December 3, 2025 School Board Meeting

001SBSD Owl Cam: Okay, we are on. All right. I'd like to call to order the December 3rd, 2025 SBSD Owl Cam: board meeting of the South Burlington School Board. SBSD Owl Cam: The first item on the agenda is an executive session. SBSD Owl Cam: The executive session is going to cover employment of a published officer. SBSD Owl Cam: Receiving, legal counsel for the purpose of providing legal services to the board. SBSD Owl Cam: And, I would entertain a motion to… Find that, SBSD Owl Cam: Premature disclosure of the contents that we're going to talk about in the executive session would put the district at a disadvantage. SBSD Owl Cam: I moved. SBSD Owl Cam: I'll move. Lauren moves. Any discussion? SBSD Owl Cam: All those in favor, say aye. Aye. SBSD Owl Cam: I will

002then proceed a motion to enter into executive session. SBSD Owl Cam: Michelle moved. Seconds. Laura seconds. Any discussion? SBSD Owl Cam: All those in favor? Okay. SBSD Owl Cam: The motion passes. So we're now in executive session, and we will return at about 6.30 PM, where… SBSD Owl Cam: Board members will go back and forth and discuss things with the public. There are three topics on the discussion, of the community forum. The budget. SBSD Owl Cam: the superintendent search, and also talking about the NASDAQ, New England School Development Council Best Use Study Proposal. Before we talk about that, the… SBSD Owl Cam: Superin- Joe. SBSD Owl Cam: requested that we talk about the best use study proposal, and so there's a question about whether we should put that in a superintendent report, but we figured

003that since we're having a community forum, we might as well, SBSD Owl Cam: allow the public to comment about whatever there was to say about that, so… So that's the rest of the agenda. Is there any… SBSD Owl Cam: About the agenda itself? SBSD Owl Cam: Alright, it's my desk. SBSD Owl Cam: We'll accept the agenda. SBSD Owl Cam: So the next item on the agenda is comments from the public. SBSD Owl Cam: So, at the South Bronx School Board, there are 3 opportunities, in general, for the public to comment. During this section, about any topic, even if it is not warned on the agenda. SBSD Owl Cam: Also, before the board takes action on any action item, but only on that topic. SBSD Owl Cam: Finally, during a community forum, and only on Warren

004topics, of which today we have three. So this meeting is a community forum, so you will be able to discuss Warren topics with the board, and the board may respond. You'll be given approximately 3 minutes to comment. SBSD Owl Cam: Please do not violate anyone's privacy, and an official employment agreement will not be filed during SBSD Owl Cam: public comment. So, this section, again, is about any topic, so if anybody wants to talk about anything, they're now looking to do so. SBSD Owl Cam: Anybody? Yep, we had so many names. SBSD Owl Cam: Hi, my name's Brian Panion, and my comment this evening would fall into the topic of public relations, treatment of the public, use of school facilities. SBSD Owl Cam: And I don't believe it's any of you are mainly because the decision

005that I'm going to talk about was done last year. But last year, there was a decision made that groups like Girl Scouts, Mini Metro Basketball, and other groups that service South Burlington children SBSD Owl Cam: Had to begin paying for meeting space. SBSD Owl Cam: And, first time it's ever happened. I mean, people like Rick Margot and Fred Tuttle would stay and let people into the building and stay with them. So I thought, that's kind of sad, because when I coached 30 years ago, we just contacted the principal, and we were welcome in the building. But maybe those are the times. SBSD Owl Cam: went to a lot of games, and I asked people last year, are you paying for gym time? SBSD Owl Cam: No, we're not. I asked some administrators I know, are

006you charging for gym time? No. And basically, their consensus comments, I'll just give them to you. SBSD Owl Cam: No, those are the folks that approve our budgets. SBSD Owl Cam: They've already paid for the school. It doesn't feel good. SBSD Owl Cam: One athletic director who's been around for, like, 30 years, I asked him, his comment was. SBSD Owl Cam: I wouldn't do that. He said, when we're fundraising, those are the folks that support and supplement our programs, and not just in life, but everything we do. And he kind of a shrewd guy, he said, I don't want to be competing with them for the fundraising problem. SBSD Owl Cam: But this some… this has driven up the cost of this program. Just so you know, the league that our kids play in, I

007think we have 18, SBSD Owl Cam: has 140 teams in it. They play all over, SBSD Owl Cam: the state. From Barrie to St. Jay, over to St. Albans, down to Middlebury, and in between. SBSD Owl Cam: We won't provide a gym in South Dlington, so two things happen. Our teams play away games all the time, and they pay a higher registration fee. SBSD Owl Cam: So, the cost of the program has been driven up, which we all know there's affordability issues for something. SBSD Owl Cam: That all said, can we fix this? Can we get back to the norm, what seems to be in Vermont, that youth programs are welcomed in schools, if they're available, and at no charge? Thank you. SBSD Owl Cam: Everybody has any other public comment in the room? SBSD

008Owl Cam: Anybody online? SBSD Owl Cam: All right, then we'll move on to our community forum. SBSD Owl Cam: And, for anybody just joining us, the purpose of a community forum is to… to set up an environment where the board can, in the forum, talk about issues and respond back and forth to any of the public's comments or questions. SBSD Owl Cam: And so, the three warrant topics that we have tonight, budget, superintendent search, and best use study proposal. We'll start with the budget. Maybe I'll start the bidding by saying that, at a… SBSD Owl Cam: at an earlier meeting in November, the school board SBSD Owl Cam: ask the staff, ask the superintendent to create a budget at the Northeast SBSD Owl Cam: Consumer Price Index inflation number of 3.4%. SBSD Owl Cam: And,

009that has now been on the superintendent's desk for a while. And so, what we have on the agenda here is come discuss your priorities and how this SBSD Owl Cam: money is spent. Now, that… those priorities, if you raise them tonight, that's more for the superintendent to hear, and the principals who are here to hear, because they have control over how the money is actually spent. But really, anything having to do with the budget, is open and fair game. SBSD Owl Cam: So, do you want to say anything? I have a pres… I have a short presentation, if you'd like me to give that before the floor is open. SBSD Owl Cam: I don't know if we have a projector or not, but I can share it. SBSD Owl Cam: I'm sharing it on… Alright,

010so if you have a… you're logged into the… SBSD Owl Cam: We'll assume you'll be able to see the presentation. But maybe you can just give us the… SBSD Owl Cam: Here. High-level notes. SBSD Owl Cam: blown… Hold my sharing here? The screen reader workflows, I believe you should… SBSD Owl Cam: So, show everything. SBSD Owl Cam: There it is, I got it. Thank you, Adriel. SBSD Owl Cam: themselves. SBSD Owl Cam: Okay, thank you very much for giving me the time to talk about this here at the Board Open Forum, December 3rd. Much of this is the same presentation that I gave to the community at the Community Open Forum, but it's been adjusted just a little bit because some decisions have been made since then. SBSD Owl Cam: So, SBSD Owl Cam: this

011is rudimentary. Everybody knows that every fall, every school district in Ohio… in Ohio… We don't have to do this in Ohio. In Vermont, must create its budget for the next school year, and so, this school year, we are developing our budget for next school year, which is 26-27. SBSD Owl Cam: I know the district, before my time here, did a survey of South Burlington stakeholders, and nearly 275 people responded, and what they overwhelmingly said is they want to increase engagement, they want transparency in the process. SBSD Owl Cam: They want us to rebuild some trust, and they really focused on greater principal ownership. They wanted principals to have the ability to make decisions at their building level. SBSD Owl Cam: So these are… this is the, timeline, of… of where we are in this process.

012Now, the school board already has come up with that amount, like you said, Chairman Absher, and it is the $74 million. We are now at the point where we have made allocations to the, SBSD Owl Cam: principals, and they are now at the point where they'll be able to start deciding how they're going to spend that money in their buildings. And then in January, we'll come to you with a final budget for you to approve, and then election day in March. SBSD Owl Cam: Here's, again, the timeline. SBSD Owl Cam: Can you go through the timeline? Oh, yes, I can. So we had the special meeting on November 10th. That's where you set the, the agenda… the, $74 million number, which is 3.4% increase, right? We had a virtual town hall on November 18th. SBSD

013Owl Cam: Tonight, December 3rd, you're hosting the in-person community forum. Our principals, over the next couple of weeks will be hosting school-level engagement. SBSD Owl Cam: January 14th is the board meeting to approve the budget, and then town meeting day on March 3rd. And we do recognize, by the way, this is… we are a little behind in the process, simply because of the mass turnover within the leadership team, so… SBSD Owl Cam: It will not be like this every year. We'll be a little bit further ahead than where we are. SBSD Owl Cam: So, on November 10th, the board approved a 3.4% increase for our budget going in the next school year. That equates to a $74 million budget based on the CPI in the Northeast region. SBSD Owl Cam: Now, we do absolutely appreciate

014the investment. However, we did, note that if we were not to make any changes at all, if we wanted to keep everything current, we would have needed a 6% increase, and that 6% would have equated to $76 million budget, and that's due to inflation, healthcare increases at about 7.5%, and wage increases at about 5.5%. SBSD Owl Cam: So what that means is that there was a… really a $2 million gap between what the board approved and what would be, not making any changes. SBSD Owl Cam: And I do have some, some good news to report, in my opinion, and that is this, that we have protected the school building's budgets. SBSD Owl Cam: We at the central office have identified enough savings to allow us to protect the schools from any reductions. In other words,

015we're able to give SBSD Owl Cam: Each school, that 6% increase to stay status quo. SBSD Owl Cam: central office, we, SBSD Owl Cam: We're making the bulk of the reductions by operating more efficiently, and it will also include a reduction of some central office positions. SBSD Owl Cam: I'm really not at liberty to tell you what those positions are now, because there's a communications framework we need to follow, because people shouldn't hear about reductions at a board meeting. They should hear it from the superintendent himself. But, suffice to say, we found $2 million and maybe more in savings at the central office SBSD Owl Cam: Or district-wide level, so it will not impact classrooms. SBSD Owl Cam: This is what the, budget model looks like. SBSD Owl Cam: Now, we had a long discussion

016this morning with the principals about the required funded by-law positions. These are positions that are… it's the bare minimum. This is what the state declares as the bare minimum to run a school. SBSD Owl Cam: These are the number of teachers you need for large class sizes. This is the number of counselors and librarians, etc. SBSD Owl Cam: for your student count. Again, we want to make everybody clear that SBSD Owl Cam: That's the bare minimum, and schools just do not operate on the bare minimum. SBSD Owl Cam: So that's where the next box comes in, the green box, which is the care, the critical resources for education. So when we talk about these care, critical resources for education, that's all the stuff that makes us not just compliant, but actually effective, right? That is

017what brings our class sizes down. That's what provides extra social-emotional support for our students. Those are all those kinds of things. SBSD Owl Cam: So we don't want people to think that we're, SBSD Owl Cam: throwing 6% more at each building. That is absolutely not what we're doing. We are increasing their budgets to coincide with the increased prices, but we are not at a point where we are going to go to the bare minimum, and hope that we never have to get to a point where we're at the absolute bare minimum. Our students deserve more. SBSD Owl Cam: So, the final budget then will be, when the principals have what they are required by law to have. SBSD Owl Cam: And then they have their care money that they can determine how they're going to

018spend that money. Are we going to add an extra teacher at this grade? Are we going to add a little more counseling at this grade? Whatever they decide they're going to do, that will then come into the budget that's brought to you in January for approval. SBSD Owl Cam: So, as we… before… and I'm almost done. Before we get to opening comments, I just want people to remember that we do have an ENDS policy, here, in South Burlington. The ENDS policy is what do we expect our kids to, to know and be able to do when they graduate, from high school? SBSD Owl Cam: And we ask… we ask our principals, of course, but we also ask the community to please consider the ends when you make, suggestions or comments about what the budget should

019be, right? Because we don't want to, we don't want to handicap ourselves from being able to achieve these ends. SBSD Owl Cam: So the first end that we have is we want all of our students to have a disposition for lifelong learning. I won't read all the bullet points to you there, but we want to make sure that our programming prepares our students to realize that they will be learning for the rest of their life, that it's not just 12 years and out. SBSD Owl Cam: We have an end of academic proficiency. We want all of our students, all of our students, to be able to achieve at a level that's going to allow them to find meaningful work and make meaningful contributions to society. SBSD Owl Cam: We, want all of our students to

020grow personally, personal development, so they are able to set goals for themselves, they're able to live responsibly, they're able to be, confident and resilient and adapt, to, to, different, SBSD Owl Cam: pitfalls that go in their way, right? And the final thing that we want all of our students to have is citizenship. We want people, our students, to understand the impact of history and government and law and economy, all those kinds of things. Again. SBSD Owl Cam: This makes them well-rounded, not just well-rounded students, well-rounded citizens. It helps them continue to move our community forward. SBSD Owl Cam: So those are the things that we want to preserve, and we hope to do that by, SBSD Owl Cam: Again, providing, the same, SBSD Owl Cam: percentage of resources to the buildings that we did this

021current year next year, so they do not have to make any reductions to the services they're providing, but we as central office recognize that we can absolutely operate a little more leanly, and there are things that we can do better, and that's what we plan to do. So I would, as we go into the open forum, I would just ask people to consider SBSD Owl Cam: you know, SBSD Owl Cam: what our ends are as you come up and make your comments, and the questions I would ask them to think are, what ideas do you have for the principals to consider as they create their building budgets? SBSD Owl Cam: And what ideas do you have for additional efficiencies central office should consider? Knowing that I can't give you any specifics now, and we've considered

022a lot, but I would love to hear any ideas that are out there for that. SBSD Owl Cam: The last slide is just a reminder of the upcoming opportunities, which are principal-hosted events in their buildings, the January 14th meeting, and Town Meeting Day on March 3rd, and there's a QR code so people can go onto our website and read all the information and watch videos like this. SBSD Owl Cam: Thank you, sir. SBSD Owl Cam: Thank you very much. So, does any board member want to… SBSD Owl Cam: start with any comments or questions. SBSD Owl Cam: Anybody from the public, have anything to say about budgeting matters? SBSD Owl Cam: Can I… huh? Yes, please. SBSD Owl Cam: Thank you. My name is, Sri Ram Srini Jasan. SBSD Owl Cam: Thank you again for

023the opportunity to, SBSD Owl Cam: share some observations. I've shared a couple of detailed emails. SBSD Owl Cam: the divorce? SBSD Owl Cam: Then I've also sent a follow-up email to, you know, a clock. SBSD Owl Cam: I appreciate that you are on the path of finding efficiency, And, SBSD Owl Cam: You know, hopefully settle over budget. SBSD Owl Cam: That reflects the objective that report said. SBSD Owl Cam: Glad to hear that. But I just want to kind of address the mechanics of the budget based on the comments I made last time. SBSD Owl Cam: So, from what I understood, the teacher's contract is a 4.25% increase in salary for Western Europe. SBSD Owl Cam: 26. SBSD Owl Cam: The federal year, starting July. SBSD Owl Cam: The support staff will have a pipeline

024of 26% increase for the first year, probably. SBSD Owl Cam: Full year. SBSD Owl Cam: If you do the math for those two. SBSD Owl Cam: The teacher salaries and the paraeducator salaries. The total salary increase would have to be $1.2 million. SBSD Owl Cam: Okay, do the math. SBSD Owl Cam: If there is any other group of employees other than paraeducator salaries in the second contract, please let me know. I don't think we are just going to be significant. SBSD Owl Cam: So, from what I understood from the last meeting, there was a $2 million result. SBSD Owl Cam: On a contingency in a miscellaneous item, the last year's budget to account for these contract increases. SBSD Owl Cam: So if the effective increase is only $1.2 million for the salary increases. SBSD Owl

025Cam: Let's just say that it's $1.2 billion. Maybe it needs to be adjusted. SBSD Owl Cam: The rest of the renewable money needs to come off of the baseline. SBSD Owl Cam: Our fiscal year 26 budget. SBSD Owl Cam: Everyone on that concept, agreed with the concept. SBSD Owl Cam: So I just want to make that point first. Do I hope… sorry, just a second. I don't, I don't necessarily agree, but I think I understand. If you leave it at 3.26%, on top of that, that's not a good budgeting practice. SBSD Owl Cam: You cannot take the money that you didn't spend and then apply the 3.26%. There's a term for that in the private sector. SBSD Owl Cam: Okay? There's a tone for that, I will not say it. SBSD Owl Cam: So, I

026think you should say it, but it's so sad that SBSD Owl Cam: Okay? So I'm just pointing out, it's something that sticks out SBSD Owl Cam: The budgeting process of school districts. SBSD Owl Cam: And it's a very simple adjustment, and I just want to bring it to life. SBSD Owl Cam: Because if you go back in the history, and you'll see that SBSD Owl Cam: The actual… the contingency is not fully used. SBSD Owl Cam: Where competitors see is the images. SBSD Owl Cam: Right? So… so I just want to make that point. SBSD Owl Cam: So, whatever the number is, total number of effective salary rates, whether it's 1.2 million, 1.3 million, 1.4 million, whatever it is. SBSD Owl Cam: There is a residual amount in the contingency that these should come out

027of the baseline. SBSD Owl Cam: Okay? That should be as effective savings of the parent baseline, okay? That's number one. SBSD Owl Cam: The second one I just want to focus on is the purchase of professional executive services. SBSD Owl Cam: There was a $1.35 million increase. SBSD Owl Cam: In the other purchase services, there was a 1.37 million to produce. SBSD Owl Cam: The detailed email I had sent, I had… I was wondering whether some of this little one-time Cost. SBSD Owl Cam: You know, there are things like… SBSD Owl Cam: Other purchase services, student transportation purchased from other sources. SBSD Owl Cam: roughly $325,000. It just stands out. Last year, I wonder if there's a one-time spend. SBSD Owl Cam: If it is a one-time spend that needs to come off of the

028baseline. SBSD Owl Cam: So, I'm just pointing out a process issue here. SBSD Owl Cam: So, it's just not… I'm not sure… SBSD Owl Cam: It's a good practice just to take the last year's number and apply a multiplier. SBSD Owl Cam: So, if you're looking for efficiency, apart from whatever operating efficiency you're looking for, I think. SBSD Owl Cam: The community needs to see the appropriate baseline adjustments. SBSD Owl Cam: And so that's the point I wanted to make. SBSD Owl Cam: And if it is not clear, I'm not coming up with any new data, it's the same data that I shared with you. SBSD Owl Cam: So, if you… Don't agree with this, please respond to it. So, okay. SBSD Owl Cam: Thank you. Thank you very much. SBSD Owl Cam: Does any

029board members have any thoughts on… Good. SBSD Owl Cam: I mean, I'd be curious, I think those are excellent points that you raise, and I think that my question would be to Joe and Jean Marie, you know, how are you counting for those comments, or for that type of situation where, you know. SBSD Owl Cam: Or is there any review to look at that? SBSD Owl Cam: you know, as part of an audit process, I don't know that I'd call it exactly… I mean, maybe it needs to be, like, an audit for how specifically the budgets are being built. SBSD Owl Cam: and see if there's any, like, redundancies or things that are showing up, and you're getting the snowballing effect where it just continues to carry on. I mean, the answer is yes, we

030do look at redundancies, and some of that $2 million in savings that the central office is able to come to was through SBSD Owl Cam: some redundancies. I would offer that there absolutely has to be some sort of contingency, because we can't control how many students enroll with us, we can't control what kind of services that they need to be offered. So I think it would be impossible to develop a budget that will SBSD Owl Cam: be spent to the point. That's just… it's not responsible, so I think our budgets are a little more conservative, SBSD Owl Cam: that there is some contingency, built in for those kinds of raising. And if I could just, respond to what I understood of what you said, SBSD Owl Cam: I think that… It is. SBSD Owl Cam:

031as a board, like, as an individual board member, I don't know the details of… SBSD Owl Cam: the operations expenses and all those things. And so, I think our… SBSD Owl Cam: role as elected representatives of the taxpayer is to say, what is a fair burden to put on the taxpayer? And also, what is a fair amount of, SBSD Owl Cam: monitoring and governance put on the district, right? And there's, both things are important. And so when we say. SBSD Owl Cam: what was the budget number on the ballot last year? And then we just… Add inflation to that. SBSD Owl Cam: I think that we're assuming that there are gonna be, like, an average number of contingencies, right? And so, like, the thing… the one-time costs that may have happened last year, there are

032going to be different one-time costs this year, and so we can't just cut them out and then, you know, do things fine. SBSD Owl Cam: So, that's from where I said. Can I please respond to that? Yeah. SBSD Owl Cam: And also, if anybody… I think the rule is basically, like, if anybody else wants to comment, they're allowed to comment. Everybody's allowed to comment. SBSD Owl Cam: They go… they move to the front of the line, say, if they have a problem. So, I… I appreciate Dr. Clark's comments about contingencies. Obviously, you're going to have new contingencies going forward, because you have new risks and new issues. SBSD Owl Cam: All I'm saying, asking for is, whatever contingencies you had for last year. SBSD Owl Cam: on one-time expenses you have. To the extent that

033you did not spend that money, it's not going to record. Please make an adjustment. SBSD Owl Cam: I'm not asking you to do anything differently about your governance. It's just a good budget practice. SBSD Owl Cam: That's not what I'm saying. Right, and what I'm suggesting is that's exactly what we're doing. We are finding places where money was budgeted that hasn't been used, and we can make that reduction without impacting students in the class. SBSD Owl Cam: So, just to make my point more specific and relevant here. SBSD Owl Cam: This cost center of 5519, student transportation purchased from other sources, you look back at history. SBSD Owl Cam: Because not… the school district does not spend $325,000 in one year. SBSD Owl Cam: That's a one-time expense. If that goes into the baseline, and

034you're adding 3.5% on top of that. SBSD Owl Cam: That's not… It's not the budgeting process. SBSD Owl Cam: Look, there has been so much difficulty in managing the expenses for the school industry. All of us know that. SBSD Owl Cam: I'm finding out some low-hanging fruits. SBSD Owl Cam: These are low-hanging fruits. SBSD Owl Cam: I'm not… I'm not even kidding, it was other significant stuff. SBSD Owl Cam: Because those things take a tremendous amount of energy. SBSD Owl Cam: I'm just asking you to observe SBSD Owl Cam: do the due diligence of low-hanging groups, please. Okay? Got it, got it. SBSD Owl Cam: Yeah, we can… we can look into it. I think Jean Marie has something to say, too. I can just speak in broad terms. I would say this. If… if

035there is a, SBSD Owl Cam: other transportation costs that had never appeared before and appeared last year, that probably means that they were coded wrong earlier, because every school district I've ever been a part of has private transportation, most often for students with disabilities, who we have to provide SBSD Owl Cam: private transportation to. So, if nothing existed prior to last year, I would say it was probably an accounting error. And we will have those costs moving forward. I can't tell you what those costs are, because I haven't been here long enough to absorb that. Gene Maria? SBSD Owl Cam: I was gonna say, and it's exactly that, Joe, SBSD Owl Cam: One of the benefits of there being a lot of new staff members at the central office is there's a whole new set

036of eyes looking at things, and we're doing business in a different way than we have done in past years. SBSD Owl Cam: I'm not trying to throw shade at anybody that was in any of these positions before, but it's just a fresh set of eyes looking at things. So, I think that is… you're going to continue to see differences in budgets to come. SBSD Owl Cam: Joe and I and the rest of the team were able to stay with the school districts. I would agree with your comment about that private transportation. That doesn't surprise me at all. One of the things that happened in the spring on 24 was we changed our fiscal management software, and there were a lot of inaccuracies that were done SBSD Owl Cam: Prior to, so… More… as we go

037along, our numbers will get… SBSD Owl Cam: more and more accurate. I would also say that, SBSD Owl Cam: Oh, gosh, it just right out of my head. SBSD Owl Cam: Another comment that you've made? SBSD Owl Cam: No rush. Yeah, sorry, I apologize. I did have another comment to tell you. Oh, that was that we did have… there was a past practice of, if we budgeted you for SBSD Owl Cam: you know, $25,000 in toilet paper. Last year, we're gonna give it to you again this year, and what we're gonna add 3% for inflation, like, we're just… that's how we did do our budgeting. SBSD Owl Cam: One of the big differences that we've done this year that's helping us with our savings is if we always gave you a $25,000 toilet paper budget,

038but you only ever spent $15,000, but we kept giving you $25,000, SBSD Owl Cam: In our new budget that we're proposing, we're only going to give you 15. SBSD Owl Cam: So that may feel like a cut to some of our budget managers, but it's much more accurate in our budget. So that's a pretty big change. The way that we created the budget this year, particularly around those non-personnel costs, was to look at our last completed and audited budget, what we actually spent. SBSD Owl Cam: roll it and add CPI to it, roll it again and add CPI again. So that… SBSD Owl Cam: hopefully is a much more accurate forecasting for some of those things that we can control. But, there are things that we can't control that we do need to have contingencies

039for, like furnaces that bite the dust, and… SBSD Owl Cam: you know, equipment that needs to be replaced, so I don't need to take up more of your time, but I just wanted to add those comments. SBSD Owl Cam: So, first, I do, ideally, I want to thank Srini. Srini, or Sri? Yes, Srini. Sri, for your comments, and… and I, I quite agree. And the need to rethink this type of standard government practice, so just… SBSD Owl Cam: But there's the underlying part of it, too, and that's what my question is, which is that past practice has created probably some dependencies, right? And some expectations about the perception of the damage caused by the loss of the money, and… SBSD Owl Cam: So, what I'm getting at is. SBSD Owl Cam: what are you… and

040I guess you don't have to answer it now, but maybe just make sure that we're all thinking about this. What kinds of things can we put in place in terms of modern… how can the boards support you in this? How… how will you think about this? SBSD Owl Cam: gaming the system, right? So, well, use it or lose it, we're… we have a military background. That was a very common thing to… to hear. And I would be extremely disappointed if that became common practice. As a result of this more… SBSD Owl Cam: focused and precise budgeting, I think. SBSD Owl Cam: Yeah, I don't think that… that's been a practice here. I do think that, SBSD Owl Cam: I know that all of our budget managers, our building principals, as well as our, you know,

041other area budget managers, are incredibly mindful of their budgets. I've only been with the district for 18 months, and what I can tell you is that in that time, those budget managers have said to me many times, like. SBSD Owl Cam: Really could use another half a person here, but, like, we're serving it together, and, like. SBSD Owl Cam: you know, oh, this building wants more of this, but I didn't budget for that, so I'm gonna do the best that I can. Like, I really, truly believe that there's… SBSD Owl Cam: They're… they all have very good hearts and good intentions for the way that they're managing their education, foresee that anyone, you know, is obviously missing their thoughts. SBSD Owl Cam: I do think that there are some historical practices that Joe and I

042are trying to change, you know, things that he's shared with you guys offline that will be impactful and will be a little bit of change in the way that we do business. But… SBSD Owl Cam: yeah, I appreciate the support, and I think that that's important. I also… the other comment I was going to make is that I do think at the end of the year, there may be times where budget managers look and say, oh, I do have SBSD Owl Cam: $10,000 left in this budget, and I really could use some new tables in the cafeteria, so I'm going to spend the money on that, right? So. SBSD Owl Cam: So it isn't… I mean, it is a little bit of the use it or leave it, but if you use it in the

043good way, not in the, like, taking us all out of the lunchrooms. I got money lunch in the budget, as much as I can about taking me on a trip to a room, since you found some extra money in your budget, that isn't what happens. There is the, like, well, we really could use, like, new desktop this classroom, or… I joke about, like, I wouldn't really think you have malicious intent. Well, if I don't. SBSD Owl Cam: have the same amount. If I know that it's not going to be an incremental increase to what I have in my budget right now, that does mean I'm going to lose money. I'm going to lose money if I'm managing that budget. SBSD Owl Cam: And it just, like, it… I'm worried about a culture shift that does

044look for tables. Well, oh, the kids could use them in. Yeah. And then the flip side of that, too, is that we have to be mindful, like, the IT team that reports to me is… there are things that they think that we need from a security standpoint, the way that we do business now, that SBSD Owl Cam: is different than the way that our previous IT team operated, and I keep saying to them, yes, but remember, we're not buying chalkboards and chocolate. Like, we're buying laptops, or we're buying smart boards. SBSD Owl Cam: it is a different way that we're doing business, and so those expenses look different and feel different in the classrooms and in the buildings, but… so we have to be mindful of those things, like, oh man, like, next year we

045do need to buy, you know, this fancy IT thing that never… that needs to be updated because it's at the end of its life, like, so that's it. Yeah, so that would, you know, mean that maybe that budget… that non-personnel budget's gonna take up that SBSD Owl Cam: here for those items, and it ticked back down the next year, so… So, with the example that you basically gave you, where SBSD Owl Cam: It was, say, $10,000 left over from one line item. SBSD Owl Cam: purchase something else that is probably needed for the school's event? Where's the oversight in how… whom they said? SBSD Owl Cam: prove it. Yeah, so that all goes through the budget managers and the business office, and then up to the superintendent. So, and it could be… SBSD Owl Cam:

046I would like to be totally different paper, it's not a great example, but, there could be things in the facilities world of, like, I know we're going to need a new plow for the plow truck, that kind of thing, for example. So, SBSD Owl Cam: And those are real needs, and so, for example, they're… they're thinking about buying a piece of equipment this year for the facilities team to be able to, take in-house the plowing of this property, snow plowing of this property, and not have that done by your contractor. So that would bring our… the ROI on that would be less than 3 years. SBSD Owl Cam: would bring that work in-house, and then students would maybe do that. So it's a way to manage their budget. It would be using it different than

047what they originally had intended for, but helps us in the future, and SBSD Owl Cam: And you're saying that that was approved by… That would come up through the… so the facilities manager would look at his budget, make that suggestion, go through the business manager, and then myself, and then, talk to Joe. Why not? SBSD Owl Cam: And are all deviations like that, do all of them require superintendent approval, or are there some rules, like, it's less than X dollar amount, so therefore… I mean, he signs off on everything, so, like, he does essentially see everything. But, you know, if it's… SBSD Owl Cam: Lawrence is going to buy 10 more pieces of toilet paper, like, that's probably not going to be a big enough of an anomaly for Joe to notice, but if it's…

048SBSD Owl Cam: Yeah, I can't think of it, but… It's not like they're… SBSD Owl Cam: Joe, I spend more time in Joe's office than he probably cares that I would. So, like, there's a lot of open communication about those things, so… particularly around the budget and this time of year, so… SBSD Owl Cam: Yeah, just another practice that we're doing that I'm sure… our principals are fantastic, and I'm sure I'm annoying them, even though they're back there smiling, and they're very gracious, but… SBSD Owl Cam: It's always been my practice that anytime somebody leaves an organization, we don't just rubber stamp a, let's replace it, right? I want to look… it's much better, in my opinion, to be able to reduce staff through attrition than to have to lay people off. So when somebody

049does leave. SBSD Owl Cam: we analyze, do we need this position? Is there a better way to do it? That slows things down, it gums things up, it annoys folks, but I think that's a good way of managing it. I'm a guy that every car that I've ever owned has gone through a quarter of a million dollars. SBSD Owl Cam: I am as cheap as they come, quite frankly, so I'm very grateful for the insights that we're getting from folks, and I know I'm not going to catch everything this year. I've been here 3 months, but I am pretty notoriously SBSD Owl Cam: Frugal. Hold on. We, we have something on, Bridget online. SBSD Owl Cam: Yep. Very nice, right? Bridget Burkhardt: Thank you. Thanks so much. My question, I guess, is for Dr. Clark

050and Jean Marie. Have you gotten the state-level factors yet, that will help model what a 3.4% budget increase will turn into in terms of a tax rate increase? SBSD Owl Cam: Not officially, but yes. Bridget Burkhardt: Okay. SBSD Owl Cam: So, go ahead. We got the December 1st letter, Bridget. Bridget Burkhardt: No, but the… I was asking more about the specific factors for the district, as opposed to just the general December 1st letter, the ones about our, weighted pupil count and our CLA, specifically for South Burlington. SBSD Owl Cam: Yeah, I mean, we've seen those, and we have, I don't want to be quoted on the numbers, so tell me if I say this wrong. We believe that with the 3.4% increase to our budget, that the district's tax rate would go up less than

0514%, I believe. SBSD Owl Cam: And is that public information that was revealed to you? Like… SBSD Owl Cam: Or is it official, or… It is not official. It is, insight from people in the know, so I probably shouldn't even be saying it, but I… I feel… I feel good that the increase to the budget is not going to be the, the avalanche that people might expect. SBSD Owl Cam: I was just gonna say that one of the things that SBSD Owl Cam: First one, we say, I am not Tim Jarvis. It's not my job to be Tim Jarvis. I really respect him, but he has a completely different background than I do. SBSD Owl Cam: it's my job to help us be really good stewards of the budget that we create, that you've asked

052us to create, and to communicate that to all of you. I think last year, we didn't do a great job… we did a really good job pushing a lot of information out to the community, and confused everyone, and got a lot of feedback that SBSD Owl Cam: It was… SBSD Owl Cam: it felt not transparent and convoluted, and that's sort of how we're up to today. I can control… help us control our school budget, and so we're working really hard to stay to that 2.4% increase that you asked us to. SBSD Owl Cam: So, I'm spending all of my time working on what our internal budget is and what I can control. SBSD Owl Cam: What… how that impacts… SBSD Owl Cam: the tax rate that the taxpayers get, like, I haven't gotten that far,

053because I… there are other factors that I don't have control over that SBSD Owl Cam: Like, I'm sort of like, that's not my job. My job is to control this food budget, and so, I know Tim spent a lot of time really working through that whole algorithm to try to predict that, and I'm not that girl, and I can't control that, so… Bridget Burkhardt: Well, I would just be… I would just be cautious, though. So, for example, CVU, or CVSD, which is right next door, went right to that. Somebody in the district needs to be modeling that, because the 3.4% that we've given as guidance Bridget Burkhardt: maybe too much as an increase. I… 4% sounds low to me based on the estimates, and again, the December 1st letter is all estimates, and it's gonna

054change over the course of December and, you know, even into the legislative session. But if we don't have our eye on the ball of what the output is in terms of tax rate. Bridget Burkhardt: Given what the state factors are. Bridget Burkhardt: Then… this is why the budget is usually an iterative process. It's really hard to say, the budget is going to go up by exactly this amount, or it's going to be capped at this amount, or it's going to go up that amount, before we have a sense. There's a little bit of iteration that has to happen, and so I'm just a little concerned if nobody is focused on that outcome and that potential tax rate increase. SBSD Owl Cam: I think that's a good, it's a good time to mention the importance of

055advocating at the state level for more fairness and just a more rational process. SBSD Owl Cam: You know, this whole thing about how local communities have to vote on budgets SBSD Owl Cam: But then, really, they could say any budget they wanted, and then the state's gonna reallocate money anyway, and so, you know, other… you know, I think in our case, we were responsible, and we said, we're not growing this budget more than inflation. SBSD Owl Cam: But other communities may say, well, let's take it up 7%, because we'll, you know, we'll just get that money to stay. And then, you know. SBSD Owl Cam: So I'll throw in some taxpayers gold. SBSD Owl Cam: pay for that. So, it's very important that state legislators hear from us that, the budgeting process needs to get

056rationalized. SBSD Owl Cam: I do want to support this process, and say, anecdotally, that that is the appropriate advice, I think. The fact that there is a, you know, a condition that is out of our control. SBSD Owl Cam: Is not something for which any of us hear this from our responsibility. SBSD Owl Cam: And we should not engage in sequences. So to say that 3.4 might… SBSD Owl Cam: you know, leave some money on the table. I just don't agree with that. I don't think that promotes good budgeting. It does not promote the kinds of looks that we're talking about here that Shireen, you thought of, that you would manage it. Dr. Clark has, you know… Bridget Burkhardt: Well, I'm saying… I'm saying the opposite, actually, that you… it may be too much, and

057if we don't know what the potential tax rate is, we don't know. So, for example, CVSD came to me and said that, potentially, they could see a 16% tax increase in some of their communities if they were to go with a level services budget. Bridget Burkhardt: And I don't think that that means that they're going up 7%. I don't think they're being irresponsible with the level of services budget. And so, they're having to really do some hard thinking, in order to make sure that that doesn't happen. So, I'm not saying that we're potentially leaving money on the table, I'm just saying. Bridget Burkhardt: it is important. I know that we can't change what the state-level factors are in South Burlington, that that has to be done at the state level, but I think somebody needs

058to have their eye on that ball and have that be a part of the conversation. SBSD Owl Cam: It's not what it does. SBSD Owl Cam: Sorry, I interrupt you, Jen, did you want to ask another question, so… the joke. SBSD Owl Cam: No, no, it was just… no. You had said $250,000 for your car. Oh, okay. I meant 200,000 miles, that's all. Oh, yeah, so I mean, to be clear. To be clear. Yeah, 250,000 miles, right. SBSD Owl Cam: Driving for the Diamond. SBSD Owl Cam: Can you come up to the… just so we can all hear you? SBSD Owl Cam: it sounds like we're talking about budget oversight, monitoring, whatever you want to call it. Does the district have a program where you periodically look at the budgets? Does principals, department heads look

059at it, and develop some type of estimate to complete the school year? SBSD Owl Cam: They're working on their budgets all the time, for sure. They're in them constantly, they are… that's why the business manager, so they're not in the budgets constantly. It seems like we've got to surprise some dime in those surpluses, and that doesn't seem like it should be happening. SBSD Owl Cam: I mean, somewhere, there's money being held that is being factored into a budget for the future that is not going to be spent. SBSD Owl Cam: It's like paying too much in income tax. You feel good when you got the money back, but you're really getting good money. SBSD Owl Cam: Is there a process where you're looking and saying, overall in the district. SBSD Owl Cam: We've cut in

060$70 million, and we're coming in at $68. Our best guess, we're not going to go cutting stuff, we're not going to give money back right now. That's where… Yes. You had that process? Correct. Is it ever made public? SBSD Owl Cam: Listen, this is my first round in this, my friend Brian, so, I… SBSD Owl Cam: I don't know that that is a public process. I know that that's what the business manager is doing constantly, looking at where we're at and asking, and I know that those individuals. So, I love it, but that's a public process. It's probably public information, if it's asked for. Yeah. And the question I think you're getting at is, is it proactively published? SBSD Owl Cam: And… SBSD Owl Cam: Right. Yeah, I was actually just gonna say, to echo

061that comment, and Srini, thank you very much for your comments, both in our prior meeting and tonight. Fundamentally, I agree, and you know, a budget that takes the prior year's number and multiplies it by inflation is a bad budget process, and SBSD Owl Cam: You know, I… I would like to hear, you know, assurances that that is not our budgeting process, and certainly there are some things we can comfortably inflate by inflation. Teacher productivity, for example, I think that's fair and reasonable. There are some things that should have their own, multiplier behind inflation, like health insurance. We don't understand that. SBSD Owl Cam: And then there are fixed costs and visas, which we can model, but once we get past those items, everything outside of that category I would love to hear is on the

062table. SBSD Owl Cam: for something… we may never get to zero-based budgeting, right, but some version of that, you know, some version of auditing. I don't know if that encapsulates what your thoughts are. But I think that's what I would love to hear, and fully appreciate that we are in the middle of a budgeting vortex right now. As you just said, it's the first rodeo, so I'm empathetic to that. But as we go through this process. SBSD Owl Cam: I personally and the board and the community would love SBSD Owl Cam: And I think benefit from hearing about that last category, right? You know, this, you know, we found $100,000 here, you know, or, you know, this was a $200,000 one-time expense that we do not expect to repeat in this budget, right? SBSD Owl

063Cam: But focusing on that last category, not simply multiplying by inflation, and advertising, when we have chosen to not do that, and we've reviewed each line item, I think would go a long way in SBSD Owl Cam: community trust and board, for me personally, feeling like we are being responsible stewards of our budget. And the net number may very well come out to be 3.4%, but it's the process that leads to that number that I think would help. SBSD Owl Cam: Yeah, as we work on building this budget with our building principals, it isn't a zero-based budgeting modeling, but it's… it feels similar to that. But there are still things that SBSD Owl Cam: are going to surprise us. People, especially that move in and out of the district, students that get placed outside of

064our district that we have to provide transportation for that SBSD Owl Cam: We didn't know… SBSD Owl Cam: about in November of the year, you know, like, some things are hard for us. Arbitrations, legal matters, all of those things that we don't… you can't predict. So, it's never going to be perfect. Of course, of course. And I know we'll never get to zero-based budgeting, that was just an example. But I guess I would hope that the buffer for those things is reflected in a contingency line, you know, not in SBSD Owl Cam: They… times inflation. SBSD Owl Cam: you know, spreadsheet, right? You know, absolutely, let's put contingencies in there, but let's call them a contingency instead of maybe finding them because we inflated something that, you know, for 5 years it didn't even… Yeah.

065And I don't know, I'm not with you in the office, I know you remotely part of the budget, so I'm not… maybe that's variable in the process now, but the more we could advertise that. SBSD Owl Cam: where we've chosen to make those decisions, I think, would really help, me feel confident and community feel confident. SBSD Owl Cam: You know, we're not just multiplying everything by inflation. SBSD Owl Cam: As far as to Dr. Clark's comment about ideas and so on, I think it's great that you're looking at efficiencies. SBSD Owl Cam: Terrific. SBSD Owl Cam: That's a good place to start, I guess, in my opinion. I do believe that we need to do some strategic things differently to get out of that cycle of SBSD Owl Cam: Consume resources, we really need them,

066and the option is much higher taxes or higher taxes. SBSD Owl Cam: Or we have to cut people, and that's cutting resources. That's not what it would be. And we hear that this is a employee, SBSD Owl Cam: people… SBSD Owl Cam: salaries, benefits-driven organization. I get it. So, what can we do about the expense side on wages and benefits? I know if we were SBSD Owl Cam: you look at a trade union or a construction company, you're not… you're gonna have a gradual, here's our senior group of people, and they're paid this. We always have certain people at the pipeline entry level, that are going to ascend to those positions. And I think in South Burlington. SBSD Owl Cam: What I've heard is, we want the best, we'll go out and hire somebody from

067outside the district who is gonna, let's say, get plugged into year 10 of the spend. SBSD Owl Cam: Now they're, what, 8 years from the max? They're gonna work 20 more years? We've got them at the max. We're not saying they're bad teachers, I'm not saying… but for a system like you have, you have to have equal distribution at every level. And I don't know what the percentage of our folks are at the highest level. SBSD Owl Cam: But if you ran a bunch of numbers, you could figure out that down the road. SBSD Owl Cam: This is what it's gonna cost us if you just took regular wage increase, medical, I believe it twice. Wage increase, and so on. You can probably predict what your salaries are gonna be for those people for the

068next 15 years. SBSD Owl Cam: So I think we need to strategically look at, gonna get ahold of wages, hiring entry-level people, people out of college, 2 years experience, instead of these 10-year people with so many hours. SBSD Owl Cam: who plug in at $40,000 more into the schedule, that's $40,000 more calculated into retirement. Workers' comp benefits, it's snowballed. SBSD Owl Cam: And once they're at the max. SBSD Owl Cam: There's no movement in education that are going to continue to move on, but you're there SBSD Owl Cam: We really need to do something about the wage side, I'm saying. And I think it's by hiring good, sharp, young people that schools are turning out, because they're turning out good people to connect. SBSD Owl Cam: Thank you, Douche. SBSD Owl Cam: Any other, thoughts

069from the board about Budget? SBSD Owl Cam: I would say the last thing that I would say is as much transparency as we can provide to the public, the better off it would be. So. SBSD Owl Cam: I… highlighting if there's efficiencies that are being found. SBSD Owl Cam: presenting the budget when it's available, and providing that information, because I do think that we've got some incredible resources in our community, and, you know, we've got cold eyes that are looking at things, and SBSD Owl Cam: You know, I mean, it's just great to hear the feedback from everyone, so I think that, again, as much as we can put out there and solicit that feedback and be welcome to it, I think you're better off. Yeah, and we will absolutely do that. SBSD Owl Cam:

070frankly frustrating for me in this position, we make decisions, but there's a time frame for going through those decisions. There's a, you know, a list of who do I have to tell, right? And what order do I tell them? And how do we break this news, and all of those kinds of things, but SBSD Owl Cam: I think it is fair to say that before that January 14th meeting, when you vote on the budget, you'll have a line-by-line list of where we made all these reductions. So we have two people online. SBSD Owl Cam: At least on the port. SBSD Owl Cam: Forrest, go ahead. Forest Harger (she/her): Hi there! Forest Harger (she/her): I'm a South Burlington Elementary School parent. I see Principal McDonald back in the wall there. Thank you so much, Alyssa, for

071being there tonight. Forest Harger (she/her): First, I want to just call out the point about communication. I think that… Forest Harger (she/her): you are actually communicating. What's disappointing to me is that I don't see many other South Burlington Forest Harger (she/her): parents in that room. I can't see who's online. I've been blind to that, so perhaps they're all online, and I hope that's the case. So I just want to say thank you for creating a forum, even if you're not getting the engagement that you want. Forest Harger (she/her): Also, it's kind of hard at 6.30 at night with two kids to make this happen, but I'm doing it. I also want to… I understand that the superintendent works for the city, and he works for the school board, but… and I know that there's been

072a tremendous amount of, like, adversarial interaction between the school board and the superintendent in the past. Forest Harger (she/her): there's not so much of that tonight, but I would invite both parties to just operate from a place of best intentions. Like, Dr. Clark is very new to the district. He's mentioned that he is playing catch-up while drinking from the fire hose. It sounds like Jean Marie, I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with you, but you're also kind of new to this gambit. Forest Harger (she/her): And so, giving people a little bit of grace. Forest Harger (she/her): To make that catch-up, to assume that they are looking at things with the eyes that you're asking them to look at, instead of coming from a position of just thinking that they don't know what they're doing. Forest Harger

073(she/her): could be really helpful in terms of making sure that this all goes successfully. Not only that, it demonstrates to our kids, who probably aren't really paying attention to what's going on. SBSD Owl Cam: Good point. Forest Harger (she/her): That the adults in the room are being adults. Forest Harger (she/her): And I think that's probably a big takeaway to what the superintendent mentioned at the beginning, like, what is our end, right, in raising these kids through the public school system? And one of them is how to be productive people in society. And I think we're really responsible at all junctures to try and identify opportunities for them to do that. We have to model it. Forest Harger (she/her): So, just meeting one another with the best of intentions at the outset. Forest Harger (she/her): is

074a really, I think, positive way to try and do that. Forest Harger (she/her): The other thing I want to mention is, we're talking about, like, finding $200,000 here and there, like, that is quarters on the couch cushions. It's 0.2% of the overall budget, which was… Forest Harger (she/her): what was it, $74 million? Like, it's not to say we shouldn't be looking for those things, but it sounds like there's a lot of time being spent trying to identify those small amounts, and I wonder if that's time better spent for Principal McDonald, focusing on what's happening in the school building. Forest Harger (she/her): You know, I trust and believe that Lyssa has great control over what's happening at Rick Marcot every day, where my kids are, but I am gonna bet, I haven't talked to her about

075this, I'm gonna bet, that she would rather not be nickel and diming her team constantly. It's… it's a distraction. Forest Harger (she/her): I realize that this is a much larger thing, so we can't all control that, but just making sure we're kind of lifting our heads up and thinking about where are the really impactful ways Forest Harger (she/her): You know, again, the superintendent talked about 2 million. That's a little more impactful than a couple hundred thousand. Forest Harger (she/her): And then the last thing I wanted to ask Jean Marie about is you mentioned that we had transitioned to a new, Forest Harger (she/her): finance and accounting system, and I wanted to ask about, you know, that sort of contingency that you referenced, like, is it legal matters, is it transportation needs? Are we taking, like,

076data analytics to any of that to look at kind of what trends might be in terms of spending over the years for that sort of Forest Harger (she/her): Question mark box. Forest Harger (she/her): to be able to predict a little bit better going forward, I don't know if that's really even feasible, but I just wondered if that would be… if it's possible to look at what spending trends are to understand how to think about what you might need to set aside as contingency and going forward. SBSD Owl Cam: In before you, go, if I, might, I just wanted to respond to the… one of the first things that you said. SBSD Owl Cam: I… I'm also a parent of kids in school, and I think that before I… SBSD Owl Cam: really started paying attention

077to the school board and getting on the school board, I had a very parent-focused, school-focused perspective on it. You know, I was basically, like. SBSD Owl Cam: It just… it felt like something that was about… SBSD Owl Cam: primarily about the kids and the schools, and I think what I have learned is that SBSD Owl Cam: Really, our job on the school board is to represent the entire community, all the taxpayers, all the voters, and ultimately, if we're in sync SBSD Owl Cam: You know, if we're, you know, because, like, for somebody on a fixed income, for somebody retired. SBSD Owl Cam: they might not think that $200,000 is, you know, coins on the couch. And so, like, if we can be in sync with the community in terms of the investments. SBSD Owl Cam:

078that we want to make in schools, and this community has put a huge amount of money into schools. We're a very well-financed district. Then, in the long term, that's a… SBSD Owl Cam: That's the way that we can have a sustainable relationship with everybody in the non-school community. So I just wanted to point out that it's very important for us on the school board, in my opinion, to look at… to really look at the non-school community at their address and keep those in mind. SBSD Owl Cam: Sorry, go ahead, right, go ahead. SBSD Owl Cam: I guess I just wanted to… you caught my comment about the new fiscal management software, and so because of the new software, you're able to look back as accurately as we can look forward. SBSD Owl Cam: And our

079budgets are getting cleaner and more specific as we go along. SBSD Owl Cam: Full transparency, the business office was, really struggling with some staffing over the last year or so, and I'm really pleased to say that we're fully staffed out with some really incredible staff members who are just doing some really, really good work. SBSD Owl Cam: And I had a lot more faith in our numbers going forward than I would have in our numbers going back. So, you know, to your point around forecasting, that… SBSD Owl Cam: We were able to forecast our non-personnel budgets by looking at our past completed budget. SBSD Owl Cam: trends around, contingencies. I guess I can't really speak to that right now. SBSD Owl Cam: I feel like there is more to your question that I'm not answering.

080SBSD Owl Cam: Any other board comments on… We can, thank you for us. If we can go to, Jerry. Gerry Silverstein: So, I have a couple of things to say. First of all. Gerry Silverstein: somewhat humorous, I guess. I rarely agree with Bridget Burkhardt, but I will tonight. Gerry Silverstein: I think you must keep your eye on the ball with regard to what the education tax rate increase is likely to be, and the reason for that is, as Phil Scott said, over the last 5 years. Gerry Silverstein: But education taxes have increased more than 40%. Gerry Silverstein: That is dramatically above inflation, and since education taxes are directly proportional to education tax assessments, if over 5 years the education tax rate has increased 40%, so has the education tax assessments on property tax bills. Gerry

081Silverstein: Most importantly, a few things, and I want people to understand this. I've said it many times, but I'll say it again. As a percent of income. Gerry Silverstein: Vermont has the highest property taxes of all 50 states. Gerry Silverstein: As a percent of income, Vermont has the highest property taxes of all 50 states. 75% of the property tax goes to education. Gerry Silverstein: And education property taxes are only one of three ways that residents pay for education in the state of Vermont. Gerry Silverstein: 100% of the sales tax, which is about the same amount of money as is raised from primary homesteads in Vermont, that's about $625 million, 100% of that goes to the education fund. Gerry Silverstein: And because the teachers' pension fund, the STRS, has been significantly underfunded for many years. Gerry

082Silverstein: This year, and continuing, according to the former treasurer, State Treasurer, contributions from the General Fund, whose primary revenue stream is resident income taxes. Gerry Silverstein: will be needed to be transferred to the STRS, the pension fund, until 2038. This year, $230 million. Gerry Silverstein: will have to leave the general fund and go to the pension fund. And again, the number one revenue stream in the general fund is income taxes. So not only do we pay for public school education in the state of Vermont via our property taxes on our property tax bill. Gerry Silverstein: We also pay for it through our sales taxes, then we make any purchases, and also through our income taxes. And I might mention, speaking for my own property tax bill, with the so-called buy-down that the legislature and the

083governor agreed to for this year. Gerry Silverstein: I saved $16, Gerry Silverstein: on a expected $440 increase on my property, education property taxes. I saved $16 with the buy-down, but to get that $16, the state used $63 of my income taxes. Gerry Silverstein: To buy down property taxes statewide. Gerry Silverstein: So, only in Vermont could I get a $16 credit by paying $63 in income taxes, and I'll challenge anybody to disprove me wrong on it. Gerry Silverstein: The other points I want to mention is that, as Phil Scott has said, over the last 20 years. Gerry Silverstein: While education taxes have been increasing significantly, enrollment in Vermont public schools has declined by 20%. And believe it or not, I checked my records from handouts from former superintendent David Young. In South Burlington, if you just

084look at South Burlington students, K-12, the numbers have gone down by 18%. Gerry Silverstein: But I can assure you, the number of enrolled employees has not gone down. Gerry Silverstein: Statewide in Vermont, the employee… pupil-to-employee ratio… the last number I got is 4.4 to 1. That's from the state AOE. Somebody in an article today said it's been lowered to 3.4 to 1, but what you want to understand is the national rate is 7.45 to 1. Gerry Silverstein: So we have a dramatically higher number of employees for every pupil in the state Gerry Silverstein: compared to the other 49 states in this country. And that's even true for South Burlington. The ratio in South Burlington of pupils to FTE is just a little bit under 5 to 1, about 50% lower than the national average. Gerry

085Silverstein: So, when you say for this budget, you're going to try to basically not do any cuts for your 5 public schools and make all of your cuts Gerry Silverstein: to central office. What you're saying to me is you've allowed the massive inflation into the budget, which has been going on for two decades now, to remain as it is. You're doing nothing, you're doing nothing to address the fact that we've been increasing the budgets over the years. Gerry Silverstein: beyond what is sustainable, and by simply maintaining the status quo, you're basically incorporating instability into the budgets going forward. Gerry Silverstein: You think by doing this, you're going to make everybody happy, but in the long run, you're putting off until tomorrow what you need to do today. You're still kicking the can down the road.

086Gerry Silverstein: Because you're not in any way moving closer to sustainability. Gerry Silverstein: And we're going to be back here, if you adopt this budget, we'll be back here next year and the year after, until it becomes so catastrophic that there will no longer be an option to control spending. We will have to do it, because we continue to make excuses for doing it in every year in the past. I'm warning you, if you don't do it now, you're gonna have to do it in the future. It's just not sustainable. Gerry Silverstein: Thank you. SBSD Owl Cam: Does any board member have any… I had just a quick note, Jerry said that we hadn't done any… SBSD Owl Cam: anything, and this is the lowest budget increase in 5 years, and so it's a… it's

087a… in my opinion, it's… it's about what direction we're going in. But I… I do respect and hear many of the points that SBSD Owl Cam: You bet. SBSD Owl Cam: I do, I do too, and I would say I've been here 3 months, and, frankly. SBSD Owl Cam: It will take some time to determine what other reductions need to be made. SBSD Owl Cam: I would just also like to say I really appreciate you trying to keep the resources useful. That's important to me, and… SBSD Owl Cam: I think it's what our kids need, so I really appreciate that you're doing that, and I don't think they need less resources. SBSD Owl Cam: I think we'd have to… SBSD Owl Cam: work on through issues that we have, with what we have, before we

088can think about reducing resources for our students. I think that… SBSD Owl Cam: make any sense whatsoever. Gerry Silverstein: Am I still alive? SBSD Owl Cam: Oh, you have to… Gerry Silverstein: I forgot to mention one thing. Now, I still disagree with your 3.4% for Northeast inflation. I have this… I have a 3.1% from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, so I think we have a disagreement there. But I also want to mention… I want to remind you, 18% of residents are senior citizens, and our COLA for Social Security next year is 2.8%. Gerry Silverstein: And our Part B premium for Medicare is going up 10%. Gerry Silverstein: So really, what you've said is you've relegated senior citizens in the community to an economic status lower than the compensation you're providing to employees in the school

089district. And speaking on behalf of the senior citizens, I take exception to that marginalization of our economic well-being. SBSD Owl Cam: That's a very important point. SBSD Owl Cam: Very portable one. SBSD Owl Cam: Thank you for your comments, Gary. I did just want to say, I appreciate the efficiencies that Dr. Clark and Jean Marie have already worked to find, and we are only a couple months into this process, and Joe's tenure, and SBSD Owl Cam: I appreciate the efficiencies that you found, and that we started in central office, so thank you for that, and look for the additional efficiencies that we may find? So thank you for starting where you did, and finding the efficiencies. SBSD Owl Cam: You both have. SBSD Owl Cam: Maybe we'll take one more comment on this one, or

090two, Elizabeth, go ahead. SBSD Owl Cam: I didn't really prepare any comments, but just wanted to make a couple of me segue, Seamus into another item that you're planning to talk about. SBSD Owl Cam: a couple of things. One, I would encourage the board as part of your policy governance review to, look at least at monthly, if not quarterly, financials, but look at actuals and forecasts, because I think that can SBSD Owl Cam: If you, folks, and policy for policy, largest policy. SBSD Owl Cam: governance issue that the board is responsible for is the budget development. So, looking at those actual forecasts and anywhere there may be a conversation that the business office can anticipate can give you an idea of what's coming down the road versus them getting to the end of the year

091in the budget process. SBSD Owl Cam: I think dollar rising some of the big ticket items, like wages and healthcare expenses, is important for the community to understand. And my understanding in the past is that's about 80% of the budget. SBSD Owl Cam: But, and I think somebody else brought up sort of a real solid understanding of the F teams that are, being considered within the district and the proposed budget, to really understand where that may start to get out of whack with enrollment. SBSD Owl Cam: I think the comments about one-time spending, again, if there are one-time expenses that can be anticipated, identify those up front in the budget, the understanding that you'll always need some, surplus for unexpected expenses. SBSD Owl Cam: A couple of things, SBSD Owl Cam: you know, that I

092think about when I think about the school system, it's really… SBSD Owl Cam: Similar to the medical field, is sort of first do no harm, and that's kind of the trust that you hold with students and with schools and staff as well. SBSD Owl Cam: The tough part about the budget process is you can come up with ideas that might drive efficiencies or improvements down the road, but the budget process is not the time to implement those. So, some of the things I've talked about in the past myself would be looking at back office operations, and given that. SBSD Owl Cam: The consolidation of districts, that's kind of been put on the back burner for now. SBSD Owl Cam: I think, South Carolina could be a leader in really looking at consolidating that box operations

093and driving maybe some of the efficiency stuff that you've already identified across all Chippew County, for instance. I think looking at, AP classes. SBSD Owl Cam: Where, rather than cutting something, if it's low enrollment, the opportunity to leverage remote underneath it, for instance, and that does require some contractual changes, but considering that, and we've done that, in fact, from culturally activities. SBSD Owl Cam: partner with other school districts, but maybe that's an area that opens up opportunities, but leverage the expense of that across districts. SBSD Owl Cam: And the last point I wanted to make is, I think there's a credibility issue that if it doesn't exist right now, I think SBSD Owl Cam: it's evident, and emerging with the community, which is really the credibility issue around what outcomes are, and I think that's

094no segment into another topic you've got here, but people want to know what is the value for what they're paying us to spend, and SBSD Owl Cam: When you look at some of the competencies here, academic proficiencies, one of the ones SBSD Owl Cam: That falls short by a lot of measures, and I know there's a lot of catch-up going on, but I think you are considering that, and I know you were looking at that as well, but really looking at SBSD Owl Cam: Understanding the credibility gap and the value proposition the protest being asked from a taxpayer, and closing that gap. SBSD Owl Cam: Thanks. SBSD Owl Cam: Well, that does bring to mind, Joe, one thing, that we talked about. I know in your… SBSD Owl Cam: When you talk to the redistricting

095committee. SBSD Owl Cam: I think you mentioned that South Burlington is interested in BOSACE, like the board of… SBSD Owl Cam: Cooperative Education Services, so I would love to hear more about how we might be able to, cooperate with other districts in Chittenden County, even in advance of redistricting, to provide better services for less money. SBSD Owl Cam: Alright. SBSD Owl Cam: And then let's take one more, just… and if you don't mind, we move to the next… Yeah, I just, wanted one, concern that I had last year during the budget process that, that was… SBSD Owl Cam: Interesting. Oh, yeah, Krista Shen. SBSD Owl Cam: parent, and myself to add. Just related to programming, I don't know if there's any way we can work, SBSD Owl Cam: a little savvy with our money, and

096maybe look to the building principals, and I know that they're being given some leeway with some… I don't know how that's going to look, but I know… I believe we made some cuts to our pre-K programming, and, you know, those are our most… SBSD Owl Cam: vulnerable students, and I, you know, giving the most robust programming, you know this, right, I'm talking to educators, so, you know, I think making cuts to that programming SBSD Owl Cam: might have been, you know, not, in my eyes, not the most ideal decision, you know, and so if there's a way that we can move things around and maybe make just small gains back to our pre- pre-K classrooms, you know. SBSD Owl Cam: taking away from that then gives us students in elementary and middle school that end

097up with lots of needs, right? And so, you know, I think putting back in there will then give us less needs. SBSD Owl Cam: So, you know, if there's any way to be… to that. SBSD Owl Cam: programming. SBSD Owl Cam: Thank you. And, and do we… is Schools Out separate from… No. Schools Out is part of the district. It's not for non-graduate, actually. SBSD Owl Cam: Okay. Not yet. If I want to keep the middle school, I ask my children what they would like to keep, and what they like, so can I share that? They would love… so, they love field trips, so keep that if we can. They love, their… so band tutors are wonderful, so if we keep our band titters, that would be great. SBSD Owl Cam: And from my perspective,

098the math, the math lab has been moderately, helpful for my kids, so if there's anything SBSD Owl Cam: Thank you. Thanks. SBSD Owl Cam: Maybe let's take one more, one more conference. One more comment? SBSD Owl Cam: I just want to kind of reinforce the message that had been rostered, you know, sometimes rostered the same. SBSD Owl Cam: I think maybe… maybe you should do. SBSD Owl Cam: Everyone in the community should think of this face SBSD Owl Cam: as a face of rewriting the story of some building. SBSD Owl Cam: The only issue around credibility and transparency SBSD Owl Cam: I think it's an important one. SBSD Owl Cam: I think some of the things that I pointed out SBSD Owl Cam: If you take the… if you do… if you do the due

099diligence, And… and you were storytelling. SBSD Owl Cam: on how you're streamlined. I wouldn't… I wouldn't use the word clean up. SBSD Owl Cam: How you can streamline the street operations. SBSD Owl Cam: I think we go a long way. SBSD Owl Cam: I mean, I think we'll get incredible support from him. SBSD Owl Cam: And then also this issue around academic proficiency and all that, I think those are all much, much bigger challenges. SBSD Owl Cam: I believe that any organization, if they want to get better, they have to consistently improve. SBSD Owl Cam: I think these things that have come up. SBSD Owl Cam: To put you on a path for continuous improvement. SBSD Owl Cam: I haven't heard the word continuous improvement much. SBSD Owl Cam: in this business before. SBSD Owl

100Cam: So maybe the environment you're in. SBSD Owl Cam: and all this redistricting agenda and all that. I think South Burlington can set itself apart. SBSD Owl Cam: And we rewrite the story. SBSD Owl Cam: So, I appreciate board members who are open to SBSD Owl Cam: new way of thinking, and I hope that this gets some traction. A lot of smart people in the community can come. SBSD Owl Cam: Now, you don't have to do all the work. SBSD Owl Cam: Allow our people. SBSD Owl Cam: So I hope… I hope this is a… SBSD Owl Cam: This is a… this could be the beginning of a new phase for South Africa. SBSD Owl Cam: Thank you. It's a great place to… SBSD Owl Cam: Yeah, I do want to say one last thing,

101one last thing to that point, is I completely agree. SBSD Owl Cam: And I think there's a great opportunity here. I think that's… it's… and one of the things that we've talked about is creating a scorecard. SBSD Owl Cam: that allows us to see where our opportunities are. Like, and we've got a retreat coming up in a couple of weeks, and hopefully, maybe that'll be something, I don't know if it's on the agenda or not, but it's something that we've been thinking of, like, how can we transparently show to the community SBSD Owl Cam: you know, maybe some specific metrics, KPIs that we're looking at to say, this is what we're looking at. SBSD Owl Cam: And what are the results? And where do we have that opportunity for continuous improvement? And where are we

102driving the efficiencies? Not just in what the board is doing in our operations with policy governance and monitoring and all of that, but also with… SBSD Owl Cam: you know, community engagements, and, and looking at some of the information with, you know, the budget, and how we're stewarding that, and communicating that out, and educating the community on what all of this means. So, I mean. SBSD Owl Cam: you're speaking exactly what we've been… what I feel like a lot of us have been talking about, and it's just bringing that into, you know, crystallizing it, and then delivering on it. Glad to hear that. Very glad to hear. SBSD Owl Cam: Well, Ray, thank you for the… We could go higher. SBSD Owl Cam: Just one final comment. I just want to say how grateful I

103am for all of the community members who have come out tonight in person and online, and at our last community forum. It's really easy to not pay attention to this, and to not be invested, and so I know we have some familiar faces that join us on a regular basis, and I just… even though sometimes you're asking us questions that are uncomfortable for us to answer, or I SBSD Owl Cam: don't… we don't have… I or we don't have the answers immediately at our fingertips. Just really grateful that you're here and participating and asking those questions, because SBSD Owl Cam: We are trying really hard, and I think that, having you as our partners is really valuable, so thank you for doing that work, showing up for your community. SBSD Owl Cam: Otherwise, what? SBSD

104Owl Cam: The next, item on our agenda for the Community Forum is the permanent superintendent search. SBSD Owl Cam: So, the board committed to do a full national search. SBSD Owl Cam: To fill the permanent superintendent position. SBSD Owl Cam: So in this discussion, if anybody has any thoughts about what is important for the CEO of what is the most valuable asset that's held by South Burlington, I think we'd love to hear it. I would just ask that, as we discuss this SBSD Owl Cam: Permanent superintendent position. We on the board, do not… SBSD Owl Cam: Talk about any candidates or potential candidates, or anybody in particular. SBSD Owl Cam: So… Yeah, so does anybody have any thoughts about the CEO search, as it works? SBSD Owl Cam: Pardon me. SBSD Owl Cam: Go ahead,

105Bill, please go ahead. Forest Harger (she/her): I just had a question. Do… Forest Harger (she/her): Is there… will there… well, I know that the, sort of, like, whatever the redistricting effort that's going on at the state level isn't settled yet, but… Forest Harger (she/her): Do you know if that will have any impact on this role? Which is to say, like. Forest Harger (she/her): Would you hire someone and then the role goes away because the district gets absorbed or combined or something like that, or is that not a concern? SBSD Owl Cam: That certainly people who, applied for this role SBSD Owl Cam: That is a risk that they're taking. SBSD Owl Cam: Yeah, and the advice that we got from our search consultant was to, SBSD Owl Cam: Not necessarily put that front and center

106in our job posting, but… SBSD Owl Cam: You know, anybody in the superintendent role is expected to be able to do a level of due diligence that would uncover something like that. You know, should know enough about the Vermont landscape. SBSD Owl Cam: And the contracts aren't written indefinitely to begin with, right? So, it's normal to expect K2 or 3 or some… SBSD Owl Cam: Your contract, and that pre-districting, which… SBSD Owl Cam: I won't comment on, but even if it were to go full, it wasn't, for another two years, but that would take place. So, there's still space to write normal one. SBSD Owl Cam: So, permanent is never permanent. SBSD Owl Cam: I guess so. Forest Harger (she/her): Well, so I guess my follow-up question then would be, I'm assuming that mounting a

107search is costly, and we just spent a lot of time talking about expenses in… Forest Harger (she/her): the school budget. So, has there been a discussion around extending an opportunity to Dr. Clark to just stay on until that redistricting happens, and we have a better understanding of how that might shake out for that role? SBSD Owl Cam: Great point. SBSD Owl Cam: Yeah, we're not, thank you for your question, but we are not going to talk about any individual people. Forest Harger (she/her): Fair enough. You made that clear, sorry. SBSD Owl Cam: report that I made about the cost of the superintendent search, and I will share, I was actually pleasantly surprised at how affordable, the process was, and I forget the exact number, but maybe a day ago, it was $12,000. So, so of

108course, I don't know if you heard that, so $12,000 from the permanent superintendent search, which, at least in my ears, felt very reasonable given the. Forest Harger (she/her): That's remarkably reasonable, yes, because I know what it costs to hire an executive, so it's… yeah, that's good. Okay, thank you. SBSD Owl Cam: And I would say that I think that the board has to do this. Knowing that the drama that has rolled out the last year, I think the board absolutely is doing the right thing by doing a national surgery. SBSD Owl Cam: our due diligence. And one other thing, too, I'd like to add is that we had interviewed different groups to do the search, and we had also interviewed a boutique SBSD Owl Cam: consulting company to do it, and I want to say

109it was about 4 times, maybe 5 times the size. Yeah, so, I mean, 5 times the size. So we're leveraging the Vermont School Board Association. I feel like we've got a very good partnership going with it that we haven't had in the past, which is pretty fantastic. And, so yeah, so I agree, though. Yeah, it's definitely something that needs to be done. SBSD Owl Cam: done. SBSD Owl Cam: I would like, also. SBSD Owl Cam: to point out, you know, as we talk about cost savings on a superintendent search, I want to go back to the board's commitment to do a national, very serious search. The impact of the CEO is… SBSD Owl Cam: Humongous. SBSD Owl Cam: And so, it's a varied, and that's why we have this discussion item at multiple board meetings,

110this is why we have it on the, SBSD Owl Cam: on the agenda tonight. This is why we put an ad in the paper last week, with a link to a form that people can fill out. SBSD Owl Cam: the… so yeah, the board recognizes that the role of superintendent is incredibly impactful on every aspect, costs, budgets, student performance, teacher, all that stuff, so… SBSD Owl Cam: Everybody who can… if you have a friend who has opinions about this, please have them get in contact with us. SBSD Owl Cam: And also, I know the QR code is coming out in the other paper, and I think we said it was open until December 1st, or… It came out last week's. Last week's paper, but I haven't gotten paid for that. Oh. So, like, it's like

111a week… SBSD Owl Cam: It's delayed. Yeah. It's still open. It's still open. So I think that's an important thing. And then also, we would invite everybody, because we've got our community forum tonight, we're going to have another one on December 15th. SBSD Owl Cam: And I think we've alerted folks to that, but we are going to be interviewing the permanent… the candidates for the permanent role on December the 12th, which is a week from this Friday, so it's next Friday, and then we will be down to two candidates that will advance to the final round. SBSD Owl Cam: And we're inviting the community to come and meet them. And so that will happen on, Monday, December the 15th. I forget what time. 6 o'clock. I think it's 6 o'clock p.m. So, yeah, 6 p.m,

112so… SBSD Owl Cam: You know, it's great to come and ask questions, and… SBSD Owl Cam: Just be present. You know, Horace, that was one of the things you had mentioned that, you know, you're not sure who is here. I mean, I would love to see more people showing up at the forums. And, you know, Dr. Clark had hosted a town hall a couple of weeks ago, and it was really good, but I think that there were… SBSD Owl Cam: 20-something? Yeah, 20-something that were there, but a lot of them, I know I went into a breakout room. Was that the one with the breakout rooms? And I was in a breakout room with Pat Burke. SBSD Owl Cam: And, yeah, Suzanne. And I'm like, wait a minute. Half are probably school employees. Half of

113them are school employees, so it's like, we need to get more engagement from our community. Like, bring a friend to these things, you know? Emily will make cookies. Now, really, I mean, it's true, because this is all about stakeholder engagement, and it's so critical that people have a… SBSD Owl Cam: A seat at the table, and let us hear your voices. It matters. SBSD Owl Cam: Any other… any other board comment on, Superintendent, sir? SBSD Owl Cam: Any other public comment on superintendent search? SBSD Owl Cam: You want to know what we want? SBSD Owl Cam: You know, I would say, you know, it would be really important to me for someone who is a strong communicator. SBSD Owl Cam: You know, both oral communication and written communication, but someone who is an active listener,

114you know, can sit and listen and take input from both community members, from the board, from teachers, and then implement that feedback and information, but then also make decisions. SBSD Owl Cam: You know, and be decisive in their decisions. And, you know, also somebody who has… who's organized SBSD Owl Cam: in general, it's organized, you know, it doesn't come showing up discombobulated, you know. And someone who has, you know, a good understanding of, finance. SBSD Owl Cam: You know, that, that's a, you know, part of their jobs, to… SBSD Owl Cam: Helping to understand, education, the budgeting and all the parts of that, and an approachable person. SBSD Owl Cam: You know, it's somebody who, you know, these people feel like they can go to, right, and speak to, and that they feel supported by.

115Not somebody who's sitting in an office all day, and SBSD Owl Cam: With their door closed, and is not available for help and support. SBSD Owl Cam: That's what I… you want. SBSD Owl Cam: All right, if we don't have any more comments on that, we'll move to the, the last item for our community forum, which is the NASDAQ Best Use Study Proposal, which, is a SBSD Owl Cam: you know, I would love to hear what that is, you know, explain like I'm 5, so maybe we can start with Joe explaining what we're talking about, what the benefits are, what implications it might have. So this… what this… as we talk about, you know, potential efficiencies and how might we operate the district, better. SBSD Owl Cam: I… I would recommend that we use a,

116unbiased source like NESDAQ to come in and do this best-use study proposal. And I remember last, at the last meeting, we were asked about, wasn't there some sort of proposal like this done before? I did find that, and it wasn't quite the same thing. SBSD Owl Cam: What the best use study proposal would do, we specifically are asking them to look at our three elementary schools, South Point. SBSD Owl Cam: the middle school and central office, I guess everything except the high school, to determine, is there a better way for us to organize? Are we using the facilities to the best of our ability? Can we downsize? Can we consolidate? Those sorts of things. SBSD Owl Cam: Frankly, because when you talk about consolidation, that becomes a really hot potato kind of issue, which is

117why I think it's better to have an outside source come in, so it's not, it's not perceived as some sort of, internal, decision that's being made. SBSD Owl Cam: So this proposal, as I provided to you, does cost about $16,000. That is a discount, because we are members of NESDAQ. It would take them about 3 or 4 months to do it. SBSD Owl Cam: Nothing that, they would do would be able to be implemented for the 26-27 school year. Well, I guess I'm assuming that. What I'm expecting them to do is come back with bigger picture kind of items. SBSD Owl Cam: So this is a year-out kind of thing. SBSD Owl Cam: I also don't see this as a long-term solution. My three months here have shown me that we probably need to talk

118about new facilities at some point, but that's probably a little further down the way. SBSD Owl Cam: what can we do now to save some money? Can we operate more efficiently? So NESDAQ would come in, they would… they look at our enrollment projections, they look at our facilities, how they're laid out, they measure things, they see class sizes, all of those kinds of things, and then they provide us a report with recommendations about SBSD Owl Cam: What would they do if they were, operating this district? SBSD Owl Cam: I saw your proposal, and I'm interested in it, and I'm glad you mentioned consolidation, because what I… SBSD Owl Cam: Disappointed to see when you consolidate those who don't have schools. SBSD Owl Cam: That is an idea. It is a hot topic. It has been

119suggested before. It will cost a lot of money to build a new… so I like that hearing you say, this isn't… SBSD Owl Cam: I want to just find some other spaces. I don't want to hear just consolidate airline resources, because SBSD Owl Cam: That's not something that's gonna happen to save us money. SBSD Owl Cam: And I'm glad you said that, because I… their, their recommendations will not be new construction, right? It's going to be, what do you currently have, and how can you operate those better? Which is why it's a more short-term approach, but I think it could be significant savings, frankly. I really appreciate it. I just… I've lived through the idea of consolidating this elementary school, and… SBSD Owl Cam: It doesn't… SBSD Owl Cam: it's a conversation that needs to

120be… That's a community decision. Yeah. I think, yeah, what I would say about SBSD Owl Cam: Consolidate, like, normally the operation of schools, especially in a policy governance framework, is entirely the purview of the superintendent. But when it comes to things like consolidation, I think we should SBSD Owl Cam: be open to any suggestion. I think that on the school board, we represent more than just the parents and the students, we represent the taxpayers, and SBSD Owl Cam: And so I think that any decision regarding consolidation moves out of an operational consideration and more into the political, you know, where we just have to bill consent, or that there isn't consent for it. So I think that SBSD Owl Cam: from your perspective, in my opinion, NESDAQ's perspective, you should be… should propose whatever the

121best thing is for the district, but SBSD Owl Cam: what? SBSD Owl Cam: the decision is not superintendents of, you know, do we do some, you know, controversial thing? That better rests the school board, because if we make the wrong decision, or if we're trending in the wrong direction, we can be replaced, and that's essentially… SBSD Owl Cam: And I agree with that, and that's my history. I'm new to the policy governance thing, but I agree with that. I think the larger the decision, the more people that should be involved in that decision. Tomorrow, we might have a snow day, that's on me. SBSD Owl Cam: When we're talking about building new facilities, or consolidating, or doing something short-term, that should be an entire community. The community owns the schools, and they should have decision-making

122authority for those kinds of decisions. Absolutely. SBSD Owl Cam: You know, and if you're talking about consolidating the elementary schools. SBSD Owl Cam: You know, you have to build a… you would have to build a new one, and the public would have to approve that. SBSD Owl Cam: Well, I think that there's… I think what I… to clarify, what I'm saying is, like, let's say that… and I'm speculating here, you know, that I'm… I'm not on this board because I'm an educational expert, but if… SBSD Owl Cam: NESDAQ came and said, oh, well, you should put all the 4th and 5th graders of one school, and all the 1st, 2nd, and third graders at another school. SBSD Owl Cam: Right? That is a form of consolidation, and I think that that… and again, that may

123have many financial benefits, you know, there's going to be parents who are unhappy with that, but then there could also be many voters and taxpayers who would be happy with that. And so it's just that… that's what I mean that it's, SBSD Owl Cam: even decisions like that really roll to the school portion. Agreed. Yeah, and again, when we talk about consolidation, with this report specifically, we're not talking about new construction. What can we do with our current facilities if we're not using them to the best of our ability? SBSD Owl Cam: I just have a quick question. Is that just facility-based recommendations, or is it personnel as well? Like, you know, say… No, it's not personnel. This is specifically for how do we use our facilities. Yes. SBSD Owl Cam: So, one thing I

124would add, Joe, is after we talked about this before, I had asked if you would provide an example, and you provided that example to the board, which was really… was really great to see. I'm wondering if… SBSD Owl Cam: it would be possible, or if there's a value add, like, if others in the community would be interested to see, or if that's something that can be posted, I don't know if it can be or not. SBSD Owl Cam: anything could be posted, yeah, just… Okay, I just didn't know. The board wants me to post it. I mean, if just, if there's any interest to see what, like, a report out would look like, they… Joe had shared, I think it was the three school districts? Three schools, and I don't think they were all best

125use studies. Some were, SBSD Owl Cam: enrollment projections, which Chenezdoug does for us for free because we are one of their members. And one was a joint enrollment projection and best use study. SBSD Owl Cam: But, yeah. I mean, it's just kind of neat to see, like, this would be an output that you might anticipate. SBSD Owl Cam: you know, coming out of the study if we were to do it. And I'm not asking for action tonight. I was hoping we could have action at the December meeting, but honestly, they wouldn't get started probably until the spring anyway, so if it rolled over to January, it wouldn't be the end of the world. SBSD Owl Cam: I love seeing all the data that was there, that they've provided, and I thought it was really helpful.

126Yeah, I think it is too. SBSD Owl Cam: And I think it's in the spirit of… SBSD Owl Cam: Squeezing as much juice out of the investment that the community has already made. SBSD Owl Cam: Yeah, so, very much worth that. SBSD Owl Cam: Just one more thing. If you do go forward with it, which I think SBSD Owl Cam: supported the, you know, I think always finding efficiencies and things, and however that moves forward. I think being, again, transparent, and the communication piece would be so important, and having… put it in your wolves thing. SBSD Owl Cam: And having it in newsletters, and… because if it becomes a surprise, and parents are like, whoa… It'll absolutely be out there, it'll be presented at a board meeting, it'll be all over, because this is… Well

127received, well received, and it's gonna be a hard, right? It's gonna be hard news for people. It could be, or maybe it's… Change is always hard, right? Yeah. SBSD Owl Cam: difficult, and so I think preemptively telling people, this is what we're doing, this could be what it looks like, right? A sample report, and this is why we're doing it, and the rationale, and what it could, you know, this is what the pros of it, right? It's all about selling it. SBSD Owl Cam: You know, like, how you present things if you know all of it, you know, so… Well, it would be irresponsible to spend that kind of money to get a report about… SBSD Owl Cam: Absolutely right. You know, and it's, you know, it's how you, it's how you market it, how

128you sell it, and give, you know, present that information. And, if I may, you know. SBSD Owl Cam: That they're recommendations. They're not telling us… Right, right. It's a report. SBSD Owl Cam: You know, from its perspective. It's creative. Stated and unique. SBSD Owl Cam: True. Yep. SBSD Owl Cam: So, I would suggest, I would suggest that if that's something that you can put up, like, you know, even if we have, I don't know, this is something we can consider in our… in our scorecard and how we're communicating out, but if there's, like, some key takeaways that we want the community to know about. SBSD Owl Cam: maybe it's something that gets thrown up on the… on our… on our website. You know, like, hey, as we discussed, here are some of the things that

129we chatted about, and here's, you know, here's links for… Yeah, I would be more than happy to put a story on our website and email it to all community members, as I do with all this other stuff, and again, my… the… SBSD Owl Cam: The key point I would want to get across is just this. It's data, it's a recommendation, nobody should panic or do any of that yet, right? It's just a study that's being done to help us make some decisions, and they'll hear more about it. And here's what they did in Massachusetts. Yeah. Massachusetts. SBSD Owl Cam: Is there any other board comments? SBSD Owl Cam: Comments? Any other community comments? SBSD Owl Cam: Hopefully I'm fine. SBSD Owl Cam: Well, great. Thanks, everybody, for coming. I would entertain a motion to… Adjourned.

130SBSD Owl Cam: Two things before you move. So, yeah, I would just say… Yes, yes. And then we have another meeting on December 17th, where the permanent superintendent will be announced. SBSD Owl Cam: to the public, and so that is our board meeting two weeks from today. So that's all I want to say. All right. So, I would entertain a motion to adjourn. SBSD Owl Cam: Jennifer, second. Any introduction? SBSD Owl Cam: Just two points. All those in favor? Aye. SBSD Owl Cam: That's what we hear.