001Convinced that some board members just don't care to do the work that's required. With these instances of lack of accountability adding up, one might want to blame the board or its members, but it is not the fault of anyone on the board. It is our fault. It is our fault. We are enterprising enough to read a letter to the other paper or to come to a school board meeting but not enough to decide to look for solutions or to run for school board. We have accepted board members, creating chaos, driving other board members to quit early in their terms. Disrespecting the general public and approving maximalist contracts and maximalist budgets with no concern for the people who pay for them. Uncontested candidates have become unaccountable board members. Eight years of such time. Thank you. I
002got one more paragraph. Can you handle it? Thank you. Thank you. Actually, if you'd like to read it, go ahead. Eight years ago, I ran for school board and was inspired by a sign in the RMCS gym. If it is to be, it is up to me. A thriving community needs people who are willing to do the work that makes it continue to thrive. Democracy cannot exist. Without participation from those who are governed by it. Thank you, Tim. Any other public comment not related to budget? Good evening. My name is Cynthia Herbert. My husband, Dadian Herbert, and I are residents of South Burlington and parents of two wrestlers. In the middle and high school. We would like to provide an update to the school board and community stakeholders. Regarding the South Burlington School Wrestling Club.
003Briefly, we wanted to summarize the progress of students and community members supporting the promotion of the sport of wrestling in our district. During the fall of 2023, our rosters of wrestlers started at the count of seven. Under the coaching leadership of Jack Kearney and Alex Sutchman. Our team was encouraged and supported by Essex School District and the Northern Vermont Wrestling Club. We want to thank Blaine Isham, Tim Sullivan. And criticism for offering early access to their training facilities and scrimmaging opportunities. The fellowship and collaboration extended by the folks at Essex and Shane Fenton at High Hack Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Club. In South Burlington gave our wrestlers a sense of belonging and community as they began to build the club in their first year. We want to express our appreciation and gratitude to the South Burlington School
004District. The athletic department and South Burlington Athletic Boosters. Our request to for offering funding relating to weight room access, transportation access, cingulates, and cleaning supplies. As we anticipate completing our second year of club status, our roster of wrestlers has burgeoned to a 22-person squad, including Including mostly male athletes and we welcomed our first athlete female athlete this year There are students ranging from grade six through 12 from culturally, linguistically, and neurodiverse backgrounds. They have served as athletic ambassadors at tournaments In and outside of Chittenden County. And across Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. Typically, they train a total of three to five hours a day after school and during the holiday breaks. Our request to the board it's fine okay and the community is that we would like you to continue to promote the sport And
005we appreciate and invite you all to come to Essex Classic this Friday and Saturday. Thank you. Yes. Agenda item four, focus on student learning. Thank you. Alia and I only have a couple of announcements tonight. First one is that SBHI students are in the midst of Canon Week, which is a week of longer class periods and project-based work. Due to this, hosts of the high school this week start at 10.40 each morning for the first two hours of the school day, reserved for retakes. Makeups for meeting with teachers. The SBHS music Christmas tree pickup is still happening on October the 11th. If you live in South Burlington and would like to participate, this is a reminder to please leave your tree on the curb no later than 10 a.m. And make a check out to
006SPHS Music. For $15 for small and medium sized trees and $20 for large trees. And all profits will fund new instruments and the musical experience for SVHS students. All right, so now we're going to do consent agenda. So agenda item previously nine item five consent agenda Are there any questions about any of the items on the consent agenda? That brings us to agenda item six, discussion items, and we have finance. Do we want to do finance committee first Sure. Who are kind of giving the update. Yeah, we haven't had an opportunity to meet um so we've been sort of behind the default on some stuff As we move forward after tonight, what I would like to ask is if we perhaps can Schedule a couple of meetings with the finance committee. One, I'd like to,
007if Tim Jarvis is available, invite him to talk numbers with the Finance Committee. Perhaps we can record that session and use that as a source material for the community and post off the website. I'd also like to try to get in two sessions hosted by the Finance Committee, maybe one at the end of January, one towards the end of February, where we do a budget presentation as the committee to the community. So it would be just on Zoom and would be available for everybody to attend. That's great. Yeah. So Tim, as the liaison to the committee, it's certainly available to support with any financials needed. Okay, so I'll email Tim and set up just in time to talk about the presentation and get that rolling. Trying to make eye contact with Tim, which is usually
008a little easier, but I do have a pretty good direct. Yeah, I'm getting a wave, so we're good. Thank you, Tim. Thank you. So thinking about inviting the finance committee just to a board meeting to meet the full board and just have a brief conversation. We don't know if the finance committee would be amenable to that or available and there are limited board meetings between now and I mean, that might not work out, but that was also something we were doing That's great. Steering committee might be a good time for them to join too since we'll be simultaneously presenting the city's budget with the school's budget. That's on the 22nd of January. Yeah, so Chelsea, I'll follow up with you on specific dates and times for the uh for the three calls who we can.
009All right, so next is candidates for school board. We need to just sort of declare publicly what the plans are. We have four of the current five seats available or up for election, and then we're adding two seats to the board on meeting day. We have some specific ballot language to read tonight about that, but it would be a good time for board members to just sort of declare what their intentions are. Community members too. That's good. I do have applications, by the way, in case anybody, I did stop at the, if there's anybody out there who would like to run, I actually do have some blank applications. I stopped at the town offices. You're good. Absolutely, Don. Thank you again. My name is Tim Moore, and I've been on the board for a year
010now. I was appointed at one point because of an absence. And did run last year to complete the two-year seat. So this is the end of the two-year seat. And I do intend to run again. I would like to run for one of the three-year seats. As much as I enjoy getting out and getting signatures and stuff middle of January doing that can be a little challenging so Also, I've picked up quite a bit over the last year. And I think a three-year C would potentially bring some consistency and some stability so Yes, I do intend to run. Thank you. I am probably leaning towards no. I have to say my reasons are more reasons Personal, this has been a great experience I'm you know i'm a little upset about it because it's been such
011a rewarding experience and getting to know I know a lot of faces in the crowd and it's just being able to have an impact and learn as much. I don't think it's the time either. I was actually surprised. I've served on other committees and say I spend more time on other committees like this has been a balanced amount. I think that the time and the time That includes me doing some extracurricular work for the board. So it's not tied. I haven't made up my mind officially, but probably you'll lean towards. No, at this time. Well, this is my second meeting. But at this time, I am leaning towards Yes, running. I'm not exactly clear on two year versus three year what would be appropriate and that but as I'm still kind of trying to just
012get my feet underneath, to be honest. I feel like the time that I'm spending to do that. I should continue on once we were up to speed. A lot of people told me when I joined it takes like two years to really feel like have a sense of what you're doing. So you're not behind. Thank you. Laura. And yes, I do demand on running. So I'll take one of my primers to go by City Hall tomorrow. So Tim, you've done it for me. Thank you. Yeah, and the the town clerk can walk you through which one which Term you'd like to fund for yeah there are probably really great So you'll be in good hands. They can answer any question you have there too. There's six seats up, right? That's my understanding. Yeah, so Tim,
013Laura, Chris. Parent plus the two seeds. And let's see that. If I don't run and be vacating. It would be a one-year term And I think there's two one-year terms right so there's there's a lot of options. I would want to encourage folks um just if you're interested, I would love to have a conversation with you. Encourage you to talk to a school board member. It really is a rewarding experience. So it's intimidation where you feel like you haven't run a campaign before there are people who will help you. And you're making it as one year left. Any other questions about how long? Okay, anything else? With that, we are going to move to We want to recess 40 minutes early. We're only 15 minutes into the meeting. Or we can take the recess perhaps
014after the presentation and inform public comment. Right. All right, so agenda item seven. These are our action items this evening. Do you want to invite Tim up to go over the I'm happy to speak to that. So first, I was all excited about budget. That's what everyone is here for, right? So announced tuition rate, this is the recommendation that I'm bringing forward to the school board. This is something we do annually in accordance with Title 16 VSA section 826A. And I'm recommending for fiscal year 2026 a secondary grades seven through 12 of 21,734 per student. And for elementary grades, which is K through six, I'm recommending $20,000,739 per 20,739 per student. And happy to provide any information that's helpful. I don't recall the numbers from last year, but are most significant changes. They're not significant.
015They steadily increase pretty consistently. Do I have a motion to approve the FY 2026 tuition rate Asrad, Superintendent Nicholas. So moved. Do I have a second? Second. 10 seconds. So we're going to do a roll call vote. So I'll call each board member and you can vote your name. Karen? Yeah. Yay. Yay. The motion is approving and asking. All right. Big ticket item now the budget Thank you. All right. What we're ready for. I would like to invite Tim Jarvis, Senior Director of Finance, to join us. Kristen Romick, Executive Director of Education Support System Judy Valancourt, Executive Director of Learning, and Monica DeRochers, Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Social Emotional Learning, and the Anti-Racism. That's important, that goes before the social emotional learning. We joke we call her diesel because it's a good acronym. She's
016on virtually this evening and um Let's get a couple of chairs for you here. Apologies to be short on chairs. This is every chair we have down here. I'll keep getting attention to see if there's anything. And I think we need that should do it. Standing room only is a problem that I will always consider to be a good problem. So glad to have you all here this evening. My name is Violet Nichols. I'm the superintendent of the South Burlington School District, and I want to thank our principals and assistant principals, directors, and central office administrators for being here to support this evening. I want to also thank every one of you for being here and for engaging in the process. I'm appreciative of you coming out on a cold night and those joining us
017virtually as well. Today, I have the pleasure of presenting the budget alongside Tim, Jody, Kristen, and Monica. Although I want to acknowledge and recognize all of those who contributed to this process. I feel like we actually never stopped talking about budget after our current fiscal year budget was finally passed. So I want to give credit to the team and thank our municipal assistant principals directors and of course the central office administrators for just the constant work and care put into this. I also want to thank the many people both in and outside of the district and in our community who have provided feedback and engaged in the process. The finance committee and our board. So without further ado, I want to talk a little bit about vision. Opening this discussion, I think the most important
018thing for me to highlight is we're here to support our students and our staff. And anytime we're in a position where we're facing what is arguably the most difficult budget season, we as a school community have faced. This is hard on our staff and that's hard on our kids. So I want to start by saying that in this development, we really tried to hang on this vision Which drives all that we do to achieve our ends in support of students. So this budget has been developed to achieve our ends to preserve equity supports to the extent possible, given that we know we have to make reductions and no reductions are best for students. We are also in a position where we're required to adhere to regulatory and legal requirements. And something that comes at a
019cost to our South Burlington taxpayers, something that can be sustained. Due to the impacts of Act 127, which are outside of the control of anyone in this room, and our use of surplus funds for fiscal year 26, which we allocated to drive down the tax rate in order to support programming and staffing levels this year. We are in a position where we're facing an additionally increased percentage for per pupil education spending, which is about 15.76 with this proposed budget. Due to these factors, painful reductions are required, and that is not within the control of anyone here. Certainly conversations that no superintendent wants to have with valued staff. But we will have those conversations tonight and speak to each of these. In a way that provides information to our communities. So, you know, finally, we have
020been identified as requiring designated equity supports. This budget is designed to provide equity of services to students who require additional supports and to attend to those required Aoe designated equity supports. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Executive Director of Learning, Jody Valancourt, to share more about some pieces regarding budget development with respect to policy, law, and compliance. Thank you, Jodi. So as Superintendent Nichols mentioned, there are several different guidelines that we must adhere to. Some of them are regulatory, some of them are legislative. Act 173 is a law that is related to enhancing the effectiveness, availability. And equity of services provided to students who require additional support in schools. So that requires us to maintain a multi-tiered system of support that provides additional services and support for students who need it
021both academically and for social emotional learning behavior issues. Jordy, can I ask, you may want to take that microphone that has the red on it and move it closer to you. I'm not sure if everybody can hear her. Is that green button on on the mic on your right? Just to make sure people in the back can hear you. Thank you. That's the in-room microphone. The other is for RTN. Also, we were identified by the Vermont Agency of Education as being in need of equity supports for some subgroups. And so you'll see that multilingual program supports is associated. With that. Act 139, which is a brand new law since last May, is an act relating to supporting Vermont's young readers through evidence-based literacy instruction and screening assessments. And then there's also the education quality standards,
022which are the regulatory piece issued by the State Board of Education. And that lays out things like minimum ratios for some roles require content areas and those types of things. And then, of course, there are board policies like the EMS policy and the equity policy. So the way that we worked to take an approach that would connect to the vision is that, first of all, principals and central office staff went through budgets every line item and identified reductions based on non-staffing priorities first. And then principals were asked to consult with their staff to get budget feedback. And they submitted proposals related to line item reductions and staff reductions to Kristen Romick, Monica DeRoche, myself, Tim, April Jennings, the business manager, and Violet Nichols, and all district offices also proposed budget line item and staff reductions.
023In conjunction with the school-based and principal feedback, we also reviewed feedback from the community survey, the finance committee, and direct feedback that has been received from individual stakeholders given face-to-face and via email. We reviewed alignment with other school districts regarding their structure and best practices and also evaluated student academic and social emotional achievement data to identify needs. Central office and business office leadership incorporated board direction and then budget factors such as the common level of appraisal and tax rate factors once those were known. Throughout all of that process, we continue to engage with feedback from multiple points and multiple stakeholders. And then central office and business leadership is now putting forward a budget that aligns with the ENDS policy, the equity policy, and other board policies, as well as the Laws Act 173. Act 139
024and the equity support designations from the Agency of Education. And now I'm going to pass it back to Superintendent Nicholas. Thank you so much. So now that we've discussed process, I want to talk about some of the external factors that are impacting the budget. Many of these factors come in late and some can change and pretty significantly throughout the process. Starting with a little recap. So for our current fiscal year 25 budget, which is $68 million, it passed on its third try with an 8.18 homestead tax rate increase. This was significantly lower than some of the double digit tax rates that our neighbors were having approved and those seen across the state. And this tax rate, being able to achieve the lowered tax rate was largely due to being able to apply the $3 million
025surplus from the previous two fiscal years. Which was lovely at the time. However, we are now paying for our maintaining staffing and program this year in that we do not have any surpluses to allocate toward the fiscal year 26 budget. And we are seeing this 15.76 per pupil education spending rate with the 2026 fiscal year 26 budget. The yield is an important factor in the budget formula. It is something that's finalized after the legislative session is closed, which typically happens in mid-June. This year, the yield was favorable, which was excellent. The legislative Branch decided to set the yield at 8,553, significantly higher than what we had planned for. With this, they have shared that they have been hoping for zero or negative homestead tax rate increases. Which we are not able to achieve. The common
026level of appraisal, which is a factor often abbreviated as CLA, is 74.45 for this year. This is kinder than we had anticipated off the back of two fiscal years of nine and 10% drops. The common level of appraisal is a budget factor that is developed on a three-year rolling average, and it represents the delta between appraised values of home prices and sale prices. And because we are yet one year further away from reappraisal in South Burlington, this number, which if it were at 100% would be total equilibrium, which is best for our tax rate and that it drives the tax rate down. Given that we're one year further away, we're at a 74.45. So as this percentage dips. There is a direct relationship with the homestead tax rate, which then increases. The CLA is not
027expected to be changed. The yield, however, if it dips, will drive up the tax rate. Likewise, if it goes the other direction, which it did this year, will drive it down. We have not finalized our per pupil accounts and some of the people in the room who have been our hardworking data team members and business office staff have been seeing us on the delinquency list from the agency saying, approve, approve. And our response has been we're one student off from what we see to be accurate. So I want to thank our team for really digging into that to make sure that we have all of the revenue that we feel is accurate to support education. So we're still working with the Agency of Education. It's likely to be finalized tomorrow. But we're advocating for additional
028per pupil counts The per pupil count verbiage is something we've used in years past. With the implementation of Act 127, the figure is now known as long-term weighted average daily membership, or LTW ADM, because we needed more alphabet soup. So these are all critical inputs to the state's ed funding formula. And as you see, there could be change in these which could impact the homestead tax rate increase, even after approved by the board and even after approval by our voters. On the positive side, the Federal Reserve, as well as other sources, are stating that there is kind inflation rates. So in the range of 2.5% is where we've been seeing them. Much gentler than three years ago. And some of you recall me talking about the 8% inflation rates we were seeing. And we always
029joke that I talked about the price of salt for sanding things like school. And on January days like today. That's relevant. Both our teachers union and support staff collective bargaining unions are up for renegotiation for the fiscal year 26 and they expire at the end of fiscal year 25. State mandated district contributions to health care insurance are up to increasing by 11.9%. That's a significant cost increase for the district given that 80% of our budget of our budget current $68 million budget is for staffing. I'd now like to talk about enrollment for a little while. I want to, this is important as it relates to our budget conversations for several reasons. We have consistent pervasive facilities needs. And so we'll continue to have conversations about enrollment As we have facilities needs that will need to
030be addressed. This chart represents two pieces of information. The December 23 and 24 columns are finite. Those are not estimates. The fiscal year 26 through fiscal year 30 columns are all projections prepared by demographer Jerome McKibbons. And so these are not, of course, finalized numbers. They're based on a consistent formula that demographers use. Right now, as of December, well, December 2024, so seems like so long ago and yet yesterday, our elementary totals were 1,073 students. With a district grand total of 2,444. The predictions, if we follow those lines through elementary, again, projections for the fiscal year 30 are modified just a little bit here. You see 1,087 students and then with a grand total of 2,605 for the district. I want to thank all those who've reached out regarding enrollment. I've enjoyed some really rich
031discussions with folks and community members and made some new friends, even those in the room regarding enrollment. I have added an enrollment page to our website for folks interested in checking it out. It is linked here. So please feel free to check that out. We'll continue to provide enrollment projections to the community to engage in forecasting, both associated with budgeting and facilities needs. I'll now turn it over to Senior Director of Finance Tim Jarvis to discuss long-term weighted average daily membership. Thank you, Violet. This is a chart that reflects the current state of counting how many students we have in different categories, which is a critical factor in how the state calculates the ed fund spending allocations And ultimately, our tax rate. So what happens at the beginning of the school year over a 10-day
032period in October is that there's a census done of literally bums and seeds. At our schools and that's this baseline pupil count They use a number which is averaged over the last two years. So it's not only this year's number, but it's the average of this year and last year. And so what you're seeing here From the Act 127 weight factors, which Violet touched upon briefly different categories of students are granted different weights And the concept of it is that it costs more to educate students who are part of these demographic categories Than those which are not. So we're sort of a neutral student versus a student who requires additional education services and supports. So when you work your way through this, the first column is showing what those factors are. What last year's numbers
033were and what the current number is for fiscal year 26. That's the line that our budget is going to be constructed upon. So when Violet was saying that these numbers were still in flux. She was, if anything, underestimating and under exaggerating the amount of dialogue going on every day for the past few weeks between all the business managers around the state, all the data managers around the state and the Agency of Education. As we were all questioning the accuracy and making sure it's such an important number in the final formula that we have been painstaking student by student, category by category, is this the right number? And they're hoping to finalize this. Tomorrow or soon. And I think that it's too early to predict exactly what these numbers are going to end up on the
034next version, which would be version four. But I'll show you when we go through how the tax rate is calculated, the importance of this factor. And then the bottom line is simply what is the difference of these current numbers for fiscal year 26 versus last year. So if you start with starting people count, you can see that we The two-year average has gone down by about 22 students. The early education pre-K weights have, this is actually a negative weight because the other main concept of this is, and you'll see this on the note at the bottom of the slide. That grades one through five are considered neutral and carry no weights. So the concept is it costs more to educate a high school student than it does a pre-K student, etc. So you actually, that's
035a negative way. The middle school way we benefited from because the current count of our middle school grade six through eight is higher than it was last year. So we've got some positive points. And basically, if you can see the colors on this, and it's also in the parentheses. Red or parentheses is a negative impact to us. And otherwise, it's a positive impact. So middle school is a positive way. Grades 9 through 12, we're down a little bit. The economic disadvantage or students who qualify for free and reduced lunch Even though we had universal meals and no one is paying for lunch, through a variety of different sources of demographic data. Including Medicare data, attestations that families file, et cetera, et cetera. Our number has actually dropped a little bit from last year. And this
036is an important number because you can see that carries 752 points, so to speak. But again, this year that number is slightly lower than it was, of course, last year. As is also the case for English language learners. So the ELL way is a big way. It's 2.49. So that's basically saying it costs two and a half times more money to educate a person whose home language is not English than it does a neutral student. So the changes that you have in the number of English language learners can significantly change the final number So we're down a little bit there as well. And consequently, our total LPW ABM is 66 points lower than it was last year. I'll show you when we go through the detailed budget calculation, what that actually means. The next slide
037is one we've shown before, which is really just to set the context of how tax rates and cla have… In South Burlington over the last 10 years or so. So you can see between 2016 and 2021, a pretty steady, relatively flat tax rate Slightly decline in CLA. And what happens mathematically is that mathematically when your CLA goes down, your tax rate goes up. There was a reappraisal done and the first time that manifested itself was in the 2022 budget And that was between 2022 and 2023 is where there was largely a equilibrium between the assessed values of homes because of the reappraisal And what price homes were selling at again over a cycle of the previous two years. Where it really started to hit us. Was in 2024. And this was the first significant drop
038in the CLA from 100.99 to 92.97. And then especially last year when it went down to 82.54. So what does that really mean? What it means is that it means the tax rate goes up because the value of your home loans has gone up. But the assessed value is the same as it was when the reappraisal was done in 2021. I know that that's a very difficult concept for people to get their hands around because an individual may say, well, my house hasn't gone. The provider in my house hasn't gone up that much or It's not fair that you're using the sales Proceeds from the entire city of South Burlington as opposed to my neighborhood, for example. But the CLA is uniformly used across the state. And it's not looking at an individual's home it's
039looking at the average assessed value or any average sales price and what is the difference between those two things? And so because of this really steep drop Last year, we were very concerned because we all know or we all sense that the housing market in South Birminghamton is still very tight. Maybe it's a little less tight than it was last year but We all feel the impact of rising home costs in South Burlington. And so I thought, and we thought that it was going to be significantly lower than 82.54, that it was really like skyrocket downward again. And so that's why Our initial estimates when we were doing budget modeling was that that number would be even worse than it was. But fortunately, it did not turn out to be as bad. I mean, it
040still went down significantly, but not by as much as we would have expected. So that's the historical data. And the next slide, this is where we get into some do some details. This is comparing last year's our current year, fiscal year 25 budget to the proposed budget In terms of a number of critical factors. In the top left-hand you see the current estimated yield Which Violet mentioned is 8553. The CLA is 74.45. Just to make things even more fun and interesting. The state decided in its yield bill that they were going to impose yet another statistical factor into this formula which is called the statewide adjustment factor. And that statewide adjustment factor is applied against a number of these different items. It's applied against the yield, it's applied against the CLA, and it's applied against
041what's called a pennies discount, which is a benefit that we received last year because we were disadvantaged by the Act 127 days So this chart is basically just comparing last year this year. So the general fund expenditures When we move to a new financial platform this year and became compliant with the state's uniform chart of accounts you'll see this expenditure number of 66.8 million Historically, we have been reporting in both our expenditure and our revenue lines grants. Which is not the standard way to do this in terms of how much money are you getting from the state education fund So we made a one-time adjustment this year. And excluded the grants from both the expenditures and the revenue. It has zero impact on the tax rate. It has zero impact on on the education spending
042because it's you're subtracting from both expenses and revenues. And to put the $68 million number there would have been disingenuous because you want to be comparing apples to apples. And I can explain that more. There's a note at the bottom as well. But the budget that we have put forward tonight. On the expenditure side in the general fund represents a 7.06% increase. And the cause of that increase is largely driven by the factors that Violet described earlier. Health insurance, inflation 75% of the budget being salaries and benefits, et cetera, et cetera. The revenues, because we had this huge $3 million surplus last year, that's counted as a revenue. We don't have that this year. So you can see last year we had over $15 million of revenue and this year we have less than $13
043million in revenue. And that has a very significant impact on all of these numbers. We keep saying that, and this is the maths kind of behind it, because If we had not applied that surplus last year the way we did. Then our revenues would only be going up by four that would be going up by 4.8% instead of going down by over 23%. And you see it most informing in net education spending. So net education spending is the number that the State Education Fund will fund will provide to us with a past budget. Last year, it was 58, 51 million. This year, it's almost 59 million, which is 13.89% increase. If there had not been the surplus, which our fishery drove down last year's number, it would have been an 8% increase in net ad
044spending. The LTWADM we've talked about, so that's gone down 1.61% as of today. It could be changed tomorrow. And then you get through the net education spending per pupil. Which has gone up because of the surplus causing last year's number to be so low is up 15.76%. If you discount the impact of the surplus, it'd be under 10%. All of that then gets calculated into the homestead tax rate. Including all of the interchanges in the formulas, the statewide adjustment And the one point that the dollar 4598 last year in this budget would be 1.$55.58, which is an 8.10 increase in tax rates. If the surplus had not been applied last year, that increase would have only been 2.27%. So in essence. Because we were able to maintain a much lower than average increase last year,
045which is 8.18%, Likewise, I said, we're kind of paying the price for that this year because we don't have that surplus anymore. And so netted spending has gone up. But just to give some context, in terms of what exactly are we spending. The net ed spending would be just over 2% increase. The tax rate, I'm sorry, would be just over 2.1. 270%. That's a lot of information and a lot of numbers. But we just wanted to make sure that everyone was aware of how this works. What I'm going to do now, do you want me to do the interactive spreadsheet now? So I'll share my screen. I'll talk while you're checking. So the interactive budget worksheet is something that we share and it's a live spreadsheet where we want to we will type in various
046budget factors so that you all can see how that impacts ed spending, tax rates, factors that Tim will be plugging in our yields and the variance and what that does to our tax rate. The relevance for many of us is what is the impact of our ability to preserve staffing and programming? So again, these are factors that are not within our control, but we want to show you how when the figures change, what goes up and what goes down, because those have impacts on our budget. So the first variable, the spreadsheet right now is set as follows. The yield here, you know. The yield is 8553. That's a variable field. Tim, would you expand the view to just show the spreadsheet so that it's enlarged and then could we maybe enlarge the view so that
047folks are able to see better. So I followed it on your keyboard if you want to get rid of them. Url. And then if you go to view, you can just Or where it says 100% on that toolbar, increase that to like 125 maybe. Is that a little better? It's okay, okay. So when you hear us talk about what is the increase in the tax rate with various variables change. This is set up right now with the current yield. The next piece is how much of a discount do we get because of our Act 127 weights from last year so Because a 70 cent adjustment on that. The next series is last year's information for comparative purposes. And then we get down to this year's. Items. This 405-713 is Version three, the current version from
048the state of our pupil The CLA that violated discussed before being 74.45. That's one of the factors in the formula that gets divided by this new statewide adjustment factor. And so although the CLA is 74.45, the way that it's included in the new funding formula is you divide it by the statewide adjustment factor and it's 102.89. The next line is the average assessed value of a primary residence in South Burlington. And the average assessed value of a condo in South Bone. And this information comes from the city's tax department. Which we just got a few days ago. So 439, 937. Is your average. Now this is assessed value, not market value right 439-937 and for condo, it's 297, 520. So those are sort of the static inputs in those yellow boxes, which you can change
049to see what happens, which I'll do in a minute. So the expenditure number that we're putting forward tonight for fiscal year 26 is this 71.5 million dollar number. The revenue is 12.7. Neted spending, and I've shown the calculation methodology for all of these figures And this, if it's not on the website right now, we'll put it there because It's possible for you to just download. You can't use mine. You can download it And play with it yourself to see different scenarios. So our net spending is $58,770. Than that, it's been in pupil or simply number divided by the people count You get an equalized homestead property tax rate before any reduction in CLA, after pennies reduction in CLA. And so really, I think what people are most interested in Is what's the bottom line? What
050is my tax rate going to be under this scenario. General fund expenditures As I mentioned before, going up seven panel sets net spending is going up 13.89. Net ed spending per pupil is going up by 15.76. And the homestead property tax rate after cla with yield and pennies adjusted is 8.10%. That is… for a homestead owner in South Burlington who does not qualify for a property tax credit. And we have some information on that in a later slide. Below that, we have information about, okay, well, that's nice, Tim. So what does that mean for me? The next rows are showing what that means. For every $100,000 of the assessed value of your home. The first line is how much would you pay if your property was assessed at exactly $100,000, your ad property tax under
051this budget would be of this 1578 number. Which is $118 a year And just under $10 a month. It would increase from last year. Probably not very many of you have homes assessed at $100,000. So we also include what would it be for the average value condo which we talked about a lot. So for an average value condo, your current rate or your annual rate would be a little under $4,700 a year which is an annual increase of 351.75 and a monthly increase of 2931. And for the average valued primary residence your tax, your homestead property tax would be 69.42. Which represents an annual increase of $520 and a monthly increase of $4334. So these are the numbers that are in place As we used to sit here. With the inputs that the state has
052given us for pupil counts and yield. What can change? First of all, let's see what happens if we increase the spending. It's at 71.5. If you increase it to 72 million. All these numbers will change. And the tax rate increase goes up to 9.04%. What happens if you increase it to 75 million? The tax rate goes up by 14.8%. What happens if you lower it if you lower it to 70 million? The tax rate increase goes down to 5.21%. And so all of these formulas are just built into this spreadsheet and um I spend a lot of time in this spreadsheet to look at different scenarios. As we were going through the budget development process. It was almost continuous. So you were, well, what if we did this? What if we did that And every
053time we did this little what if. I would change that number and it would give me a different tax rate. So if we put it back to the current budget that we're presenting tonight. So we're back to 8.10%. But I'm sure at 8.0% increase. What ends up with the yield changes? So the yield currently is 8553. What if the yield goes up? To 8,700. It changes everything. The tax rate is now 6.19%. What happens if it goes up? To Nine. The actually will go way down to 2.5%. So the yield is really a critical input. Well, they're all critical, but the yield is especially critical Because when you go to the polls On March 4th, we're not going to know what the final yield is. The state will wait until all of the towns and
054cities of Vermont have passed their budgets, their school budgets. And only then will they know how much money does the education fund need to fund each town because the town is going to receive exactly what the voters voted for. The difference is how much are you going to pay for that, right? Through your tax rate. And so you know last year when there was a continuous changing of the law and the education funding, if any of you remember that story from last year, I mean, they completely changed things A week or two before town meeting Which dramatically changed our tax rates. Hopefully that won't happen again this year, but they will be tweaking this yield either up or down, which will have either a positive or negative impact on our tax rate. And we won't
055know. When we go to the polls on March 4th, we're not going to know. We're going to know what the yield is at that point in time. And I'll plug it into this spreadsheet and I'll tell you that if the yield is on March 4th. Well, it's going to be on july 1st. Then we'll know. But otherwise we won't. Same thing with the same thing with the average daily membership, which is 4057.13 If that goes up or down, it's going to change. The 8.10. If it goes, let's say we lose through these last minute calculations let's say it goes to 4060. I mean, that's a really small change. It's going to go down. Our tax rate will go down to 8.02%. What if it goes, it's not going to, I can tell you right now,
056it's not going to go on. The discussions right now are really around tweaking a relatively small number so that's That number is probably going to change, but I don't think it's going to change significantly. Although time will tell as soon as they tell us what the final version is. So the only thing that will change on the CLA is if they change the state adjustment factor. And that will change a lot of things. So this is just the tool we use to be able to look at different scenarios. And… It's very interactive. The yield could change and the LTW AWD could change. The state adjustment factor could change. And it's very unfortunate the way that the state of vermont aligns various activities relating to the education budget in consideration of when town meeting day is.
057Where most towns and cities vote on March 4th. Not all of them do. I think Essex, Laura, if I'm not mistaken, is in Napoleon. And that's probably something that will be discussed in more detail through these various commission and committees that are looking at the future state of education and education funding in Vermont. Is kind of the craziness of voting on March 4th on a On a expenditure budget. But not knowing what the tax rate is going to be at that time because of changes in these other Very well. I'll pause there. If you have any questions while we're here But this is what we use. This is our this is like This is my baby. This is my baby A day does not go by that I do not look at the spreadsheet because
058we're always looking at different scenarios. And every single time we think about, well, what if we do this instead of that? I will change the number and I'll have a different type of rate. And this is, as of tonight, this is where we stand. With our budget. Can we just see what would happen if the yield went down to like 75? 7,500. We're down to what? Like 7,500. Will I have to yield? The deal with them is $7,500. Then our tax rate would be 23.93%. Any other questions on the calculator itself? This doesn't take into account. We're nowhere near the excess spending threshold, even at 14. No, that's i mean I'm trying to limit the very many other complexities of the state. If this isn't complex enough. No, no, no, no, it's complex enough. But
059Tim's right that this year the state has reintroduced A component of the formula which it had in place before COVID, which is that It looks at the average Education spending per pupil. And then it tacks on a pretty large premium on that. You can go up quite a bit before you hit the um excess spending threshold, but what the excess spending threshold essentially is is that if a town is spending so much money on a net basis and taking a disproportionate amount of money out of the state education fund. There's a point at which you're penalized for that. And we're nowhere near the penalization point because we have uh and we've shown this in earlier presentations when we looked at comparisons of our ed spending versus even just our fellow neighbors in Cheney County. We
060have a relatively modest tax rate and a relatively modest net education spending number which is only skewed this year because of that $3 million surplus. But even taking that into account, we're nowhere near the excess spending threshold. Okay, so if we're okay with this, I'll stop sharing. Okay, so those are the budget highlights next budget worksheet And… The next slide. His notes on costume methodology. The next few slides are probably what most people are here for, which is how we are explaining the rationale and the impact of staffing changes. In our school district. So I just wanted to i just i just wanted to point out to people how we went about doing this because In many respects. The calculations that we're using for the budget are models. Because there is such a wide variety
061of scenarios What is the dollar impact of adding staff? And what is the dollar style? What is the dollar impact of reducing the staff? And there's two things I wanted you to get out of this slide. One is at the bottom of it, which is how much do we pay for health insurance benefits for employees? Because I don't think a lot of people understand this. We talk about it. We say it's going up 11.9%, but 11.9% of what, right? So this chart on the bottom of the page is showing you, and these are all state negotiated, this has absolutely nothing to do with Violet's not negotiating this. I'm not negotiating it. It's being negotiated at a state level. Depending on what Insurance policy benefit an employee selects Most of them use what's called the gold
062CDHP plan. And the first line here is what is the full premium and vi I just forget what the acronym means, but it's the vermont Education. It's the state, basically. There's range for if you're a single employee, there's a higher rate for if it's you and your spouse There's a different way if you are a parent and with a child or a single parent with a child or children and then a family which is In partnership. Basically. So you can see that the annual cost, these are all annual costs. So the annual cost of these premiums are listed on that first row between 14.8 thousand a year and over 40,000 a year for a family. The direct expense that the district pays. Of that is driven by both the collective bargaining agreements As well as
063other guidelines that are used by the state. And the state standard is that the school district will pay for 80% of that premium. Which is the case, if you look at the middle row, that is the case for educators. Those in the teachers union, the district is paying 80% of their insurance costs And we are on a sliding or ascending scale for the non for the union and non-union support staff where every year where every year the employee is paying 1% more than they did the year before. The idea was that it would be very detrimental to have that jump to 20% in one year, because that would be a very impactful financial a change for the employee's insurance costs. So for fiscal year 26, we're paying 85% of that total for for the union
064and non-union sports now. So like you can see In each of those cases, how much are we paying? And so you're going to have a situation, and we do have situations where For some of our employees. The amount of money we're paying for their insurance costs is as much or more than their base salary. Because that's because this insurance cost is not in any way related to your bank's salary. It's just related to what category of employee you are in the district. And what is your current rate for that? And so people sometimes say, well. How could this position cost so much money when it's like a junior position or an entry-level position or one of our lower paid positions that they will say, well, there's no way that this position could cost the district
065$75,000 when they're only making $40,000. This slide is showing you why that is the case. And so we've never really explained that before. We've talked about how expensive insurance is and how much is going up but When you look at the cost of an employee. It's way more than just their base salary. It's their insurance. It's the amount that the district needs to pay for Social Security tax and Medicare tax And child care tax. And working compensation tax. And so the cost of an employee is simply, it's not in any respect just their base salary there's If anything, these other expenses that the district has on the employee line can exceed their base salary. So is that clear? Okay. You're going to stop hearing from me for a little while. I'm going to turn it
066over to Kristen Romick, who's the executive director of education support systems. And my team is going to start walking through some of the specific staffing adjustments that we've been discussing that are incorporated in this budget. Thank you. Hi. Okay. So when we've been working on the proposed adjustments, it's important to note that these stem from the need to make significant cuts within legal policy and operational boundaries. These considerations include maintaining class sizes, adhering to our educational quality standards, and upholding agency of education designated equity supports. While proposing these cuts is incredibly challenging, our goal as an administrative and central office team has been to maintain staffing to the highest degree possible and preserve programming does not full restructuring. So if we start at the top, we've reduced district clerical staff and district leadership by days.
067With restructuring, we reduced our business office staff by 1.5. While we've made significant gains in the area of transportation this year, we do need to hire an additional two bus drivers. We're cutting our remaining instructional technology educator position. This means we will no longer have individual tech support as we make cuts at the middle and the high school level last year. This will eliminate our instructional technology educator model for the district. Gertrude Chamberlain, we're reducing FTE and keeping consistent across the district with the stipend position for our positive behavior interventions and supports coordinator. At our other two elementary schools, this is already a stipend position and therefore starting next year all of our people positions will be stipended. Across elementary schools, we are eliminating our instructional coaching model. As with all proposed cuts, our administrative
068team and central office team came together to make decisions that keep us in compliance. They do not impact class sizes, educational quality standards for our designated agencies. Of education equity support. It does have a significant impact on instructional leadership at the elementary level. It is important to know that while we made minimal elementary close cuts. This year, we made cuts last year that put us at the height of our class size. Due to budgetary cuts and for consistency, we are reducing 2.5 special education clerical assistants who are building specific. And lower structure to have one district special education assistant who will support all five buildings. Due to budget constraints, we reduced the KA coordinator position for the 2425 school year. However, we're proposing that we add an assistant special education director Our district is experiencing
069unprecedented special education needs compounded by significant reduction in community-based special education supports. In an earlier iteration, a K-12 program manager was identified as critical. Following feedback from the board community and staff, it has become clear that the district-wide special education support is necessary. This position has been restructured and renamed as assistant special education director to align with the practices of our neighboring districts. Many of which have both directors and assistant directors dedicated to special education. Some districts even have a staff director for each school. This edition reflects our shared understanding of the urgency of this need. And then with the CAS structure reinstated in the budget, our high school will continue to benefit from the instructional and leadership support of the special education CIS. We recognize the importance of leadership and support spanning our pre-K
070through 12th grade to meet the needs of all of our learners effectively. So I'm going to turn it over at this point. Oh, sorry. Not yet. One more. I apologize. We're restructuring the pre-K program by reducing two classroom teachers while maintaining student-staff ratios that align with our educational quality standards and practices in our neighboring districts. We're proposing the addition an additional classroom teacher at South Point, which is our alternative education program that was created in the summer of 23 for the 23-24 school year due to a substantial reduction in community programs. The addition of this position is cost neutral as it's funded by the tuition for attending student, I'm sorry, for attending South Point. We are proposing the addition of four general education paraeducators to proactively support students. With students moving into our district and
071needs changing, we are adding in three interventionists to support individualized student needs. Similar to the other reductions I noted, we're reducing the amount of days our social emotional coaches are working. And you'll see this across the remainder of the slides that discuss staffing adjustments specific to the buildings. We are also reducing the behavioral analyst position at Chamberlain by five days. At this point, I'll turn it back to Jody for additional proposed staffing adjustments. Before I continue with these additional proposed staffing adjustments, I would like to reiterate that when there are cuts being proposed, it is because we had to make them. It is in no way a reflection of how these individuals or the work that they do is valued. Rather, it represents balancing the need to make substantial cuts and maintaining compliance with legal
072policy and regulatory requirements. So at Rick Marcotte Central School, we are proposing reducing 1.0 FTE classroom teacher the impact of this would be increased class sizes. This is based on student enrollment data and we would remain in compliance with our class size policy. At Marcotte, there is also a proposal to reduce the social emotional learning coaches contract days in alignment with the other elementary schools and that would the impact of that would be that some summer work to proactively plan and be ready for the start of school would no longer be able to happen. At Orchard, there's a proposed reduction of 1.0 FTE for a classroom teacher. Again, the impact would be increased class sizes, and this is based on student enrollment data, and we would remain in compliance with their class size policy. At
073Orchard, there's also a reduction of 0.2 of a registrar 0.5 of a library media tech position the impact of that would mean that students would have less access to the library collection during school day. And the school will also require additional support from the district IT department help desk. At Orchard, there's also a proposed reduction of 0.1 FTE for a school counselor. This will still maintain compliance with the EQS staffing ratio guidelines and you also will notice down below that there would be an addition at orchard that became your facilitator as well that could support some of that work. And an orchard also has the reduction of the SEL coach contracted days to that impact would be consistent with the other elementary schools of that proactive summer programming in order to be ready for the
074start of the school year would no longer occur. At Turtle Middle School, there would be a proposed reduction of a 0.5 FTE general ed clerical assistant, and that would require restructuring of the support and assistance model to recognizing cost savings there. There also is a proposal for a reduction of 0.6 FTE for a STEAM teacher. This is… an extra rotation of an exploratory class that now runs opposite abandoned chorus. And so the numbers of students available to participate in this has decreased. There is a 1.0 FTE Tech Ed teacher remaining at Tuttle, and that does give every student access to that tech ed. And there also is the proposal to the proposal to create or add a 1.0 board certified behavior analyst position And that is required behavior support to meet a student's IEP service
075plans. And now I am going to pass it over to Monica DeRoche, the Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Anti-Racism, and Social-emotional Learning. Thank you, Jody. And I'll reiterate the message that my colleagues have shared earlier around these cuts being devastating and the need to make cuts in being in in that turbulence right now. So I'm going to be talking about the cuts at our high school. First is the ninth grade dean. This reduction is part of the social emotional learning team. Comprised of counselors, the substance abuse prevention coordinator and assistant principals. That all partner to support students. We were at able to add back leadership at the high school level in response to our last budget. Assistant principals will be kept on 260 day contracts and the addition of the addition curriculum area supervisors will
076happen. And that left us with the need to still make cuts. The next is general education paraeducators and the elimination of paraprofessionals reduced in-class support to students. These reductions are general education and do not impact what's required. By students IEPs. We'll be eliminating a math teacher and an English teacher, which will result in increased STEM class sizes. And this was based on enrollment data and we will still be in compliance with class size requirements. This will not impact or this will not reduce any course offerings. The next is the Japanese, the elimination of our Japanese teacher and program. And this was also based on enrollment information. Students will still have language choices that range from Spanish to German. The next is the elimination of after school libraria Media Technology Support. For students. The elimination of
077the substitute coordinator. This position is unique to the high school and we will work with the high school to plan how sub coordination will operate next year. The next is the EST coordinator. And this role will shift to a stipend position. We will continue education. Thank you. Education support team. Plans and plans through a stipended position similar to our elementary and middle schools. The reduction of the reduction 0.4 of a career development center coordinator will impact student exploration of career opportunities. We will continue strong partnerships with career and tech centers such as CTE and BTC. Next is half the elimination of half of the guidance admin assistant Which will reduce administrative support in our guidance and counseling office. The reduction of a school counselor will increase counselor caseloads. We will maintain compliance of caseloads through
078the education quality standards as the substance the Substance Abuse Prevention Coordinator um and school clinicians count favorably towards those ratios. The next is the elimination of the big picture program. This was based on enrollment data as big picture enrollment has been consistently declining. And finally. The reduction from four grade level lead advisors to two grade level lead advisors, but 0.2 of their FTE. So a total of 0.4 FTE, which will impact the advisory model. Finally, there's obviously other expense adjustments that are not captured through full-time equivalent staff. So first, Superintendent Nichols has talked extensively about our aging facilities and the need to build our capital reserve fund to proactively address and save up for facility needs. We are also adding a K-8 teacher leader stipend of stipends in the amount of 56,000 total. This is
079not meant to replace at all our instructional coaches. This is meant to show value to teach your voice and keep some type of leadership structure at the elementary level and middle level for teacher voice. We will be adding multilingual programming support in the amount of $132,000. This is currently funded by a federal grant and we do not perceive having access to this grant in the future. In addition, the Agency of Education has also anticipated decrease of federal funding and overall grant money for districts. There will be broad reductions in district school and special education budgets in non-contractual professional development, curricular materials, conferences, equipment, general supplies. And this is to try to preserve as many staff as possible. The reduction of facilities includes the downgrading of custodial services and cleaning standards in schools and central office
080and deferring building maintenance when we can. The reduction of information technology expenses ranging from printer all the way to education software and finding efficiencies in that, looking at redundancies in software um and consolidating where we can. And finally, the reduction of expenses in athletics totaling $140,000, which includes the elimination of night games for fall, winter, and spring sports. And cutting programming. In JV football, fall cheer, JVB boys soccer, JVB boys basketball, JVB baseball, gymnastics. Uniforms, equipment, general supplies. All right. So we greatly value teacher leadership and in budgetary constraints, we've had to have hard conversations. And so… the curriculum area supervisors have been reinstated the elementary instructional coaches have been eliminated and in an effort to preserve some form of teacher voice at the elementary level. We are… we are moving towards stipended teacher, leader
081positions. And this is work that a lot of our teacher leaders already do in our elementary schools after work, after school or during prep time that's unpaid. So we are trying to, our intention is to really value that time. It is in no way to take the spot of our instructional coaching at the elementary level. Which is being lost. It's important to note that curriculum area supervisors are required in the teacher's collective bargaining agreement and 0.4 of their FTE are devoted to their CAS responsibilities, which range from teacher leadership all the way to instructional support, supervision and evaluation. And… in a variety of capacities. And again, this is not a value statement of who should have more teacher leaders versus not. This is just information about where we're at right now with the numbers. And
082then finally, the collective bargaining agreement is negotiated by union leadership and the board. All right. I will pass it back to Jody. So this slide is an overview of some of the features of this proposed budget. It does include additional special education support, which is necessary due to increased demands in special ed. It preserves nursing services for students, which was a potential reduction that was discussed in December. It preserves the curriculum area supervisor leadership model, which will provide instructional support and teacher leadership at high school. It preserves multilingual supports and this is an area that we were identified as a need of equity support with and also it has had increasing demands and needs over the years. It keeps assistant principals at a 260-day contract rather than reducing to 220, which was a potential reduction
083discussed in December. It does make leadership reductions in pre-K. The ninth grade dean, a PBS coordinator, and a transportation coordinator There are reductions in athletics and co-curricular offerings. There are reductions to pre-kindergarten staffing as well. This will require restructuring of departments to find efficiencies and cost savings. Including the business office pre-K program, special education, and transportation, which will result in changes to roles and responsibilities. And this proposed budget also results in the elimination of instructional support. At the elementary and middle levels, instructional support was eliminated at the middle school last year. And also, uh. Instructional technology education that also was reduced last year to FTE were reduced last year And this would eliminate that support entirely. This will mean that K-8 teachers will no longer be able to access instructional or instructional technology support. And
084that high school teachers will also lose the instructional technology support entirely. And now I will pass it back. Thank you, Jodi. So over the last few years, we have made consistent reductions in staffing. We have worked over the last few years to find as many efficiencies as possible to maintain staff and to continue programming as we're incredibly proud of our robust programming. We are now at a point where we can no longer go without more deep cuts. This budget represents a reduction of just under 15 FTEs. Fte stands for full-time equivalent, so this would be a staff member. We would be looking at running the district with 15 less positions this year than next year than this year. I want to take some time to explore our expenditures by category so that folks can see
085the big chunks of funding. The largest part of this graph is showing salaries and benefits for staff. Which is about $53.5 million. This represents about 75% of our costs. Of the proposed $71 million budget. This is before negotiations have been finalized. As you may recall, we're both the support staff and teachers contracts are expiring at the end of year fiscal year 26 The next category here, the transfer to the capital reserve fund. This is a quarter of a million dollars, which we'll put in the savings account to address the significant facilities needs. As you all know, this is a small drop in the bucket, but it's important that we continue to be proactive and to plan for future years and not just look at this fiscal year. We're seeing neighboring school projects go for $250
086million, but it is the responsible move here for us not to be short-sighted in this budget cycle. Time to plan ahead. Other categories, we have debt and miscellaneous expenditures, which is bond. We have the bond principal and interest payments here. Property and capitalized equipment. This is things like leases for buses. Computers, our vehicles, supplies is inclusive of instructional, administrative supplies, custodial supplies. It's all items that are not considered to be equipment, such as software and maintenance agreements Other purchased services is inclusive of tuition to private schools. Our CTEs or Career Technical Education Centers, pre-K, which is Act 166 funds. And things like liability insurance. Purchased property services are services that are provided by outside vendors. So those who are not employed by our district Not employees. And they are to operate, repair and maintain property
087which is owned by the district, such as utilities and buildings repair and maintenance. And finally, purchase professional and technical services. These are services that are performed by persons or firms with specialized skills and knowledge, such as auditors, therapists. Audiologists, outside educational services, which are not considered tuition. And I'm happy to, I can provide some big buckets of the actual money. You see the percentages here, but I'll share salaries and benefits is about $53.5 million. Transfer to capital reserve fund is $250,000. Debt and miscellaneous expenditures is about $4.4 million. Property and capitalized equipment is $273,500. Supplies. Just under 3 million. Other professional services just under 5 million, purchased property services, 1.7 million, and purchase professional and technical services is $3.5 million. Happy to provide those exact figures at any time for folks interested. So that's a
088breakdown of the expenditures by category as proposed for the FY26 budget. I want to share the highlights here that have been referenced in a number of the slides that Mr. Jarvis shared. These are what we would consider to be the most important budgetary factors that you all will see when you are at the polls on town meeting day. So the homestead tax rate increase With the current yield from the December 1st tax letter is an 8.10 homestead tax rate increase. This gives us a corresponding budget of $71,507,854. This is an increase from our current $68 million budget. Our per pupil and spending is 14,486. And this is an increase from this year per pupil of 15.76% in largely due to that bond expenditure that we discussed. But of course, other things, healthcare. And so on.
089I want to provide some information to really bring this to a place that's plain for a more simple for folks to understand of, you know, what do these figures really look like? What does this mean for me and my family's financial situation? So I will describe that on this slide. These costs are based on two factors. One, the average assessed values of condos and homes in Vermont. And two, the ensuing cost per $100,000 of assessed value. So I'll provide a few examples and I'm happy to talk through this at any time as well. So the Ed property tax paid per $100,000 of assessed value is $1,578. Three cents. This is an increase annually of $118.23. And per month, it's an increase of $9.85. That is per $100,000 of assessed value. So if you're The average
090condo in South Burlington is just under $300,000. So the average cost of the Condo in South Burlington, the average tax rate, again, is going to be $4,694.94. So the average valued condo would be, owner would be experiencing a $351 increase annually. Which would be an additional $29 per month for the average condo owner. In South Burlington. If we now look at average increases for the average homeowner, which is estimated by the City of South Burlington to be 439, $1,000. We are looking at the average tax paid, again, for the average value primary home. We're only looking at primary homes here. This is just under $7,000. And that equates to an increase of about $520 per month. Which is an increase of about $43, excuse me, $520 increase per year, which is an increased monthly of
091about $43. Important to note here is that statewide, about two thirds of property owners pay a reduced tax rate based on income. This rate is set at $139,500. So if a home makes less than that, one would be eligible for this income sensitivity based tax reduction. In South Burlington, just under 53% of our residents Are eligible for this property tax credit. And would pay less than the tax rates listed above. And that tax credit, the average tax credit in South Burlington is just under $2,000 per eligible homestead. So I think that's important to share in tandem with the tax rates. So, you know, given all of this I want to end by saying, well, by first expressing a great deal of gratitude to everyone here and listening and to who has contributed in the budget
092process. As you have seen, this has been A really difficult process because of the financial situation in which we find ourselves So I was having to make reductions due to factors that are not within our control. So with this, we've strived to develop a budget which is going to allow us to achieve our ends, which is in support of all students. Through this process, supporting our valued staff, our students, families, and communities is critically important. Due to the impacts of Act 127 and our use of surplus funds last year, significant reductions are required. This budget was developed to adhere to regulatory and legislative requirements and to provide the required equity supports And come at a cost that our great community can in fact sustain and support. I want to thank our principals, assistant principals, our
093directors, our central office staff for their incredible time and care and work in preparing this budget process. And as I said earlier, they didn't get any reprieve because as soon as we passed this budget, we knew that we had to prepare for this year. I want to thank you all for your continued support. And I've linked our budget website here for anyone who wants to look at more information. And I want to thank you all. Thank you. Does the board want to take our recess now that you're going to ask questions and then complete the recess? Take a nap and then come back. If we could do five and probably stretch into six or seven All right, so you will take the recess and we'll come back at 7.32. Excuse me? We're going to resume
094the meeting now, so if you could end your conversations, please. Thank you. All right, so at this time, we're going to move to board discussion and questions, and then we'll move to public comment in the room first and then online. Are we ready for board discussion? I'd like to start. Can I ask a question, Violet, about the japanese program. So I'm just wondering like My Japanese was singled out for languages yep yeah uh so the question is why is Japanese on a possible reduction list? When we looked at these, we looked at enrollment of every single course in the high school and all enrollment in the pre-K to 12 levels as well. We have offered Japanese, Spanish, Latin, and French, and we have really tried to maintain language programming in consultation with the high school
095leadership team and in looking at enrollment for Japanese courses and consultation with the high school CAS for language. Reducing Japanese was the recommendation. We are. As I understand, this was shared by a principal, we are the only high school who offers Japanese. We felt that Not accurate? Essex offers Japanese. All right. Good to know. So we stand corrected on that. You know, making programmatic reductions is something we never like to do One of the reasons that we are so attractive to school choice students is because of our robust programming. When we were able to bring back CAS and nursing and assistant principals at the high school level, we had to try to, as a team. Work to find additional cost saving measures, trying to be mindful of presenting a budget that can support our students
096and you know With that, we think about our students families abilities to pay for things like housing and heat and food on the table. So part of supporting the whole student is looking at tax rates. That was the rationale there. Thank you. Just follow up on the fact that it seems like Are there opportunities where we can I'll share with other districts like, hey, Essex is doing uh japanese why can't if there's not enough support why can't we yeah great question. So this has been a question all along of like if this is reduced, then how will X be provided? And when I shared the slide where I showed the FTE reductions, the staffing reductions over time, part of that is We are going to approach a point where things will not be available. We
097are in a position where we do have many supports that our neighbors still don't have. When we look at language programming, we don't have a plan yet in that we don't have a board approved or a voter approved budget. Once we have a voter approved budget, it's working with our school-based leadership teams are going to work together and central office for support in deciding how we're going to continue to support students, right? So with that. Boces, our Board of Cooperative Services, are something that Vermont is now toe dipping into. And I have engaged in and have reached out to the high school administration to work with neighboring districts on how we can try to partner to co-op to provide things like Japanese, right? We're trying to be creative in other options too. Vermont Learning Collaborative.
098We have our current high school Japanese teacher is a cooperating teacher for BTVLC. And so our students can so our students have access to languages through that. I don't want to sound like everything's going to be fine because this is a real finite reduction. What I am saying is that we are going to do everything we can, which will be a heavy lift for our building administrators as well to to support our students and to continue to keep programming robust. Again, tuition students account for about 20% of our student population at the high school. And so that's critical revenue for keeping program in one and at that robust level. That was actually my question. When we're looking at like enrollment projections, are those including the people, the 20%? Coming in from other communities? Yes. So
099question is, and if you can't hear me in the back, just like, you know, wave your hands, indicate to me and somehow that I need to speak louder um Thanks, Kevin. I'm sorry, Karen. The enrollment projections do include tuition students at the high school. The fiscal year, the 2023 and 2024 are the current actuals. Are we sort of doing just a round robin one question and then circling back around okay um just one question i have as i look at the uh I just want to say I have a slide deck. Thank you for clarifying the cost of the health care. That's the first time I've seen it broken out like that. And that was very helpful. My question around that is, as we look at the overall increase in spending that we're looking at.
100That 12% health care increase, do you have any idea what overall percentage of that total increase that is It's about a $2 million. Increase in the overall value. So it's a big chunk of the difference last year's budget or current year's budget so we're going from a 66 million dollar budget to 71. You're saying 2 million of that two million of that is the health care? I mean, it's a moving number because routine coding. Yeah, sure. But it's a significant increase. Okay. Wow. Okay. Thank you. Any other board discussion? I feel like they've asked all the questions. Just a dismal question. I have a couple, just one or two comments. Thank you so much. Sorry, I'm flipping through my pages here. I want to say during the last meeting I did comment on ensuring we
101have the behavior specialist in the nursing, so I'm glad to see that that's backing i think those are really critical positions. I know it's tough all the way around, but I'm Kind of excited to see those back in. One thought I have is for the board in general. We're looking at some significant cuts that are going to impact many of the teachers, not just from a job perspective, but in how they do their jobs. And as we look at these cuts, I think it's incumbent on the board that, you know, as We go forward into next year to work with the superintendent to understand the overall impact of these cuts and to track what is being done to mitigate those and then how do we ensure that we are either bringing stuff back in during
102the next as we converse in the next budget cycle. But what I don't want to see happen is that we talk about it right now. We cut a bunch of positions and then we move on, right? So I'm sure I'm hoping there is some sort of Tracking plan and analysis in place to understand these impacts and how we might address this in future budget sightings. Yeah, we're going to have to continue to look at funding available. The analysis ranges you know from qualitative to quantitative enrollment data and courses, enrollment data in our systems um we are, you know, we have abilities to look at Broad variety of social emotional data and we annually in our data workbook report social emotional trends and academic data which you can directly correlate back to staffing and programming. So
103those provide some good quantitative measures. We also can look at staffing and retention rates is an important factor. So just a few, but absolutely. Part of the significant frustration, I think that is really shared by many in the room tonight is there's an understanding that mathematically We have a finite amount of resources being given to us by the agency. But the real impacts Are painful when the rubber hits the road and when it's our students and our classrooms and our professions and I think that a lot of the reductions can't actually be expressed in in many of the ways that we measure them, right? The qualitative measure, the experience of our students and our staff Is something that is something you know we can say in board meetings. And I think many as a career
104educator, I mean, how many folks in this room I've had conversations with many folks in this room who said like my spouse doesn't even understand or, you know, my partner whoever and It is. You know we've prepared a long presentation and shared it, but there is no adequately expressing the impact that this will have on our system. Just like following the tracking idea, I think another piece that's really frustrating is looking at that like both the standardized testing data and the social emotional data and looking to see, oh, is what we're doing working? Is our continuous improvement plan are those goals working Well, it's really hard to say because our resources just continue to diminish so what do those numbers actually mean? And tracking that you know tracking that you know perhaps people who are
105just tuning in now are saying, well, why would I pass a budget when your numbers just keep declining, right? But you have to have the full picture and it's just I don't know when the right time is to say this, but I gave you a bad number. This year's cost of health insurance is about 7.6 million and the 12% increase is about a little over $900,000. Okay, not $2 million. Still significant. Okay. Thank you, Tim. I appreciate that. I guess just one quick follow, Milan. I totally get looking at it from a quantitative perspective. I'm also trying to ensure that we somehow track and engage with the teachers to understand, you know, there's a lot that anecdotally needs to be captured, I believe. And what are the Whatever the successes you will have as you
106find the new normal right because you're going to have to find the new normal. And I go back to Noah's comment about the work has to go someplace or the work just doesn't get done. And I really want the board to kind of understand on an ongoing basis What have we succeeded in doing when we made these cuts? Where did we find efficiencies and continue to you know It's because I think there's going to be a lot of hard work going into this, but I also know that we're going to lose. And I just want to understand what that is going forward and not rely on a survey that really is going to be hard to dig into. So if there's a way for us to somehow capture that or track it, or maybe we
107have it on an agenda and discuss it every once in a while. I only have one more question if that's okay. Talking about the CAS. I don't recall from the cba I don't know if you said it's required to have cast is that is it a requirement in the CBA or is it just there from a Paid perspective like if you have a state house this is what they will be paid. The district, the board could operationally RIF, the CAS. Ftes. The CAS structure articulated in the cba state CIS responsibilities and that the cas role will be 40% of the CIS FTE that they'll receive an additional eight and a half percent stipend for that. For that 0.4% time. For the leadership role. Right. So the options for the speaker for is we couldn't rift
108those positions we could choose not to fill them going forward or it's a contrary i just want to make sure because i heard the word required And I'm not quite sure if that's required. Cas is outlined, the CIS structure has guidelines in it discussed in the CBA, which pertain to pay and FTE. Should the for that to be modified the modified union and the board would have to negotiate that out. However, operationally, technically, they could be RIFT. The issue would be what you just described is where does the work go? Who does the work where you know Thank you. 8.5% of the base salary. So if the base salary is $100,000, it would be an additional eight and a half thousand dollars on top of that for the CAS responsibility. I'm sorry, I have one
109more really quick question, Tim, or maybe Violet can answer this. The expenditures by category yes those categories are those the universal categories that we're supposed to be using? I read them right out of the chart of accounts. Okay, great. I was hoping they would be this year. I will say that Because we have adopted the new uniform chart of accounts it's challenging at every expense line to say apples versus apples, 25 versus 26, because there's been a reclassification Of a lot of expenses. Which is why we're not really showing the comparison to the current budget as much as it is like this would be the new budget breakdown. That's part of digitizing our financial systems and cleaning up, which has allowed us to really find efficiencies and maintain the staffing and program we found, we
110realized a lot of revenue possibilities and savings associated with that you know cleaning up and it's been a process that This started my first year as superintendent it had the process had failed and been abandoned once and then we restarted it and um the financial software went live one year ago, but we've still been you know really the heavy lift didn't end when it went live. So again, huge thanks to our business office staff and HR staff. That's been a massive project. But it's been good work and it's allowed us to provide increased accuracy in our financial reporting. And to budget. Most effectively. Thank you, sir. Any further board discussion? People are here. I think we will thank you and excuse you to our space for people for coming up. Very much. So we're going
111to move to the public comment portion of our budget agenda item. But I get a feel with raised hands how many people would like to comment. So what I'd really like to ask is that as you listen to people comment, if you hear your point already made, please do not come up and make a redundant point. And if you could keep your comments to two minutes, that would be great. And we conclude with public comment in the room, we will move to public comment online. And you can signify you'd like to make a comment online by raising your hand. When you come up in the room, please state your name for the record. Hi there, my name is Jeffy Duncan. I'm an early childhood special educator in the preschool program here in South Burlington. You
112will see many of my colleagues here tonight to advocate on behalf of our program. I am here to describe the demographics within the preschool classrooms in the district and in the district in order to reflect how essential the current model is to the success of the South Burlington School District's youngest learners. Our current model is to have one licensed classroom teacher, one special educator, one speech and language pathologist, and one paraeducator in the classrooms, which serves students ages three to five years old. Our three classrooms currently serve 69 students, 40% of whom receive special education services. This number does not include the students that receive special education services through our outreach program. The number of students receiving special education services within the classrooms continue to rise through initial special education evaluations, which leads to eligibility.
113Approximately one third of our students in our preschool classrooms are dual language or multi-language learners. Because we are considered separate from the K-5 schools with the current model, we are unable to access ELL services, guidance, or counseling services. Therefore, these additional job responsibilities are already falling onto the classroom teachers and special educators in order to bridge the gaps that exist within our current system today. Eliminating two classroom teacher positions within the program is eliminating 20% of our staff. It is important to note that decreasing the classroom teacher role will leave several key components of education undone. This includes but is not limited to curriculum planning and data collection and documentation as these are not in the contracts of the staff that would be remaining within the classroom teaching positions. Research shows that 90% of the
114child's brain is developed by age five. By cutting interventions at an early age, we will be underserving our most vulnerable students. This is going to have a profound ripple effect on the K-12 system. I urge you to consider keeping the classroom model in order to support our youngest, most vulnerable students. Thank you for your time and consideration. Good evening. My name is Carrie from Soccer. I'm a South Rurlington community member. And an early childhood special educator in our crucible program. At a time when the federal and state government recognized the importance and impact of early childhood education and are investing in initiatives. We as a district are proposing to cut two of the three of our preschool classroom teacher positions from our district preschool team. Under the title of prepaid restructuring. There has been little
115to no transparency about what this means for our district preschool classrooms. The only change that has been shared is that the current early childhood special educator to assume the role of the classroom teacher. Our district has two separate job descriptions for both the special educator and the classroom teacher. Given that these two professional positions are both FTEs, we are left to wonder how to maintain quality best practice compliance with special education laws and DOE child care licensing regulations the responsibility of the education and assessment for up to 32 students each day And the provision of special education services and case management for up to 16 students each day. We are also left to wonder if this restructuring would happen at other grade levels. Our preschool classrooms serve many of our most vulnerable and historically marginalized
116students in the district. Preschool is often overlooked and disregarded broadly. Even on the district website, it states that there are five total schools with no mention of preschool. Similarly, while there are important statistics about the success of our students, there is no mention of the diversity of our student body population in terms of race, home languages, or other identities often ignored. Eliminating classroom teachers in preschool is in direct contrast with what was shared earlier around programming. Preserved through compliance and law. Cuts to pre-K will directly impact the social emotional learning. I'm sorry, we're at time are you almost done? Yes. Last sentence. Social-emotional learning, our ELL students, and special education services in our preschool classrooms. Are we allowed to sit together or is that against the rules? I don't know the playbook, but we want
117people to be comfortable A team presentation. We do co-teach. It's very effective. Hi, my name is Arielle Powers and I'm the Early Development Special Educator at Rickmore Cotton School. I'm here today to address deep concerns regarding the proposed preschool staff reductions. Act 166 provides universal access to publicly funded pre-K education. This ensures a free preschool experience for children in our district who might not otherwise accessible. When proposed staff cuts are South Arlington preschool program is experiencing a 20% staffing decrease of highly qualified educators. And I need to quote unquote restructure. When we talk about special education supports, with our current model, we are able to serve 36 students on IEPs. Of those, 18 are students with complex special needs. For example, students with Down syndrome and autism based on the surrounding district models, would these
118proposed staff cuts and program restructuring, we will only be able to serve 24 students on IEPs. And six of which are students with complex needs. This leaves 20 students on IETs who will need to access preschool through outside programs. Which we all know is extremely limited. This also means that we will have that 67% of our students with complex needs are going to be displaced from our programming. This type of restructuring will cause a lot of up to $116,000, $16,000 of Act 1766 funding that we could be receiving. The community has clearly stated that they want to preserve student-facing positions when considering budget cuts. The new budget includes hiring a district clerical special ed assistant for $71,000. And an assistant special education director for $180,000 while cutting two preschool teachers, which caused the district over
11980,000 less. What are the implications of spending more money a year on two non-essential, non-student facing administrative level positions while cutting two highly qualified educators who directly support the needs of our students and families while providing the community exactly what they're asking for. You're going to restart the clock, right? I am. Good. Our district has advertised the demolition of our program as restructuring. And now my fiance is calling me wondering where I am. Restructuring presents a dual meeting for spreading our educators thin and decreasing supports and services, whether or not that is transparent to the families we serve. Because of the cuts to the general education teachers, the peers in our classroom will not be getting the support they need. And while administrators may think that students are getting IEP services, we know our special
120educator and SLP will be so spread thin running the classroom that the high quality and legal services students are obligated to have will not occur. Your decisions are affecting every single student and family in our program. We're standing here as a staff then we know we will not be able to do our jobs legally and ethically. The education of 88 students is being sacrificed for central office positions. When I started, I had two supervisors. The table back there continues to grow. Today at 9 a.m, our director validated we would not be able to serve 88 students through our classrooms. She presented models from other districts that serve 10 kids per class. And one intensive special needs student, which means we would significantly be decreasing the supports we're able to provide for those students. As it
121stands right now, tomorrow. We have seven classroom students who legally qualify for interventionist support. We are meeting the needs of those students without those seven interventionists. How are seven interventionists a more responsible option than two preschool teachers when we can't hire them and my students aren't getting the education they deserve, I take pride in knowing our team stood up here tonight fighting for the fundamental rights of our most vulnerable students, the students you refer to in your mission statement. And when we saw our budget presentation, the big reveal. This is what we saw. To administrative positions affecting all of these students. So I hope you listen to the community emails you received, the parent voices of all different types of families and students. And you take this into consideration tonight. Thank you. My name is
122Elizabeth Rogers, and I actually have four children in the South Village Wellington School District. Becca, who's in fifth grade, Logan's at third Alexandra is in pre-K3 and Evelyn is in pre-4. I'm a member of the community. I ran the fun run at Orchard. I coach my kids basketball team. So I'm here to just chat. I don't have anything prepared except for the pictures of my kids in their pre-K classrooms. And they are thriving. Evelyn was in pre-K last year as a pre-K three and This little girl can write her alphabet. And I do believe that we actually just assessed her and she might actually be on an IEP in the upcoming months. I'm not totally sure, but it's something that maybe would have gone unnoticed if it wasn't for these staff members. Which is really
123great. I guess my general question for the board would be, are we making these reductions in the good of the general population is our question. And forward-facing positions towards students. Are really important to the parents. And… seeing that there would be class size increases at Orchard and general concerns me. Or, you know, things that have, we have pride in our school You know, sports. Cutting things like that. Childcare is really hard to get. Seeing that I've had four kids go through system and things change all the time. So those forward-facing positions and people who really care about your kids are really hard to find. So I want to say thanks to the pre-K team, thanks to the orchard team who are helping to teach my kids and I really want to keep it that way.
124So these decisions that you're making are really affecting our family. Our kids And, you know, we have a special kid that's time for us. Just in your email. I don't know. I'm Cindy Tan. I'm a resident and I've been teaching here for 37 years. So since the concept of instructional coaches was introduced in South Burlington, I've utilized them to improve instruction for students to support my classroom during assessment periods To organize data and to differentiate instruction. Over the years, the job of instructional coach has evolved with many additional responsibilities makes the expectations being added. Sally Zimmer, our instructional coach, provides support to our entire school in a myriad of ways. She meets twice a month with the building principal to discuss priority areas for the school and to help with the coordination of day-to-day operations
125of the building. She meets at least twice a month with Jodi to coordinate the implementation of our new literacy program and to discuss the local common assessment plan, Act 139, VDAP. And to ensure consistency across the three elementary schools, she creates Google Docs and facilitates all five progress monitoring meetings throughout the year. These documents are what help us to identify student needs And he also ensures that all assessments have been completed within the timeframe. She holds individual weekly meetings with teaching staff to support planning, implementation, answer questions, and to help with differentiation of lessons. She facilitates TLCs this year, which were highly focused on our new CKLA program. She offers six to eight week coaching cycles Which have been especially helpful to our newer teachers or teachers who have switched roles. She supports special educators
126by providing resources for instruction and ensuring accommodations for students during assessment times and also brainstorms ideas for lessons and things and how to differentiate. She supports implementation of the new programs. We have illustrative math at the elementary level. We have CKLA. We have a lot going on with very little prep time for the teachers. With the addition of the new CKL program. And all of those things I've listed above, it is really having an instructional coach seems to sensible at the elementary level. If coaches are cut. All of the things that I've just mentioned will no longer happen. There is no one to do them. One or two. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Alexa Scott. My colleagues and I, you guys can stand up, my colleagues and I are
127here to empathize the importance of retaining the instructional coach position at RMCS. Over my 19 years of teaching, I have relied on our instructional coach, Paula Jensel, for coaching cycles, student assessment analysis, and reflecting on my own teaching practices. I understand that the board faces difficult decisions tonight, but it's crucial to recognize the impact these decisions will have on our students. Our instructional coach plays a vital role in supporting both teachers and students. She meets weekly with grade levels to plan math, literacy instruction and sharing alignment and consistency across the school. She finds resources and troubleshooting solutions for new programs and technology. She prepares and reviews protocols for assessments, making testing more efficient and data actionable. She facilitates data analysis for assessments like the VTCAP and supports targeted interventions. She works directly with students during
128wind blocks and math intervention times, leading to measurable improvements in proficiency. The list I provided highlights just some of the key responsibilities our instructional coach handles. I hope you've received my email last night, which I included 24 more bullet points outlining more of the task she completes. As Noah and Tim said, who will do this work? The other part of the story that this list does not tell is the culture that our instructional coach has helped develop in our school, a culture where teachers open their doors to learn new practices, take on challenges. Make changes and grow as professionals. The proposed budget for next school year currently keeps nine CIS positions at the high school. Thus allocating around $400,000 to instructional and teacher leadership models at the high school level. While the elementary school, the
129board is allocating only $36,000 across three school buildings. As stipends for instructional models and leadership. This is extremely inequitable for our teachers. And more importantly for our students. Staff and community members make the assumption the funds and supports are equitably distributed in a pre-K through 12 system. If the district truly values and expects academic access. Support for teachers and improved learning outcomes across all grade levels Why is the district not using funds for all grade levels. Thank you. I'm a student at South Longering High School and I'm part of the day for sure program I, my entire life, have struggled with school. I don't you know fit into the typical mold of a kid going through school i don't Put in my old routine. Education system, I guess. I'm not I don't typically think of
130the people I think I've been told. Through my school career, I've been told I'm stupid and I'm not smart and I don't understand things because I never went up or whatever. And big picture has helped me evolve as a human being and evolve my self-esteem and my potential as a person. I've been doing a bunch of cool things. I actually see a future for myself where I can do these awesome things. I'm playing a little bit agriculture in the future and I have been this year, just this year, I've been going around, I've been talking to a couple kids about pesticides like classrooms and the state I'll be going and presenting about pesticides. I'm helping run A statewide learning summit thing. I'm sure many other kids have gone through like typical struggles with me. My
131sister is in eighth grade and she's planning on doing next year if the budget doesn't pass, she won't be able to. And I'm scared for her. I'm scared for how that's going to affect her and how she's not going to be able to blossom in the way I've seen so many big pictures. I'm also scared for myself. I don't know if I'm going to like thrive next year if the budget doesn't pass. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do my best and do what I need to do to To continue by futurizing. Successful person. I said, I said. Powerful member of the community. I think that I have the potential as well as so many other students in big picture we have big picture we have big dreams, we have big
132goals and we would be able to accomplish them with that big picture i think You know, it's like okay My name is Kay Rose. And i am a sophomore here at South Burlington High School in the big picture program. I want you to hear us fully. We are students we are the future and we have the power to make great change. I come to you tonight to honor my love for learning. Not to ask you why, but to tell you why. I'm here to share with you why the big picture program matters to me and all of my peers. Why it has saved me and why programs like this may be key to saving our future. One of the biggest challenges in modern education is artificial intelligence. In its most basic form, it is a
133tool that can compile quotes, data, and information, saving us time and energy. But with our current model of education. More and more students are putting less time, thought, and passion into their work. The way we give and receive knowledge is becoming stale and lifeless with the rise of AI tools. As stated by Tulum University in October of 2024, with the emergence of artificial intelligence, this evolution has accelerated dramatically, demanding fundamental redesign. Of our education system and educational approaches and priorities. The education system as we know it was on the verge of immense change, as you all know. With programs like Big Picture paving the way for new ideas and solutions. In a program like this one, you can't just have an AI generate hours of community experience, weeks of personalized research, and that moment of
134realizing This is what I love. I recently experienced this in my own work out in the cold December snow with my camera And my gut. I interviewed community members in my rural town about what brings community together and what strengthens our community relationships during hard Winter times. It was eye-opening. Never would I have imagined this opportunity would come along at age 15 for me to make a multimedia journalism project that will be published. That reflects my understanding of community and the perspectives of so many people, so many Vermonters Yeah, I'm sorry, that's time. Thank you. Bye. No two people think alike. We must all be taught the same way in this system. It doesn't make sense. Without the big picture program, the South Burlington District may be condemned to another decade of generalized education that
135suits few and holds back many. Keeping years of students from finding community Discovering their passions and changing the world. With the loss of big picture is the loss of a loving, safe, and strong community that has the power to change the way the world looks at learning forever. We are your future. Please consider more of us. For someone who did not be here tonight. So let's keep this in the eye. I have always considered myself to be a nervous person. I never like to speak in front of parents or reach out when I felt like my view was unacqualified. Today, I'm just out of my comfort zone and speak to you all because this feels important. To not only her learning, but to the learnings likely need to come. I joined Big Richard because the
136idea of being in a community that allows me to pursue my craft excitedly. When I heard that our amazing little program was in jeopardy, I immediately knew that I had to at least try to say one of the things I've come to love most. Big picture has brought me so many new opportunities that I would never have had in conventional school. I've made lifelong friends attain unique skills and have found a passion also founded and supportive. By my peers and teachers. So I may not fully understand the workings of running a school district. I do know that losing this community will impact those currently in it and those to come. New ideas when we lost, opportunities disappeared, and the creativity and joy our space doctors will go with us. I asked my peers, those who
137could not be here tonight, to give their opinions on this matter. It was important to me that those in our small funding program are represented. I've only been here for a year at this point, but I'm a whole lot happier personally and school-wise. I've never enjoyed education as much as I do now. I feel like I feel more prepared to graduate than ever. And then now I'll continue to use the skills I've learned in big picture for my entire life. It's changed me completely. As a person for the better. All right. Another quote was this space. And these people, they may feel uncomfortable The space in these people make me feel comfortable to come to school and learn every single day. I'm sorry, that's time. Thank you. I'll do my email. We did receive that
138comment via email. So we have a Hello, my name is Miranda Gallagher. I'm a Birming picture student and currently enrolled in early college for my senior year. Last year, it was announced that Big Picture Program would be potentially cut in its full budget. We've had on Monday that we risk being cut again. It's unfortunate, but this is why we're here again tonight. Big picture is a self-directed learning program where SB and NMU students get the opportunity to use their to use their passions as their education. This comes in the form of personal projects and internships ranging everywhere from art to aerospace. Big picture gives opportunities and challenges to students in ways that the classroom can only dream of. Last year, the community decided that this program was worth keeping. I can only hope that the
139same decision is made again. The importance of big picture program cannot be overstated. This is a place where students can explore their many interests and goals. This is a place where creative students get the chance to explore subjects that might not be possible in the standard high school curriculum. The student who's edits in the back of class gets their chance to work on cars or planes. The student who would rather be outside than sitting in class or we can go out into the world and teach people about wildlife conservation. The straight A student who wants more from education can explore their interest in carpentry. Students who once struggled to walk into a classroom can now confidently present in national conferences. These aren't hypotheticals. Our students are these people. Continuing with the encryption program is taking
140away these students chances to discover themselves and to help the community around them. Big picture has been an environment of growth and challenges for students of SB and MMU for 16 years now. How many students have gone through our doors and come out with experiences and knowledge that they would never have found never find in their classrooms. Big picture changes people for the better. As a testament to this, students that I've never even met have reached out to support UP. They've written their thoughts on this issue and here's what they had to say. Hello, my name is Manel Sopho Adu. I graduated in 2022. I tended to be picture From my sophomore through my senior year. Big picture was the best thing that happened to me during my high school career. Big picture is one
141of the main reasons why I'm really much time. I'll send it in an email, but can I do the last little section, please? Last paragraph. Sure. Thank you. Everyone in the picture knows how difficult this budget is. We know that cuts need to be made somewhere, but big picture is more than just a class. It's a place that lets students do more than just get by. They get to thrive in an environment of unique individuals as they learn from each other and the wider community of Vermont. For many students, this is a key that opens doors that may have been closed or otherwise completely overlooked. The Hooters of community at home. Please don't take that away from us. On behalf of South Burlington Big Picture, thank you for your time. I'm a parent in the
142community. I have a current 10th grader and current sixth grader and we moved here to the district and we are sad that our cuts happening and we want to support the school any way we can and the teachers and everybody's taking care of our girls I had an idea. And I think the math on all this budget stuff is so complicated. It took me like sitting down for several sessions trying to look at this and be like, oh my gosh, where do these numbers come from? Incredibly complicated. And I think the average person, the second they hear like there's going to be a tax rate increase, there's an emotional response central either shut down or just decide to vote no. And so I was wondering if the board or the district would consider making kind
143of a widget to go on a website. What would this cost me kind of thing? Where people could put in maybe their appraised property value and their yearly income and see what this would actually mean to them. Because I think that's really meaningful if you can see it for your own situation in real time, like when you're having that. It's just kind of like you look at like the realtor websites like buying a house and they always have that on the side and then like like i said oh yeah i did this down payment and this income interest rate, what would it cost me? And so I would like to suggest that as a possible way. Too many interest in joining that? Is it involved? You have rigid development skills? Not a part of having
144these skills in that realm. But if you do need a layperson with just like thoughts on it, I'd be happy to help. Yeah, I don't respond so sorry. I did help with COVID stuff during COVID, but I'm a pediatrician. Thank you. Show of hands of how many more public comments in the room. Before. Hi, my name is Megan Sweet. I'm the Director of School Counseling at the high school and a South Burlington resident. I'm here to express my strong opposition to the district's proposal to eliminate 1.0 school counselor at the high school. This cut would leave only 3.6 councillors serving 813 to more realistically 830 students, depending on our high school choice enrollment. Resulting in caseloads of 225 to 1 to 230 to 1, far above the 2025 Vermont Educational Quality Standards which explicitly calls
145for high school counselor caseloads of 200 to one or less. This is not just a temporary setback. History has shown that once positions are cut in SB, they never come back. Meanwhile, the debut presented predicts that the high school enrollment will climb to 890 or more within two years. At that level, caseloads would surge to an unsustainable 250 to 1. These overwhelming caseloads would make it impossible for high school counselors to deliver the critical services students need and deserve. Including individualized academic planning, addressing persistent mental health challenges. Providing daily crisis intervention and offering a robust personalized college and post-secondary counseling program. Let's be clear, budgets reflect values. Cutting a critical support service like counseling while adding positions elsewhere is both short-sighted and unjustifiable. Peer high schools in Vermont, all facing similar fiscal pressures, are not
146making these same cuts, or frankly. Adding any new positions. If approved, this decision will leave our counselors with some of the highest caseloads in the state. Moreover, cutting this position would mean the loss of our only black male school counselor. Black males who by every measure face the greatest systemic challenges would lose a crucial advocate and role model. Representation matters. This decision would only deepen the inequities they face and further alienate them In a system where they are already underrepresented. This proposal is short-sighted and damaging and frankly puts student safety at risk, and I urge you to reconsider. Our students deserve better. My name is Helena Yanti, and I'm a school counselor at the high school. I wrote a letter last week and thank you, Superintendent Nichols for your thoughtful response and really taking the
147time to address that. So I agree with absolutely everything that Maggie Sweet just offered. And I just want to offer another perspective because I started with the district in 2005. I have a background in both mental health and school counseling. I have three teenagers of my own and in the room district where I might have to wear red sometimes. Be careful what I wear in my house. So when I started in 2005, the counseling team There were 3.8 counselors in addition to the director of school counseling, which has 60% of their job is a caseload also. So essentially that was For people and one of them was not in the office just one day a week. So it was a pretty robust team And in those 19 years, the only increase that we've had in
148that department was 0.2. And so currently we now have four. Full-time counselors in addition to our director of counseling, which is a crucial part of the team with their caselo. So this proposed budget would bring the department back down lower than it was 20 years ago. To in terms of the counseling staff. And so I just would play poster with left and I don't need to go into it how different student needs are the community needs are from post-secondary planning social emotional support, academic advising, all of those so um The differences in the caseloads are going to be pretty significant and students will feel that. And one other point that stood out for me on the slide connected is that ninth grade dean of students position. I just want to note that that's a position,
149it's 100% student facing and it's one that our team works with literally on a daily basis and was hot in my mind because I'm actually going up to Franklin County tomorrow to do some pre-registration with Rising eighth graders and I'm in touch with the school counselors there. And that position is crucial in the integration of our school choice students that come from other districts as well. So I just wanted to highlight that. And when it's listed on the slide. Sure, there's fine. Thank you. If the leadership position but the on a different contract. So I just think that's important to note. So thank you so much. Good evening, board members superintendent Nichols. My name is Kevin Downey, and I am CES or the curriculum Mayor Supervisor of Flexible Pathways at Southern High School. So you
150heard from some of my passionate students here tonight. I also want to just note that you probably also received between 20 and 30 letters from prior students and staff members, I'm sorry, family members. We just heard of the news of a big picture being removed from this current budget as of 3 o'clock on Monday. And so I would implore you folks to make sure that you have some time to read through those letters before making the decision. That's what it might have to be. My role right now is to come and talk about from more of a programmatic standpoint with big picture. So as you heard, this program has served our learning community for over 16 years. It is a unique program and it's not where so many things are not found anywhere else in
151our programming or curriculum. We are the only program that offers only project-based learning incorporate service learning with community partners such as Vermont Fish and Wildlife, Audubon Society, and Nature Conservancy. We're the only program that requires student internships and capstone projects such as a college level research paper. And again, the internships with partners such as Common Roots, Beta Technologies, Echocenters, the list honestly just goes on and on over the years. We are a model and a leader for both SBHS and Vermont. We were utilizing proficiency-based grading and reporting since our onset in 2008. We were influential in pushing SBHS to move to a four-year advisory. We utilize flexible pathways and personalized learning well before Act-77 was implemented. So now I'd like to share some information with you folks that was either omitted or was inaccurate in
152public information that I saw. So this is important information. Big picture has evolved to be more financially sustainable over the last few years. So currently we have a 1.4 FTE that are associated with the program, even though we're seeing it as 2.0 on the slides. I'm sorry, that's time. I'm just going to give you a couple of these bullets and then I also sent it to you in a much more information. We did get it on the email, just so you know. Great, great. So the $85,000 in revenue from MMU, that covers 1.0 of our FTE. In addition to the fact that we previously removed one of our advisor positions because of enrollment and that Physicians used to create a very valuable opportunity in the learning center in the high school. So the enrollment information
153that you guys have. We do have to have other time for other questions. We're done. I think we've got your email already, so… I think we're shot or something. Yeah, that feels great i appreciate that. So here's the last one. I'll just finish the last sentence and be done. All right. This program has impacted the state and school over the last 16 years and our employee that takes some time to think about that because once a program like this leaves, it doesn't come back. Thank you very much. Have a great night. Good evening. I'll keep this pretty quick. I just have a couple of somewhat disconnected thoughts. My name is Phil Sirx. I'm currently a science and technology CAS of a high school. I've been in that role for 13 years. I live in a
154different community where I sometimes have to wear blue and white. And… I've just been thinking about how this process has been playing out here versus how the process plays out in my own district and just kind of listening a lot to the numbers And I feel like I want to move to South Burlington because I can pay a lot less in taxes. Is what I heard. And my taxes personally uh went up For the upcoming year. By 11% in my community and our school budget passed it on the first vote. And thinking about kind of why that is, I feel like the reason one of the reasons that's possible is because the narrative's a little bit flipped It's not about numbers. It's not about cuts. It's about impact. And what do we need to keep?
155So I feel like like the numbers are great. I'm the numbers guy. I love numbers. I geek out on spreadsheets, but tonight was a lot to take in and it pushed me almost to my maximum to really fully understand How the numbers work and what the interplays are But what's really important was when we kind of got to the end and we started to talk about impact. And Tim, I really appreciated your desire to really truly understand impact of cutting. But I think when speaking to the community and really defending this budget and when it goes out to the vote. You need to think about the impact and what's essential to keep and making sure that that's what the narrative is and what people are going to understand like this is what we need to
156function as the school district that you want. And that's the end of the story. One other thing that I want to say too that was very powerful to me with compulatory work time 10 more seconds. 10 seconds. When Tim was playing with the spreadsheet tool, I thought that was really cool, but what was really powerful was seeing what the effect of the yield can be. And for a number that's that movable. And for a number that has that impact on the bottom line, it almost feels like we could be talking about bringing a lot of things back into the budget potentially. Thank you. The name is polyvatham. I teach French and German at South Burlington High School, and I'm a proud 1994 graduate of SWHS. I want to put that out there that I still
157feel a lot of gratitude to this community for my education. I think you have a tremendous amount of pressure and these are very challenging conversations and I want to acknowledge that. And I want to share a few of my thoughts tonight. The proposed risks at the high school have been particularly hard, and I'm going to highlight a few of them for me. And I'd also just like to say that our principal is currently on sick leave. And while we have an amazing administrative team seeing these cuts while our longtime principal is out has been particularly challenging. Boards are encouraged to think of the position, not the person, but the reality of that for a few of these is really difficult for me. And especially, I think, for our district's mission to serve all students. The
158world language riff that is proposed of Japanese teacher is actually the entire Japanese program. And we just learned about it this week. This means 20 years of this program and our relationship with our sister school in Hokkaido, Japan will be over. This is the only non-Eurocentric language that we have at the high school. And I'm just going to say that personally. I think this employee is the best of our department, the hardest working, the most culturally expansive, the most prepared of anyone that I know. I would also like to talk about the school counselor position and the proposed RIF. It so happens that this most recently hired person is someone who is a black male, as was referred to by Maiden Sweet. Something else I think is very important is that he is a new
159American who grew up in this community. I work with a lot of new American students because I speak French and because I run culture and geography club. And I have seen how these students have gravitated to him. Thank you, Jim. I'll just finish up my thought about that. I have seen how these students have gravitated to him, and I think you cannot put a dollar amount on that kind of mentorship role modeling and support in our schools. Please consider, as Phil Serks just said, not the number, but the programming that you wish to keep as a board and see how you can then sell that budget to the community. Thank you. Thanks for letting me go with that. I'm Jeff Bennett. I teach driver education right across the street there. And I'm happy to report
160that most vehicles tonight are parking in between the lines. I've been teaching for more than 20 years. There are a lot of ways to describe how education has changed. Easier is not one of them. This proposed budget is a good example. As it would eliminate more than 45 FTEs over the last three years. One of the only people in South Burlington knew the name, South Burlington, who actually makes my job easier is our sub coordinator, Chris Hatton. He spends every moment of his day coordinating schedules, putting out fires, fills in everywhere. He's the only person that will take things off my plate. I can't imagine tasking that to our other leaders in the building who have already had too much to do. In the end, the student experience will suffer. Because of how much they
161are already doing. This idea about who will pick up the slack After eliminating the physician echoes throughout the budget. Denise Weaver. The ninth grade dean is working with students who need the most help and support as they transition to the high school. The guidance counseling office, in addition to everything that they do to support students every day is also the front line when students have an acute need at school. Which is happening more with more frequency. I cannot see how this budget improves. Support for our students. And I think this veil their district's equity goals. I appreciate the candida that when we go to the polls on March 4th. We won't know the tax rate. Why are we setting why are we settling for a budget that is built as painful But good enough? Instead,
162I challenge you to reflect on our proud tradition and find even more strength and courage than you already have. We're doing this thankless job. Get behind the incredible program that we offer here at South Burlington. And with the same enthusiasm that we bring to the classroom every day. Puts forth the budget that we need to maintain the exceptional experience for all students. Thanks. I'm Beth Adrian, co-president of the SBDA. And I'm no Everett from the other president. Crafting a budget that balances the needs of students with the constraints of Act 127 is not an easy task. Unfortunately, the SBEA cannot and will not support this budget. We respect the work and difficult position this board is in. To meet these challenges, we need to have leadership that articulates a vision and aligns budget choices with
163that vision. With 1.3% of cuts. Coming from administration central office And 90% coming from student-facing positions we do not see how these budget cuts promote equity aligned with legal requirements or the RN's policy. Thank you. We could use the register scan feature. So let's pretend Because I know what I'm talking about. So if the yield goes up. Taxes go down. And things be reinstated. So in other words, is this like, yeah, the board has to follow the city charter which specifies a date for you all to approve a budget to be brought forward to voters And so let's say As a teacher, I mean, I know like the instructional technology support and that person's used all the time. The substitute coordinator, that person is never not doing anything i mean i it is i i
164did hear what you said before like the um The adults in the building, we're all going to be doing triple or quadruple duty. There's just no way around it. And it just puts a lot of stress and like the japanese japanese program is like a gut punch for me um Right. Like if we approve a budget that has has all the things. And then… the tax rate is less and there's money I don't know. I just really don't. That part, I just don't understand how that works Yeah, great question. So off the back of the last board meeting, the guidance was around option two. And so that's how this was developed. You're absolutely right. I mean, these reductions are Painful. I mean, we heard We've heard testimony on every proposed reduction in our last few
165meetings and um I will say again it will not make things better. So, you know, we won't know the yield until the legislative session ends in mid-June. I think this is something that in agenda planning we need to talk about adding to the steering committee meeting is the charter timeline and the timeline in which we get our budget factors and then when we have to mourn a budget. It doesn't allow us to have ample time or information it's always this last minute crunch and um You know, I think taxpayers and community members probably struggle to know that even if they vote on a certain budget at town meeting day that that could change post meeting day. Would you agree with me that it is highly unlikely to be able to fill out like i just
166i think that's I guess you probably don't want to go on record of saying I just think it's really uncomfortable. Yeah, you can say that to me. Yeah. So I was just trying to think of You know legislators have shared that they yield um was high in, this was shared in a forum, the legislative forum that was at the library a few weeks ago um that the yield is high in hopes that the state was hoping that we would see budgets That were at the 0% or less. For us, as you can see that's that's not even close to possible. And, you know, you've heard testimony that that this is Devastating. I can't say I don't have a crystal ball, but the same thing was happening at Essex. So the exact same thing. If I
167could speak to what I'm hearing, I think there's a misunderstanding about there isn't anything that we can cut that's not important. Like every single thing on this list is important. It's not a matter of what can we cut that's not important And it's just it's painful to hear all of the impacts because it is real. And I don't want the community to misunderstand that this board doesn't recognize that and understand that. It's not a comparison of what's important and what's not important and let's just cut the not important stuff. It's all important. I know that's not the answer that anybody wants That's true. I don't think that the yield or any of the impacts that we heard tonight make it seem like we could put more things back in. Not that that's even really on
168the table. Because we're just looking at worse and worse financial conditions every single year after this. And last year, we tried not to make the hard decisions and this year it's been even worse. And so I would urge this board to remember the position we were in last year, which is better than this year. And the hard choices that we didn't make. And how many hard choices we might not have had to make this year if not for last year. And to not go through that process. It's just not going to get better. I'm usually a pretty optimistic person. Then I just want to say, I mean, the lesson I think I learned coming out of last year's budget cycle being new to it last year is the impact that all budgets across the state
169have on the education fund and hence the yield And it's critical that it's critical each district strive for as much cost containment as possible because if our budget goes up significantly that impacts our neighbors every you know as much as and we learned this the hard way last year when we tried to draw extra funds Using Act 127 as our crutch and we saw how fast the state reacted to that and that was a very painful you know wake up call about state level funding. My concern is that you know This is a significant increase for us, even with these cuts that we're facing. And if we don't really focus on cost containment, it's not just the tax rate that I'm worried about, it's the state coming back with suppression techniques that we have no
170choice in at that point, right? So if we don't work to contain the costs, they will contain them for us. Coming out of the next legislative session. So I think we need to be very conscientious of that and recognize that. Yes these are painful and i i gotta say like the ninth grade dean i am I worked in the district in the mid-90s and we were talking about a ninth grade dean back then and how critical it was for transitioning Kids from eighth grade end and to see that position though just crushes me because I work with so many ninth graders in the enrichment center at the time. But I'm fearful that the state is going to come back and just start really pressuring down and we're going to lose even more if we're not
171careful. And who's going to communicate to the agency of education that it's impossible to meet the demands. I mean, I am going to on Monday. We heard from all these teachers saying you can't we can't. And I'm a teacher. I know you can't do it. There's literally not enough moments in the day And energy is finite. It runs out. And it is only so much that people have in them while trying to maintain some sort of life you know outside of their job their job because I do want to remind people that it is a job. And there's this expectation that here's all the things you need to do. And then by the way. Another five or six hours where we're not going to pay you. You're going to do all the creative things and
172make the phone calls and do all the things so it's That's already happening. And I'm, yeah, so good. I think that that somebody needs to say that say That's great. You want to have all these things. This requirement, that requirement we can't do it. You can't ask human beings to give any more than we're already giving. You know my kids went to the district. I know how much the district So, you know, yeah. I'll keep trying. I mean, it's been more than a year that we've been advocating and i um feeling really sad right now. I mean, this is yeah you know this is a this is this is actually Terrible. It's time to try to attract people to join the board. Looking on the bright side, I am very encouraged by the staff for
173special education some of those like i haven't heard any of that uh throughout this like that's That's such a huge plus that's uh I don't know, it really resonates with me. Grateful that made that through and grateful through Are we at the point where we've heard from Violet state we've heard from the community What's the objective of our conversation so what we need to do is i have some feedback. Yeah, we need to have Discussion and feedback. And then as a board, we need to take action on this proposed budget. And then… assuming that we approve this budget, then we need to go through our annual meeting notice. If we don't, then we don't have to go triangular notice because it won't be But that's sort of the we're having the discussion at some point
174when the discussion feels like it has concluded, we will take action and proceed from there. And how much wiggle room is there in terms of when we have to warrant a budget? How many more meetings do we have if we keep the scale tonight? Not much. I didn't ask the city clerk that. Do you have a sense of Yep, so this is the last scheduled meeting that the board can certainly elect to schedule a special meeting like next week. Yeah. So basically we have two weeks before we have to like i just trying to figure out when the i don't i so i think that the last date is next week. I don't know. I'd have to verify that. Our charter our city charter dictates the time of the budget And when the board has
175to bring something forward to voters. So. This is the last scheduled meeting for that conversation and so it's 90 days before town meeting or what I'm sorry, I'm like trying to figure out what is. There's like a certain amount of time needed to get ballots and to warn Like born the information For some reason, January 21st is sticking in my head but i I don't want to misspeak. But it's like you have to date back from town meeting day balance have to be sent in order for them to be sent, they have to be approved and deleted. Etc. I'm not for nothing every additional vote that we do is pretty expensive. I think it was $50,000 for the last Yeah, revotes are hard on our staff too. I mean, I… oftentimes, oftentimes I would be
176very concerned about discussing having to discuss a remote because i As you hear, I mean, any further reductions Are so difficult. You know without the support of this budget and this is where we are taxpayers settled last year at 8.18. This is 8.10. You know, of course, trying to balance the needs of the 80% of the community who doesn't kids in our system who don't see this and hear this is really is really painful. I also don't want to not state that 16% in two years And I made a commitment at the beginning of this budget season not to perpetuate a theme or an understanding that if you vote no for the budget that you're a bad person, because that can become a very strong theme last year. And so I just want to Say
177that voting no to the budget doesn't mean that you're a bad person or you don't support schools it's probably a very real indicator of your financial circumstances so And if you don't mind, I want to address the SBEA, and I completely, I respect your decision not to support Budget, as you stated. You know, we all see the impacts and the choices we're trying to make up here. You will feel it. And that's really important to acknowledge. And I think Mr. Serps, your comment about the narrative is critical for us as a board to remember as well. So, you know, as I was thinking about As I was going through the presentation prior to this meeting, I recognize that this budget is no win. Nobody will come away happy with this budget. Maybe in a couple
178of years we can talk about being in a position where we aren't talking about cuts. But nobody will be happy from teachers especially, I recognize that i also recognize that also In collusion with uh not collusion but We want to echo what uh Chairman Tillinghast said, there are a lot of people who didn't come today who are on fixed incomes, who are struggling still. And we have to, as a board, recognize those people. That was a very key important aspect of the last budget cycle. So again. This is a pretty it's a it's a high there's a good increase here in the budget but We've also cut significantly so we are not going to please anybody. But I do want to recognize and I appreciate the… I hope it came through that we noted Act
179127 And it's not that you have to cut. It's about how it's happening That is our critique and why we can't support it. So I just want to make sure that that's there because I acknowledge that and that's that's our concern. Thank you. Talk to me about instructional coaches. Picked up on the theme that there was One strong voice in the community in Clinton and Tell me more about instructional coaches and kind of I was… concerned hearing that feedback. Full disclosure, I'm a former math instructional coach at the elementary level and um following that at an individual school because of budget reductions, I was a shared instructional coach and math was slashed and it was general instructional coaching That was difficult to sustain as a coach at the elementary level. So we included the slide
180tonight to try to distinguish between two really important factors, teacher voice and instructional leadership. At the elementary level, there used to be in South Burlington math and literacy instructional coaches Since there have been so many, there were budget fails in 2020, which I understand reduced those and then the names changed and the program was repackaged. And then last year, and there were instructional coaches at the high school and at the middle school last year, those were reduced. This year, there are three remaining instructional coaches who support math and literacy. And use of data and teachers in implementing effective level effective instruction. It's critically important, right? Like I'm not going to tell you that any of these are not important. These are the last instructional supports remaining at the elementary level. And there are three of
181them in total, one at each elementary school. And I agree with all of the testimony on instructional coaching That's fine. That's an area I have interest in. Solicit that. I know we were kind of like, oh, we're not going to do that this time It's not that we're not going to do that this time. It's that i we can't we can't approve a budget if we don't know what the implications are. And at this point trying to and also it's We can't approve a budget when we don't know what the implications are. And every single decision that our administration has brought forward has that has meant time considering what the implications of any given thing are. So there's no just like casually adding things back in It's also not our role. And I think that's
182another important thing to emphasize here is to emphasize here Our superintendent and your team are the only people tasked with considering the needs of the district at a district level lens. So we're hearing a lot of testimony from people who have the lens of their school community and that's important. But they're not tasked with considering what other schools need. And I think it is important that the board ask and learn is this budget in the best interest of the equity of all students and staff in the entire district? Not one school, not two schools, the full district. And if this is the budget that they have, I mean, can you stand by that this is the best that this is your best effort. A budget that accomplishes these needs given the constraints that we're in
183like yeah you know i can say that um in my administrative experience and with administrators from many different districts i have never been involved in a thicker engagement process. The amount of time and discussion put into this has been absolutely astounding. And I think that the evaluation of data has been more comprehensive than any other year before i think the efforts from so many people to try to make reductions in areas that would hurt less has been more significant. The um But there isn't a way that we can we can't bandaid everything. I mean, like, you know, all of the positions um that we've discussed have been talked about bringing them back like they're all I could say yes to bringing all of them back. That's not the Well, it's not an option. Because of
184our financial reality and that's extremely difficult and Just, you know, it's It's been an incredibly difficult budget year. We have been trying to, we've been advocating to legislators state And, you know, the message we're hearing is There is no discussion at this point that I know of about a modification to Act 127. The message that we continue to get from community members, which perspective hasn't been shared today. Is, well, I mean. The board and I have gotten emails about tax rates and that's, you know, I'm an educator and I agree that the conversation should center on programming and what we need. And also, you know, I am tasked with also Hearing and incorporating we are tasked with hearing incorporating community feedback which says that this cost is unsustainable and balancing those is incredibly challenging. And
185this budget was the best effort at that. If we look at the iterations of the budgets, the NEA asked us to not talk about positions specifically right after Thanksgiving and so we didn't we talked broadly and and um you know been sharing the slides and working with Nea leadership and you know trying to be responsive to feedback about like oh this isn't, you know, removing information about like, should the yield dip or, you know, being responsive to feedback at the last meeting and adding the positions back that we did, you know, working closely with our principals and It's absolutely a no-win situation. I cannot both put forward a budget that is supportive of students and that is the best for our students and our staff and also do so at a cost that is being
186imposed it's something that we've never seen before last year. Balancing those has been incredibly challenging. And again, I mean, listening to the testimony, it's um Of course, we want to bring all of these things back. I was heartened that we could include expenditures back in this budget that we didn't have included in the last version. I also just think like, as I say all the time, literally anyone could sit in the seats that we are sitting in. We're not experts in education. And while I would love to have more narrative understanding. None of us are qualified to understand any sort of comparison between any of these positions versus another. It would be… in my opinion, highly illogical for us. To try to even pretend that we understand. And I think it's a disservice to the
187testimony that we heard to pretend that we understand. Like maybe laura is the only one who could deeply understand I don't want to speak for the rest of you too much We have a very specific task as a school board and in this system and in this governance, we have very important charge and um Our charge is not the same as the other members of the system. So I would… Implore us to remember what our responsibility is as an elected Go ahead. So just to push on that a little bit. So what are our options as school providers today? But we have a decision to make, right? So what is that decision? Approve 71,000. Period or something. That's a bargain. Right like i just i'm just trying to like we we did all this public
188comment we heard it but we're not going to take action on it. I'm just trying to understand like what's the purpose of… Doing this demonstration points there. We can't act on it. Well, we can act on it. What it would look like is not approving the budget, providing the feedback and scheduling a special meeting for a new budget. And I would like to say that I have read every single email. I have not responded to any of them because from the time that I've had, it's either read everyone or respond to some of them and not read all of them. I sit here having heard everything at this point. My decision is not changing, but I'm one person of this board and so that's why we're having this discussion. I started the morning very different
189like i was like, all right, I'm good with this. We've seen this a couple of times and socialize. I've just It was very impactful hearing folks impactful folks and I feel like I don't know. But I'm just one person We have two hands raised. Yeah, I do want to give everyone a chance to speak. I don't want to break up where the thread that we're on in this conversation unless the board would like to hear public comment. I'm fine. The last two. Could we unmute Me again, please? Hello? I don't know how to show my face. But I just put a question into the Q&A. And I was curious about the funding of the Japanese program. I had understood that it was grant funded. Is that not true? I'm confused since now it's being marked
190for elimination. I'd understood that it Was being funded through a grant. Could you provide some clarification? Hi, Megan. Thanks for your question. It is locally funded. It is locally funded. Okay. Well, I am sorry to hear about the elimination, I were just back as a family from Japan and visited my son's exchange partner from Hokkaido. And so it is a relationship that has lasted now For over six years. So the students here in South Burlington are not the only ones who will be affected By that cut there are also I believe dozens of students from Japan and that, of course, friendship that is developed between Not only the two communities, but between, you know, I think the countries is important I wanted to reiterate what Mr. Sirk said. That when you are presenting a budget
191to the community it's very difficult to understand the numbers. And I am saying this as a former city councilor who has heard the numbers over and over and over. And I think that it is It would do a better service to the community for you to say that this is what we absolutely value and And that we need to have offered in our schools. That if you come forward from a value statement. It will be much more I think persuasive to the taxpayers and to the voters. And I think that it is not necessarily a service to the schools to have kind of the three tiered if the school budget fails, then we're going to go on to number two or number three, that those numbers don't mean What they actually mean. And so I
192really do. I really do encourage you to listen to that good advice from Mr. Sirks And if that means going above the eight point, I can't remember what it is, 0.51%, then so be it. If that is what you believe our community needs Thank you. I believe my time is up. Thank you. Unitarian, please. It's interesting that I follow Megan. So she said, if you have to go up a little bit, that's fine. So let me just offer you some numbers. First of all, about 20% of residents in South Burlington our seniors, the increase of Social Security for the FYI for this year is going to be 2.5%. So an 8% increase in the budget It's a big difference for what the seniors are going to see in terms of their Social Security increase. But
193if you look at national property taxes, all 50 states, in 2022, the average was about $1,800. I haven't been able to find out what it was last year, but if it stayed the same. Then the average primary homestead in South Burlington would have a property tax rate which was 377% greater than the average property tax rate nationally. South Burlington, State of Vermont has the second highest spending per pupil of all 50 states. You can go down the list in 2021, according to the Joint Fiscal Office, Vermont had the highest level of state taxation per capita of all 50 states. We're very heavy tax state. If you look at the pensions, which are driven by the cost of Salaries. There was an article in VT Tigger Today, which praised the fact that the teacher's pension is
194now funded out of 60, 61% ratio. That's up from 57.3 a couple of years back. Anything below 60% in pension funding is considered red zone. So having a 61% funded ratio is nothing to brag about. Every time you increase salaries, you're increasing the stress on the pensions. And if you ask, where's the pensions, where's the surplus going to come from those pensions, it has to be made up from the general fund because the pensions don't generate enough revenue to fulfill their fiscal responsibilities. So if you listen to general scott Governor Scott, $2 billion has already been transferred into the pensions Because they're underfunded and this year there'll be another transfer of $230 million. Most of what I heard tonight was the impact on the school, very, very little was the impact upon the community. If
195you don't understand the impact on the community. You're going to be in trouble as the years go by. You really don't understand the yield. The yield can be I'll finish with one point. Gary, that's time. Perry, that's time. Thank you. You don't understand the yield. The yield basically says how much money Is education going to cost and how much money does the state have? If the state doesn't have the money, it can't make up the money. So you need to live within your means. It's a concept which continually you don't understand. You cannot continually increase budgets by 8% per year. That's a prescription for disaster. Thank you. Let me unmute Lindsay. I was just curious about the 14 additions in the budget and some more discussion on those and kind of where they come from
196and where they come from what is absolute necessity like out of those 14 positions And just thinking about kind of the everything that is lost with each of his individual cuts. And then at the same time talking about adding positions, I'm just curious to hear more dialogue around that. Thank you. Just to restate generally what I think the question is. Speak to the 14 editions. In light of all of the cuts. It's just a little bit hard to clearly. Yeah, sure. So two of those are bus drivers. Two of those are behavior facilitate bus drivers based on need to get students to and from school and athletics events. Two of those are One of those is behavior facilitator tied to directly to student needs. The other is a bcba Middle school, the behavior facilitators at
197Orchard, BCBA, the middle school to support student needs tied to IEPs. The pre-k or the changes Remember the graphic from our pre-K. So it's not two district administrators it's um adding a lot of the several of the positions are our actual reductions. So like the position where it's removing three paras at the high school level and putting them in kindergarten to support early k so three of the new positions are not new it's the same paras so those would be Not Jenna Perez at baby high school they would be K paras to try to support early childhood intervention in hopes of providing support so that we could reduce the need for additional support since students aged through our system. There are a number of the positions are on clerical support staff. For special ed, so
198it is reducing the clerical supports. Kristen, correct me if I'm wrong. I'm going off memory. It's 3.5 of them, and we're reducing two point and we're adding. It's an ad. One of them will get this job so it's not an ad, but it's a reduction. So it's a reduction from 2.5 to 1. So that's not a new position. It's not an administrative position. It's still that clerical support. So we wanted to be clear and transparent about what those positions are, but they really New. The special ed, assistant special ed director even still so um part of um our second or after our second budget fail last year, we had to reduce our K-8 special ed coordinator who was essential so like a lot of these positions like it's not new we really are hurting this
199year without that person's support. And so With given the increased need for special education supports. And, you know, again, we badly need special education support. So that's one of the roles. I'm happy to speak to any of the other changes I've forgotten something, but It's trying to preserve staffing and models is what the goal is there. From bus driving down the line. I feel like we haven't really talked about like there seems to be a little bit of discrepancy about how exactly big picture works. And I feel like I need to understand that's It's a program I don't have. A deep understanding. I didn't know that it was in a partnership with another district like how does all of that work and where's the money coming from and Yeah. So big picture has been a
200part of our high school for 16 years. It is a program where students can have internships, explore personal interests, develop life skills. Public speaking, across the board education that I don't want to liken it to career technical education, right? Because this is The big picture allows education to happen in a more holistic way. But there are agricultural, for instance, opportunities, as we heard from student testimony The program has seen a lot of iterations over the years. We have a current MOU memorandum of understanding with MMU and we have with that the district receives $84,000 annually for their students to attend. The um reduction that was represented in the slides was it's 1.6 teaching FTEs and then the other 0.4, which was associated with the cas For, as you heard. From Kevin for yeah the flexible
201pathways I've been answering any other questions. It had a price tag next to it basically And does that include the 84 that was coming from MMA? How to how were those numbers driving yep so the um reduction of just the two staff members is $242,000. And There is $84,000 of revenue. Tim, do you want to speak to revenue and how that impacts the tax rate? I have to interject with a practical matter here. I have people arriving from Philadelphia in my house at 1015 and it is now quarter of 10. We've been here almost four hours, so I don't know if we're Or if it's appropriate for me to leave But they are going to be there. Can I leave them out. So I don't know if you want to schedule a special meeting. I
202don't know. But I'm I have to watch the clock at this point. Can I ask one question? How did you settle on the 8% tax rate increase number and what kind of community feedback have you gotten on specific tax rate increases? So the only tax rate, the tax rates were shown at our last meeting and the board in advisement with the teachers unions that present some packages, right? And that's a practice that we've done in the past. You'll recall that from last year as well. And so there are tax rates associated with kind of general buckets of like what our kids need and what our schools need to function. So the tax rates were discussed for the first time at that meeting and we received community feedback on that. The feedback from, I have received
203email feedback only regarding tax rate. You know, I don't know where the finance committee stands on that. We've received kind of general feedback um the district performed a survey which had a low response rate of 38 respondents. There were respondents who talked about tax rate. The board has received some emails from parents and employees referencing tax rates. You know, we've heard from last year and this year folks who are on fixed incomes are expressing concerns with ability to continue to be in their homes. And, you know, working with our principals and administrators on um how to balance it all. Without any further discussion? I would like to hear from other commissioners. I didn't. There's no other comment. I would just say that I'm leaning, I mean, just for my own personal walking into this two
204meetings out. I don't feel like I would be able to support this right now. Like if you asked me to vote right now, I would say I would want a special meeting Just to have one more round because i feel like you know we were all sort of tied up in the CAS drama last meeting and now all of a sudden we have new New, very new things. Suddenly um suddenly being discussed. That, and I have to say again I'll adieu to my newness, I did not realize. Like where we were in the process. And I don't feel like I would be… I would feel like I do. Complete this process tonight personally. And so I just want to make sure because you are new, you do have the option to abstain from the vote
205or vote no, obviously. Yeah, I'm just advocating for even if I weren't new i feel like suddenly having big picture, the Japanese program, like a whole bunch of things that i hadn't like hadn't even crossed my mind hadn't even crossed my mind Right here, right now. The pre-k, the pre- it all feels very new. That I would advocate even if probably I had three more meetings under my belt, I would advocate for another meeting. What sort of additional information or testimony do you think that you need in order to be there? I think just being able to read to review it. Like i said like the information that I was given about big picture is a little different than maybe I understood it originally coming into this meeting I mean, I don't want to be
206like specifically, I just have a lot of questions Just to be clear, even if we have a second meeting, the number we are going to consider that's not going to change between now and the next meeting. So the number that we see tonight and what's being presented to us tonight is what we will even vote on even if we have an additional week so That's where we're at. It's really not. And I understand, I do understand confusion given previous budget years, but it's really not a board member role to pick and choose which things get added back in I guess I'm just saying, I think if I'm going to take the responsibility of voting on it, then I feel like I need to actually understand what's going on. Very reasonable. And that there's the potential
207within having a week that we would maybe maybe have a better grasp of exactly what's happening, exactly what all of this means and that perhaps the community at large would have a better grasp of exactly what this means. I think where I land on that point is even if we have a better grasp, it's not going to actually change. Impact. And so I totally understand not wanting to vote on something when we don't understand the impact. But the impact is going to remain the same. I think… you know, I'm sort of dancing around saying that I'm not sure that the community understands exactly what's being discussed right now. At large. The you know I didn't get, I mean, this is since Monday how many people really understand what's on the block right now. And I…
208I think the community deserves to have more than three days to be able to weigh in on some of these really big issues. I think what you're really hitting upon is the timeline. So the community will have about two months from tonight to really hear and ask questions. And then on town meeting day, vote yes or no on the budget. It's really us who has to decide if this is the budget we're selling to the community. And all of their plants are well taken. And I hope that it doesn't seem like they aren't i just I… I see that. I do hear you. I just don't think it's going to change everything. Shall adults, yes. This is not a good time of night for me. Do you feel like you have the support that you
209need to make decisions that's right. I don't know. I don't care of lotion being on the table, so I don't know what I'm voting on. Do you feel prepared? Do you feel prepared like you know what your options are? I just don't want you to feel like you don't Yeah, I understand what my options are. I just don't know what you're asking me if I'm prepared to vote on. Do I have a motion to approve the FY26 budget as presented by the administration with a total budget of $71,507,854.0. So moved. Tim moved. Do I have a second? Laura second. Laura seconds, any further discussion? I'm going to call for a roll call vote. Please implicate yay or nay. Tim, how do you go? Laura, how do you vote? Karen, how do you vote? No. Chris,
210how do you vote? No. And I vote yay. So the motion passes through the two with Chelsea, Tim, and Laura voting in favor, and Chris and Karen learning nothing. So we will now read through the annual meeting and then take a vote after it is read on the meeting language. Sure. I didn't want me to read you the whole I don't have to read our names. Warning, City of South Burlington School District 2025 Annual Meeting. The legal voters of the city of South Burlington School District are hereby notified and warned to meet at their respective polling places at the Frederick h tunnell Middle School at 500 Dorset Street. The Orchard School on 2 Baldwin Avenue, the Gertrude Chamberlain School at 262 White Street. And South Burlington City Hall Senior Center at 180 Market Street on
211Tuesday, March 4th, 2025 at 7 o'clock in the morning, at which time the polls will open until 7 o'clock in the evening. At which time the polls will close. To vote by Australian ballot on the following articles. Article 1, Election of Officers. On the first Tuesday in March of 2025 Voters of the city shall elect from among the legal residents of the city two members for terms of three years two members for terms of two years and two members for terms of one year Thereafter, the election of school directors shall be for the length of the term of the member whose term is expiring. Article 2, Budget. Shall the voters of the South Burlington School District approve the school board to expend 71,507,000 854 and $0. Which is the amount the school board has determined
212to be necessary for the ensuing fiscal year. The South Burlington school district estimates that this proposed budget if approved will result in per pupil education spending of $14,486.0, which is 15.76% higher than per pupil education spending for the current year. Polling places are at the Frederick H. Tunnel Middle School at 500 Dorset Street. The Orchard School at 2 Baldwin Avenue, the Gertrude Chamberlain School at 262 White Street. And the South Burlington City Hall Senior Center at 180 Market Street. Voters are to go to the polling place in their respective district. Legal voters of the City of South Burlington School District are further warned and notified that a public information meeting will be held to discuss Articles 1 and 2 on Monday, March 3, 2025 at 6.30 p.m. At 180 Market Street. The legal voters of
213the city of South Burlington School District are further notified that voter for qualification, registration, and absentee voting relative to said annual meeting shall be as provided in chapters 43, 51, and 55 of Title 17 vermont Statutes Annotated. Do I have a motion to approve the annual meeting warning as read by Tim Warren? I need to accept that. Chris, seconds. Any further discussion? Well, again, call for a roll call vote. Please indicate your name. Laura, how do you vote? Yay. Karen, how do you vote? Yay. Chris, how do you vote? Yeah, yeah. So again, the motion passes for this. All right, back home clearance are agenda item seven, action items. Next up is agenda item eight, agenda planning. Our January 22nd meeting is a steering committee meeting. Where we will present our budget as well. As
214approved by the City Council by the voters obviously um Everyone had a chance to look at the draft board agenda. Changes. We talked about voter expansion when we last met. I think we should consider adding that. I also think the timeline of our vote should be And a possible charter change associated with the timeline should be added to the agenda. And just as a reminder, none of this guarantee meeting will start at 4. And then our regular meeting will start as Discussion, I think for update from the superintendent i just made a note We talked about the BOCES tonight. Can you clarify maybe in the next meeting where we're at with that? Very little. So the Champlain Valley superintendent is trying to work on that but um one of our newer superintendents has partnerships with
215folks in New York. And so there's a subcommittee on CBSA who's going to try to make some Progress and I'll let you know when there's an update on that. I've got a CBSA meeting on Friday. And I will check in on that. We can maybe just add that and get an update I'm really curious about your season. Yeah, it might not have an update, but even I can still provide whatever information. I'll ask CBSA about that. Can we discuss the OPR code and explain? It seems like we're struggling to have that organized. Yeah. So we have voters. So for the steering committee, we have voter dimension We have… the charter and timeline of voting Regular meeting We have BOCES. And what am I forgetting that you just said? Opr. Op, so discussion of the boards
216go to the article. January. Sorry, I'm Noah Everett. Co-president of SBA. But this is actually, we have lovely tech things here but i just i don't think you guys get to see it but the actual camera wobbles It goes back and forth and back and forth because it tries to focus on who's talking and whatever. And I'd just like to request that maybe we go to a static camera For people who are trying to watch on Zoom, which I sometimes am, and then possibly a listing so people can see who's in here digitally. Thanks. Sorry. We need to do that for a long time. It's never the right time. We're trying really hard, but it just turned on. Readings. Okay, that brings us to agenda item 10, adjournment. Do I have a motion to adjourn
217the regular meeting of the South Burlington Board? And children are removed in a second Chris seconds. Any discussion? The motion passes unanimously and the regular meeting is adjourned at 10 and 3 p.m. If you stay there