. Are there further details on this program that you want to give us besides the announced tuition? This is pretty much it. So you've got the total cost of the program for next year at $266,930. Yep. And that total cost of that program is down $73,000 from the previous year. And what is that reduction due to if you're sticking with the same staff, I mean? So the cost of the program is down because of the changeover. And then like I said, I intimated we had always been planning on two teachers there. We weren't able to get it. So we've reduced that to a paraprofessional. The tuition is up, however, just because of the reduction in the number of students. So I'm glad you guys are asking me clarifying questions. I've been like I said, scrambling around right up to the last minute when the last data came in around noon. Are there any other questions for Lane about this budget from public or board? Are we ready for a vote? I make a motion that we accept the raiden budget as presented by Lane. I second. Would you like to do a roll call vote on these seeing is it so hard to see one another or that's I guess my proposal if that's okay with everyone. All right. So hopefully I don't forget anyone. So Anne Kaplan? I. Ashley? I. Hannah? I. Cacha? I. Ryan? I. Meg? I. Rachel and myself. I'm in favor as well. So it's unanimous. I didn't skip anyone, right? Okay. Next Lane. RTCC. So we had talked about this in December. So it has changed. Markedly. One of the issues that we had was this pre-tech program that was in its fledgling year last year kind of trying to get it up and running that came out of a mandate from the state to try to get younger students involved in experiencing what a technical center program might look like. We weren't able to generate any funding despite the fact that we were paying for an instructor for that program last year. Talking in detail with Alicia this year she is confident and has the program set up and has worked with the state to make sure that we will have tuition dollars rolling in for sponsoring this program. I mean it's a good idea either way just because it's it's it's drumming up more business in a sense because the students are getting a chance to kind of experience ahead of time what they potentially may be able to take part of you know as as they get a little bit older. But it would be nice to have this program generate some money. So in the original budget that I showed you I had left that instructor in there with the assumption that you know there's no tuition dollars that are rolling in and that had pushed the tuition up over 18,000 which was kind of a critical threshold that last year the board rightfully kind of pushed back on. So what we did is the RTCC has reserve funds that it has it actually has get my number here $515,000 worth of reserve funds that is saved up over over years. And so what we've done in this budget that I'm proposing for you tonight is that for one year is that we pay for that instructor out of the reserve funds which will bring the total amount of the the budget down right because it's money that we already have that we don't have to get from somewhere else. And we'll bring the tuition down as well and pay for that position out of the reserve fund for a year do everything we can to make it viable. And if we get students rolling in and tuition rolling in from it then next year we will move it into the regular budget. So under this process under this model that we've put together the actual cost of the overall budget for RTCC has gone down by about $27,000. The impact in terms of tuition is it'll actually be $99 per student cheaper than it was last year and then kind of looking historically at what tuitions have been for the tech center for the last about 10 years. This would be the lowest tuition that technical center students in districts have paid since 2018 and 19. One of the things for the folks that are new to the board to recognize is that it takes three full years for the full impact of additional students to show up in terms of increased funding from the state for these programs. And so you know it takes a year or two you know we do get additional funding for the state for the enrollment but there's a bit of a lag time before we get the full impact of it. And so it would be nice to kind of carry this program for a year. Get us to year two where you know if we've got some good numbers in there the the money that we get from the state to help us support the program will go up to a point that we should be able to switch it over to the regular budget without having a dramatic impact on the tuition. So I'll stop there for a couple of minutes for folks to ask questions. Celine it's Ashley and I have questions. For the teacher for the pre-tech program has that teacher do we already have that teacher on staff so they're currently being funded through RTCC? Yep this is Jason brought the position in. A lot of pressure for him to work with the state to get tuition up and running fell apart I think a little bit during the transition. Felicia has picked up that ball and hopefully by second semester we're planning on on trying to run this with some students and get some tuition money rolling in. Okay and I just have one more thank you. As far as the census for that program what's the goal? So the technical center programs are kind of limited by state reg to 14-15 students. What we've been finding is depending upon the cost of the instructor the break-even point is somewhere between four and six students so the goal at least is to break even but obviously we'd love to have it up around the 14 to 15 if we're using the model where they're coming in to us. Jason had an interesting model that was set up last year where the instructor was actually going out to the other schools. Thank you. Lane has there been interest on the part of this sending schools to get their students involved in this? Oh yeah they were quite involved last year I mean they were going out to Williamstown and Northfield as well as serving some of our students here so I have very high hopes that she's going to be able to fill this right up. The other place where what we've done in the past which might play into this program is we have some of our own younger students at the elementary school who struggle a little bit in a regular academic environment but as a reward what we've done is hey you know if you can successfully complete this this and this in terms of the regular academic environment you know one day a week we'll send you over and you can participate in the the technical center programs and that's been very very very positive and has a dramatic impact on these students lives the ones that have participated and so that's something that we're hoping to be able to expand a bit as this gets up and going. Do you still hope to or does Felicia still hope to run this in the second semester this year? That's my understanding yes at our last conversation and I give her a lot of credit she's been very very aggressive about getting things done which has been which has been awesome and then remember as well that she is you know the dental program we've got the new electrical program that is is up and running this year and we were discussing as well about the possibility of a pulling program. Because we're pulling money from our reserve fund many of our reserve funds are dedicated. Have you cleared through with Robin that we've got access to that and is that going to mean that voters need to do an additional approval of an allocation of reserve funding or or not? So we checked on this with the Legal Eagles a few months back we had actually notified the board that we would that we actually had a reserve fund and that we were going to be using some of the money for some facilities upgrades. The wording that we got at that point in time with reserve funds as far as they go along with a technical center is my job is just to notify the board what we're doing and make sure that you're in the loop. So if you approve this budget tonight you're definitely in the loop and you're actually approving the use of those funds. So this does not go through is our understanding this does not go through the the typical surplus to reserve fund kind of vote that happens with the OSSD budget. You must have checked with Pietro about this that there are no legal implications because really this is a collaborative center correct? Yeah and you guys are the board that controls and oversees that center and has final say so your vote has the big the big meaning here. Are there any further questions for Lane about the RTCC proposed budget? Hearing none is there a motion to approve the budget as presented? I make a motion that we approve the RTCC budget as presented. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? Okay we're ready for a vote. Anne? Hi. Ashley? Hi. Hannah? Hi. Katja? Hi. Brian? Hi. Begg? Hi. Rachel? Myself I'm also in favor. All right so the budget is proved 8 to 0. Thank you. Lastly the OSSD budget which we understand has been changed substantially. Yeah and so well I'll talk about this one for a bit. You know the board members that were here in previous years we were doing so much structure building to improve student achievement that there were lots of details on each budget as we were looking at new staff and new programs. So these budgets so far you know have been fairly simple because we're kind of getting to that level level service budget phase. This one has some details to it because to make it work we are trying to use some surplus money to subsidize given the economic crisis that's out there and I'll explain all those details as we go through but it's critical in terms of the board members if there are questions as I'm on a slide please interrupt me ask the questions so that I can explain it and then so that it's clear because what we're talking about also has to be clear with the public to make sure that they understand you know what their votes mean because it's a little different than previous years. You guys are disembodied voices to me like I said I can't see you so don't be afraid to just speak up and interrupt doesn't bother me in the least and it's going to be critical to making sure that folks understand. So again we had kind of talked a little bit about this at the last meeting is that you know our goals as we're kind of progressing through the years here is moving towards a level service budget. The towns have been awesome the last couple of years you know we talked about the needs in terms of improving student academics and achievement of making sure that we've got a strong focus on improving independence in terms of our special education students and talked an awful lot in previous years about the structures that would get us there. Obviously those structures cost money and the the towns came to our aid in a big way and provided us with the funding that we needed to get those structures in place that are now up and running. And so now that we've got 99.9 percent of what we need to achieve our goals we're in this phase of moving towards a level service budget and that means only doing increases from year to year that are required to maintain our current operations. We're not building anything new we're not asking for anything new but each year the cost of things does go up a little bit and so just paying for those additional costs to keep doing what we're doing. Also remember I think it's hard for anyone to forget that we're still in the middle of this ongoing pandemic and so you know one of the goals for this budget year is making sure that we still got what we need to enhance student and staff safety and then it's just it's that continued push pushing forward on the the district strategic ends plan. You know improving student achievement in ELA and math getting a K to 12 science curriculum in place and up and running and getting the students to achieve at least on par with the Vermont state average and then again real concentrated focus on our special education students making sure that they get the skills that they need so that they can become independent and can move off their plans. All right so here comes the big explanation in terms of what we're trying to do and what's always been kind of cool about coming to Vermont from Massachusetts is people in Vermont really kind of for the most part understand the tax structures but just to make sure because we've got new board members I want to kind of talk through this in a very general level so that folks really kind of understand what it is we're attempting to do with this budget in terms of a strategy. So it's really important that you think of a school budget like a fixed cost right you know you can think of it like your car insurance it's pretty much the same amount each year it might go up a little bit but it's something that you know you got to pay and every year you have to put money aside to be able to pay that. The problem with fixed cost is is that if the income that's paying for that fixed cost goes down right the money you've got coming in to be able to pay for it goes down or is eliminated then to be able to pay for that fixed cost you've got to find the money from somewhere else to pay for it. Now in our case in the bigger picture of of taxes and school funding the tax income that's been flowing into the education fund is predicted to be down this year and this makes a lot of sense right because a lot of the money that supports education comes from things like restaurants and hotels all the things that are impacted pretty hard by the covid pandemic. So if this huge amount of income that's flowing in that supports the schools if it goes down and if the cost of schools is staying pretty much about the same you know not going up but staying about the same the state's put into this position where they've got to adjust the tax formulas to make up the difference. So the bottom line is is that the local tax burdens are going to increase even if our fixed costs do not and that's due to the impact of the pandemic. So as part of policy governance and as part of just what what good managers do anyway is that when we're planning budgets is we're trying to look out a few years as we're doing the planning now in case we can do things now that can support future years and by the looks of things it's probably going to take two or three years for the tax incomes the the tax revenues generated by the state to return to normal and so it's reasonable and fair that during this period of time the district should seek to help out the community members that have supported us so well by reducing tax burdens right. You guys have stepped up to the plate when we needed you to build these structures to help kids and now we're in the middle of this economic crisis and it's our job to do what we can to reduce the tax burden on the towns. Now that goal that effort is is a little bit in conflict with everything that we've done over the last couple of years. We've built some incredible structures that are going to have a dramatic impact already are and we don't want to lose them. So we need a solution for this and to be able to make sure that people understand what the solution is. I've got to talk in general about what a surplus is and what reserve funds are and then I can apply it to what I'm proposing for next year's budget. So the big blue box there is our budget that's the amount of money that we go out. We ask the the towns to supply us with they vote on that budget the money rolls in. We use it over the course of a fiscal year to meet all our financial needs and then typically at the end of the year we have money that is left over. That money is called our surplus. In most cases for us we tend to have fairly good surpluses from 200 to 300,000 is the norm. A lot of that comes from things like a veteran teacher retiring and then we hire in somebody new because remember we plan these budgets nine months in advance of the year that we're going to use them in and so we plan it based upon current staff. So if current staff leaves and we hire someone new if there's a change in salaries and there often is that can result in a surplus. There are also costs that we have to pay that we get reimbursed for but the problem is we have to have the money in the budget up front to pay the costs to meet our financial obligations and then we're reimbursed after the fact and those end up as part of the surplus. So we have surplus money and it's left over and if we do nothing about that surplus money at the end of the fiscal year it goes back to the state. Well in most cases that's not what's most beneficial to districts so most districts like us set up what are called reserve funds. Reserve funds are accounts that we put surplus money into and as Anne was saying a little bit earlier that have to be used for specific purposes and right now we have four. We have a facilities reserve fund, a transportation reserve fund, a special education reserve fund and a legal reserve fund. So like the facilities reserve fund on the warrant that goes out when people go out to vote you know they will see typically a line on there to vote for you know do you approve taking a million dollars of the surplus and putting it into the facilities reserve fund and in every year that I've been here the the communities have been wonderful about doing that. So why is this beneficial to us in these cases? Well if I've got a million or two sitting in the facilities reserve fund when something big comes along that we need to pay for like replacing the roof on Randolph Elementary and replacing the roof on Randolph Union High School both which have happened while I've been here we can pull the money from the reserve funds because the towns have pre-approved it for use on facilities and I don't have to go out to the town asking for more money to do this big work I don't have to go out to bond. So it's really kind of a win-win in a lot of ways. So surplus funds are what's left over at the end of the year. If the town votes on those surplus funds we can move those surplus funds into reserve funds that we can use later to support our operations usually for big ticket items. So I'll stop for a second and make sure that folks are understanding this and if there's any questions before I move into the solution. Hearing none I shall move to the next step. The solution that we are proposing is that we take those surplus monies at the from the end of the 2019-2020 school year and we use them to subsidize the tax burden on our three towns until the state's revenues recover. Right so we have this huge surplus which we'll talk about in the next slide because we worked our tails off to get it in anticipation that this is what we'd have to do to try to help the help the community members in the towns out and now what we're going to need to do if this budget I'm proposing is going to work is on March 3rd is get the town's people to vote that surplus into a new fund what we're going to call an operational reserve fund and what that fund will be used to do is we will draw money out of it to cover some of the costs of the budget so that we don't have to ask for as much from the towns. We really you know March April last year it was really apparent to most of us that this was going to be a difficult fiscal year in terms of budgeting because of the coronavirus it was clear that this was a long-term problem that you know coronavirus wasn't going away anytime soon and so in anticipation of that we pulled out all stops at the end of last year to create the largest surplus we could we froze spending for things that weren't unnecessary we had a lot of programs that couldn't run because of coronavirus so therefore we had savings there and then we worked our tails off I should say you know Robin and a lot of credit to the payroll folks worked their tails off to get every penny in reimbursement that we could from the coronavirus relief fund and so we are sitting right now on 1.6 million dollars of surplus because of those efforts what we would like to do is just what you see in the picture right the big black box that's what everybody's got to pay if we do this without subsidizing the tax burden this year by using some of the surplus if we use this surplus money if we put it into the operational reserve fund if the taxpayers vote to do that what we can do is ask for less money in terms of the the budget and then subsidize the remainder of what we need from those operational reserves with the impact being that what we are asking for from the community in terms of taxes is much reduced so questions before I go into the the numbers does this process make sense I just have one question and that is any inkling at all whether the state is going to say to all these districts that might have extra that you can't do something like this I just wonder they've been they've been chomping at the bit and so it's an awesome question I wish you could see your face right now they've been chomping at the bit for two or three years and there's been discussions that keep coming up about well you know the districts have surplus money you know how come we can't take that back to fill in some of the gaps in our other budgets they could pass legislation in talking with Pietro about it it would be incredibly difficult if not impossible but they keep eyeing it we do have a significant amount of money already in surplus funds that is above what our needs are for anything in the foreseeable future and when I look at that and I look at everything that we could be using that for on behalf of kids you know I've got this this goal of really pumping that money back into the district any way that I can to serve students it's there it's available we've done in a tremendous amount of facilities work and upgrades to keep things up and running and in program work but we don't want to do away with those reserve funds but we want to get them down to a level that's going to support our foreseeable needs and at the same time not be a temptation for legislators um and so you know that's one of the things that we've been discussing in the in the district over the last year amongst the cabinet and with Robin um so so very good question we did run this by Pietro by the legal team and it is perfectly okay to do what we're proposing so good question other questions before I move on to the numbers yeah go ahead no I just wondered if you're taking public questions I can wait Laura until after you're done yeah my question is so what happens after a couple of years of subsidizing um our local budget is the budget thing going to be up you know is the leap going to be so big um that it's really you know it's going to be voted down by our towns just they forget that we've been subsidizing it but with surplus and are we going to have trouble passing the budget after that just even if it's almost a level funded budget I worry that they're still going to be such a huge you know un subsidized jump so um it's a very it's a very good question and I'm going to say um it's possible but it doesn't have to happen and I'll try to explain why um in a way that that makes sense um remember that the reason our budget really isn't going up when you see the numbers um from last year to this year after we kind of change some stuff around um the reason that there's a bigger tax burden on people is because they're having to make up the difference between what the state couldn't raise through its regular revenue sources assuming that over the course of the next couple of years we begin to recover from covid that the economy starts to roar back to life their coffers will start to fill up and so we as towns won't need to subsidize their shortfalls right so as the money starts flowing in from them um assuming that covid starts to go away the economy starts to pick up they start to get their tax revenues again um that should make up the majority of the difference now the way that I'm proposing this subsidy is that we've got one 1.6 million going in this is the worst year so the way that this proposal works is that this year we subsidize half of that so 800,000 it would be to subsidize this current budget the remaining 800,000 gets split in half and used over the next two years that follow so that we slowly wean ourselves back up along during the time that hopefully the state revenues are increasing as well so that at the end of three years we're back kind of to normal um will it happen can't guarantee it but it should or it should be darn close when we get there um the other possibility is this is we have subsidies almost every year we just continue this process every year um you know I spend one of the concerns and one of the comments from the community is geez why do you have that 300,000 surplus and what we would do with the surpluses if we just keep this rolling forever is that uh you know we take out the little bit that we need each year to go into those other reserve fronts to make sure that we can replace the roof the next time that it's do that sort of thing um and then the rest of it goes back into subsidize the next year's taxes right so taxpayers it's the taxpayers that put that money in there it's it makes sense that they should get some of the benefit from it if we can provide that um did that make a little bit of sense the logic yes you know it's a you know it makes sense hopefully that that's that you know comes to pass the way that you hope yeah the reality is this um in the end it's going to be the same amount of money that people are paying the question is do they pay a moderate amount for three years or do they potentially have a cliff year where they might have a big leap um that's the question that you're asking and it's a good question right and it makes sense to use this money we've saved right now so that makes sense to me so yeah and again this is my my proposal you guys are the voting body on this you can reject it tell me to go back to the drawing board we just have to have something in place um you know within the next week or so so other questions yes um but should chris chris do you want to go first before i speak no that's fine i um you know me i got quite a few questions so i'll wait so that lane can hit them one at a time so if you want to go first that's okay thanks so lane i have a two-part question the first one is maybe very similar to what an asked but is there are there any ramifications um when this money is a surplus and any sort of grant funding or any sort of pull-down funds that are available either at the state or national level would there be any impact on this or is is this just like a budget neutral decision this is just a budget decision in terms of our grants um like title grants and things like that those are dependent upon um the level of poverty that we have across the district and our student counts and as well as the fact that the state needs to be getting in it's uh it's um it's state assessment data to the federal government on time each year those are those are what that's determined on so this this would have no impact on that okay thank you and i have one other question um you mentioned this this is a um in my opinion a surprising surplus it's a lot of money um so kudos that's fiscally responsible but we talk about the and i think maybe with that public in mind we talk about the spending that was you know the fro the freeze on spending in the programs that were um you know put on hold or cut could you give me an idea of what those programs are uh biggest biggest one was athletics so again um because i don't want to use the word cut because those programs are still here they're just unable to run because of covid um and if if you get a chance i know the lines you guys aren't supposed to really be looking at the line level of the budgets but the um the lines after paying for staff salaries um the biggest cost typically that a district has is transportation and there's a tremendous amount of transportation that goes along with with athletics um so that is probably the biggest um place where we recouped money um we also like i said we got about 400,000 or more back already in crf funds that are helping bloat this up um and so um it's uh it's uh it's it's a lot we figured about a million dollars and so they were scrambling around part of what they were scrambling around with today is they got to work with the auditor they got to work with the town treasurer to determine that surplus amount and then when they came out said it was close to one point you know 1.6 1.7 million i was like you guys sure please go back and check um so yeah there there there was a lot um covid had a real impact on programs um and things last year that just couldn't run um because it was there and so you know you would put the money in the budget for them you can't run them and so that money is now available with surplus at the end of the year so good question i think i had it if i didn't let me know i mean it's chris i'm strong um i just wondered i have a couple questions but if you could first talk about the projected hit to the vermont education fund and i know that it a while ago it was it was projected that it was going to be a lot worse than it currently is and that's because of like some federal monies and stuff that have come in so if you could just touch on that a little bit how i know that that's did but do you have is there any information that is going to change or no so yeah i can get i can't give you solid numbers because they change them so frequently i mean we were looking i think it early on it was like a 60 million um and then you know they were doing prediction you know healthcare again is is up another 10 that we all got a plan for that sort of stuff but it was very huge we're going to talk a little bit about this um when i get into the actual numbers of you know what's the potential impact on a household in one of these three towns based on this budget it's actually it's it's very small but it may be nothing because what it looks like is the formulas that they gave us to do our calculations on for this budget we're based upon their assumptions of a bigger shortfall than it looks like there really is so it's quite possible that they're going to come back um you know after we've gone through the process and say hey no actually our state revenues are higher than we thought um so we're able to help you out more than than we thought so you guys don't have to put in as much again doesn't help us right now because we got a under timelines and whatnot for notifying people about what the potential budget is for next year we got to have this vote tonight but um it always happens that those formulas change um you know after we do our budget votes and right now uh the potential change because it looks like they predicted a bigger deficit than they're going to have is positive for folks um i can't give you a dollar amount they can't give us a dollar amount but that's been the discussion the last two or three days so i think i give you what i could yeah no that's great and like and anything that i ask if you're going to hit it later in the presentation just let me know so um so there is a potential that you know things could happen the the fed could come in and we could end up getting fully funded it in the vermont education fund if that were to happen would this money just stay in the the operational reserve fund for future years uh for the i'm not sure if it actually works that way it would be a good question for robin because think the way to kind of think about this is that when the towns are doing their vote voting on their budgets um they're really creating a bill that they are sending to the the folks at the state house um and they add up all those bills from all those towns and that's what they need to take out of the education fund to fund education in the state as a whole well they have no idea right now what each town is going to vote so the formulas that they give us are their best guesstimates after that voting is done across all the towns they know what has to come out of that education fund and then they adjust the formulas to suit that so the information that i am giving you and that folks are voting on are our best indications at the time but what actually happens to your pocket book could change um i guess that's partially dependent on like what other districts do as well right so if we're fiscally responsible this year um but like burlington passes a budget that's that's that's at max or whatever um you know the our tax is not just going to pay for our budget so um so i think that's like a i see what you're saying that it's kind of tough to to judge because we don't know what the other towns are going to vote right so and i got i've got a good thing we're going to talk about just what you said because a certain amount of the money that we get per student comes from the state education fund which everybody in the state pays for you know so we pay a little bit into it but everybody else in the state is paying towards that amount as well and then anything above that amount that amount comes directly from us and and we'll show that a little bit later what those numbers are right if it's above the state the state guidance right um yeah so then second question do we have is is it public information what is currently what the balance is in those other reserved funds yeah i'll show them to you at the end of the presentation okay good because i i also wondered if we're not going to typically the reserve funds get kind of replenished each year when the town votes to do that so if we're going to now use our reserve our reserve money for operational will those those are obviously going to start to get depleted do we feel like um we're going to i just worry that in the future we might get to a position where we don't have the money to fix the roof or something like that is that something you're going to talk about later yeah and i want you to make sure that you bring up the question exactly when that those numbers come up exactly the way that you did it because you know what what we're doing is in our estimation uh the estimate for the roof uh you know we were estimating replacing that roof was going to be you know two two million dollars um and that was kind of the best that we could get with people going out and taking just a rough look at things um the reality was it was closer to about you know six hundred and eighty thousand seven hundred thousand to replace that roof um so we've got plenty of um plenty of funding there um but we do have some some projects that we want to work on in the next couple of years um one of the things that we talked about and kind of got the ball rolling on a little bit last year we're starting to have discussions about revamping the science wing um we're also still depending upon what happens with enrollments um because we are working on a middle school uh model at the high school is you know if we get to the opportunity where everything is working well and folks are comfortable having us bring the sixth grade into the the uh the ruhs is maybe you know we use some of that money to physically separate you know the middle school from the high school and do a little bit of an addition to add a second cafeteria or whatever we need to do to keep those kids separate so you know we also have that in the back of our minds when we're looking at the um the reserve funds that we currently have and we want to make sure that we're keeping enough in there that we're doing our our fiscal diligence in terms of potentially you know what's what's coming around the corner and the other plans that we'd like we also have to we've we've held off we wanted this to be last because it was appropriate but eventually you know we've got damage that's happening in the central office building um because of uh work that needs to be done it just it needs to be gutted in the inside redone um and that's that's a bigger project it's not horribly expensive but it's bigger than it needs to be done if we're going to preserve the the facilities of the district so really good questions chris so it doesn't look like this this plan will deplete those funds so that we'll be in trouble three years down the road is what you're saying you know this this money is completely separate from those funds again um it's it's the benefit of the work that we all did last year at the end of last year um and the fact that like I said there were just a lot of programs that didn't run um that we didn't have to pay for um because COVID prevented them from running and then um reimbursements that we got through the CRF funds so that's that's why it was it was so huge like I said usually it's in the two to three hundred thousand dollar range that kind of that's kind of the norm but this one you know we worked worked our tails we never expected it would be this big though okay thank you so good questions other questions before I bump on this is david um I have a quick question it sounds like the corona relief funds helped contribute to this surplus the 1.6 if no further legislation is passed does this estimate include everything expected through legislation passed that we know about so far could there be more monies coming that the state allocates say in a couple months another year or there there could be more money coming that the state allocates remember what this surplus is it gets confusing because you know we plan our budgets a year in advance and then we take care of the surplus you know six months nine months later this is the surplus that was at the leftover at the end of the fiscal year that for the school district ended last july so that budget is that budget is closed for all all um purposes there shouldn't be much more changing that's going on with it okay so anything else that anything else that we might bring in that's above and beyond should be for next year surplus okay thanks yeah so good question hey elaine it's brian um how is this year looking as far as you know year to date as far on surplus for the but this year's budget um well we can talk about that when we hit the financials um it's hard to estimate until we get uh usually about april or may um but we're not not spending any more than we normally do because we also got reimbursed for our spending for this year um we got like 900 000 that came in this year to help us out this year with the spend the additional spending we had to do um on uh coveted this year so it's been a wash um so you know if i had to give you an estimate um brian right now um we should be in our normal um range probably a little bit higher um because athletics you know has been delayed and delayed and delayed um if i had to give my a rough guesstimate um i'd probably say 500 000 to 600 000 right now and again a lot of that um due to due to programs that that weren't run because of covet and the fact that you know they did eventually i mean it took them a long time to get around to it um but they did eventually uh reimburse us for a lot of the extras that we were spending that were unplanned for so when that that reimbursement money came in it kind of washed out those additional expenses that were potentially putting us in the red so let's see if i can explain this one a little bit it's not it's nice when there's there's not a lot on a slide um what you're looking at that on the left is current year budget um this does not include federal grants and of course um i think it should be i think it should be illegal to have tax systems that are so complicated the normal normal populace can't figure them out um because then you don't know what you're paying or what you should be supposed to pay but um what we've been required to do in recent years um when we go out to vote is we're required to add into our totals um all the federal grant monies that we get um and it kind of makes sense because it's it's fair for the uh the public to know exactly what you're spending um but those federal grant monies do not come from the district or the taxpayers um uh here i mean i guess you can make the argument they get there indirectly because you pay your federal taxes um but those those monies come in from the federal government from an outside source um so i'm not including federal monies in this budget description just to make things a little bit easier to see um our federal grant monies that we get are about 900 000 a year and the vast majority of that is is title funds and that's pretty constant from year to year so in um this current year if you take out those those federal grants um our budget so the the amount of money that um came from the ed fund and local taxpayers um was 19.7 million what we're looking for as a total for next year again not including federal grants is 20.2 million and we'll talk about what's contained in that $523,000 increase from year to year um what we did uh in this current rendition of the budget that 28.2 million that's up there is we took out all discretionary spending except for $13,000 so when i talk about a level service budget we're pretty much there right now um you know i had it not been for that $13,000 and i'll talk about what that's for um we we would be a level service budget and so you can expect in the future to be a level service budget is going to require about $523,000 to keep us providing the same level of services we did the year before majority of that is uh staff salary increases that are mandated by contract and then the next biggest chunk is typically the increases in health care costs so what we are proposing is a $20.2 million budget taking $826,342 from surplus so that we only have to ask the taxpayers for 19.4 million right so actually what we would be asking for from the taxpayers is what about 300,000 less than last year so it was actually a reduction of 1.54 percent from last year's budget obviously with the surplus subsidizing that if we were to look just at the budget from last year to this year and not throw the surplus in there it would be a 2.65 percent increase and we kind of talked about that last year you know that's what a um that's what a level service budget in this district means is about a 2.6 2.7 percent increase in expenditures each year again that can be offset by revenues but we're only looking expenditures so before excuse me I flip pages here um does this make sense are the questions I can't see you so I either put you to sleep or uh or I did a passable job um expenditures you know if we do a breakdown of what's new um that we're proposing for next year 510,000 of that 523,000 um is mandatory expenditures um the big bulk um is the estimate that we did in terms of um the negotiated salary increase right we got to sit back down at the table get the negotiations done to know what the salary increases are for next year there are some increases that we already have to pay um in the steps um that are in the contract um there's also again the healthcare uh increases are astronomical um year after year I think this is actually the lowest year I've seen since I've been here it's usually around 14 percent but the cost um for the district to provide uh healthcare um to the district workers is going up by 10 percent the only discretionary money that's in this budget so in other words this is money um that we're adding in for additional things um um is 8,000 uh dollars to support the lower house right we've got some structures in place um that are are creating a true middle school program um and doing a tremendous amount of revamping of of curriculum and social interactions there um that's vitally important and then 5,000 um dollars to move our tech director onto an admin one contract we have different flavors of the administrator's contract she should never have been on an admin two um she should have always been on an admin one and so that would correct um that that oversight um and so the total cost of the discretionary monies is 13,000 for this to work and see if I can explain this before people get lost in reading the article um that is there we can't take the chance in this vote that folks vote in the lower amount for the budget and then don't vote in the ability to use the surplus funds to supplement it right if we're not extremely careful in how we write this that would have been a distinct possibility um and that would have put us in a really bad spot right because now you know they didn't vote in to allow us to use the surplus funds and now somehow I got to come up with 826,000 dollars to to make up the difference so it's very important that folks realize um what this vote means on this article 10 an article 10 is uh voting on approving the school budget but the way that this is written um if you're voting on this if you're voting yes and please vote yes um you're really voting on three things uh first thing that you're doing is you are voting to approve the budget and the amounts that I just presented you are voting to approve the creation of an operational reserve fund account and you are voting to put last year's surplus monies into that account so that I can use it to subsidize the budget in just the way that we discussed so questions on this does that make a little bit of sense so again to make sure that um people didn't vote in half of what we needed to make this work I've combined the language into one article for folks to vote on if you're voting on this you're voting to approve the budget and the dollar amount that that I uh has have just presented you're voting to approve the creation of the operational reserve fund account and that account will receive with the vote um the surplus fund so that it can then be used to subsidize uh the budget so it's very important and this is kind of this is where I'm going to be spending my time in the next month or so um as we're we're getting ready for the March vote and and talking with folks in the community to make sure that they understand that the other thing that I want to point out is when you look at that first number there 21 million what's he talking about he said it was 20 20.2 million again 21 million is not coming from the taxpayers the 20.2 million that I proposed is but we are required now to put into that number the federal grant monies so the reason that that number looks a little bit higher is because it's got that about 900 000 and extra dollars that are federal grant monies that do not come from the local taxpayers or the ed fund. Lenka asks a question yeah this is Hannah Arias um calling it an operational reserve fund does does it make sense to be more it just sounds rather unrestricted to call it an operational fund is there any pro and or con to being more to to um flushing it out more to to explain more or to restrict it more so the the the the con there's a pro and there's a con um these funds um that operational reserve fund if it is established um it is under the control of the school board it's not under my control if I want to access any of that money to subsidize the budget I then have to go to the school board and say I need x amount of dollars to perform this function to subsidize the budget and you would have to vote as a board to approve that so the there is is is controlled by the board um over what these funds are used for why the choice of operational um because basically what we're doing is if I've got a 20 million dollar budget and I'm taking you know 800 000 out of that that money that we're asking for the taxpayers that reduction um is not in staffing it's in the monies that are used to operate the budget it's paying for the programs and the books um it's not necessarily staff it's for operational purposes um and so I'm just trying to put the best word on what that money is actually being used for but you as the school board in knowing the purpose behind that reserve fund have a fiduciary duty to make sure that that's what it's spent for um does that make a little bit of sense um if we get too restrictive um then the con is is the fact that if I have a need to pay for a certain operational component of the school um to make sure that you know we're putting it in the full hundred eight hundred and twenty six uh thousand dollars to support things um I may not be able to do it if we make it too restrictive um so it's it's easier to have it open and again you are the part of the fiduciary stewards along with me to make sure that it's being spent where where it needs to be spent and it has to go to a public vote right part of you guys voting on this money in terms of subsidizing the budget is it's public people there will see it it's transparent they know what you're doing with it and they can call you and they can call me on it if we're not not doing what's right and what's appropriate um that makes sense and you know I'm not necessarily arguing that it should be more there are a lot of questions in the in the nonprofit world we see something that comes in and says it's for operations we're thrilled that basically means unrestricted to us I'm just wondering if the voters may um question it being uh a big bucket a um not a vague bucket but a big but I mean we could we could call it um you know you know budgetary subsidy fund um but again what is what are you using that money for you're using it to cover operations that you're not asking for the taxpayers to pay for yeah yeah thank you so now you got me thinking it was a good question can i take off to pick break up from uh practice but uh I think I like to look to the budget as it's going but I'll log back in as soon as I get home hey I appreciate it Brian be safe Lane I don't know if you can go back to that last slide where it had the the average per pupil so is that is that number you had mentioned earlier that we basically create a bill for for the state is that and anything above a certain amount per pupil would come directly from the taxpayers yeah so here's here's this slide so if you look over to the right and this is a hell of a lot easier excuse the language in person because I can point to stuff as I'm talking about it um there are basically uh three numbers on there I call them the basically there's three thresholds here that ten thousand seven hundred and sixty three dollars um they call that the property yield what it really is is it's how much the state is giving us um for each enrolled student you know give or take some some some averaging and stuff like that but this is how much we receive per student um that number is down uh quite a bit from last year I think last year it was closer to about ten ten thousand nine hundred and so this is how um we're paying for the extra that the ed fund didn't have they reduce what they're giving us um per student with this property yield so any money that's uh above any cost per student that's above that ten thousand seven hundred and sixty three dollars per student any dollar amount above that comes directly from the local taxpayers so in our case it's about seven thousand dollars per student and how about federal funds you'd mentioned earlier that like federal grant money and things that don't come is that that's not included in that right so so some of those funds would also come from federal money so I just wonder what what does it actually end up being do you think for the actual count to have to have per per pupil I'm not sure the question said I asked you then for me yeah so you said that ten thousand seven hundred sixty three is what you're going to receive the estimate of what you're going to receive from the state per student from the ed fund yeah right and then but earlier in the presentation you'd also mentioned that there's also federal funds and money that comes in that that you kind of didn't include so I wonder one when you have federal funds coming in as well that's obviously kind of being averaged out per pupil so I wonder how does what does that number then look like when the federal funds are put in there and what what would it really come down to per student that where we the community are are going to pay above and beyond what the state is going to give you through the way the ed is ed fund is funded so a very good question but there's multiple parts there so what you're looking at with the ten seven sixty three and the seventeen seven nineteen per student that we're looking at for this year to pay overall per student these are dollar amounts that are associated with local taxes so these do not include in any way shape or form the federal funds so does that make sense in terms of separating it out if you wanted to know the total amount that we're putting into students I can do a rough calculation for you right now give me a second to find a calculator I mean I think you might have answered it just in that so so what the eighteen thousand seven hundred eighty nine per student that's what we that's what we're getting what that's what we're basically spending for people if you if you pass this budget right so let's let's go through this I mean let me let me explain each of the three numbers that are up there because they're important so if we've talked about the property yield at ten thousand seven seven sixty three per student that's what the state is giving us for our for our our our enrollment right per student that's what they give us anything above that we pay for out of local taxes so right now our cost per student with with the subsidizing is seventeen thousand seven hundred and nineteen dollars per student that eighteen thousand seven eighty nine per student that's in red that is a critical threshold if we push our cost above that then we end up getting a tax penalty that kind of doubles any money that we're asking for above that threshold so that's a threshold you never want to cross okay so I guess that's where my question about the federal funds because you're saying the ten seven sixty three comes from state so so then we also get some money from the federal government in forms of grants and things um you also said using so using the eight the using the eight hundred and twenty six thousand really what we're going to be up to is seventeen seven nineteen seventeen thousand seven hundred nineteen per student but is that also including the money that we're going to have from the federal grants no the the federal grants are irrelevant and and I may be misreading what you're saying I just want to make sure there's not a misconception there um that seventeen seven nineteen is dependent upon that twenty point two million dollar budget it does not matter that we are subsidized whether we're subsidizing it with surplus or whether it's coming from the taxpayers that number won't change okay I I guess where I'm getting lost and we can move on if if nobody else has the same question I just wonder how the federal funds get tied into all of this because I get that we get money for students from the state and I also understand that there's money from the federal government I wonder where that is in this calculation I guess how much per student does that equate to when we do get funding through grants does that because I'm guessing that helps yeah so it a rough rule of thumb I don't have a calculator and I can't pull it up on the computer because I'll shut the presentation down um a rough estimate for our federal funding is nine hundred thousand divide that by eight hundred and thirty nine kids and that'll give you about how much per student that we get in federal funding rough estimate okay if that makes sense yeah and that money is in addition again it's not included in these numbers it shouldn't be a part of these numbers but that would be in addition to what is here to help out students so would that raise the seventeen seven nineteen number is that what you're saying it won't raise it for tax purposes but if you want like a true value of money that we are spending on kids yes that number would go up okay thank you that's yeah so good question and sorry I just wanted to try to make sure I was getting what you were asking other questions so we actually um you know through this process I got the budget summary up here that twenty one one twenty three right that's including including grants um it's assuming that we're going to be using eight hundred and twenty six thousand in surplus funding for next year's budget to offset things um the combined effect is that is that we're actually decreasing uh the burden on the taxpayers by one point five four percent compared to last year it is keeping us below that kind of critical eighteen thousand seven hundred eighty nine dollars spending threshold um this is actually is improved our our standings relative to that threshold by two hundred and seventy five dollars per student per year um so we still have a thousand dollars thousand seventy dollar per student buffer right we'd have to you know have to be spending a thousand dollars more per student to come anywhere near close to um that that uh warning threshold there all right it's going to be important before I flip to the next slide your job is not to freak out because it doesn't mean what you think it means when you see it so it's going to be very important that you let me explain this um what it means um because otherwise people are going to get confused and think they're going to be paying a huge amount of extra taxes this year when that is not the case so when I throw this up here you know what you were seeing is the equalized tax rate for your town equalized is a very special word and there is a reason that they used it because equalized means just that as one thing moves up another moves down to compensate for it so that in the end when you combine the two you're in the same place that you started so based upon um the equalization brain tree you're going to be paying 16 cents more per hundred dollars of assessed value of your property but the value of your property has been assessed much lower than it was you're paying more per dollar but the number of dollars has gone down right the assessment value of your property has gone down so in the end those two things cancel each out out they're equalized you're paying about the same amount as you have in previous years does that make sense okay brookfield you're going to be paying six cents more per hundred dollars of assessed value but to compensate and keep things about equal the assessed value of your properties have gone down moderately right you're paying more per dollar that your house is worth but your house isn't worth as many dollars again things should not be this confusing if people are trying to figure out their taxes randolph you will be paying seven cents more per hundred dollars of assessed value but the assessment the assessed value of your homes has gone down moderately to compensate if you want to know based on this budget what you are potentially going to be paying in addition to what you are already paying for taxes relative to the schools with this budget you are going to be adding about three and a half cents per hundred dollars of assessed value what does that mean the average home value in vermont is two hundred and seventy five thousand dollars right now things have changed a little bit because of covid so that means on average for the entire year the average homeowner is going to see a tax increase of ninety six dollars which is eight dollars a month now you see those two big asterisks is on the top and on the bottom and this goes back to something that chris had brought up a little while ago this is all based upon their current formulas and their current formulas were predicting a big shortfall in the ed fund and it's looking like in recent discussions that they've underestimated the property yield in other words they're actually yielding they're actually getting more money into that ed fund than they thought and so that's probably going to be adjusted robin and i were looking at it today if the property yield is back up close to what it was last year and there is the very real potential that it will be once they get their final calculations done it's very likely that there will be no tax increase right instead of point three instead of you know three and a half cents per hundred dollars of assessed value it may be zero it certainly by the looks of things will will be better than what i am presenting here but put things in perspective we are in the middle of an economic crisis the likes of which we have not seen in a hundred years and we're talking about keeping the schools running at the same level of service they have been running at for a tax increase on average of 96 dollars per year which is eight dollars a month also have to remind folks on this that if you're a person who has hit the income sensitivity threshold and that threshold is actually fairly high they change it from year to year i didn't get a chance to look up the the most recent numbers today when i was scrambling around but if you're at that sensitivity threshold you know you just fill out that additional form as part of your taxes and they reduce your tax assessment so don't forget that so questions on this another tax piece is confusing i have to study it again each year and i still after a day or two because i don't use it all the time you know it falls out of my mind and i have to go back and look at it again lane when you're when you're talking about the tax rate or the assessed value when we get questions from community members that assessed value that you're talking about is that state assessed value it's not the assessed value that the town gives you based for the cla yeah it's the the cla so it's a good question lane i'm sorry i feel super dense at this point because i'm the only one with all these questions but can you so can you explain that a little bit better because that was exactly what ann said that was kind of what my question was was where are we seeing this 100 that the assessed value has gone down where do we where do we see that i guess you know like each each year i take my property taxes and i i look at that and i see the the the tax rate that the town is charging based on the assessed value of my home so but you're saying that's not where it's going to be seen yeah so the the the town cla um for last year was 109 percent um so your assessment was high right these things balance out to equalize each other um you know your your your assessment by the state of the properties um when it took a look at it was high so that meant that your tax rates were lower right you're instead of 16 that the the number of pennies that you were paying per hundred dollars of assessed value was lower um what happened in the case of like brain tree is that common level of assessment was 109 last year this year it's it's 101 so there was a huge shift um in assessed value right and so that's why you're seeing this huge increase to compensate for that again one goes down one goes up in the end it kind of means the same thing in terms of of what you're paying what the what the actual schools are actually adding to things is this right this is staying the same from year to year the only thing that's going going on is the uh you know the the what you're paying for dollar is changing but the number of dollars that you're paying it on is changing as well to compensate the big thing is is here you're we're with this budget we're adding about three and a half cents per hundred dollars of assessed value and it's a lot more complicated than i'm presenting it but i'm trying to present it fairly simple yeah um in the case of and this kind of happened the the assessed values were high last year for all three towns um brookfield was 102 last year it's 100 this year uh Randolph was 103 and it's 100 to 101 this year um so again in all cases assessed values went down right so the the number of dollars that you have to pay on went down but what you're paying per dollar goes up because of that to keep things about equal so good questions so other other questions on this piece here silence either people's brains are burning up or or we're okay okay so i'm throwing this up here um it was kind of um within the budgets um but this is actually let's go back before we do this because this is actually a separate vote um uh maura what i'll i'll do is we've kind of completed you know the presentation that i've got for the os sd budget um and i'll let you determine if you you guys want to have discussion if you want to vote if there's more questions well first then are there any more questions for lane about about this osd budget either from board or from any other public uh it's kacha no question i just want to um thank you for this presentation i think it was really helpful and informative so if we vote yes on this budget um we will also i assume lane be voting yes to create this operational reserve fund and move some of that money if it is approved into reducing the budgetary weight on the towns yeah so basically what you're doing um is you vote if you vote yes on the budget um you are also voting pretty much yes on the warrant and the way that it's written um if that makes sense yeah no i think that's the best way to do it is that you know that's really what we're approving is is this whole proposal um which does include the operational reserve fund yeah and then that's the way the warrants warrants written so uh if there are no further questions for lane is there a motion to approve the osd budget and all the encompasses including the you know the uh operational reserve fund as written in the town warning uh is there a motion to approve it uh as written i'll move that we uh approve the budget as written and the warrant as written in the presentation second any further questions or discussion before we go to a vote all right hearing none um i'll do the same roll call and i ashley hi hannah hi kacha hi brian i believe is still not here um so i'll skip over to meg hi rachel hi and i am also in agreement so we are uh seven with one abstaining or absent i guess is a better way to say it thanks very much for all that information lane that was real helpful can you tell me who seconded it i missed that who seconded in the motion that was me linda kacha okay thank you okay lane is there anything else you wanted to present it seems like you had one more slide or are you yeah there yeah there's a couple of things that we don't want to miss and and i promise chris some some more data on the the reserve funds too i want to make sure we hit um you also have to vote on the announced tuitions for next year um in most cases it was kind of already contained in the votes that you did but it should also be a standalone separate vote um so these are the tuitions that outside folks coming into the district would pay to participate in our programs so at raven and we've kind of talked about where the number came from it would be 26 693 for the tech center for next year it would be 17679 if they're coming in to attend one of our elementary schools under the school choice program it would be 14866 and if they're coming in to attend our uhs under the school choice programs it would be 18630 and i can ask who could what is that 18630 differ from the previous figure which you said was 177 something um it's the when robin was kind of doing uh predictions about the overall cost to students and i believe including um monies from the federal grant piece and this is probably getting close to that number that chris was looking at um because it gets us to the actual cost that you know we're providing for kids we're not trying to not trying to charge more but we want to make sure that we're breaking even relative to the other students does that also balance well considering that you know random element or any of the elementary schools are at 14866 so the 17 was more of an average vote for all pupils though in the os sd and that's why there's different prices yeah and um again these are would be what people would pay through school choice um to be able to attend their district any further questions for lane around announced tuitions is there a motion to approve the announced tuitions as presented this is kacha i need to approve the announced tuitions as presented seconded hannah all right um uh i guess we can do a roll call again um if there's no further discussion um ann hi ashley hi hannah hi kacha hi i'll skip over brian who's not returned meg hi rachel all right and i also agree all right thank you is that all for you okay this is chris this is this is uh the answer to your your question this is currently what is in um each of the four um currently existing reserve funds um there's 2.8 million um to cover facilities works 1.2 million for transportation which is you know replacing the buses replacing the vehicles um we started to build the special education fund in anticipation um of the transition to the block grant funding that is coming in case you know we have unexpected expenses in the middle of the year and then we um have been keeping keeping some money in a legal fund um given that the fact that um negotiations with uh with the union have been yearly um and those tend to be a little bit more costly than than a normal year so just in case um so that's currently what's in those reserve funds um tapping into these next year considering that you basically mean your proposed budget you've found a way to actually kind of level fund us um for spending this coming year would these only be tapped into if there were like you've said in the past the roof is probably the most common example that you said is that the only time that these would be tapped into yeah these are only tapped into um you know we're expected to put um normally anticipated expenses into the budget which is what's there these are kind of for the bigger things you know capital capital things um bigger things above above and beyond um you know or unexpected events you know we tapped into the facilities um fund this year i can give you a perfect example and and we'll get reimbursed for it in the end but we needed the money up front um to hire two additional um custodians um to help keep up with the disinfectant and the cleaning because of covid um right that was uh facilities request that was approved by the board a few months back so that's an example of what it's used for and actually chris later in this meeting we're going to look at uh taking out from the transportation fund money to replace three buses right okay and i just want to once that money's in there and if you were to ever need to to shift it around is that impossible or do you just need to go to voters again for the town or how does that work when the money's are actually you hit it you hit it right on the head um the voters are the ones that chose uh the category of things that could be used for when they placed it into with accounts so let's say that you know we decided it was appropriate we had a need to shift some money from facilities to the transportation fund that would require a full town though across the three towns to do but it is doable yeah thank you so good questions the only um other thing that i i see there and i apologize or i just want to make sure um and you probably are on it anyway i kept calling it the warrant it's the annual warning there are more articles in the article 10 um so we would need to to vote to approve that warrant as as written that that folks have a copy of right and that's on the agenda but annual warning was actually um not part of our agenda packet but it was emailed to us by linda under separate cover i believe yeah we just like i said we got the numbers this afternoon so we were scrambling around um when we got the final surplus numbers yeah i'm just looking for it on my other screen here uh linda was that today okay i think it was um yes this afternoon i don't know maybe two to thirty i'm thinking okay um so there yes i can see it i don't know if the other um board members had time to look at it but um this is what we will be voting on next we will all need to sign this and this is um something that we will have to to vote on first at the annual school district meeting on monday march first and then this was will be actually um the wording for what the voters will approve when they vote on the budget on i guess march second so um i don't know if has everyone had time to look over the wording for this annual warning most of it is pre-routine really the most um sort of important part is the wording of exactly what we just approved that lay of the budget of wording which transfers money into this operational reserve fund and defines how much we're going to be asking the the voters to approve the rest of it is is pretty routine just electing moderators and clerks etc so if you are able to i would like to have a motion to approve the um draft warning as as presented uh this is actually i make a motion that we present the draft warning as presented is there a second i second that motion hannah okay um let's have a vote on it then um and i think it is easiest just to do it by roll roll call since most people can't see all of us at once so um if there's no further discussion i will move to a vote and i ashley hi hannah hi katcha hi brian's still not here so megan hi rachel hi and i'm also in favor great all right thank you and next we have a report on negotiations lane so it looks like um it looks like they're uh we're able to try to arrange christ sent an email probably just a little before the board meeting um that they've got some dates potentially set aside for uh looks like the first week of february um to hopefully begin the process um and so uh the people that are on that committee should take a look and get back with him um on you know whether or not that works um at this point in time there are a couple of things and actually it's chris are you still here there you are um to kind of talk about so that we're both double checking um we had the we had last year's contract that both sides kind of agreed upon and the board actually voted to approve it assuming the wording in the written document comes back um you know the way the way that it was intended um i'm going to check with pietro tomorrow if you can check with stewart um what had happened was they sent it to me at stewart was doing the updates i give him a lot of credit because it's it's a lot of work he'd sent it to me and pietro um at thanksgiving just before thanksgiving i reviewed it over thanksgiving i sent it back um to them because uh it was missing the language on health care and after i sent it back i have not heard a peep since um so it might be sitting on stewart's desk it might be sitting on pietro's if we both check tomorrow maybe we can get that thing wrapped up yeah just so i did speak i spoke with for this afternoon and stewart had we had received your um your comments and stuff from from before thanksgiving like you like you said we received those on the december 15th is when we got them we sent them back to pietro with corrections and stuff on december 16th and so that was the last we've heard so um if you check with pietro then that might be where and i'm sure he's really busy with everything going on as well so that might be where things got held up um but we sent those back on december 16th and i believe stewart was also going to reach out to pietro uh today as well so yeah i'll shoot him an email tonight because that's good that we can we can try to wrap that up the other piece that's related um to negotiations is that when we were doing discussions about the support staff um about you know potentially maybe restoring some sick time we had reached a tentative agreement um about that in the final meeting um laura was there as well um stewart had offered to do a first draft of that potential language that was agreed to um i'm not sure where that sits if that still was sorted or pietro um it'd be nice to get that wrapped up as well um and i'll i'll reach out to pietro on that one too to make sure it's not sitting on his desk um if you want to reach out with stewart say that again that was he said that was for support staff specifically for support staff yep it was about potentially returning some sick time um from last year if they could provide a doctor's note um showing that it was a medical necessity that rose to the level of what we put in the current mo use okay yeah i'll take a listen to it on that one thank you yep and then you know we just talked about a little while ago you know where we're standing on the the current negotiations that are coming up um we did talk i sent a sent a message and i just i want think that this is important to discuss um as of tonight um as of the board's vote a little while ago the budget is locked um they have to vote that budget about this time there's not a lot of flexibility this month um because they they need a certain amount of time to make that vote public so people can consider it before march um the march second vote um what that means um is that i've had to estimate you know what a potential increase for staff salaries would be if we get into negotiations um and folks come back dramatically higher than that i'm going to have to do risks to cover it um at this point in time um because again the budget's a fixed amount it is set so i want to put that caution out there to folks um which is you know hopefully you know for getting the negotiations done ahead of time i kind of had mentioned that a month or so ago to folks um i don't want to go down that path um and hopefully the other issue there is that if negotiations go beyond about mid march um and things are not resolved that's potentially again putting me in a position to have to riff just to make sure that i'm preserving the potential sanctity um of the budget because i am not allowed to go into the red under under the wrecks um and the reason that it would have to happen by march um 15th is because i need time to get the rifts out by the april 15th deadline in the contract so i do not want to go down that road um there's no reason for it it should not be necessary if both sides here both of us you know us and you can get our act together and get this done but to speed the process along i'm going to kind of reiterate um you know my statements from earlier this year um since this is a one-year contract right because um folks are back at the table at the state level um working on health care uh again um that we just focus on salary bang it out get it done get every everybody happy and in a good place and then my suggestion is is that if there are language issues for the contract that hopefully after that state negotiation is done on health care thing pictures will be a lot clearer um and hopefully we can get a multi-year contract um uh which i think would would be awesome um so anyway just just just my thoughts on the matter um if possible um but i would like yeah so i think i think what you hit on is that is is what's been unfortunate is that we have gone into yearly negotiations where you know five years ago we used to negotiate once every three years maybe two years but they were typically two or three year contracts and what what's really been the result of that is that um we're constantly pushed back and pushed back and we can't really start a new negotiation session without knowing what the previous contract is so i mean to be honest we we have it in our contract that we reach out to the board i sent a letter of intention to negotiate for this year way back in september but it just wasn't the reason that we're now into pushing the budget season and and you don't have that picture is because of the nature of how that's worked over the past few years um so that that's just one piece um so that people understand i think i think we would all love to get back to a point um that we're doing multi-year contracts and i know that there are complications with that but but it isn't set in stone that this is a one-year contract there's been districts that have done multi-year contracts even despite the fact of what's going on at the state level i know there's been two-year contracts settled in the like last year even though most districts are settling out one year so again that's something that just happens at the negotiations table on how many years that's going to happen there are complications as you said because of what the state's been doing things that are totally beyond the board and the association's control so yeah no and and again we're just just trying to figure it out to get things gone and i'm hoping that at least at the state level that they're going to be negotiating you know my guess is it'll be a two-year on the healthcare which then locks us into two-year contracts but you know that's better for everybody to be able to actually focus on on on the work of the district um i know it's it's difficult on on on you it's difficult on us it takes takes up quite a bit a bit of time it's it's worth it um but it is unusual compared uh you know previous decades um that we're always at the table yeah then you don't get behind and then when we actually are negotiating you have a better idea head into the budget yeah no agreed so more about if the state can get their act together i guess and come up with some decisions and an honor oh yeah i agreed so it is that he christ i give him a lot of credit he did get some dates out this afternoon um for february so folks can just take a peek at that and we can get this ball rolling um which would be good hey christ just out of curiosity since you're here and if you don't have an answer right now that's okay um you had put out like four dates um would it be possible to potentially even though they're all like in the same week would it be potential potentially possible to do you know multiple meetings in one week and you know maybe two try to get it going so typically we i mean we don't need to waste everybody's time talking about it but yeah typically we're like once every month um so that there's plenty of time to go through things it's probably something we should talk about at the in our first meeting we will discuss the dates that setting future dates so that's definitely something we can look at when we get into it um right now our part of the reason we didn't meet at the beginning of january now um is because phro has been booked so yeah those initial dates that were sent out we tried to get the ball rolling in the beginning of january but because phro wasn't available really we're what we've found is we're going more off phro schedule than anybody else's schedule so we're that's why that's what those dates are and as long as he hasn't been booked on those dates by the time everybody gets back to me and then i can get back to him then that's totally a possibility i would say yeah no i'm sure he's negotiating other groups but this actually i this was good to be able to talk together and you know just kind of set some ideas as we're going in so i appreciate that can i ask a quick question because i just want to make sure i didn't miss anything um is that just for professional staff i'm not really hearing support staff negotiations dates it's it's it's for both um i have not heard um much i know that um there was an illness um that prevented you know the possibility for a little while um but that should be getting back on the table too is the support staff okay so these dates that you're discussing are just for the professional for the teachers the cba yeah thank you yep it's okay all right let's move on here um next we we have two uh el reports 2.4 and 2.5 both were presented last month and i hope that um board members had a chance to read them over again um i did have just one question on the financial one lane um you know back then when you presented it there was one sort of questionable thing about tech center finances has that all been for ironed out yeah we talked about that in executive session a little little bit um we do have folks going in taking a look at all the parts and pieces there outside of things being late um in some cases dramatically late things are as they should be from what we can see and we did uh we did at that time we did notify the auditor um just to make sure that we had an outside set of eyes on things as well yeah that's what i was asking about yeah so at this point in time is where we're speaking with everything that people are looking at on things things look pretty good yeah any other questions for laying around el uh 2.4 or 2.5 hearing none let's approve them both um with one vote um can i have a motion please to approve both monitoring report 2.4 and 2.5 i move to approve monitoring reports thanks ashley 2.4 and 2.5 i will second hannah is there any further discussion okay hearing none let's uh have a vote to approve those um am i ashley hi hannah hi atcha hi ryan i guess he's not here yet uh meg hi rachel hi and i agree as well thank you um everyone and thank you lane all right next i'm going to go back to my agenda page here um all right so we've got the consent agenda um all of these we will vote uh approve the one uh well we'll approve the first three and then we're going to hear from um danie bella vance about the um transportation reserve fund expenditure um and so we'll have a separate vote on the um on the bus and then there's there's one update um to that consent agenda i am going to recommend oops sorry i don't know if that's me or somebody else i'm going to recommend to the board um that they remove the approval of the benefit plan um from that um the rationale is that there's nothing wrong with it um we are transitioning our uh hra hsa uh provider this year after many difficulties with data path um to a company called further um this is their agreement you know the services that they will provide um we had sent this out a while ago um to visbit um because their legal service to look over to make sure that it's appropriate for us to be signing we have not heard back from visbit yet so um while i am sure that everything there is right and appropriate um i'm not comfortable um suggesting that the board are recommending to the board that they approve that until we hear back from council um so that would uh so look at the two things because we've already approved the announced situations previously so we just have minutes from our regular meeting on december 14th and minutes from our special meeting last monday um are there any substitutions or additions or subtractions uh corrections of those uh on those minutes hearing none uh is there a motion to approve the minutes from those two meetings so no let's catch up second i second this is ashley uh all those in favor please wave or say aye hi hi thank you all right uh so next is to approve the transportation reserve fund expenditure today we um received a letter for the transportation people dammy and would you like to speak on behalf of this sure i can introduce myself here thank you for allowing me at this time here to make my proposal there to have uh three buses uh to be purchased to get into the transition of uh trading out three older buses i don't know if you've had my reports in front of you or not but we're running into an issue here with our buses having uh over 100 000 miles on them and of course the wear and tear on the back roads and the raw and the body have sent a couple of pictures out too but it's time to start thinking about replacing three of the older buses typically i think we've been in the past history replacing two every year we haven't been able to do that this is my fourth year here and i believe we've only purchased three buses and part of those that we have purchased was uh to increase our fleet when we entered entered introduced rochester and the chelsea school we added two buses to our fleet so not counting that we've only replaced one bus or purchased one new bus with our old ones so now we're getting to the point where instead of doing two every year which we have not been doing we're starting to get behind a little bit so now we're finding ourselves i believe it was in 2014 that there was a grant program where the district took advantage of the grant program they purchased three buses so that's a couple of years down the road so we're falling into a position now where we need to rotate the buses out i think if we get three this year then we can go back to the two every year uh or a little bit but we do have 14 buses in all in our fleet they're very well maintained the only thing is is um the wear and tear uh the body fatigue is getting to be where either we're going to do a lot of repair work on them or we can just get into the rotation of the purchase of new buses i did get approximate cost of vehicles from three different vendors and what's interesting is the vendor that we're currently or have been using for the last several years has offered us an opportunity to purchase buses less than last year's cost and it's about $3,000 less than the other two vendors that um i received viz for the $84,000 from our current vendor kressy is significant savings compared to anderson 87,800 for clark's truck center in jericho at $88,090 per bus so i believe we can take advantage of this opportunity by purchasing three buses at less than last year's cost for the replacement of the three bus that i have that over 100,000 miles we are going to replace the three buses with 100,000 miles on them uh we'll still be maintaining them they're 72 passenger buses they do meet all the requirements what's interesting though is the purchase of the buses that we're getting from our current vendor kressy uh has an option that other vendors don't have and that's the differential lock option what that means that the dirt roads that we have and the uphills and the downhills we're able to lock in the differential so we can have like all the wheels in the back of the bus going at the same time the other two vendors don't have that differential lock option so i think we're ahead by keeping the current vendor keeping the current fleet the same thomas bus with the coming engine all the parts and pieces are all the same for the whole fleet rather than going from thomas to anderson to bluebird or to an international bus we can save the three thousand dollars staying with the same vendor same relationships and take advantage of the ability for kressy to buy buses directly from the manufacturer they eliminate the middleman we're international bus you have to go through the middleman i think that's why the difference in price of three to four thousand dollars we're able to go more direct so my proposal would be for the district to maintain the uh the the vehicles to have three purchased this year and then two next year and then maybe we can do one for a while uh getting them to last 10 years is asking a lot but i think if we can maintain them like we have been and keep them between nine and 10 years it's to our advantage after that it gets expensive we start replacing the turbos the doors the windows the replacement costs of the parts and pieces to keep older buses will fire away the cost of a monthly payment i guess is how i look at it so my request would be for the board to approve the the purchase of three buses tonight i see that it with your total is two two two hundred thousand two hundred and sixty four thousand two hundred and seventy dollars um from our transportation reserve fund yep and that was based on the more expensive of the buses um i'm going to suggest we leave it at that um just uh it just in case um if dany goes with kressy it's it's actually about two hundred and fifty three thousand correct yeah did you say that we the three that we're replacing what happens to those three i can are they like cars where you can it has trade-in value or anything what happens what what they'll do that's a good question what he'll do brian kressy will come to vermont on his one trip through new england that he makes and he'll take a look at our buses and he'll evaluate them i don't have the numbers that he gave us for trade-ins of previous buses when i first came here three years ago of course there were old buses then but you know you can probably i'm hoping you can get three to four thousand dollars for them and take that towards the trade-in you know we have a well maintained fleet i give a lot of credit to reggie magnet they're well maintained for what we do the oil degrees the brakes the tires the doors and all that and so when they do come they see that they've been well maintained i like to keep them clean as well too but you know just uh have that advantage of the records all in the files they can see the parts and pieces that we've taken the time to list and give them in the file when they come to trade them in it'll add to the cost i believe or add to the value of the trade-in so i'm hoping you know four thousand dollars for the buses that he'll see but of course that's up to him and it's it's interesting you know the big the big joke and it's it's actually impressive if you've seen the roads that um those buses have to go over some of them it's actually amazing that they last as long as they do so one thing that saves them a lot is we do get them with air ride and i believe that adds at least two years of of running or operational years to them to their life instead of trading them in every eight years you can perhaps get closer to 10 years of that air ride i've been to school buses without air rides in a previous district out there in harwood and you'll see the dirt roads that they run without air ride and the rivet starts coming out of the bus it just shakes them to death but here these these buses are well maintained and they're in good shape for the shape they're in i guess any further discussion before we take a vote is there a motion to approve 264 270 dollars um from the transportation fund to cover the purchase of three new passenger buses so moved second this is actually second any further discussion all those in favor please wave or say i thank you um that passes all right um you're welcome thank you again who made the motion i'm sorry uh okay thank you all right um next we have the board evaluation meg oh no i'm sorry i'm sorry i skipped a whole i skipped a whole report some incidentals sorry about that i was getting a little ahead of myself all right so we've got the superintendent's report um which looks like your annual report um lane do you have anything to add or comment on that yeah now that was just following through on the past tradition as always you know this report was the annual report from the superintendent um then uh maryl will work with that we'll dress it up a little bit to get it into the the brochure for the district okay and then we got director of principal reports um we had a financial report how are we doing actually we're doing really well um the only area right now that is out of whack robin and i talked for a little while this afternoon um looking things over is um food services um and part of the reason for that is right now all all students are getting free lunch you know free breakfast under um the extension of the summer food program that the government put out to make sure that all students are getting fed during covid um so a lot of that is just waiting for the reimbursements um and we do fully expect to get reimbursed for the total um dollar amount of that um but again it took you know covid started in march and we got our first grant money rolling in and around november so you know there is usually a significant delay in these things but that's the only thing that's out of whack right now any other incidentals or any other questions from board members for lane on around these uh reports okay now you're up mega the board evaluation all right um so i i gave us uh met our best expectations expectations um pretty much across the board um except for i did doc a few points on following the agenda or a little sidetracked and with questions um the meeting proceeded without interruptions or distractions but otherwise good all right thank you um is there a need for executive session lane you probably don't want the answer but yeah we should there's a couple things we should talk about yeah and so what i'll do is um while folks are talking i'm gonna i'll shoot a remote session out to folks for it okay and just so that uh everyone else knows following the executive session we're going to reconvene in public session and we're gonna just have a brief 15 minute sort of training or a reminder about what open meeting laws require of us via email and things like that so um we will come back to public session after our executive session all right do i have a motion to to move into executive session i'll move that we move into an executive session at 8 46 p.m to is it personnel of is it her personal student and personnel student and personnel information that's private is there a second second this is hannah okay so i've asked rachel to lead this discussion since she's our knowledgeable one about this sort of thing so she's gonna go ahead thanks what i know is included in the um the document i sent out about do we need to state that nothing was no action taken in uh executive session yes we do uh i'm no action was taken in executive session correct ryan thank you um so um i guess i'll start with do people have particular questions about the open meeting laws i think it's just worth being really kind i know you sent that stuff and i read it and i tried to ingest it and um i think that just verbalizing really clearly what can be emailed what can't what can be an executive session what can't yeah i read it over and over and it doesn't it doesn't stick with me except kind of the general gist of it so i actually carried that the vermont league of cities and towns um thing i carried that around with me for a while so i could like when every time i came to a meeting so i'd have it with me in my bag but um i found that helpful and lane had a copy from the vermont secretary of state something similar from the vermont secretary of state's office um that i can forward to you if you if you're interested it's really just a summary of the law that applies to public bodies um that have dialogue um so the two things that seem to be um applicable to our board include the what can be shared by email um how does email become a meeting that needs to be shared publicly um so i guess i'll start with that and then and then we'll hit quickly on um it's the other thing uh executive session and what can be discussed in executive set executive session um or when a board can meet privately so let me find my version of of it um because i have i have lanes open but i want i'm more familiar with the vermont league of cities and towns so bear with me for a second i know it's late okay so um so the vermont league of cities and towns tells us a good deal about about how to be careful about email and i included most of it in in the email that i sent about the open meeting law um basically if an if an email so so anytime we are discussing something that we may vote on that should not be included in email um that shouldn't be something that's discussed in email so anything any actionable item should not be discussed in amongst us in email um anytime there's a quorum of us together meaning half our board actually does it have to be more than half our board laura do you know do we have to have a majority do we have to have five of our eight i i was reading it today it has to be a majority so i was like so what makes a majority when we have eight people is it four or is it five and yeah it has to be five the case can be discussed in email but can you put it in email and then somebody can reply and say we put that right okay so point of clarification so you can so you can bring something up in an email but it can't but then it something that could be voted on an actionable item can be brought up in email but the reply should be let's put that on an agenda or let's discuss that in an open meeting instead of a dialogue so we shouldn't be having dialogue on email about actionable items if we do then that's then that's all public then we're in violation of the of the open meeting law and and this and we can be sued for that um the document that i sent has a way it has how we how we cure it um or how we fix it if that happens and all the documents that we've shared are public um all the emails become our public they are public um so a quorum we just so we just discussed the quorum i think another thing to mention is that if we have subcommittees um the same the same rules apply also we've over the last few years we've lost some board members and occasionally we will have a we'll have a board meeting where there are very few of us present um and you still need you need even if we have a vacant spot on the board you still need the quorum of the eight not you know if so you know paul was missing or um brook was missing and we had a smaller number we still needed five to make a quorum because our board is a board of eight even if there's an empty slot um question so far does dan want to join us yeah he offered that's like that's like i think and i think he heard him whisper it but i think one of the things too is like just not hitting reply all is a good way to not yeah um is is a good way not to um be in violation of that so replying individually and you know potentially just to your chair um before i take public questions but sure i just wondered so i don't have the document that you signed so i'm just curious if you said that if you were in violation there's a way to resolve that so if there so so if there was if there was could you just touch on what that is and and how the public know that that was being resolved i guess sure so it so it wouldn't correct me if i'm wrong um it wouldn't need to be cured unless a member of the public said hey you all had a meeting or you all discussed something that that you shouldn't have discussed unless and then it has it has to be recognized before it has before it needs to be cured um if it's emailed and how are how is anybody in the public supposed to know rather than trust that you're not doing it i guess that's right you want to talk are you able to talk so this is my husband he's on the brain tree select board his name is daniel he is um he kind of pointed me in the direction of this thing because i like rules and i like to know the rules and i like to follow the rules so um he's also an attorney but he's not he's not giving legal advice he's just helping me interpret the law so a couple things that as far as your question of how do you resolve it and how do you cure it it doesn't have to be the public that recognizes the issue if the board recognizes an issue on their own they can self cure but it basically that you can read it but it basically to cure it you just publish it you present it to the public and that's how you cure it right you say oh some might hit reply all now we have to do this the other problem with also is not just reply all it can be because kachi you said something about individually replies if you get five individual replies that still counts instead of one reply all right okay or a chain so if one person forwards it to another who forwards it to another and five people get on the chain that also constitutes a quorum so it's not just a reply all issue okay i'll step back you need the forum and and the email so it's not like if two of you were to have a conversation or three of you were you had to be that it involved more than right yeah so that was the problem just to give some historical perspective for the brain tree select board that used to have three members but that meant that two people couldn't talk to each other because as soon as two people spoke about something you had a quorum and it was a meeting so at that point they decided to go to five members because that allows two people to talk about something and you haven't created a meeting you're having a discussion about an issue it's not a public forum so that's how that plays out questions and then executive session um so what can be discussed in executive session let me see i keep losing that document i have it open and i keep i can't remember which tab it's under all right um so executive session or when can a board meet in private and basically there are two instances where a board or two um types of meeting where a board can meet in private and they are deliberative session and executive session deliberative session we don't use much it's about um acting as a quasi judicial body i think at times we have perhaps um actually met in deliberative session but uh but called it executive session when we were when we um discuss hearings that we've had um grievances um but anyway executive session is it's pretty it's pretty strict and limited in what we can um what we can talk about and really it's um like for us it's the it's confidential staff issues it's confidential student issues anything else personal evaluations employments firings things like that yeah um real when when we were trying to figure out our design team i was thinking we did do that okay because that's sort of there was a thing in here the appointment or employment so we were appointing people to be on the design team so we did that we sort of talked about that in executive session that was an appropriate use of executive session because we were we were appointing people right or not really are i mean because we were kind of it was sort of but it was like people were volunteering to be a part of a group so was that appointing somebody or is that not i would guess not really sorry this is daniel jelvin again just because that's more that i think and if lane is on there whoever you know correct me but that's more for a municipal body because we have appointed positions on certain commissions so like a zoning commissioner or planning board or things like that where they're in a pointed position and it's truly in the statutes as an appointed position so that there is a there is a strict statutory definition of what an appointed position is so i would say unless it falls into that it's not necessarily um i have a question a clarifying question so the executive session does not and this is this is not a personal thing at all but it does not automatically include lane correct correct so we can okay um because i feel like it's and he most frequently has the issues that we or brings the issues that we discuss in executive session but um there have been times that i thought really the question should be put to all of us does anyone right have something to bring to executive session and then it could be with him or without him okay thank you yes so like when we if we want to discuss lanes evaluation we can do that in executive session so i have another i i have another question because when i when i said when i did the the motion to go into executive session when i was reading before it's like you're supposed to be like referencing the law which is like oh crap yeah i was like i don't remember exactly so i was like oh for privacy and something else i just sort of added on there but that is part of what we kind of need to be doing which means we may need to like slow down and and be able to pull this document up and re-reference like the the reason you know and the legal you need to have the statutory reference there you need to say for personnel issues under 301d3 or a3 or whatever it is i forget the citation but yeah you have to say each one so generally the biggest ones are are legal issues so if there's a lawsuit or a pending lawsuit or litigation if there's a real estate purchase for personnel issues which is fairly broad but generally it's evaluations and terminations and personnel problems contract negotiations wage issues well i'm trying to think of the other times when lane has something we don't necessarily know exactly what the issue is so that's something that the board hair well and does he know right from this i don't know if during the no because not necessarily this time he didn't know he said he didn't think we would need an executive session and then there were several issues that came up personnel etc in the between time so i don't is he able to say yes we do need to go into executive session because uh i mean he always says yeah for a personnel issue or student issue which are definitely legitimate reasons to be in private session but you know he we never reference like under which statutes right and i don't think i don't think we're actually required to but the vermont league of cities and towns recommends it oh we're not required to oh you don't think we're required to but it's recommended and then to confirm we need to vote to enter executive session right yes we don't need to vote to exit correct okay you just say it's over and state whether you made whether there's an action or take a vote if you have to take a vote based on what happened and see the time correct yes and then if a decision is made in executive session we have to discuss our reasoning don't isn't that isn't that right on certain things certain things well we can only vote on it outside of executive set yes no voting can take place in executive session is that right yes and there can be discussion well you can vote on a real estate matter inside of executive session i think that's the only one that you can so this is very clear very clear let's see um and then chris had asked about how we how we cure or fix a violation so we have to have if we get a written notice of an alleged violation of the law if it's an inadvertent violation of the law then we have 14 calendar days we have to acknowledge it and then we have 14 calendar days to cure it and that is done by publishing it at our next meeting is that right and then adopting specific measures to prevent future violations including training regarding the open meeting law or implementation of internal procedures to assist future open meeting law compliance okay quick quick other question so if you if somebody recognizes let's say you recognized it rachel and you wanted to then have the board decide to rectify it you couldn't probably in an email would you have to enter executives this session to talk with each other about it or would you have to bring it up in a meeting because you probably couldn't email everybody and get everybody's opinion they would have to go on to the agenda so like during the next school board meeting you would have to say one of the agenda items is that we believe that we violated this and we need to cure it yep okay and the cure to that would be basically to have the email chain published so that the public could could review what we had discussed right now when in the text that you sent out that you said I believe it said that we could do a just agenda items um through emails and stuff that wouldn't violate the law so if we were you know if someone had a question and wanted to basically have lane be more prepared to have more information that would be a okay use of that email chain and as long as we didn't discuss it we were just basically preparing for the meeting yeah you could send it to everyone brian the problem is the reply all um or you could just send it to the board chair who would then put it on the put it consider it for the agenda I don't know if you'd necessarily put it on lower or if you would or if you would talk about it and decide whether to put it on or the two of you could go back and like the board chair and you could go back and forth on whether it actually needed to be an agenda item or just as long as it's not everybody deciding on it yeah well there are times that in our meetings where someone will send out an email and say by the way you need to look at this before we show up at the next meeting because this is on the agenda right that's fine if you're disseminating information in that way as long as everybody's not writing back to say oh that's junk why are we even talking about that or here's how I feel about that right you recognize this on the agenda you're giving out information and it's just helping people prepare that's not a problem is this is this helpful yes don't all talk I like I like having the the document too so I would love to have the the the thicker one too that lane gave you yeah I can send them on the lane I'll for the one that lane sent to me is there anything else we should know does anyone want to ask any other questions or discuss anything further and just so you know in our policies it says a board member may recommend or request an item for board discussion by submitting the item to the chair no later than five days before the agenda is being is to be warned so that's in our policies right now so if you want as a board member the chair doesn't you can you can recommend or request an item I don't know if the chair has the ability to just say no I'm not going to do that whatever people have requested things and I've responded to that person and then you know we've decided to usually add it so but you know then it just turns up on the agenda or in the agenda packet you know so you may not have necessarily known that that happened right I just wanted to make sure people knew that that was in there under agenda planning in our policies so thanks Ann yeah thanks for doing this Rachel I know open meeting can be so confusing with the little intricacies of what you can and can't discuss and like I told you I've read that document like or pieces of that it's a light and I'm like what does that mean well I'm glad and thanks Daniel for helping us oh no problem it's it's tricky we had problem we had problems on the select board with people that have been on the select board for seven or eight years still hit and reply all to every email and you just have to keep correcting and correcting until it gets fixed so that's the biggest one that gets everybody but scheduling scheduling you can hit reply all yeah but anything substantial material discussions yeah you can right right thank you very much Rachel I appreciate it yep thanks everybody um if there's no further questions is there a motion to adjourn don't move all second all right see you guys next month thanks thank you good night