001the agenda [Music] that squeakiness wow i think that's too much fun at baseball practice sounds like yeah it's not practice it's games we're in the playoff game so okay okay are we yeah i think we're good to go um so we can start out with the public input statement ready always okay uh the first public input session is a 15-minute session with each person having no longer than three minutes in which to make a statement but a second public input session may be held at the end of the meeting if allowed by the board chair the speaker will give his her name address and reason for speaking public input is designated for district residents but the board chair may grant not res non-residents the opportunity to address the board statements concerning a subject matter that
002falls under the law regarding executive sessions for example matters involving personnel cannot be made during public input and you should click on the link at the top of the agenda to send us your input tonight yep we have one piece of public input this is from drew sampson of lebanon he had two two points one we urge you to drop the unnecessary mask mandate now do not wait for the next school year the science behind it is highly subjective and is psychologically negatively impacting the children number two we just started hearing a little about critical race theory crt and the 1619 project and would like to know is any of this or similar elements been introduced to the school system or planned to be thank you jess andrew sampson but the light behind me is
003strong sorry about that yeah don't you like whoa um so um we're following the mass mandate because we have to follow the mass mandate and i don't know that we i you know i think that's kind of how it rolls with that one and hopefully they'll be able to lift that mass mandate for then you know in for summer school and in the future so we will do what they tell us um in terms of the other piece of it with this uh critical race theory and um the project 1619 we are not specifically doing anything related to that kind of curriculum or or work we are definitely as we've talked to you a little bit earlier about and we're introducing the diversity equity inclusion work it's so it's basically we want to make sure
004that our system is welcoming to all and that we are addressing any concerns that might be out there and um you got we hired consultants we're working with folks and we're going to be working with the board starting in july and we've got some good professional development happening um starting actually next week with our with our folks in the district so nothing honestly controversial just more about inclusion so anything else audra you is that pretty much correct okay great all right so there's again it looks like that when you the vote so i'm a little i actually don't fully understand agenda item three i don't know if it's what we signed earlier or i guess we just have to do a public vote you do have to do a public vote and i just need
005to read off the totals and then we need the form of motion and then i have the checklist that i need to do that um for how you vote so the budget passed in all three towns and we want to actually thank everybody for supporting our schools especially during this year this very difficult challenging year but it took a lot of teamwork and uh it worked out and we're very excited to um look to the fall as well and we'll talk a little just a tiny bit about that and under other business so article one was the district budget and um that total was affirmative um for 928 votes negative for 504 and it passed article 2 was for school nutrition and that was 1091 votes affirmative 404 um in the negative so that passed
006and article 3 was adult education and that was 945 affirmative and 546 in the negative and that passed as well so what i need to do is you need to verbally say if you approve this um or not do they have to be separate emotions they can be one motion it's just one check that i need to do okay okay it's basically allowing you guys to certify the vote so if someone could make a motion that you are certifying the vote then we'll go through the roll call and everybody can hopefully agree i'll make that motion that we certify the the votes for the three articles in all three towns great and i will um i'll just go through who i see here so um nancy newberg is that under am i understanding you have
007to get individual ones okay so yes travis yes lynn yes stephanie yes rebecca yes and me yes and is that i'm not missing anyone on i don't see anyone else great thank you did you get lynn yeah yes good um okay and then did every have you gotten signatures on that document yet that you needed if we did jen has them okay blank copy okay um so that's that for that piece yes thank you okay great well done and i just want to say that i'm i was obviously i'm thrilled that the budget passed in all three towns but it seemed like it was a comfortable thoughtful margin where obviously people still you know put their own thought into it and and voted as you know their conscience but it was nice to see um
008it was just nice to see that support support across all three towns yeah definitely we agree um and okay so fiscal year 22 subsidy all right that's denise do you want to start with that sure so um i know that we've talked about this before but the governor has proposed um additional funding for schools to bring the funding rate to 55 percent it is not officially approved so we do not have a revised ed279 um but um one of the things we have to do in the month of june is send the assessments for the fiscal 22 budget to the three towns so normally what happens is when we look at the local distributive calculation where they assess you know where we divided by towns we then have to give them more detail about what
009amount they need to pay us each month um in addition this year there are new warrant articles that go with that so previously i had done a spreadsheet and i had sent it out to the towns and that's how they did it now we have warrants where the board has to approve how much we are sending out to the towns and assessing them uh before we did that we wanted to have a conversation with you about what your desire is for this additional funding and whether you want to send it back we have three options we can receive the money and not spend it just put it receive it and it will go to the fund balance at the end of fiscal 22 and then we have it available for use when we're crafting the
010fiscal 23 budget we can do we can go back to the voters and say we want to spend it and this is the way we want to spend it or we can give that extra back to the towns and assess them less so basically adjust the amount of subsidy that we originally did now i'm going to try to share my screen with you let me see if i can do that tab this is can everyone see that yep okay so this yellow cell the yellow cells are really where we're looking so this is how the revenue sheet looks based on what the voters approved we were getting 20 million 136 in subsidy and we were assessing the towns 21 586 and this is generally what it looked like increases to berwick lebanon and north berwick
011excuse me um so that was the original let me go to a revised and what this would look like is again this 21 million 386 is the proposed amount of subsidy for for the district which means that the local taxes would decrease from fiscal and be effectively a negative 1.85 percent decrease in taxes to the taxpayers um when you go to the location um i'm confused i i my question is like it's actually why don't you i'll ask it at the end um because it's i think i'm go ahead i'll ask my question later um okay um this is what the new um local distributive calculation would be and we it you can see that each town would see a decrease in their contribution to the budget what was the original one so the numbers
012that we're looking at are the um the this is the revised as of may 17th which is what the budge the governor proposed okay so like a person in berwick would see uh a 0.17 reduction in their taxes um i am not sure where you're getting the 0.17 from but this is this these are the decreases to the town the person the pers it says percent change right so but so denise it would be the change that we would assess to the towns how those actually filter down to each individual person might be a little different but there would be a there would be less than um what we what we currently have on the budget and then if this money comes through and we want to give it back to the towns and not
013and so we'll just reduce our assessment let me um let me reshare some let me share the other thing i think i forgot to change i changed tabs for myself and i forgot to change tabs for you all hold on one second let me show you the revised that may help sorry about my screen oh technology i thought we were looking at the revised okay um so this is the revised again this is would be um additional subsidy so instead of losing three hundred sixty seven thousand two hundred eleven dollars we'd be gaining eight hundred eighty two thousand um again the taxpayers would see this twenty million three three six as the assessment versus which would result in a 1.85 overall and then the local distributive calculation again this number changes these percentages are just
014the change from year to year in the in everybody's proration for lack of a better word but this is what the towns would see as decreases and we would get a similar subsidy next year and going forward in theory if the governor is changing and bringing everything up to 55 percent that is what we're thinking but at this point it's just this is a proposed for us one year change and it affects fiscal 22. and it's not even in effect yet right it is i believe it is not in effect but i believe from everything i've heard from both the lawyers and the business managers and everything that this is on track to pass um so what basically what i want to do is i want to i'm looking for some guidance so that i
015can prepare these warrant articles to reflect what you would like to do with this money does anybody know what we've done with it in the past i don't remember because this happened before i recall we kept it and stashed it for the following year in the past and i know we got some negative comments on that as well if you don't know you're going to get it or not for sure i don't think you can apply it to the current year i mean well when will we know any ballpark when it's gonna be decided um that's the thing i don't know i don't know when the legislative session ends to be honest i think it's soon it is soon but that doesn't always mean you know they still have to pass the budget and um
016you know sometimes it'll go later it is supposed to be in the next couple of weeks right it's usually before july yeah i know we've had years past where you know i think i think it was two year two or three years ago when they went into the next fiscal year last year was in the new fiscal year for the vote but um the last time we got a very late award um they did it before june 30 i believe denise can you remind us what your your at the beginning you said there were three options can you just go over those again yes so according to bill stockmayer our attorney we can do nothing which means we get the extra revenue in our monthly checks and it just stays in the district and it
017goes kind of to the bottom line and it becomes part of fund balance at the end of the year we can um give give that money and reduce the assessment to the towns so instead of um increasing their assessments this year they would decrease from the prior year or we can choose to spend the money but we would have to go out and ask the voters to spend the money right down the middle where we're giving some back and keeping some at the same time or does it have to be all or none um i believe you can do as you wish my initial thought is that going back to the towns and adding a vote is not gonna i mean it's hard enough to get uh turnout you know at an election at a
018local election um that we just had so i i i feel like the third option would not be i don't feel like we would get a real reflection of how people felt but i may you know if it actually meant having to have a vote um [Music] i agree with denise i think that third option should be off the table and now to me it would be the other two yeah i agree i i'm thinking if maybe if we give them back the money that may help us in the fall when we go to our construction vote that's a good thought i didn't think of that um but again though it might just be where uh you know they're not gonna remember that aspect that's what i'm thinking what i'm wondering is if if we
019if we add it to the form balance and then um [Music] use it to basically make every attempt possible next year to have little to no i don't know how i don't know what like how it would work out percentage-wise but um you know not necessarily spend it but use it next year to offset any potential increase that we might have had um you know will still ultimately benefit the taxpayers because we would be aiming to not increa have any increase um but uh i don't know and here's my go ahead go ahead nancy i was just going to say it i think it would be a little bit some good pr for us and maybe bring some more people back on board for the high significant increase we're going to be asking for next
020in the fall so but that's just my opinion do you think you need to be aware that like town managers people people are people are aware that this is happening and are probably going to be interested in how we handle it like it's not it's not it's not un it is not an unknown right now that folks are waiting to see if and when this goes through and north north berwick to that point soon north berwick specifically as soon as they heard asked when we were going to adjust their assessment okay denise that doesn't surprise me did our lawyers advise us on how to proceed or or give a suggestion about what others are doing or they did not i can go back i can certainly go back and ask more questions again this is
021not something we're looking to sign off on tonight but in my preparation of the of the documents to certify the assessment i'll need to have a direction so i can prepare multiple scenarios and we can sign next week the ones that we decide to go with i can certainly ask more questions um if you have them of the attorneys and get back um yeah my you know what i mean i'm yeah i think that would be great my thought is if we um and i don't i'm not saying this to be like pessimistic but i think if we give it back to the towns i i think that people at the town will notice but i i don't think it's gonna buy us an ounce of goodwill when it comes to trying to get um
022you know construction stuff passed i i just don't think there's enough um awareness of our budget or any of this stuff i think people on the board and people on the in the towns will know but i i i just think it would it would be i i don't think it's going to get us i don't think the reason for doing it would be to try to get some you know support for those we can certainly make it a part of the story that we're telling but i don't mean that i mean it really is part of it i don't mean making it up i just mean it is part of what the narrative but i don't with voters i i don't think they're gonna see it as the same thing but if it's i
023mean if the intent of this money is to lower the local tax assessment then that's probably what we should be doing and that that percentage decrease is not over this year's taxes that's the decrease in what the increase would be for next year right did that make sense um actually did make sense yes so in the uh original in the original documents they were seeing an increase from the school district for fiscal 22 over fiscal 21. in the revised version if you decided to give it back there would be a decrease from the school compared to fiscal 21. oh really oh i thought that was just a decrease on what they were gonna have to pay extra next year so in this in this document that you see here um for example in berwick fiscal
02421 we asked eight million one hundred ninety six thousand five hundred twenty six and for fiscal 22 we'd we'd be asking eight million ten thousand three sixty four so we'd be asking 186 000 less than we did last year i think i like the idea of splitting it giving some back to the taxpayers and then keeping some but does that have to be hold it on do we i mean by the by the taxpayers would they have to vote on that or we just could just do it that way um so what the attorney told me is that uh he would find it difficult to believe that anyone would have a problem if we lowered the assessments to the towns and the taxpayers he's not ever seen anyone create an argument that we should be
025charging them more but we don't have to earmark that money if we kept half of it do we have to earmark that and go to vote or can we just keep it and put it in the fund balance so i think the only reason you would go to vote is if you wanted to spend some of it in fiscal 22 because again the voters voted on how much money we can spend so if you wanted to spend more than that using these funds to cover those additional expenses we would have to go out to a vote if we are sticking to the same expenditure just receiving more revenue then that goes ultimately into fund balance but what if we're over our allotted fund balance that we're allowed to keep how's that play out um that
026plays out that the audit firm writes a comment that says we're over in fund balance and we have three years to figure out how to use that that would be hard there is also um just so you know a one of the bills in the legislature this session has to do with increasing that three percent i think i've heard something as high as 15 percent instead of three um but there is a bill to increase that amount so it doesn't it doesn't change anything but i would be a welcome buffer um just because three percent isn't even a it's a really role it's really weird to like have a limit to how responsible you can be with your money right yep and it only affects really um the regional school districts those that have that
027are a department like sanford has a school department they have they never fall into that situation because they have the town of sanford that can hold all their all the money and and dole it out to them as needed whereas we are stand alone so we we hit that wall because we're three times so we're a district correct there's nobody holding money for us or helping us out if we need it or so i want to give you a couple of of a couple of um things so that i can maybe you know if you want to think on it i can come up with a couple of scenarios with the different uh paperwork for each and then we can sign i i would be interested to see what it looked like if the amount
028that we held on to uh was the amount that would fully fund our fund balance um and then uh i've i don't know where that would land i don't know if that's like half or whatever um i don't i don't think i don't think we should um i don't think we should keep more than half of it i would be interested to know if you know if a split would be uh like i believe the taxpayers would welcome that but i don't know if the towns are expecting something more so um i don't know if anyone has sort of a um a gauge for that so i i personally don't care what the town's expected i think we got to do what's best for us because we don't want to give make them feel like
029they can spend their money because we're going to give them more money back the other one of the other comments that the attorney did make was that you want to make sure that giving the towns back the money means they're passing it on to taxpayers we can't require them to do that we can hope that they do that but that's there's no guarantee that if we give the money back to the town that they'll you that they will pass it along and lower taxes very low and that that's my concern and that's kind of where i'm thinking we don't know that this is taking place yet um if it does take place great let's do our due diligence and making sure that we put it into play for next year where because we know that
030we got it if we um give even half and half we don't know what the town's going to do with it true yeah i didn't i i guess i didn't really realize that it was i mean the point of this is to reduce the taxpayer burden so yeah i would i would definitely want to know what that's what was going to happen and i i wouldn't say that that's not what's going to happen just we have no control over that right i like in talking to north berwick it's you know the the tone of it was we want to pass this along but i don't know that that's what they would vote to do you know i don't know are they too late in their process like we are too late in our process right
031so do we do it and then just do it all next year or or do we get some sort of verbal commitment do the towns have to what kind of they don't have to go to vote they don't have to go out for a vote if they want to reduce i mean they just pass their budget so like what's their process if they're going to reduce the tax burden i don't honestly know what their process is i want to say they may i think there's something that they need to do when they know how much money they're going to need from taxpayers is it that they borrow money and pay it back as they collect it i'm not saying i don't know the town side of it well like i know in lebanon we don't
032even get our they don't even figure the tax rate and all that stuff till august so and then we get our you know property tax bills hopefully sometime before october 16th when they're due so i don't think they know it's until again they don't they do that commitment that they have to do in august i would say it would be maybe helpful if we could at least say that we would um give enough back to the town so that it was a zero percent for like it was a flat kind of flat funded so that there wasn't an increase i don't know this is all very interesting honestly to try to navigate that's what i was thinking i was thinking that too um i i just i just feel like it would i mean i
033can i it would really bother me if we did this and the taxpayers didn't see a decree or you know a decrease in the increase or whatever it ends up being um my sense is that that that you know that the the folks in towns or that are our town fathers would probably be would want to be able to pass that along and we can clearly say we were able to give back so that it was a zero percent increase um well i don't know that i don't know if we can do it can we do that in all three towns denise um we i think we can do it as a whole it won't be in all three towns necessarily because of this change in percentages yeah so again to this to this document
034in the top section yeah berwick in fiscal 22 is going to have 39.39 of whatever the taxpayer amount is it's actually a decrease from last year so they would probably see a decrease north berwick is where they would see the increase because their percentage of the whole budget went up a little bit right so we can zero it as a whole to the to the whole district right um but it might not hit zero correct because if again if you look at what north berwick is getting as a as money back it's 69 608 dollars and that's using the whole amount the whole gotcha so we can develop a few options right denise and have them for you guys and maybe we can recap this so that you guys can think about it over to
035decide by well again if um i have lots of um i have some paperwork that requires some calculations in it for you got for everyone to sign next week um so i can come up with if you can give me the scenarios you want i can create all of those documents and then next week if you decide on one of them we can have jen send that out so that you can electronically sign it um but it will take me a little bit just to to calcul make all those calculations so so if i'm hearing everybody tell me if if i'm getting this wrong but it sounds to me like everybody is on board with either having the money go into our fund balance or having some kind of split with the towns are those
036the two scenarios that people seem to be leaning towards or those are the few scenarios i hear the 50 50 split or all of it in our fund balance okay does any are we can we give those two scenarios to denise or does anyone have another one that um they want to look at so you don't want there's no option there's no time where you would want to give all of it back i don't i mean personally i don't actually have a problem with that unless except that i would want to know that it was going to the taxpayers okay so i can hold it all i can give it all back and then as far as the split travis you said a 50 50 are we talking 50 50 are we talking make it
037a zero overall increase um what kind of split i'd like to see 50 50. i'm thinking 50 of the money we received stays with us and 50 goes back to the three towns divided up however you need to divide it up whether it's thirds or what yeah i would i would split it based on the the district calculation whatever that is okay so i will generate those documents um we can uh if you can be thinking and then next week we'll we can move forward with signing and so when you have any other questions let me know we will i can buy next week is what you're saying yeah we need to so and on that note what i'm hearing is that i really can't skip next week's meeting which is permission from audra and
038sue and i i sort of got a fuzzy no on that one i just sent you the impossible agenda deciding on the future of everything um welcoming new board members oh actually i'm glad you said that what who what are the who what board members should i have on this should i should joanne be out even though it's a june meeting we should should i have all the new board members listed or not it's all new board members all the old ones are gone yeah we got some detail on that i think joanne and estrida might come just for a little bit but they would they would be as guests okay and linda will be joining us as a guest as well okay yeah and then so we're actually officially down a board member okay
039correct we're working on that yep yeah i've already directed a possible replacement to contact the town to figure out her letter of intent and stuff oh cool all right was that is that it for that complicated agenda i think it is that's it yes for right now building committee update sure so we had a building committee meeting and uh the cha went over some of the estimate estimates that they received and as we mentioned i think it was just last week that the information came in the estimates came in 15 million approximately 15 million over the original kind of quote that they gave us way back when so i did share that document with you earlier just so you can see it i didn't think there was enough time to digest it but just for
040you to look at um the building committee wanted to move ahead even knowing that the the money was 15 million dollars more than the original um to move ahead to start doing some publicity with the intent of going to vote still in the fall so there were just some things that kind of came up for us as far as um it's good to get that momentum going and start doing some of that but we don't have real detailed budget line items from them yet um so there's a little bit of a concern about that so we just wanted to kind of have um travis and nancy if you want to just kind of update just how those conversations went at the at the committee not to put you on the spot just um some of
041the points that came up for for the committee overall and then we can just we just want to make sure that we're heading in the direction not only that the building committee wants to head into but that we want the board to head into as well it was a depressing meeting that's what i even said and they really most people thought we need to get out and get ahead of this sooner rather than later and even though it's the end of school uh we want to be having meetings like before july for the public before everybody goes on vacation um so i assume that they're working hard on that and yeah that's a lot of money i think there is some concerns as well about unfortunately the timing of things has put us in a
042place where things are um priced so much higher than they were you know eight months ago even and so there i think we actually denise and i and i just sat down and were just talking about it like we wanted to make sure the board was okay going out in a time at the highest point of locking stuff in so we just we i don't know i mean this is like it's it's just a little it's a little unnerving honestly like as we go forward so i just want we just really wanted to make sure that we were as a board everybody was on on board with it um i know and nancy both had concerns about the just the timing is is so hard but we don't want to slow down it's it's a
043it's it's very much a difficult time because if we don't do it it's going to be more expensive next year so it's not like i don't think waiting is going to make any make it any better so i have a question um like i not necessarily to sort of go through this um sheet in like super detail but like i would have thought that all of the increases would be in like raw materials and maybe labor but there's a huge increase in technology so what is that what why is that a factor or like sort of the what's the reason for the increase in the areas that aren't really like you know we've seen a lot of increases because of the pandemic i don't like for the ones that aren't obviously connected to that what's
044that inc like lose the technology line i think prior to the estimating they gave us their best kind of guess as to what that would be and as they've been in conversations and looking at the buildings they've been able to kind of tease it out a little more so that's a much more accurate number than just the more global number that they gave us in the beginning uh additionally um they are looking at ada compliance with bathrooms which didn't happen uh prior to that wasn't something that came up and then it became pretty clear as they were going through the new plans that some of the elevators were very old and outdated and it would be in our best interest to um work through those and and replace those while we're going through all of
045this work so that two years after the projects we don't have to go back out and say oh we need 300 000 for this or that so it's been a combination of things i think it was a very general quote that came in at 40 million i am not on the committee so i have zero right to say this but i mean it's it's always a little frustrating because you know quoting out on a 40 million dollar job is a huge part of what like of what it's a huge part of the job and you know to i completely understand that in the past year we've seen an enormous difference in the cost of raw materials and you know labor is an issue i absolutely get those things but i it's i would imagine that
046you guys would have been very frustrated with other things that should have been maybe included in the original estimates okay i'm not gonna lie this has been a very frustrating process and we've dropped the ball uh some when it comes to this process uh and i kind of voiced that at the last meeting um because we should have we should have been well ahead of this before we got to where we're at now or now we're kind of trying to play catch up and cram it all in in like two weeks which is not going to be fun but we have to get we're kind of between a rock and a hard place we yeah our our towns are growing so much that we do not have the space so we have to move forward
047with this in hopes that uh that you know the prices will all drop which i highly doubt they will because once they get set at a certain price they're not gonna go down nobody's going to give you that back but but the hopes is that you know the prices will come down we'll come in way under budget and be able to make that adjustment but where our we don't have the space now uh and it's going to be boiled down to so we're going to have to start putting trailers out which then is going to be throwing money away for nothing um so i you know i'm not happy with the process at all um but we're kind of we're kind of stuck we don't really have much of a choice and i feel that
048that might be part of what is playing in on this as well i i want to just jump in a little bit i think um you know that they were just able now again we have to take into account covet actually did happen we actually had you know this process has been frustrating but part of that frustration really is that it overlapped with everyone being out of commission for a while um so that's really part of it they were not going to be you know they're still working on drawings they're still right now working on budget numbers and i'm feeling you know they they put out 55 million i'm gonna just ballpark 55 million as our estimate um there are still things that are not in that budget they have not come and said this
049is the this is where we think we're going to be this is the final number we still have um to have conversations about the ryan home purchase of land we that's not in there the ada bathrooms again are not in there for some of the of the buildings um i'm feeling the pressure of having if we're going forward with this having to have final numbers in this budget vetted by the end of july and i don't know if in six weeks we are you know how do i i don't know how to vet a 40 or a 55 million budget did they think of everything did they miss anything kind of like with the srf is there anything that was missed and that's my i agree we need to go forward but my concern is
050that again as travis mentioned that the timeline is so compressed i don't i don't know well i mean we really and the other thing the only other option was and nobody wants to do this but maybe just do lebanon and then get portables for the other two towns but i don't think they would enjoy that i mean what else what are we gonna what can we do i mean i mean the other thing is is if we were to delay it the vote to june of next year is six months that would give six additional months to have community presentations because that's the other big thing right we have to get the community behind it but um again i might what is this vote currently scheduled november is the november one okay yep and regardless
051of keeping it in november or moving it to june we would do a lot of work this summer and into the fall regardless of that yeah we built for june we're just gonna burn a couple weeks to set up first community forum anyways right it's just the concern about the the fact that they haven't we do not yet have a budget from them so we cannot yet look through that to make sure that it's accurate it is that and matt and that's the thing that's leaving matt is took the lead uh at the start of this year and he's going to a different company so um yeah kidding me so oh my god yeah so there's that piece as well but we just it's a lot of money and um just the concern about the
052fact that we don't have that budget from them to look to even start to look at it and have to have it done by july if we were going in november that's as they said when we will have it they haven't given us a hard fast date but they unders i mean they they understand the timeliness of it but they have not given us a date and i think honestly at all to say like look at where we are i know we agreed to go with you but this is not working like do we have any leverage of any kind not a lot no no not a lot wow i know one of the one of the frustrating things i had we had a meeting in january and we had a timeline all laid out
053ready to follow and that included being ready to go for um the november ballot and by january covid was slow enough that we could have moved forward and we didn't meet those deadlines at all uh and now we're trying to play catch up and trying to get this squeezed in we don't really have a choice but to go in my opinion we have to move forward there so we're gonna be wasting money with trailers on on school property denise were you gonna say something didn't he smell it um no that's okay there's no good answer that's for sure what do you need from us from the board mostly we just wanted you to be aware of the struggle that we're looking at that um i mean i understand where travis is coming from 100 but
054um i i'm i'm concerned about having true numbers for what we're what we're going to be putting out there i i have no problem with having our community forums starting june 23rd i think is what they're doing um to get the word out and to have to talk to people that's not a problem um but i am concerned about meeting deadlines in terms of for the warrants for the vote in november with accurate figures um that's what i'm concerned when that's the end of july well yeah i mean the way that you back things up to have a november there's like all these things that need to happen why is really and does the do they are they willing to say yes like were you know do they give you any confidence that we can
055do this they can give you the numbers by then uh i i don't know i mean i i can't i've as much as i think travis is frustrated with the committee or with us in particular i guess i'm frustrated with the company that is not really providing the details that we pass them to oh yeah no i'll re that's who i'm frustrated with they're the ones that came up with the schedule and they dropped the ball and they're not following it yeah so you know we yeah we should have probably been on top of them a little bit more but they're the ones that have completely screwed us on this situation well i mean that's what we hired them for was to be able to to to lead this process through and we are not
056feeling so i'm just worried about it i'm just worried we have no leverage to make that happen there should have been penalties built into the contract with them that they had to meet deadlines or get paid less well the it the process is just typically that those are the deadlines that are built into the contractors contracts not necessarily the architects who are who are helping us develop the contract so i hear what you're saying lin but it's not typically that like usually they're our partners and we're moving forward in a good way i think this has been difficult and we are just trying to navigate it um and so yeah i think we just needed you to be aware and i think we'll work really hard to try to pull this off um but be
057just just just as long as you're aware and we'll do i think we'll do the community pieces without a problem and we'll put it out there and i want to hear what the community has to say about this whole idea um you know because it's a big process for the district yeah well not just that i also want to see what they present because i'm concerned on how they're going to present and i want to see how they're going to present and try and sell it yeah yeah so so our little meeting that was supposed to be 20 minutes is almost an hour i'm sorry all right do we have any other anything else sure just very quickly um the good news is that in the fall as of yesterday in the fall um we
058don't have to adhere to any social distancing which significantly impacts us in a very positive way with cafeterias with lunches um with all of that so that's great it's great news um in the summer time for summer programming we still do need to have the six foot um distancing for lunches but um the best news is for moving ahead to the fall that's great and then just a couple others um if possible we would like to do in person next week at the meeting we will have our new board members we'll invite them to come to the meeting we do have joanne and estrida and linda available to come in for the beginning of that so just um if everybody's able to do that i think that would be nice loud and clear okay [Laughter]
059had such good attention no i don't i don't mean that's not what i meant i just meant in person versus remote but just do it denise yeah seriously denise we'll be fine yes i'll be there uh i have one other regarding the graduation and we we've gotten a lot of negative publicity lately from the school district on some of the decisions that are being made and some of the communications that are gone out uh but probably one of the biggest ones that i'm hearing lately is the decorating of the caps and as a board are we allowed to waive that so that as long as they're respectable that we can allow them to decorate because i can tell you right now they're already almost all decorated i would i personally would risk leave that up
060to the high school the kids are gonna do what they're gonna do travis as long as people aren't kicked out of graduation you know it's my understanding is that it's the same policy every year and yeah this isn't this is nothing different than we've always done it also happens at like every school everywhere and true you know i i think people are going to do what they want to do i personally would rather just leave this up to the high school um to manage that's just me personally but but i'm here and it's also as a board that are what put these out and i know one year we made that adjustment as a board to allow that for something i don't remember what now but we had an issue one year already so that's
061why i brought it up tonight with decorating graduation caps well with the graduation procedures in that aspect and that's one of them oh i thought i mean i think it was just last year when we were trying to figure out what on earth to do for graduation but i don't remember don't know well some of you you have the historical some historical pieces typically over time it's always basically been the same structure you know we've had i think what you're talking about travis is is that i'm not even sure how many years ago five or six years ago maybe seven we had moved from white for the you know the ladies and and maroon for the men to just all maroon just to make it simpler um across the board and there was some pushback
062on that but i don't believe i believe that information came to the board but the board still left it to the to the high school to follow their procedures and leave it at that um so i mean this is not unusual i mean the the the the the questioning about whether or not to decorate the caps has been it comes up every now and then um we've just kind of a lot we've just basically stuck to the the the ceremonial piece of it and trying to keep it fairly you know fairly serious and left to that and we all know that that doesn't always happen that things happen at graduation when the beach balls come out and uh and those were not those are not allowed either but but they have happened so you know
063i i don't i don't really want to make this into something bigger than it needs to be it's totally um i don't know it's it's a it's a hard one i would very much like to not see a single kid removed from graduation you know unless it was something egregious but i really want to overrule their policy and i think the other issue that travis didn't mention is that the kids picked up their caps and gowns and then it wasn't until a day later that they were actually given that information so that was definitely that i think is the communication piece not to say that if it had come out before we wouldn't have still had pushback right but they're these they're literally kids that have spent an entire day personalizing their laps and you
064know um yeah i you know i i guess i would maybe just say i would second that let's just make sure that the ad knows that the communication was out of order and therefore there are a lot of people that did decorate their caps because they hadn't been told otherwise so it would be i think in my opinion and travis i'm guessing you would agree that highly inappropriate to have any kind of discipline for that um given that they weren't actually told that instruction you know so if the high school wants to drop that rule awesome i would just personally like it to come from them and not have the board involved but that's that's just me okay but the order of communication was um most definitely the issue got it and that's not the
065that's not the kid's fault i have i have one other other and it's a question um i thought on administration when we have administrative openings didn't we used to have a school board member on the interview or the of the yeah the interview commit if it's been principal or like directors yes and we haven't hit that point yet that we've been doing some of those final interviews we had an initial round for um high school principal and then we were going to have board representation at that second round we haven't hit it yet okay um but yes the plan would be to have her principal and directors yep that's right just checking and you have to approve them as well at a board meeting this summer like i don't i you know how i can
066um hire the teacher do the final right we can't do that for you we'll call meetings right yeah okay and that just reminds me that we do need to schedule a date for the july retreat and i'll have jen reshare the document she should the form that she shared a couple a few weeks back just to make sure that um you can look at your schedule and see if there's a date that works better now that we have some newly elected members we'll include them as well okay can i just go back to travis's point um can can we just get a can you guys let us know for sure that you will bring the board's concerns to admin we will and they didn't get a board thing that i just didn't want us to
067be making a decision at that level but i would agree with travis as far as the you know importance of it yes and they understand the timing they're very clear about the timing of the yes they are okay and they understand them yeah what sort of cause yep and are they considering making any changes or this worked i don't know if how how much they're considering that piece um we did get that guidance from the law firm about the monitoring and how hard it is to look at some of the innuendos that can be in and how that can be harmful to some students um so that's the angle they've taken students they you know that angle of the student safety and being respectful of they are going to potentially what are they going to
068do if somebody's got a decorated cap well i i think that it's fair to say that we're not looking to eliminate seniors from their graduation ceremony yes well we shouldn't be forcing them to switch their caps out either unless it's a cap that is not political and i can't say politically correct just not a respectable cap appropriate you know yeah the bottom line that's the word i wanted it's one more just to be honest with you guys it's one more thing for this administrative team to have to look at in a very busy time frame in a graduation piece it that is why in the past we have asked not to have caps get decorated because it's just one more thing all right who's gonna check out all the caps and get you know they've
069already they already have a lot to do so we're not we understand where the communication piece broke down and we understand all that and we'll go forward you know we're not gonna be we're not looking to cause more angst so it's one of those things looks like the weather's going to be perfect one can hope that would be good okay it's a great day everybody's gonna be super happy you know what i mean it's gonna be a beautiful day um and it'll be exciting that these kids can have a pretty typical graduation ceremony i'm pretty excited about that yep all right anything else no motion to return somebody adjourn i'll make the motion that we adjourn i'll second it all in favor yep right thanks guys thank you thanks so much thanks