September 17, 2025 School Board Meeting

001SBSD Helpdesk: We're good? You're good. SBSD Helpdesk: I would like to call the September 17th, 2025 SBSD Helpdesk: special meeting of the South Burlington School Board of the order. SBSD Helpdesk: The first item on our agenda was a projected executive session. However, we did not have SBSD Helpdesk: For the executive session, so we did not go into executive session today. SBSD Helpdesk: So, our, next order, is announcements and amendments to the agenda. Does anyone have any announcements or amendments to the agenda? SBSD Helpdesk: Did you want to mention before training? Yes, I would. And we're joined today by our new interim superintendent, Joe Clark. SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, so, I know we've talked about it in passing, SBSD Helpdesk: First of all, thank you for your warm welcome here to South Burlington. It's been fantastic. I'm

002really pleased. SBSD Helpdesk: to be meeting people, and that sort of thing. And I know that what I've found so far is that we have a really good school board, and a lot of you are relatively new to the school board, and I'm new in a lot of our administrative teams. So I think it would be really good for us to start having a discussion about getting some training from the Vermont School Boards Association. I know they have some robust training. SBSD Helpdesk: Not just about, not just… SBSD Helpdesk: what, the role of the school board is, but what's our relationship going to be like, how are we going to communicate, and those sorts of things. So I would like the board to consider, relatively soon, getting some time set aside so we could have

003VSBA come in and help us, help us SBSD Helpdesk: Let's learn from each other. SBSD Helpdesk: Are there any other announcements or amendments to the agenda? SBSD Helpdesk: Alright, our next item on the agenda is comments from the public. SBSD Helpdesk: So… There are two opportunities for the public to comment. SBSD Helpdesk: During comments from the public, that's this section, and that can be about any topic. Anything in the world that you want to talk about, you can talk about during comments from the public. SBSD Helpdesk: The other opportunity is, before the board takes action on an action item on the topic being actions. We're not actioning anything tonight. SBSD Helpdesk: The board will not respond to public comments unless the meeting is specially designated as a community forum, and the comment is on a

004topic worn on the agenda. So, tonight is a specially designated community forum. It's our first one. SBSD Helpdesk: And so that means that tonight, during our community forum section, the expectation is that it will be, an open dialogue. SBSD Helpdesk: In general, for public comment, for every instance of your commenting, you'll be given up to 3 minutes' time. Please don't violate anyone's privacy during that time, and you cannot file an official complaint or grievance, during public comment. SBSD Helpdesk: So, I would like to open up the floor for public comments. This can be about any topic, but the board is not going to respond. SBSD Helpdesk: Good evening, Board. Daisy Brayton, Human Resources Director. I just wanted to take a moment to introduce you to our new Communications Coordinator. I will actually go ahead and

005let Ken Elmer introduce himself, and then I… I kind of surprised him with this, so you got 3 minutes. SBSD Helpdesk: Well, hello, everybody. I'd like to introduce myself to each of you independently. I think I missed Ms. Lawrence and Ms. Hoffman. Certainly, I would welcome any chance to talk to you personally. Again, my name is Ken Elmer, and I am a… SBSD Helpdesk: former… SBSD Helpdesk: I've spent years, sort of coordinating systems for businesses to communicate and to market, mostly. This is my first school experience, but I'm extremely excited to be here, extremely, SBSD Helpdesk: excited to be working with Joe, and I think, you know, we're both new at this particular facility, or at this… I'm new to the school system, certainly Joe is not, but I'm just really looking exciting… really excited

006about the opportunities that are showing up already. Got a chance to meet some of the principals today, and that was really amazing. SBSD Helpdesk: And, yeah, if there are any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. But I've been in Vermont for about 10 years, spent, SBSD Helpdesk: 10 years in California, as an illustrator. I started out as a medical illustrator, of all the crazy things to do, and, sort of worked that into my present career. And again, very, very happy to be here. SBSD Helpdesk: Welcome, Kat. Thank you. Thank you. SBSD Helpdesk: Right. SBSD Helpdesk: Are there any more comments from the public? SBSD Helpdesk: Alright. SBSD Helpdesk: Well, I think what we should do now is just wait for 3 minutes. SBSD Helpdesk: Because our community forum is supposed to start at 610,

007and anybody might be joining remotely, I just want them to have time to show up. So, we'll just wait for 3 minutes. SBSD Helpdesk: There's no… not… there's several loop, but no one race. Okay. SBSD Helpdesk: All right, so we're just gonna take a brief 3-minute recess while we wait for the time to come. SBSD Helpdesk: Is everybody ready? Alright, so the next item on the agenda is our community forum, and SBSD Helpdesk: Somebody say something on that side of the room so the outcome sees you. Hi. Keep talking, save choice. SBSD Helpdesk: Yes. It's good. SBSD Helpdesk: Certainly you, Laura. So, at tonight's community forum. SBSD Helpdesk: The board will, engage in a discussion about things that are on the agenda. There are 3 things on the agenda. Meet the superintendent. How should we

008set the budget number? What committees does the community want to be a part of? SBSD Helpdesk: There are only two rules. SBSD Helpdesk: First of all, it has to be about a topic on the agenda. I'm not going to stop any community member from talking about something that's not on the agenda, although they believe they don't, but I would ask that the board only responds on those three topics. SBSD Helpdesk: And then the other rule is that we're gonna let anybody… everybody say something before anybody says. SBSD Helpdesk: two things, right? So, SBSD Helpdesk: I think, we'll do that. So, the first topic on our community forum is meet the superintendent, so… SBSD Helpdesk: Hi, Joe. Good morning. Good to meet you. SBSD Helpdesk: I've met all of you, a lot of you already, maybe

009all of you now. I'm shaking hands. I've been telling… I can't remember how many times I've said this, and then how many times you've heard it, so I'll just repeat it, and hopefully I won't bore you. I've been in education 33 years, all of that in Ohio. SBSD Helpdesk: have been a high school English teacher, a high school assistant principal, a middle school principal, an HR director, an assistant superintendent, a superintendent. SBSD Helpdesk: in several districts. The majority of my career was in a place called Mordonia Hills, which is midway between Cleveland and Akron. SBSD Helpdesk: 14 years as a superintendent, SBSD Helpdesk: 12 of those in Oregonia, and I spent a year in a place called Westerville, and a year in a place called Waterloo. And these districts ranged from 750 students in one

010building to 15,000 students SBSD Helpdesk: 25 buildings. But the majority of my career was in, Nordonia, which is really similar here to South Burlington, about 3,500 students and 6 schools. SBSD Helpdesk: Excuse me. I, so, in the middle of last year, the state of Ohio changed the requirements for retirement. They reduced the service years to 33, and I was in year 33. SBSD Helpdesk: And so, I took advantage of the opportunity to retire, but I'm still young, I feel young anyway, and I want to keep working. So, my wife and I have been to New England and love it, and thought this might be a good SBSD Helpdesk: it's one of those chances to really take a risk, and let's try something new. And I saw this posting, applied for it, and was fortunate that

011this board's given me this opportunity. It's been nothing but fantastic so far. I've been very, very pleased with the things that are going on in our schools, and just how kind and welcoming everybody's been to me. SBSD Helpdesk: Personally, I am, SBSD Helpdesk: I'm the youngest of 11 children. My dad has an identical twin brother who also has 11 children, and we lived next door to each other growing up. 22 of us there on what we called the compound, and it really gave me a lot of great experiences. SBSD Helpdesk: I'm married, myself, 31 years, to my wife, Amy, this summer, and we have two adult sons. Isaac is married to Christy. They live in Ohio, and they have our two grandchildren, two grandsons, Cameron, who's two and a half years old, and Spencer, who's

012two and a half months. SBSD Helpdesk: Oh, they're fantastic. My younger son, Matthew. SBSD Helpdesk: is married to Christina. They got married this summer, July 5th, and they live in Baltimore. Christina's a teacher for the Baltimore Public… er, Baltimore County Schools, and Matthew works for the Baltimore Ravens. He's on their grounds crew, which is… SBSD Helpdesk: It's ironic for a couple things. First of all, we're die-hard Bronx fans, and also, the kid never mowed my loan. SBSD Helpdesk: I don't know how he came… that job came to pass, but he loves teams, so if you ever watch a Ravens game, like this past weekend at the NFL Shield, my son paid him that, and you would see him in the end zone, pulling up the, the net for the field goals when, SBSD Helpdesk: When

013that happens. And then during the week, I mean, they're taking care of the fields and the machines and all those sorts of things. SBSD Helpdesk: So that's me. I'm super happy to be here. It is an interim role, and it's a one-year contract, but I've told the board that when they… and the board's committed, they're going to do a search, and I think that's very wise of them. My name will be… I'm going to put my name there, for sure. So hopefully, it'll turn out for me to be long-term, and if not, I'm sure they'll find somebody great to… SBSD Helpdesk: Not fill in long-term. SBSD Helpdesk: And, again, for anybody, and anybody online, I also wanted to make this clear, SBSD Helpdesk: If you want to say something and you're online, just raise your

014hand, and we'll immediately, recognize you. So, yeah, so I'll open it up for anybody who wants to ask any questions. I have questions. SBSD Helpdesk: Pressure's on you guys. SBSD Helpdesk: I'll start with the comment. So, Joe, welcome. Thank you. And we're thrilled to have you, and personally, I'm thrilled to… SBSD Helpdesk: you got the job. Oh, would you introduce yourself? Oh, I'm sorry. For the people on the call, just to… Yeah, my name's Mark Gable, I have a junior at the high school, and then I have a daughter who's in college now, graduated from South Burlington. So, and I happen to drive a school bus. Oh, I'm sorry. SBSD Helpdesk: So, which is the greatest part-time… part-time… part-time, full-time job. SBSD Helpdesk: Having come from Ohio, you know, I think you'll find that this

015was a good move. SBSD Helpdesk: And I give you a ton of credit, because, leaving your grandchildren behind, and your wife behind for a year, until my understanding is she's not coming until the final decision is made. That's a big commitment on your end, so thank you for doing that. Well, I hope she's not watching, because I really miss my dog. SBSD Helpdesk: For my dog. I think he is my Beagle, bulldog hybrid. I love that guy. And my wife and I, I'm… SBSD Helpdesk: When I was in Westerville and Columbus, we did this, and we're empty nesters, and honestly, with technology today, you know, we talk all the time, and FaceTime, and all that. And she's coming up this weekend, so I'm really excited that she'll get to see it. I've been sending her

016a ton of pictures, and she's like, I might not go home. I'm gonna come up, so it's great. SBSD Helpdesk: I miss the grandkids too, but… SBSD Helpdesk: Getting lots and lots of pictures, they're just the best. SBSD Helpdesk: Jarvis, private citizen. I'm sure you know that Dave Hyatt, the assistant principal at the middle school, is also from Ohio. SBSD Helpdesk: And is such a hardcore Ohio State football fan that he refuses to watch the games with anybody else, and I know that because I invited him to watch a game, and I was turned down. Where do you stay on the college football next week? SBSD Helpdesk: I said, Ohio State, how do you and Dave expect to work together? Listen, I'll tell you the truth. When I was in Ohio as a superintendent for

01714 years, I was a closet Ohio State heater. I wouldn't say that publicly in Ohio. For me, rooting for Ohio State, I'm sorry, Dave, it's like rooting for Walmart. It's like they're too big and too powerful and… SBSD Helpdesk: I like underdogs, so I root for underdogs, and my kids, went to Syracuse and Louisville, so those are the teams I root for, and then generally, whoever's playing Ohio State, or whoever. SBSD Helpdesk: you know, lower, lower rank is who I'm… I'm a bigger soccer… well, I'm a die-hard Browns fan, so that's the team that I schedule my life around, is the Browns, and they've let me down for many, many, many years. But I'm also a huge soccer fan. I like to watch the MLS, and the Premier League, and… SBSD Helpdesk: international, so I

018really enjoy that. SBSD Helpdesk: Good. SBSD Helpdesk: I would get up to see it. I would love to see them. I have seen, DVM play. In fact, they played Akron U last week, which is, you know, right from where I'm from, so that's a great game. SBSD Helpdesk: The Vermont Marine sounds outstanding. I'd love to see Montreal FC, too. I'm a big, homes crew guy, so I'm interested to see them. SBSD Helpdesk: moments on the South Burlington soccer game, too, so… Yeah, that was it. I was at the game yesterday, and, very… SBSD Helpdesk: Very good, good game. SBSD Helpdesk: That's right. SBSD Helpdesk: I have a, I have a question, SBSD Helpdesk: Can you tell us a little bit about your educational philosophy? SBSD Helpdesk: Just, you know. Yeah, SBSD Helpdesk: I tend to

019say it in really pretty frank terms, and generally my educational philosophy SBSD Helpdesk: is we want kids to move out of their parents' basement, right? Our goal is to provide kids with skills so that they can be productive members of society, so they can find a job that has healthcare, maybe a retirement plan. SBSD Helpdesk: And I don't care what the job is, as long as they love doing it and are good doing it, that's what I want to get. Now, that's kind of a crass way of saying it. In the… in the big scheme, I'm really a big proponent of SBSD Helpdesk: Having really engaging instruction and teaching, or treating kids really, really well. SBSD Helpdesk: I think with great relationships, with great instruction, test scores tend to take care of themselves. SBSD Helpdesk:

020Now, we are… we're never going to ignore data. We will look at data, analyze data, and see what we can do to provide, you know, interventions where we need to. But to me, it's all about people, right? SBSD Helpdesk: you know, every number that we see on a chart somewhere, there's a child behind that, and I want to make sure that when children are coming to our schools, they feel welcome and safe and cared for. And so, that's the… SBSD Helpdesk: I will judge my success by how comfortable our kids feel coming to our school. And when they feel great, I think they're going to perform well, too. SBSD Helpdesk: So, I have a question. In regards to community engagement, I have to applaud you. I think you've done a fantastic job reaching out since

021you've been here. You know, showing up at the football game, you know, on Friday night. SBSD Helpdesk: And I'm glad to hear that you're going to soccer games. Really appreciated the emails that you sent out, and your video, your YouTube that went today. And I was wondering, like, how… who within our community received that? Was all… was that the parents and guardians, or how… so this is kind of a two-part question. That's… that's the first part. SBSD Helpdesk: So go ahead, you can answer that one. So the first part is the, SBSD Helpdesk: the email and the video. I mean, the YouTube video is on a channel, so anybody can find it, but it was sent to every address in our school messenger list, so it's about 9, SBSD Helpdesk: the gentleman in the back

022might know even better. It was a ton… 9,700, I think. 9,700 different… 9,700. Yeah, so I'm… so people have multiple phone numbers, multiple… it went to… it told me that there were 9,700 contacts that I was sending that to. Of staff and faculty. It went to staff, faculty, students, parents, guardians, okay. Yeah. SBSD Helpdesk: So, my next question is, how are we going to cast a wider net to encompass more people within the community that may be not engaged in… in that? Yeah. SBSD Helpdesk: Well, you had the great opportunity to meet Ken earlier. Ken is an expert in communications, and he and I sat down, actually, yesterday and started talking big picture about what do we want to do. What's our… what's our end game? We want… SBSD Helpdesk: We know that we have

023a variety of stakeholder groups, and we want all of them to be informed. And we also know that, you know, the majority of our folks that live in this community do not have children that go to our schools. So we need to come up with, SBSD Helpdesk: methods to reach all of those folks. I believe that that starts with surveying people and finding out what… how do you want us to reach out to you? SBSD Helpdesk: social media, of course, I know there's a lot of discussion about use of social media in the schools anymore, but that seems to be a… seems to me like a lot of people are on Facebook and whatnot. So, actually, Ken got the Facebook login account information today, and he said, I need to post something. I go. SBSD

024Helpdesk: Why don't you tell people that I'm here? And so I think that should be his first post, if it hasn't happened already. But the other thing I've talked about a lot is these… this idea of these 3Q meetings that I'm going to be running. Three questions. SBSD Helpdesk: So the administrative team and I have already started brainstorming lists of every community group that we can think of. We'll continue that brainstorming into next week, and at that point, I will start getting out into the community for not just students and parents, but SBSD Helpdesk: Community members, at large. SBSD Helpdesk: to ask, what do you like about our schools, what can we do better, and what do you expect out of the superintendent? I, I expect, at that point. SBSD Helpdesk: A lot of these

025topics will come up about… and ideas about how we might be able to reach folks who are not in our… in our list. SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, that's great. Nothing concrete yet, other than we know that that's a priority. So, will you have some metrics or KPIs that you can share with us? Like, this is how many SBSD Helpdesk: you know, contacts we've had, how many touchpoints we've had with different groups, and where we're seeing some positions. As we go through this, I'll report out to you. I will, as I'm collecting data, I will share with the board the feedback that I'm getting, the number of groups I've spoken with, or actually listened to. I'm not really there to speak, but listen. SBSD Helpdesk: how many people were in attendance. And then at the very end,

026when we're done, I'll also send out and publish out to the community SBSD Helpdesk: Anybody that didn't have the opportunity to come to one of these meetings, here's a written survey that you can take to give us feedback. SBSD Helpdesk: I have another question. So, you, you know, you've only been in Vermont now for a couple weeks, and… SBSD Helpdesk: one of the… One of the questions that people had SBSD Helpdesk: you know, during the search process for interim was, you know. SBSD Helpdesk: how is a new person gonna deal with Vermont's particular taxing and budgeting, things? And so. SBSD Helpdesk: You probably don't know a lot yet. SBSD Helpdesk: But, like… Are you able to make any early… SBSD Helpdesk: compare and contrast with what you had back in Ohio versus, like, what we

027have here? Yeah, I mean, I… SBSD Helpdesk: not knowing all of, how Vermont works, and I'm meeting with superintendents, area… Champlain Valley superintendents on Friday at one of the state superintendent conference next week, and I'll start getting more of this, knowledge. SBSD Helpdesk: What I know so far is I don't… I don't think you could design a worse funding system than the state of Ohio has. It's literally designed to make communities hate school people, because of the constant, levies that we have to pass. SBSD Helpdesk: in order to fund our schools. In Ohio, we don't do, like, an annual budget. We do a 5-year forecast, and the 5-year forecast is based on SBSD Helpdesk: It's a 5-year forecast, but the state only does it by any of the budget, so you're… you're shooting at the

028wind about what… how much we're going to need. SBSD Helpdesk: And the state in Ohio now is talking about these cash carryovers. Well, the whole, large cash carryovers that districts have, but it's because the system is such that, SBSD Helpdesk: income does not, school revenue does not go up with, as home volumes do. The millage rate, or the tax rate, goes down every time somebody's home rate goes up. So the income is always flat. SBSD Helpdesk: The expenses always go up. When those lines cross, you need to ask for a lending. And so, superintendents become politicians asking people to please give us money, and they will say, but you have a $10 million cash carryover. SBSD Helpdesk: And you'll say. SBSD Helpdesk: yeah, but we're spending more than we're taking in, and they'll say, well,

029that… you shouldn't do that. But you have to, by nature, you have to. So… SBSD Helpdesk: not fully knowing what Vermont is, I can confidently say I will take it over Ohio's, but I know it's changing, and I'm looking forward to learning a lot about it. Correct me if I'm wrong, Joe, I did a little research on Ohio, and… SBSD Helpdesk: there's a lot of money funneling into private school, private religious schools in Ohio. Huge voucher system. It sounds… SBSD Helpdesk: That's really kind of crippling the public schools in Ohio. That's what it sounds like to me. Ohio is… Ohio is going to be, if not be, SBSD Helpdesk: the most generous to private schools, one of the top, most generous to private schools. That's my understanding. There are… there are… you can be a

030private school parent whose child has never intended a public school, with no, SBSD Helpdesk: with no financial hardship at all, and still get a voucher from the state to pay your tuition to a private school. Right, and my understanding is that there are so many families that are doing their study. SBSD Helpdesk: That even, like, basic services in public schools. And the thing about the private schools is, is that they don't have to follow any of the rules that the public schools do, so they can, they can still decide who they're going to enroll. SBSD Helpdesk: So they're getting all the money, but they don't have to provide services for students with special needs, or transportation, or any of those kinds of things. SBSD Helpdesk: If a student misbehaves, they can… Ask them to leave.

031SBSD Helpdesk: public schools, what I'm proud about public schools is we educate every child, and that's… it's really just an unfair playing field. SBSD Helpdesk: I'm really excited to learn more about this. I mean, since I've been here, I've heard the word budget probably 10,000 times, and I know it's big. I know I have… that, frankly, will be my biggest learning curve, but I'm ready to jump into it, and SBSD Helpdesk: And with the experts that are here on the roof to help me here this first year, frankly, I will learn quick. I'm a quick study. Hopefully, you know, it's go well when it comes to meeting day. SBSD Helpdesk: what other… so the… the topic on the agenda is… SBSD Helpdesk: you know, meet the superintendent, you know, get a sense of his opinions

032on things, so does anybody have other questions about just where Joe is coming from? SBSD Helpdesk: Oh, yeah, one more. So, it's absolutely wonderful. You're coming in with an incredibly positive attitude. SBSD Helpdesk: you've gone through the schools, you've met the administration, and you've met a bunch of the students, and you've met a bunch of the teachers, and I've heard nothing but praise for South Burlington schools. SBSD Helpdesk: Which is wonderful. Yeah. However… SBSD Helpdesk: You know, we know that it's not a perfect system that we have here. Is there anything that you would bring up after your touring of the schools that would jump out at you that needs to be addressed? SBSD Helpdesk: I would say, at this point, I mean, the most glaring things to me are not anything to do with

033people, it's more to do with systems that we have in place. What I'm hearing, again, it's not been a ton, so I don't want to sound any alarms here, but I'm hearing things like, SBSD Helpdesk: It's hard to get students to school on time at the middle school because the buses are running late. SBSD Helpdesk: And through no fault of the bus drivers, but there's a system in place that is causing that to back up a little bit. I'm hearing that there are, SBSD Helpdesk: teachers are… have some frustration about just the ability to make copies, you know, and how many copies they have access to, and fewer copy machines, which I know was probably a reduction, because it costs money. SBSD Helpdesk: Middle school, we don't bus kids to athletic events. That's really a

034big inconvenience for parents, you know? So, I mean, those are the kinds of things that I'm hearing right off the hand. Okay. Thank you. SBSD Helpdesk: May I add another one to that list, and it's very different than that, and that is math in the district. It's been a question that… I was on the board 3 years ago, the 6 years before I went off the board 3 years ago, and it was a question then. We did a math audit. SBSD Helpdesk: the outcome of that audit, it's a little unclear to me, like, how that actually impacted what we were doing in the district, and I think I… I still hear from parents all the time. SBSD Helpdesk: across the whole spectrum. Kids who are struggling with math, kids who want more math, and kids

035who just want to be on grade level at math, and are getting worksheets and work that is from grades way below where they are. And… SBSD Helpdesk: it's a problem. It's a real problem, and we're seeing it in the test force, too. So, I like the notion that, you know, good relationships and all of that lead to better performance. Something's not working when it comes to math, and I know the same is true for literacy, because our literacy scores have gone down over time. SBSD Helpdesk: And so I think there are some real issues, that need to be really looked into, and I think that those are going to be multi-year issues, and I think that, really, we need to start now looking at those issues, because it might take us a few years to

036solve them, and so I don't… I wouldn't like to see you, like. SBSD Helpdesk: push that off until, you know, until next year. I would really like to, especially on the math and the literacy side, really see us dig in more deeply. I would just caution that there's a huge gap also between our students of poverty and students not in poverty, and so those scores will necessarily go up when we start doing a better job, SBSD Helpdesk: Working with our students who are disadvantaged. SBSD Helpdesk: I hear you, and I agree with that. I also know that there's a lot of frustration in the transition from families from the middle school to the high school. SBSD Helpdesk: And where kids get placed in math, and the process is very unclear. It makes people feel that

037they don't trust the district, because they're not sure how to get their kids tested, if there's testing, because there are different messages about whether there's any testing, how to get them into different levels of math. And then there's also this weird bifurcated system where people can take online courses over the summer. SBSD Helpdesk: to get into higher levels of math at the high school, but that's very expensive, and it falls all on parents to do that. So you end up perpetuating what you're talking about, which is kids from disadvantaged backgrounds don't have those same opportunities, which they really should, you know? And so there's some real, real issues, I think, that we need to just… SBSD Helpdesk: Just be really open and transparent about, and just really, focus on. SBSD Helpdesk: Thank you, thank you

038for that. May I… I'm sorry. No, I just say that is the most important point that you just pointed out. I was going to add, too, that some students… my daughter's a great student, and she had no idea about the summer math program. It was never brought to her attention. SBSD Helpdesk: And so she didn't do it. So now she's stuck in math classes. SBSD Helpdesk: And my 6th grader… I have a 7th grader now, who was a 6th grader last year, and toward the end of the 6th grade term, they were handed worksheets that literally said in the corner, they were from some curriculum online, that were second grade worksheets. SBSD Helpdesk: This is the whole class. This isn't kids who are, like, struggling and are being pulled out for extra help in some

039way. Like, the whole class was doing second grade stuff at the end of the school year, and that's… SBSD Helpdesk: that's distressing. Like, that's… that's not a… that's not a great look. Something's broken if you're having to catch up on place value, which is what they were studying at the end of sixth grade, just so that everybody's ready to move into the next thing. SBSD Helpdesk: We shouldn't be there. We should be, you know, mastering other things by that. SBSD Helpdesk: Well, I think, thank you for the feedback, and I think as we go out and do these 3Q meetings and ask these questions, this will be all the, the… SBSD Helpdesk: input that we get, that will help us as we, you know, decide where we're gonna, you know, put our focus. I'm glad…

040glad that you… and I will… I will tell everybody when I go to these meetings that I'm not gonna solve any problems tonight, but I'm gonna listen so we can, you know, so we can, SBSD Helpdesk: Prioritize where we need to go. SBSD Helpdesk: Did you have any follow-up thoughts? Yeah, I think this is a really important point that you just brought up, because this is sort of… I've had, my personal experience was that, I have… I had a third and fourth grader, and, my fourth… my fourth graders started out in another district, and they started out with a whole SBSD Helpdesk: different set of how they taught the kids how to do literacy and, phonics words, and just… SBSD Helpdesk: Getting them to kind of memorize to compensate for their, learning the phonics parts,

041so it kind of gave them, like, a boost to… for fluid reading. SBSD Helpdesk: And, my younger daughter that started at… in this district, she had no… she does not have a base for this. So, I addressed that as a concern many times, every single meeting, and all I was, you know. SBSD Helpdesk: Getting responded back was that… SBSD Helpdesk: they were doing okay in the test scores, and the test scores was, you know, they're right… what one of it was, she's right in the middle of the class that she needs to be, she's exactly in the middle, and then just by compared to other schools, that exactly the kids her same age SBSD Helpdesk: They were completely in a different reading level, so it feels like a different… SBSD Helpdesk: like, standard to understand,

042like, kids should be reading at third grade, and sometimes, you know, and then there was, like, all kinds of excuses. Oh, we're doing another literacy program, and they're gonna catch up, and we're introducing something else that's gonna help them to learn better. And then in parallel, I… so I decided to take my daughter, also that she was SBSD Helpdesk: experiencing, like, dis… You know, disruption, a lot of disruption, so the teachers weren't able to proceed, and she was getting kind of… SBSD Helpdesk: like, dragged into the, like, all the bad behavior that was happening, so I pulled her out last year to homeschool her, just to kind of… not to waste her time, because it was too much for her to go to school, and then come home and, have to kind of… SBSD Helpdesk:

043you know, catch up, it's too much for a kid. So instead of wasting her time, I decided to pull her out and homeschool her. So what I did was, I took all of this… I started with little pie charts, like, one-third, you know, learning, and progressed. And to her level. SBSD Helpdesk: She was, like, able to do, a lot of, you know, numerical… SBSD Helpdesk: I mean, just fractions, extended fractions, and she was able to do all that. And then, so, I brought… she's back at school now, and she's doing, like, you know. SBSD Helpdesk: just basic numerical placement, and just a total regression from having to go back to school. And her capability… she was… she was kind of bored, and her capabilities are as such that she can, you know, is… SBSD Helpdesk:

044not being pushed to her level, essentially. So, SBSD Helpdesk: But I just want to say that the teachers have been amazing, that they are, like, very… SBSD Helpdesk: great with the kids, and, you know… Good, awesome. The teachers have been really good. She has a really great teacher this year that is just on point, and she's… I guess she's trying to… SBSD Helpdesk: kind of fixed all the problems that have amounted to me. Now she's, like, we don't know if she has dyslexia, I don't know, like… because she, like, learned how to write letters. SBSD Helpdesk: in numbers. It was just drawing. She never, like, actually learned the correction that you start the letters from the top. SBSD Helpdesk: And stuff, and so she, like, in the progression of her learning, now she's, like, having

045to regress and kind of go back to the basics. So I feel like it's really important to not just focus on test scores and just actually SBSD Helpdesk: teach kids, like, in their… I went to school in Brazil, and for my early education, and the education there is completely, you know, they really teach kids how to read and how to do math. SBSD Helpdesk: and all this other stuff, I don't know what's going on, but, you know, it doesn't cost very much to do that kind of stuff. Thank you, thank you so much for that feedback. I hope to gather more of that coming up. It sounds to me like… SBSD Helpdesk: Clearly, we have some concerns about… the academic program Yeah, that's… Thank you. SBSD Helpdesk: So, we're at the 30-minute mark. We've got

046three topics in, an hour and a half. Does anybody have a final question on the topic of, kind of, like, what does Joe think about X? SBSD Helpdesk: I'm also looking online to see if there's anybody who might have joined and wanted to… No, not him, no. SBSD Helpdesk: Okay. Oh. Can I ask one more question? Dr. Clark, what… SBSD Helpdesk: How was special education funded in Ohio, and how was that handled? Because this is an issue that we're having in Vermont, and it… the extraordinary special education, so education for kids who can't be educated in the classroom last year doubled in Vermont, the cost for that. SBSD Helpdesk: And so there's something in our statewide system that maybe isn't working, and I just wondered how Ohio funds special ed education. Is it, like, a

047block grant, or is it, like… They do it poorly. No, it's funded federally, and the federal government, who puts all the regulations together, does not fund, special ed to the level that they should fund special ed. They do, again… SBSD Helpdesk: We love all of our kids, and we want SBSD Helpdesk: And I believe that all kids need to be in school. It's great for the kids with disabilities, it's also great for the kids without disabilities to be in school with those folks, but there are some, SBSD Helpdesk: really high cost if you look at, and it's in Ohio, it is not, the state doesn't… SBSD Helpdesk: There is a catastrophic cost, so a student with, say, a multiple handicap might get more funding through the district, but it's always a fraction of what the

048actual cost is. SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, so it's… I doubt that it's… I'm sure it's no better than Vermont. Vermont might not be better either. SBSD Helpdesk: And I'll take in my notes here. SBSD Helpdesk: Great. All right, so, our next, topic in the committee forum is, how should we set the budget number? SBSD Helpdesk: this is a tough question, because like Joe was mentioning, you know, we're a… we're a newborn, except for Laura, and I also warned Laura that we'd be looking to her to remember things. So we also have Jean Marie here, we also have Tim here, and so, basically. SBSD Helpdesk: The… SBSD Helpdesk: the process that was suggested to the board this year is that, and this is a suggestion made by a consulting group called Tassant Partners, is that essentially the

049board should tell the central office a number to shoot for. SBSD Helpdesk: And then the central office comes up with a budget, and then it goes to the principals, who have an allocation. And so… SBSD Helpdesk: that first… Action is that the board has to… SBSD Helpdesk: tell a number, and we feel, and I think we feel that we need to get prepared as soon as possible for what number we should be setting. So, I asked Joe to pull up the slide, and just give a quick, talk about that. So I'm going to turn it over to you to kind of get the discussion started. SBSD Helpdesk: Okay, so what do I… I have it in my Google Drive. Do I need to… SBSD Helpdesk: You should look at Derek from your… So, share my

050screen. SBSD Helpdesk: With my Zoom? SBSD Helpdesk: I didn't. SBSD Helpdesk: Nope. SBSD Helpdesk: So… Perfect. I just need to make it so people can see it. Yeah. SBSD Helpdesk: loss as well SBSD Helpdesk: That's so cute. SBSD Helpdesk: Oh, it's better. SBSD Helpdesk: Perfect. Okay, thank you. SBSD Helpdesk: Okay, so, yeah, this is the, SBSD Helpdesk: the timeline that, Tassant is the group that I believe is helping us with this, and they provided this, and it shows us school-level engagement, district engagement, and board engagement, over the next several months. And in October, it starts with, principals SBSD Helpdesk: Giving some feedback about their vision and budget priorities, and… SBSD Helpdesk: the historical context of where, you know, where they've been in the past with their budgets, and key open, upcoming dates. They'll share those

051at their open houses. SBSD Helpdesk: District-wide, SBSD Helpdesk: there will be an overview of our priorities with a community survey, so I know that the board is just beginning to talk today about what some of these priorities should be, but it looks as if we've told folks we're going to survey them to get some input on what our goals should be. SBSD Helpdesk: And then there's, to be a community forum so we can get some more input, prior to setting the overall budget for the coming year. SBSD Helpdesk: In November, we'll have, principals, discussions with principals about what the student budgets, could be. In other words, how much are we going to spend on each student. SBSD Helpdesk: maybe a virtual town hall, to get further, input district-wide. So, again, October and November is a

052lot of just data collection, opinion collecting from, from a lot of stakeholders. SBSD Helpdesk: In December, we'll email back to the community, the school community, sharing what the final decisions have been made. Again, another video overview of the budget that will be submitted to the board, via all of our communication channels. Again, we met Ken earlier, and he'll be working on that. SBSD Helpdesk: And then the board, after they've decided, this is what we're going to ask for, then they'll start making a case for the budget. Why not they settled on what they settled on, what the tax rate's going to be, how it's going to impact people. SBSD Helpdesk: In their pocketbook. SBSD Helpdesk: The student board, in January, the student board director presentation to their fellow high school students, so we'll have fun

053doing that, talking to your classmates about what the budget's going to look like, and then the final budget presentation at the January board meeting. So, again, in the next two months, it's going to be a lot of listening, a lot of getting feedback, and in December, it's going to be really crunching. SBSD Helpdesk: numbers and deciding this is… this is what we're going to ask for, and then in January, we will talk about SBSD Helpdesk: what that final number is, and start telling people, you know, telling the story. This is what we're asking for, and this is what that is needed for. SBSD Helpdesk: And, there's another slide, too, that some of you may remember that says, SBSD Helpdesk: it's like a purple slide, and it says, like, first it's the board, then it's the

054central office, then it's the principals. You know the… do you know the slide I'm talking about? Yeah. I'll find it. SBSD Helpdesk: The start of the process is here with the school board. SBSD Helpdesk: Giving us guidance. SBSD Helpdesk: And, what month are we supposed to say. SBSD Helpdesk: this is the number that you should be shooting for. I'm asking this as a general. Jean Maria, you may also know the number, like, what month are we supposed to… SBSD Helpdesk: Smoother, better than liquor, but additionally, SBSD Helpdesk: you have to wait for some information to come in from some of the… from the AOE, and we need to know about what our… what the health insurance number's gonna look like, so, SBSD Helpdesk: It's… those are… we will have to set a target and likely

055readjust once those numbers come in. SBSD Helpdesk: I have been talking with my team a lot. I'll… let me just… I hope Jill's looking for the slide. Let me just rant for a second. SBSD Helpdesk: I have been talking a lot with my team about, the redistricting and how that's going to impact us and our budget. And that is a few years down the road, but it's coming at us. And right now. SBSD Helpdesk: We are one of the higher spending per-pupil districts, in the state, when you look at our ranking, and so… SBSD Helpdesk: I think I would, in, like, my own personal budget, I don't want at home for my income one month to be, say. SBSD Helpdesk: you know, $10,000, and then all of a sudden it's only $5, and I gotta

056figure out how to pay all my bills on half as much money coming in. So my goal for the district over those next few years as we move to redistricting and whatever the state tells us we get to spend, is that we SBSD Helpdesk: Can keep our spending low, keep our numbers down, so that SBSD Helpdesk: When that number comes in, I fear that it will be… SBSD Helpdesk: Lower than what we're accustomed to, so that SBSD Helpdesk: Whatever those changes are we have to make when we are… that is forced upon us, it is an easier SBSD Helpdesk: Pill to swallow. SBSD Helpdesk: So in those conversations with my team, we've been talking around… I think it's the job of the central office team and our… and my staff base to look at the

057way that we do business. SBSD Helpdesk: And the way that we operate, so that we can find efficiencies there, and, do business as efficiently and as… SBSD Helpdesk: Inexpensively as we possibly can. SBSD Helpdesk: And then, you know, that is our way to partner with educators and the building principals as we look at, you know, ways that we maybe have to adjust our staffing. SBSD Helpdesk: Okay, thank you for that. And it looks like, yes, this is the, like, very concrete, timeline that I was… SBSD Helpdesk: So, total budget amount, school board, oh wow, September, October. But it'll likely be interested. I still need more information. Yeah. And, you know, it would be really helpful to… SBSD Helpdesk: speak with principals and building administrators to find out exactly what their priorities are. Yeah, we didn't

058do that, so… SBSD Helpdesk: And then to hear, like, what, like, what's available. SBSD Helpdesk: I couldn't make up a number right now, but I don't know, I don't know, you know, 500 million dollars. No, no, I don't know. But you get my point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we need, like. SBSD Helpdesk: what's available, what is going to happen with the AOE? And then I know there's all these, like, mystical numbers out there. Yeah. Somebody in the back room… That's what makes it difficult, if trying to, like… Right. A guy in the back room at the SBA, like, crunching numbers. SBSD Helpdesk: That's the guy. Yeah. And this is… this is a target. Yeah, target. But that… this has to be done before principals are moving forward with the October SBSD Helpdesk: Right, you'll have

059a chance to do priority setting also when you're allocation. So I kind of want to flip the conversation on its head, though, for a minute. SBSD Helpdesk: Because as, like, a taxpayer. SBSD Helpdesk: I don't know the details of what you guys are talking about, right? And so… SBSD Helpdesk: I can imagine thinking about the budget in terms of, like, well. SBSD Helpdesk: level funded. Like, let's just say, let's use the exact same number as last year. What that means is that there would have to be cuts to the staff, because the healthcare costs are mandated. SBSD Helpdesk: And then I can also say as a taxpayer, well, level funded is excessive… it's excessively stringent, so maybe what we should do is inflation. We should just say, take the inflation number. SBSD Helpdesk: and multiply

060that by the budget. And then that gives a number that, as a taxpayer, makes sense. Or maybe we said, you know, one of the first conversations I had when I got on the board was with a former board member who told me that the way they used to do it was, by the grand list. You know, the school budget went up by no more than what the grand list expanded. And, SBSD Helpdesk: And so that's the kind of, like. SBSD Helpdesk: what the discussion that I'd like to have with as many people as possible is, like, you know, does it make sense to people to set the number at inflation, knowing that given healthcare costs, that probably will mean teacher cuts? Is the community… SBSD Helpdesk: dead set on a level-funded budget, which would be

061very stringent. On the other hand, does the community want to say. SBSD Helpdesk: you know, we want to make investments while we still can, you know? And, you know, let's do above inflation. So, if we could just flip the conversation like that, and hear from people about, you know, what would be like to go back to inflation-based or brandless-based, I'm truly a clean slate on this, and I would like to… Just to put some context. SBSD Helpdesk: I'm assuming, yeah. SBSD Helpdesk: One of the reasons why the Toussant recommendation was to have the school board determine its target budget, and everyone knew that it was a target. SBSD Helpdesk: is because one of the other steps of the Toussaint process is to allocate to the schools based upon, the number of students and using certain,

062SBSD Helpdesk: demographic information, right? So, if the high school has 850 students, and the middle school has 500 students, and orchard, and children, etc. SBSD Helpdesk: The idea was, for the… SBSD Helpdesk: A lot of money out of the total budget that will be allocated to the schools, as opposed to, like, facilities, you know, dealing with that separately. SBSD Helpdesk: They need to have the denominator in order to do that calculation, and to say. SBSD Helpdesk: Okay, high school, your share of this pot that the school board has designated is X number of dollars. SBSD Helpdesk: how are you going to spend it? And then the principals take that. SBSD Helpdesk: initial number, and they say, you know… and it's very different in the elementary schools, and the middle school, and especially the high school.

063The high school is the craziest one, because there's so much SBSD Helpdesk: extra programming and option alternatives and things like that, where, you know, what Holly faces, and her colleagues in the elementary schools, is much more rigid that you need based on class sizes. You need X number of teachers, and you need X number, or Y and Z, etc. SBSD Helpdesk: So, that's… that's the reason why they're looking for this initial target number. SBSD Helpdesk: But it's completely divorced from what's going to happen in the ensuing months, once you start getting all this information from the state. SBSD Helpdesk: And it's going to then become a question of what will the voters find affordable and acceptable based upon what's going to happen to their tax rates. SBSD Helpdesk: But there's no question SBSD Helpdesk: that…

064and I like this process because it's more in line with what we expect will happen in the future state when we're running the foundation form of where schools across the state are going to be given SBSD Helpdesk: an X number of dollars per student, they send out profits. And the challenge is always going to be SBSD Helpdesk: Setting expectations that then are destroyed by the data, or by these factors that come in. SBSD Helpdesk: And, it can have a significant impact, you know, and, SBSD Helpdesk: I actually… I ran some numbers. Maybe this isn't the right time to do it, but I was doing some SBSD Helpdesk: In my spare time, which I have a lot of now. SBSD Helpdesk: Projecting what the impact could be SBSD Helpdesk: of a flat budget, of a minus

0655% budget. And the biggest driver of this is going to be what is the real estate inflation rate in South Burlington for this coming year, because SBSD Helpdesk: On that, that's average close to 10%. SBSD Helpdesk: For the last 3 years, and if it's around 10%, SBSD Helpdesk: Again, it may or may not be. I mean, unless you think that real estate… Real estate inflation helps tax revenues? SBSD Helpdesk: What's that? Real estate inflation helps tax revenue, so that's why it depends on it? No, well, the… SBSD Helpdesk: The macro thing you need to understand is that the way that tax rates are determined has really nothing to do with, or hasn't… SBSD Helpdesk: relatively little to do with South Burlington as it does the entire state, because the state SBSD Helpdesk: We'll set the

066yield, which is the most… one of the most important. SBSD Helpdesk: Parts of the calculation, but… SBSD Helpdesk: If you have high real estate inflation. SBSD Helpdesk: What it's basically saying is that your house that was worth $400,000 SBSD Helpdesk: this year, or last year, is now worth $450,000, and that's the study they do, that's a Commonwealth Local Basel study they do every year. SBSD Helpdesk: We have no control over that. And then that is just applied to the cancellation after other factors are taken into account. SBSD Helpdesk: And you're basically paying… A higher tax rate on the same assessed value on the grant funds. SBSD Helpdesk: And so, your… until we do another reappraisal for the city, which God knows when, some cities, towns have waited 20, 30 years for this, and I mean,

067ours was about… SBSD Helpdesk: Maybe 8 years ago? No, it wasn't that large. It was during COVID, because we all had people in. But ours has been one of the biggest, changing ones in the state. So, we started at 113% for our CLA right after the appraisal, and then we were, what, last year at, like, 70? 74. Yeah. SBSD Helpdesk: And so they divide the number you get at the bottom. There's, like, this whole calculation, you divide the number by the common level of appraisal, so a higher common level of appraisal… SBSD Helpdesk: means a lower tax rate. And that common level appraisal is basically saying. SBSD Helpdesk: here's how properties are valued right now, based on the last reappraisal, but here's what the market value is. That's the study that PBR does at the

068state level, and they provide that number to the district. SBSD Helpdesk: out of the district's control, really. And unfortunately, that usually comes with a December 1 letter, which doesn't… That doesn't… that actually doesn't… historically doesn't come until the week between Christmas and New Year's, which is why SBSD Helpdesk: It's so crazy. So, I just… I want to kind of play the devil's advocate here for a minute, and just say, like, a lot of that, as a taxpayer, sounds like inside baseball. SBSD Helpdesk: And I'm like, at the end of the day, like, why can't I, as the taxpayer, just tell you SBSD Helpdesk: the budget is allowed to grow with inflation, and you guys figure it out. Within that box. SBSD Helpdesk: it's up to you all, you know what I mean? So, like, what…

069what am I missing when I think about a taxpayer's point of view? And Beth, I know you want to say something. I do. SBSD Helpdesk: Because… SBSD Helpdesk: in the… historically, in the… because you told me to not say anything to me, but I'm gonna anyway. SBSD Helpdesk: Historically, our conversations in South Burlington have always been about the number, and not about programming, and not about kids. And that's why we're here. We're not a business. We're a public school. We don't… our inputs are… SBSD Helpdesk: not the same. When you have a business, your inputs are the same. Our inputs are not the same. Our outputs are not the same. We are trying to create citizens that we want to vote and do all these things, and if we only talk about that number and

070the tax rate, we're forgetting the kids. SBSD Helpdesk: And they're left out of the conversation, and so I just want to make sure SBSD Helpdesk: that when we talk about the budget, we're also talking about programming and what that budget means to our students. Yeah, I agree completely with Beth on that point, and I… just so everyone remembers, I have two kids in high school itself, right? So. SBSD Helpdesk: I am not… I'm talking as a parent as much as a taxpayer. SBSD Helpdesk: But… SBSD Helpdesk: And everything that Beth said is correct, you know, and I think that this new way of approaching the budget cycle is beneficial to all of us. SBSD Helpdesk: By front-running it with the priorities of the schools and the students, as the… and maybe those will need to

071be cut further down the road. SBSD Helpdesk: But it will at least help us SBSD Helpdesk: from a community engagement point of view, get all that stuff on the table up front. Like, this is a list of our priorities at the high school. This is a list of our priorities at middle school, etc. SBSD Helpdesk: We may… I would suspect that the city will not be able to afford everything that's put on that list, but you have to start with that list and work backwards. Where I think we may have, done disservice to ourselves SBSD Helpdesk: is that we were so obsessed with the tax rate because the whole state is obsessed with the tax rate, right? The governor is obsessed with the tax rate, every newspaper is obsessed with the tax rate. SBSD Helpdesk:

072And 80% of our residents don't… don't even have kids in the school, right? And only 20% of, at most, of the residents who are eligible to vote actually vote. SBSD Helpdesk: And so, it… But let's, let's… so let's bring it… let's bring it back to that. SBSD Helpdesk: I mean, I think that the, SBSD Helpdesk: as a taxpayer, again, I could say. SBSD Helpdesk: That the list of needs this year SBSD Helpdesk: let's say that it suggests that we grow with double inflation, and then next year, like, I as a taxpayer, don't have a guarantee that it's not just going to be every year significantly more than inflation, which is then just, by definition, unsustainable. Agreed. And so, like, what's the, like, how should the board… should the board SBSD Helpdesk: be saying… and I

073would like to propose on the board that, like, we say… we don't necessarily specify a number, we specify a design, and the design is like, well, you guys are going to be level funded, or you guys are going to be inflation, or you're going to be double inflation and year-wide. And so, like, what, SBSD Helpdesk: if the… Schools come back and tell us that they need more money than inflation. SBSD Helpdesk: And I'm… I'm taking out… we have to take out the part that's mandated by the state. Like, healthcare is mandated by the state. Gold plan… SBSD Helpdesk: for the whole family, paid for 80% by the schools, that's mandated by the Vermont Health Commissioners. Like, that's… that's entitlement. But, like, for the money that the teachers in the schools say that they need, how

074can I, as a taxpayer, know that next year it's not going to also be, again, double inflation and double inflation? Like, what… SBSD Helpdesk: And, you know, how should I think about that? How should we think about that? I mean, when you say double inflation. SBSD Helpdesk: For the taxpayer, Double inflation is gonna be, like… SBSD Helpdesk: high double digits for tax increase, right? So, is the inflation SBSD Helpdesk: How much money are you adding to the $71.5 million school budget, or is inflation, like. SBSD Helpdesk: my taxes were X this year. No, I think if you take a step back and you say, like, the inflation number right now is, like, 2 or 3%. Like, that's what the CPI is, that's what the CPIU is. So, like, when people think about inflation, I think

075they're thinking about, like, a 2% number, a 5%. Over COVID, it was more like 5 or 7%. So, like, if what we're growing the… SBSD Helpdesk: District's budget buys more than 2% of 3% or 5%. SBSD Helpdesk: how are we supposed to explain that? And how are we supposed to say that it's not going to be like that every single year? I think that's, like, what's… SBSD Helpdesk: My sense is that constituents who are not in the schools, who don't have school connections, that's what they're allergic to. It's like, why is it that you guys get to double it? You get to double inflation every year. SBSD Helpdesk: Our truth is open. SBSD Helpdesk: It's a weapon. SBSD Helpdesk: Like, how should we think about that? I think, though. SBSD Helpdesk: And this is a

076hard question, Ryan, because it's complicated. Everything about this is complicated, but… SBSD Helpdesk: I don't know if the average citizen or voter SBSD Helpdesk: Cares as much about the inflation increase of the $71.5 million school budget SBSD Helpdesk: or the impact that that has on the property taxes, which is from their own plot, right? And that's why it's hard to separate them, and why you need to build an incredibly compelling story for them. SBSD Helpdesk: About why you need More than inflation, let's say. SBSD Helpdesk: I think… I think people can… although other school districts this past year, when it was so difficult, they cut their budgets, right? They had, like, negative SBSD Helpdesk: Budgets, and not even, level funding, so… SBSD Helpdesk: The other thing is, in the lead-up to whatever ends up happening

077with the new act, like, nobody knows, right? Nobody knows the redistricting, nobody knows the foundation formula, so… SBSD Helpdesk: If it's an opportunity for South Burlington, and if they're willing to pay our taxes to fund it. SBSD Helpdesk: Maybe you're trying to get yourself in a better situation this year. So have higher… so ask for a lot, relatively speaking. SBSD Helpdesk: balanced with, once you get all these state factors, and you realize that what you're asking for is going to be the 25% tax increase, right? I mean, that's probably going to be turned down, and then you're going to have two weeks to get a new budget, and then you're going to get 2 weeks to get another budget, and then you can refer to last year's budget. SBSD Helpdesk: So does any… does anybody

078else have… I think you have a raised hand, oh, yeah. Go ahead, please go ahead, Jess. Jess Wisloski: Can you hear me on the call? Jess Wisloski: Can you hear me? Jess Wisloski: Hello, can you hear me? SBSD Helpdesk: We can hear you. Yeah, we can hear you. Jess Wisloski: Oh, you can? Okay, because I can't hear you immediately. I'm a librarian at Orchard School. I'm… I'm speaking up because this slide itself that's on the screen is another example of a sort of Jess Wisloski: Problematic, like, under-reporting what's happening with the school libraries and the elementary schools. Jess Wisloski: The librarian needs to have two stars. Jess Wisloski: Next to it, we are beyond max capacity in my school library, and we… the EQS require that school librarians… one… at least one librarian for a

079school of 300. Our school ranges from, like, 415 to 430. Jess Wisloski: And sufficient support staff in order to run a well-rounded and, like. Jess Wisloski: like, a fully supported school library program. In the elementary schools, just like the middle and high schools, there is an expectation to have the doors open for students to come and go through the day. But I teach 23 classes a week that are 50 minutes each. Jess Wisloski: I can't actually help staff when they come in and need help. I can't co-teach or co-plan with teachers. There's a lot of things that are in my mandate Jess Wisloski: As outlined in my job requirement and the educational quality standards, which also say a supported schedule that allows librarians to do their jobs. This district has lost 6 librarians since 2023.

080Jess Wisloski: There's a problem. Jess Wisloski: I understand that we have financial burdens, but underreporting some of the issues, the fact that two of our schools are well over 300 students, and in my case, my staff got cut this year. I have a less than .5 assistant now. Every other building has a 1.0 library assistant. Jess Wisloski: Orchard is by far the largest elementary school. Jess Wisloski: we are not operating at, like, anything outlined in the EQS, and I would certainly love to welcome a further conversation, but this is, again, a time that I've seen in one of our district-wide slides that Jess Wisloski: like, a misrepresentation of what our staff is. When they made the cut, they just said it was a 1.0 to a .5. They didn't say what the library's assistant does.

081They are not just working in the library. They are the all-building IT support staff. Jess Wisloski: And ours is the only one that doesn't have somebody after 11 in the morning every day. Jess Wisloski: So, thanks, that's all. I just needed to speak out, because it's been a frustrating year to try and continue to do my job when I went into library science for a reason. Thanks. SBSD Helpdesk: And just to clarify, this slide is a Tassant slide, and it's based on the ed quality standards, so this, this is not… SBSD Helpdesk: This doesn't represent what we have currently in South Burlington. This was the… SBSD Helpdesk: final budget, the way that Tessana had come up with that allocation. And this is, I think, what I meant when I said I would like to hear

082from administrators and teachers, like, that kind of story. I can tell you at Essex Westford, where I am, we've cut an entire French teacher in Spanish, and French have been Japanese have been reduced. Our classes are huge. SBSD Helpdesk: And… We… And the need is really great. So, I mean, these numbers that are bounced around. SBSD Helpdesk: you're not talking about the human beings, like, there is… it's, like, devoid of the human… like, there's no sense of the human beings that are sitting in my room, and it is not a business. SBSD Helpdesk: It's not. It's like, yeah, business, you get to pick and choose. I don't get to pick and choose who walks through my room. I have, you know, 25 kids. My… across the hall from me is the algebra teacher, 35 kids

083in her class. She doesn't get to decide who's in there. SBSD Helpdesk: Right? So, I mean, this is so… this is, like, for me, it's very hard to talk about this budget without knowing exactly what is happening in the school. I mean, so… I'm feeling the pressure, too. So that's… I think that's what I meant. SBSD Helpdesk: I would like to hear from the staff, because otherwise I can't. How can I make a decision? SBSD Helpdesk: Hi, Elizabeth Fitzgerald, City Council and grandmother of two, at the elementary school. City Council did provide direction to city staff at Monday's meeting on budget. SBSD Helpdesk: And the direction was around kind of a rolling CPI, so that was set at 3.4%. SBSD Helpdesk: Whether it stays there or not. SBSD Helpdesk: you know, remains to be seen,

084but department heads will go back and work with the city manager to come back with what meets that target, and then what isn't funded at that target, and that's where the discussion will come. I do think it's important from a timing standpoint SBSD Helpdesk: for the leadership team, the board, to sort of set a direction, and then hear that information that I think everybody wants to hear of SBSD Helpdesk: What can get funded at that level, and then what is not getting funded, or what SBSD Helpdesk: is either desirable to be done, what might have to be cut, and programs should always be evaluated for whether they're still effective, but at some point. SBSD Helpdesk: we collectively will go to the taxpayer with our respective budgets, and it'll be a, you know, consolidated impact on

085the tax rate. And hopefully, the whole story will be, SBSD Helpdesk: palatable to the community, but I know the healthcare rates typically are given to the Department of Financial Regulation mid-October, so that's when that component will be available. They could… DFR could accept or reject those, but typically they don't, so whatever gets submitted to DFR will be close to SBSD Helpdesk: Approximate for at least that component, and then the December 1st, assuming that SBSD Helpdesk: that date is available, that'll be another piece of the puzzle. But our… I know our goal as Council was… SBSD Helpdesk: To present that initial target, and I think that is a message to the community of what SBSD Helpdesk: we're trying to accomplish and deliver, at this stage. And again, we walked that tightrope of SBSD Helpdesk: fundamentally changing

086as you get down the road, but at least if you're starting with something that is intent, I think it sends the message to the community that this is… this is the goal we're striving for, and is also, you know. SBSD Helpdesk: the city is very near the pressure on the school system, and the city budget was adjusted last year to reflect the substantial increase in the taxpayer bill that went associated with the general ed fund. SBSD Helpdesk: That's not going to feel good to do that again, because the programs that… or the programs and services provided to many folks that don't have kids in the school system are funded by the city budget, SBSD Helpdesk: And, but it would benefit all community members, so it's… it's a tight, tough, tightrope, but I do think, SBSD

087Helpdesk: intent from the leadership team is important. So, did you just say that the City Council directed the City Administration SBSD Helpdesk: to set budgets for next year at the inflation rate? Yes. And you said rolling, so, like, if it… you're giving them the flexibility that if the inflation rate goes way up… No, there was no… there was no flexibility. We looked at the historical SBSD Helpdesk: rolling CPI, and we determined it to be 3.4%. So you guys, you fixed it, then you said, okay. That, to me, sounds very… I think the current Northeast CPI is about 3.6 for the first half of this… SBSD Helpdesk: And there are also CPIs that… not CPIs, but there are other inflation factors, like, SBSD Helpdesk: blanking on the acronym for it. If you go to the Joint

088Fiscal website, there's a whole list of different inflation factors, and one of them takes into account healthcare increases, which is, I think, where state is headed eventually, when we're sort of building into law inflation metrics for some of these things, and I think we need to be really careful about, like, which inflation metric we're using. The other thing is, the city has a little bit of a different SBSD Helpdesk: Setup than the district does, because you can have SBSD Helpdesk: big increases in the number of students, which, you know, could change the overall size of the budget. You could have a drastic change. Just a handful of really high-need kids coming into the district can dramatically change the number of staff you need. So, it's by nature an iterative process. You're not going to be

089able to say, like. SBSD Helpdesk: bring me back a budget that's 3.4% more than last year, if that's what you have to work with, and everything else you're just going to cut to get to that, it has to be a conversation. So, I mean, I think it's not a bad framework to say, hey, you know, CPI to start with, and as Elizabeth said, come back with what that means. SBSD Helpdesk: in terms of what's going to have to be cut, because there would be cuts at CPI. I guarantee there would be cuts at CPI. But again, to sort of just… sorry to keep reiterating Elizabeth's points, but one thing that was frustrating when I was on the board was we often put in place programs SBSD Helpdesk: That had all good intentions, and that were

090meant to be pilot programs, and then there was never any true review of them to say, for example, and this is way back when, so now behavioral interventions are part of our system, like that, that we need them, and we need a lot of them. SBSD Helpdesk: But we would put something like that in place, and there would be no sort of real review of the outcomes of, like, whether this actually helped teachers. You know, like, did it actually expand their ability to focus on other kids in the class if there was a behavioral interventionist? Like, what did it look like with two in one school and one in the other? You know, we'd never really sort of took stuff back SBSD Helpdesk: If it wasn't working, and so I think there needs to be

091a little bit of give and take there, and that kind of stuff SBSD Helpdesk: takes a while to do. I'm not even sure that we always get to this point in the fall and sort of say, we really should be reviewing these programs, but it's already the end of September, and we really just need to get a budget done, and so it's really tricky. So that may be something that, you know, we start to implement SBSD Helpdesk: after this budget cycle, like, really reviewing each of the programs, because that sort of addresses the drivers, as opposed to just the overall number, which is kind of tricky, too. And could justify spending above inflation, I think is maybe part of what you're saying. Well, and which… and when you're talking to the public, like, it is

092tricky, because I do take your point, Tim, that, like, people do look at their… their tax bills when they get them, and they do pull them out and compare them to last year. SBSD Helpdesk: However, when they go to the ballot box, what they see in the ballot box is how much we're increasing per student, per weighted average student, and they do see, like, what the overall percentage increase is, so we do have to be a little bit careful with that. That was a constant battle to try to explain to the community, yes, the per-pupil cost is going up, but because of all these state factors, your tax rate may be going down this year, and people just… SBSD Helpdesk: it's inherent in the way the system is structured right now, and it creates a

093lack of trust, and so it just needs a lot of communication for, here's what we're doing to contain costs more, to make sure that we're operating in the best way for students, and the most efficient way for taxpayers. And yet, even if we're doing all those right things. SBSD Helpdesk: We still may have a tax increase because of what's happening at the state level. SBSD Helpdesk: Just, Bridget, I'm going to follow up with you, so you can point me to the inflation, including healthcare. Yes. Because that does sound very interesting. Just a quick comment, because I think you make a good point, Bridget, is you could set SBSD Helpdesk: A rate or a number, whatever, however you choose to do it, and make it on a fixed enrollment and a fixed, SBSD Helpdesk: acuity or

094weighting of students as well, because that would allow for that adjustment. And what you're saying is that then, we would say, if there's 10 students. SBSD Helpdesk: Well, what do you… what happens? Well, basically, if enrollment changes… increases substantially in any situation, then you haven't locked yourself in, because you would potentially need additional staff, or, you know, you would need some additional service there, so… and then if you do the waiting. SBSD Helpdesk: You would have adjusted for any potential needs of a completely different mix of students. SBSD Helpdesk: So you said… SBSD Helpdesk: I'm sure that if you have questions, I'm sure other people have questions too, so we do express… No, I'm just very confused, because we don't… we're not going to build this budget. That's up to the staff to do that,

095so we're not building any budget. That's… I feel like we're getting into the… that is not our purpose. Let me explain just what the… So, our job is important. SBSD Helpdesk: is to give a top, like, a top line… I understand that, but usually we get information first from, you know, from Jean Marie, you know, you know, all the people who understand the numbers. SBSD Helpdesk: That's generally how it has worked. And from a political standpoint, as a taxpayer, as somebody who doesn't have kids in school. SBSD Helpdesk: I look at that process, and I'm like, well, you're letting the… what is it, the box run the NL? Well, no, that's why I was saying, like, we need to hear from the staff as well. Like, you find one… I personally am not comfortable right

096now making any decisions. Oh, absolutely. I'm just saying that the purpose is that… I think what Seamus is trying to say, I hear both of you, I think what he's trying to say is. SBSD Helpdesk: Is there a framework that the community would like us to start this process with to keep their interests in mind, so that when we do give them a budget that incorporates that framework, it's in a context that… I guess I'm further confused, because I thought that we paid this consulting agency $60,000 to help us do that? SBSD Helpdesk: So I guess I'm confused, like, where are they right now? Why aren't they… That's a great question. That is a great question, one I have, but I guess I was hearing two different points, so just kind of clarify. I mean,

097it's not that I disagree with either one of you. SBSD Helpdesk: I'm just… SBSD Helpdesk: I look at this slide, and it says we paid $60,000 for this, and I want to know where these people are. SBSD Helpdesk: And why are they… Yeah, and I guess I'm just… Laura, the high level of what I'm trying to do is that I'm trying to start from the position of, like, what can we… SBSD Helpdesk: what budget can we get passed, and then we back into other things, as opposed to starting from what money would be ideal, and trying to pass that. Well, I get it. I just don't know why… I don't know why we've paid them all this money. SBSD Helpdesk: I think the goal, too, was if we wait until we have all the numbers,

098it's… the timeline is really tight, and we're not getting… No, that makes sense. SBSD Helpdesk: And so, you know, The goal was to start with SBSD Helpdesk: a target. It's not going to be… SBSD Helpdesk: exact, and then to think about, okay, here's a target, and then come back to us. And now we have to say, okay, here's what our priorities are. SBSD Helpdesk: administrators and get feedback from the community. And the target that we might set might not be a dollar amount. Yeah. It might just be, like, what the city council did. Right. Yeah, oh, right, right, okay. I just feel like we're not putting that… SBSD Helpdesk: you sort of have an idea of priorities, I assume, like, principles. SBSD Helpdesk: kind of have ideas about, like, what your wishlist would be before

099you get a number. Do you have, like, ideas about… like, maybe the orchard knows, like, gosh, our library is needing to bring that library back, library back if we possibly can. Like, are those things already kind of in your mind when we're… SBSD Helpdesk: Coming upon budget season, about, like, well. SBSD Helpdesk: I need this in my school, lost it, I'd love to get it back, or… Yeah. So you kind of… yeah, I mean, there's nothing wrong with, like, them… the principals already kind of just having ideas about what their priorities are before we have an exact number, or a… SBSD Helpdesk: rank to give, right? I think that would be good for reflection on… this past year has been hard, as Jess said, and, like, how we could help students feel good in their

100classrooms, like you were saying, and I think it has a lot to do with the services and teachers. SBSD Helpdesk: I just want to use the library as an example, too, because I guess you do have to have a reasonable presentation for the taxpayers, too. SBSD Helpdesk: Justify, you know, non-astronomical number to look crazy. SBSD Helpdesk: But, you know, in looking into the micro details of the library, like, why is the library having issues in the first place? And are there philosophical problems in… that are happening at the library? For example, like, purging out all of the books that don't have SBSD Helpdesk: you know, perfect language in them, and just having to repurchase all of the books from the library, because it insults someone, or has some kind of language. And so I think

101they did, like, a huge kind of… SBSD Helpdesk: or perjury, that they got, you know, got rid of a lot of materials, and who has a say on that? And, you know, I guess… SBSD Helpdesk: That's… those are kind of the… SBSD Helpdesk: Maybe the other audits that we kind of have to look at to just make sure that we're not wasting money. SBSD Helpdesk: Something that not everybody is reason, and I feel like a lot of the librarians have quit because of that. SBSD Helpdesk: Or not a lot. Yeah, well, and Jean Marie mentioned efficiencies earlier, and I hear that word a lot, and… SBSD Helpdesk: I don't really… it's like a magic word to me. I'm like, how do… how… that's… that's the process we're talking about. It's gonna take, like, how do

102we… SBSD Helpdesk: Find out what's not working, yeah. And when… but that takes years, and I love, SBSD Helpdesk: I love the idea of efficiency, you know, to cut down money costs instead of having to not… SBSD Helpdesk: We don't have as many resources for our kids. SBSD Helpdesk: So, but then you run into a copier time. I'm quiet because I'm, again, I'm new here, and I've only been here a few days, but I think what I'm hearing is, first of all, I'm hearing, symptoms of leadership turnover, right? Because there's so many new people here that don't… haven't been… SBSD Helpdesk: haven't been here, and so it's hard to give judgments on what programs are working or turning folks over, so we're at a disadvantage this year, but I'm also hearing that SBSD Helpdesk: this

103board wants to get some feedback from our staff about what programs are we missing. I can almost guess that nobody would say we have too much programming. But I would like to hear from folks about what are we short? I mean, I heard the library, I hear from other folks, but it sounds like you need some feedback, and it needs to be in pretty short order. SBSD Helpdesk: In a perfect world, maybe we would have started this a month ago and had SBSD Helpdesk: reaching out, so… she'd like me to, yes, do what I can to gather some feedback from our teams about this budget season, and not… we can't promise anything, but I just… we need to get a sense for the new leadership here about SBSD Helpdesk: What do you think of? Joe,

104I don't want to speak on behalf of the board, so I'm sort of posing this question to the board, and then maybe if we agree to you. I think it would be really helpful for us to, one, yes, we are a new board. SBSD Helpdesk: It would be helpful for us to get that list of all the things that the administrators would like to do, so if there's an assumption of, okay, you know, if there was more money than was in last year's budget, what would you like to do differently? SBSD Helpdesk: I would also love to get a list of, like, what are the areas that we could trigger. It would be helpful to have both of those, so that we can put together the healthiest budget for taxpayers. SBSD Helpdesk: And also recognizing

105the fact, and you had shared the data with me earlier, just that we have a flat to potentially declining student enrollment projection, so how do we manage that as well? If we have ever-increasing budgets and never, you know, moderating, potentially decreasing student population. SBSD Helpdesk: we're gonna have to rate… there are things we should do that are new, that we want to do that are newer. There are some things that we probably just need to make hard decisions about cutting, so if… SBSD Helpdesk: is it okay if we ask Joe to get a list of, like, the wish list and a areas we could cut list from the administrators that we can start then incorporating in your budget? Ultimately, I think we can use that. As I understand it, it's… SBSD Helpdesk: Ultimately, the… SBSD

106Helpdesk: You guys are gonna decide how you spend the money, and we're gonna give you the top-line priorities, and then we also have to be in sync, so we can… so we can… SBSD Helpdesk: make the case to the taxpayer that it's worth voting yes on whatever. So I would absolutely be interested in that, but more from the, you know, not because I'm going to pick between whatever we need to cut word and we keep, it's just so that I can then go to the voters and say. SBSD Helpdesk: I really believe that even though it's expensive, we should really, you know, reopen X, or… Agreed, whatever. Well, I mean, programs mean people, right? So if they're… if anybody wants to add anything, it's going to be people, which is what costs money, so… and

107to stay… SBSD Helpdesk: Status quo would mean still an increase if we're not cutting any projects, right? SBSD Helpdesk: But again, I go back to, like, what Laura was just saying, which is we just paid all this money for this shift, you know, pro model that we're creating here, and the staffing allocations, but I think, how are we using that to look at SBSD Helpdesk: what the budget is going to be. I think that's going to be really critical. Instead of saying, and maybe this all fits into it, but instead of, like, okay, here's our wish list, how does that translate to what we are getting out of this budget model? Are we using this budget model? Because we did just spend an exorbitant amount of money on that. SBSD Helpdesk: And how are we

108using that model to… to give us this output that we need? Well, I think that's sort of in here, where it's, like, the first… this first slide is, like, okay, that's… that's what you need to keep the, like, like, you know, state regulations, right? So we could get that number. SBSD Helpdesk: Also, from principal. And then, we're moving over to the critical resources for education, and that's sort of the more on… on… on top, as far as I have agreed in bringing this. I mean, I also feel a need that… for me to immediately reach out to TASA and introduce myself and get together with them and let them know that we're working. SBSD Helpdesk: And I think that, like, at large organizations, sometimes SBSD Helpdesk: you need to pay people to tell you obvious

109things. And so, like, part of the value of having the timeline slide, which I think is, for me, the most valuable thing Tassan provided, is it's… SBSD Helpdesk: telling the board, you guys need to set a number ASAP, because otherwise, central office is flying blind. And then, I love the fact that Tasan SBSD Helpdesk: created legitimacy around the idea of giving principals allocations. You know, that's a… and so it's just, like, sometimes, so I view a lot of that value as having been delivered just in the clarity of the process. SBSD Helpdesk: I had a variety of comments I wanted to make. One is, I know that on our webpage that there's a, like, get in touch with us button that I think you folks put on there, and I think there's value in SBSD

110Helpdesk: especially with so many new board members, so many new, district office folks, that, there are people in our community, I'm for sure, who will say a statement like, well, I've been saying for years that we oughta outsource this, or cut that, like, this will say… and that no one's listened to me, right? So I really… SBSD Helpdesk: hope that those folks inside and outside the district will click the button and give us that feedback, you know, on the website or in some of these community forums, because I… there likely are some good ideas there. There likely are some not-great ideas there, too, but I'd love to make sure that those folks have an opportunity to give them again. SBSD Helpdesk: I… now I'm… I like 3 or 4 unrelated things, and I'm gonna not

111remember them all now. I really think that, there is… one of the things that Tassant did for us is… SBSD Helpdesk: help us work on who is owning the budget and giving them the power to put input into that. So, like you said. SBSD Helpdesk: you know, the Hollies, the Lissas, the Pat Burks of the world, they're going to be able to say, our community knows that we need, like an orchard, two librarians. And so that's how we're going to prioritize the… we are empowering the principals to put that, those, that, those budgets together. SBSD Helpdesk: Well, it's hard getting old when you put that on the stage. Well, maybe from the first thing you said also goes back to one of the first things that Joe said, and it's related to what Austin said,

112which is, SBSD Helpdesk: I think we said on the first slide you showed that we would run a survey, a community survey. SBSD Helpdesk: And it sounds like we need to do that, like, ASAP. Now it's… SBSD Helpdesk: I wonder if the board should run that, because it's a budget thing instead of the school district, so that… I would be happy to receive advice about that, but, have been kind of not very good to relay information, the ones that have been given to… Could you… SBSD Helpdesk: Because the questions that they were asked were kind of not really answering the problems, they were kind of… SBSD Helpdesk: You know, just, the way it was… they were structured, they were not really… helpful. SBSD Helpdesk: A lot of skill to write a really good survey that

113actually elicits the information you want, and it's really tricky when you're trying to do it in a very quick way, because you tend to hear from the squeaky wheels. You hear from this group of people who are kind of engaged already, and you miss out on a whole group of people, some of them parents. SBSD Helpdesk: who… maybe English isn't their first language. Maybe, you know, they have so much on their plate, like, another survey, like, is not… so you're missing, I think, a lot of voices, so I don't think it's a bad idea to do a survey. I just think that if you do it, you have to… I would… I would say the board is probably not the right person, because there are some folks in the district who have done surveys before,

114and have… and maybe some of you guys have skills, I don't know about, so maybe SBSD Helpdesk: someone is an expert. But I would also just caution that whenever you do get back, you just take it with a little bit of a grain of salt, because it's gonna not necessarily, no matter how hard you work, we don't have 6 months to, you know, go to every single group and hand them the survey and walk… SBSD Helpdesk: And Joe's about to go talk to a bunch of, you know, if you go… when you go to the Senior Center, bring some paper copies, you know, when, you know, that sounds like you can… we'll have a limited ability to deliver to some groups that traditionally wouldn't respond to the World Web Survey. It is a small group

115that's responding, having the relevant questions that pertain to the outcomes and the results. SBSD Helpdesk: The way the survey's rated. SBSD Helpdesk: is kind of the most important, like, bottom line that we're getting started. We did get over 400 responses on the internet students, which is great. I remember my last thing, sorry. Before I forget again, SBSD Helpdesk: I just want to recognize how uncomfortable we all are with the schedule of events for this budget, and I want to remind us the main reason why we're doing that is because SBSD Helpdesk: We were so… we heard from the community time and time again that by the time they heard what was in the budget. SBSD Helpdesk: we… you were voting on it, or they were expected to vote on it. So we're trying… that's why

116everything is so early, that we want them to say, I value an additional lacrosse team. You know, I want you to put that into the budget, or for the love of Pete, don't cut the art program. Whatever those things are, that's why we're doing this now, not in February and March. When they come, they're mad. SBSD Helpdesk: And the… the opportunity is gone, yeah. Community Forum. SBSD Helpdesk: Don't just talk to people when you need the money. Right. Yes, yeah. I wanted to reiterate something that Joe said a minute ago, and I hope we all hear clearly. I think one of the first things the board needs is to completely understand what a flat budget's gonna cost. SBSD Helpdesk: So, if we keep everything status quo, I can guarantee that's going to cost you 5%,

1175.5%, so that you know that if you're going to come back to, say, CPI at 3.4, that means we cut. So, I think that bottom line information is an important piece of information that you… this is what we did in the system. SBSD Helpdesk: Sorry, another drop-in. SBSD Helpdesk: You know, and we all know that the primary SBSD Helpdesk: driver behind increased costs is healthcare. And so, you know, you brought that up, Austin. And so, it can't just be the CPI, it has to be the CPI plus what is our increased cost? There's an inflation number that takes… Right. I was gonna ask Jean Marie, if you don't… if you have… do you have a sense for when we might know the inflation number? Understand… I'm sorry, for insurance, understanding that that will be, like,

118our first major SBSD Helpdesk: Off the top of my head, in this moment, I don't. Yeah, but it's got to be a part of your… SBSD Helpdesk: Because otherwise, those cuts come immediately. That's what I… I don't know what Joe thinks about that, but I think we need a budget committee. SBSD Helpdesk: Okay, so we have three topics, we've covered 2 of them. I wanted to give Holly a chance to, if you had anything… Oh, I was just… I was just thinking, as far as surveys go, we put out a family survey through our… through Panorama as one of our continuous improvement, SBSD Helpdesk: plan goals at the end of October. So, just that awareness that we're already asking families to do a survey, and I know families have only so much capacity to SBSD

119Helpdesk: I don't want to over-survey parents, but we do try and do that at the end of October when it's possible. And I'm really focused on the 80% of people who would never receive that survey in the first place. SBSD Helpdesk: I honestly don't think I'm gonna answer the survey unless it's, like, reworded, because it was a waste of time doing those. SBSD Helpdesk: Survey design is very important, because when you expect 10,000 people to take a survey, every question, every word in every question matters. You're, you know, that's a great point. SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, one quick suggestion I might have is, if Joe could meet with Jesse Baker, the city manager, and, we have a city has a different mailing, I think, or the city bulletin. SBSD Helpdesk: And we can't use it, but

120there could be an opt-in. SBSD Helpdesk: potentially available on the website, or a link to school-related matters. So that's just a suggestion that might target a different audience. SBSD Helpdesk: It's a great idea. SBSD Helpdesk: Alright. SBSD Helpdesk: Was there anything… No, no. Alright, so our last, our last question is, what committees does the community, want to be a part of, and how should they work? SBSD Helpdesk: I know that Joe had a great suggestion for how committees could work. My concern about committees that I raised at the last meeting was around, breaking policy governance. The board is not supposed to SBSD Helpdesk: get into the details of curriculum, operations, stuff like that, and so I would be concerned about having a board committee about curriculum. But I think Joe might have an answer for

121us on how we might do that. SBSD Helpdesk: Well, I'll tell you what we did in Ohio, and I think it's probably true for… well, I know it's true for Vermont. I did some research in it. SBSD Helpdesk: In Ohio, a school board committee SBSD Helpdesk: is required to follow all of the laws related to, open meetings. So that means, if the board had a committee of SBSD Helpdesk: a budget committee, or a curriculum committee, or whatever, you'd have to post the meeting, you'd have to warm the agenda, you'd have to take minutes, and all those kinds of things. It becomes rather burdensome, quite frankly. What we did often in Ohio, and I imagine I haven't had a chance to meet other superintendents, they probably do it here too, is… SBSD Helpdesk: it's a superintendent

122who has committees. They're advisory committees. It can include some board members. It could absolutely include community members, but it takes away all of the, SBSD Helpdesk: the bureaucracy and red tape of actually getting together and having meetings and taking notes and all that. That's exactly how most boards do it. Yeah, so my recommend… I mean, in Nordonia, where I worked, we had a finance committee, we had an athletic committee, we had a curriculum committee, we had a special ed committee, we had a technology committee. SBSD Helpdesk: And it would be, every year, a board member or two would volunteer to be on the committee, we would have community members that would be on the committee, we'd have, representatives from the teaching staff, and then whatever central office, super office administrator SBSD Helpdesk: that was their

123purview, right? So, the curriculum director would be leading the curriculum committee, and he would put together the agenda, invite people, those kinds of things. I am a huge proponent of having advisory committees, and like I said, I think probably several times. SBSD Helpdesk: you know, if you get advice, you need to be ready to take advice. If you ask questions, people are going to give you their opinions, and I think that there's a lot of vulnerability in involving people, but I think it's really important. The community owns the schools, and we're stewards of it. Right. So I would love for us to be able to get some committees. My recommendation would be SBSD Helpdesk: If you, give some ideas about what kind of committees SBSD Helpdesk: would want. I would like for them to be

124superintendent, advisory. SBSD Helpdesk: and then get them set up really pretty quickly. Get, board members to volunteer to be in which ones, and then we start… And then you can maintain operation. I work for a budget committee. We're not taking action. SBSD Helpdesk: I know, I'm just kidding. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Budget Committee is a great thing about that. SBSD Helpdesk: a budget committee here in South Bronx. It gets reconstituted in different ways. Like, back in the day, it used to be run… it was the system budget advisory group, and it was run by the business manager at the time, John Stewart, used to run it, and David Young, who was the superintendent at the time, would come when he could. He was there most of the nights, and that's how I kind of ended up

125on the board originally, is John asked me to be on that. SBSD Helpdesk: Citizens Budget Advisory Group, and I… that… but it… you also have to be really clear when you set the parameters about what you're expecting those committees to do, and that advisory board is really important, because you don't want people to walk in thinking that they are making decisions, but rather they are giving advice. Well, we just… yeah, we just did the advisory… we had the advisory committee to… to appoint you, and in the past couple years, we have had SBSD Helpdesk: just board members being the budget committee, but I do think it would make… we haven't had the superintendent take the lead on that, and I think that is what needs to happen. That was… that is… I think you'll get

126traction, I think you'll get buy-in, I think you'll… you know, maintain control. SBSD Helpdesk: It's similar to the… the purpose of this meeting was to have the board hear present in full quorum. SBSD Helpdesk: So that it wasn't like we were having, like, a mini-meeting. You know, like, some of the previous community outreach was only one board member at a time, and it's like, well, if I went to that meeting, I wouldn't be influencing as much as I could. So the superintendent's there, you know, which also means you have to have fewer committees. SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, so we have… we've done… I mean, I've done… I was on the 5th grade committee, and that went to all five schools. Almost no one showed. I did another listening to, when I first got on the board,

127when we did the superintendent search three and a half years ago, nobody showed. So I've done this four times, and nobody has showed up. SBSD Helpdesk: I think this is the way to do it. I just think this is the way to do it. SBSD Helpdesk: You get a handful of standing committees, and then they… if you find out you don't need them, you get rid of them. If you find out you need another, you add another. It's easy to do, because it doesn't have to go through the process of… So, based on some of the feedback tonight, and things that were discussed, I mean, I think the budget committee is a great idea. SBSD Helpdesk: academic curriculum, support, I think, would be a very good one to consider. SBSD Helpdesk: A Labor Relations Committee.

128SBSD Helpdesk: I think would be a good one. That one… But that's just standing, is that the thing? Quite frankly, I don't know that I would invite, community members to be in that relation. No, that wouldn't be community members, that would be, like, you and Daisy being board members and, community leaders. But we need to put together a permanent superintendent search one as well. That's… that's a separate… Yeah, so… SBSD Helpdesk: That is… that's a… that's a board. The town… the town I live in, and their school board has, like, a community engagement SBSD Helpdesk: They have, facilities, which is a super important. And I think they have… SBSD Helpdesk: I feel like they have one more, but I can't remember. And so, facilities and community engagement for each of those. SBSD Helpdesk: would they

129be a board committee or a superintendent? I think they're superintendent committees, and they have board meetings on… or board members on. And I think… and then you ask the committee to… SBSD Helpdesk: periodically report to them. This is what we've been talking about. These are… We're going to adopt a textbook. It was truly invented for the curriculum. SBSD Helpdesk: We had a diversity committee, you know, so we could talk about those kind of issues. Joe, which superintendent committees in the past did you find, you know, were the most helpful to you and your role and the board and their administration? SBSD Helpdesk: I think it changed. Boards have different priorities, so there was a time when the athletic committee was the most important committee that we had, and then that board member went off the

130board, and that stopped meeting. The curriculum committee was, I think, one that we… SBSD Helpdesk: I was in Northernia 14 years, it was there when I started, it was there when I was gone, because it was looking at SBSD Helpdesk: adoption of, you know, our one-to-one technology program, textbooks, new courses, all of those kinds of things. We added a diversity committee later, which I thought was incredibly helpful tool. There was a finance committee that always… we called it a finance committee, so it would be, people, SBSD Helpdesk: It would be the finance folks in the district trying to help the community understand how school finance works. It could certainly be a budget part to that, you know. So you're saying that perhaps the… instead of having a budget committee, a finance committee, and it just…

131they focus on the budget to start. You call it finance budget committee. SBSD Helpdesk: That's what I was thinking. You can use slashes, you know, and think whatever word. I mean, what's our key… what are the key things that we do, right? We educate kids, we spend a lot of community taxpayer money, and I think those need to be… SBSD Helpdesk: Those absolutely would be two of the problems. SBSD Helpdesk: Elizabeth, did you want? Yeah, the, a couple of thoughts I had with this agenda item is, and maybe this could be rolled into the curriculum committee you're talking about, but to include student outcomes in that, because that's directly applicable to the community when they're looking at budgets. If you can demonstrate SBSD Helpdesk: improved outcomes, that's… That's critical. I think, SBSD Helpdesk: a redistricting

132committee is going to be critical. Right now, as, city voice bump failure. SBSD Helpdesk: the… I've talked before about a city school committee. I'm not sure that would make the highest priority if you're starting to look at those now, but demographics, SBSD Helpdesk: capital needs or bonding needs are important. There's been a significant investment made by the city in an economic development plan, which looks at career pathing and improving the tax base. SBSD Helpdesk: which is relevant, housing, which is critical, not only to employees, but residents, affordable, I should say. And then climate initiatives, which cross over city and school and really move our community forward as a leader of the state. SBSD Helpdesk: Then the last one I had written down was, the strategic plan. That has not been stated in a long time.

133SBSD Helpdesk: the district, and it marries right into the ENS policy and whether that needs revisiting. SBSD Helpdesk: So, those are the top of mind for those. Those are great. I… and then I was gonna add, somebody said, Elizabeth, like a student committee. Student committee would be great. And then, there are only seven of us. SBSD Helpdesk: So I'm wondering, like, what a… I mean… Yeah, so what's, like, a reasonable number of committees? Like, that's a great… Well, there's 9, you can count these guys. We had a special ed committee in California, where it was 30. How do we divide these up now? I think we just listed, you know, two dozen communities. SBSD Helpdesk: The thing is, there's… I think the budget is the biggest thing, and then there's… we're doing the superintendent's group,

134so… SBSD Helpdesk: Having just done the interim search, I can tell you that is hours and hours and hours of work. SBSD Helpdesk: So, I… I just want to make sure that we know that we choose wisely. I don't know how to choose. We can do whatever we want to do. The practice that we had in our place was the kidneys meet maybe four times a year, quarterly, maybe. Oh, okay. For hours now, two hours. SBSD Helpdesk: Not, like, 3 times a week that we did. And ask people to come back. And I have a question. SBSD Helpdesk: So, I think… I don't remember who brought it up, but, maybe it was Beth, about a community engagement committee. And to me. SBSD Helpdesk: the board is responsible for a lot of the community engagement for

135the school. You know, the board… if a school budget fails, that is on the board. SBSD Helpdesk: And so, like, for me, the word community engagement is a little bit too abstract, because it, you know, you know what I mean? Am I wrong about that? Well, I have to remind you that Elaine and I did that last year. It was this time last year we met. We did it, once every two weeks, four times, and nobody showed up. SBSD Helpdesk: Because we were trying to do the board community outreach, and we met at the… we met the library. It was very… SBSD Helpdesk: really thought about it. We thought, okay, wanted to go to a place where people don't feel obligated to buy any food. That the library is free to everybody, nobody can eat.

136SBSD Helpdesk: I did it at night, I did it on a weekend, I had a… and I just think if it's just us. SBSD Helpdesk: without one. Dr. Joe, I don't think people are going to take it as soon, so that just… SBSD Helpdesk: Don't… I don't take it personally, I'm just saying that I think it's… I mean, I guess maybe my other piece of advice would be, let me run these 3Q meetings that I'm going to have October, November, and I think we'll get a lot of feedback from the community about what their priorities are, and that might help us decide what committees are, but we're going to need them together. SBSD Helpdesk: And that would also feed into a strategic plan. Okay, so I just looked it up. They have a community engagement

137committee, a facilities committee, a finance committee, a policy committee. SBSD Helpdesk: And then the other two are not necessarily SBSD Helpdesk: So these look like they're all… well… I mean, they're meeting quarterly, that's doable. I was thinking, like, once a week. It sounds like, right, there are some committees we'd like to agree 100%. Right now, we support budget and finance, probably academic, and then superintendent search, which is a board committee, so the operator side. The rest, is it appropriate for us to follow up with SBSD Helpdesk: Dr. Joe, especially after his three Q meetings, and figure out which committees you might want to institute after that, but we say, you know, we know right now we want a budget committee. SBSD Helpdesk: We want the academic committee, right? It sounds like we're universal, and then

138the rest, we can work with Dr. Zero to determine later. SBSD Helpdesk: based on community feedback, I'm comfortable with that. You know, and I actually would be interested to know, too, regarding, like, the idea of an athletic committee. There's a pep club, or, you know, boosters, and there's groups like that that kind of already exist, and is there any way to bridge and have some engagement with those folks? Right. SBSD Helpdesk: One of the things that I've seen, and I've noticed having had kids in this school, is, you know, even regarding sports, I feel like they're so important for kids to have an opportunity to play, and I've seen comments regarding this on Facebook, I know I experienced it when my kids were younger, where maybe they try out, they don't make a tune. SBSD

139Helpdesk: And it's heartbreaking, because it's like, you know, even if they're not gonna make the junior varsity team or the varsity team, to have the opportunity to play, because otherwise, these kids are gonna… what else are they gonna do? They're gonna go home and… SBSD Helpdesk: You know, a computer, or what. So, I mean, the idea of that… so, again, I'm just kind of floating that out there as that kind of idea, and how could we pull in SBSD Helpdesk: you know, perhaps some existing groups already that could be a part of that. So, Oregonia's athletic committee was athletic director, superintendent, a couple board members, a handful of coaches, booster club presidents, they would be on there, and they would discuss things about, we need new turf, or we need whatever, and… SBSD Helpdesk: They

140would talk sometimes about policy, you know, what they might want to implement, you know, like a minimum rate, all those kinds of things. They'd have those discussions and give some advice. SBSD Helpdesk: What about something like the arts? Where… I mean, I really think that's key. Oh, the arts, because there are plenty of kids who are not interested in sports, or don't feel that's the place for them, and, you know, I think their interests are just as… SBSD Helpdesk: Yep. That reminds me of that slide from last week, or two weeks ago, that, Monica showed us, where, like, the after-school activities that were not athletic was, like… Yeah. SBSD Helpdesk: This is awesome. We're just student activities, which is the space outside of academics. Oh, third place is, like, academic standout. Third place. What are

141the other two representatives? Homeschool. Homeschool, I see. SBSD Helpdesk: This is great, just the brainstorming and data, and then it's like, how do we… So, yes, what's the next step? Are you gonna do your listening things and get ideas? Yeah, so my plan is within, SBSD Helpdesk: October, November, to get out to as many of these community groups as I can to do the illicit tour, and I will absolutely give the board and the community feedback. That will all be public stuff. SBSD Helpdesk: I… but I'm also hearing that if we maybe don't want to wait to get a curriculum committee and a budget slash finance committee together, we can start that. I could work on that tomorrow. SBSD Helpdesk: It sounds also like he wants some feedback from our educators about SBSD Helpdesk: budget

142stuff, and, like, pie in the sky, hey, if we could add programming, what that might be, and why. Also, hey, is there anything we're doing that we're… SBSD Helpdesk: that we shouldn't be. I doubt you'll get people saying yes to staff, but you can ask the question. That was my request. I don't know that the board necessarily agrees with that, so I want to make sure that, like, it's that something… I think you're allowed to ask for information. Okay, I don't want to create work for you, but also, is that something we would find value in, in setting this initial number SBSD Helpdesk: with the principals and Joe, or is it not? Is that not the right information we need to send back? I asked that question, I don't think we fully, like. SBSD Helpdesk:

143I think definitely we need what Daisy pointed out, in terms of, like, if we just did the same thing, what would that number be? I think that's important. Yeah, we need to know that. I think it's important to know if, you know, is there any glaring… anything that we're not doing that is glaringly obvious that we should be… in other words, are we… are we damaging kids because of something we're not providing to them? Right. And if that's the case, then I think we need to seriously consider SBSD Helpdesk: etc. But at this point, I mean. SBSD Helpdesk: we're late in the game, I don't… SBSD Helpdesk: Though it should do more than… SBSD Helpdesk: status quo is, unless there's something to learn, but I think it's good to get some feedback. SBSD Helpdesk: Understand

144that if there's a belt, a gap that needs to be closed. SBSD Helpdesk: First, 2 o'clock. SBSD Helpdesk: Yes. Well, it's been a great conversation. Any final thoughts? SBSD Helpdesk: Yes. SBSD Helpdesk: When's our next… when's our next Communities Forum? I was thinking, what about next week? SBSD Helpdesk: Can you take a look at that. SBSD Helpdesk: All right, well, so thank you very much for coming. We hope that you, not only come to our board meetings, our community forums, but also you bring your friends. SBSD Helpdesk: And, thank you to Joe. SBSD Helpdesk: And we'll put more information on the, on this idea of committees, and there will be an outreach, I would envision, for the community for if people are interested in participating in… Absolutely. The absolute latest will be Monday that I…

145I mean, we're talking curriculum, and we're talking budget, so that means we're talking about the cold, Jean Marie. SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, which means he'd be sitting with them and say, hey. SBSD Helpdesk: Just a quick comment. We have about 130 community volunteers for city committees, and they do operate on the SBSD Helpdesk: complete transparency that we've been doing well. But there is an application. SBSD Helpdesk: So I don't know if you want to go that far. It's not detailed, but at least it gives you some information about a candidate, if you… SBSD Helpdesk: want to consider that. SBSD Helpdesk: I think it's great if you… if there's committees there, too, where you can have people that perhaps have some legal, obviously, cross-pollination. I think it's a… it's a mix of community students and, SBSD Helpdesk:

146Well, I would entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting. SBSD Helpdesk: move to agenda the meeting. Before you do, so our next meeting, then… It's not next week, it's going to be October 3rd. It's not… Our next meeting is October 8th, I thought. October 8th on October 8th? Yeah, October 8th, yeah. I clarified that. SBSD Helpdesk: And the format that is TV. SBSD Helpdesk: The which? We don't have a date. And the board may schedule a special meeting between now and October 8th. SBSD Helpdesk: Well, I have an entertainment to adjoin the meeting. Then we'll try again. I move to adjourn. Second? Second. Any discussion? Now's your chance. SBSD Helpdesk: All those in favor? Aye.