All righty, so I would like to call the meeting to order at 6.04. And I'd like to get started first. I know it's not on the agenda. But by introducing, our two student board members are asking them to introduce themselves. So take the way. I'm Fiona Ballancourt. I'm a junior. I'm Lily Hudson, and I'm a junior. Welcome. Thank you. Welcome, ladies. How were you chosen? We were elected. Wonderful. All right. Are there any adjustments to the agenda? Anything we should have? Do they know who we are? Would you like us to introduce ourselves? I'm not going to say anything. Especially because we're on camera, that would be good. Can I see the camera? Jasmine. So I'm Lisa Floyd, the chair of the White River Union District Board. First lab's the superintendent of the Supervisory Board. Owen Bradley's White River Valley Middle School Principal. Andrews Wolland-Beckle Elementary Principal. David Wolland-South 4 Health and Elementary Principal. Reed McCracken, high school principal. I'm Sarah McEnroe, I'm the business manager for the supervisory union. Rodney Ringville, board member. Shannon Morrell-Cordnillius, I'm a board member. Lisa McCrory, board member. Thank you all. All right. No adjustments to the agenda? I'd just like to point something out. Madam Chairwoman, John Hubbell is here to speak about the Bethel heating system. OK. So just so you know why he's here in the audience. OK. For the boiler update. That's on the agenda. Eating system. We thought you were more accurate. OK, I'm sorry. No, you're fine. OK. And that's going to be part of what part of the notes? That's down on 9.1. OK. And if you, under adjustments to the agenda, if you'd like to change that to heating system update. Hear that in central Hall, or? Yeah, we can definitely move that up to, we'll move that up to four. And we'll public comment after that. That's OK with you. OK. A sign times and a time keeper. Who would like to be our time keeper? Well, I am experienced. I think it's so hard to find a keeper. It is Rodney Rainville. He's working on his resume. OK. And I feel like if we could keep all sections to under 15 minutes, that's reasonable. Does that make sense? OK. All right. OK. So heating system update. Thank you. You don't remember my name, John Hubble, and I think that's all Mr. Bradley and Mrs. Baldwin asked me in a moment to give you kind of an update on what's going on with our heating system. I've been working with Alliance. They have been, I think the issue was before that there was a fear that there may have been a lot of moisture, water, and the thermostats will come to find out. Fortunately enough for us, there wasn't really that much. There haven't been, there have been some thermostats that needed to be replaced, but nearly not what we expected from them. So I'm working with them, and they have just about completed the installation of the new thermostat with the exception of platform two, which is on order and they're coming up every day now, hopefully. They ran the furnace all day today and are a goodly portion of the morning for this morning. And I went around to each one of the individual teachers to find out whether or not they were comfortable, what sort of expectations they had. And I noticed Alliance had spent a goodly amount of time in calibrating all the thermostats. And I would say that we averaged just between 68 and 70. It was perfect throughout the building. So I guess I kind of maybe jump again the last time I was here, but.  Was that in my lifetime? Something always happens. Well, it is worrisome when we're thinking about heating and building for all of the community's children. So I appreciate that. And I appreciate that we're at a place where we know that it's working successfully. And as soon as we get the audit report and we know the funds available, we'll think of a more proactive plan to be in a good place for next year. Did Alliance give any report on the condition of the heating system? They're very happy with the condition of the boilers. One's 92 and the other is 89 years old, or constructed in that year. And they seem to think when we cleaned them out this spring, there was quite a bit of particulate and stuff by Nash that had to be removed from it. But we did that successfully. And I think they're quite happy with the condition of it. All down. Any other questions? So at this point, the concerns really were the water and the thermostats last meeting. Overly concerned. And you were worried that if the water was in there, the thermostats wouldn't work. The rooms wouldn't get heat because the system wouldn't recognize it. But now you've identified just a couple. Hopefully, that's been taken care of. And we're not too much further ado. Good. Let me see if you can quiet you. It's not to say that there isn't a sense of urgency and to address how we deal with the rest of it.  So we really should be thinking about it. We're great. Yes, ma'am. And we are. That's the plan. Shall we go with Mr. Hubbell? Thank you very much. You're quite welcome. Thank you, John. All right. That moves us to public comment. Do you have time? I took 15 minutes for each section. Not too much time, though. You're going to report on that in a minute? That was three minutes. We can't see not to exceed 15 minutes per section. All right, public comment. Hearing none, we'll move on. I was about to actually hear somebody comment through the book. I could set carry up by saying that there is a consultant working with music teachers. That's not the last one, though. All right. Public comment literally just came in, as I said it. And there was no one. And now you're here. So I feel like I should say it again. Now the designated public comment, please. All right, thank you. OK. Attached to this packet, you'll see minutes from our previous meetings. And I would entertain a motion to approve them as one consent agenda if people feel comfortable with them. And we pass this down. Under the board members receive the packet. Usually board members receive the minutes within a couple of days of the meetings. So will these board members receive them? Yes, we can ask Kristi to have them. To the left. We'll need your emails if you could maybe write them in the sign-in notepad. That's in the spec. We could pass that on to Kristi and ask what your input you've got. I'm sure Kristi has your student email site. Well, let's. OK. I'm not in that ballot court anymore. Yep. OK. Will you put in the minutes that they need to be added? Mm-hmm. Please. Yep. OK. And you can share that for a few seconds. Sorry. The list is finished. I make a motion to approve them as a consent agenda. OK. Walk. I second the motion. OK. All in favor of approving the minutes as a single consent agenda say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Do we have anything for board comment? We're on to reports to the board. The business managers report. Auditors are here for week three. We've been plugging along getting information that they need to complete their process. So that's still not having any focus right now. OK. I did receive an inquiry from Orange County Care and Child Center. They did some reconciliation of their pre-K tuition. Mm-hmm. And it was discovered that invoices were not submitted to White River Unified District for several of their months, totaling $2,874.98. And I advise that because it's outside of the timeframe allowed in the partnership agreement that I would need to come to you as the board to determine if you're willing to pay those invoices and all that. So are those White River Unified District or White River Valley Unified District? White River Valley Unified District. These are your applications? I'm sorry. The whole SU or just us? No. They're just yours. Just that they didn't send the invoices for your school. For your kiddos that are coming to Orange County. And when were those invoices? When should they have been submitted? Invoices are due by the 15th of the month and paid by the 15th of the following month. And according to the partnership agreement, this is I just remind us all from the pre-K coordinator transition. The invoices should have all been submitted by the end of June, but they had turned over in their position also at work. So they were trying to do the recognition. I took those in time to get these out. Okay. And the total value again? $2,874.98. So this is the? Last year. Yeah. So this is paying for pre-K students. It didn't come to our place. No, it didn't come to our place. And theoretically we should be counting those in our student account, right? So that we get those invoices. So that we get those invoices. So that we get those invoices. So that we get those invoices. So that we get some money. And I think that's pulling them onto that. Do we know if those students were counted? The pre-K students weren't counted the same way that they're going to be counted now. So I couldn't tell you specifically if they were counted. We just need to make sure. But it's paid for through the pre-K people. And they have to go through, according to the partnership agreement, they have to be a member of the partnership. And they have to meet the conditions that are required to get the 10 hours of public pre-K assistance. So that's what this would look like. And we get some reimbursement from the state for that, correct? Can you show what I would need to double-check on that? I don't know if that's all connected to the... I think we keep that count of those equalized people. There's something like that. I know they are counted in your EDM. They're like a 0.46. Andrew, I think that's a good question. If they didn't bill us for them, they might not have submitted their attendance. And it might be like they were... they might not be on the books. I think we should... I would recommend we research that. And I don't know who... Do you know Bruce who was... who tracked that prior to this? Because it's all done through the collaborative. So I'm not sure. I can't figure it out. I just don't know how it works. So I would make a motion that if they were students that we were compensated for, that we would pull it down. Like I don't know how to make a motion. But can we make... approve this request as long as the paper work is done? As long as we were able to count them. Yeah. Well, yeah. Maybe we should just revisit it. If you'd like to... After it's actually been invested. So do you want to make a motion? Or do we want to table this? I don't think you need to do a motion. I'll figure it out for us now. I don't think it needs to be that official. I was thinking that you could just do it if it is... No. I'll send it to you by email. Great. Perfect. Perfect. All right. Thank you. Anything else in your report? I am working with the principals on next year's budget. Okay. That's all I got. So I've been... I wonder too, I know that you've been working on a plan to have Maryland work less. I just wondered if there's any progress related to hiring people to help. I have not wrote the ad to go into paper because we are still, as the leadership team within the central office, determining what our transition plan is going to be. So we had a meeting on it today. Okay. Is there any timeline related to that plan? I hope to have a draft transition for the executive board meeting on the 28th. Okay. I think this is an aspirational document. It's something that we want to become. And there has to be multiple steps in order to get there. Over probably multiple budgets to get there. We have several... We have reported on several of the people in the current business department that will... may be retiring in the next year or two years. And we have to consider that. And exactly what we have, we've engaged the auditors in this because they have a really good handle on what we need going forward within our budgets. And so basically that's what we meant about today. I would like to be able to share the executive board and after that, and the rest of the members of the board exactly where we're going with this over a period of time instead of just trying to satisfy the moment. Yeah, we can't demand that right now. Yeah. Several things have transpired over the last two weeks that brought lots of things to the table. So for the sake of the notes, you're going to have a plan... A draft transition plan. Okay. For the executive board meeting on the 28th. I guess my... And can you tell me exactly what this plan is for? Staffing in the business office. Future staffing in the business office. And I guess that's exciting to me that there's a transition plan being developed and that we're thinking big picture. I guess I'm just worried about the level of burnout that we've seen over the last two years and that it's staffing isn't where we need it to be that we'll continue to see that trend. So I appreciate the work you're doing right now. Just on the next year's budget as you're going through the process and I know that we ground up with some things where things got coded differently than what they were kind of budgeted as. So just as you're going through the process with the principles, make sure you guys are on the page as to what everything is. I continue to be a working progress. Yes. Good. Okay. I have three more questions. Shannon. Yes. So I know that last year we had all kinds of a mess with attendance and how many students did we have and the state system was a mess and then it turns out in Rochester it was who knows how they were counting people. How is that going forward? I want our community as confident as possible that we are counting students. We're counting them correctly. We're reaching out and finding all the students who are these preschoolers who we should be counting. What is happening with those numbers and with that process? The students during the office last Wednesday they went through the web to school training with Ray which is what drives the information that gets reported to the SLDS system to the state. Once that official enrollment file goes up November 15th the state starts running ABM reports daily and we can go in, we can pull those reports and we can confirm those reports and confirm our students. The challenge that we're going to have is in districts that are sending districts if the students are not appropriately coded to the right residents or Residence C it can skew our numbers which is what we discovered was happening in the Rochester and Stockbridge situation. It wasn't anything that was done on our end on several of the students it was actually the schools receiving them that are responsible to report that information. So I worked with Jen Perry on a plan on how once that system starts to generate that how we can track it and check it out. So we have checks and balances in place and we'll prevent that from happening again. We can't make any promises it's a work in progress at the state level and the preschool report was just released today as to how we have to reflect them up separately. What this has done is we're warming up a lot from it. We also, you are not as vulnerable for some of those kids because we don't tuition out and we couldn't have seen kids showing up out of district tuition receiving towns but in the case of this district you're not vulnerable to that because you keep your kids here and so it's not so much an issue but I think we learned a lot I think the state learned a lot about all of this they're trying to transition to a computerized system and you're only as good with your data as the people that are putting it in so they need to be well trained in order to be able to make sure we don't make those errors. I think we have a really good end on the Rochester and Stockbridge now because we really want students by student to be addressed by address making sure we knew where every one of them were and by the way their tax that they had assessment that they had approved by the voters went down after this happened because we came out a little better they got under the cap they also have to have enough as much money as they thought was going to be required so they had how many students? I'm forgetting this now. I don't have any more credits for in a district like Rochester and Stockbridge one student makes a huge amount of difference that's not so much the case here it is the case here but not so much as we have to do so much more. As long as there's no feeling that we need to go through our numbers student by student that all happened long after the rest of the town and the SU had sort of settled everything out alright that brings us to our superintendent's report not on the list but I wanted to just tell you we have a new hire Jan Crow who's a preschool coordinator she's working two and a half days a week her time replacing Karen Flett they've done some transition work together and Jan is very experienced having worked in the Windsor district over a number of years she's probably got 30 years in so we kind of really lucked out in finding her she's jumped right in and is working now at the office Cindy's around you're probably going to have to share because I don't think I have enough for everybody and don't disregard the top of it where it says Keeneburg School District because this is an example of the chain command document that we would like to have under our under our heading going forward I've been carrying this around for about two years hoping that we could pass a policy which is in the works right now and also put this up on the web describing exactly how to access people I thought it was a good representation of how it should go turns out that Owen just informed me that he graduated from this school district in New Jersey so I'm wondering maybe if I should tear this up and maybe start again I left when I was 12 years old my parents still haven't come it's a good example of you know if you work for a club you're not going to get a new one it's a good example of how we might organize this and I'd like to do it for each of you so I've asked a lot of the principals I believe have seen this and they try to organize their own structure using the names that they have and numbers and so on and so forth so it's just an example for you Keeneburg is in New Jersey and it's they must have a lot of problems because they seem to do this very well right so we would have ours would be different in terms of names right Andrew being the last person before the superintendent on the Bethel Elementary campus and we don't have the director no some of these things are not right so that makes sense yeah he's got a Google doc and I don't know whether everybody's added to it or not and it's with my name off so anyway I'll just give you that as an example we're just support grants actually Tara and I spent quite a bit of time trying to find the notes around this we finally tracked down the meeting when it was and turns out that Tara did have some notes on the decision how to do this I recall July 25th or June 25th they were June 25th 2018 board meeting do you have that total I know what it is and I got figures roughly 80,000 right and last year we wanted to access funds for field trips no one has touched it right there's no process right and the reason that and we've asked for that well it needs to be done with the executive board or the full board somehow and we now have a request from Rochester and Stockbridge to access those funds but because we don't have any mechanism I don't know what to tell them but we also have one other that is now we will be merger expenditures well and we asked last spring for funds to be released for the trips that are at our merged middle school so at the 5th grade level bringing those groups together to nature's classroom and the 8th grade field trip to Washington DC because I was at the full board meeting where we said that we weren't going to allocate them to specific schools and we weren't going to divide them up like pie based on your percentage of students etc in the district but instead we were going to look for things that were like added value for students and so I would submit that our request came in quite some time ago so I think we need to establish a process for that fund but when I say we it's the executive board we're going to make that decision on how those funds are now going to be handled moving forward if that means that you submit an official proposal to the board they approve it what not I think the struggle is that it's not a representative entity so at the point that I made the request last year at the full board it was tabled until we had a process and so it's like a dog chasing its own tail okay we will have a process develop at this next executive board meeting because I'm in favor of dividing it up like pie if we can't come up with a better process but I mean otherwise money's still there we have there are still there are still legal fees there were student issues and also for property transfers I have not heard yet and then you have to consider where Strapford and Sharon in all of this because they didn't work they didn't have expenses they didn't have expenses I'm feeling like we're having this again budget support would be so unneeded they didn't work executive board at the end of this October 28th 28th executive board meeting we have a full agenda so making sure that that will be on the agenda for the next there's the meeting visit at the SU and that's for the executive board yep and that's next week 28th is that next week? don't rush it on we're going to have auditors will be recording out that night right so they will be in attendance and we'll be recording just Rod I believe he's the head down awesome thank you so if you look in your packet third from the last page under the new if you know anything about act 173 that is a way of changing the way districts use the money and special ed in that kind of thing there have been some comments recently that part of the process is that we should lock some money up for those kids placed out of this for their general education not all of the work they do at these places has to do with special needs issues there should be some general funds a lot of general funds that will be charged to each of the districts that send those kids out of district we've been told by the secretary to start to create our own program and if you look at the memorandum on the next page it really explains this idea of carving out some money from each of the districts there's also a list of out of district placements for each of the districts in the SU and how many kids are out what the cost per student is that we there's not really I had a conversation on Friday and there's a wide variance between superintendents of how they're going to handle this whether some of them are not too excited about getting involved in this because we haven't had real clear guidance yet what Deb is doing is taking the district average for state average for tuition around the state $15,933 and applying it to each one of these kids and then assessing each of the districts that have those kids you having the most because you have 17 kids out in placements somewhere some of those kids are eligible to come back but we don't have space for them others probably won't come back but nobody's given us guidance on how much money we should set aside and so Deb said well I'm just going to do what the state average is and we'll see how that goes it's a huge cost to your budget about that and I'm not quite sure that that's enough because we don't have the guidance and some of my fellow superintendents have gotten clarification on this far more than the state average is what they were looking for us to do and I think my fellow superintendents feel like until we get clarification on what this is we're going to go status quo for this next budget on doing this and it goes hand in hand with what the secretary has said you guys need to start working on your own local programs because it's going to be three you're not going to have the funds to send kids out of district at expensive places and on the back of that list it gives you some idea about the exposure that you will have depending on where these kids go and they go all the way from the new school at $123,000 a year to a rate of $35,000 and usually words don't set where these kids go it's IEP teams making decisions on that so so potentially we have savings with the restorative classroom related to East Valley Academy and Raven those are typically or we don't have a high school model yet for restorative classroom which Raven might if we had the hands on project based component I've been talking to I've been talking to Central Vermont which is Swingstown Northfield and also with Randolph about partnering alternative high school for those kids because those are the ones that are still out that we can't bring back because we don't have a program or we need to change our own programming of the high school level to be able to accept those kids back and have when you're facing a couple hundred thousand dollars in cost maybe it's more efficient to bring them back and support them in our own program as long as so this is an an issue that's going to heat up especially when the legislature comes back but probably before that because we're getting various opinions on how much exposure we're going to have in the next budget when we met with this problem when we met with the secretary about three weeks ago he looked at us all and he said are you ready for Act 173 and I turned to him and I said are you ready for Act 173 because unless you guys support us it's going to be very hard going to put these on the locals basically these costs on the locals so this is a very popular topic and we're reading on Friday as well about how business managers are handling it for this district it's $270,000 so I'm not being to sneeze at that thank you so I'll just clarify the students that we're sending out will be currently counting on our student members I believe so because that would be money that would and then we then they get paid for these placements that are currently getting paid for out of the social education budget and some percentage of that is reimbursed by the state some of that is reimbursed but then we get depending on how costly the placement is we get some for the most difficult kids and the most costly kids we get a ramped up percentage of state aid for them and so the change would be that we need to allocate kind of this cost per student out of our local budget and the remainder would still be a special education budget the rub here is that what Deb is forecasting is a number that we're not sure about but I'm just going over I don't care about the actual number I just want to know what you think is what it's going to be what they're trying to do is the general ed cost for students that are placed outside of their districts are the responsibility of the local budgets and then only the special education services that are provided get paid for by the special education program and the challenge there is the agency of education can't give clear guidance as to what that general ed cost number is the report that we saw on Friday ranged from $30,000 to over $100,000 that just for the general ed cost side of things so that's where they really need to give some clarification because this could be a severely under budgeted number for several business managers set on Friday then we end up in a deficit spend situation because we didn't use the right number for general ed so on a per student basis it could cost up to $25,000 $40,000 a student an actual cost so the independent schools have to submit to the agency of education their breakout of general ed versus special education that's where the AOE then has to figure out are they going to use an average or are they going to use a percentage what that guidance is and that hasn't been released yet and the reimbursement only happens if the student is not in anything yes we take 504 kids the engineers started the program but going out I think we do have some kids that are on 504s that are out we don't get the same reimbursement but we don't get the same reimbursement right it's regular ed for that so I just think that just thinking back to last year at our annual meeting people were curious about those percentages of those who were placing out that didn't qualify for special education but we sent out because it's the right academic placement for sure yeah and like I'd be curious to know what the reimbursement was for each of these categories anyway because where are you going to be adding $15,000 or $16,000 to our vocal budget but that's coming out of the SU budget so the special education assessment is going to be smaller for the SU portion of the budget so are we actually going to be adding 270 or is it going to be more than that that's going to be offset some by the special education cost coming down that's the actual percentage difference I realize we don't have to do this for the next we don't have to do this for this upcoming budget cycle but it will do for the fall thanks well I'm expecting most of the superintendents sitting around the table were going to status quo they weren't even bugging on the $15,000 I don't know the report what it says here is that SUs that do not currently have a general versus special education that's a matter we'll have one additional year so is that additional year this budget cycle if so we should definitely take a bin with that I mean I'm looking ahead Deb's reports to the state on expenditures I think are due today and she's put hers in like last Thursday but they may get kicked back to us I don't know I guess I'm trying to find out whether this one additional year is the current school year or next school year but again most of the superintendents sitting around the table are not doing anything just to clarify next school year that it goes into effect or next school year that we can have one additional year is the next school year I think it's probably 21-22 okay I'll be clear on that yeah well I can continue because I could change I mean there's no these are all hypotheticals definitely take the extra year if we get it right because we need to not bring in an increase this year and with health insurance etc I'm already increased so this cycle this probably won't go into play until the 21-22 school year is that the we hope not although I was talking to the current superintendent and they haven't we at least have tried to show good faith and put something in they haven't done this when those reports get to the AOE and they see that what happens next are they going to say you know we told you to make the good faith efforts the problem is unless somebody can give us clarity around this I have seen a couple letters that the AOE has sent back to the superintendent saying no this is what your general ed cost should be pulled out we saw two letters from one of the superintendents so if you put this in what you're sending to them are they going to expect us to pay this then I mean can we not submit this and we've already submitted but we can change it so I mean if this is what we submit and then we wind up having to pay it even though we could have had an extra year I asked Deb why did we put this in we're going to be the only ones doing it and she said well we can make some alterations at some point you know this is not pretty news for anybody I mean it really shoots a hole in the state funding and her budget the special ed budget went down because much of this is being thrown on the local budget so you know it just seems to get this information it's nice to have it going in advance so that we could plan a budget around it and this is a it makes us look bad as a board like we're not sharing enough information to the general public when clearly he's written thrown at us you know out of the blue with no no opportunity to plan when you do your budget we'll have definitive information because all the reports will be in and there will be clarification because there's real confusion right now right so you'll have it by the time your budget gets developed we hope the AOE is still down what the FTE's or more so they are short by at least 28 people at least and why aren't they telling those positions nobody wants sorry I think they're very challenging to fill this has been going on for a while maybe now that it gets out maybe maybe well I just think it's challenging they're being asked to do more with less like many agencies when this is applied to whenever this budget cycle next time when we do have to do it and ask them about how it's going to change the SU especially education assessments I also want to tell you guys you're not helpless in this you can contact people and speak out if you're as we get closer to that budget and see how it's going to impact I expect we'll get some clarity around this now that the special ed reports have been in financial reports have been in for next year so sorry if there's bad news I don't know whether this is bad or not it might be how are we doing time wise oh more than 15 years well we did like 3 years so let's say 6.9 for the under-principles report okay thank you alright so it was 20 minutes but we did 3 sessions right yeah so awesome alright so we're supposed to report e-mails to us make a note to add Fiona and Millie to the press I want to prove that you have copies of the principles report that we're going to look at so we'll have to pull it up since it was late in coming but if you pull it up you can link to the links yeah why one of the things that doesn't work I mean I had permissions it was corrected 45 minutes ago oh that's all yeah 45 minutes ago I want to see who's reading it your diary yeah it's still still not it so the administrative goals was I think it's definitely works now I didn't get it to work but again it needs work on my phone and lastly I need 3 documents to it just goes up do you want one of these we're good no no no I've got this oh okay it's the it's the first link the unified 2019 I'll triple check screen yeah exactly I need to project the goals I don't need to do you want to give it over to you yeah that would be awesome we'll just sign this up we did so as we shared with you in last spring we are working with a consultant Peter Clark who's a seasoned Vermont principal for principal principal member of schools trained by the state as a mentor he happens to be by a mentor he somebody who worked who Owen worked for many years ago in Montculier so we have some connections he's been kind of leading us through a process of doing some visioning and goal work collectively as the four of us and the short version of this is we have four goals for ourselves for the district for this year the first is to work on forming an identity for the merged schools so we've had two joint meetings so far this year which is two more than we had last year not including SUI meetings where we're working together with everybody and we'll have our next one in December an example of some of the work we're doing together is the Alice active shooter training which we did back in September and we're doing trauma informed learning work together some of it we're doing on our own campuses and some of us are coming together so working on that and trying to shape our own vision from the thoughts and minds of the staff here in Bethlehem the second is to align our work with the strategic plan for the supervisory union that gets pre-detailed if you're able to follow the link and want to read more about that but an example the strategic plan is working on the literacy initiative for example goal three is working on administrative team building we kind of just jumped right into things last summer and painting the building and ordering new things and coming up with new signs and didn't spend any time collectively on administrative retreat like all of you do so in many ways the work we've done since July or since end of June has provided us with some growth in our working relationships with one another and trying to create a more resilient and forward thinking and then finally we've got some programs that we're working on which you've heard us talk about before they include the music program that we've been working on outdoor program and looking at the MTSS looking at the math program that pilot work that's starting this year is that what MTSS is no MTSS is multi-tiered that's what happens when you come late to an open house we talked about that in the parent open house it's the multi-tiered system so the systems we're putting in place to provide help to students and each campus has a MTSS coordinator now in addition to the resources we had last year we had the intention of being able to meet students needs and help them find support within the classroom and at a universal level but also beyond the walls of the school so helping to make connections with community resources that may be able to help out with student needs that go above and beyond what we're able to provide for within the walls of the school and I repeat I've looked over the home school letter has it gone out yet? no okay looking forward to that thank you we have hard copies if you want see one actually we'll pass them all over perfect thank you is that the whole report month month report well I mean there's more I've heard it out the tuition student enrollment reports it's something that the board had asked for last month and it's an interesting read yes these numbers are hard to pin down because we think we have a student system but maybe they weren't here when ADM was counted so they may not actually count when we actually come to counting students but by the numbers that we've got today and our best guess is we think we've gained 14 tuition students over last year which is really happy positive news and we are pretty sure we have nine additional resident students over last year so we've got a total of 23 is that right that doesn't add up quite right but also maybe it's 23 instead of 33 now it comes to it's the gain of 14 tuition students so our total number of tuition students in the district is now 33 so we had 19 tuition students last year we have 14 additional over last year so that's a nice pick up and on top of that there are nine additional students who live in Vethel or South Royalton again that's by our best first October 15 yeah some of those numbers are from earlier today but some of them are pre October 1st so but if we just a kind of cocktail napkin calculation we look at each student additional student $16,000 that should be a revenue increase of over half million dollars that should help them in the budgeting process as we look to next year so and for drilling down there's 23 more students in the middle school than there was last year that doesn't mean we have 23 more students that means we are stretching our middle school capacity we have between 18 and 20 kids on average in every class that's right where we want to be because of a huge sixth grade class largely and because of the way we configure our groups have we gotten tuition students in the middle school? more than last year I think it's actually down one there's very few no it's on that first page actually we moved six into the high school and so we only have the one we have one middle school student looks like this year any other questions about the principals record or any other things you'd like to highlight? well I'd like to point out if you go into budgeting that we're at the time of the year we're thinking about classroom configurations for next year and stemming off the guidance from school quality standards and the number of students you would have in a class our targets are to have a minimum of 15 students K-2 per class with a maximum of 20 and a minimum of 18 students in grades 4 through 5 with a maximum of 23 we're using those numbers for our plan for next year can you repeat that? it's in the notes we cut and paste or just paste it a whole thing so we have a minimum of 15 and a maximum of 20 but when you have a grade that's 22 kids are you looking at combining grades to make multiple grade groups? I'm looking at everything in lots of ways yeah, multiple classrooms is a common way to compensate there's some that probably just won't exactly fit if it's a 5th grade with 23 kids that's very different than a 5th grade with 23 kids what they're really saying is that those days of carrying really small classes we have to look at that's maybe in some cases like in a calculus class that might be all that are available but we have to be very thoughtful about how many we run and the levels we have a large first grade calculus class I'll give you one one more announcement middle school will be going to Boston to see the lion thing the entire middle school when's that happening? 24 they want to go 24 are you using a school bus or are you using a coach bus? if you take the school buses there's no school buses to do the runs I went to see the lion king with the middle school maybe it was 2 years ago or 3 years ago and we took the school bus and I'm still in pain she went to so it's 140 students leaving at 8.30 am and they will return at 8.30 pm let me know if you need extra shopping or more wait a minute Tara I'm taking Cooper and my mom that day so if you want to ride you just got to get the day off yeah I can do that can you stick to it? I'll be there that day anyway just so you know thank you that's awesome great any other questions? thank you all for all of this I appreciate it that brings us to action ladies we've already discussed the heating system the budget build and annual meeting planning I feel like we may need to bump that to November given the audit coming the end of the month yes and a lot of the stuff that I need to report to you all we have a few more principals hinges on the audits so we're going to table this until next month if no one objects driver's ed program update I do so the state reimbursement rate is $71 so I was able to confirm that since our last meeting $71 per student less indirect less indirect what does that mean again? it's less direct cost so it's $71 per student and then the direct cost seems to be the insurance total cost so the reimbursement for the last report was $327.56 per student no total okay that was for the summer program this was from July 1 through 9.30 19 this was the last report that was due on today that we filed on the second so that was the calculations down at the bottom it was insurance days on 92 daily rate of $1.07 insurance total cost $98.44 so reimbursable enrollments was 6 times $71 for a total of $426 plus the direct cost of $98.44 for a total amount of reimbursement of $327.56 so the reason why we wanted this was because in order to get this money we need to let the other town's kids into our program it does not seem worth it to have our kids not have access to our program for $300 $300 yeah so before you guys jump on that bandwagon let's think about this if you're going to charge families the full amount of what it costs for the program that's a pretty big number for a lot of poor families to swallow it's about $700 a student right I mean we're just talking about keeping it the way it is now our kids have priority and we don't get this $300 from the state including our students in districts now and we're only getting $300 from the state I think the big issue at our last meeting was that because we're taking the small amount of funds it means that any student from inside our district or outside could enroll for the class and it would go to seniority based on age so that means that some of our own students could get bumped at a later date because of other students coming in to take the class and so the biggest concern was making sure that our students had priority the only way to prioritize our students and then allow others in when and if there was room would be to not accept that $71 minus insurance for students sounds like we're getting maybe $300 and I believe Reid brought this in is that other districts charge they don't make it an item in their budget they allow it to be cost neutral for the districts and allow students and their families to pay what it would cost for a teacher and that's probably $100 per family and so I guess I understand what you're saying as far as maybe not paying and therefore not having to pay by those rules but on the other hand if you were to take it out of your budget like some districts have done and charge families to do it it's quite expensive to do that I don't think we want to charge families for this for me that's a real equity issue however I think that prioritizing our own students and having the right to do that by not accepting $300 on an $11 million budget is okay with me well there's probably that was just one that was only one class so it's basically so the summer semester is due in October the fall semester is due on February 15th so whatever is enrolled in the fall semester and then July 15th is the due date for the spring semester so depending on what you have for enrollment and that was just the current rate for that one submission $60 per student we currently have a full class of 20 students so we would have reimbursement of $14.20 for the fall semester minus direct costs direct costs are about ten bucks a student looks like insurance days on was $92 a daily rate of $107 so they gave the insurance cost for this time frame of $98 and $44 for the whole group for the six here I think we need to do a little bit more research because if the state underwrites the insurance for the student drivers I don't know what the I mean that may be what they're charging us if we had to use a private insurer because if we use the state insurance we have to play by the state rules then maybe it would cost us more money to have a private insurance cover our student drivers I don't know so we need those numbers to look at our next meeting just to see what the scenarios are you can say that the other question I have is do we have a lot of students that are waiting I believe we got everybody in the fall that wanted to take it but I'm a little bit worried that we're going to have a bottleneck in the spring that we I think we have 26 to 27 students on the wait list only 20 spots in the spring so and how many from out of our district that's important to know how much does that impact I haven't drilled down to that level yet but can you have that information too by next meeting so we know which students how it's impacting our district because I thought there were some students that had to be wait listed to spring because we were folding in students from outside of our district that may be the case and we're a huge rural district and for some families it means a lot for students to be able to drive in terms of access to extracurriculars jobs I just think we need to get all the information to find out how we can prioritize our own students first Andrew if we're forced to have the program be open to all students of the SU it would make sense to make this an SU program somehow it would be worth paying us that a board meeting for our district right and they're also welcome to send their students to school with us and if our garden is at you can introduce that working for them as well as I'm working I know well it might be a good thing to put on our website that our members is free to our students what is it talking about? right okay I'm just worried about the equity part of it like Lisa said that's want to make sure that kids have the opportunity to see is the right thing that they right I mean that's a separate discussion so I think our students will have an affordable opportunity to take driver's ed the current scenarios we have three students from the chair academy who are enrolled in driver's ed program and two homeschool students so a quarter of this semester's enrollment our students who are not paying any tuition other than what we get for the state and our costs to run the program are a little bit over a thousand yes so I I mean we don't get to count them in terms of our ADM but their parents pay taxes in Bethel and Royalton if that's where they're from but I don't know that for sure so they could be a tough bridge yours I need a look and do it I haven't drilled down to the level of where the students coming from all of that yet we also don't need to offer programs to homeschool families if we don't have space or an instrument or a book it's by our ability to offer it right so but at this point we have that ability yeah so we do it absolutely so for the next board meeting we're gonna have a comparison of using state funds and a look with current enrollment versus how what our costs could potentially be without using state funds enrolling on our own but then having to incur our own insurance and then the other thing is to assess how many students that are signed up right now that are currently in the fall fall class um of the homeschool and you know what's the breakdown of students that are in our district and outside of our district if they're homeschool students are they still Bethel Royalton residents and anything else so and then for the fall and the spring we want that breakdown of all that just so that we can kind of look at scenarios and see if our if our district's really being taken care of or if anyone's being left out you also wanted to confirm how many are in how many kids from our district are waiting because yeah that's because of yeah as a result based on because if the state funded is accepted then we have to do prioritize based on age right um regardless of where we have to lift them in because the prioritizing the only fair way to do this is by age can you double check with the state that really makes no sense to me that the district is paying for something but has to accept SU students can you make sure that they realize that this is a district program and not an SNID program that's how I that's the information that I brought to you from them I know but like whenever we're talking about stuff people always get the district and the supervisor confused and so I think it would be worth double checking just to make sure that that information is correct and it makes no sense to me that we're paying as a district and have to accept students from a supervisor so either it should be a supervisor in a program in which case you know getting paid through the SU or it should be a district program that accepts district students I'll dig into it a little bit more as soon as I get the budget thing to chair this week maybe next week this is the thing you like it is, yes and we can talk about equity across the SU but that's an SU issue not an R district issue I'm not really worried about the Sharon students I'm sorry I'm worried that our students are not getting their training so that they can get back and forth to their classes and their extracurriculars well and I mean I think it's okay to think about them if we have physicians available and we're not bumping our own students okay with it then but if we're bumping our I just think that we should have the right to take care of our own first what do the students think? yes do you think we should prioritize you guys put them together? I think we should have a one to one program too, right? a car and a trailer great we're trying to contain the budget you thought I was your problem you got when you guys turned 16 you already turned 16 I did as well did you get into drives that okay? did you have to wait? how about Hunter's safety? I know that my son, my 15 year old was going to take it in the fall and now he's taking it in the spring assuming he doesn't get bumped he's a February birthday boy so I'm sure that he's anyway he wanted to take it in the fall? yeah he would have taken it in the fall if he could but maybe it was a I don't know if it was due to enrollment or if it was a scheduling thing I'm not quite clear on that but I know that he needs to take it in the spring because he's planning on driving and I'd love it where this all started was serving that we had to provide a program for them and that's why I made a phone call to find out exactly where the state stood on this whole thing so because of their program they had to charge the full rate for their parents I think hundreds of dollars and they weren't getting you know credited for some of that even though those kids lived here and so basically that was the issue and that's why I called and the other thing is I district college in the other districts when this was going in? we don't because okay well I wonder if that's a whole other category of students that is another opportunity I guess you could probably charge them something I don't know but no I think that's the conversation I have to have with the state what if we were to do a surcharge for those kids we're living in the SU but we're going to the host school just make sure you clarify the districts because I don't see what living in the SU has to do with it because it's not an SU program no if there was a state thing there would be any district anywhere I wonder if there's a nuance here I mean I don't know if this is the case or not if you have a South Royalton resident who's attending the Sharon Academy which would be a different thing than a Sharon student resident attending Sharon Academy I could see that but I don't know to what extent that is I need a whole flow chart to figure out how to handle each student all right more personally so Ray you're clear on what we're looking for I think I've got most of it we'll do my best and we can keep fine tuning I think we're going to make this phone call together awesome I'm just going to take a back and forth I have to give a few different scenarios and how do I handle that so we're expecting the audit to wrap up next week and we'll have a presentation at the Executive Board meeting on October 28th so they send is there any additional information it's been a very detailed learning experience okay all right since this is the last budget item the the last time we talked about budget kind of collectively it felt like the principals administration was given some guidance budget wise and I know when we came to the table last year we came with this is what we think would be an optimal amount of money for us to spend to put the programs into place that we feel the students and staff and then we came back and we cut and then we went around and around and we cut again and we still had a maximum tax increase for the residents of South Royalton and we know some assumptions like health insurance is going to go up by 12.9% so we've got we're going to have some upward pressure on the budget even if all the programs stay the same and so I'm wondering if the board has clarity for us what you'd like us to be looking at I mean we had that list of cuts that we didn't talk about much last January should we be coming to the table with some of those as part of the budget as a beginning spot or what do you think speaking for myself I think we promised the voters this time that there wasn't going to be this upcoming year and so we need to look at what revenue we have and if we can accommodate everything under that revenue then I think great and if we can't then we need to look at what we need to do to make it so that we can but I don't think we can do tax increases this year I agree with that I don't think we can do a tax increase but also we did start a lot of new programs and we need to look at it and make sure if some will not really be inutilized then you know maybe there's some we can cut out if they're not really that popular you know because it doesn't hurt to agree this is some of these programs just to make sure I mean if it's okay it's a tricky part for us is at this point we are looking at expenditures only and we don't know what the revenue side of things is and really have to wait a while so maybe it makes sense to just keep programs as they are knowing that down the road when we have some insight I don't know what the revenue side will look like I think that's the reason I don't think we're out of place where we can add anything I think that when tax bills went out people are still struggling to wrap their heads around which part was the school increase versus the town increase versus impacted by the common level of appraisal and so I think it's all a challenge and I think that we can demonstrate the greater value that we've achieved for those increases and we know that taxes would have gone up without the merger and so I think those are things that are important to note but over the past two years Royalton has gone right up to the cap each of those years and we just can't do that again so I anticipate this will be a far harder budget cycle I don't know if that's what you were looking for but that being said I kind of knew all of that but it's good to have I heard it again and I think you're playing a role in the budget as is and then we see where the revenues are and we'll adjust accordingly yeah and maybe on the sidelines have some ideas if there was more money where would it go or what would you do but you know where we can make cuts if we need to yeah exactly we're already discussing that and trying to prioritize them I mean with insurance going up 12% in a way that's eating away at opportunities 13% I mean how can how can how can we by the way I don't know whether I told you but we're being told that by December 1st we'll know what the negotiations at the state level is and that should be in time alright so we already did enrollment and tuition students as part of the principals report sprinter van update okay I have no new information about that okay preschool update they all fit in the sprinter van safety seat belted I thought that the question on that was how we would enrollment so we put that on that chart okay alright is there any new planning moving forward for next year not until we do the screening if we need to know what we're doing well I mean what we were looking at though was making it so that there can be more than this afternoon a similar thing, separate classroom for the morning and afternoon right now there's kind of a limited space and I feel like we have more students impossible after school programs summer programs those kids aren't trying to find daycare placements where there aren't any part of the question for expanding or what the configuration is for full day or part A for 3-4 year olds is also going to depend on our overall budget picture if it requires additional staffing if we can afford that alright I do think that would be a priority for me though is making sure that you know you can have a separate discussion about this I don't I think we need to make sure that we can accommodate all the preschoolers who want to because that impacts the budget for a term of 5 kids away or something like that or 5 kids don't come because they can work out to go to Bethel or whatever then that's money that could have gone to an extra staffer or something like that and I think it's been proven in Sharon and other places that parents will pay extra for school and the summer care so those programs may help pay for themselves they're a little bit more budget new for them thank you that brings us to our next public comment hi did you miss me I'm actually just going to add on a little bit to what you said which is I mean you and I spent some time beating down rumors on Facebook about a month ago I do not recommend but I think it was effective and you never know who else is listening and metaphorically speaking so you always tell yourself that you're trying to put more good into the world than bad but I do think that with every year with another budget jump the Royals and population probably Bethel 2 gets more cynical about the whole business so I think working on that preschool program not just to say we're asking for more money but we're accommodating more kids but also say we're asking for more money and we're looking for revenue this is going to make us money we're not just asking for more money year after year and by the way we're sending the entire middle school to the Lion King which I know is a good deal and should be done and is not actually going to impact the budget that much but I also know people I will not name down the street who will say I can't believe they're asking for more money when they took the entire middle school on a trip I can hear it you didn't bring it back I know I know they never listen to that part either I will also say they asked for half of the cost of the ticket oh yeah no but that's what I'm saying you know I'm not saying it's not a very I'm 100% supported that program we talked about at the boosters meeting it's great it's cool I love it it's not like I love it right now because I'm on a roll don't take it personally but you know everybody in this room knows that we can hitch on to dumb things and be dumb about them everyone will quote me on this next week and so we need to make sure and it's kind of sad that this is where we are but it's also good that this is where we are is that if we find good things we can talk about in terms of we are not we are working to stay revenue neutral we are working to bring in income look at the new tuition students we brought in that is also helpful and so we need to remember to not rest so to speak if we can you know share an academy for the students for driver's ed that they want for free just as a random example I took out of nowhere but to really make sure because some of these things are relatively small but they can be very symbolic and people can get hung up on them which you know in some ways is really unfortunate in some ways it's just human nature easier to wrap your head around a bus trip than a multi-million dollar budget I have a lot easier time wrapping my head around a bus trip than the whole budget because it's big and there's a lot of moving parts and so I think working towards the preschool with the aftercare is such a net good it serves the people who live here it's a potential recruitment for more families to live here because child care is such a crunch and it hurts our economy that we don't have adequate child care I mean there's no two ways about it and so I feel like if we crack that nut and make that work and I know Bruce you've talked about this all the time so we're singing in harmony at the moment if we crack that nut we can really do a huge net good as well as kind of quote-unquote looking good I think you know there's so many families I know who benefit from that and then there's families who might come here and benefit from that which would mean again more tax-based more community more kids more money from the state win-win-win you can turn away from me now and I think I was lurking on that a lot of those discussions on this on the Facebook and it seemed like some of the people were questioning you know why we have so many principles you know that whole thing that at our last board meeting we were talking about was going to work with finding some existing documents and also working with Bruce in creating something in writing to acknowledge why we have four principles how it's changed from what it was before just so that when we get those those occasional questions and people needing clarity we can handle a fact sheet we can handle some information and be proactive and also not find ourselves being in the defensive because I think what we've made is a legal decision but to have it in writing to justify is going to be I think productive and nurturing and keep things on the right track instead of you know I wasn't about to hop in on that if I had something I would have like sent an attachment and then they would have had like something that we all a document that we've all created that we have checked off on but I think those kinds of fact sheets can be really useful especially when budget conversations happen so I guess I would encourage us as a board and to work with Bruce to like pull this that information together I have that information I get it from well can you send it to us so that we can start reading it because I think when we start having budget discussions I think it will be great for us to have that information ready to launch if anybody that wants it that wants to ask those questions so before we move on to executive session I'm just wondering about future agenda items while everybody's still here yes Andrew one thing we kind of have on the plate that we haven't addressed in a while is the community engagement boards and I think we left it where we were going to come up with how the community members are selected and approved wasn't that or a plan was being drafted we presented it and we were looking for feedback so I think that's where that right and it's kind of stopped so we need to make sure that either we discuss that tonight or get that on a future agenda I think we should try and get it as soon as possible and as far as I'm concerned like I don't know that it needs to be something that would be approved or anything like that right I'd vote I thought about that isn't the board actually a representative of the town anyways so why do we need another board well so this would be a resource so like a resource for the principals to get feedback directly from parents I don't have any kids in high school well I don't have any great schools I don't know why we need another panel to do what we're already doing one of the things when the merger happened was that we were going from two separate boards down to one which decreased the total number of community representatives so there was worry that there was going to be less community engagement so this is a way of getting people involved when you're actually involved in giving feedback and thinking about something much more invested in it than if you're you know just kind of sending it to other people or taking care of it so you know it could be a good resource for the principals to have you know they don't come to us with every single thing that they want to do and you can also have we were talking about different councils that would have like more specific focuses on things you know and we generally would be here we're kind of more of a small structure you know I think it would be useful to reach out and see if we get more people engaged one of the things I see is a benefit is that more people we have coming into our school positive about what they see feeling like their voices being heard they're going to go back and talk to their friends and their families and I think it just builds a greater community around the school and more support and we're six people and I think we do our best at communicating the things we love about our schools and the things that we wish we're done differently and so I think having more voices at the table is really positive also there's only the particles of the greenery right and right that came up last March also I mean we can try it just doesn't seem like anybody's really that interested in showing up to work I will say I don't know this bangstorm a lot I would love to have more communication still we get some blog stuff from Reed I know he's busy I do not want to point anything to anyone I want to give credit where to deal with that is but like the open house we didn't have a bad attendance we used to have when we had a weekly newsletter that really encouraged people to come to stuff we just didn't and the MTSS program if you weren't there you didn't hear about it and I was in the meeting with the senior parents for the seniors so I didn't hear about it anyway even though I did come you know I can you saw me same here we were doing our job man and so I really I know I bang this drum all the time but more communications on the website on the on the Facebook page and I know we are you guys are tight on staff and I know you have other stuff to do I know all that stuff but like it becomes a self perpetuating cycle that people don't come out to things because they don't know about things and then they come out to even fewer things because they don't feel like they're being reached out to and then the budget goes down that's not the only bad thing about it but you know that's just one thing since we were already talking about that and I just want there to be you know gets that newsletter out hell, high water, natural disaster for guidance and so I think especially senior parents in the room would say you know that's something that you expect you get used to you read it and to have something else that comes out regularly, semi-regularly or even just you know more Facebook events and announcements and that kind of stuff you know the Facebook stuff is usually announcements they're not events so you can't RSVP to them so Facebook doesn't remind you about it and it like I said I worry that it becomes a self perpetuating cycle where we get more and more parents who are not going to show up because they don't feel like they're being asked to show up and so it will spiral downward so thanks for looking meaningful and me and me you knew you were going to get that we're all on the same page we were talking about future agenda topics and we could have a communication update as a future agenda topic also what is it? communication update I also feel like the audit will be on our next agenda and perhaps the first glance draft of the budget my timeline stays true okay there's always that caveat if I get delayed by one thing yep that would be what we asked for the November meeting that would be on target with where we wanted to be so far I have not yet so we need drivers that and that's also scheduled to be the meeting where we invite Pam, Carmen and Allison to begin talking about our structure for the annual meeting okay and I'm happy to reach out to those three okay so we'll enter executive session at can I ask a question before we do that you've always provided some guidance about our student representatives and whether or not they need to get out of here in a decent hour to be able to go home and do their homework or what but I thought maybe what the board their contribution should be and I would think it's student issues to bring to us I know do you want to provide any of that guidance for the student decisions of the first meeting do you feel comfortable providing a student update for next meeting we'll add that to the agenda as well okay students are truly preschool through 12th grade there might be some middle school kids or college so we're going to call this a student update I'm our student representatives sure alright thank you thank you for coming when we enter executive session that's just the voting members of the board typically and anybody you invite and anybody we invite but typically because of confidentiality we wouldn't invite student representatives so thank you just a question for the notes are we going to ask for the communication that could include the community engagement board or should that be a separate item from the future so that would that would encompass that for the communication update is that going to encompass the community engagement board and the plans for okay is that a separate item okay I was thinking of a website is here this way though so I'm going to go back to the the the the the the the the the the the the the