October 1, 2025 School Board Meeting

001SBSD Helpdesk: Okay. SBSD Helpdesk: Alrighty. SBSD Helpdesk: place a call to order the October 1st, 2025 SBSD Helpdesk: special meeting of the South Burlington School Board. SBSD Helpdesk: The first item on our agenda is a projected executive session. SBSD Helpdesk: I would entertain a motion. SBSD Helpdesk: To find that what we're going to talk about in this executive session, namely employment of a public officer employee, and to receive confidential attorney-client communication for the purpose of providing legal services to the board, would place the school district at significant disadvantage. SBSD Helpdesk: Commit to motion. SBSD Helpdesk: Do I have a second? Second? SBSD Helpdesk: Any discussion? SBSD Helpdesk: All those in favor? Aye. SBSD Helpdesk: Bob. SBSD Helpdesk: I would entertain a motion to enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing employment of a

002public officer to receive confidential attorney-client communication for the purpose of providing legal services for board and labor negotiations. SBSD Helpdesk: I don't remove. SBSD Helpdesk: Do I have a second? Second. Any discussion? SBSD Helpdesk: All those in favor? Aye. We are now going into executive session. We will have Dr. Joe Clark, our superintendent, with us. We may be joined by other, staff or legal counsel, and I will provide an update when we get back. SBSD Helpdesk: So, thank you. SBSD Helpdesk: Yes. I got a bucket. SBSD Helpdesk: Thank you. SBSD Helpdesk: I'll definitely move that way. SBSD Helpdesk: Alright, I'll call the… SBSD Helpdesk: special meeting of the South Burlington School Board on October 1st, 2025, back to order. We just did an hour of executive session SBSD Helpdesk: We talked about, employment of a

003public officer, receiving confidential attorney-blind communication for the purpose of providing legal services to the board, and labor negotiations, and our one guest was, Dr. Go Clark, our superintendent. SBSD Helpdesk: So our first item in the agenda is announcements and amendments to the agenda. Does anyone have any announcements or amendments to the agenda? SBSD Helpdesk: Announcement… I was contacted by Andrew Chelnick, a city councilor, and he suggested that SBSD Helpdesk: the school board look into, saving money through a, solar, power purchase plant, power purchasing agreement, and so I forwarded his suggestion on to, Joe Clark for, SBSD Helpdesk: investigation. SBSD Helpdesk: He was saying that the tax breaks will be up in… up next year, and so he thought there was some urgency to it, so I turned that over to Joe for investigation. SBSD Helpdesk:

004Now we'll have our next agenda item, comments from the public. SBSD Helpdesk: And I'll just read the guidelines for public comment. There are two opportunities for the public to comment. SBSD Helpdesk: Number one, during comments from the public about any topic, that's right now, so if you want to talk about anything, please do talk about it now. And then also, we'll take comment from the public before the board takes action on an action item. SBSD Helpdesk: But only on the topic being action. So, if we are on a discussion item, we won't pick public domino. SBSD Helpdesk: The board will not respond to public comments unless this meeting is a specially designated community forum. SBSD Helpdesk: And the comments on the topic warrant on the community forum agenda. So, we last had a community forum

005September 17th, and we have not scheduled another one yet. SBSD Helpdesk: Each person will be given up to 3 minutes. Please don't violate anyone's privacy, and you cannot file an official complaint or grievance using public comment. SBSD Helpdesk: So, anybody who'd like to help. SBSD Helpdesk: Who knows? SBSD Helpdesk: Hello, everybody. Daisy Brayton, and I'm your HR Director. I just wanted to briefly touch base on… I noticed that one of the discussion items, F, is about the permanent search superintendent search, and I just wanted to let you know your HR team is ready and raring to go, and anxious to get that started, as we know that, SBSD Helpdesk: I took a quick look at the American Association of… superintendents. SBSD Helpdesk: And they have a listing of superintendent openings, and there's about 13 of

006them right now that I think would directly compete with us. So, yes, we're raring and ready to go, and if you wanted my input, I would say the sooner the better. Thanks. SBSD Helpdesk: Is there anyone online? SBSD Helpdesk: True. SBSD Helpdesk: Would you, would you start with whoever? SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, we'll start with Jerry. Jerry, go ahead. Gerry Silverstein: So, my comment, I'll phrase as a question. Are there any situations where the South Bromington School District does not, emphasis on the word not. Gerry Silverstein: have to obey the laws of the state of Vermont. Gerry Silverstein: Such as those laws governing public records requests submitted through appropriate channels. That's my comment. Gerry Silverstein: I know you don't always answer questions, but you can take that question under advisement at some point. SBSD Helpdesk: Thank

007you, Jerry. SBSD Helpdesk: Would you recognize Bridget? Bridget Burkhardt: Hi, can you hear me? SBSD Helpdesk: Yes. Bridget Burkhardt: Sorry, picking up a child from a sporting event, so I am in the car. Not driving, though. Bridget Burkhardt: I just wanted to reiterate something that I think I've said in the past, which is I'm disappointed to see so many things that really should be on a regular school board meeting agenda. Bridget Burkhardt: on a special meeting, especially an action item on a new policy that is being implemented. It makes it really hard for the public to participate when there are so many different meetings, and I think it would be really helpful for the relationship with the community if more of these things could be done during regular school board meetings, rather than special meetings.

008Bridget Burkhardt: Thanks. SBSD Helpdesk: Any other public comment? SBSD Helpdesk: So, one more. Elizabeth? Elizabeth: Hi, thank you, Seamus. I don't know if there is an announcement on the agenda today, but I did want to, take a minute, and I see Jesse is in the room, so she can add some comment as well, but, there is a City Council agenda Elizabeth: for the October 6th meeting on Monday that Elizabeth: Acting Chief, Police Chief Briscoe and Superintendent Joe Clark will be talking about school safety with an emphasis on implications for community safety as well. And I just want to make sure that's, Elizabeth: information's available to the audience today and, and, and to the school community, too. Thank you. SBSD Helpdesk: Thank you. SBSD Helpdesk: All right, so we'll move on to the next, action items.

009So, it's a little weird tonight. The agenda goes action, discussion, and then back to action. SBSD Helpdesk: So, the first two action items are related to nominating or designating a school board member to vote on behalf of the school board. SBSD Helpdesk: at the BSBA, Vermont School Boards Association, and the VEHI VISBIT, which is the Vermont Education Health Initiative, Vermont School Boards Insurance Trust Annual Meetings. SBSD Helpdesk: So on the first action, which is the Vermont School Board Association's, annual meeting, Laura, can you give us a little information about that? Yeah, so their meeting, I think, is October 23rd, if I'm mistaken. And so they, they have a business meeting where they have, SBSD Helpdesk: they have different things to come to a vote. I was unable to attend the past two years, so I

010didn't have SBSD Helpdesk: have anybody, anybody voting. So, it's the annual meeting, which is, it's in Burlington this time, And… SBSD Helpdesk: It is. SBSD Helpdesk: October 23rd. I was right, so October… so October 23rd, SBSD Helpdesk: And… and 24th. So they usually have the business meeting, in the evening. SBSD Helpdesk: And, and I actually can't remember what word… SBSD Helpdesk: I wasn't able to attend the past couple of times, so if someone's going to attend. SBSD Helpdesk: the meeting, it's very difficult for me to take… I cannot take so much personal time job for this job. SBSD Helpdesk: So, it's pretty easy, you just listen, there's a financial report, you vote to approve the budget, and just things like that. Kind of what… SBSD Helpdesk: So, pretty straightforward. SBSD Helpdesk: In terms of… SBSD

011Helpdesk: the Visbit annual meeting, so I know I'm just gonna go into that. I… I should not be. SBSD Helpdesk: I should not be there, because I am a teacher. So, as far as I know, we haven't had anybody, a voting number. SBSD Helpdesk: from responsibility there. But there are people on the… from the VSBA and serving committee, and they… they all… SBSD Helpdesk: So… So I don't know if anybody was… is interested in doing one that we got her. SBSD Helpdesk: I do plan on going to the… to the business meeting. SBSD Helpdesk: on the 23rd, so I can do that one. SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah. And then somebody wants to. Again, we haven't had anybody vote. SBSD Helpdesk: for this, and I have to recuse myself because I'm a teacher. So you're saying, okay,

012so we're talking about, first. SBSD Helpdesk: designating a school board member to vote on behalf of the South Bronxon School Board at the Vermont School Boards Association, the BSBA Annual Meeting, which is on October 23rd at 6 p.m. SBSD Helpdesk: Does… is it… who is… who is interested in that? SBSD Helpdesk: You're interested in that? I mean, yeah, BSBA members, board members, so… SBSD Helpdesk: Everybody else want to do it? SBSD Helpdesk: I won't be in chat. SBSD Helpdesk: Okay, and you'll be able to attend this year? Yeah, I'll be able… so I can go to the business meeting that I prefer. It's the daytime. SBSD Helpdesk: So I think I'll… Okay, and, would you, if you… if we designated you, would you summarize what's being voted on? And, SBSD Helpdesk: send that out to

013the board, and then if the board wants to talk about it, we can talk about it at our October 8th meeting. Yeah, yeah, but again, yeah, right, just like approving minutes, approving the Treasury report. SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, things like that. Resolute, yeah. SBSD Helpdesk: So, yes, I will do that. Okay. And then, maybe when we talk about agenda planning, we, on the October 8th, if there's any updates about SBSD Helpdesk: If there's anything, relevant we should be talking about, we can talk about it in October. SBSD Helpdesk: Okay, so I would entertain a motion to designate Laura Williams as the, SBSD Helpdesk: South Burlington designate for the BSBA meeting. SBSD Helpdesk: Hello. SBSD Helpdesk: Alright. SBSD Helpdesk: So, emily moves. Michelle seconds. Is there any discussion? SBSD Helpdesk: Thank you, Laura. All those in favor?

014Aye. Aye. Aye. The motion passes. SBSD Helpdesk: So we'll move on to the next agenda item, designating school board member or administrator to vote on behalf of the SPSD at the Health Initiative and the Insurance Trust Annual Meeting. This is on October 23rd at 6 p.m. SBSD Helpdesk: VSA. Wow, yes. SBSD Helpdesk: So, I have a suggestion here. Joe, are you available to do that? SBSD Helpdesk: I believe I am, and I think also in your folder, there might be something about being able to vote by proxy if somebody came to… SBSD Helpdesk: The 23rd? Yeah. 23rd at 6 p.m. Yes. SBSD Helpdesk: So I would… You know, happy to. SBSD Helpdesk: If they allow us to send an administrator and… SBSD Helpdesk: And if you could do it, like, similar to Laura, where you…

015SBSD Helpdesk: summarize for us in advance of the October 8th meeting, if there's anything that we should be thinking about, if there's anything that you think you need our advice on about how to vote, and then it can be discussed, or if you have the latest. Be happy to do that. Give me an opportunity to learn more about both of those. SBSD Helpdesk: organizations. Okay. Well, I would entertain a motion to designate, Joe Clark as our SBSD Helpdesk: as our designee to vote at the Vermont Education Health Initiative and the Vermont School Board's Insurance Trust Annual Meeting on October 23rd at 6 p.m. SBSD Helpdesk: Second. Okay, so Laura moves, Austin seconds. Any discussion? SBSD Helpdesk: All those in favor? Aye. Grace. SBSD Helpdesk: Hold certified. SBSD Helpdesk: Laura? Laura? SBSD Helpdesk: Great. SBSD Helpdesk:

016We are now a little bit ahead of time. It's 6.17, and on our agenda, we have 6.30, so maybe let's just take a 3-minute break, and then we'll start 10 minutes early, at 6.20. SBSD Helpdesk: So, we'll just take a quick… Right. SBSD Helpdesk: I had a question. Do you guys… do the student… SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah. I think most of our stuff we can wait till next week to share. Okay. Yeah. Thank you for Jeffing. SBSD Helpdesk: Alright, so we'll start. SBSD Helpdesk: start back up here. So the first item for discussion is Vice Chair. SBSD Helpdesk: This is something that the SBA SBSD Helpdesk: Says is possible, and whereas we cannot have co-chairs. SBSD Helpdesk: we can have a vice chair. And so, I personally will be out SBSD Helpdesk: for a few meetings

017later this year. I won't be here next week. I will be on Zoom for a couple meetings in November, and so I thought it would be a good idea to talk about, having a vice chair to run the meetings. SBSD Helpdesk: I remember the conversation came up when we were reorganizing, SBSD Helpdesk: We talked about a vice chair, especially since we're all new, and so it could be good to have support, and also seven of us, so… SBSD Helpdesk: Good… good people's spare. I think it's a great idea. SBSD Helpdesk: Hi, Ian. So do I. No objection. SBSD Helpdesk: Great. Well, I would, thanks. SBSD Helpdesk: I think I can nominate somebody. SBSD Helpdesk: the chair. Cool. SBSD Helpdesk: No, no, you can… I'd like to nominate Jenny Lawrence to the new Vice Chair. SBSD

018Helpdesk: So, do… so I would entertain a motion to… Oh, yeah. SBSD Helpdesk: Dude, that's why there's a little uncomfortable about him. SBSD Helpdesk: I'd be happy to do it. Okay. I'd be happy. SBSD Helpdesk: I'd say with conviction. I would like to nominate Jen Lawrence. I second Lawrence. Okay, so I would entertain a motion to nominate Jen… to name Jen Lawrence the Vice Chair of the South Burlington School Board. SBSD Helpdesk: And so now we should… now somebody can make the motion. I will go to nominate 10 as Chairman. SBSD Helpdesk: Second. Second. Is there any discussion? SBSD Helpdesk: This is where the public could discuss. Yes, because we marked it for possible action. Okay. So, I think… So, anyone comment right now. Yes. Okay, good catch on. SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, I guess. So,

019any, any public comment? SBSD Helpdesk: Paul doesn't… We have one. Go for it. SBSD Helpdesk: Just a point of clarification, I wonder if… can you state their name? Because there's so people can hear. SBSD Helpdesk: Hi, I'm Jean Marine Clark, I'm the Senior Director of Finance and Operations and a former board member. I just am curious if perhaps you should vote to agree to have that position in your SBSD Helpdesk: before you nominate somebody for that position. To agree to have a vice chair as part of your complement of positions. Sure. That's my comment. I'll take that advice. SBSD Helpdesk: Good point. SBSD Helpdesk: So, shall we allow the… allow the motion to fail and start over? I would entertain a motion to specify that there will be a vice chair of the South Burlington

020School Board. SBSD Helpdesk: I move to have a vice chair of the South Bronx School Board. SBSD Helpdesk: I second. SBSD Helpdesk: So, Laura moves, Emily seconds, any discussion? SBSD Helpdesk: All those in favor? Aye. The motion passes. SBSD Helpdesk: So I would entertain a motion to name Jennifer Lawrence as the Vice Chair of the South Burlington School Board. Second. SBSD Helpdesk: And so, Laura… Oh, you move. Laura moves, and… 10 seconds. SBSD Helpdesk: Any discussion? SBSD Helpdesk: All those in favor? Aye. Aye. SBSD Helpdesk: Okay, thanks, John. Thanks, John. Congrats, folks. SBSD Helpdesk: So the next item on our agenda is, budget. SBSD Helpdesk: And so, I hate, SBSD Helpdesk: I have a few thoughts initially, and then I believe Joe may have some thoughts, and also Joe invited Jesse Baker, City Manager of

021South Burlington, who can also go, you know, help us just talk through the idea. So. SBSD Helpdesk: I just wanted to start by saying SBSD Helpdesk: One of the wise things that Joe said a couple months ago at this point, maybe it was a couple weeks ago, was it's important to talk about money when you're not asking for it. SBSD Helpdesk: And so, I think that this board needs to do as much outreach as possible, following the Tassant plan to start to get community engagement around SBSD Helpdesk: Around budget. SBSD Helpdesk: And I also think that the board has to be very careful about how we approach SBSD Helpdesk: The budget, to make sure that we are not making SBSD Helpdesk: the school district's job harder, on the one hand, by getting into operational concerns,

022and on the other hand, making the budget harder to understand for taxpayers and voters, SBSD Helpdesk: And so, when we discuss this going forward, something I'm going to be watching out for is when we get into real inside baseball about SBSD Helpdesk: you know, financial letters, and CLAs, and all these things that can very rapidly confuse people, and frankly, also, I think, confuse us as a board. So, with that, Joe, do you have any preliminary thoughts about SBSD Helpdesk: budget. Well, I mean, this is my first, budget as a Vermont, superintendent. I'm learning a lot. I went to the conference last week and learned a lot, and Jean Marie is a great, SBSD Helpdesk: a great resource as well, as is Tasan. I'm glad that they are on board to help guide us through this

023first time. My understanding is, is that the board, really, your role SBSD Helpdesk: as I understand it, is to determine what the overall budget is going to be, but it's the operations of me and my team to decide how that money will be spent. Of course, we'll keep you updated on all of those things, but I think when you talk about, not… the board not getting in the weeds too much, I think it's really about SBSD Helpdesk: setting the level that we feel the community will be able to support, and then me and my team. And I also believe that SBSD Helpdesk: principals need to have a lot of say in how they spend their money and their buildings. I think they know their buildings better than anybody, so I'm hopeful that the board will

024give me some guidance on… SBSD Helpdesk: You know, what our overall budget will be, and we will be… SBSD Helpdesk: Really pleased to go through and figure out how are we going to best serve our kids with the resources we provided. SBSD Helpdesk: Great. And Jesse, could I ask you to step up to the microphone? SBSD Helpdesk: So, one of the things, and obviously we're now in a discussion period, so Board, please feel free to ask questions, to Joe, to Jesse, to Genevie, SBSD Helpdesk: My first question for you, Jesse, is around the way that we talk about budgets in this spot. SBSD Helpdesk: And I was going through some of the city budget materials from last year, and I saw where it's like, you know, based on inflation, but at the same time maintaining

025operations. And it would be great if you could just give kind of a Vermont-based SBSD Helpdesk: You know, vocabulary for how we talk about budgets. SBSD Helpdesk: Sure, so just for the record, my name's Jesse Baker, I serve as your super… not your superintendent, really, as your city manager. And I would first like to say I'm so thankful to be here tonight, and for the partnership that I've experienced with all of you. SBSD Helpdesk: All of you, and especially the superintendent over the last two weeks, it's been a real breath of fresh air. We've already done a lot of work together, and I'm very thankful for that. I also want to start this with the caveat that a municipal budget and a school budget are wildly different in some really important ways in Vermont. SBSD

026Helpdesk: Primarily, our fund… our tax rate formula is very simple. SBSD Helpdesk: We take what our expenditure budget is, we subtract out the non-property tax revenues, and we set the property tax rate based on that expenditure number divided by the brand list. SBSD Helpdesk: It's very straightforward, very easy to calculate. You all have the challenge of contending with a similar expense budget, but many more factors that are not controlled by you going into the revenue side of that equation. It creates a big challenge for you. And I have an understanding of that, but I do not at all suggest that I am an expert in that. SBSD Helpdesk: from a goal-setting process, what I… what I think would be more… less helpful is to share how the South Burlington City Council and other city councils

027I've worked with in Vermont have handled, at the board level or the council level, setting goals for your executive to go and meet as part of the budget process. SBSD Helpdesk: So, here in South Burlington, the City Council, at their September 2nd meeting, approves a budget schedule for the process. At their meeting on September 15th, the staff presented our FY27 projections, which included our expenditure projections and our revenue projections, and then the Council had a conversation about high-level policy goals SBSD Helpdesk: that they would like us to meet, as we, the leadership team of the city, the department heads of the City, put together the operations budget for the Council to consider in December. SBSD Helpdesk: So very specifically, what they, the guidance they gave us on September 15th was that they want to continue

028our current operations level. They want to kind of have what's called a steady-state or maintaining operations budget. They're not looking to add greatly to the budget, nor subtract greatly to the budget. SBSD Helpdesk: They asked us to explore non-property tax revenues, which we have more ability to raise than you do on the education side. SBSD Helpdesk: They have asked us to deliver them a budget that was at or under August inflation, so I think that's a point you just made. So August inflation for our region of the country was 3.3%, so they don't want to go over that, considering the affordability goals of our community. SBSD Helpdesk: They also asked us to look at our strategic use of our reserves and implementing any policy actions that they've taken that may have yet to implement. SBSD

029Helpdesk: So on our side of the… of Dorset Street, what this means is our expense budget, if we do nothing else, just to maintain our current level of staffing, our expense budget's gonna go up 6.5%, taking into consideration baseline revenues of new grand list growth. SBSD Helpdesk: That means a tax rate increase of 5.5%, and we are looking… to 3.3%. SBSD Helpdesk: So what the leadership team is doing. I just want to underline what Dr. Park said. In our systems, in our policy, and operation, or, SBSD Helpdesk: policy, elected officials and our implementers at the executive level. Your… your role is really to set that high-level policy guidance and let your executive bring you a set of recommendations that meets those policy bullets. SBSD Helpdesk: Happy to answer any questions. SBSD Helpdesk: And is it

030common? And I understand that it's very different municipal and school board budgeting, the reason I ask. SBSD Helpdesk: ask you this question is because I think that, you know, you're a leader in South Burlington, and so you know South Burlington pretty well, and is it common for the City Council to ask you to do inflation year after year, or like. SBSD Helpdesk: Wh-what is… or… SBSD Helpdesk: you know, I've also heard the term level funding, or, you know, 0%, like, what's been the history of what the City Council has asked you to do? SBSD Helpdesk: So, I am in my fifth year, this will be my fourth budget bringing to the community. Over that period of time, they have asked us to meet inflation, and then if there was new policy initiatives we were implementing.

031SBSD Helpdesk: consider that in addition to level funding or maintaining operations. So that is… we have hovered around that, between 2% increase and SBSD Helpdesk: 5% tax rate increase over those 4 years, and the higher numbers were the years we were adding staff to meet a specific policy decision the Council had. SBSD Helpdesk: And so, when a… When a governing body tells you inflation. SBSD Helpdesk: And in this case, it would be 3.3%. SBSD Helpdesk: does that… that doesn't mean that the tax rate goes up by 3.3%. That… that's separate. SBSD Helpdesk: So that is a tax rate goal that the Council has set. For us, on our side, that is what that… that is the guidance they've given, is bring us a tax rate not to exceed inflation. SBSD Helpdesk: Thinking with the… under

032the guise of… SBSD Helpdesk: we have… we… the Council has set affordability goals. We want to be a community that's affordable to all of our residents, and if our residents are, their income's only increasing a certain amount, and all of their other costs are increasing the amount, the same amount, or a similar amount, we don't want to go over that average. SBSD Helpdesk: So, for us, it is a tax rate goal. That is much harder on your side of the equation, because you don't know all of those inputs when you're setting your budget. SBSD Helpdesk: So you could… because you have a very different funding formula, you could think about, using that as a benchmark on your expense budget, or using that as a benchmark on your expense budget minus entitlements, or… SBSD Helpdesk: Using

033it as a benchmark in a different way as a policy decision. SBSD Helpdesk: I think it's going to be very important to make it abundantly clear for people that they can see these are the variables. You know, this is what we know. SBSD Helpdesk: And then these are the factors that can change. Because I think it is very difficult to get your head around. SBSD Helpdesk: Now, but what you're saying makes sense, that your property tax, you don't want that to be outpacing inflation. If your property tax is going up, that would be causing red flags. Well… SBSD Helpdesk: That's just what the city may have told Jesse to do. Right. SBSD Helpdesk: I don't think you're… That's the policy guidance that Council has given us. SBSD Helpdesk: Okay. SBSD Helpdesk: So… Joe, if we

034said to you, SBSD Helpdesk: We're going to give you 3 different… levels. SBSD Helpdesk: One of them is, like, a 0%, like, so the exact same number that was on the ballot last year is going to be on the ballot this year. SBSD Helpdesk: And then another option would be that number on the ballot from last year, just multiplied by SBSD Helpdesk: 103.3%, you know, inflation. And then a third option would be, SBSD Helpdesk: maintaining all the programs, so no additions, but also no cuts. Is that a way that the board should think about telling you what to do? And there's also a question if you want to call on Jean Brie, too. I think Jean Bree might be very helpful in this. I think that… SBSD Helpdesk: Again, it's my first time going through

035this. I think that if we had those numbers, what I would be able to SBSD Helpdesk: Tell the board is… SBSD Helpdesk: what that means in terms of personnel, right? We will have an average cost for a professional staff member, for a classified staff member, etc. So, I'll be able to tell you, how many, SBSD Helpdesk: cuts we might need to make, but I would not be able to tell you what those would be, nor do I think that's something that you really need to be concerned. SBSD Helpdesk: come out, right? But I… but if you get a sense of, and this budget means we're cutting nobody, or this budget means we're going to cut 50 employees, you would start to get a sense of how that might impact programming in the district. SBSD Helpdesk:

036So… SBSD Helpdesk: That's a long way of saying, yeah, it'd be helpful for my first time through, to get some… to get some different looks at what they might… what the, options might be. SBSD Helpdesk: Do you have any thoughts about that? I mean, I think that Joe answered you the same way that I would, which is we just need some SBSD Helpdesk: guidance from you of the direction you'd like us to go in, and pulling together a couple different, you know, budget scenarios is definitely something that we could do. I talked with the team about that today, and so there's some SBSD Helpdesk: when I'm working with my friends that are from the accounting world, and I say to them, can you help me come up with a number that's more of an art

037than a science? They really struggle with that, because they really want to come in with an exact figure. And I think at this point in time. SBSD Helpdesk: we just need, like, a ballpark number of, like, if we move to, maintain everything and not make any cuts, like, that would be about a 7% increase, and that would look like approximately this. I'm comfortable doing that. They struggle with that a little bit. So, there's some things that they're working on. One of the things right now that they've been working really hard on is, SBSD Helpdesk: the salary schedule as those contracts are being finalized. So, once they've got those salary schedules settled and agreed upon, that gives them really accurate, much more accurate numbers as we look to forecast the budget. SBSD Helpdesk: one of the

038things that one of the staff members said to me today is, like, really what we could do is look at FY25, the last finished year, and broadcast that a couple years, and that's what they've done in other districts. So, giving them a little bit of time to come up with those numbers for you, I think, would be… SBSD Helpdesk: helpful. SBSD Helpdesk: But yeah, they're comfortable doing that, they just need some direction. And if you said, could you come up with 10 scenarios? SBSD Helpdesk: that would be a little bit of a, a big ask, but I think to come up with two or three is definitely possible. Okay, and then to add another complication to ask with reasonable, SBSD Helpdesk: So… This is something that, Jesse mentioned, entitlement, discretionary. SBSD Helpdesk: So, would it

039be too complicated for the board to say to you. SBSD Helpdesk: Separate the budget into what the school board has control over, and what the school board doesn't have control over. SBSD Helpdesk: And… Grow the discretionary part by a certain… by those three numbers, and then maybe… you know… SBSD Helpdesk: the entire… and treat that as separate from the entitlement spending. Does that make sense? SBSD Helpdesk: I think it's… SBSD Helpdesk: potentially possible. You know, the entitlement spending, as you have it listed, is outside of our control, and, you know, it's given to us. Like, but we know right now approximately what the healthcare, increase will be, and, like, I was kind of spitballing that with the team today. Like, right now, the… SBSD Helpdesk: the SBA is, SBSD Helpdesk: We're looking at, like, 13.7

040is what they think it's gonna come in at, which is, like, 2% less SBSD Helpdesk: than last year. So my team was like, such a giant number! And I said, yes, but it's 2% less than last year, and at a $73 million budget, 2% less of healthcare costs is the significant, significant difference. SBSD Helpdesk: So, so I think that we could do that, I just really wanna… SBSD Helpdesk: put some emphasis on the fact that entitlement spending, you can't say to me, keep that at this percentage. Right. I guess the reason that I would ask for… because again, this is a matter of communicating SBSD Helpdesk: what we're doing to the community. Yeah. And so, like, something that Jesse mentioned was this idea of, SBSD Helpdesk: Increasing the discretionary part by the inflation number SBSD

041Helpdesk: And if we did that, what we would be saying is that, like, however much the entitlement part grows, maybe it grows by 10%, that's out of our control. SBSD Helpdesk: And we don't want to… and if we were to combine the two, and say, grow the overall budget by X, but we didn't separate them into discretionary entitlement, what we would end up doing is SBSD Helpdesk: dramatically cutting discretionary, because the entitlement would take up all of the increase, and more. Yep, agreed. I… because I'm so new to playing this game, I don't know, SBSD Helpdesk: At what moment in time we're able to forecast SBSD Helpdesk: what special ed numbers look like. We may be able to, look back in history to say, well, these, you know, typically go up 3% or 10% every

042year to be able to give us a little bit of guidance there. But yeah, as a person who used to sit in your seats. SBSD Helpdesk: It does feel like there's so much that we are required to pay for that is just outside of our control that goes up. SBSD Helpdesk: And we… we can't help that, and it impacts all the other things that we do want to have control. So, I totally feel for you, and… SBSD Helpdesk: we can work through trying to help you make as best of an educated guess as possible. And there's relationships between entitlement spending and discretionary spending, right? The… what healthcare costs SBSD Helpdesk: we can't control, but we can control how many people qualify for benefits, right? That's based on what your staffing is. So, I think that

043makes it SBSD Helpdesk: it adds a wrinkle to this about, well, we, you know, we have to spend this on healthcare, not if we reduce debt. And I'm not suggesting we reduce debt, right? SBSD Helpdesk: special education, you know, we're required to meet the needs of an IEP. It would take one or two students with significant, significant needs to move to the district that might blow the budget out of the water. You know, we… SBSD Helpdesk: rightfully so, educate every student that lives in the district, and some have more student needs than others that can be quite expensive. So, there's a lot of… even within the entitlement, there's a lot of variability that we… that we have, perhaps, that the city doesn't. SBSD Helpdesk: Sue. I have a question. When can you nail down those

044costs for, like, special ed? At what point in this SBSD Helpdesk: formula. SBSD Helpdesk: Can we nail those costs down so we know what it is? SBSD Helpdesk: I don't have the answer for that. I don't know if you know that. I don't know that we can, honestly. I don't think that you can nail it down until the kids show up on day one next year. So you just put a placeholder in, and say, based on previous years, this is approximately what it would be. You know, what the current student population looks like. 15% of our kids are on IEPs, and this is the rate of the different disabilities they have. SBSD Helpdesk: this is what it typically costs, and then you plan for whatever services you have that you outsource, OT or PT, or

045whatever it might be, how much are those… SBSD Helpdesk: And so something that Joe just said, I want to ask Jesse if you had any thoughts about, SBSD Helpdesk: The fact that entitlement spending is… SBSD Helpdesk: based on staffing levels, which are themselves discretionary up to the max class size limits. But, like, how… when… has the… has the City Council ever asked you to separate discretionary and entitlement in that way? And if so, how would you resolve that? SBSD Helpdesk: They have not asked us to separate like that, because it's a completely… we don't have entitlements the way you do. If I can step back for a minute, I think one of the big differences in… SBSD Helpdesk: I actually think anyone was on the council when we had this conversation previously. SBSD Helpdesk: there's

046a governance difference in the school board and the council. The school board and the school district is required to SBSD Helpdesk: do a lot more of the service delivery by statute than the city is. The only things the city is actually statutorily required to do is maintain roads, run elections, and maintain property records and vital records. SBSD Helpdesk: Everything else is policy of the council the community has asked them to do. So our entitlements SBSD Helpdesk: don't exist in the same way, and we don't receive a healthcare number from an outside source, so we have much more ability to change our plans, to change our stop loss insurance, to renegotiate with providers. SBSD Helpdesk: So it's… so the goals they set are universal for the whole expenditure budget and revenue budget, not just a certain

047part, because it's… it's much more discretionary at the value. Right, because at the… at the school district, there's a Vermont SBSD Helpdesk: Health Commissioner's Board that sets what SBSD Helpdesk: Insurance and healthcare must be offered to all employees, and currently. SBSD Helpdesk: That is set at the state level as it's a gold family plan. SBSD Helpdesk: And that the school district must pay 80% of the Gold Family Plan for all district employees. SBSD Helpdesk: So that's an example of something you don't have. You don't have the health commissioners telling you this is what the plan is. Exactly. Or… and the premiums. Exactly. So, for example, this fiscal year, we are increasing the amount our employees are paying towards their healthcare premium. SBSD Helpdesk: we have the ability to do that, negotiate through our collective bargaining

048agreements. You don't have the same SBSD Helpdesk: So we only have control above. SBSD Helpdesk: I don't think 25% of the budget. SBSD Helpdesk: So, I mean, so can we… yeah, so it's just not that much to control. So, like, what's it? Three to four scenarios, would you say? SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, I mean, you tell me what you're looking for, and then we'll have the team, work that up for you. Like, Seamus in the board, I think it was you, potentially, that someone put in the board agenda three different scenarios, and so if that's what you'd like us to work towards, then you can do that. SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, I did also have, while Jesse's sitting here with me, I was thinking, Seamus, one thing that you might be asking Jesse is. SBSD Helpdesk: As

049a taxpayer, you get one bill, right, that is our budget and your budget, and so if I… SBSD Helpdesk: Which then equals 1. SBSD Helpdesk: Dad? SBSD Helpdesk: So, like, I think I would want to know… From a taxpayer's perspective. SBSD Helpdesk: what you think… will your budget increase, or, like, what would your percentage look like, and how it impacts what ours… you know, if yours is going to go up by 5, and ours stays stay at 4, then the impact is 9%, like… SBSD Helpdesk: It's way too early to ask that question. So it doesn't actually aggregate like that, because, SBSD Helpdesk: Of a total… so this is a… going down a different road that we can or can. So of a total… SBSD Helpdesk: South Burlington homeowners budget, the city portion of that

050budget is 20… or the city… the city portion of that tax bill is about 25%, and the school portion of that tax bill is about 75%. So they don't… it doesn't aggregate 4 plus 5. Yeah. There is a… we could figure out, kind of, the curve of that if we… if our budget comes in at 3.3% or lower for that 25%. Yeah. SBSD Helpdesk: And you come in at 3.3… well, if you come in at… if we came in at the same, that's what it would be. Yeah. But, it's… it's a… it's not a 50-50. Yeah. But just how that… yeah, how that overall impacts… SBSD Helpdesk: like, how together… so we could look at that historically. So, Jesse, so on that note. SBSD Helpdesk: If we do not have our budget until later, how

051does that impact you? Because if that's, say, 75%, and if our number comes in SBSD Helpdesk: much higher. I mean, I guess, when do you nail down your… your budget? So, our… our, SBSD Helpdesk: elected, or… SBSD Helpdesk: elected bodies are separate, so the city council sets the tax rate goal just for the municipal budget. So when I say they've set a goal at 3.3% or lower, that's just from the municipal tax rate portion of that number. When we… and that is a separate ballot item on the town meeting day ballot. Yep. You know, you can approve the city budget and not the school budget in reverse, and… SBSD Helpdesk: So, it's… Unless the two elected bodies come together and discuss, it's really done. SBSD Helpdesk: not to get separate, so got it. Jesse, would

052you agree, like, well, this budget's much more complicated, right? Isn't that what you were saying? The school budget? Yes, the school budget. So, I think, like, yeah, SBSD Helpdesk: much more complicated from an impact on the property tax picture. Exactly. I think it's more complicated on the fund side for the municipal. Yeah, and there's just a lot of variables that the city doesn't have to deal with. I mean, this is education. It is… it is not a business. Otherwise, nobody would run a business this way. But we… so we, SBSD Helpdesk: like, 80%, 80, 85% is salary, and, you know, I mean, really, we control very, very little of it. SBSD Helpdesk: So, frankly, I… maybe if we just choose, like, 3 to 4 scenarios, and then take a look at what that looks like.

053Keeping in mind, it's going to change, because the state does weird things in January, and it just… it's not a very streamlined process. Plus, there's, negotiations go… SBSD Helpdesk: So… I think everybody's just gotta stay open, and understand that we… SBSD Helpdesk: it's not like doing the… the… I love hearing justice and the city budget, I love it because it's like, oh, it's so clear. Oh, that's not what we're dealing with. So… but yeah, but thank you. SBSD Helpdesk: So I prepared this also, this is not official school district material, so nobody should take a screenshot of this and put it in the paper. This is just me reading all of the different sources of information that are available, looking at the way SBSD Helpdesk: looking at growth rates over time. Something that I thought

054was pretty interesting is that since 2019, the… SBSD Helpdesk: The school district budget has grown at about inflation. Wages have also grown at about inflation. I also put state average wages. This is from, official government SBSD Helpdesk: survey called OEWS. SBSD Helpdesk: That, looks at, like, elementary, post-secondary, and middle school teachers, across the state of Vermont. And I also went back to old enrollment reports and tried to get the best enrollment numbers that I could. SBSD Helpdesk: I think that the… obviously, the most shocking thing on here is the red line, which is the state-mandated healthcare. This is, the Vermont Health Commissioner's SBSD Helpdesk: approved… SBSD Helpdesk: Rates, of which we pay 80%, and my understanding, although, don't quote me on this, is that SBSD Helpdesk: the health commissioners actually have been taken to arbitration

055and, have launched an arbitration. So, SBSD Helpdesk: I just wanted to put this on screen as an informative thing about, you know, where the budget is, where inflation is, where wages are, where enrollment is, where healthcare is at. It's possible to get. And the other thing is that that healthcare is going to remain in effect through the end of 2020. SBSD Helpdesk: So… Seamus, I'd also just share with you that when Joe and I were away at the MASBO meeting last week, Behai presented to us as we were talking through healthcare costs, and they said that for a SBSD Helpdesk: The cost for a family plan in fiscal year 18 was… SBSD Helpdesk: Or maybe this was the year 19, it was $18,000 for a family plan. SBSD Helpdesk: Current year, $40,000. SBSD Helpdesk: that,

056like, those numbers stuck with me, and that's, like, I can't speak to exactly what you have on your graph, but it's… it has grown exponentially. So yeah, again, this is something that nobody sitting here gets to make a decision about. We just have to deal with numbers. So I'm wondering if maybe we… SBSD Helpdesk: start just discussing what they… what January should… because we can't… there's… I mean, that's just been extended to 2020, so there's nothing anybody can do. I mean. SBSD Helpdesk: People are… things are happening at the state level, Greenland Care Board, they are trying to reduce costs and things like that. But again, that has nothing to do… Yeah, right. Excellent. SBSD Helpdesk: So I would, propose that we think about this maybe in two phases. SBSD Helpdesk: First, I want to

057propose the idea of splitting… of asking the… Central office. SBSD Helpdesk: To come up with a report for us. SBSD Helpdesk: that splits… SBSD Helpdesk: discretionary and entitlement. And I think we should decide, before we talk about the options, is that a good idea that will take them more time to split things up by discretionary entitlement? But I think the benefit of it is that we can then SBSD Helpdesk: To a certain extent, go to the voters and say, listen, you're really voting about SBSD Helpdesk: 30% of the budget, 70% of the budget has been set by you, by the state government. So, how do people feel? Is that too much of a burden to put on the staff? SBSD Helpdesk: Or should… or is it worth the additional burden of calculating leverage? I would…

058I would ask you a different question as well. I'd love your response. You're breaking out, you know, discretionary versus non. SBSD Helpdesk: the main purpose of that, as I understand it, is to get to a point of what are the things we can control versus what are the things we cannot control, right? But we already know, to some extent, that things outside of our control are going to be increasing at X percent or X percent, or we have some guesses. So my question would be. SBSD Helpdesk: Or would it be as effective, and you tell us what would be easier or preferred for you and team, to say, if we change nothing else with the budget, except for the few things we know right now, right, which is the Act 27 expired credit, and some

059rough estimate for insurance costs, right? We put in the few things we know now. SBSD Helpdesk: how much higher does the budget go? And that's a starting point. SBSD Helpdesk: Right? Well, my response to that is there's two… first of all. SBSD Helpdesk: Part of the reason to do discretionary versus entitlement is so that when we inform the public about the budget, we can differentiate that, and we can say, look, you know, we're not asking you to SBSD Helpdesk: you know, the budget's going up by X percent, but that X percent is not our choice. That X… only half of that X percent is our choice. So it's a messaging. It's ensuring that we have that ability to message. That's… SBSD Helpdesk: That's number one. And then, number two, I don't think that the board

060should ask for… SBSD Helpdesk: I don't think the board should, like, ask for… SBSD Helpdesk: what do we think the number is going to be? I think the board is instead supposed to say, here's what the number will be, or here's some… and then you guys, you know, here's 3 boxes, a small box and a medium box and a big box. What fits in each one of those boxes? I don't think that we… I think we would get in an iterative loop where we would SBSD Helpdesk: have to keep revising and having more meetings if we kept saying, well, what if we… what if we took this out, and then that's a new number, and we say, well, we're not happy with that. So I think we have to set, proactively, a number, as opposed

061to telling… having them tell us what the number is. SBSD Helpdesk: I don't think we can give an exact number. I think, like, some of these scenarios have to be played out, and I know, like, what Tim would have a spreadsheet where you could, like. SBSD Helpdesk: you know, he would take out and add things to see what it would do to a number. I don't, like, I don't know what… I don't know if we can give an exact number without… I mean… SBSD Helpdesk: I don't think that's how… So, I have been playing with some scenarios, and I certainly am not the expert that you are, or that Tim was on this, but the reason behind my question is that there are already some things that appear to be inevitable in this budget. SBSD

062Helpdesk: that if we just keep everything else the same, could result in anywhere… us recognizing that there are a lot of unknowns could result in anywhere from a 6% to a 12% budget, right? And that's if we just keep other things the same, and the momentum of things coming our way hit the budget. So I'm asking us to maybe recognize that reality in the insurance graph. SBSD Helpdesk: certainly illustrates, right? There's a runaway cost that we did not elect for, that we are on the hook for. SBSD Helpdesk: We might not know the exact number, but if we know and appreciate that a number of that magnitude is coming, we can start with a budget that SBSD Helpdesk: will anticipate that, and we'll end in a place that the community will support. I don't want

063us to… personally, I don't think it would be productive for us to give you a number that we could play through with some reasonable assumptions and see ending up at a 12% budget hike. SBSD Helpdesk: Because the community will support that. So if we work backwards from getting to a budget that we expect the community to support, I think we could… we should start with that number in mind, at the best of our ability today, which probably means a more modest starting point. That's what I would encourage us to do, but… Or multiple starting points, right? Sure, yeah, but I would encourage us to start from… SBSD Helpdesk: modest multiple starting points, because there are things coming in with some simple modeling that could easily push us into double-digit budget territory without us even, you

064know, trying to do anything heroic, right? Just with momentum. SBSD Helpdesk: So, Michelle, did you want to… Yeah. I agree. I think that we need to start modest because of those things in our… SBSD Helpdesk: That aren't in our control, that have the potential to really bring that number up, no matter what, but… SBSD Helpdesk: specifically on the discretionary versus entitlement, I do think that it's making a false distinction that actually complicates it, in my mind, and to the point that Joe was making, we do have leverage over healthcare, because we have leverage over the number of people that are receiving healthcare. SBSD Helpdesk: We have leverage over max class size, we could set a policy. SBSD Helpdesk: Obviously, that has some natural limits and things that we need to consider from an educational perspective

065that we would rely on our experts to tell us about. SBSD Helpdesk: But I don't see that the green box and the red box are mutually exclusive. They're overlapping. SBSD Helpdesk: Therefore, I… my sense is, is that, and you can all tell me, that it actually makes your job harder, and it makes it a little less clear to the community if we give you, well. SBSD Helpdesk: we're going to give you a number, but it only applies to discretionary. Then you're coming back, well, what do you mean by discretionary? Can I… can I give you a scenario that has cuts? Do I have to give you a scenario that doesn't have cuts? SBSD Helpdesk: So… I'm not in favor of… SBSD Helpdesk: this as it is, like, maybe if it's special ed, because that is

066fixed fix. There's nothing that anybody could do about that. The other things… SBSD Helpdesk: Oh, that's… are technically discretionary. Yeah, yeah. You… if you said. SBSD Helpdesk: That… if we separated special ed and everything else. SBSD Helpdesk: Would there be anything else besides special ed that's totally obligatory and mandated that we can't control through headcount? SBSD Helpdesk: lights, buildings… Yeah, something like 25% that we have control over. SBSD Helpdesk: I, I don't know… Well, but you say 25%, but I mean, we do have control over headcount. SBSD Helpdesk: So that is… that's… So you want classes, or, like, what are we talking about? I mean, class size. SBSD Helpdesk: Okay, so class sizes have already gotten bigger. SBSD Helpdesk: And you've got, you know, I reported the capped at 25. SBSD Helpdesk: And you have

067a lot more need now, so I'd be very… SBSD Helpdesk: careful about that. Can we… can we ask for… SBSD Helpdesk: I don't know, I would like to see scenarios. Well, sure, right. So I think my first ask here was to just have the board decide whether we would like to ask for a differentiation between discretionary and entitlement, because that applies to all the scenarios equally. I think that what Michelle said is a really good idea. Let's… SBSD Helpdesk: Let's only think about the, SBSD Helpdesk: special ed, because that is entirely dependent on who moves into our district, and is not completely out of our control. And so we basically say, as you go into this scenario planning, if you would possibly keep separate the special ed portion and everything else. SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, and

068to that point, if you're looking for projections, I did just happen to notice yesterday that the AOE just put out a report to the legislature that has some really nice trend information in there. I can send you the link. I found it really useful to think about what we can expect. SBSD Helpdesk: In terms of… SBSD Helpdesk: growth in IEPs. They have been growing, and pretty… at a higher rate in Vermont than pretty much anywhere else. SBSD Helpdesk: The other thing I wanted to suggest, and this came from a community member, and I think it's a really good idea for us to consider, which is the rate of Social Security increase. I'm not even sure that one's high. So in terms of a number for us to consider to give to SBSD Helpdesk: District 2…

069SBSD Helpdesk: play out in terms of a budget. And the rationale behind that is we have inflation, but when we look at the average person. SBSD Helpdesk: we don't get inflation, right? We get something less than that, typically, and the Social Security is running, I think it's projected right now, 2.7 to 2.8. The real number is going to come out middle of October, so there's… SBSD Helpdesk: So it's less than inflation. It's less than inflation, because that's more realistic. And it's not that, you know, I get my 1.5% raise, and that goes all to taxes, but it sets a benchmark of a reasonable expectation about what real people are realizing in their… So let's talk about that in the next… SBSD Helpdesk: question that I have, which is, like, what are the three scenarios, or

070the, you know, how many… so, first question is, is the board broadly okay with the concept of asking the staff to separate special ed from everything else? SBSD Helpdesk: as they go through these… these different things, and… and treating that as entitlement, and everything else is discretionary. I don't understand that. SBSD Helpdesk: And I have a little bit of a comfortable word entitlement to the special education, because that is federal law. I need to ask? I mean, I'd be curious to hear what would be some recommendations that maybe you might suggest for how we could best figure out how to approach this. SBSD Helpdesk: Well, to answer that for… I guess my first comment is I'm just really concerned about us saying. SBSD Helpdesk: Hello, world, here's exactly how much we spend on just this

071one population. Very uncomfortable. Right. Unkind. But that's also public information. Okay, well, what about, like, saying… Jen. I mean, like, how about you game out, like, a 6% increase, and then people can take a look at what goes into special education? Well, I guess the reason… SBSD Helpdesk: Can I explain that? So, basically, what I'm saying is that we can forget about this whole concept of separating discretionary and entitlement. And then, in the next section, where we say. SBSD Helpdesk: Have a scenario for 0%, have a scenario for Social Security, have a scenario for inflation, have a scenario for, no cuts. SBSD Helpdesk: If we don't separate discretionary and those things, then on the, like, inflation one, or the Social Security one, then what's gonna happen is that you're going to SBSD Helpdesk: increase the

072budget… the overall budget by 2.5%, or 2.7%, like you were just saying, Michelle, but then what happens is that the healthcare, or the special ed costs, I'm sorry, go up by so much that actually it's a dramatic cut. And so by saying 2.5% inflation. SBSD Helpdesk: It's actually a dramatic cut. Right. I mean, that's what's going to happen. That's the reality of this right now. So what we could do, in terms of selling… in terms of informing the community about how this budget works, is we could also say, well, separate out the special ed money and grow whatever is left SBSD Helpdesk: By 2.5%, or grow whatever is left by inflation. And then that would ensure that SBSD Helpdesk: In some… you might argue that that is more fair for the rest of the budget.

073SBSD Helpdesk: Because the special ed funding we can't control. It's like a bait and switch, though, right? If the goal is to communicate to the community, which I think we should, and I respect what I'm hearing is the goal. SBSD Helpdesk: is, you know, here's what we have control over, and here's what we do not have control over. I think there's a way to do that without calling out entitlement versus discretionary, or special education for nothing. And we are responsible for the whole budget, ultimately, right? A total number. So I would hate to give the impression that we're really only focusing on a small portion. SBSD Helpdesk: And the way that, hopefully, we could communicate that with the community is say, here's the number, here were the increases that were obligated to us, right? And

074this was how much we had to pay no matter what. That was our starting point. And then, therefore, we either, after that point, we either added a little on top, or we had to cut in these other areas. SBSD Helpdesk: And we can communicate that total number that we were, like, you know, our entitlement number, but… SBSD Helpdesk: I'm uncomfortable bringing up the social security number, personally, but if the goal is to show the community, which I think is what you're trying to get at, here's what we actually… here's what was… here's the expenses that were foisted on us, right, that we were starting with, and here's the expenses we chose, I think we can do that in the aggregate at the end. Well, the only… and I'm ready to move on from this, because

075it doesn't seem like there's broad support for the idea of using it. My only concern is that now we're going to move into the SBSD Helpdesk: next part, which I'd like to ask, which is, like, what are the three level… what are the three options that we want to ask for? 0%, SBSD Helpdesk: inflation, no cuts, for example. If we have just decided that we're not going to include… if we've just decided that in that inflation number, that 3.4%, 3.3% must include that SBSD Helpdesk: special education money, what we might be doing is, kind of making more dramatic cuts than we realize, and calling it inflation. You know, like, we may be, like. SBSD Helpdesk: You know, if… basically, in the bigger picture, if the community understood how much special education is costing us, they

076might be more understanding of us SBSD Helpdesk: growing the rest of the budget by inflation. So we may… it's a smaller budget, and it's harder to justify, in my opinion, if we don't separate those things out. SBSD Helpdesk: conceptual run at the beginning. Conceptually, until they get their real estate bill, and it's up 11%. I mean, they… we can all… they can… sure, they can support that in concept, but when it actually comes down to what that means for real estate taxes, the support will be different. Right, I think, like, what you're saying is, like, Seamus, in your, SBSD Helpdesk: what you're really trying to do is be as transparent as possible, and really, like, make it understandable, but it can end up being more confusing in the end. That's what you're saying? Right, and,

077like, I'm sure every community member would want to support, like, really, like, generous and well-funded special education programs, we all do, but then when it actually gets down to what does that mean for the tax bill, after two years of really high tax bill increases already. SBSD Helpdesk: If we're like, well, here's what it means, right? In order to do that at the level we want, or even to increase… It's the law. I'm sorry, even to increase discretionary by inflation while also absorbing all these other costs, that ends up meaning SBSD Helpdesk: your tax was going up 11%. So, if we have these legally obligated tax, you know, or increase that we have to realize in the budget. SBSD Helpdesk: Okay, and just imagine that, like, what we… let's say that there's a perfect number,

078which there isn't, but let's say that the perfect number is, like, a 7% increase, right? Right? So there's two ways to explain that number. One way is to explain it by saying, well, what we did is we… SBSD Helpdesk: treated this… SBSD Helpdesk: special ed separately, and we just said, apply inflation to the rest. And the other way of saying it is this combined method, where we said, well, if you put everything together. SBSD Helpdesk: we think that the… you know, we think that the budget should grow by about 7%. And people immediately… I mean, my reaction to that would be, wait a minute, why aren't you just growing the budget by inflation? SBSD Helpdesk: And so what we end up doing is we end up making it much harder to pass a budget that,

079in my opinion, much harder, that is fair for the schools, given the burden being placed by outside parties. SBSD Helpdesk: But that's not a concern? No, I don't think it's fair for the schools. I just also think it's going to be hard to get the community to support what we want to be fair to the schools, and what would be fair to the schools. SBSD Helpdesk: it's a… it's a county situation. I was just gonna say, we have 30 minutes, we have 5 more items on this, and I'm just wondering if, Superintendent Joe, if you have some thoughts, on this. I have a few thoughts. I… I would like to see 3 scenarios. SBSD Helpdesk: I think, these are the scenarios I'd like to see. I'd like to see a 0%, right? So, we… we

080are spending exactly what we did this year. SBSD Helpdesk: And then we will be able to tell you, because we know expenses are going to go up, how is this going to impact our staffing levels? Therefore, how is it going to impact our program? SBSD Helpdesk: I would like to see a… SBSD Helpdesk: no cuts. We're going to have the exact same staffing as we have this year, next year, and that means our budget is going to go up X percent. SBSD Helpdesk: And then I want something right in the middle. So we figure out, this is what zero is, this is what no cuts is, and I want what's right in the middle. So then we can see, okay, that means it's going to go up X percent, and also have this number of

081cuts. And I think if we have those three things first. SBSD Helpdesk: Then we can say, okay, which one's closest to what we want? And now let's nudge it whichever way. We don't want to cut this bad, but we don't want to go all the way up this high to the increase, so let's have a better idea. And I think I like the idea of the… SBSD Helpdesk: I like the idea, after we know what the budget's going to be, of showing the community how much of this is beyond our control and how much is in our control. SBSD Helpdesk: Which is what we do every year. Yeah, I don't necessarily like the terminology of entitlement or special ed, but I think it's fair to say, listen, we're asking you, when it's all said and

082done, we're asking you for a budget, but it requires to make a cut of about 5% of our staff. It means it's going to increase your taxes, you know, 7%, SBSD Helpdesk: And this is how much is beyond our control, because healthcare is going up, and this is going up, and this is how much that, you know, we are keeping because we value programs for kids. That, to me, I think, again, and I've never been through this, so I'm probably being way too simplistic about this, but I think those are the numbers I'd like to see. Is that doable for your job? Yeah, that feels like the right direction. SBSD Helpdesk: to go in, and I, like, I think what you're trying to get to, Seamus, is the narrative that you want to share with

083a community to be able to say. SBSD Helpdesk: it's a 7% increase, but of the 7%, 5% of it was these fixed costs, if you will, of things that we don't have control of. Yeah, and we can… I'm for sure we can get to that for you when we get to the other side of this, right? That you'll be able to have all that information, but… and then I also think that you'll be able to say. SBSD Helpdesk: Of the discretionary that we were able to spend SBSD Helpdesk: Here are the things that we preserve, here are our priorities and our goals, or the things that we preserved, and here are the things that we were… that we had to cut. SBSD Helpdesk: You know, for whatever reason, those are. So I think the road

084you're going down is exactly the right one, it just is a little current before the horse, so I think… SBSD Helpdesk: I would agree with what Joe's suggestions are, and I think that I can have our team work through that. But the one in the middle, it's not inflation. It's just going to be in the middle. And that's what I'm… like, as a taxpayer, if I just, again, clear my mind of all the details that I know about this, and SBSD Helpdesk: I'm like, why should anything… SBSD Helpdesk: why should… why should this budget grow by more than inflation? Well, I don't… I don't think that middle budget is what we end up with. I think that's what we use as our next… SBSD Helpdesk: what the board uses as the next set of discussions,

085right? Because I don't… I don't think… I haven't heard that this board is ready to say, we're going to go 0%, and you're going to have to make massive cuts. Nor do I hear that the board saying, we're not… we're not going to cut anything. SBSD Helpdesk: I hear a saying it's going to be somewhere in the middle, so I'd like to get a sense of what the middle is, because it's going to be closer to the middle than either of these two ends, both inside of… SBSD Helpdesk: Even if it was… SBSD Helpdesk: like, let's say the middle of that is 6%, but 6% is not inflation. So again, you have to clear out your mind of anything that you know about education, because 80% of the people of the voter… 80% of the

086voters are not education people. Why should they support SBSD Helpdesk: more than inflation. If we're… if you're trying to reverse engineer into a budget that matches inflation, like the countless city councils, which I… SBSD Helpdesk: totally appreciate and understand that narrative. We are asking for aggressive cuts right now. I mean, that is what that will necessitate, and that's the point I'm trying to make. But if it's every year, it's above inflation… I mean, that's the… it's the sustainability thing. How could you ever have a sustainable budget if you do anything other than SBSD Helpdesk: you know, mostly inflation and sometimes some jobs. That's why I'm asking us to start very conservatively, because there are things in the budget well above inflation that will push the budget naturally at, or even above inflation on their own

087merit. SBSD Helpdesk: And so if you're trying to reverse engineer from a budget, which will get passed from the committee, which I think is a smart way to approach it, and want to land somewhere around inflation. SBSD Helpdesk: We are… we are asking for cuts. That is what that will mean, because there are things, right, there are things that are going into the budget that will already be well in excess have to cut elsewhere. So why don't we sit there? Why don't we set the middle? Exactly, exactly. Why don't we do simply that? We need to start? Yeah, the place of zero, the no cuts. SBSD Helpdesk: The middle… Okay. And then we can have… then we'll have discussions about which way they want to go. Do we know that 6% to 7% is level

088spending, or is that… No, I think that's… because that's kind of established… Oh, yeah. No, that's… yeah, and I think that's… I think it'll be much above that, but I think that's important to know. And don't forget, we are going to be redistricting. SBSD Helpdesk: So, I mean, really, you've got to keep this in mind, and so I would like to call for the orders of the day and continue on and keep you posted. SBSD Helpdesk: scenarios. So those four, just to clarify, are… the school board is asking the staff to produce, SBSD Helpdesk: proposed budgets. SBSD Helpdesk: At the 0% increase, inflation… SBSD Helpdesk: And no cuts, and also a fourth option, which is in between the first and the third, in between zero and no cuts. SBSD Helpdesk: So, that's one. SBSD Helpdesk:

089Cool. Did you get all that too muted? SBSD Helpdesk: Give me your last one one more time. So are you good enough for zero? Are you talking like I'm at your base now. SBSD Helpdesk: So, for the taxpayers who are listening, it's… SBSD Helpdesk: 0% change, it's inflation, it's no cuts, which is, we're estimating above 7% or 8%, and also one that is right smack in the middle between 0% and the no cuts, which is probably higher than inflation. SBSD Helpdesk: Yes. SBSD Helpdesk: Great. SBSD Helpdesk: Do you need anything else from us? SBSD Helpdesk: Just so we don't want to be a blocker on your work. No, thank you. You said we can't go to 10. SBSD Helpdesk: I think that, SBSD Helpdesk: In conversations with my team, other districts have done… other boards

090have done the same thing, and at the end of the day. SBSD Helpdesk: they got to a place where they were like, okay, enough with the high end and the low end, like, can we jump… let's always just shoot for something in the middle, because that's kind of where we always end up, instead of going through this, but I think it's important for us to do. I think that, SBSD Helpdesk: you know, my ask of you is for you to begin to think about, no matter how this plays out, there's going to be losers, there's going to be cuts, inevitably. So I think it's important for you to all think about what are their priorities, what are the things that are important to us, what are the things that we know that we want to

091preserve, and that'll be work that, you know. SBSD Helpdesk: with Joe and the team, but… SBSD Helpdesk: Okay. And just, I want to give the board members a chance to make any final statements about… because this is the most important thing that we do here. My personal statement about this will be that I think the burden of proof is going to lie on any budget that is above inflation. I think that that is the… SBSD Helpdesk: That's where… SBSD Helpdesk: that's where the line is for a lot of taxpayers and voters, and so it's, it's important to justify it if it's more than inflation. It's really tough. Right, because even then, when the CLA comes in… SBSD Helpdesk: What if it… what if it comes in unavailable? It's going to be higher. Yeah, the CLA

092is probably going to… it's already trending above inflation anyway, so no matter what… no matter what, if we're trying to hit inflation, there's a lot of cuts, because the CLA is outside of our control, we're losing the Act 127 credit, I mean, there's, like. SBSD Helpdesk: Simply matching inflation means cuts. SBSD Helpdesk: There's gonna be unhappy people, right? Where, yeah, you know, there's gonna be a spark. A lot of unhappy taxpayers, there's gonna be a lot of unhappy people in the district because of cuts or everything. SBSD Helpdesk: It's… It's another one. SBSD Helpdesk: Does anybody else, any other board members have any… SBSD Helpdesk: statements on the budget. How long do you think it will take? SBSD Helpdesk: I'm taking vacation next week, so it's not gonna be next week. SBSD Helpdesk: And our

093audit is coming up this month, so, and then the other piece, SBSD Helpdesk: sooner than I… I'm hoping it's going to be as soon as possible, but I want you to… I just want to remind you of the work of the team, which is settling that salary schedule that came out after negotiations, so they've got to get that work done. SBSD Helpdesk: And then getting ready for the audit. This, begins on October 7th, so… Is that a problem, the audit strike hitting right now? SBSD Helpdesk: In a sense of, like, should… if… I mean, you probably can't reschedule it, but… SBSD Helpdesk: That seems problematic. So, maybe in a month? A month or so? Yeah, okay, yeah. As soon as we possibly can, yeah. So it would be nice to have that in November, and

094talk through it, and go on. Okay, I say. SBSD Helpdesk: I think we need to break up the… SBSD Helpdesk: staff numbers, then preferably trend. I'm sorry. So, the number of district employees. Yes. Preferably broken out by… SBSD Helpdesk: bargaining. SBSD Helpdesk: Do you want to request that, given how much workload they just said that they have? What can we wait for that until November? Yeah. I feel like it's context for what we're talking about. I think it's probably… SBSD Helpdesk: readily available to us. Yeah, and it's work that's already being done. One of the pieces of the, Toussant budget work that we're working on, number one, is staff verification. Who's in your building? SBSD Helpdesk: You know, and what role are they in? So they're doing… my office is doing some of that. They

095just started that work, they've got that information back from, like, here's who we think is in your building, you need to verify that for us. So, they've just got that information back from the… Might not be tomorrow, but yeah, it shouldn't be… it shouldn't be too long. Yeah, no, I'm thinking just as context for our future, our next round of discussion. We wouldn't necessarily, as a board, talk anymore SBSD Helpdesk: about the budget until we hear again from you in November, the scenarios. Okay, all right. Is there any other comments from the board? Keeping in mind that we won't talk about this again probably until November. SBSD Helpdesk: Just thank you, Joe, for your opinions, and thank you for starting the process. I know it's obviously messing parts. Thanks for your patience. Thank you for

096coming, Jesse. Thanks, Jesse. SBSD Helpdesk: All right, the next item on our agenda is policy monitoring, and the reason that this is on the agenda is both that the schedule of monitoring reports might SBSD Helpdesk: they're updating. And also, Joe asked me to clarify for the staff what the expectations about the monitoring reports are. So, SBSD Helpdesk: I'll just lay out a proposal, and we can use it as a starting point for the discussion. SBSD Helpdesk: I might suggest that we assign a board member to revive… to just check over and see how we're doing on the monitoring schedule, and work with Joe on proposing a set of dates. SBSD Helpdesk: And similarly, I might propose that we assign a board member to, talk through the requirements for each one of the monitoring reports with

097staff, and then kind of report back to the board about, SBSD Helpdesk: any additional things that we might ask? You know, for example, on the equity monitoring report, we wanted SBSD Helpdesk: longitudinal data. You know, like, we wanted to see data from this year and last year. So, policy monitoring for their discussion. Oh, we have a schedule. SBSD Helpdesk: A lot which we are not following. SBSD Helpdesk: Which is why it's on February. Which is, we should be following it. So, for example, like, 2.9 that we're talking about tonight is not as… is, as I answered them. That's February. SBSD Helpdesk: And we probably need an audit of this, for sure. I don't know if that… but, SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, one of us could sit down with Joe and take a

098look at this. The reason I asked Seamus about this, and the reason I asked is there's a lot of angst among my administrative team. There's a lot of new folks, there's a lot… we're down a member or two. Yeah. And and the board's new. And so, SBSD Helpdesk: We're not opposed to monitoring, so we want to do them, but we would like to at least take a breather to let us SBSD Helpdesk: work with each other, and then maybe start on a new cycle, maybe January or whatever, and Monica is going to continue doing hers. We know that hers is mostly done, and she's adding the longitudinal data, so we'll be able to bring that one, but the other ones, I respectfully ask that if we could just SBSD Helpdesk: delay those a little bit,

099so we can get our feet wet. I would really… I would be grateful for that. I would recommend, and I don't know how this would play out, but I almost feel like this would be a great opportunity to bring the VSBA in to do an audit, perhaps. SBSD Helpdesk: As, you know, you're doing your thing, that we can have some kind of gauge of where we are with SBSD Helpdesk: with what's been done in the past. And just to be able to see that, because as part of continuous improvement, looking at, hey, where are some deficiencies, and how can we tighten this up? SBSD Helpdesk: I would like that. I think it would be very helpful. So, would you want to contact the VSBA, where I could do it, and I'll send… So, right, I

100might make a proposal. What if, Laura, you, SBSD Helpdesk: board gen, contacted the VSBA, got information about the costs of an audit. Right. And then my suggestion, you know, Michelle, I know that one of your interests getting on the board was monitoring reports. SBSD Helpdesk: I would suggest maybe the board delegate to Michelle SBSD Helpdesk: to meet with Joe, go over the monitoring schedule, go over, like, what kind of quality things we want on monitoring, and then kind of report back to the board, for our… for our action. For example, I think that we probably have to take action to set a new calendar, but maybe you and Joe could figure out SBSD Helpdesk: So that'd be my proposal, is that Michelle and Joe is figure out what the schedule would be. SBSD Helpdesk: I

101need to find out. SBSD Helpdesk: when I could work with somebody from the DST who would work with him, Michelle. SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, I think that would be great. Okay. Would it also be part of the board training that we're talking about? Would that be a good discussion? Absolutely. Or not? SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, I mean, why not? Well, I have a question about, the monitoring reports, and, you know, Austin brought this up when we were trying to do our last report, since it was his first one, and it's… SBSD Helpdesk: Not… we hadn't done very many of them, as most of us anyway, because we're new to the board, and SBSD Helpdesk: are they the same for every school district? Like, did we write those policies ourselves, or does every school district follow the same…

102do you know the answer to this question? I do, but I hesitate to answer because I'm not the expert, I'm just knowledgeable. Okay. So, most of the policies that we've adopted come from Vermont School Board. SBSD Helpdesk: model policies almost verbatim, and there are some, like, shifts, but the equity one, for example, is almost verbatim on the state. Yeah, and the policy governance model and the policies themselves, when I look across the U.S, I see… SBSD Helpdesk: also almost verbatim. Exactly. And there's a ton of resources out there on how to do good monitoring. You know, it's not a bag of words, it's not words, words, words, words, words, it has purpose. Right, and I'd be curious if there'd be a way to translate all of that to something that's more SBSD Helpdesk: It's less

103burdensome of the district. It's… SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, so the whole idea is so that the board and the community know how the district is doing. It's not punitive, it's formative, right? Like, it is a process by which we understand each other and, you know, do our duty. Yeah, and I just think it's a good idea, just because we've been doing this the same way for so many years doesn't mean we have to keep doing it that way. If it's not really… I don't know if the community feels they're SBSD Helpdesk: getting any kind of real information out of it, or if the board feels like we're at the end of it, understanding what we heard. So I would love the idea of going over those policies again. So I'll talk about the audit, and then

104I'll connect that person… That'd be great. That'd be great. We welcome accountability. We welcome accountability, but we just need a breather. SBSD Helpdesk: Like, Let's get some guidance and clarity on where the gaps are. SBSD Helpdesk: And then I think one of the outcomes from this would be some kind of matrix that we can show that is available on our website, that has an overview of, here's our schedule, this is what we've reviewed, here's the outcomes. SBSD Helpdesk: For each one of these, so that there's transparency, because right now, it's like… SBSD Helpdesk: where are the old… they're just not… this information isn't been… scheduling is good to line up with the information as it comes in, too. Like, I felt so bad, Monica was sitting there, and we were asking her questions about this

105year's data. Well, it's embargoed, I can't use it, so… SBSD Helpdesk: Well, it's a very bad position for you to be in, right? That's actually why I came up, so, for round two of the equity monitoring report. SBSD Helpdesk: So I'm putting together more longitudinal data, and I wanted to ask the board around SBSD Helpdesk: I'd like to put in 2025, SRM 2025 data, so you're gonna have 23, 24, 25. If the board SBSD Helpdesk: is amenable to that, we would have to wait until November, until the 25 data is unembargoed. The other option is to forego 25 and do 22, 23, 24, and look at that in October, but you're kind of not getting… Does any board member want to say that we should monitor this before November? So that's fine? No, I think

106that's perfectly fine. SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, no, and it doesn't make much sense to do 22, 23, 24, because it's not the same schedule. Okay, so I believe when you're looking at the future schedule. SBSD Helpdesk: Yep. SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, and it is good timing in line with the budget, right? Of, like, helping us identify gaps and priorities and resources. Excellent. And I like the idea that once we have it, then that becomes something that rolls SBSD Helpdesk: So that you have 23, 24, 25, 26, and we can see it over time. Until they change the test again. What was that? Until they change the test again. Yeah, right. Okay, so I think what I'm hearing is that we should, SBSD Helpdesk: Ask. SBSD Helpdesk: Laura to talk to the BSBA, get a quote for an

107audit, and maybe ask the BSBA to SBSD Helpdesk: Well, depending on the complexity of the audit, either present to us at a school board meeting, or one of us can just explain the value monitor. And then I think my opinion… well, and then separately, we should push back monitoring of anything SBSD Helpdesk: Until… January. Until January? Yeah. Yeah. Do we… do we think that we need to take a motion on that, just because it seems pretty serious? SBSD Helpdesk: If we need to take a motion, we'll take it next week. Okay. But for now, I think the board has agreed that we can move back until January, all but treatment of, or I'm sorry, equity. And then the final thing would be, I think we should ask, Michelle SBSD Helpdesk: to meet with Joe to

108get the conversation started. I don't necessarily think you should, in my opinion, wait for the BSBA. I think you guys should just start talking, and then once you have the BSBA information, you can use that to enrich. We have a meeting scheduled for Friday. So is that cool that the board basically is saying, Michelle, talk to them about monitoring? Thank you. SBSD Helpdesk: Frank, any other… Thank you very much. Thank you. SBSD Helpdesk: Any other thoughts on, policy monitoring? SBSD Helpdesk: Great. SBSD Helpdesk: We'll move on to the next, discussion item, which is project management. SBSD Helpdesk: And so this has come up on a number of board meetings, and we keep kicking the can down the road on it. I think that Jen is advocating for a particular framework for project management, you know,

109board work management, which is called RACI. SBSD Helpdesk: And that just… it hasn't gotten traction such that it could stick around. Like, at one point last… felt like last year, April, we actually opened up a spreadsheet at a board meeting and wrote down what, SBSD Helpdesk: And wrote down all kinds of things. SBSD Helpdesk: Well, you could do it right now. I mean, Michelle just is taking on the auditing, or the, SBSD Helpdesk: Call them. Policy monitoring, and so that would be… that'd be a line in the racing, and Michelle would be the person who's responsible. SBSD Helpdesk: And… SBSD Helpdesk: Right. So my… my thought about the racy, though, is I think the, you know, the birth… you're always supposed to do the simplest thing you can. SBSD Helpdesk: And my question is, why…

110why can't this maybe being devil's advocate here, but, you know, why can't we just have a simple list of what each board member is kind of, like, taking on individually to report back to the board? Like, why do we need to go beyond just a simple list? SBSD Helpdesk: Well, if, yeah, if we're looking for project management, I think that there is a model there that is, like, the simplest, which is DRI, so it's the directly responsible. So, who's the person who's in charge of that, and then they have, like. SBSD Helpdesk: Latitude to, you know. SBSD Helpdesk: bring other people in, or organize a Google Doc, or whatever they need to achieve or learn. But if we're just trying to keep it lean, just… SBSD Helpdesk: one person, DRI, who is the person who's

111in charge of this? Michelle was in charge. Wouldn't this be part of the board training? I'm sorry, since part of the board training, right? I mean, the success board came up. SBSD Helpdesk: Well, I think we can decide, like, we can decide to make a list of things, almost like a to-do list. I think that's what then our economics is. SBSD Helpdesk: Well, and I can imagine a RACI coming into play after SBSD Helpdesk: we get some momentum as we move forward, and like, maybe we make that list that you're talking about, and we… the first thing on it can be, Laura's gonna talk to the VSBA about an audit, and Michelle's gonna meet about… so at least it just has a running list of what we're doing. To-do list. And then as we start

112to warm… SBSD Helpdesk: as a team together, Ben may be erasing SBSD Helpdesk: would be something, because I understand the importance of it. I'm a project manager, and I don't actually like crazy charts, but, I do understand… I do understand that they can be, helpful, and maybe as we start to work as a more competent team together, it could be something that we could, oh, work… Yeah, and I think… I think part of it was, too, when we were thinking about it, is… that was just a term we had thrown out, that who could do it? There could be a number of different tools SBSD Helpdesk: you could use. SBSD Helpdesk: But the thought is, is to have some kind of map. Like, these are all the things that we might be working on or

113through. So it could be, SBSD Helpdesk: you know, the committee discussions. Like, okay, who's on what point for participation in what committees? Who is, you know, you know, the engagements with student representatives? SBSD Helpdesk: you know, onboarding new board members. Like, is there a really good process regarding how we do that, and ensuring that anybody that's new to the board has the tools that they need and, you know, perhaps training or something to kind of get them up and running? SBSD Helpdesk: You know what I mean? So it's kind of like thinking through… SBSD Helpdesk: You know, what are the board… SBSD Helpdesk: actions and efforts that we need to do, and then ensuring that we've got everything captured in one place, and who's on point to kind of handle these things so that things

114don't drop? Newspaper articles, as an example. And then the other thing was, I'll just add to that, is you have these things, and some of them are just recurring, ongoing activities. Some of them are going to be one-off things that might happen, but then what I was trying to do was overlay it SBSD Helpdesk: like a Gantt chart type of thing, because there are some things that need to be happening at a particular frequency, like reporting to the paper, or, you know, if we're going to be doing articles or that type of thing. So it's… it's kind of merging all of this. Another idea was the strategic plan. SBSD Helpdesk: Our strategic plan is, you know, 20-something years old, so… SBSD Helpdesk: you know, that would be another topic, like, these are kind of our

115wish list. What are the things that we need to be working towards as a board SBSD Helpdesk: You know, and who's kind of going to be on point to do what. Sounds like I would make a proposal that we start small, and we only write down the things that people are currently going to assign themselves to. SBSD Helpdesk: and as… as opposed to anticipating future needs, like onboarding the board members, then just start… start with just a divvy, you know, so, like, for example, I put something on the screen here that's just an idea. You know, we just said, Laura, you know, report, this, you know, VSBA, SBSD Helpdesk: Policy, audit. SBSD Helpdesk: Right? So I think that, like, this represents what we just asked. SBSD Helpdesk: ourselves to do. SBSD Helpdesk: Oh, sorry, let

116me interrupt. No, go ahead. I like starting simple, and we're also trying to get to a point I think Jennifer is trying to get to, which is SBSD Helpdesk: Understand that some responsibilities are in perpetuity, and some are expiring, and we need to see what's coming in order to start it. SBSD Helpdesk: if we could add maybe one other item, which is this is an ongoing responsibility, it's a perpetual one, or this is a expiring one, right? Here's the time, right? This is a one month, a two-month, and then it's done. So it's like a… SBSD Helpdesk: that might help us, like, we're done these three things, but Jen has this ongoing thing she continues to do, and that'll help us, like, in a Gantt chart sense. Yeah, and I would say, like, when I

117think about… SBSD Helpdesk: what Laura's going to be doing, I see that as falling under policy governance. SBSD Helpdesk: And there's going to be a number of items that fall underneath that. One of them would be, alright, we're going to do an audit. One of them is going to be creating the schedule. One of them is going to be creating, you know, a scorecard or something for the policy governance that we do for those monitoring reports that we look through. You know. SBSD Helpdesk: I mean, I could just… I can see some of that, you know, detail there. Really have 5 more minutes, so discussion when we started. SBSD Helpdesk: So I would propose that if anybody else has things, like. SBSD Helpdesk: Perhaps we start with something very simple, like what I have on

118my screen here. SBSD Helpdesk: And then, right now, is there anything else? Like, one thing that I am interested in getting more answers about, and I'm hearing a lot about, is, IEPs, and so I might like to self-assign SBSD Helpdesk: Boss. SBSD Helpdesk: you know, just working with Joe to get some more answers about special ed… SBSD Helpdesk: Rates, and, you know, like, our ability, you know, do we have enough coverage for kids? SBSD Helpdesk: And all that stuff, so I might want to self-assign it. If you can, I would just suggest… I see what you're doing, but I had already started one. Some of these things are in here, and it's got a lot, and I shared some of this with you if you want to modify it, but I can resend this. This

119is… this was the RACI, and it has a lot of stuff in here, but I shared this… I can… why don't you share your screen, and I'll just… SBSD Helpdesk: Are you on Zoom? Oh, yeah. Is this something that I want public-facing? Yeah, I've got a call for the orders of the day, because I find it really interesting when we're ahead, we slow it down, but when we're way behind, but… Why don't I just send this? I can. The only reason that I propose to be SBSD Helpdesk: continue and run a little late is because I don't want to kick the tan on this, and then have it come up with a future work. Then I would… then I would propose that we strike some of these other lines. SBSD Helpdesk: We could, yeah, we

120could potentially do that. But let's… let's finish in my… SBSD Helpdesk: Is there a broad consensus that we should move on to the next topic at this point? SBSD Helpdesk: Can I add something before we move on? Is that okay? I don't think we're gonna move on unless multiple people speak up and say we should move on. SBSD Helpdesk: I want you, excellent. SBSD Helpdesk: Yes, so as long as Jen is sharing her screen, go ahead. Something Jen just mentioned that I would love to be on there is designating someone's for communication with me and MoMin as the student representatives. I know, like. SBSD Helpdesk: we had a discussion about making sure we're being communicated to about special board meetings that were planned, or, like, any materials for meetings being sent to us, and we…

121the only communication that we got about a special meeting was because of Delina sending us over. SBSD Helpdesk: the link for it, so I think it would be amazing if that was decided today, and it made it a little easier for us. SBSD Helpdesk: So Delina sent it to you, right? Yeah, that was part of what we talked about. I thought that she… SBSD Helpdesk: she would send over the link for, like, the agendas that are posted online, but we had a discussion about any of the stuff that you guys were looking at that wasn't… SBSD Helpdesk: on the public thing, that the board was… I think it's a valid ask to say, can we as student reps have somebody who is kind of assigned to us? Yeah. Like, when there's a special meeting that's

122decided. SBSD Helpdesk: between you guys, and we're not part of that conversation, someone emails us and goes, hey, there's a special meeting that's going to be on this stage, so that we immediately know and can try to work our schedule. Does anybody want to volunteer for that? I know that I'm… we may end up using a different screen, but I just want to write down, is there… is there any… Yeah, when this first came up, I was… SBSD Helpdesk: sort of took on the responsibility of sending you guys the information about certain meetings that, you know, that were scheduled, and I guess I didn't even think of this SBSD Helpdesk: particular one is special meetings, so… but I'm happy to take on that role. So now let's look at what Jen… Yeah, it's up there,

123it's sharing. You should… if you go to your thing, you should be able to say it. See, in my opinion, this is what I was saying, I think that the… SBSD Helpdesk: It's too much of a step for us to already move to… SBSD Helpdesk: full project management of all the… of all the potential topics. That's just my… Well, and this was just brainstorm. Like, we can even prioritize and say, we're not getting into this. This was just something that came up when we did our… it came up during our retreat, so this is a great retreat activity. SBSD Helpdesk: Which, if we get together November, December, whenever it is, like, we can resurrect this and go back and look at it, because this was some of the information that we had from that. SBSD

124Helpdesk: That I pulled into this, and then kind of googled a little bit more. You said make it a little bit bigger? SBSD Helpdesk: Just as our command, shift, plus. SBSD Helpdesk: No. SBSD Helpdesk: Hang on. SBSD Helpdesk: So we had in here, you know, again, this was from a couple of Several weeks ago. SBSD Helpdesk: You know, these are the district initiatives. Let me give you an example of why I think this might be the perfect… I mean, that I'm not trying to… I… I think that it's unlikely that we're going to be able to come up with a full grid, splitting up who's responsible, who's accountable, and all those things for all of these items. Yeah, that's fine. And so what I might propose is that we just start with, like, that board

125assignment sheet, and then SBSD Helpdesk: we can… and then you can turn that into the RACI, your interpretation, and then at the next time we talk about this, for example, at the board retreat in December, then you can say, okay, let's upgrade from what we're SBSD Helpdesk: the simple list into a full racing. I just don't think we can drop straight into a racing. Yeah. Well, and these things here, you know, just looking at when I was talking about a map, like, you've got district initiatives, there could be board business, there's SBSD Helpdesk: Board governance, community outreach and engagement, and training. And those are just high level, because there's a lot of different topics. So, again, you can hide things and say, well, what are the things that we want to look at? And you

126don't even need to have the racy component here, but… SBSD Helpdesk: You know. SBSD Helpdesk: however we want to do it. I think that we should upgrade into RACI, and so my proposal on this is that we start with writing down what the current assignments of the board are, and then SBSD Helpdesk: Leave… SBSD Helpdesk: And then, for example, you could break that out because… just because you're responsible for it doesn't mean you're SBSD Helpdesk: you could show us what that looks like when you break out. And so, like, for example, you know, on your screen, you have Treatment and Community Policy Refresh. That has not surfaced right now on the list of board assignments, and so I would argue that that means that it's not urgent enough to be on our list right now.

127SBSD Helpdesk: But… And we could have a parking lot. You could move things down to a parking lot, so you don't lose it, because this was something we had talked about at one point. SBSD Helpdesk: You know what I mean? SBSD Helpdesk: So, is the, I think we might be able to leave it here and basically say, SBSD Helpdesk: This is the work… so I'm gonna share my screen again. SBSD Helpdesk: These are the assignments that we currently know about. SBSD Helpdesk: But would you close that, nope. SBSD Helpdesk: So, these are the assignments that we just talked about. I would propose that we stop here for now, and we just say these are… SBSD Helpdesk: And… but if there's anything missing from here, if we… for example, if we know that we need to

128write a newspaper article, we don't have somebody currently assigned to that. SBSD Helpdesk: Right? SBSD Helpdesk: And is there anything else that anybody is personally interested? I've just gone through for IEP. SBSD Helpdesk: Anything else in terms of… SBSD Helpdesk: I'd like to be involved whenever we are ready as a board, and it's premature on a redistricting conversation committee, discussion with legislators, just to understand more about how that impacts us. I'd like to volunteer for that. Okay, so… so we have a meeting with SBSD Helpdesk: legislators, on October 10th, and so you should be on that call. SBSD Helpdesk: So, redistricting. SBSD Helpdesk: Legislators… So we'll… SBSD Helpdesk: And also, this should serve to say that, like, we shouldn't assign too much to anyone's person. So any other… SBSD Helpdesk: I don't quite see how

129a strategic plan aligns with superintendent committees. Okay, great, thank you. I wrote that note down because I thought that the SBSD Helpdesk: The agreement around strategic plan was that that was going to be a superintendent-led initiative. SBSD Helpdesk: I could be totally wrong about that. SBSD Helpdesk: Oh, you're talking superintendent committees. SBSD Helpdesk: the superintendent committees you're talking about, okay, I'm thinking two different things, okay. I was thinking superintendent search committee, and that's why I wasn't… Oh, no, no, no, superintendent Committees. Gotcha, okay. So, superintendent Committee, this is like… Ctrl-Z, bring that back. Curriculum one, curriculum… Yeah, that's fine. SBSD Helpdesk: Room curriculum, room finance. Finance, right. SBSD Helpdesk: Those are the only two we started with, and then we said, we'll add more. Great. And you're in is our person that you're working with

130on Superintendent. Perfect. Is that fine with everybody? SBSD Helpdesk: Great, okay. I think we can move on from this. SBSD Helpdesk: Can I ask a very… another very quick question? Are things like the calls with the redistricting, with legislators things me and Loman are allowed to be involved in? SBSD Helpdesk: Yes. I don't see why not, I don't think… SBSD Helpdesk: And that's why I was, like, trying to bring up the… having someone like Emily who would know, like, hey, when something like that comes up, then she's responsible for communicating that to us, and, like, it takes off that. And the student… in the committees. SBSD Helpdesk: because we'd like to have a student committee, but how is that going to be different? Would that be part of, like, the superintendent committee, or would that

131be something different? I'll let you… that's not… I'll let you and Joe figure that out, you know what I mean? Okay, and I should note, last note on this as we move beyond it, is that this SBSD Helpdesk: Google Doc will not be collaboratively edited with any other members of the board. If people want to change things on this, they'll have to email me to change it to satisfy Open Meeting Club. SBSD Helpdesk: Any other thoughts on, just getting a list of things to work on and managing those projects. SBSD Helpdesk: Okay, so next, item is board training, and so I may turn it over straight to Joe. What training do you think we should do? Yeah, well, I think, I mean, you sent a doodle out, I think an initial, probably, half day, maybe

1324 hours, with… I would, I would, SBSD Helpdesk: deferred to the school board association. You know, we have… and just explain them, we have a new superintendent, we have several new board members, we have several new administrators. I want it to be my administrative team and the board, where we're talking about… they've done this a thousand times, I'm sure, but SBSD Helpdesk: Communication styles, expectations, all of those sorts of things. SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, please. And we had talked about, too, as a central office team, inviting or offering the board anti-risis training. That's parallel to what our teachers, staff, and administrators are undergoing, just so we can all start to work and build… SBSD Helpdesk: Never done that. So, maybe not at the retreat, but I think, absolutely, absolutely. It's a great afternoon. So I might,

133based on that, I might propose that Laura, as our liaison with the SBA, ask them about, the cost and the… SBSD Helpdesk: proposed agenda for BSP training for a December, early December retreat. SBSD Helpdesk: And the context of what Joe just said is that I sent out a scheduling link for, for the board to pick a day in the first two weeks of December to do a retreat with the board plus the executive staff of the district. SBSD Helpdesk: And were you thinking, Monica, that we would join, like. SBSD Helpdesk: the staff, or… We can do one unique to the board. Yeah, and it would have to be… SBSD Helpdesk: And that training is free. SBSD Helpdesk: Great, great. Thank you. Is there any inter… is there anything beyond the anti-racist training that was just

134suggested and the VSBA training that the board wants to talk about getting for itself? SBSD Helpdesk: I just see this as a first meeting, and then I believe a really functional board does ongoing training annually. Great, great, thank you. That's where I think getting these calendars and schedules together are so helpful. I agree. SBSD Helpdesk: You know, as well, just so that we… SBSD Helpdesk: go back to this board assignments here, and I want to note for Michelle that, one of the things we're specifically interested in is a calendar of monitoring on the website, just as it knows the things that we want to be sure to be transparent about. SBSD Helpdesk: So the next item on the agenda is the permanent superintendent search. SBSD Helpdesk: Obviously, we heard from Daisy during public comment that

135it would be good to start this as soon as possible. I also know that out of respect for, our interim superintendent, SBSD Helpdesk: We should know… who the… SBSD Helpdesk: can… who the, top candidates are, you know, in December, if possible, so that, SBSD Helpdesk: you know, if we don't go with Dr. Joe, then he has a chance to… he's not waiting until spring of next year to start, whatever personal decisions he has. So, I would suggest that we immediately SBSD Helpdesk: Start. SBSD Helpdesk: to… and potentially take action next week, on October 8th, to start the superintendent search. So that means deciding who we're going to get to help us? SBSD Helpdesk: So that's the… yeah, so what we should talk about today is, do we want to use the BSBA again, or do

136we want to go with one of the more expensive commercial executive search firms? Can I just ask the individuals who are on the committee, that brought us Dr. Joe Clark, what their recommendation is, based on how we haven't gone through that process recently? SBSD Helpdesk: I thought the DSBA did a phenomenal job. SBSD Helpdesk: I would agree. We have the… we have the relationship, and we have… SBSD Helpdesk: Okay, we have the… we have the relationship with them, price is probably right, because they've done a lot of the legwork. They are great to work with as a candidate. Yeah, as a candidate, yeah, so, I mean, I… Yeah, great. Daisy and Jim are right. SBSD Helpdesk: I would echo what you just said, Laura, in that, as the budget manager for the school district, I

137would like to encourage you to use a thoughtful and affordable process. I know that, SBSD Helpdesk: We heard from other outside organizations that seemed really lovely. SBSD Helpdesk: And we're very expensive, and I am concerned about a large expense like that, right? Yeah, right. And we did… I felt like we really bonded with… Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I thought Ivy's just very respectful of… and… SBSD Helpdesk: Efficient. And efficient. Effective. And perhaps we could ask for her again. Yeah, I was just gonna say that. She has gotten to know the… Oh, I think so well. SBSD Helpdesk: And I will… I will completely admit, I sat here in front of you saying we should not do them the first time, and we should go with the… with the larger organization. I have changed my mind.

138SBSD Helpdesk: And, yeah, I… And I agree. I would… I don't know what ever… you know, because I know there was a questionnaire that went out after the fact that they could provide feedback, but I would suggest that probably all of the committee that participated, the 14 people that were part of that, I think all had pretty good feedback. SBSD Helpdesk: It absolutely depends. My one concern, having been on the committee, SBSD Helpdesk: You know, which is… I… I just… it is… SBSD Helpdesk: How are they going to put us on the national… SBSD Helpdesk: ads. But she did that. But she did. She did that. She did. She did it for this year. Oh, I'm very happy. SBSD Helpdesk: My only concern, you know, like, again, you know, one of the most important jobs

139of, SBSD Helpdesk: school board is employing superintendent. And so I just… the… before, you know, I'm playing devil's advocate here a bit. If we decide to go with the VSBA, one of the things that they told us in their presentation was that they do not, SBSD Helpdesk: like, for example, they don't have a staff of people that are scrolling through LinkedIn. SBSD Helpdesk: and looking for candidates, and I think that that had been originally one of the things that you had suggested that we do. Yeah, we can also say, we can do that, we can… SBSD Helpdesk: It's going to be a huge committee. As a superintendent, I could tell you where I look for postings, or the, like, the National Superintendent Association. Yeah, and that's posting… That's what you need to do to get

140into their location. Yeah. She indicated she had, quite a bit of interest in the permanent position. SBSD Helpdesk: But not necessarily the interim session. So, while we may not have seen anyone on the finalist list that came directly from them, I think we'll see that in the process. SBSD Helpdesk: All right, so do people, feel that we need to discuss this anymore today? And do they feel prepared? Do they need more information such that we could schedule this for action next week? SBSD Helpdesk: We have a good sense of the range of non-VSBA options, because I know we heard from one other… SBSD Helpdesk: Was that right? Yeah, they're about… And they were 1,000. Right. Yeah, I don't think it's… Yeah, that sounds about right. SBSD Helpdesk: Can we not vote on it today because

141the snoblist says that? No, no, we're not voting. To be clear, we could. But we should. We could. Well, we should. Yeah, I think the next… next week. SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah. Just for the record, I won't be here next week. My daughter's getting married. SBSD Helpdesk: Got it. SBSD Helpdesk: Any other thoughts on… from Superintendent search? SBSD Helpdesk: Great. SBSD Helpdesk: So, the next, I'm sorry, can I have a question? Is that cost… because I remember the cost for the interim search was $12,000, is that… SBSD Helpdesk: I believe. That is a cost that they quoted us for a permanent search, and they said that if the interim search SBSD Helpdesk: was less work, they might go below it, but they didn't end up doing that. So, we can estimate that going with the SBA

142would cost about $12,000, going with a big commercial national firm would be about $60,000. SBSD Helpdesk: Any other… anything else on that? Great. Next topic, next community forum. SBSD Helpdesk: So, our first community forum had 3 topics. They were meet the superintendent. SBSD Helpdesk: What budget number should we set? And, SBSD Helpdesk: What committees do you want to be on? SBSD Helpdesk: My personal criticism of it, you know, soft criticism, is that I think that we… SBSD Helpdesk: did not get as many non-school community members, and so I would like to propose that for future community forums, we might consider doing it at the Senior Center, or, you know, something like that, but, SBSD Helpdesk: I think what we really need is a next topic for a community forum, and then we can kind of

143gel around… gel around that. SBSD Helpdesk: Splits it. I think continuing budget. And maybe we could aim to share whatever we know at that time, that we aren't digesting. So do it after we've heard from… Right, right, so in the spirit of making sure the community is fully aware of the form. SBSD Helpdesk: And you can get her… SBSD Helpdesk: the point, of course, we all agree with that. We don't control. Right. Yeah, that's a good time for that. Just keep putting that out at every… SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, I think that's a perfect place. Here are the costs we already know about, that we're incorporating, here's how we are considering incorporating them, here are the unknowns. SBSD Helpdesk: And here's what we're doing based on these unknowns, and, you know, we're working through this. So,

144I think it's important for a community to know how challenging it is going to be to try and get to a number that they are supportive of, while also digesting numbers that are outside of our… Okay, so what I'm hearing is… SBSD Helpdesk: Is it okay if it's a December community forum? SBSD Helpdesk: So we'll do a December Community Forum, and it'll be about budget. And over the next couple months, if we want to add topics to it, we can add topics to it, but the foundational thing will be budget. Any other, thoughts on Community Forum? And it'll be a motion. SBSD Helpdesk: And what do you guys think about doing it, for example, at the Senior Center? Yeah. SBSD Helpdesk: go to people asking them to come to us, it's not working. Well, actually,

145for open meeting law, is that a challenge? SBSD Helpdesk: We might be… we might be invited. Let's see, maybe we can explore that. I don't know if we should do that now. We need to make sure to comply. We can. Okay. It's a little bit of a burden on the district, but it is, you know. SBSD Helpdesk: We kind of. SBSD Helpdesk: And we might also, if that fails, the city might have, at the very least, it might be in the city auditoriums. Or, you know, there's crazier ideas, like doing it SBSD Helpdesk: We're good for now, I think. The other thing I think would be good to do is if we have any feedback or information from the advisory committees that we're doing, and I think that would also be, you know, something that

146could be shared, perhaps. SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, I don't know the bill… SBSD Helpdesk: hopefully we'll have at least one meeting before then. Okay. Well, I won't add that to the agenda yet, but if it does seem like this, okay, the curriculum committee or the finance committee has some stuff to report about, the superintendent committees on those things, then we'll add that to the public. Great. Okay, so we'll move on. SBSD Helpdesk: Our next… We caught up yet? Yeah. SBSD Helpdesk: Our next topic is an action item. SBSD Helpdesk: This is action on policy amendment 2.9, which I will put on my screen now. So, I'm wondering if this is… we've just been asked by our superintendent to put a halt on this. SBSD Helpdesk: So I would look to offer. This is an agreement. This

147is an amendment. But I would suggest, if… SBSD Helpdesk: I would say, Jess, I mean, even based on the feedback that we have, and the fact that we're going over, and it's a holiday night for people. SBSD Helpdesk: I would suggest, strike this and put this on perhaps next week's agenda, because that was also feedback that we received during public comment, is that this is an opportunity for the public to comment on this topic. Right now, it's come down, it's young conformative. I think that they should not do that. That would be my suggestion. SBSD Helpdesk: I didn't sound sorry. SBSD Helpdesk: So, we will move this to… SBSD Helpdesk: next week. In terms of the next item on our agenda, do you have any… anything you wanted to talk about? I know we're short

148of time, but, we're actually right on top. I will not take 10 minutes, but I do want… I do have a few things I'd like to talk about. First of all, I want, SBSD Helpdesk: just for the public to hear, you know, there was a recent needle incident at Richmoor Central School, and we did have a multi-agency meeting on September 25th with school administration, our facilities folks, school nurse, operations and finance, the police department, there was city council. SBSD Helpdesk: Folks there, and we are, taking steps immediately. We, are, SBSD Helpdesk: Gonna put up an 8-foot security fence that will have a buffer between the current fence that is there behind the McDonald's property and our school, so if folks are using SBSD Helpdesk: needles and decide to discard them, they will not be able

149to throw them all the way over onto the playground. There'll be a gate so we can… SBSD Helpdesk: clean it out. We are going to install motion sensor lighting, because some folks are actually going on to our playground at night and not doing it for McDonald's, so we're hoping that that lighting will maybe scare them away. Vegetation management, where we will, SBSD Helpdesk: Take out, as much vegetation as we can that allows people to hide. SBSD Helpdesk: And we're talking with McDonald's about taking care of their fence, and we're just really grateful for the city. I can't speak enough about how impressed I've been with the city of South Burlington, and the staff there, and the police department, and the council, and… SBSD Helpdesk: Everybody's been just outstanding. It's a great, great relationship that we

150should be very, very grateful for. SBSD Helpdesk: I have started, putting together the three questions. I talked about this in my interview, I've talked about it a lot. So we have, at this point, it's, SBSD Helpdesk: identified about 50… 50-some community groups. I emailed them all on Monday to ask them if they would please invite me to one of their meetings. I have about 7 or 8 scheduled already, starting this Monday, and I'll follow up later this week with all the folks that haven't responded yet, but again, I'm going to go out. I'm going to take somebody with me to take notes. What do you like about South Burlington schools? What can we do better? What do you expect of the superintendent? SBSD Helpdesk: We will gather all that information. I think that would be

151very helpful. It may, SBSD Helpdesk: helping with my priorities, but also I think that would be really beneficial for a strategic plan when we get to, get to that point. There will also… I know, there are some folks who maybe aren't in any of these community groups. We will make sure that it is SBSD Helpdesk: that I have open, open calls towards the end of this, where via Zoom, or via public meeting, where any community members that were not in any of those groups can come out. My goal is to get to as many people as we possibly can. SBSD Helpdesk: to give that feedback. And Joe, did you add the, the synagogue and the Islamic Society to your list? Yep, they're on there. Out of curiosity, what's the first, the one on Monday? SBSD

152Helpdesk: They don't go. SBSD Helpdesk: It is… SBSD Helpdesk: Starts Tuesday, the SBBA. Yes, that is expressive. SBSD Helpdesk: Yeah, and then I have the Orchard PTO, a bunch of them coming up. Great, great. SBSD Helpdesk: Finally, we… I put this at a board update, but I think it's… I'm happy about this, because I think that, people love South Burlington schools, and they want to represent, right? And we have a great store on our website, with great gear. Might be a little pricier than what we would SBSD Helpdesk: know that some of our folks can afford, so we do… we are entering into a partnership with a place called Ohio Pile Prince. They're not from Ohio, I have no relation to them. They're called Pile Pile, they're out of Pennsylvania. SBSD Helpdesk: Anyway, what they

153will do is… SBSD Helpdesk: they will print South Burlington gear. It will be available in, like, your local, like, Walgreens and CVSs. SBSD Helpdesk: should be able to buy, it'll be more reasonably priced, and they will give 7% of the profit back to us, which we will put into a fund really designated for, SBSD Helpdesk: For student activities, be it either athletics or music or art, whatever it's going to be. SBSD Helpdesk: we'll make more decisions after we get that first check, which I don't expect it's going to be a ton, right? More important to me is that we're going to be able to, SBSD Helpdesk: allow folks who want to represent without spending, you know, 80 bucks on a shirt to be able to find something. So, look for that. I don't know, a

154couple months, maybe, you'll start seeing it. And if you go now, if you haven't noticed, you'll… I was in a… SBSD Helpdesk: their drugstore the other day in Essex had a whole rack of stuff, and I went up, and sure enough, it was an Ohio Pile, and it looked like that stuff, so… SBSD Helpdesk: Well, I'm happy about that, and thanks to Ken, who has been really the spearhead of that. Alright, thank you. Thanks, Ken. SBSD Helpdesk: And that concludes my report. SBSD Helpdesk: Thank you very much. SBSD Helpdesk: I would entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting. SBSD Helpdesk: And we can discuss any, scheduling for October 8th over email. SBSD Helpdesk: I will move to the terminal. Second, any discussion? SBSD Helpdesk: All in favor? Aye. SBSD Helpdesk: No, we had dinner.