001So we could make decisions to to you know kick the bucket down the road um obviously If I were to liken this to a car, your car still needs oil changes we can just cutting things like what would be equivalent of doing teen oil changes be in our buildings Again, not advisable. But we must discuss it in information technology. We have gone through a massive project beginning this summer We're trying to find cost savings through things like printers and you know moving those out of our entire district, which is a significant savings that we can realize. cell phones, we had 82 district cell phones at the onset of the summer. We've reduced that to about 35. you know the administrators have phones as well as our lead custodians use them in case of emergencies. You
002know, we can look at more reductions there. I'm literally scratching for pennies at this point, which is why you see me looking through things like It's not me. It's our teams looking through things like software. So we're evaluating educational apps that we have, what's the usership? What could we possibly cut? So trying to use data-driven decision making when making reductions. things like Microsoft licenses, you know, are we paying for licenses that are unused? Just trying to really attend to all these details, which takes a tremendous amount of time, right? So like the managerial efforts of combing through, you know, evaluating what do we save on a piece of paper printed in a you know special ed office, you know, and how can we um you know who's got licenses and what employees are still here
003and trying to comb through those is where we've been able to find significant savings, but it's not it's not nearly enough. Special education supplies, professional development, conferences, increasing caseloads. Those are all discussion items, not advisable. Transportation, looking at reducing leadership. We know we have to prioritize bus drivers. curriculum, instruction, assessment, reducing curriculum materials, professional learning, conferences. And if those ongoing learning and to be, of course, cutting the learning of those who provide learning is not a good practice. And so those are the discussion items. And of course, everything is available for discussion. the administration and I are looking for guidance this evening on specific reductions to make and what the board would like to see Included in the December 4th budget presentation Again, as you see, all areas are being evaluated and must be discussed
004for consideration. There is no one magic reduction that's going to get us anywhere close to where we need to be. So with that, I will stop sharing my screen. And, um. Pass it to you, Chelsea. Just to kind of have our agenda here, we're going to open this now to board discussion and board questions. And once the board has had a good chance for discussion, we will Go ahead. Okay, so that's a lot to digest. What I would really like to see Pressure go out to all staff educators in the community. I do think people will have some idea about where to cut i mean the for example software that's something that we do at Essex you know that's you know we're asked to review who, you know, who is using this. I do think
005like you've got an untapped resource in all these buildings. I think that is Without hearing from people in the buildings who I think can see where things might be able to we can't. The only thing that jumped out at me I don't know, I look at things from the chopping block and I think. No way. I mean, the things that are accessible to everyone, including historically marginalized people, you know, athletics, art, music, anywhere you are connecting with your body and your mind and you're making connections with people. You take that away and schools just you know, we did that during the pandemic. And it doesn't work. And cell phones, I'm a little confused like what's cell phones and not what people don't have walkie talkies here We do have walk-in counties. So you need both.
006I've not ever seen that. in a school usually it's just walking sound piece I mean, I just as pain pay a lot of money for cell phones in my home. So I just wonder if that's if that's a place. I don't know. It's a thing right people before things, I mean, that's what you said before. People over possessions Your point on the survey is so well taken. So the survey, I should have added this, I'll add an asterisk. The survey that we put out was staff did respond and it was open to anyone. I put it in my newsletter. It was open to anyone. However, if the board wants to send a survey. out, you know, I'm happy to help with that process. This survey only got 37 responses and it was in my newsletter
007for quite some time, but I think it was a lot of staff I understand did respond. But with that, you know, it's a low number. So again, you know, if the board wants to do a survey, I think that'd be awesome. You know, any additional feedback that we can get and how we create feedback from our staff. Directly. from stuff and if it came from you know chelsea I don't know. It's just a thought. I want to be careful about opening dialogue between the board and staff directly. I think that's such a great precedent. But I am kind of surprised that we got 37 responses. I think that This process, more so than I think any previous process that I've been a part of. And I'm guessing for a very long time, it's going to
008require partnership from everybody, like all sides. This is just not a time for a time the idea that this is staff versus board or staff versus superintendent. It's just like We have to work together as a team. And… Education is an investment. in our future. And so as a community, I think we really need to decide what our priorities are. I don't think anybody is going to be happy with any budget proposal that's put forth because with drastic, drastic cuts. the tax increase is still going to be too high. And the tax increase is still going to be too high when we try to preserve programming that's important. I'm really kind of disheartened that we only got 37 responses. I also feel like i feel like I wish I was seeing more I don't know
009if this is like politically incorrect to say, but I wish I was seeing more support from the NEA for them to educate teachers on what's going on with the funding formula. Because maybe you would have gotten more responses if some of our staff understood the budget situation that we're in. I just like I can't imagine working with people that I care about and trying to advocate for my things over somebody that I know is an incredible educator's job. Maybe I'm getting too far off on a tangent here, but I think this is going to be a really difficult conversation. I would also like to say something that came up in our finance committee meeting is that some community members felt like our budget discussions last year put community members in good or bad groups. So
010if you voted yes for the budget, you were a good person. And if you voted no for the budget, you were a bad person. And I want to be really cognizant of not continuing with that message. That wasn't my intention last year and I didn't mean to be a part of any discussion that would make community members feel that way. So I just kind of wanted to state that at the beginning of our budget discussions tonight that you're not a good or a bad person depending on how you vote for the budget or what you think of the budget. All right, so where do we want to start with our discussion? I'd like to jump right into possible reductions to discuss. First, I just want to say I sort of interrupted you, Violet, at one
011point about there was something about I just want to make a comment. I was thinking back to, I think, something you said, Tim, about changes in the yield bill. And I recall there was ballot language change in there. They're changing how we have to present the language. And I did look at that and the change. I was concerned at first. I remember in committee discussions. It was going to be some extreme changes that really put districts in a very poor way, regardless of what we did. it looks like what the ballot language will require us to do is to specify how much our per pupil spending is basically compared to last year. Which isn't a bad comparison, but that I think is a change in the language So I was concerned that my concern is
012that Last year, I feel that we got really focused in on a single single number, and that was the tax rate increase right They're coming out of the pandemic years and coming out of what essentially were three or possibly four years of really unusually low budgets to some extent because of the number of reasons. We're sort of seeing a correction now and and that people are perceiving certain villains and like Chelsea said, I don't think there are any villains here. It is really just to a large extent, a correction of some time. That said. I have a number of notes here. I am, as we look at the cuts i There is certainly, I absolutely agree with the focus on equity And such, I am also concerned that at some level I don't know how
013to say it appropriately, but gifted, talented AP programs, things like that, that really are a draw for some folks And important for some folks that those start to really suffer. So arts programs So on and so forth. And I see those in the list there It would be my preference if we can work somehow to ensure that we are saving wheels and providing opportunities, that that's critical because along with co-curriculars I feel that those programs really speak to certain students who aren't into the Pythagorean theorem or whatnot right so I just want to call that out. And I'm not sure how we address that, but I know everything's on the wall. As we look at reductions. athletics and co-curriculars Pardon, I see you've got some lists here. I guess I would be interested to know
014And I think I've mentioned this before what the paradigm is for choosing certain co-curricular activities, right? I absolutely support co-curriculars and believe They're critical to student success. But as we sort of have to pick and choose I think it's fair to the community to come up with some sort of paradigm that says, you know, there's an equity issue here, there's a cost of entry here, there's an overall cost to a program. these are the qualities that we're looking for and this is why we're choosing to potentially eliminate certain ones. Otherwise, I fear we are going to get into a really emotional tug and back and forth with the community about certain programs that may have to go that are extremely popular, but could be expensive, a high cost to entry, very inequitable, so on and
015so forth. if we can put something like that together just to rationalize the decisions around that. I think that would be helpful. As we look at what you've listed here for elementary school, middle and high school. I don't see anything that I'm like, oh my gosh, absolutely don't touch that. I think everything is is is on the chopping block here potentially. I will say that based on the still very vivid conversations from last year. One area that stood out were behavior supports, direct behavior supports in the classroom I feel those are critical. And if we can preserve those as much as possible. And the reason I feel that is because I can only imagine being a teacher and having to deal with potentially more kids in your classroom because of teacher cuts. along with additional
016behavior issues. So that to me would be a concern as if we are looking at cutting direct behavior support to students That impacts everybody right across the board, whether you need the support or not. as we look at at facilities Wow. You know, I agree. You can let the oil go for so long before you really have to change it, but I'm sure what you will be looking at is I want to make sure we're in a safe environment. And it's one thing to let the paint go a little bit But I'm sure things that are really safety issues are being, and I wonder at some point, will we review the stewardship plan at some point to understand where we're at with that or Is that up for discussion at some point as part of
017this budget review. On the monitoring reports, but happy to share that when we get to staff, not just teachers, but administrators. We need to take a hard look at administration that's a clear message from the community that I've heard over and over again that administrative staff is not sacrosanct and that needs to be looked at so And I hate to say it, my concern there is that certain work that the staff is doing is critical and will get either not done or be pushed to others. But we are at a point where we have to look at staff at administrative building positions. Clearly. If you guys want to jump in or I think the difficulty with the discussion right now is that we're all trying to respond potentially to the whole presentation. So I do
018wonder if it would make more sense to give our general comments about the overall presentation and then jump into topic by topic. No, I did ask for guidance. Your overarching points to the presentation We are, by our agenda, we're supposed to be discussing this until 8 and that's only seven minutes left. But I think that obviously this is a discussion that needs our attention. So we're going to run over And I just want to focus the discussion as much as possible. I think the emotions in this could potentially make the conversation longer than it does really need to be. So let's respond with our what our superintendent is asking for, which is our directives and our priorities in response to this presentation, but generally globally, and then we can go point by point. I don't
019want to have this conversation though for another hour. I don't know if that's going to be productive. I'm not saying another hour. I'm just saying seven minutes isn't sufficient. Do you… What was the feedback from the survey? I just know at Essex we did get a survey from the school board, which I did really appreciate. So their robber carpenters trying to communicate with us directly. Yeah. Modified it. It's probably modified but um it does help. And anyway, I'm just wondering what was what were the like what what did So I'm assuming we don't know who answers who was it like educator and community member or parents yeah the survey was open to, it was in my newsletter it was open to anyone with a link so uh everything students staff, community members, parents, guardians Yeah,
020anyone in our community could have responded to that Was there a specific question about where we should be cutting No, it was a broad question and it was like, what ideas, suggestions, feedback do you have you know any it was open-ended to try to be inclusive and to really just give the opportunity for unbridled feedback like we didn't want to put parameters around, you know, checking a box when someone's like, I'm really wanting to communicate X, Y, or Z that doesn't fit in one of the questions. So try to leave it open-ended to get them. a broad variety of, you know, anything that anyone wanted to include and um I would like to reaffirm that there's really nothing about this that is a new question or criticism. I think it's the time to look at
021old practices and why do we do it this way? if we did it a different way. Are there opportunities to bring into alignment with better practices? What do we see our peers who are successful districts? What are they doing? Just because that's the way we've always done it, that kind of mindset. I hear my colleagues when they talk about software that that's that's not going to be it. those are excellent places to look. It's not going to be as informed. number that uh say like we took a hard look at that at that We're definitely feeling the burden of applying that 3 million surplus. And so while we took a an 8% increase, our neighbors did 15%. there's… I think there's an opportunity where we might see some of that this year. We bought down
022the tax rate and so did the state. We're going to pay for that this year. I think that's just important to understand as a board that That's what we signed up for. we're doing what we should have done last year a little bit. I really like the community feedback about administration's on the hook. I saw that there was a mention of a some salaries or a curriculum. piece um I don't want to see anything excluded I want to be able to rely on superintendents expertise and knowledge. to come back to the school board. It keeps getting referenced. It's so opaque saying reduce teacher salaries like that We hear that all the time. But something like I'm just curious about why a specific curriculum errors area I don't know what that is, but that's think of
023it as the old like department head model, but different think of it that way yeah yeah And when it mentions you know cutting athletics and fewer co-curriculars. I feel like we always back away from that because it's not popular you can audit that stuff. If you don't want to support a 15% increase in the community Something's got to go. You want to see Well, bone at South Burlington. the committee is going to have to support that. The items that give me pause is special education where we say increased workloads or caseloads. That gives me a lot of concern there. That's an area where I hear already that we're struggling in that area and increasing workload how would that have a positive impact on our student outcomes? And then just Sorry, I'm rambling on here. Just
024the last piece is the art um you know band playhouse band costs like we uh it's It seems like one of those and languages that just seems one of those low cost, high impact pieces so just I don't want to cut for cutting sake. But I give a lot of trust to violent groups. work through the board to come back with reasonable proposals. Anything over 15% generally. Seems like that's going to be untenable by the community. you just saying 15% folks are like, well, but anything over 15% just… I can't see us pretty much there. So I agree with you, Chris. My concern is There are so many concerns here. What I don't want us to do is try to put it together gather a budget that's going to hit some arbitrary tax rate increase
025number right exactly yeah because that is really not what our end policy is about. What I don't want to see is this become erased in the bottom. And that's my significant concern here is that we are already getting too long And we are, and as we compare ourselves to other communities in the district. across the state. You know, again, we're all different. Even though we're changing county we're a different district than cvu and others and they have different different issues that they're facing. Although we can look at salaries and such across the districts. I'm hesitant to say, oh, geez, we have to be at this salary level because this district over here is. I think that does a disservice not only to to us, but to the staff who are working, the teachers, these are
026educated people And to tell them that, hey, we love you, you're great, but you know what, we're going to cut your salary. I think it's probably one of the most demoralizing actions we could possibly take. So I will be very open here um and you know, anybody who comes in and says, hey, we just got to cut their salaries I… I feel that that could that could really, you know, have long-term implications. It does. And, you know, I'm a teacher it gets 36 degrees out. You know what? I'm on my bike coming to this meeting because I don't have a car. So, you know, I think people think, oh, you know, these really high salaries. I'm on a bicycle and it's 36 degrees in the pitch dark because I come nurse this meeting. So I
027really do want to like, I know I'm a little emphatic about this, but You know, my daughter and I are sharing, we're like a one car household. So we have, you know, it's something like I am like rolling in and have a five second car and I'm buy a house and fly that that i i don't go anywhere. You know, I commute on a bicycle 11 miles. I mean, now I'm not doing that now, but you know It is really demoralizing. And it's very upsetting. And I do also want to say, and honestly, I don't know is my answer to you, but I'll tell you what The pandemic had taught me nothing not having art, not having band, not having athletics, not having anything social to find the community is the worst thing we can
028do. It took so long to recover. And I'm not so sure. Yeah, so I just don't. I really don't. I don't know. I don't have anything i don't have anything to add, I think I need to really think about this, but I just didn't want. say that to all teachers out there, I'm really sorry Because I'm in it too. And this is going to happen to me too. I definitely So, you know, I really ain't got no penalty now. Is that wild can i ask because as we look at cuts Are there any areas here where you have concerns that we may risk something like accreditation? Or is there any I assume we're an accredited institution. People start to cut things and we look at both languages and such. do we run any risk there
029at all? So the things that are wholly protected are things like offering band and, you know, we have one of the most robust band programs for instance at our middle school so like sixth graders have the opportunity to engage in band for board for us. Other schools offer one or the other so like that's an area where we're really excelling. It's a wonderful way to engage The arts are wholly unprotected by what the law requires. Special education is protected. We absolutely are not you know we don't have what we need in special education. We need to protect special education. So things like that are protected by the law, right? There's federal law, there's state laws. The inequality standards have a lot of provisions. Given this budget, I don't know if we could meet education quality
030standards or act 173, which talks about robust systems of supports for social, emotional, and academic. So yes, we would be risking not being compliant with education quality standards or act 173 and multi-tiered systems of support in this budget. And I don't see a way around it or out of it we will be out of compliance in many, many different ways. even if we do cut arts, languages, co-curriculars. we're going to be out of compliance on what people normally referred to as the three R's, there's simply such a significant cut that we have to make And it will absolutely impact quality holistically pervasively in all of our schools. And I've written to everyone who will listen to all of our legislators, the governor all of the budget committees that we will be out of compliance in
031all of these areas. I've really communicated that to the state. So clearly I'm not an educator. I rely on Ms. Violetta, as the subject matter expert, just better. clarifying our role here on the school board. I mean, we're not giving you don't cut this, cut this like our just my understanding, and please call me Correct me if I'm wrong. We approved the number. and you have an case like that. In order for me to meet these requirements. I need to spend this much and it's up to us saying, well, we'll have to prove it or not. But if you come to us with a number saying. This is what I need to meet these requirements. Yep. So great question. Question of clarification here. A board member couldn't say, I want to cut x position or
032X person or something to a granular level like that, which is great. We need a protection for our staff, right? There has to be a process for how decisions are being made. you know boards can absolutely say things like we need to prioritize special education supports and our equity supports, right? Boards can also say things like, we need to look at reductions in XYZ categories, as we've heard some of that feedback. So for you all to provide general feedback based on what your constituents are sharing with you and feedback sessions that you've engaged in, you work in the finance committee and listening committees. You know, those broad categories are you know your um Can we start to get into the specific items to that end? I spent some time trying to like look at organizational
033charts of other districts and collective bargaining agreements in other districts. And our curriculum area supervisor model seems to me like a more expensive version of that job duty. So in other districts, instead of a curriculum area supervisor, they have a teacher leader And that those job duties are There's a stipend, but the extra pay for those duties are not tied to salary. And I feel like there is a professional benefit to being a curricular curriculum area supervisor And that it makes you kind of on a short list for administrative advancement if that's your If that's something that you're hoping to do in your career. And it seems like in Burlington, for example, teachers have one additional prep period, but they still have a relatively full teaching course load. And so I'm just wondering if we
034could review that model as a possible change in a way to preserve teachers and their jobs but reduce costs associated with that job. And I don't want to come across as insensitive. district-wide, everybody is going to be doing more work practical lesson on me. And it didn't make any difference really, but I'd just like to highlight that last year the board eliminated our stipends altogether. So all four of us sitting here tonight are volunteering all of our time to do this. So when I say something like, you're going to have to do more work for less money. I'm doing this for free and nobody's happy with me. So I get it. The other thing I would love to hear is this is a possibility and I haven't looked into legally what the CBA would require,
035but some other districts their assistant principals only have school year contracts, not full year contracts so that could be another way perhaps to preserve the stuff and reduce the cost. These are just ideas that I have. I would love to review the board budget as a whole and make like all of the cuts there that we can. um like uh in terms of we don't need hotel reservations. We don't need food. We don't need transportation. We need like the DSBA membership payment And please jump in, bored if you disagree, but we don't need professional development money I don't think we need printing. We do basically everything electronically if you want to reserve something for like if a warning needs to be printed and signed or Anything that we have to sign? I'm sure when you
036say printing, do you mean overall in the district get rid of all. For the board okay yeah i cut that off. A few years ago at least. I used to get every week or every two weeks in the mail like And it would also break my heart on a climate change level. So we need to review the board budget and I would like to cut that like to the maximum extent possible. The other questions or ideas that I had, I saw pre-K reductions and I know that The income guidelines for the child care financial assistance programs, I believe it's Act 76. just changed to be even more helpful And in terms of pre-K, I'm wondering if there's funding coming from the state level to help families get their children into pre-k what sort of reductions
037would we be proposing and how could we potentially still offer that programming to as many community members as possible? But if there's cost savings that we can find there that perhaps like what I'm saying is, is there a cost that the district is currently paying that could be covered by Act 76 or by Act 166 or yeah not that we know of, but we're looking at a move we have a public and private pre-K. And if we moved our schools out pre-K to one location and the other to a different school, which we did phase one of that this year, then we could offer the same level of programming But with fewer staff. So that's what we're evaluating right now. So we're trying to, in all of these you know reductions like, you know, Tim,
038to your point on evaluating the co-curricular impact, like a lot of those reductions, our athletic director said, hey, you know, the city offers X, Y, or Z, so the need wouldn't go unmet. Or, hey, we come up with Burlington curve football, we could do the same for gymnastics. So we're trying to focus on the proposed athletics and co-curricular productions were really around not taking away an opportunity, but still like where in our community are those resources? we won't be able to do that with all cases, but on this day, you know, on the pre-K one, that's our goal here is to look at efficiencies through movement Again, we're still evaluating whether that's possible and what the facility's costs would be, if any, and of course we take transportation My other question, and I'm sure you've
039already looked at this, but are there any unused assets that we have that we can solve? Yeah, so we routinely, we're good in this area. We routinely sell back technology, buses, equipment. We are we are selling back all assets that we can resell back to anyone so Not that I know of. We've combed through that one pretty thoroughly. Yeah. I went in there to blow my nose a few minutes ago and I saw the fridge and I was like, we don't need that. And then if it's not plugged in, it's not costing electricity. I think in terms of my general priority feedback, that's mostly what I have. I would like to have a conversation about what we could be telling community members to tell their legislators. And I have some specific questions about that, but
040I want to make sure we kind of have wrapped this part of the discussion before we go there. Oh, yeah, yes, please. First, I'd like to thank you all for what you're doing. You're working incredibly hard, it seems like Your hearts are really throwing out to students. I really appreciate that. I'd like to emphasize the importance of athletics and co-curriculars. And then while the other one out there are tag teams and I participate in various clubs and those are some of the main reasons that I enjoy my school day and Along with all my incredible teachers. And so I just like to echo Violet's point about how athletics and extracurriculars really bolster students lifelong I also am feeling really anxious when I'm hearing this and I know that when budget season rolls around and votes
041are And Tom Mina is approaching students will be feeling the same anxiety and I think it's really increased when there's misinformation going around the school. And Ali and I do our best to educate our peers, but we can't reach everyone. And so I think it might be really nice to possibly have some sort of presentation during the school day, maybe Ali and I can partner with the students who are on the finance committee to have that as a part of the school day and students can come maybe offer opinions afterwards It'd be really incredible for a board member to be there as well. And I think that would get some really good student feedback and also just have some general consensus around So those are my thoughts. And I want to emphasize also the athletics
042and extracurriculars this year we already have the cut of our Thursday mornings where we could have clubs and we're already making use of school day to have the clubs at the end and at the beginning I'd also like to emphasize your point about doing the presentations. Chris, I heard you make the point about having community support for football and how that's how we would keep it. And I think most students don't know how to get involved and advocate. for those kinds of programs, especially because they aren't the ones voting on most of this. So I think having like that survey that gets sent out to students offering anecdotal evidence or also having the listening session during school hours is a great idea. I'd also like to touch on how important world language is to a
043lot of students. I'm in Latin personally, and I know that might be up for discussion and I just like to emphasize that students focus on learning languages in school often and back, I would love to see that One more. We're getting sort of specific there. I was not quite sure how deep we wanted to go So just looking at some of the other line items you have here under possible reductions, I see professional development, I see one or two other things. I think we also need to look at operationally where we can tighten up in the sense I know we have in our You know, there's leave time and everything but um you know there are hidden costs there, right? I'll be very public with this, depending on people taking time off and such, we
044pay for substitutes we that there are other expenses there that get pulled in. So as much as we can work to ensure that we are controlling some of those hidden costs operationally will help us avoid making direct cut costs that could be really useful. So I'm sure you've been thinking about that, but I just want to reiterate that as another potential savings opportunity. to that end, didn't we see a presentation earlier this year about moving TLC dates from Friday to Wednesday because attendance is lower on Friday? I was in a negotiation a couple of years ago where The staff were advocating for professional development and advocating for training. But then also we have the data to say that a lot of staff take training days off. And so I'm like, I don't know where the
045line is between you have to be in compliance for offering a certain amount of professional development But if staff aren't coming to the professional development, I don't want us to pay for it. And that's very like black and white in terms of the guidance that I'm offering, but I'm just saying like. if you can cut costs and such professional development. maybe that's a good idea. Yeah, so professional development is outlined specifically in the collective bargaining agreement. So we are required to follow what has been negotiated. So this is, again, a place where i I can't be on the negotiations at all, but I hope that the union negotiators will partner with the school district um in finding where we can cut costs and save stops. Because our student facing jobs are what give our educational
046experience and quality and that is the investment that we're all here to protect. So I know, you know, the union is the co-presidents have been they're very committed to helping the budget pass and to information sharing and supporting members throughout this whole process. And so just appreciate that partnership. And my concern is there, you know, a lot of people are listening And you hear a role mentioned and suddenly people are concerned and worried and so on and so forth and And so I just want to be very conscientious of that as we move forward. And that none of this is reflective of priorities of these items. And the reality is we're going to have to have in all areas. And again, it's not reflective of values it's that we are given a significantly diminished amount
047of money to do the same thing and kids are coming the next day, you know and I don't have what we need now. I don't want to reduce anything else. And yet we must make those reductions. And I don't know how we can save, like I said, I don't know how anything will look the same given the financial outlook. To that end, could I ask some questions that are more like from a community member perspective, what are the conversations, questions, or ideas we can be sharing with our legislators to change this for the future. I know it's not going to be Anything fast. But I was thinking about the cla And how community members property taxes don't reflect the value of their actual home, but the value of the potential they can get if they
048sold their home. which feels and if i'm if I'm not understanding, please inform me because I still struggle with this concept as like why is it this way? But here's what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about somebody who's lived here for 35 years and when they purchased their home, maybe they purchased it for $200,000. And now they've paid off their home, so they don't have a mortgage, but they do have a property tax bill. And they're on a fixed income because they're retired and their property tax bill just keeps increasing. but the the needs that their home has for say maintenance every year. are not, how can I put this in a way that like Makes sense. It's just infuriating. It doesn't seem equitable to me. that people are paying property taxes, not based on
049the actual value of their home, but based on like South Burlington as a whole that just doesn't seem fair. And is this a place where we could ask our legislators to consider a change because and almost incentivizes leaving South Burlington. Like, well, if you don't want to pay the high property taxes here, sell your home for more than you bought it for and go live somewhere else. and like I… I'm not very conventional in my living. I would rather not live. In a really nice house, I would prefer to live in a yurt if I could but I have thought before, like, could I buy just a small piece of property in South Burlington and build a yurt and just like really low cost living? And there's nothing, like there's nothing on the market for
050less than My point is. It just doesn't seem fair. It seems like it is creating a system where only like the 1% could afford to live here and that's that's not a diverse community and i don't think that that's what any of us really want so Do you get any sort of question out of that like my question is well i mean there's The easiest explanation of the cla Is that… First of all, you can't have an approval. The only way you find out how much your house is worth is through an appraisal. And the state is so far behind and so it's not in any way practical to think that South Birmingham is going to have an appraisal done anytime soon. There's state statute about that? And there are so many towns. I think
051there's something like 200 towns that haven't had our appraisal done in over 15 or 20 years. And so the only way they could do that is to do a phrasing. Like, how much is your house worth and my house worth and somebody else's house? So the concept, then the concept of the CLA is not really wrong Right? Because… All it's saying is that you have a hypothetical value of your home. And in the absence of being able to do an appraisal. every year you the only real other way to do it is the way to do the cla which is We look at home sales for the past three years. It isn't just last year. It's like over a course of three years. what was the average difference between the selling price of every home
052in that three-year period And the assessed value on the ground list. And that's what the CLA is. It's not much more complicated than that. and so in a town like South Burlington where The home sales are reflecting a really sharp increase versus the grand list. which is what they're comparing it to. That's where this conundra comes from. It's as simple as that, right? I don't think it's realistic to think that we're ever going to get to a point where every year everybody's house is going to be assessed because The concept is that as a whole, town, city. The average increase of home sales versus grand list is X. right and um in a rising housing market that we have, it means that that percentage is always going to go down. And that's why the CLA
053has been continuing to go down. You know, one idea that people have talked about is to track the impact of the CRA Which is that like last year, I think SCLA went now 11.22%. if you capped it. let's say no cla in the state is allowed to go above That's 9.99% or 8% or something That's a possibility, right? And that's just a part of the math but the um The other side of the coin is, okay, but the education fund is losing a lot of money then. And so where is the extra money going to come from? And that's where The discussion has been, well, should the education fund be an income tax? as opposed to a property tax. Or are there other avenues through which the education fund can be supported through other new
054taxes higher percentage of existing taxes. and things like that but that still doesn't get away from the fact that you're paying your property tax on the hypothetical value of your home and the only way to what the hypothetical value is, is by looking at home sales in your town. without an appraisal. Like we saw Winoosky's tax rate went down significantly because they had an appraisal last year right and so their tax rate, when you have them appraised, your tax rate actually goes down. But you're paying a lower tax on a higher value home on the grand list so You know, that's why people get It can get very either confused or try to use tax rates to their advantage in how they argue it. Because it isn't necessarily just I mean, your post CLA tax
055rate, I think, is irrelevant Because it is taking the CLE into account. But if it's not If you're talking about free CLA taxes, those numbers are all over the place because they're not being equalized by the CLA factor. So they don't mean much in isolation. So, you know, it's it's it's it's really hard because it's really hard because We're trying to fund our schools at the level of programming and support that we believe is necessary as a community But you can't get away from that nagging fact that soft burns you know Sponsoring values are going up. It's not necessarily the person who lives, like I grew up by the airport and you know my father bought our house for $17,000 and it sold last year for like 350 right to somebody you know that's can't
056help it because of the housing stock and that if someone wants to live in South Burlington. There's not that many houses on the market that can't afford a McMansion on Spear Street. And so they're buying in these neighborhoods, these older neighborhoods that we have along the you know Willison Road, Heinsberg Road. Shawwood road corridors but the houses are selling for like crazy money but as you said earlier right it's it's really hard to find it But from the CLA perspective, I mean. that house that was 17,000 is now $350,000. I mean, that's what it's worth based upon the value in which it's sold. And an aggregate of the hundreds of homes that were sold in that three-year period. It's hard to calculate what's in the right. I don't know if I answered your question. I
057think you helped me like clear up some of the broader perspectives of what I was focused on, which was helpful. I'm just really concerned about the fashion of our community who's you know in part the heart of our community we've been here for decades And they're going to be pushed out by property taxes. I don't sit well with me. a little more affordable housing. But how do we do that who does that The school district doesn't do that, right? I just want to jump in here for a second because I also… want to clarify that um You know, in this discussion, we can't forget that the whole reason for the CLA is to fund the education funds so that we are providing equitable education across the state So for the purposes of education in this
058state. our property here in South Burlington does not belong to South Burlington. It is state property, the commercial property, the houses, all of that. So all of the building that's gone on in South Burlington, it's been great locally. Certainly it's helped our municipal taxes and help there. But for the purposes of education, that's all state property. So when they adjust the values, our tax rate up. Yeah, we built a lot of housing and such, and it's benefited everybody in the state, not just South Burlington. And that's really to some extent the way it should be. That's what our Constitution calls for. And that was the whole reason of Act 60. So we can't lose sight of that. And it's a perception that I think we have here sometimes that Our district is just spending money
059willy-nilly. We're a wealthy town. We have all of this money available. And it's really just not the case, right? And we've had to make significant cuts And the state is raising a significant amount of money through the property in South Burlington but again The budgets in other towns affect us just as much as ours affects them so It is sort of, and this was a hard lesson that i i sort of it took a while to learn and tim correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we need to be cognizant of that fact. that this is a state level. state level low. issue. It's fun to share that. So again, I think that gets lost in the shuffle of, oh, my taxes are going up. And it's not just because South Burlington has a
060school budget it's because you know statewide, we are funding everything statewide as they are funding us Sorry, I just wanted to share it. it's a hard concept because I think, Tim, you mentioned that people see their taxes and they think that money's going right into the coffers of South Burlington and it's staying there. the town really just collects those taxes, but really they go to the state because they're state taxes. And then they come back to us based on our budget But those taxes may also go to other towns to help support their budgets as well. Sorry. So we're at 830. And I told Laura we wouldn't talk about this for an hour um In terms of budget priority feedback from the board, do you have a good starting place to get the feedback that
061you're looking for as a first house you have. specific areas that you're seeking more feedback from with the research? I think… you know last year's budget really paved the way for you know the understanding that there has to be sweeping reductions and that None of us want to do these things. We value our staff and our kids, our students and You know, I appreciate the conversation around the state factors, which are out of the control of everyone in this room. And, you know, we will endure. I think if there's one thing I do know the ed funding formula will change and it is the political will that will do that. in advocacy for community and I'm going to continue to fight for resources for our district and, you know, support our students and our staff
062and our community in the meantime through you know some rocky times. And again, I think You know, change will come as it as it does with the funding formula so Yeah, I mean, the only closing comment on this I'd like to make is just for the board to understand that the budget. is not a PowerPoint. The budget is a extremely detailed accounting document with over 2,000 individual lines that we need to put numbers in. And they add up to something. Right. in order to have the guidance, and obviously I'll talk about it online about this, what we're going to do next. But to have this budget ready for December 4th of next week being Thanksgiving is going to be They're quite attacked right because you have to translate all these themes into dollars. Some of
063them are easier than others. Some are like last year we spent X and this year we're going to spend less than X. or more than eggs. But are you going to cut JV football or are you going to cut General supplies, right? I mean, we have to translate this presentation into a very detailed budget and then we can have a discussion. Where did everything land And then obviously you only get two more tries before the eighth, right? And so Just to, I share that only to raise awareness that This is not a like easy exercise and you really have to be we're going to have to now is this spending amount too big or too small and is this tax rate too big or too small? before we come back here on the 4th and
064on the 18th and on the meeting generating 80 meters. Because the levers will move as you find out. And for the next two, we won't know what to use for CRA, so we'll you know we'll have a number Which would be more or less than $68 million. And then we will show what will the tax rate implications be at those spending levels according to maybe three or four different CLA scenarios? Just want to let you know what you're likely to get, right? I mean, I shared with you before, there's like over 200 scenarios Which I'm not going to do at this meeting next time but So we are going to kind of need to know what's the sweet spot for spending dollars and tax rate So that we can continue to refine this before we
065have a final budget to warn So yeah, at this time, I'm going to wrap up our discussion. We'll open for public comment Just a reminder, please raise your hand on Zoom and who'd like to make a comment or raise your hand in the room if you'd like to make a comment. And please be sensitive to the amount of time that we have remaining. Could you please unmute Noah Everett? Hi, Noah Everett, and I am a co-president of the South Burlington Educators Association. So, um. Can you hear me? Yeah, I know. Thank you. Oh, that was weird. So… Okay. It keeps flashing on and off. Anyway, so I heard several things. And one thing that I definitely want to say is There's been a long history of the South Barrington Educators Association both meeting with board
066chairs and collaborating with them. And we'd love to help you gather information and feedback from teaching faculty. Second. I really think… that has this discussion is evolving. And the factors that we have. We really need to consider that the offerings we're going to be able to have are going to reduce. And teachers can handle that, especially if we lead forcefully. So I would encourage the board and the superintendent to set a vision and then bring people along with them. The discussion so far has been a little meandering and it makes me feel very anxious. As opposed to lead. I think that faculty really would like to hear the vision and then backfill. And I've seen that in other districts around. I'm hopeful that we can work together on this, especially in the short timeframe. and
067and Definitely am willing to continue to collaborate with you. Okay. All right. Do we want to take a five-minute incense or doing our own? I would appreciate for you too. Thank you. Yeah, we'll learn. That's fine. I'm just saying regardless All right. We will take a three-minute break and come back to 84. I'm sorry to talk about this. Okay. So next is agenda item eight action items, and we have our third reading of provisions of firearms and weapons policy. And we are taking action on this policy this evening. As a reminder, we do not need to read through the whole policy again. So I would just start by asking, does anyone have any Okay. Questions and comments. I have no idea further. Turn on. Or is it just for the Lord? It's just for the
068board. You can get a copy It is posted on our website. Oh, it's probably the one we have. Okay. My entire web browser just crashed. So I still see yeah not my Zoom, just my They're here for this. I actually need my chair notes. I take notes to make sure that my language is it in alignment with Robert's rules so that I don't have to think about it on the fly. Make sure it's correct We're good. See, all he has to do is ask for help, really. I'm going to make her superpowers of healing here. No, it's true. You've done the same for me. Let me ask you a question. No questions, comments, or concerns about the policy loop. revisions. Okay. Do I have a motion to approve the firearms and weapons policy as currently
069written, revised, and reviewed? Chris moves the second. Tim seconds. Any discussion? on the replacing it by saying aye. Aye. Aye. the firearms and weapons policy has been approved. Thank you to Violet and the staff who worked hard to keep our kids safe. I'm happy to see the thought and prayer that went into the policy. Okay, so moving on, we need to monitor our executive policy 2.5 financial planning and budgeting Has everyone had an opportunity to review the monitoring report for policy 2.5? This is… Laura, have you had a chance to review the 2.5 million podcast. Yes, I have. Any questions, comments, discussion about this report? Great. I might even join you. I'm going to excuse me, Tim, might I invite you to join us for the discussion on Good to go. So just this very
070good report. Just a couple of questions on the on the first section Detail policy one And it involved the late payments on the invoices. Just out of curiosity, I mean, it was a pretty significant jump you had listed there. And your explanation was very clear and it sounds like there's a very good cap in place to tackle it. Where the suppliers that we're talking about here, were they primarily local suppliers or Was there one in particular or it's a mix. Some are local um some, you know, we purchase a lot of school supplies from outside of Vermont so I don't know if there's a trend in state versus out of state but I just wanted to make sure. Any complaint is unacceptable. I just want to make sure you weren't like and you don't feel
071like we've endangered any relationships here by paying late. This was early. I mean, there's just a lot of adoring, which is deserved. Can I get it? Myla gets in and April gets it. We're trying to… Did we incur any significant late payment fees or anything with this. The only other comment I had was I really appreciated, honestly, the explanation of the of the dam which was the damn the bond a discussion about cash flow and your bond anticipation notes. I think that's the first time I've heard that explanation and it made sense. So I just wanted to comment that that was That's a good explanation. I appreciate it. So other than that, I had no confidence. Thank you, thank you. Thank you. I want to learn a little bit more about what to consider. No.
072Any other comments, questions, discussion about the monitoring report? We did ask Tim Jarvis all the way up for a third time this evening so It's my exercise. The only exercise I've got all day, so I'll do laps around the room if you want. I'll stop you when I need to answer questions. I continue to be pressed with the financial aspects of this. It's big budget it's a big school district. Thank you. Just if AP is some of our worst issues We're doing all right. Yeah, I mean, I'll use this opportunity to give a big shout out to our new business manager April Jennings, who joined us. On July 1st. She has brought in an incredibly good skill set. She was groomed by one of the best business managers in the state. And she is introducing
073wholesale changes that are going to benefit all of us. you know she had done this systems migration two years ago and so she knows this system real well And she's pointed out a lot of the legacy practices of the district that have been in place literally for many years Where… things that should have been booked as supplies were being booked as machinery, things that should have been booked in one way, it shouldn't have booked the other so We are in a very active process of ensuring that as we prepare this fiscal year 26 budget everything is in its right place and that when we do the 27 budget everything will be logged into it. It's just something there's a lot of sort of rough navigation along the way, but it's going to pay off. It's
074worth it. I think I want to also just echo tremendous amount of gratitude to Tim, April, our business office staff, HR, and this is doing an extensive amount of getting things in order and there's you know the hill I'm going to die on it is going to be getting, you know, bringing order and consistency and One of the hopes is we've been a business official training that Tim Apo and I attended, we learned about a company that provides information on budgeting once they have all of our staffing and financial information, which we will, for the first time ever, the district will actually have digitized, which has been our big work over the last few years that we started. you know, just a couple of years ago I'm like losing track. This is year three. So
075two years ago and um we are able to provide this information to a company that can then give us really good metrics on things like art spending for grades. students in grades three to five should be X number of dollars per pupil, you know, things like that so we can really Try to increase equity and data-driven decision making in our budgets. And, you know, to echo themes for tonight in our budget is really around equity and focusing on attending to those who need equity supports. So that is very much the vision of the budget that I'm trying to share and with the lens of attending to the law. So that is the journey that I'm trying to take us on. some additional data will definitely hit that home. Thank you, Jennifer. I have no idea
076what we're. Okay, so at this time, as a reminder, I'm going to read through the global policy and then I'll read each policy detail and ask if we have a reasonable interpretation, adequate data, and if we're in compliance, and he'll answer yes or no to each of these questions. And then once we've reviewed each policy detail, I go back to the global policy and I'll ask the questions again. Okay. All right. 2.5, financial planning and budgeting. The superintendent shall not cause or allow financial planning for any fiscal year or the remaining part of any fiscal year to deviate materially from the board's end priorities, risk financial jeopardy, or fail to be derived from a multi-year plan. Further, without limiting the scope of the foregoing by this enumeration, there will be no financial plans that, one.
077risk incurring those situations or conditions described as unacceptable in the board policy, financial condition, and activities. reasonable interpretation. Yes. I put that in? Yes. In compliance, yes, no. Yes. Is it a whole? Is it in compliance? Okay, yes, yes, thank you. to omit credible projection of revenues and expenses, separation of capital and operational items. cash flow, disclosure of planning assumptions, and predicted financial impact. reasonable interpretation? Yes. adequate data? Yes. Yes. Three, provide less for board prerogatives during the year than is set forth in the governance investment policy. Reasonable interpretation? Yes. adequate data. include bias. Yes. The superintendent shall not cause or allow financial planning for any fiscal year or the remaining part of any fiscal year to deviate materially from the board's end priorities. risk financial jeopardy or fail to be prescribed from the multi-year
078plan. Reasonable interpretation? Yes. adequate data yes items. Yes. the 2.5 financial planning and budgeting monitoring report is approved. So up next, we have agenda planning We need to set our agenda for our December 4th meeting. My browser is completely not functioning. I can pull up the draft agenda on the phone though. That would be awesome. Okay. running from the finance committee update next. Yes, absolutely. through strength listening sessions for now Yeah, I don't know my lucky that approach. It's unfortunate. Secondly, getting over our security camera policy school board candidate interviews initial budget review And we have part of our FY26 budget, a community budget forum as part of our meeting. I notice right now that we are only budgeting an hour to review the first budget, have discussion. And have a forum. I'm not sure
079that's going to be enough in time. I think we need to be ours. Yeah. And if we need two hours for that, we need stuff ahead of it needs to be I mean, tonight we were 40 minutes ahead before we got to the budget. Okay, agenda planning. session of school board applicants Anything that we need to add, this is already packed agenda, but I can't see a lot that we could strike I do want to check in at this meeting with everyone about the OPR info that we're writing as a board so I just, I don't find the email to be a particularly good way to organize ourselves. So I'll just add a quick discussion of that in discussion items, if that works for everybody. then we can just do like literally a two or
080three minute discussion Okay. Thank you. I'll just take a picture of it. All we're doing is striking listening sessions and adding OP article. And then what do you want to do at the time on budgets? Yeah, I think that realistically, if we're holding, we have time for the public to comment on the budget Just based on history, I don't think we need 20 minutes for comments from the public. Obviously, if something happens. Until you publish the budget. But what we have budget comments as part of our meeting and um I also think that we should try to have It's hard because we want to budget enough time for the community to come and talk if they'd like to talk, but also if people look at the warrant agenda and think we're discussing the budget at
0818 p.m. But we're 20 minutes ahead of schedule and we start discussing at 740. It's not great so Yeah, I think we should move it. Probably. to, I think we should move it to um And we do candidate interviews, maybe 7 45 I'd rather have people I don't want people to miss it. Yeah, same. I also don't think that we'll need 20 minutes for school board candidate interviews unless we get a lot more applicants, which I am not predicting. If we only have one applicant, historically we've budgeted seven minutes per interview. So we could add three minutes for transition to the table time. and reading of instructions and reading have it for 10 minutes. Okay. Okay, but we can do more time you can take that. I mean, thank you so much. All right. Let
082me just pull my No browser crashed again. Okay, so agenda item 10, consent agenda. Has everyone had an opportunity to review the minutes of the November 6th meeting? Yes, yes. Any questions, comments, or changes? No. Hearing none, the November 6th meeting minutes are approved No, I just didn't make, when I wrote these notes, I didn't have that part yet. So we want to discuss the hiring. Yeah, I'm happy to have Daryl Kemp fill in the 10 special educator position at Orchard School. It's a one-year-old new position. as it was the contract was signed after the July 8th. And he's filling an open position that was previously held by Elizabeth So I'm really glad to have Nicole. Next up is bids, approved leasing arrangement, finance acquisition of two passenger vans required by the Transportation Department and
083one tool that utility work machines with the facilities and maintenance department. Has everyone had a chance to review this code request? Yes. Yes. Any questions? I have just one. So the amount was for 149k That doesn't include the interest, right? So we're doing just the principal purchase. Do you know the answer to that for the bids, is that including just principal or P&I? one um That's the principle that we put out here. Okay. So the overall cost will be the principal. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions about this discussion? Those beds are very neat. Next approval date orders 1146, 1156, 1157, 1158, 1159, 1161, and 115 0. Has everyone had a chance to review these APorders? Yes, yes. What are your questions? You can see we're trying to catch up. I literally just thought to
084myself, do we need to have like a special meeting every week just like every other free AP orders? given that. No questions? On all those AP orders? Incredible. No, I do feel like at some point when we have the luxury of time, we should do like an AP order training just so that all at once but anyways, move on. I'm not going to read them all again. No questions? No. The AP orders are approved. Do I have a motion to approve a check to the Howard Center for Human Services in the amount of $57,404? $454.39. Laura moves there in a second. Second. 20 seconds. Any discussions? All in favor? Both sides, no onions. All in favor. Or the chat to the Howard Center has been approved. Which leads us to agenda item 11, agenda. Do
085I have a motion? So moved. I'll second. Chris moves to adjourn the regular session of the South Burlington School Board and Laura seconds. Any discussion? The regular meeting of the South Orange Institute board is adjourned. And this is again.