001Um I will take a look at this but it's basically those are basically the ranges that we have and now we've had so much movement and people have had narrow Justice. What can we create? I was trying to text. really see. Yes, they saw the practice. I know cuz I saw my neighbor who was on his way to Okay. I only saw like practice. I didn't know it was his team. I mean, it's it's his team. I don't know whether he's got like I'm missing. Oh, no. So when they when we actually start the meeting then you'll hit the join the meeting button the agenda button. So if you click that you'll go right I'm learning that now it means that the meeting is running and active. So what's going on baking tonight? I just
002finished hundreds club celebration. Oh, hund of them. Wow. Oh my gosh. Should we do it? All right, let's call our meeting to order at Call 6:35. Um, first of all, do we have agenda review? We have any changes to the agenda tonight? Jay, so I just have one. There's an item under executive session that um as I asked in in the Dresen meeting, we haven't presented survey feedback to the principal yet. So, okay. I won't be presenting it tonight. So, do we we don't need executive session? Oh, that's right. Okay. It's there now. Sorry, let me just make sure I'm NCS has such a good vibe. Got the books. That's I think it's nostalgic also for me. It is all the books. All right, so that's it for agenda review. While I'm restarting my thing,
003um we can move on to public comment. Anybody from the public have any comments? Anybody in the audience [Music] on some participants? I don't see any hands raised. No. Okay. Any public comments? Um, we can move on to the PTO report. Sure. That might be surprised if there's anyone here PTO report. I only see firsthand, but I don't think it's first and people in the audience are PTI people. Okay. Um I haven't heard anything from the PT. Okay. Um why don't we move on to our business crime discussion? First up is item A, which is a donation for picnic tables. This is from the women's club. Um Sean, did you want to give a quick background on this or I'm happy to let's see read it as well. So, is it proposal from a parent
004for picking tables out to be able to have some seating out there and the women's club stepped up in where I what I know about this one. Where are they going to go? Going to go towards That' be good. Okay. So, everyone's in So, we are definitely looking at we need the panic tables. What you're saying? I would advocate that we you advocate for tables. Okay. Sounds like a good idea. More seating in the yard's always good out there. Okay. Can I just ask a question? Clear as there's a dollar. We'll keep the dollar. Yeah. Just read an email, too. Looks like $1,100. Oh yeah, under the Wednesday May 7th part two at 101 p.m. Okay, because that's the in that first paragraph under that. Yes. For women club is awarded a grant in the
005amount of $1,100 to support Mary cross school. Okay. But we're not being Are we being asked to approve approval donation? Okay, I see it. Sorry. We're all good. We're all good. All good. Okay. Well, thank you to the Norman Club and the folks that pulled that together. I'm sure they will be um very well used. Okay. A um this is our annual micro and small purchase decision procedure that we review and approve every year. Sure. Do they have any comments on that? Is this anything different than it's been in the past or we're just approving the same thing? This is just an annual approval. I think last year actually changed, but nothing changed this year. Okay, Teresa. That's great. Thank you. Um, moving on through. So, we got the reading on policy. This is just
006the reporting form. I think last time we were a little bit unsure what it was because it's not the policy, but indeed it is just the form that we are approving that goes along with policy. [Music] Yes. Um I just want to note that there are still two references to New Hampshire in that form. They're a little bit lower down. that they're in in the headers of some of those boxes. So, happy to approve tonight, I think, on a connection that we just update the New Hampshire references to Vermont. Oh, I see it. And the incident information. Yeah. So, if you Yeah. If you look at the so at the um going from the bottom up on the bottom of page three it says NH DC YF and that probably should be Vermont DCF right
007and then I think that there was another reference just above that as well too. Yeah. One says just New Hampshire DCF and one actually says New Hampshire DC. So we'll get those cleaned up. Yeah, there's two of them, right? Two of them. There's one under report number three4. Okay. Very few other districts have this problem. One perhaps. Um, so just thinking ahead, Kar, I think when we get to business requiring action, you probably just want to pull H out of the consent agenda and then just make a separate motion that we approve that with those modifications. Okay, that's good. Okay. Um, the next and last item I business discussion is a legislative update. Um, I can address it quickly or Neil if you want to go into it too. I know we were all on
008pins and needles late into the night. Was it Friday night or Saturday night? Friday night. Friday night. Um, thank you to those um, folks that did send notes to our representatives. Um, they did end up, I think is probably most people read in the news that they ended up not passing anything and deciding to adjourn for the session. But then they're supposed to be coming back I think on June 16th. Although Neil was saying actually Neil talk too. Um again I would I had written a couple notes to our folks. We have um Allison Clarkson, Becca White and Joe Major who are our senators. And of course we have Rebecca Hul and Jim Massland who both gave us some great updates um at our last schoolboard meeting. Um and I think they still very much
009feel the same that they did then. Um I think from our from my perspective at least my notes were trying to limit it to a few points which are really the fact that there is very limited modeling still this foundation formula obviously leaves Norwich in a a pretty uh yeah dire situation because I don't frankly know what we would do if that was just passed which is why I was quite nervous on Friday night that it would pass but I'm not sure what would happen next. Um and that there was a lot of protections for private schools. it became quite a politicized um piece of legislation and that I think as we've all said there hasn't really been a lot of effort to understand and control the true crop cost drivers which I think is
010what Rebecca and Jim our two reps were really um uh saying last week at our meeting was really one of the primary things again we went through this in my opinion with F127 and had to implement that without a lot of knowledge as far as what the impacts were going to be um and that didn't go so So Neil, do you have any updates or anything that you want to add? Um, I guess what I would add is and just maybe to give folks a little bit of context as to how this works, right? So um at the end of the session after the bill um had passed the Senate, they had to get together in a in a conference committee to try to reconcile the differences between what the House originally said and what
011the Senate was saying. And the conference committee consisted of three senators and three representatives. Um those discussions continued for a few days but they weren't going well. The two sides were not able to come to an agreement. And then um late in the day on Friday um the Senate it had gone back and forth a couple of times. Right. So earlier in the week um the Senate essentially sounded like they had agreed with the House the original House proposal and at that stage everybody thought okay I think something may actually happen here and then hours later the Senate came back into that same conference committee and was proposing a whole host of changes um that sort of took a lot of the representatives uh back um some of those proposals that came in the 11th
012hour brought up topics or ideas that hadn't been previously introduced in either the House or the Senate bill. So, this was like framed up in in in my mind quite frankly, terrible terrible lawmaking. You don't do that at the 11th hour. Um, and on top of that, some of the things that were being brought to the table were egregiously designed to protect uh private independent schools in the state of Vermont. um that really soured discussions in that conference committee I think pretty quickly to the point where they were like we are not um the original plan I think had been to sort of um try to wrestle through all of these issues and the what we hearing at the time was that thoughts that they would be able to have something figured out have this
013all voted and approved for like a 2 a.m. um adjournment. Um that did not happen. So around about 11:00 p.m. on Friday night, they called it quits. But even at that point, you could sense that things were not going well because the Senate said, uh, we're going to give up on this for tonight, but we're going to get back together tomorrow morning, Saturday morning to try to continue this. And then not, you know, minutes later, the legislative, the representative leads, the the speaker of the house came back and said, "We're not getting together until next week." So even at that point, the two sides were still like not on the same page about this. Come Monday morning, we were expecting to see notices that the conference committee was going to begin its work again, but
014nothing came. And then messaging came out that they were not going to get together this week um and that they were going to continue to possibly try to get their ducks in a row um to come back together uh by the 16th, which is the the the current schedule of things. um Neil's opinion on this. I mean, this is a real show and I don't need to, you know, and I'll say that on live TV or whoever is watching this, like th this is um this is one of the worst examples that I've seen of law making in the entire time that I've been following the legislature. This is this is absolutely horrendous. and for the the amount of things that they were considering to change if this was truly real education reform. Um, this
015is not how you do this. This is this is an embarrassment quite frankly for the way that our legislature is operating at this moment. I sincerely hope personally that this bill does not pass, that they do not come to an agreement and that nothing moves forward in this session and that we um you know get some time to reflect on what we were really attempting to do here, what the real true problem is and have some thoughtful um transparent uh engagement and discussion about this um next year um to try to put something together at this moment in time and have it done by June 16th um I worry will have devastating impacts on public education not just here in Norwich but across the state and I hope legislative leaders understand that and um you
016know make the right call to just stop this bill right now and not move it forward so Neil if the house bill were to go forward that everything I read at least seems like it had support from BSBA teacher superintendent associations is that I think it um would that have been okay if that had moved forward or I don't you know it's it's hard to do a what if on this thing um I would um I don't know like even I I don't even I would not support the original House version of the bill at this time like I don't you know the stakes are too high for public education and I think what you would find You know, a lot of legislative leaders, I think, voted yes on that original House version of the
017bill, not because they really liked it, but because they wanted it to get to the next phase of the process, right? That there was time for revision, for consideration, for review, for getting things right. And then once the bill landed in the Senate, that never happened. Got it. Right. It got turned sideways. It got turned upside down. And so I don't think it my view is not that there was a whole lot of support for the House bill. There was support to have the have the conversation continue to hopefully get to a meaningful piece of legislation and then when once it got to the Senate that never transpired. Got it. So all right. Any questions from the board? So but I would say pay attention because something can still happen this session. But I would
018encourage not just my colleagues on the board, but anybody in the Norwich public that happens to be listening to this, please to reach out to your senators and your representatives and let them know that this is a terrible piece of legislation and it should not be passed this session. And sorry, last question just so I Sorry, to be clear, that's only Neil's opinion. That is not the Norwich opinion. Okay. I mean it it it is it's a little bit of all of our opinion because we would have the best mess in our hands in less than six months from now. Um what was I lost my train of thought there. Um you have one more question but then you didn't say what it was. I actually Oh if they were to pick this back up
019again where would they pick back up? Would they pick back up literally the the the bill that they basically all walked out of the room on that was a total mess or or they start with a whole another piece of legislation like where like say they all come back to work on the 16th. What's what's your understanding of like what do they start with? Right. So my fear right is that what's going on right now outside of public view is that there are discussions going on amongst senators and discussions going on amongst representatives as to what they would be willing to agree to in a bill and then what would happen is they would come back together in that conference committee and each side would say here's what we think and what would be even
020worse is if there had been some behind-the-scenes conversations between both the the House and the Senate about what they mutually could agree upon and that that would magically show up when they returned to conference committee and things would happen like that and it would be done. That's worstc case scenario in my mind. So I guess to answer your question is you know um because we are at this phase of law making and working with a conference committee where things can happen pretty quickly like those you know senators representatives could be for all we know right now working on proposals to be able to bring forward to the conference committee and even trying to vet that stuff ahead of time behind the scenes to find out whether or not they've got the votes for something and
021then they in public right bring that stuff out a conference committee and then votes start to happen pretty quick and the next thing you know you got law and and none of those have been vetted by models. None of us have seen anything because there have been no public meetings since they left on Friday. Uh last question I guess so is it worth do we think that we should put something out on the list server notification or something on the website with regards to notifying people of this? something we just said if you're watching this, you know, please start paying attention or we just kind of um I think if you wanted something to go on the list, sir, that actually came from the Norwich School Board that you would want to have a vote
022or a motion on that for something like that tonight. Um uh aside from that, board members individually could certainly post their own opinions to the list served as to how they think this all goes. Okay. Okay. All right. Any questions from the board? Any comments? No any from the public. All right, there being none, we can move on to our business requiring action. J, say if you refresh, I I just pulled the approval of policy down to item I from item H. So you can make the the um consent motion clear and I change the wording for the policy approval to include as amended with New Hampshire DCYF references correctly. Great. Thank you. Okay. So do I have a motion for B through H by consent? I move to approve items B through H by
023consent. Second. All those in favor that is unanimous. Do I have another motion for item I? Neil move to approve policy JLF- abuse and neglect as amended this evening to replace New Hampshire. We'll second that. All those in favor. That's also for that donation from the north women's club for the paint tables. That is super generous. Okay. Um report of the chair. Um this is our last meeting until August. August. There's no meeting. There's this right M. Our next meeting on July 4th. Yeah. Um, so hopefully everyone has a good summer. As we said, there's going to be a lot going on in the next couple weeks. Um, or maybe hopefully not a lot coming at the legislative session so that we can all relax into our summer. Um, as we all heard last night,
024Jay gave his formal um, resignation, which was a emotional for all of us, I think, just knowing how long we've worked together and how what a great job Jay's done over the period um, that he's been here. It's been, as he said, a very short eight years. But again, I think we we will Yeah, you will not we'll we will see you again in the fall. So, this isn't bother because you will be attending you hopefully be attending at least one of our our fall meetings as we move things forward and we are welcoming hopefully Robin on board here as our as we move forward with our negotiations on a superintendent role. Um so, very exciting news and looking forward to the summertime and then getting back to working in the fall. But until now,
025before that, I think it'll be a relaxing um month or two bringing this school year to a close. And I do think that at least the Maring Cross School has run, I think, flawlessly this past year thanks to the team here. Um it's been a pleasure to work through the budgets and get into our finish up the school year here. So, it's been it's been great to watch everything going on. We have all the playground now getting green and the grass growing out there and did the septic system actually flood over the rain storm or something. There was an alarm that went off but I think the septic's all up and running and we haven't any more complaints about that. So I said everything's just been just been running great from from a board perspective.
026So thanks to everybody. Um with that said, uh we got the principal report for uh we'll start with enrollment. We have 327 students. They're not all the same 327 students in the last month, but we've maintained the same [Music] number. I highlighted a number of activities that have gone on and celebrations throughout the school. This is the time of year where everything comes together. It's quite fun because kids are taking all that they've learned and putting that into action and field trips to learn more, putting on presentations for their families. All things on here were great. My favorite to attend was the kindergarten forest Friday learning celebration. It's just amazing to watch the kindergarteners. It was completely kindergarten. They had research research papers, diaramas. They had gone out in the forest and set up areas
027for their animals. They gave their parents a complete tour of independently, read their reports, made snail bread out on the fire and it was just amazing to watch kindergarters just rise the medication and very collaborative and wonderful. Other thing I will say is that I feel my perspective, this has been my favorite year in CS so far. We have a really outstanding team of teachers and support staff administrators here that are doing wonderful things with kids just well place for kids who may struggle a little bit support them. a great thing in place for kids who need academic support and we like province curricular leadership that's getting better each and every year just to come to a close because of the year is busy but any questions questions for Sean thank you Sean I did
028sign all of the sixth grade graduation things this afternoon. So, congratulations to that crew. I'm sad to say it's probably the last year that I will recognize most of the names. My daughter played baseball with a lot of them. So, as I was going through, I was like, "Oh, I know you. I know you." So, this is maybe the last year of that, unfortunately. But, um, again, congratulations to the sixth graders because that graduation is on this next Wednesday. Next Wednesday, right? So, it's coming up fast. Okay. On to the superintendence report. So, I did submit my report, but I did want to note a few things. We have received some of our title funding. So, it's um we, as you know, did not receive any title one funding last year. So, we did receive
029$26,917.80. That's what we're slated to receive this year. So, that's an increase for us. And in the past, we've used that for title one services within the school tutoring and things like that. So, we'll be able to do that hopefully again this year. And then for title two, we are going to receive $21,57120 and that's down about $5,000 from last year. With that money, we typically I write the grant so that it's used for professional development activities. And this year, the school has been working on assessment with demonstrating success. So hopefully that will be able to continue into next school year. And because we do not receive title one funding this year, it affects our title four funding for next year. I've been telling you about that. So, which is really unfortunate because we get
030the minimal amount generally every year, which is $10,000, but we've used it for really great after school activities. Jillian and Caitlyn have done the cooks books or some iteration of that every year and it's been really popular with the students. We were able to fund some of the theater program after school this year when we received the extra title for funding. So, I feel like that's a big plus for us just in terms of what we're able to offer with that and we've purchased some technology and things like that. So, we may get some rollover funds as the year progresses, but we'll wait and see what really happens with the grants, but I've been holding off writing them because they just keep pushing everything back. But now I feel like, okay, they're saying that we're
031getting this amount of money, so I'll start working on that with the schools. So, and the ELA committee, I will just mention that we have finalized our meetings for that for the year and it was nice because we've been looking at some resources and now this over the summer I I've asked people to give up their time. They've generously volunteered it. Becky is one of our members. She's been to all of our meetings. And so I'm sending out the resources to all of the staff in both schools so we can get more people involved and able to see what programs we're potentially looking at. And then in the fall, we'll have some online visits with some of the publishers and then be able to go to some of the schools and visit and see how
032some of these work in action. And we're looking really at word recognition programs and um apprehension programs. So, we'll see. We've made a lot of progress. It's been for me really um rewarding work and really enjoyable. It's been a wonderful committee of 22 plus people from both schools that literally have volunteered hours to comfort. So, again, thank you Becky and to Sean and Greg who have been a part of it as well. So, that's it. questions for no real executive session. All right. And our last item, our finance director. So I also live in um this is report um thing I want to mention um been doing the same thing winding uh purchase orders down everything else trying to close out the year contracts and all that went out um same report transportation working with
033them trying to set our pace for next year working with Tony and Matt on maintenance and fencing project sounds like just really finally happening, but that's been ordered um to um increase the prek square footage because we needed about 2,700 square feet or something in order to meet the state requirements. So hopefully that should be installed by the last couple weeks of June. That's what I've been told that should be done. food service is winding down and probably have some meetings start having more meetings with food service people just try to again kind of get out with what's been going on and I've uploaded the financial reports um key things some of the things with the um I uploaded the little um detail slip the only thing that really has changed drastically from the last
034report is the site improvements was about 2,00 200,000 over budget, but going back and working with Jamie different things, there were two things for the playground and the septic projects that um had not been moved over to those particular project funds that should have been something that um she had said that really should have been charged over there. So, we did move those. So that really um brought us right back down and brought us back in the budget by 200,000 but helps roughly about 200,000. So that's the major change there which um in that turn then instead of being so we're looking at not sure what happened to my second my second half but I had at the bottom of the um spreadsheet and the report I uploaded that our anticipated or projected fund balance
035at this point would be about 399 to6,000 um due with that change Teresa, so is the is that playground because it was that is that the one right out here right outside of the or is it this right? What's the what's the prep? It's this one right here. Oh, it's the new one. Okay. So, it's with this. So, this is the fence that we put up which is a little too small then. Yeah. So, what we're going to do is take that fence and push it back so this entire playground area have a fence around it. It will also be helpful when kindergarten goes out place and in anticipation someday we may want to grow our painting program. Is there a section that allow us to is there any other summer projects? I know it's
036I know last summer was that very stressful summer so having a quite a good thing but the only other one I know of is like the asus um um still that ongoing project and everything that's probably the biggest thing that's the two projects that we talked about the other day when we met um what was that the asbestous I know that there's certain areas you probably know better than the two cave zones have really well loved carpet that's going to be coming out and unfortunately underneath there was some asbestous that could be faded. So those two rooms are going to get done. We're also going to do a section section of the hallway down to the end next. I had a report myself. Oh, sorry. Sorry. just just briefly I'm not gonna rehash all the
037retirement stuff at this point but uh I could send a notice out to everybody and I I will I will particularly miss Mary being here at Marian Cross. The very first school I sat set foot in uh when I came here for my all day interview was was Marian Cross. the district put me up at the Norwich in and just walked across in the morning and joined all the folks from town with their dogs and cats and every it was it was really I felt it was special then I still do. Um but uh I want to just thank all of our teachers and all of our support staff and and Sean and Greg for another great year. Uh things just seem to be getting better and better. Um, and one particular event that I
038really really loved was we recently had a an opportunity for the Hanover High School environmental club along with the environmental club from here at Marian Cross had a community event to share the work they've done on the climate action plan as well as the giant super compost system that we have here. and um they presented to people from throughout the community who were involved in various aspects of environmental sustainability and and actually very meaningfully interacted with them. They served us homemade soups and bread, salad, and uh just represented the school really well and just did an outstanding job feeding us all. And uh it was a really great night and it was uh it's so nice to see the Maran Cross students working together with the high school students. That was something I I had
039seen just traveling around seeing all these cool things that that they're doing in all all toward um u helping us deal with climate change in their own ways and the fact that they're able to work together now make their efforts that much more powerful. So, um, just got to follow and, uh, again, thanks for a great year. Thanks for a great eight years. It's been a privilege and an honor to work with all of you. And that's my report. Thank you, J. It was a timely end. I did that on purpose, actually. So, that brings the our regular meeting to an end. Again, I think uh probably don't need to stay um for the public um for the rest of the meeting. We're going to return. There's nothing going to be to approve. Again, we'd
040like to just thank Sean, Greg, Becky, and our audience here for um all the work this year, Jay and Robin as well, and our board members as we all kind of take a little bit of a break here. Gina, Lisa, and Michael for all the hard work as well. So, um All right. Can I add one thing before we go into executive session? Sure. Um, and that is I know a lot of folks in in Norwich now are receiving their property valuation reports and I just want to caution folks, right? Um, you can't take that new assessed value that you see in the property book and use that with the current tax rate because those two things don't go together. uh if you're trying to get a sense as to what the impact is in
041on the property taxes that you're going to owe, you can't use the existing tax rate and the new valuation because the the new valuation is going to come with a change in a common level appraisal that we don't know yet which is going to change the rate. So, I just want to caution folks. Yes, I mean I saw a huge increase in my assessment. Um, but you can't uh you can't back into a into property taxes owed just yet until the process is done and we actually know what the CLA is going to be. So, I just wanted to put that out there. We Someone might say that on the list, sir, because I've had multiple questions today about it from I answer from Garrett, but yeah. Yeah. Well, two things. it will be the
042CLA will change and then obviously the denominator of the tax rate calculation will change because the grand list is going to be much bigger, right? I mean, there's a couple factors that are going into what final answer. So, I I would second either putting it on our website or the lister um because I had four conversations at Dan and Ritz after work today and three conversations at the bottom of my hill at the mailboxes about the fact that everyone's property have been assessed dramatically differently and they're applying that directly to a tax rate and can so I think if you live in other towns like this is a normal occurrence but unfortunately since I've moved here which was 10 years ago it's never been reassess. Well, my house was reassessed because I bought it to
043reassess it, but every they haven't done a reassessment, a townwide reassessment in this law. Most towns do this. I mean, in New Hampshire sometimes too, third of the town every year, right? So, I mean, this is not really, but unfortunately, it's been a big change. I think actually um there was a post on the list today. Oh, I missed it. Um, she had two kind of reminded them of basically making point to say it really plainly. Yeah. Yeah. Don't apply the existing tax rate to your new valuation. It doesn't work that way. That's it. Yeah. Thanks, N. Bring us on. I ended with Jay, but now you need to bring it back to taxes. I want to thank Jay for an excellent leader. here in this district and we look forward to betting you in
044August tax situation. Um so I do have a motion to enter into executive session. Um it should be do we have the motion up there? It I believe it one it will be is it should be uh 313A1 for confidential attorney client communications. 313 A1 A1 I move to enter into executive session at 7:15 p.m. in accordance with title one section 313 for the purpose of discussing 313A1. Yeah. 3131. Okay. Do I have a second? No. Are you okay? Yeah. All those in favor. All right. that you so we will move into executive session to discuss All right. Okay, we're time at 7:45. All right, that ends our meeting here. Um, topics for next meeting again, August 14th moment. Wish everyone a happy summer. Do we have a motion to adjourn? Move to adjurnn. Move
045to adjourn. Second by Gina. All right. All those in favor. All right. We have adjourned at 7:47. So the minute Michael Costa showed up at 7:25 help people celebrate this meeting home. Thank you. Thank you for being here. I will watch it on YouTube. Thank you.