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Um, but absolutely. So, we we'll look forward to feedback on that as well. >> Mike, one more question. I know you had invited the um town administrators and the select boards. Will they be coming next time or are they or you guys just meeting with them separately offline? So you guys have a meeting with them. You met this weekend. >> So we met with Berlin um both uh Fincom and Select Board and Capital. We um met last night with um the select board from Bolston, but that was to do with the roofing project of Bolston Elementary and we we've talked to April. April has a copy of this budget and she'll be inviting us to come in to talk to her her committees as well too. Um but this budget presentation was given to Poston as well too. So, we're waiting for the invite for that as well.
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Is there something we considering doing? And I mean obviously hopefully it never happens but if it happens we need to know what this tragedy is going to be. obviously would it be calling our journey to to somehow represent the kids and trying to figure out and then once they you know whatever the pens will have to take over at some point but some of that first whatever many hours we should probably consider having a budget put into place for representation of god forbid anything happen we already have a budget put on the side to pay attorney to >> certain amount of hours of of representation to try to bring the kids back home. >> So, I don't have all the answers at this point. Uh, all I can say is that um doing some research and working with our attorney and seeing what they're understanding and they may not be the expert or the people that we want to work with us on this.
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>> I think it's like a minute. They do it late. >> Yeah. >> You can just about the popups. Is there any way? >> So, at the bottom of the popup, it says, "Don't show me this message again." You mean the school committee one was irritating for you? >> All right. Thanks, Aaron. >> All righty. Uh, another budget season is well underway. Um, uh, we're going to go through a quick presentation. Uh I'm not going to dwell on some of the individual line items um as we as well as what's already been presented. Um but uh I I did want to comment uh Megan raised the point of setting up reserve accounts. Uh great idea. I will look at the state limits us to the types of reserve accounts we can have. I'm not sure if say curriculum reserve account fits. I will look at that.
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So I I think one of the first things we need to look at is where are who has the experience that we're looking for and then also you know who has experienced what you're talking about and what how did they handle it to give us some understanding of how maybe we should handle it and what and how what is our responsibilities if a student is taking taken at you know at that point. So I think we need to learn more and then bring it back to the back to the committee uh uh once we have a little more understanding and knowledge and if that's something the committee says well we'd like to fund some kind have some kind of fund to support that possibility then that's something we could give you better understanding and knowledge once we have that. So, I'm, you know, uh, at this point, I'm willing to continue to look at what we're just scratching the surface now of, uh, needing to have better understanding and and knowledge.
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Um, one of the challenges though with setting up reserve accounts, um, is a lot like, you know, my personal life. No matter how many pockets my pants have, I'm limited by how much money my wife gets gives me, right? So, unless we have money to put in those those reserve accounts, right? To your point, you made a point like, well, we need money to put in it somehow. Um, it's it's hard to fund those. and having a whole bunch of I I can't tell you how many times I've had people say, "Well, don't we have a reserve account for that?" Well, yeah, you you may have voted one in 15 years ago, but you never put a dime in it. So, now it's like there's doesn't ex, you know, it either exists or doesn't exist. So, I think we can look at that. It's certainly worth talking about.
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I mean, you see it on TV all the time. It's like anything else. Like, wow, that's way over in Minnesota. We're not worried about it, you know, until it's knock they're knocking on our door. And so, that's Yeah. Yeah. So, that's why we got to get more knowledge. >> Thank you, >> Mrs. Fris. Mrs. I mean, I know you hear it and it's it's it's way out there, but school buses, school property is prohibited. School bus is part of the school. They're still as is like a bus stop. I mean, that's I was trained in that vein years ago. I don't know why it would change. I have no reason to believe that it has changed. So the school I mean somebody just can't pull over the the school bus. The school bus driver should not be stopping for something like that. >> Yeah. >> And not opening the door.
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Um, we do have a couple pots of money and we'll talk about those pots of money later. Um, and those are our excess and deficiency in our school choice accounts. Um, those are places where we can save some money. Um, and I think we could even make sure that we're delegating some of our choice money to stay in the choice account for curriculum. So, it doesn't mean that even if we don't have a reserve account, we can't sort of delegate a certain portion of money towards that. and one-time costs or or individual um event costs are really good uses of those money. It's really hard to use those on ongoing operations. We'll talk about that a little bit. So Joe gave me the power um to walk through this. So my budget right presentation will be broken into three major parts. We'll be talking about the operating budget uh the investments requested by uh the staff uh and then we will get into uh capitals.
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That's part of the school. >> Yeah. So I don't know what I don't know. We know what they should or shouldn't do or what's right or legal, but we don't know if they're going to act that way and uh based on what we're hearing out there, right? But I don't know how accurate some there might be it might be one specific incident that the press is focusing on but what's real how are these officers really behaving and working with so we need so we need to know more >> and by talking to the people who have experienced it >> you have bad experiences so >> are you all set >> I I I am all set yes >> actually can I ask a question. >> Sure. Sure. >> I heard that ICE came here. Is that true? >> Excuse me. >> Did they come here >> recently?
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Uh quick note uh as we talked about before there were cuts made to last year's budget. Um uh we we cut the biology teacher as as shared a world language teacher here at Tahanto. There were other cuts across the district that were challenging. Um we are hoping to not have to make more cuts. We are hoping to be able to uh improve upon things and make investments in our children's future. Uh with that said, I do think it's worth sharing uh that we are um within this budget, we are um including that additional fifth grade classroom. Um we're considering that a service level situation uh because of the size of that class moving up. Um it would be extremely difficult to have um two elementary classrooms with 33 students each in them. So that's something that um we're definitely keeping. As I talked about, you will see the math curriculum on slide 22.
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>> I we I have I'm not aware of any anyone that has come here. Any ICE agents or officers that have come here? >> I think I heard that that they came here. And >> have you heard of anything, Brenda? No, I have not. No one has reported that to me. >> All sent. Uh vice chair, you still with us? Julio. Yes. Not um I'd like to know if anybody's inclined to um vote on this policy. I know you just got the secondary one recently, but I think we should have a policy rather than not have a policy in play. I was wondering if anybody's inclined to um call a motion for a vote to accept this policy. >> Before we do that, um is there is there a way we can all agree that if if a student because again this is this is all assuming prepping for the worst, right?
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Um so these are some of the major uh budget cuts. Uh I talked about the biology teacher. We cut health teachers at the elementary school uh as well as the world language teacher as well as some smaller cuts. Uh really important caveat to this budget as we move into this year. There are other districts um thinking a little differently about this. Um but with the closure of the federal department of education, a lot of people are talking about what is going to happen to some of those major educational grants. Um my personal opinion is very likely for better or worse I I have no real opinion on it one way or the other um that those would end up as what's called block grants. Um and the federal government would block grant those to the states with certain provisions for their use. Um ideally those uh formulas would remain similar.
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If if if there if if we don't want to wait until there there's something happened to try to go back and say, "Well, we should have added to the policy when we could have now that we're now that we're here." >> Oscar, can you check the screen, please? The vice chair says it's frozen. And so >> our uh attorney has reviewed our policy and with the knowledge of um what the state has put out there >> and so it I believe it aligns what the governor has suggested. I mean um >> so it doesn't mean we can't amend it and make other changes. So we have this and then next week you say, "Oh, we should also include this." We can amend it and add to >> it's better to have it and then know that you can amend it than not have anything. >> No, no.
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Uh our district receives about $300,000 that we applied towards the budget um that would be impacted. So uh you know we are hoping those are for very specific purposes and we assume that those purposes um that are uh based on law would stay in place. There might be specific um items related to the administration's wishes and desires. They might add on to that. Um but uh largely so right now looking at the overall our proposed budget comes out to 26,928,214. That's an increase of about $2.5 million and a 10.3% cut. Um, I had one very, very small change come in yesterday and and I want you guys to realize I am updating the budget with every new little piece of information that comes in. So, it's actually 10.19% right now um related to uh a small item that changed the budget. U moving on by cost center.
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Correct. Correct. What what I was referring to is understanding my point that I would just said like right now >> the school is going to get notified, the parents going to get get notified, but the parent have no asset to to to an attorney the way we have asset to an attorney. Obviously, maybe our attorney don't necessarily have the experience, but he's an attorney where a lot of these parents would not even know where to go. So, it would be good for them to know that there's a level of man of ours that our attorneys will try to collaborate with somebody else, but it's already into place that we're somehow whatever 10 hours or 20 hours of of of of whoever attorney, it's already into place. If that gaffer be happen during school school hour that that we already have in place that an attorney will will represent the the the student uh or the students on behalf of the students for a certain amount of hours until you know those fines are um already used.
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So you'll see districtwide has a relatively significant increase without a big change in staffing. Um that is largely due to a move of some items that um are are being moved to the district office. So as you'll recall uh in the past there has been a curriculum director stipen that has been received by one of our principles at the elementary level. um and then a full-on curriculum director at Tahanto. Uh this budget proposes saving a little bit of money and moving that position entirely to the district office. So it supports supports the entire district uh K to 12 preK to 12, sorry. Um additionally, um one of the items that that Janelle and I have talked a lot about is is translation. translation services um are very difficult to do at the school only level. Um they're very IEP based. They're very based on language needs of individual families that change and come and go.
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But at least that somebody's there to so they know that they're not alone. So I think if we don't if we now that we're talking about the the the the policy I think this will be a great time to add that if we all agree to >> to the fact of having some kind of funds already put to the side in that in case of >> we can use this as a living document. We can update it at a later time. >> Yeah. And >> what I think is important is that we do have a policy in play tomorrow. >> I might be wrong. Well, I think what Edison's trying to say is do we add a u an article in there that states that we would fund empower our attorney to represent our student if in fact we had a situation like that >> during school hours.
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Um there have been comparable amounts budgeted at each school. We've just moved those funds. It's only about $12,000 all told from there to the district office. It also means that we can consolidate some of those efforts. So when we're translating things instead of worrying about is this a boilson translation is a burrow is it that translation service is just for the entire district. So what the pro the resulting product because of the product of the district. Um so big increase I understand that um the goal is to bring this budget down every meeting from here. So this is what we consider sort of the most conservative or worst case scenario budget given what we're looking at. Now I'm not going to dwell on every function area um in the interest of time. We'll talk about these items a little bit more um in the upcoming budget meetings, but you do have some comments on each item that has a significant change.
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So, I don't I don't know of any I'm not aware of any school that has that in the policy or or if it's even feasible. I'd like to talk to our attorney first before we vote on something like that and take a look at what that could really mean in terms of costs. You know, they took 30 students and what kind of hours >> Nobody's going to come in here. Don't worry. >> Right. >> No worries. >> Right. >> Not coming here. >> Okay. So, I just don't know of any of that. So, if you just if we we're going to be back in two weeks, we can upgrade this once we have more information. >> Um, >> that'd be great. >> Let me get uh Mr. McI. He's frozen. I think he's got something to say. >> But in the meantime, Oh, he does.
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Um and uh and I'm happy to have conversations individually if people have questions. Um and we will move through uh Berlin uh again again you'll see the removal of the curriculum director that's being moved to the district office and consolidated um as an example of some of the changes. Uh Boilston, same thing. uh that curriculum director in a few changes. Happy again to talk about individual changes with folks if they want to talk about schools. Uh to Hondo, same thing. I won't dwell on individual line items yet. Um but all of those changes, you'll see the curriculum director moving to the district office. That's one big shift. So, some things to consider, and this is a lot of what gets us into the conversation of why this is a most conservative budget. Uh, right now, um, our budget is based on, uh, the governor's budget.
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So, I I was going to make a motion. Chairman. >> Hey, Tommy. >> Vice Chair. I'm sorry. We're having problems on this end. I do have you on speaker. I do have you on speaker. Did you want to s say something? >> I can hear you now. >> Oh, now you can hear me. Say bye. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Okay. Mr. Mia, are you there? >> Yes. >> Okay. Did you want to say something? >> Uh, no. Did I miss something? Well, what we what we were talking about what I was uh asking is anybody was inclined to vote for this policy as is right now. I think it's better if we had a policy now and up updated it later on. Uh but I think it's important >> for it now and making amendments later. I just want to make sure that we are clear that if we want to make any amendments, we should discuss it at the next meeting.
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