Hanover School Board SAU70 Meeting 20211215

001marcelo from address yes can you say something just to check yes i can hear you thank you i can i can hear you can you hear me thanks for the time we saw you i'm sorry but i heard that you were talking but i couldn't hear what you were saying all right i'm going to call this meeting to order at 6 15. apologies again they're going to go to technical delays which may be ongoing but we'll see um before i start i want to give a reminder to the board and to all our public participants that at the last meeting there were several complaints both in person that board members and the public had were hard to hear both in person and online so for all of our board members i'd like to remind please

002proudly speak clearly try not to interrupt each other and for members of the public who are going to eventually so move around um jamie did you have something you wanted to add yes it's in a gender review i know you hate to be a person oh god i know no i need a chance for presenting the buddies i want me to be that person i'm not that coordinated for that much information so [Music] at the moment yes right yeah yeah absolutely thank you good idea i'll do that so um we have had some email screens going back and forth regarding the gift-giving policy um and [Music] because we have some differing opinions of how to read it i thought it would be best to bring the information to the school board and ask for um

003either an approval or so that we're on the same page we all understand it or are we're reading it in the same manner okay so let's add that to the agenda um sure and uh jamie anything else you need there and then the other one that was asked to be added um would be 5b under budget presentation can we add a discussion about draft warrant articles and then maybe just pop in the bullet numbers one through four there and i can do that j if you want oh that'd be great i just wanted to say that i've been approached by the aga and the hss to further discuss the telecommuting policies g-a-a-b and g-a-a-b-r can you define those those are codes for the proposed telecommuting policy um and a regulatory policy to uh implement that

004policy there's there's uh that we've been approached to consider a potential moa with the unions and they would overlap and so the idea would be to hold off until we have that conversation with the association so essentially i'm asking the table those those two items actually there's three of them there's g-a-a-b-r-one also which is the form those are the three years yes sir so remove them from the business requirement discussion business card action yeah if we could take them again okay any other gender review by board members nothing publicly address the board some must be addressed uh please come on up note that there are three minutes per person and um yes hold on one second all right can you identify yourself in the time you're from brothers your preference of the district or employee

005of the district or representing the news media either the north korea i pay taxes this is the universal leadership i have two grandchildren who are enrolled in the uh in this school i'll allow this to repeat i have this definition you're not assisting the district or an employee of the district or represented in the news media so i'll allow for now okay so the comment i have really is that there have been a couple of requests that i've made regarding the reaction to the uh survey that's been that's been had which was finished in 2020. and the the questions that have been raised were what's been done by the system including this school and i know that you're going to address some of this this evening or at least i think you are but i'd

006like to know system-wide what's been done in reaction to the uh to the survey and what are the what are the costs that are involved with uh with the reaction to the surgery so those two things i i don't i'm not sure why it's taking quite so long to get an answer to what i thought was a relatively simple question but i'll just i'll make that comment now hope to hear from from whoever i think the question is being handled the answer to the question is being asked by neil perhaps with the assistance of jamie um and hopefully there will be an answer very shortly because it really involves the work that we're doing very closely for one second okay right so my brief chair response would be that neil o'dell is not a member

007of this board and so he would not be involuntary at the norwich level um secondly if you're talking about the equity update which i think is what you're referring to correct we'll get to that as a separate item so feel free to come back at that anything else remember the public i'm not related to anything else on the agenda [Music] sure okay jess you should be able to if you unmute you should be able to address us and if you can start with your name and where you live hey can you guys hear me was that a yes oh awesome hey my name is um jess brooks um i live in hanover and i have three kids in the race school kindergarten third grade and fifth grade and i just wanted to take a minute

008just to say thank you to everyone at ray and su-70 and our school board just for prioritizing diversity equity and inclusion in the classroom and in our community and i have watched my three boys directly benefit from this work in so many ways they come home and ask thought provoking questions which have sparked really important conversations about race gender and religion for example my oldest child asked me one day after school how i know if the source is reliable and then was able to give me examples of how he thinks critically about sources of information and i just think that these critical thinking skills are so important for all our kids most importantly this work throughout our community in schools has inspired my kids to think and care about equity um which is really just

009caring about their community and your work is just helping me raise good humans so thank you it takes a village to raise kids and i'm glad that you guys are a part of mine uh thank you justin similar to what i told the previous speaker um that's not related to the equity report record update please appear coming back again after that at 6 c as if you need to all right principles report lauren what's up good evening everyone um in favor of spending some additional time on an equity update later in this meeting i'm going to keep my principal's report this evening fairly brief i'll start with the usual enrollment update we've again stayed relatively stable in enrollment numbers over the past month where now we hit that 500 mark we're now back down to

010498 but we know of three additional students that will be joining us after the holiday break i'll make the plea again we still have several open positions here at the ray school if you are interested please visit the sau 70 website some positions include interventionists one-on-one educational assistance grade one educational assistant a part-time spanish teacher and we are always looking for subs in the district so if you're interested please apply we look forward to seeing your applications a brief curriculum work update um in january we are pursuing the next round of read level curriculum development days um we're excited to have our curriculum curriculum development teams here at ray joined together with the curriculum teams at norwich at the marion cross school and continue this important work our math resource update since our last board

011meeting the school has begun to conduct an inventory of current math supplies and manipulatives in order to properly budget for and purchase kits and supplies for the upcoming school year additionally some staff have engaged in informative webinars about illustrative mathematics the resource that we are adopting here at the reef school as well as the marion cross school we're in the process of scheduling meetings with reps from illustrative mathematics for all staff members progress reports our next formal check-in with families will be in the form of progress reports in the month of january progress reports will be sent home digitally released to families on friday january 28th and then the upcoming break as a reminder we do have school on monday and tuesday of next week our december break begins on wednesday december 22nd and we

012will return together to school on monday january 3rd and with that i wish everybody happy healthy holidays thank you any questions for lauren on the board good question for you is there any policy in place about traveling for parents and families we continue to follow the cdc recommendations and requirements depending on vaccination status uh whether it's domestic travel or international travel but we're continuing with those same guidelines cdc guidelines says it today yes very quickly so there is a there is a teacher shortage apparently and you indicated that there is an application process can you tell me a little bit about how to apply absolutely so you can you can go to the sau 70 website you'll find a place where you can click where it says employment uh there you'll see a list of

013the open opportunities and you can apply right on the website thank you [Music] thank you very much lauren as always all right budget presentation uh yeah myself and our chair of our budget community care department was involved a little bit a section of the budget and so what i would like to do uh if you went on early before i got here in front of the move things around and you want to follow along you might want to refresh your board docs um there was a section in the uh presentation which needed to be updated it's updated on the handbook if you're following along so first of all it won't be the wrong date on the front page sorry we should say 22 23. it's been a little bit of a rough couple weeks so

014that's the first type though i'm sure there are more um so this is the 2223 budget which you'll note throughout the document itself has the correct dates we like to share our mission statement of our school and we don't have to read it to you um it has not changed in the last few years but probably the three r's at the bottom are really important rights respect and responsibility so next we like to often share our 22 pre-budget guidelines summary this is the first section that we bring to the september board meeting it's based on the august what we call the quick model the quick model is where we take last year's ratified budget and we push it forward with some assumptions and some known facts in order to try to give us a starting

015point for where we think it may come in with a with a with respect to a percent of increase year over year so the quick model and all that information was shared throughout our meetings with both the school board and the budget committee and you can find those back and board docs in august and september that helps us to inform the budget guidelines summary and you can see it's all listed there we also uh broke it down yes cam just for this for those following along on zoom we're looking at the hanover budget presentation december 15 2021 pdf just so folks want to open that at home that's what we're looking at what we have hard copies of yeah and i don't know you know ortox does this funny thing in the left corner where

016it holds on to the very first named file that you ever put it under i don't know why it does that um but it's showing me that this is my draft done page six it's actually a final draft so i don't know why it does that but we're gonna look into that anyway um the guideline summary considerations uh are listed here um the fact that we had union agreements for teachers and support staff in negotiations while we did the quick model and came up with the budget guidelines we did use some information though when we did it early on based on what the step cost might be and we included some of that information in there when we took a quick early look we had initially used the health insurance premium increased that 5 that

017came in at 10.1 other program costs were estimated at that point in the july cpi of 4.2 obviously everybody knows it's over six now it's a store a special ed program costs are estimated to increase uh based on what we knew at that point in time uh so these are most of these were assumptions at that point in time in august and then we discussed there might be other changes that we did not include in that quick model which would be potential of higher enrollments which might mean that we needed additional teaching ftes they were working at that point in time on updating the math curriculum with assistant superintendent uh robin sign up and then additional reading and writing specialists in order to uh be sure that you know curriculum on site is being handled

018appropriately with the students um we did take we then took a look at our actual enrollment on october 1 and as lauren mentioned earlier we were 497 at that point we then went up to what 4.99 might have quickly broke 500 you hit 500. yeah we did okay now we've come back down a little bit um it is a little bit of a transient population just because of the nature of all of the companies in and around hanover uh with the school and then the hospital so that's where we were for 21 22 actual as of october when we always use that date for projection purposes so that we're always choosing the same date and time we then push forward some of the numbers uh based on five year averages either up or down sometimes

019we have weird little things that occur between classes um where they go down in numbers when they go up in grades oftentimes we found when we looked into that and it's just that it happens more than just a handler we have found that it's usually folks coming in to do special programming at the college who are younger and have younger children and so they stay for two or three years and then they move on um so it's if it looks like it goes down from one way to the next it quite possibly yes we did not hear in the past we have and we may in january because we may know more at that point in time we did not share the class breakdowns um but we will do that probably in january just to

020give you an idea of where the students are within the different classes and how many sections there are we then took a look at district staffing we met with robin um and nan and her folks here and they go through what they feel their needs will be for the next year out this is informed by lauren and then we build at my office we build the salary benefit sheets and then we drive all those numbers into the budget so we we're uh responsible for putting all the 100 and 200 object codes into the group budget but it's done based on these numbers there is some movement with regular and special ed aids and that's because we reallocated someone that was being used initially as special education aids and now they're being used as shared inclusionary

021aids within the classrooms so we felt it was um more appropriate to put them in the regular ed age category so that's that's why we see that we're lower in specialized aids and higher than regular um there's a few hours adjustments in the assistance in your health library and technical sections the custodial staff is highlighted for a reason as the hannah or school board knows in september actually august august of this year we were presented with some significant challenges for employees in the custodial realm there is a problem with hiring bus drivers custodians food service workers and it's dire we had openings at richmond middle school hannah high school and here at the ray school we made a decision after speaking with folks tony davil and myself and jay superintendent and lauren here on site

022and her lead custodian to redirect the ftes that we had remaining here at the race school to fill the positions at the dresden schools and then to outsource the custodial night operations here at the ray school so that is highlighted because we will be meeting this week this week next week this week this week to discuss um the pros and cons um and what we see as our path forward um for next year so the budget of built depending on what our discussion um you know filters out or ends up being may go down because this is built with four and a half custodial staff being included which is what your budget was built as for 2122 the year we're in outsourcing with a company we do we do still keep our lead custodian on

023days here at the ray school as an employee but outsourcing uh is um a significant decrease from what's presently bondaging so that number may be adjusted okay so that's why it's highlighted um as as always although not as much this year which was kind of cool um we go through many different versions of budgets as we start building them we did have a draft version 2 which i haven't shared here because it was the first draft that we brought together as an administration because as i mentioned earlier there are different people building different sections we're decentralized in our building which means that the folks for the operations sections for the instructional here at the school actually put all their information into the budget building module the maintenance and custodial put all their information in um

024rep and his team put all of the special education information in so it's a very big group effort and we really don't know what it's going to look like until it hits my office and then we compile all the information together oftentimes the first draft will miss pieces so we have to go through and say oh why is this a zero so we go through it and make sure that we don't miss any pieces because that would be very bad so the first graph would build was lower than this back here um so virgin one is the one that we shared on november 1st it was built as of october 30. we're showing it without the regular and tuition for sixth grade tuition costs which are paid to dresden in this current fiscal year 2122

025in the amount of 1.9 million dollars because we really wanted to be able to compare apples to apples on what the increase is for just the regular programming costs and so we shown that there to you on that first one where the increase we would be building out on version 114 225 or an increase of 475 221 3.46 that was about a quarter of a percent over where we had thought the guideline would bring us in um yes just to clarify the reason why we've taken out that 1.9 million right is just to remember that we voted um last year as the warren article to officially move our ray school sixth graders to dresden so we will no longer be paying from this budget that we're talking about going forward any tuition payments so if

026you were to see that two million dollar you know swing it just it's so you know kind of eye-boggling that it's hard to look past any of that so that's why we we decided to present kind of the figures with and without so you know what the actual that we'll be voting on which of course would be a decrease right but we wanted to show that you know what's actually happening kind of with our operational costs is is increasing to the tune of kind of what jamie's going to discuss so that's just to kind of remind us that that's why we're doing a with and without so kind of bear with us as we have these two sets of numbers which can be confusing and we're trying to make it as easy to follow as

027possible when we thought the reason we need to show it both ways and thank you kim for for reminding people of what i just assumed because i'm here every day right is that the sixth graders have now become a part of the dresden school district for this upcoming month when we file our reports to the state of new hampshire the department of revenue administration they have to be filed in total okay so if somebody were to go out and look at the dra reports if we didn't show them with all of the different numbers right inclusive then they wouldn't be able to fall it wouldn't match so that's why we would learn the 2d one we'll show it to you so then we built the version 2 for november 20th which we shared on 11

02822. uh there it would seem that there's not a lot of change there right about 5 000 um but there really was a few changes going on behind the scenes um we had differing health rates come in because we had initially projected them on uh 9.2 we updated them on 9.2 which was we initially put them in at five percent then we updated them to the 9.2 which was actual but that is what we call an effective wage because there's a discount that comes off of the trust so the effective rate year over year is what this is built on and it was a 10.1 increase on the other side we have we had decreases very linear but they were decreases in two percent decrease in our dental plans costs and we had some minor

029decreases in our long-term disability insurance rate so we went through all of the salary benefit build again and updated all of those numbers there may have also been well there was also some changes in some curriculum uh lines uh because lauren and her team had budgeted some monies for different curriculum throughout the different math lines and then they decided on our actual program so some of the monies that were in some of the curriculum lines up here got moved down down here right so there is quite a bit of movement even though it doesn't look it looks like it's only five thousand dollars and uh the two percent non-union wage increases um i have not built that in here but that's right because i know of um there are changes that will be occurring with

030personnel turnover that will be able to absorb that okay and it's it's three it affects full it affects four voice so it's not hugely mature um okay so we can make that change in the next version if you want to see where it actually looks okay with the regular intuition as kim mentioned uh we would be looking at a decrease budget to budget year of about one point four billion dollars and nine point eleven percent okay moving on we also like to take a look at this view by category it's something historically that we've done um and we look at race school what we call direct operating expense and then we carve out some of our special agitation expenditures um and you know it's always um esy which is extended school year and um some

031of the pre-k costs um sometimes they are special and related and sometimes they're not but we have historically tried to capture their hair in this section um so you can see that our direct operating expense from prepaid of five is going up about four hundred thousand dollars uh so that means that probably the bulk of our increases are being spent within the classroom on classroom instruction we also will have special ed tuition expenditures which rhett is going to speak to a little bit later an increase of about 170 000 keep in mind please that because of dresden or it's a bit of a unicorn we're in two different states any of the special education out of district costs for any high school or middle school students go back to the towns from which the children

032hail okay that's why you'll see uh out-of-state costs private costs for nine through twelve and six to eight then we look at our capital expense which includes our site building improvements um it's somewhat level funded we're booking about 11 000 increase um and then our debt service is somewhat flat it's you know we're starting to pay into the debt so you know some of the interest is going down but the um the debt itself is accelerating um and then inter fund transfers out we are recognizing 49 000 there um and that is for the richmond fund that we take into general fund and then we transfer it out to special projects it's also the nine thousand dollars that we transfer out to the food service last year we had had and it's a thousand dollars

033less to the food service fund that we're projecting for this year over last year last year we um directed a hundred thousand dollars to the sixth grade tuition reserve fund which i thought mistakenly my fault sorry that we did not have to send i thought we could vote as a school board did not send that because of the change that got ratified with the sixth grade going to dresden but i was mistaken and uh we had to send it into the fund okay so we'll discuss that a little bit later it makes the fund a little bit higher now for what to do with that one okay because the sixth grade reserve button will no longer be necessary um and then you can see the sixth grade regular intuition expense then again we're showing the

034totals um both with the one point nine and without the whole tank now jamie can't ask a question yes kevin the tuition expenses for special ed do they include transportation costs that are associated with that um they don't in this view but they do on some of the other weeks yeah i was just wondering what's the increase from private tuition for grades nine through twelve that'll have a corresponding transportation increase associated with that yeah we do have some transportation increases scheduled about 84 000 and that's carved out in one of the next slides and we've looked at this a couple different ways kevin and and we could do that we used to sometimes carve out transportation from this um and perhaps maybe we should do that again significant changes from version two this kind of

035corresponds i probably should have mentioned a little bit remiss sorry we put out a hanover budget book that speaks to all of the this information and it also gives you about 12 or 13 exhibits which give you backup documents to the to the information that we're sharing here yes and it is posted and it's updated today at 5 30 um from a couple changes and so all of the most all the significant changes mentioned here can be found on the significant change exhibit one within that document on our powerpoint presentation we try to consolidate them because otherwise we'll be here only right so we consolidate them into larger numbers so you can take a look at what's going on in a snapshot view um total salaries are gonna be down okay but people like to

036look at what the teachers and specialists are trending and for those folks who are trending up a little bit about 30 000 most of that is due to turnover um and the net of the decreases is due to a decrease in our ftes which we looked at prior uh our sau services are going up um for hanover's portion at 17 438 that budget was ratified in november at the sau board budget meeting you can see that on board docs the special ed tuition as i mentioned is going up building improvements is going up a little bit the total sum of our health insurance rate increases net any level changes for folks choosing you know single two-person family or cash in little uh is a difference of 364 which is built in this budget or approximately

0374.63 uh new hampshire retirement increases mostly due to turnover because you did not have a rate increase this year uh it's 50 543 and a little bit of it maybe also due to um some increased hours here and there which may have triggered somebody to participate between my participle um group in service and staff development there's a lot going on some of that is for the math curriculum summit some of it is help me out lauren what else and then also facilitation training for staff members okay there are bigger initiatives great and then technology services and equipment a lot of that has to do with software uses in the classroom that the teachers are using as aids for teaching there's also equipment purchases going on normal our normal turnover and the technology project is still

038rolling out here the grounds maintenance and dng overhead services are going up that's spread out throughout and you can take a look at exhibit in the book yes it is and that will give you some ideas of the different costs special education transportation as kevin mentioned is going up um 84 200. and then our transportation contract the contract itself it doesn't include gas reports like that is scheduled at 12 625 um and then there are two larger decreases that don't fit into either the salary or benefit lines okay because you can look through the budget the consolidated budget consolidated budget and you can see other decreases that are larger than these than the one on early retirement benefits but they have been captured in total in either the salary or the health insurance for the

039retirement funds okay because those are the bulk of the bigger decreases so that's a significant changes overview now we move on to the district revenues and net assessment where some really exciting and crazy things are going on which it took a village to work out right because we're all going this can't be true um earlier on and then it really caught our eye uh so it tries to this page which is small and it falls like tries to show you last year as voted and you're going to see a couple different numbers there and the blue represents what the total was with also with the technology project okay even though we financed it with cash coming out of an expendable reserve trust the department of revenue administration tells us that we have to report the

040total amount of the warrant article that was ratified okay we just won't be spending that much or collecting that much which is fine can i just kind of clarify that so last year we voted um really actually in all of our districts to do a technology improvement project and in hannover we realized once actually the project came to be a little bit more crystallized and a little finer pen we realized we could actually pay for it out of our maintenance fund um so we decided not to issue a bond instead and just pay with cash knowing also that we'd likely would have some reserves that we could kind of replenish the maintenance fund at that point um and that's kind of what we were initially thinking right so um so just to let you know

041that we did not issue the bond but according to what jamie is saying we still need to act as if since that's what was voted and kind of um but know that that's not what we ended up doing at the end correct we just have to recognize the total dollar amount of what was on the warranty itself and then what they do is they just write to disallow the difference so it's just a housekeeping for the department of revenue administration it was filed properly on the revenues to show that 150 000 would come out of the trust the expendable trust and that the balance view was just nested in other and then we just won't ever collect the other already off okay so but but it's important if somebody is following along with the dra

042reports be sure that they're in line with them uh so you'll see us voted for this year and it brings you all the way down to the bottom where we had net assessment actual at 14 163 397. then we go to our proposed column which is the one we're talking about right now that we're building and you can see the changes that we've discussed and then we go to the second big block which shows our revenues okay and uh this is interesting as you get down to the state sources it's not really interesting until you get down to that line the ballots carry forward the balance carry forward we're going to project it pretty stable okay based on the fact that the school board retained this year three hundred thousand dollars okay which the launch

043article that we voted for retained allowed us to okay so the hannover waterworks i've not gotten the new number in yet but it will be coming and we'll have it right here tuition income is pretty stable for the next year out interest on investment is just sad um prior to your refunds i'm assuming that's going to go down a little bit as well because the health insurance is uh more and that's where some of that usually comes off hey jamie are you reminding us all in public why we're getting money from hanover waterworks oh my gosh um yeah i think yeah panther better than i can't yeah i can do it when i speak next time we do get asked that question a lot let's address that when you take them okay thank you the

044money from dartmouth college stopped but the money from the water was dependent um yeah that's true the rental property we feel is going to go up as the cast and everybody are starting to use our buildings again and we're being able to allow that to as you saw all the basketball players are here and then we get to adequacy date so for fiscal year 2223 we're going to go through some slides so i'm not going to spend a ton of time on this we can come back to it for fiscal year 23 which is what the state calls it there will be a one-time change to the statewide funding formula and honest to god hannah her school district will be receiving a check from the state of new hampshire for 1.3 million dollars i know

045you should see what porksman's getting okay all right and then our catastrophic aid we're projecting to be about the same based on the fact it will probably come in higher but with catastrophic or what they call special ed reimbursement aid they do a percentage of the whole total amount of money that's available so we often will go a little bit lower okay and then adjust it to when we set the taxes uh this year we adjusted it when we set the tax rate because the prior year we actually booked it i think at 440 or 3 000 and it's conditionally over 500. and with the increases in out of district tuition amounts i'm sure that number will probably go higher as long as the percentage that they're paying out does not draw for some other

046reason building aid is static federal sources we're keeping that stable we should know about that in january as well um i know that our person who processes that is working through the backlog of this past year and changes in how you have to adapt all of the information that you want first again items in blue there should be numbers there but because we're trying to do an apple's apples comparison we have not included them so normally or when i go to present this uh for safe purposes they would have money in from building maintenance reserve form of 150 000 and then the balance would be from other in that first one okay on the other side so we would show a distance there anyway for the apples to apples without the sixth grade tuition and

047the tech project we then are showing that revenues from to and from fund balance would be an increase of a million forty six thousand three hundred eighty four dollars okay which would make us have a net assessment actual including the warrant articles that we know of at this point in time because it's probably a couple new ones a couple more coming that we will have on our next projection assuming ratification um that we would be looking to raise about two and a half million dollars less from taxable okay and so we carry these numbers forward so you can see what the district assessments look like when you put them together with dresden and this is the last built dresden budget committee meeting on december 6th which may be subject to change as well because they're

048well not here anyway but they will have a couple more fourth articles also so this number may not actually change so then we come out through the fact that we would be about 177 277 higher than this current year not including the monies that we would have raised for um actually that does include all the ones that includes all the money that is a conclusive of everything um so then we look at the estimated tax rate we put the state school tax rate in red because this is a big deal that this is a one year change to how the state of new hampshire is going to do what's known as sweat statewide education property checks and that we're going to get an increase in our adequacy aid because of the changes they're making in

049the funding formula for the statewide education property classes they're doing it specifically because it's not going to be the swept like we know it to be in past where no offense to anybody but the state it's a shell game because we're raising our money and we're keeping our money and we're not spending money i don't know it's a really interesting concept but it's based on equalized valuations across the whole all the property and state so let's move on to the next slide we have a question yeah um i'm highly suspicious about that million dollars from the state given that the school voucher plan is six thousand percent oversubscribed from what the legislature said in terms of predicting numbers last year to the tune of over eight million dollars where they said it was going to

050be 128 thousand dollars max and that's coming out of the same fund that the adequacy aid comes from am i correct the destination trust fund uh this is a different the monies they're going for this is a different pot than all of the monies for that some of it crosses over but not all of it is coming from the same sources well it says the that this dedicated fund is used to meet the state's education adequacy obligation [Music] you're saying it's not the same one that's paying out all the money for the it has some of the same funding sources yeah uh so there's crossover i believe in the funding sources um i don't know that this one year's money is going to be competing with that program do you want to take any guts

051so i think we're going to get to it oh more i apologize yeah there's more more explanation but i think if you want to get a little bit more comfort i mean the way that the law is written now um is that we there has to be a make good a make hole and so we're getting this based upon the 100 promise that it's a make hole in addition as opposed to what our advocacy which kind of we've been receiving over the past couple of years even we typically haven't that was like a 95 confidence interval on that this is an actual make hole written into the law so okay as it stands right now it feels more comfortable that we're going to get that then you know but but i mean i carry you

052on where it all assumes and actually maybe jamie will get to it on slide 14 but like it all assumes that the funding is going to come from other sources as opposed to the swept the state tax so okay thank you believe me there are there are towns that are getting that have never gotten any money that are getting much larger songs than we are and they've had the same entire set of questions when we met with mark manganiello from the state of new hampshire he's their accountant and did a training which i shared with you on the bottom of page 12 here the link from the video and you can go on and watch it if you want to um and i can post the letter that comes out about radical aid and how

053they figured so this just kind of gives you our thousand foot view about statewide education property tax rate and how it's normally done okay um so from the state's perspective it tells you that they put it in their books as both a revenue and an expenditure so it nets out to zero right from the school district's perspective they tell us that we still receive this money from our local school district from our local town they raised the money off of the local tax bills you see it on your bill as two separate line items one is a local tax rate one state tax rate the reason for that is because local tax rate is determined by your actual net assessed valuation in your account alone okay the statewide property tax rate is figured based on

054equalized property values across the entire state of new hampshire that's where they take the value of charlestown new hampshire which is very poor and the value of hanover new hampshire which is wealthier and they try to equalize them on a somewhat equal playing field if for every one student everybody had say a thousand dollars worth of property value to use to raise money right and then they set a property tax rate based on those calculations and you can go out and look at the information um on the department of revenue administration listed so this year is different because they're not going to do that with the statewide education property tax rate because there has been monies coming in let's go to the next slide okay well so i just got ahead of myself sorry slide

05513 kind of shows you how swept rates are calculated and it shows you this is from the new hampshire department of ed training uh powerpoint presentation um that they do online and it's interactive they actually take it but this is an excerpt from the powerpoint itself so basically in 2022 they used 363 million dollars in revenue and they equalized state property to 199 billion they came out with a dollar 82 per thousand spirit in 2023 they're gonna lower that revenue by a hundred million dollars okay and they're projecting 214 billion in state property okay so they're coming out with a dollar twenty-four that's true and you know of course i had to ask are they actually um is the state not supporting schools by a hundred million dollars and the answer is no it will

056get that on site fourteen it's just where they're getting those funding for it they're not asking the local towns to raise it through their school tax rate um and so they're going to find other sources right so ken's saying is that how normally we would have two tax rates and the swept rate would be like in the dollar eighty it's been as high as 203 before right it's going to be lower because they want to conceivably give the resident taxpayers a one year break and fund that other 100 million dollars from other revenue sources at the state level so this is also an excerpt from the department of ed training on slide 14. um i don't know what slide number is for that but so here's this is from 2020. he did not have a

057new pie chart for a trade okay i am assuming scary that they will send us a new pie chart soon okay because they're putting together their budget as well but here are the different revenue categories okay from where the normal education trust fund revenue is coming from and so basically what we were told is that the projection of these revenues are coming in so much higher that they're that they're going to carve more money like 100 million dollars off and then they're going to use it as like whole timeless grants i did not put the slide in which would show you what our swept calculation is so basically what the 1.3 million dollars is is if you figured our swept rate for it comes out to a number of like four point uh four point

058six million um when you do it with a dollar twenty three it drops considerably to three point three million right so what they are saying is that they're going to issue a one-time grant to hold you hard to hold harmless your loss of sweat even if it was excess sweat okay because there was a whole conversation about xxx excess sweat like two or three years ago if you remember okay um and believe me there's about 22 of us in the state of new hampshire including portsmouth all ten years again so who all have the same questions that he did like is this real okay um and they're still emailing them and there's a lot of components and there's a great slide that was shared in this new hampshire d.o.e training about how adequacy aid was

059figured and it was done in a vertical manner instead of a horizontal manner and it brought in all of these three pieces where you can get additional aid depending on your adequacy uh the formula pieces the only thing that could adjust any of this number [Music] would be if our population or our our student population were to suddenly severely decline in the next six months okay or our levels of free and reduced rate of decline or esl levels or any of those other driving forces or pieces of data whereby we get different dollar amounts in order to give a pupil an adequate you know education a funding for an adequate education it has a bunch of different pieces that make up the big total they'll learn based on a student and what their needs are

060if the student count and the amount of needs were to significantly drop or change it could change that number a little bit based on what we've been seeing i don't see that i don't see that i'm not fearful of that okay because our esl numbers we have been told will probably be turning up uh due to relocations and our student populations um are going up okay in the element um and they are still doing the old hard work no they're not doing the whole promise on the um fte 28 kdm okay so that was a whole lot of information to absorb i would strongly suggest to everybody who's interested in understanding it more to go out and look at the doe training on youtube okay and then email us with your questions all right and

061then we will answer them by the next round of budget meetings and actually all board members should have received a link to the video in the regular nhsba emails that we get sent out so if you look at when it's the doe training about adequacy i think it was sent just too big yesterday very helpful and that's actually where some of these sites came from yeah and the training was done uh for business administrators and we do have the letter for adequacy aid which we can share if somebody wants to read through it i'll post it uh it's kind of interesting um they send it out every year in november they threw these numbers up usually uh by august because they start sending money out next september um and then we just are wrapping up

062a quick overview presentation about other potential budget changes um we're still discussing the transportation contract extension um and what the roots may look like for 23 24 22 23 the custodial ftes as we mentioned um and we also it's on the dockets for tonight may have a teacher sabbatical that needs to be covered here at the ray school so that would i would budget another hundred and five thousand dollars in this budget for the coverage that's available um other potential warrant articles uh which we're going to also discuss we put it on but i mention them here also is that the support staff union agreement have been negotiated the school board will discuss it tonight and then the judson school board also needs to discuss it on the 21st we cannot share any of the

063parameters of what was discussed until after the resident board has a chance to discuss it in its entirety as well the education association union agreement which is the teachers union is the same we've got temper we've got tas on both of them the boards have to discuss whether to rather fire them uh dissolving the sixth grade tuition reserve fund if we do that what do we do with the money of 370 000 in there now um and whether or not to set up a notepad wasn't fun and or they had it but you did mention it refund the maintenance reserve fund history kind of decimated we left behind about 8500. so just i was just gonna hit with some comments there's just a big picture overview here um you know i think what we're looking

064at therefore and you know we're gonna talk about dresden later so let's just assume that is what it is right now but we're looking in hanover 1.6 1.5 tax rate increase um and why we went into so much detail about swept and this 1.3 million is that it really is a one-time issue and so you know i think it is well received this year but keep in mind you know we just are going to have the normal operational needs and we are fulfilling that in this budget but you know it might be uh you know a little too low for what it is actually you know the case right so we're growing at a three and a half percent on our operational costs but because of this extra revenue we're at 1.6 so um you

065know i only bring it bring it up just to think about when we think about next year um and also just really where we were the prior year so we've actually kind of had two kind of long years um so we've had not necessarily i mean for reasons outside of our control so this current year's budget and what tax bills kind of went out if you actually see we had um a decrease actually in our school tax rate um definitely more of a decrease than what we had anticipated at our voting time but actually just increase from actual to actual so um i think what the reason for that was because we were um absorbing um the savings and basically giving it back to the taxpayers from when we closed schools in march of 2020

066and so we had some significant savings on that so actually we had kind of a very modest tax rate last year this year in the budget we just discussed is at a 1.6 but keep in mind there's kind of so there's two kind of revenues or one-offs that are feeling great great for taxpayers particularly you know for folks who are struggling in this covet economy but i just want to make sure everyone is aware that that we might be needing to contemplate some warrant articles which we can kind of talk about and maybe for a future discussion in detail on maybe what do we need to do to start thinking longer term about what's going to happen next year when i'm not sure this 1.3 million dollars is so so secure right and to figure

067out what do we do in that case because we're going to kind of be in that in that way so just wanted to to state that and um you know really thank everyone who's really worked on this and you know it's been really thoughtful and i'm particularly very excited to hear about the math curriculum kind of kicking off that alignment and working so well with marion frost and so i think really well done there thanks jamie on page six we talked about the change from regular special special will that result in a corresponding increase in the number of regulator systems who need a one-to-one pay differential when you're working with students one-on-one [Music] no exactly well you would have had the other it would have the opposite effect because regulates don't unless they're filling in

068for somebody who's out that's a speciality or don't have the one-to-one any questions [Music] hello my yes is kari asmus i live in between and hanover center and my first comment i will just it's just me as an individual responding to the question why do we receive money uh from the water you know company and that has to do with about 10 years ago when we switched from a private water company that was primarily owned by dartmouth to a municipalized water company when it went from a private company that paid property taxes to a municipal entity it went from paying property taxes to not paying property taxes and as we were going through this process it was pointed out that that would be a significant loss of revenue to both the town and to the

069school and that it would force tax rates to go up and because the municipalization was something that um benefited people who were on the water system but not those who are not on that it wasn't fair for people who don't benefit from the water system to see an increase in their taxes so as part of the whole municipalization they came up with a payment in lieu love uh that the water company uh although its municipal water company would be making to both the town and to the school so it has to do with the history of our town which is always so special uh that we went from having a you know private water company for over 100 years to have a municipal one and you know at that time when i would write into

070my uh word processor municipalized it it said that wasn't a word because everybody was de-municipalizing everything so we were we were definitely uh not not following uh you know a normal course of action at that time but i don't know if anybody has any questions but that's what it has to do with and if i recall from the same question i asked i believe though um it will um i guess what's the term of the payments so i mean it would go on into conversion for yeah but but now with the revaluation um you know perhaps the water company property and and buildings have appreciated more than average or less than average i you know i haven't looked that up so the payment could fall uh if it didn't appreciate on an average amount or

071it could go up if it's completed by more um but so there has been some variability and i remember when this was discussed it was sort of even more significant dollar amount than 175 compared to the rest of the so it was it was kind of a big deal and it was just part of the negotiations well thank you for answering that board question and then you have something a separate thing you wanted to try and now i would put on my um hanover finance committee hat which i'm the chair again this year and um i wanted to say it was very interesting for us as a group to um attend the november 26th or 22nd joint dresden hanover budget committee and go over the initial numbers and see how things were coming along and

072i have to say we all looked at that sort of then it was a slightly different number but the 1.6 increase uh in the tax rate and you're like oh my god that was how is that happening um but i think that we all thought that you know that that was very reasonable and that there was no particular reason to ask administration to you know make sure have you taken out your sharpest pencil and now that we know that you know although the increased spending this year can feel very comfortable very affordable next year because of the loss you know that we think i mean you could have lightning strike the same tree twice but you know we just really can't count on it that next year that loss of 1.3 million would mean that

073you know before you add a single dollar to the budget you know that you would be looking at a four four and a half percent depending you know on changes in that assessed valuation in your tax rates without a single additional dollar so everything that you can do this year uh to help yourself next year um is a step that you might want to take so i just wanted to say that when i heard uh jamie say you know that maybe we'll be looking more closely at the custodian line or you know any line um any sharpening of the pencil that you see responsible this year it will help you tremendously next year and of course one of one of the things that the finance committee we like to do is to look at the

074media here but to also look forward because the goal is always to have a steady um you know smooth waters for for the ship of the school the sale on over multiple years so that would be um one of my comments um yeah and i was just gonna say to you the other way of looking at this is that if you didn't have that 1.3 million uh right now you'd be looking at a five five and a half percent increase in the tax rate and that's before the addition of of of the tas the union agreements and so you can sort of imagine you know what it would be like if you're going in for the voters and saying and so that is really the real impact of your of this proposed uh budget um

075so i think that's that is pretty much um you know the message that i would give and i would just uh you know echo the summary that kim and and jamie bell gave i'm looking forward and then i just also wanted to say that in the past we have had a special ed presentation as part of the budget process that just sort of gave everybody an understanding of well uh what is special and but also what are the trends what are we looking at uh we didn't do that last year with uh covid and i just wanted to put out that i thought and the finance committee thought was a very useful presentation and i hope that you'll consider adding that to your um agenda the budget agenda item um in january so we don't

076miss that two years ago all right uh carrie can you hear me yes um thanks thanks ben um yes 9 north park street um also vice chair of the hannover finance committee um thank you all for the work that you've done on the budget and i'll just give a special shout out to jamie because when once you've you know it the the budget is complicated enough as it is but uh even more complicated this year with uh the the twist from new hampshire so thank you uh jamie um so so i guess i would um echo um kari's sentiment with respect to the reliance on this you know this is a 100 million dollar tax cut at the state of new hampshire level but if the um build back better um state and local tax

077exemption or deduction uh is restored you know maybe doubled um the pressure for that reduction in property taxes will potentially lessen with the federal tax change so you could easily envision a scenario in which this is a one-time deal so just just something to think about there um jamie just on page 11 10 11 um i guess i just want to uh assure myself and my this starts to spin my head around but the um adequacy aid is added to the tune of 1.3 million but then also the state's uh you know school tax rate is reduced and that's not double counting i know you thought about that no actually it's kind of funny to say that because i was uh going through and when i added the 1.3 in earlier i had done it

078because then i looked at i printed the sheet i looked at it and it was really lovely it had like a 39 reduction so i was like oh that's not right so um now because i wanted to go back if you look uh back on exhibit seven the new exhibit seven i had the restore not to be that guy but from the zoom it's not clear who's talking so if you can come up for some people okay so i had to go i went back in to the exhibit seven and at the top of exhibit seven if you look at it now in order for that tax rate to to uh calculate properly because it's driven off of exhibit 7. i restored the 1.3 million to the assessment at the top of exhibit 7 so

079it doesn't double it so it's showing it in two different views here we have to recognize it as revenue in our revenue section and then when we do the formula on the tax uh the tax rate exhibit on our seven we wanted to show it as coming out as a part of the assessment so i restored it to the top line okay thank you i'll take a look i appreciate that yeah kerry there might have might have been a version where it was double counting but if you hit refresh or if you have the latest version it should tie out in case that helps to clarify too right because i had to pull them both down i had gotten ahead of myself posted it so um if you're seeing a version where that number where

080the swept tax rate state tax number looks really great yeah that's wrong so it should be a dollar 29 on the version we pulled them down and we posted them and i reposted the budget book as well but it was late it was like 5 30 8 probably when i reposted this thank you and just one last thing if i could um i the idea of um putting funds into an opeb uh reserve fund or um you know um i guess graduating the impact of a potential hit next year if the swept thing reverses on us is appealing so um so just something to think about when you're when you're thinking about um funding the various uh reserve funds potentially including this new op fund thank you gary questions [Music] let's move on ahead to

081we are now on five lead especially potential warrant articles i mean it's really just a continuation of the last slide that jamie was talking about and um i think we as a so well i guess first this is the time that we start thinking about warren articles right so because we'll have to be approving them at the january board meetings is that correct jamie right it's mid-january so we have until now the mid-january to think about what warren articles should be appropriate and um i just wanted to make sure we start thinking about that and then um from the budget side um there are probably a few we should think about and um i i think i'm going to propose at the end of this to have a maybe a budget committee meeting where we

082kind of talk more about the details on the who's and what's but um first um topic that you know jamie has um here is dissolving a sixth grade tuition reserve fund now we might find alternative uses for the fund um we also may not want to dissolve the fund for whatever reason but um i just since we no longer have sixth grade tuition it's just something for us to consider and there are i want to say over 300 000 in that fun jamie rate in the sixth grade in the 60s 000. it picks around 380 in that so um you know as we're thinking about ways to potentially help that 1.3 million dollar hit that we might see next year we might have some other kind of levers we can pull regarding that and we'll

083have to figure out what makes the most sense um and then setting up the opeb reserve fund it was an idea that has been discussed in the past it's just a way to kind of help on some unfunded long-term liabilities that we have regarding um kind of other uh post-employment expenses and that kind of a thing so um we can kind of get into the details on that and you know what audits have recommended and whatnot but that's just a potential solution um that would be kind of a longer term view um and but of course there are other types of reserve funds and then the last is also the maintenance fund that um so kind of thinking about if we wanted to allocate additional resources to the existing maintenance fund since we had used

084it for the technology fund so those are kind of a general flavor and i would probably recommend looking at kevin and others in the hanover budget committee just to kind of talk about what makes the most sense as a recommendation for um for our next meeting to discuss or we can discuss it right now but i just feel like it's probably best to um kind of have a little bit more time to think about that and come back with a recommendation so we no longer have a sixth grade need for the tuition as you said um but there's 370 something thousand dollars in there um is that you know can you just move that to anyone because it's my guess is it's restricted to that sixth grade fund but now that's not needed you know

085what's the what are the kind of rules around moving that money around like yeah and i think that's why we want to have a budget committee to understand because i i haven't had much experience in kind of do we just can we rename a fund do we have to take it out and have a separate article to put it back into something you know just to try to just to understand kind of what what do we have to do what's the easiest way [Laughter] questions until like the past day or two understood about the windfall 1.3 million uh the finance committee has not discussed the issue of what to do with potential warrant articles um as a group um however as i was sitting at home today i mean one of the things that um

086you know i was thinking of and then it changed my thoughts on using the sixth grade and today my initial thing was sixth grade tuition trend we told people we're going to use it for this thing we should give it back to the voters but now that i see this impending you know kind of waterfall next year that we don't necessarily want to go over i'm thinking of that very different i'm also thinking um you know about replenishing the building maintenance fund and um [Music] you know that was a one-time expense that's a one-time replenishment and one of the things that you sometimes want to think about using one-time monies for are one-time costs so you're faced with this 1.3 1 million revenue source so my thought that i haven't run past the finance committee

087at all is would it be most appropriate to use some of that for the one-time replenishment that would drive this you know the tax rate you're talking about now up a small amount but because this year it is so comfortable again that would then kind of mitigate the increase next year and it is again a pretty well understood um a technique that you use one-time resources for one-time expenses if you can't but i can't think of any other you know one-time expenses that you have coming up but that replenishment is one thing that you can discuss and i just wanted to throw that out in and the other kind of source of revenue too just as we start thinking about it too is if we were to not retain so in hanover we have retained

088edge as well and so if we were not to retain as much as we have in the past that would kind of by releasing that routine it would also be kind of like a revenue source and lower the tax rate in future years so that's just another thing that we can kind of discuss with the budget committee kind of what what makes sense to apply what and where and um but i mean i know this is also for any other warrant articles doesn't always just have to be budget related and so i just also want to make sure you kind of think a little bit broader too than just uh [Music] would suggest we table and those are all the the remote work along with the associated forms and uh our hurdle about public participation

089which for those who are looking at board dogs would be bdth and real charging efaa so for the first one for public participation board meetings um i'm also the chair of the policy committee such as now the policy committee which is currently the price of myself uh kevin here as well as derek fullman from norwich school district spent several hours i think fine-tuning this one if you wish to compare it to the current one which is actually in board docs right now under 3a public comment there's a passion to see the current version this one is far more detailed far more descriptive and i um i think all the board members as well as jay i think watch a several hour long video from the state to give us further guidance to this and there's

090a lot here so we might be on this one for a while kevin yeah so there's a lot of text changes to it but in actuality there isn't a lot of practice changes to it so the biggest changes to it that i noticed um is it clarifies a lot of things that weren't specified in previous policy one of which was allowing a minimum of three minutes of time per public comment speaker was previously some of the board meetings all the districts the four districts used the same policy but we weren't implementing them all the same policy in the same manner so this is going to re-emphasize that and i will say that the board meetings i've been at have all been implementing in the same way so really the biggest thing that's changed is it

091specifies that three minutes so if you're concerned about a change in the policy there's a lot of word changes there aren't a lot of changes in practice to what we've been doing thank you kevin any questions or comments from the board and i do know they will be mentioned in that this will come up address them and norwich as well separately then [Music] this got some comment at the last discussion i believe the policy previously addressed those issues short one start policy any comments from the board comments from our audiences so i will start by just giving a little bit of history on bridgeman um what we're even looking at and why we're looking at it and why it made it this far especially for our new board members and anyone in the public that

092may not be familiar with richmond so a bridgman fund um graceful students staff members and community members may apply for this fund um they submit a proposal um and previously by richmond middle school sixth grade students were also under the purview of this richmond trust fund as they're moving into dresden they are no longer part of bridgman fund as i understand it but kim you can definitely chime in if i understand it incorrectly this is to benefit students that are attending the canover school district which is now the ray school so the proposal process the person who submits the proposal will submit it to the building principal and i can request a meeting to further discuss the proposal if i have any questions part of my job is to determine the proposal is consistent with

093the purpose of the fund and then from there we move it along to the hanover school board for approval we typically have two times during the year where we accept bridgeman proposals um but these are just uh our own set dates um so we have a fall submission or a winter submission depending on the year and then also a spring submission as well so guidelines that i mentioned before any proposal for bridgeman funding must consider the following before applying for bridgman funds the project should have a clear positive purpose bridgeman funds cannot be used to reduce taxes the bridgeman funds must benefit only hanover students the hanover school board will use these parameters to determine if the bridgman fund is appropriate for the proposal and then before extending any of the bridgeman funds the school

094board would describe in writing the purpose for which the money will be used and certify in writing that the fund will not be used to reduce taxes but to afford advantages to the students of the hanover school district and then we ask applicants to consider sustainability so this is typically a one-time funded project so if there are things that need to be funded beyond like ongoing cost of maintenance or replacement for materials that must be integrated into the future budget the project should be outside the current school budget there should be a high student impact and if bridgeman fund proposals come from the community community members unless have a liaison within the school so that both the stakeholder and the school have a well-established relationship in order to carry out the project on approval and

095then we also ask for curriculum ties so asking folks to delineate the curriculum that they hope to improve as well as the rationale behind why that ties into the curriculum so what we have before you i hope we had a moment to take a look at um is actually a culmination of more than a year of thinking and work on this project so the idea became an idea over a year ago and now that it's been solidified into a proposal for their review and making it this far means that i have checked the boxes feeling that it is appropriate for you all to review this project is for decodable classroom libraries here at the ray school it was submitted by first grade teacher beth phillips whitehead and catherine farrell who is one of our reading

096writing specialists here at the ray school but also contributions from our other reading writing specialists and that is karen dubois i'll read a couple of the most salient points from the proposal but again hopefully you've had a time had some time to look at it on your own so we have embarked on an initiative k1 previously around foundations which is a phonics phonemic awareness program in kindergarten first grade and as the proposal mentions the next hurdle that we face is creating a comprehensive and equitable classroom library for our kindergartners and our first graders so that all emergent readers and students have access to decodable texts advances in neuroscience have led to new research detailing guidelines for how we teach children to read the older whole language strategy has now been replaced with explicit teaching following

097the phonetic rules of the english language the wealth foundations our program has allowed us to teach these concepts the classroom libraries we currently have are not resourced to support those readers and learning to read with proper texts research now supports that having all children use their phonic skills to decode text is a much more solid approach to reading instruction and there's a substantial body of research to support the use of decodable texts with our early readers newer research suggests that all children should be taught to read using these equitable texts not just 20 of our readers this is a large shift from previous teaching and currently we don't have the resources for our emergent readers as recommended by current research and protocol so what i submit to you on behalf of our kindergarten first grade

098teams as well as our reading writing specialists is the opportunity to use bridgeman funding to create these incredible text libraries for each of our kindergarten and first-grade classrooms and many of the attachments outline what would be purchased in order to make this a thing that would come true here for the graceful and for our students i would be happy to answer any questions but i fully support this proposal can you walk us through the two different options yeah sure so there are um some different options around storage if you've ever been in our k room k1 book room um you walk in we have lots of different systems in place to try and figure out the best way to check in and check out books and we've probably tried ten different ways to check in

099and check out books um and none of them have been very successful so i'm thinking about how we're repurposing this k1 book room um we're looking at different ways to store within the classroom versus just storing within the k1 book room um so you'll see that there's sort of a delineation around the number of bins as well as the type of bins and parts that could possibly be used in the classroom and that was one of the major differences in the two proposals yeah so um so kevin just asked me about uh what the specific um type of book cart was and it's literally a book cart so there is a big um uh expense that's a difference there uh because you can think about having a classroom library with like bookshelves and bins in

100those bookshelves or you can think about having a classroom library on a book heart which means that it can actually be brought around the different classroom or different areas of the classroom and it can even be brought out into the main pod area for use for student groupings that are happening out there as well and we speaking on behalf of the folks that put this proposal together um there's a real desire to do this right and not just to do this right now in without much expense so you can go to walmart and you can get 25 bookshelves and they will last you a year or two before they start falling apart and getting very wobbly or we can invest in materials that will be long lasting well made and by groups that we already

101purchased from that have high quality items for our classrooms so is it safe to assume that option two is the better path the higher quality path and you think you said before you've obviously signed off on it you've gold support absolutely thank you yeah let's just kind of plan to share the foundations concepts with parents because a lot of parents aren't familiar with that it seems like a really good program and the amount that's shared varied with parents varies dramatically between classrooms so whether there could just be a website that has the basics of foundations for the school um for parents to access i think would be very helpful since they're actually spending a tremendous amount of time working right yes so um foundations is the program that we currently have in place and there

102are opportunities around grant communication and i would be happy to check in with our customer teams and see that we can be consistent um and this is separate from the fundation in addition to so these books are not through fundation the group that has that program they are through a different group so yes to your question but it's outside the parameters of this bridgeman proposal yes any questions okay someone in the audience car you want to come on up again so harvey smith and i would say this and i'm probably speaking with my school board emeritus you know hat on um and i don't have comments for this particular um proposal although i have to say it sounds wonderful and exactly the sort of thing that we would have liked to have had brought forward

103to us while i was on board but it's going back to the purpose of the fund i just wanted to make a couple of clarifications that i would suggest um that you do ask the council whether or not the sixth graders could continue to be um included the will of mr bridgeman was written like in the 1920s when he envisioned that the funds would go okay or not they didn't have grades one through by the time his funds came to uh the district when his last last beneficiary died it was in the 19th late 1990s um and uh the courts at that time said well you know there is you know the world has changed since he wrote this but we think his intent was that the funds should benefit any student who resides in

104the town of hanover and so um that's how it came that the sixth graders would be included but the the courts felt that uh it should not be extended to students from norwich which is sort of not our philosophy but that's what the court said and so that is why i think that you might want to continue to find out if you can um offer this opportunity to the sixth graders to benefit them um the other thing that i wanted to say that we also thought that it was very prudent to stick primarily to one year projects so that you continue to have this ability to uh have new new projects but we did contemplate at times but you know there were sometimes things that could normally just take two years to execute and it

105was the same amount each year and you knew that you know uh i'm trying to think like what an example was but there were a couple of times when we looked at that circumstance so i just wanted to encourage you in the future not to say it just has to always be a one year project um some of the things that we sometimes talked about were residencies um or consultant work that in order to really you know to have the freedom to have that come to fruition it just needed two years to happen so i i guess i just wanted to encourage you um to yes follow prudent guidelines but also not you know use them as handcuffs because sometimes things do come up that could really benefit our schools um from from the richmond

106funds and isn't it sort of amazing that somebody wrote a will you know over a hundred years ago or coming up on 100 years ago is still having such an impact on our schools today so anyway thank you also i neglected to say earlier thank you for all your work during uh this busy budget time and uh this whole school year so anyway i i look forward to seeing you all in january i'm not going to speak for this you know really the bridgeman fun the school boards in the past and maybe during kari's time or before um you know kind of self-imposed a forty thousand dollar kind of annuity cycle it by the the letter of the law doesn't have to be that forty thousand dollar but at that level it kind of gives

107us a fund in perpetuity um and the trustees of the trust funds have kind of appreciated that kind of withdrawal cycle as they make their investments they kind of know when they need to take out cash and whatnot so if if at any point we realize that we need more than 40 000 and or you know that kind of needed some flexible funding we can ask to do that you know and absolutely do that and just just keep in mind that you know we just need to work with the trustees of the trust fund and and to make sure that like that that fun would likely continue to probably be best practice right so um just to kind of give you a sense of it's not also just 40 000 um per year and there

108is a little bit more flexibility we need to be prudent with that resource i'll ask us that the source of the beeping in the audience if i could just stop please anyone else on bridgeman so as many of you may be aware we the uh the sau board took on the duties of what had been an administrative committee that was engaged in equity work for the district going back to 2019 and in the course of that work we have had questions um in fact mr richards alluded to this earlier we've had requests for information about activities that have already taken place in in dei and also uh some sort of a update on what's going on now there has there's been for those folks that were part of the original community there was some concern

109that there was nothing happening and so i was aware that each of our schools has been engaged in a variety of different activities they're different but but they suit the needs of the individual schools and so we thought it'd be a great idea to have our principals address the equity committee which they did at our last meeting so um another thing that that we thought in fact the chairs of the boards thought would be great for the principals to make a presentation just to kind of bring folks up to date on what is isn't happening um with regard to dei and uh so that's uh that's why we put it on the agenda this this particular month okay and i know also that one of our hanover board members michelle de blasio is the vice

110chair of that committee and i think she'll speak to the sector lauren as well lauren sure so just to caution you might remember my principal's report was quite short so i'm going to speak to myself right i was asked to report out tonight on efforts at the ray school that we have undertaken this year some of you may have attended or watched last week's equity committee meeting where administrators in each school reported on what has been occurring at each school in the absence of a district-wide professional development like we had last year with groundswell change of note it's important for me to take a moment to verbalize that what i'm about to share is important work and that it moves the needle on diversity equity and inclusion at the rey school however it is also

111work in a silo without a person coordinating district efforts or even a person who coordinates long and short-term efforts within the school as their primary job an area of expertise it remains just that important incremental and slow work done because it matters and it's a priority among priorities that's distributed across many people who have full-time jobs already that being said i am pleased to share what's been happening at the race pool and some of this information has also been shared by the silos that i mentioned teams here within the race school i'll start by talking about some school-wide initiatives one thing that we've continued this year with more fidelity is responsive classroom and responsive classroom includes but is not limited to positive community creating safe predictable joyful inclusive classrooms where all students have a sense

112of belonging and significance effective management creating a calm orderly environment that promotes autonomy and allows students to focus on learning engaging academics designing and delivering high quality rigorous and engaging instructions developmentally responsive teaching responding to students individual cultural and developmental learning needs and strengths and logical consequences a non-punitive response to misbehavior that allows teachers to set clear limits and for students to fix and learn from their mistakes while maintaining dignity some of the other things that you will see through a responsive classroom here at the race will include the morning meeting daily meetings that build community honor identity promote belonging significance and engagement interactive modeling an explicit practice for teaching school and classroom routines as well as academic and social skills teacher language speaking in ways that lead each student to envision success think deeply

113set goals and work hard to achieve them positive discipline involving students and creating rules proactively teaching these rules and a non-punitive response to restore positive behavior preserve student dignity and continue learning and then interactive learning structures purposeful learning tasks that give students opportunities to engage with content in active and interactive ways and we're supporting responsive classroom to our coaching as well as our curriculum another area that you will see school-wide that promotes our efforts around diversity equity inclusion also includes our curriculum documentation and our math resource adoption giving all students access to what they need i'll move on to contributions from our teams here at the race school one team shared that they're growing their classroom library by adding titles that reflect a more diverse collection of books claim uh containing topics relative to current

114ever-changing cultural and societal issues also highlighting authors and illustrators from diverse backgrounds another team is continuing to update classroom read-alouds and texts they're looking at their native american unit and integrating content into their science and social studies unit they've written a pto grant to continue their dei work all teachers are continuing their professional development using staff development funds school counselors are continually evaluating the literature they use and the contents of their effective ad lessons to ensure a broader representation of race religion gender socioeconomic status and culture they're also continuing their professional development through the american school counselors association annual conference third grade is taking a look at their japan studies planning carefully in order to center those studies around the question of why why are we a friendship city and why do we have that

115relationship with miyamotsu in japan reframing essential questions what is culture how does geography impact culture how are the lives of children similar and different in our global communities and they are using their scope and sequence to ensure common learning experiences across the grade our esl team shared that they're looking for ways to have better communication with our families using translation interpreters and the ability to message families in their native languages in order to provide more inclusivity and respect for the cultural and language diversity in our community the spanish team has been working since the beginning of the year with the idea of integrating different perspectives around cultures they're working to avoid stereotypes about the latin culture integrating different ways of living giving examples a variety of celebrations traditions foods and expressions the spanish team noted

116that the advantage they have is that they come from different countries with different experiences that they're able to share with our students they focus on making connections at the beginning of the year on people who connected to their own roots from other cultures like the latino roots with life here in the us they've discussed different types of art representation dances music styles and they're expanding their knowledge about the way of thinking and living in different parts of the globe from our specialist team they're approaching dei training in a variety of ways our art our teachers have shared that they're continuing to introduce more women artists living artists and artists of color to our students and that they're utilizing the people and the website at the hood museum and dartmouth as resources to help select appropriate

117materials and information for our students in our music class our major our music teacher has surveyed families to learn about the background cultures and countries and it has used this information to add folk songs and dances from those areas our music teacher is continuing to add books representing other cultures performers and creators in the areas of music and dance she's building a library of authentic music and dance of the people of the first nation she's continuing yearly revision of all that i've already mentioned and she's continued efforts to be more conscious of gender inclusive language in her speaking and the materials that she uses i'll stop there to reiterate that all of this is happening organically prioritized by administration and by individual teams here at the school so i urge you to imagine the possibility

118of what could be accomplished with coordination and expertise at the equity committee meeting one of the things we discussed was looking for effective structures currently in place and using those structures as models for dei work and coordination there are many of those structures that could be named but here are a few from the raceable perspective that are proving to be effective district curriculum coordination district pandemic response district technology and last year's district dei training so what commonalities do we see one there's an overarching coordination by one person or in some cases partners who is our experts in the field this person coordinates and takes action at the district level this helps ensure common vision dedicated time and common overarching goals two this coordination is supported by people on site at the school who know the

119culture climate and community of the specific school these people are liaisons and take action at the school level this helps to carry out the common vision and helps protect helps execute dedicated time and keep that time protected and helps ensure progress towards achieving the goals laid out and three this work is supported by the teaching teams within the schools and by the administrators by working with the coordinators who are directly working with the district coordinator the impact of this work is directly benefiting students and again we're seeing it in district uh committees like curriculum coordination pandemic response technology and dei so in these structures that have been effective in the district and each and at the rate school each of the three parts that i outlined has been integral for the overall success so i'll

120move into the hopes and dreams piece and these are a few priority items among many priorities we believe that a district dei coordinator who is a specialist and an expert and supported by specialists that are situated in each school is a priority it is a hope and a dream we hope to continue to pursue instructional coaching through the dei lens this includes a few points awareness a coach stays alert for entry points offered by the teacher and capitalizes on the opportunity to surface and question underlying assumptions and belief the next part action the coach supports the teacher the surface and take action that might meet the needs of different learners to disconfirm deficit beliefs and provide evidence supporting asset based attitudes analysis the coach collects and highlights data that may surface or disconfirm deficit beliefs

121and provide evidence for asset-based practices changes the code the coach stays attuned to assumptions that may perpetuate or interrupt inequalities for marginalized groups of students and supports colleagues to internalize attitudes that support greater success and access the next hope and dream is around our continued work in curriculum documentation well right now we're documenting curriculum we also must move to the point where exam where we are examining our curriculum that's now documented through a dei lens and a multicultural framework hope and dream continued work on inclusion for all students currently we have systems in place like child study tiered support and special education who are we missing who are we getting and what do we need to do about that continued work around teaching practices including responsive classroom as previously mentioned and continued focus and professional

122development around responsive classrooms well i'd like to be able to say that all of our staff is trained thoroughly in responsive classrooms that's not the case there and we strive to do so because it connects students cultures languages and life experiences with what they learn in school these connections help students access rigorous curriculum and develop higher level academic skills i'm almost done these are important book study and school-wide professional development continued documentation of curriculum and the resulting school-wide resource adoption as prudent and finally continued policy review so to close i'm going to reiterate something from earlier that i said in this update message and message again it's important for me to take a moment to verbalize that what i have shared is important work and work that moves the needle on diversity equity and inclusion

123here at the race tool however under the current model it is work in a silo without a person coordinating district efforts or even a person who coordinates long and short-term efforts within the school as their primary job and area of expertise it will remain just that important incremental and slow work done because it matters but is a priority among priorities it is truly a full-time job and if it's in it it must be a full-time job if it's to be done correctly and impactfully that concludes my report thank you very much i'm sure someone said questions from our business i hear from marcelo de blasio first she's obviously representing an equity committee on this marcel would should speak kyle yes i just want to make sure you you can hear me excellent okay thank you

124okay so um thank you uh so much lauren for sharing out to us the tremendous work at the gray school thank you also for pointing us um to the ongoing need for coordination in order for this work to expand right um and to be and to be really appreciated um as work that's happening beyond people's full-time jobs already right um as many of you probably know we lost a brilliant mind today um bell hooks a path-breaking feminist um black feminist theorist um passed away and so i've been thinking about some of her her lasting impacts and so one of the quotes that i keep thinking of is only love can heal the wounds of the past and i think this really informs a lot of the work that you're describing lauren um one of the

125reasons i'm speaking to you right now is because the last sau 7d board meeting we presented the equity committee's recommendation that we need a district level coordinator for diversity equity and inclusion the siu-70 board had a number of questions about how exactly such a position would work and so the recommendation was sent back to the committee for further clarification some of the board's questions were what are the alternatives to a district director or coordinator what would be the duties and responsibilities specifically for a person in this position what is the relationship between this position and the individual campuses to answer these questions the equity committee chair neil o'dell dr dave adams and i went to the leadership at each campus to help us learn about what's already happening with regard to dii work and also

126to ask what would be most helpful and we're so grateful for the input of every principle because it showed us that there's already work that needs support and they also led us to conclude that some of the essays questions are impossible for the equity committee to answer because they are really operational in nature it became clear that any ei initiative will need both coordination at the district level and support and initiative at each of the campuses working together so building to this ultimate goal the committee has the following suggestion slash clarification we've proposed dedicating 0.2 fte at the rey school point to ft at the marion cross school 0.2 fte at the richmond middle school and 0.4 fte at the hanover high school as part of a broader effort to support the tremendous labor that

127is associated with di work already underway at each of the schools the additional point to ft at the hanover high school represents the need for time to coordinate with the other campuses and provide input on strategic planning now this is where things get a little tricky given the jurisdiction of the equity committee the committee is an sau 70 committee but this recommendation can only really be understood as a suggestion to the hanover norwich and dresden school boards because these are campus specific ftds this is in part um one way of answering the sne 70 boards questions about alternatives roles and campuses by respecting the specific needs of each campus and supporting work already underway while also acknowledging our longer term goals to bring this campus-specific work together through a district-wide ei plan that can be

128informed by a dedicated leader with specific expertise in dei work um and so i'm keeping this short and i'll just end with another of my favorite bell hooks quotes because we've learned to believe negativity is more realistic it appears more real than any positive voice true resistance begins with people confronting pain and wanting to do something to change it so thank you hey marcelo does anyone have any questions on the board for either warren or someone marcelo's usually on this issue it's more just to clarify obviously i mean so what we discussed in the budget today did not include this proposal right because we're just hearing it now so i just wanted to clarify so if we were to contemplate this further um we would need to update the budget um lauren so if this

129sort of go through like a point to fd specific to the race school what would you envision that person's daily stuff would be if they were here on site one day would that be individual students would that be sort of checking local curriculum what do you think that is a great question and so um [Music] going back to the list of priorities and it's dangerous to have more than a couple of priorities and i listed a lot of things and our priorities for our hopes and dreams um i'll i'll refer back to um when i talked about structures that are currently in place that are really showing to be high yields and high capacity building here at the race bowl and here at ray we have an amazing instructional coaching team or instructional specialist team

130and currently that's comprised of reading writing specialists a math specialist our technology specialist as well as our media specialists and this group gets together on a weekly basis to talk about school-wide themes and problems and opportunities that come up that they tackle together in in this group but from a lens of their expertise area 0.2 is is one day a week each of these specialists is employed at five days a week and there are still things that get bumped off of the agenda on a weekly basis so when i think of a person who is added to this instructional team which is proven to be high-yield and effective um there's not going to be a lot of time for that person to do much of anything so the priority would be integrating this person into

131our instructional team and our instructional specialists are also instructional coaches they work very closely with teachers because we find that working one-on-one with students or even in small groups of students students does not have the same capacity building that working with a teacher who then impacts an entire classroom of students has so our priority as it stands now and because this is a new recommendation from the equity committee meeting and we've had not even a week to really think through it our priority would be to add this person as an instructional coach and an instructional specialist to our currently existing team that then dan and i would support as the administrators any more questions [Music] sure so at this point our second grade team has considered the developmental appropriateness and their ability to successfully tackle

132some of the difficult topics that do come up during the colonial days unit with the fidelity that they would like to cover it and whether or not that is developmentally appropriate for second graders at this time they're looking to replace that early american unit with an updated unit that is not an american early unit or sorry an early american unit um that's all i'm going to share at this point because they're in the process of revisiting this and deciding how they're going to shift their focus you have changes in the budget for colonial days already yes so you must have some specific changes in mind already they have a limit the specific changes that you see in there is an elimination of the materials and supplies that would be needed for the early american kit

133so it might just be canceling yes if possible okay and you have any questions or comments from the public in person okay one person anyone else all right and then two okay um push one two three okay and then if anyone has any comments very much wishes to speak online [Music] my name is dan richards um two kids both in the race will uh lauren thank you for that very articulate and expansive description of what's going on i appreciate it i think what's interesting though to know is that what wasn't said which was anything to do with a commitment by the equity committee or those who are proponents of this ideology to excellence and i think it's um an oversight or maybe it's not i don't know um but i think that everybody on this

134board and the public listing this call should know that the us and our student populations continue to slip further and further behind from a competitiveness perspective today we rank 13th in the world in reading 18th in the world in science and 37 in the world in math so that's not great when you look at where math where we rank in math for instance we're behind powerhouses like slovenia poland latvia uh you know you put all those populations together and you know that's about the population of you know probably the city of new york um the point is is what are we doing to prepare our students to be competitive and to be able to get the good jobs that are going to be available to them after they graduate and i can tell you that

135the uh the things that used to protect suboptimal uh graduates people who didn't have the kind of education um you know to get their jobs before the pandemic a lot of those barriers are going away right so the ability to get uh a good job five years ago that job can now be done remotely by somebody else in another place so we're one of the larger employers in the upper valley outside of government and dartmouth and we employ people not only here but in a lot of other countries around the world and as an employer i've been given the choice between employing somebody who ranks in the middle or the bottom in these categories number one number two uh you know maybe doesn't have the best attitude right i'm not imputing americans in general i

136think americans generally have better attitudes or great attitudes but but the problem part of the problem is that um if if they're not competitive then they're not going to be able to to be able to get some of these jobs so at the end of the day this effort and money that's being spent on dpi does that improve our competitiveness or not does anybody on the board know whether it does or not and the people who are proponents of this i would say that it matters and there's very little data out there but there is some and there is a stanford study that was just released that shows that unfortunately those that spend a lot of money on dei and build out their dei stats actually perform worse and the achievement gaps between minorities and

137white students not only get worse but the actual performance of the entire aggregate goes down so i'd be happy to share that with you thank you thank you next speaker please [Music] yes sorry i thought this was a microphone no it's not okay so i want to say uh express my gratitude to lauren to nan to all of the staff of the race pool to the school board and the administration for supporting equity work over the last few years that i have witness to it i'm sure there was some before then but at least that i've been able to verify this too it makes a big big difference um so specifically my child um is not a kid who feels welcome in a lot of spaces okay but they feel very welcome at their grade

138school and when i told them that i was coming here to make sure that the ray school you know support the kindness and the inclusion of the race school they said well why do you need to do that it already is so kind and i said absolutely that's the point is to show up and say thank you and support that work so it continues to be a kind and inclusive space okay so i know it takes effort to do that and i really appreciate it i know that the board does not need to respond to public specific public promise i would like to respond briefly to one point that mr richards made which is that equity work actually does make groups more effective there's great data on this i'm familiar with the data in the

139healthcare industry and it's very clear that having an inclusive environment um sets you up for success for example surgeons that um shut down discussion that are not welcoming your input have worse outcomes i think more patients die okay so that's like a very small example but it ripples out and applies to this um so anyway thank you very much there's a lot of great work going on here and i really appreciate uh it yeah you're right i know i said it before but name town and where they represent any group norwich member of the equity committee i don't speak for the equity committee and i have a somewhat different opinion than perhaps some of the other members of the equity committee but i think it's important to note that the center for education equity ce

140did a did a survey 750 people responded to the survey that includes both the students the staff and the parents and i just i would like this to be part of the record so i'll read it directly from from what they wrote what they said was findings and recommendations from the criteria for an equitable school equity audit responses they are the experts supposedly and obviously we pay i don't know how much but we paid for that equity audit to be done the responses indicate that school climate is an area of relative strength in the criteria for an equitable school that's what they said the school exists now today this is supported and i'm quoting directly reading it this is supported by the overwhelmingly positive responses to the school climate survey this there seems to be

141a contradiction here as far as i can tell and that is when we talk about viewing everything through an equity lens and the responses to the equitable school survey if if in fact we need to respond to equity problems or issues i don't understand why this survey was so positive i really don't understand why it was so positive and it just it sounds to me and i certainly would be willing to be convinced that at all it sounds to me like we we have a solution proposed for a problem that doesn't exist so i've also heard from jay and i certainly respect his opinion that 10 percent of the students in the system have a problem i don't know how he got to that number or how it can be quantified but i i would

142love to know more and i would love to be persuaded that we need an equity director we need to spend 150 grand or whatever the amount turns out to be uh and that is something that is important so just i just leave you with that thought and thank now yes can you state your name your town and whether you're representing any particular group or not hi my name is carol endeavor i live in hanover new hampshire i'm not representing any group but my child is a recent graduate of the ray school and is now a student at richmond middle school and i hung on tonight because i wanted to commend the staff and the leadership at the race school for their incredibly transformative and visionary approach to diversity equity and inclusion over the past few

143years i think that the work that they've done is um it's excellent and it's rigorous and in contrast to a point made by mr richards the younger i believe we know that diverse and inclusive education diverse and inclusive communities make better decisions create more innovation and are are more effective and they're also ethically and morally the right goal for our community to be striving for thank you thank you karen do you have anyone else on in person or i'm soon seeing no one do everything else on the board wishes to comment before we move on thank you all for your discussion moving right along to item 6d out of district placement update well i guess just to close the loop on that sorry from a budget committee perspective we're already meeting to discuss warren articles

144i mean we'll obviously be meeting again to discuss the second draft which is what the board will see and obviously we'll um you know contemplate this in addition to all the other ones just to clarify and also what's gonna happen meaningless okay 60 out of district placement updates uh right you want to introduce yourself and tell us what you're talking about uh right there the director for student services and in board docs there's the document that was provided some details about students who acquire out of districts special education placement and as jamie alluded to earlier and kari as well i have done presentations including other district students but also especially education in general which i'm happy to do at a future game that would be helpful to the board and the public to learn a

145bit more about special education and impact on budgets so for this specific update um you know the out-of-district total cost is about 25 in the special education budget um so it's a substantial portion which i think warrants some discussion and explanation and opportunities and questions this year there were some unexpected and unbudgeted increases to the out of district lines and so the document that i put together details the reasons for that and also some of the revenue offsets that we can use through additional grant funds to try and offset those unexpected increase in costs as jamie mentioned earlier the out-of-district costs for students that reside in hanover whether or not they are of grade school age or dresden age those costs come back to the hanover budget so when you look at the eight dresden

146students those costs all come back on the budget are there specific questions regarding uh february night what are what are the arp idea fund so to start idea funds are federal funds which are issued to individual states and then those funds are allocated to the school district within that state the arp that was an additional some additional grant funds that aren't provided through these years so it was an unexpected sum of additional funds that we weren't expecting this year so we were able to leverage those did those come to the district automatically or did you have to request those uh no it's an entitlement based on the numbers of students with disabilities and population are they kind of new specific students more just a general population uh they need to be used for students in

147special education so the grant the funds that we use to offset some of the unexpected district costs are just paid to the students that make it makes the most sense to offset those tuition funds as opposed to others who are eligible for additional state reimbursement through the special education aid so they don't want to reduce down the amount of tuition that we pay for them who's down our elders so these are going towards students who don't reach that threshold for special education reimbursement anyone have any questions for that and we're going to publish or unzoom sure so i think well me and lauren anyway because i'm not familiar with every single year i think every year you do this right yeah do you need to get off dude yeah okay so there you go yeah

148no problem this question uh specifically because uh we have an sau volunteer coordinator who sent out some uh guidelines as interpreted from the policy that we're looking at tonight that indicated that um if a classroom had raised something over 100 to purchase an item for the classroom as a gift to the teacher and the class but that would actually not be in compliance with this gift-giving policy um so we had a sort of side discussion about the policy itself um and what my belief was and i think partly what we can kind of discuss tonight is that if each family in the classroom is donating ten dollars towards the purchase of a thing in a classroom these are individual ten dollar donations to the classroom the fact that then those donations are pulled together to

149purchase one thing instead of ten or several ten dollar things on behalf of each family um is is the issue that we're working with right now so can we consider these gifts and of course jamie rephrase this if you need to but my question is can we consider these gifts as 10 donations independently given by families to the classroom then used to purchase a gift that happens to cost more than 100 but is not a gift to the teacher it's a dif it's for the classroom it's a gift for the classroom or do we need to yeah or do we need to say whatever is purchased for the classroom no matter where the funding is coming from must be under one hundred dollars so if each if each uh family is asked to do you

150know give and that's it's been asked definitely not a requirement but if every family chooses to donate ten dollars and you have a class of 20 kids right then you've got 200 that is uh then pooled together as independent um donations to purchase an item all right so so emma asked for clarification on the policy because i think it's probably a little bit gray yeah what's happening she's our volunteer coordinator she's a paid phone she coordinates the volunteers which is a district employee [Laughter] i assume everybody knows everything i'm sorry [Music] so lauren and i had a back and forth which i'm sharing with you all just so you can understand what our thought process was and after listening to it you know i would concur that it's not truly a gift to the teacher

151it seems as if it's a gift on behalf of the teacher's hard work for the class um so that's why i said go ahead because unless it reaches a thousand dollars i don't feel that it needs board approval um so but there was some concern you know um and so we just wanted we just need clarification so when we need clarification on a policy i think um you know or on how we're going to uh understand how a policy works it's just best to bring it to their intention so i asked for it to be put on so we can discuss what you would like to do because at the end of the day if you think it's supposed to have permission you are the folks to give the approach okay first and then john

152who is going to mention the people who aren't involved this is a policy that was brought up in front of the policy committee a couple meetings ago and because we have so many policies on the agenda that we don't actually think we're going to get to all of them but it's just in case so we reviewed it and we recognized that it has some ambiguity associated with it um i've been at room fairing race school for the last three years it's been 100 stated as a 100 per classroom policy or gift policy for the classroom by the volunteer coordinator to all the new parents the last three years and that's what was done this year and then it was clarified and another message that emma sent out to the parents but to put it in

153perspective um i told parents in the classroom i was the ring parent for last year try to limit it we needed to keep the total under 100 for the classroom i had more than one parent give me over a hundred dollars now i don't think we want to be in the position where this classroom the classroom a in the second grade gets a 900 gift from parents in classroom b in the second grade gets a 70 gift from parents so i think they need some type of a cap associated with it it is definitely stated as a gift to the classroom it's been very clear from emma and the previous volunteer coordinator before her um the policy on gift giving specifically mentions that it's a gift to the classroom and not to the teacher but

154it also mentions that incidental gifts to classrooms are 100 are supposed to be kept under a hundred dollars and it's a paragraph in g or eight or something like that so this caused confusion all the all the new parents asked volunteer coordinators check on it every year i was just going to say is so is one of the questions then is a hundred dollars an appropriate limit or are we thinking that maybe we should adjust that for inflation for the last several years so i can't say what the different classrooms need there are some teachers who will say they don't want a gift for the classroom because they have everything they need there are other teachers who will say something different so it depends i think if it's a gift an incidental gift from parents

155to the classroom you know like ten dollars per family this reasonable cap because when you pull that money together something for the class will help you're not buying a specific item for the classroom usually it's little incidental things like things keep the kids busy during uh like when last year before when they got to school within their precess or something they had activities going on [Music] per student sort of situation then we'd be looking somewhere between 18 and 25 students so we could maybe consider a different threshold than 100 right if that makes sense if that's what the will is [Laughter] sometimes struggle with the nickel and diming and putting caps on things if these are things that a teacher specifically needs if they don't get it through this they're going to go out and

156spend their own money on it knowing firsthand that happens quite a bit even though we are a very well-resourced district there are still things that teachers are buying for themselves that they feel they need for the classroom and i feel like if we start putting limitations or policies on every darn thing it's gonna start i just feel like it causes that kind of angst amongst folks but but i also see the point of if one class raises 900 and one class rate is 38 but that that's an equity issue so i get that easily well that larger issue was the one that i was concerned about was a particularly generous parent or a couple of parents and you could have a real lopsided situation between grade levels and i think that is something we really

157do not want in between classrooms exactly exactly and and so i think we need to have a cat i think that's appropriate but i think it's also fine to try to prevent the situation happening that jonathan is speaking to and i know that when my children my daughter came over to kindergarten i kept that kindergarten first grade classroom in soft kleenex for the year i just that was my thing i i sent her with a box of them a lot because you know the horrible i don't know if it still goes back but institutional kleenex is just terrible on little noses so i did that and i never figured out what it cost i just spent it in with her lunch once a week so so that's a great point because i haven't thought about

158you know an equity issue um perhaps we need to rethink how it's done so that the donation that they want to do that come into you know don't you have do you have uh class leaders like grade leaders or you mean staff or kids yeah yeah um yes so so because you don't want an equity issue maybe they should all be pooled and then divvied out equally if there's you know if there are requests from different classrooms yeah and i see that um i think we're talking i think we're talking more about equality right but everybody is getting the same amount and then with that then they can get what they need from the classroom so there's an equity scare but um they may not all want the same amount yeah so i don't know

159it's tricky right okay kim and then i'll speak as well so i was going to suggest maybe this is a great sau policy committee discussion um since that's typically where we do that and then also i mean i'm assuming that this is not only an issue at the race pool but uh other places in sau so i just would kind of encourage us instead of discussing it here amongst champions folks we think about it moment okay emma's planning to come to the next policy okay that's nice okay okay so um yes would be great to have it talked about at the policy committee it's a thing right now because of the timing so it would be wonderful to be able to walk away yeah walk away with um some guidance around that or give us

160some approval to go over the hunt yeah so that's right so my instincts will be not as chair policy but as just someone who's spitballing like we all are would be to perhaps have some sort of per classroom limit not necessarily 10 but maybe 20 or 50 or whatever and then in that same email the volunteer coordinator can say all donations develop that will be distributed among all classrooms at the school or something similar that's just me spinball thanks for that for the current issue so it's something there's a time-based component to this we have four more days before break and typically this thing is going to be happening in the next four days right so yeah it was really yes yeah yes okay um and or could there be some sort of crazy escrow

161thing i think it's in the policy [Music] quite vigorously that we could do a one-off thing right now to resolve this particular issue and add it to policy for a long-term issue yeah um i still think there's anything you want so let's table that business requiring action if someone wants to craft a motion for that perhaps i see you can look into the sky oh i was trying to think what that language is just my last comment on it is we're talking about um teachers getting extra things for their classroom and eliminating it and i recognize that as gifts from parents as gifts from parents and i recognize where i'm going to come from next week at the dresden meeting and my other point if you have a wealthy lacrosse parent who wants to donate

162a new field we're probably not going to say no to that and how is that different [Music] i understand that but it still has to go to approval and it could be not approved right we're saying we could disapprove something for a teacher that's a hundred bucks right i think i think what maybe maybe what some of the language might appear is um that will will accept amount so long as they don't exceed a thousand dollars right because then they have to come to the board but if it's in that zero to 999 range we can accept it but maybe we might give some guidance that anything above a certain threshold be kind of spread out or open to a broad variety of folks so we can still accept the funds but not necessarily uh

163you know what the policy actually says is that it's an approval authority limit so up to a thousand dollars above above 100 per classroom and below a thousand dollars it's an administrator within the school so lauren she could designate man or she can designate anyone she wants in the school as the approval authority for that so it's talking about an individual not um 37 individuals or whatever possible or something like that below the 100 limit it says it can be accepted personally by the teacher without reporting it because it's an incidental gift to the classroom for miscellaneous things in the classroom it doesn't say exactly those words but it's really just an approval limit thing so if it's an incidental thing to the classroom under 100 it can be approved by the teacher or just

164accepted by the teacher once you get above that limit then it's a school administrator or their designated representative has to include it yes because you're right because you're reading f which gives lauren the authority to accept this i was concerned because of i um where it says or school board shall consider thousand dollars women above depending on whether it's a targeted thing or general is school board okay so sorry for wasting your time i guess lauren you can approve it so does this mean that i need to get some itemized donations so that i can know what i'm approving it just seems like there's another step i don't really want it if it's over a hundred so if a teacher gets a 100 do i need receipts how do i know that it's over a

165hundred dollars do i get an itemized list in order to approve it i hope that might be something else but apparently we have a decision a question so yeah so if someone wishes to craft with a proposal this isn't a board level decision yeah all right that's why i apologize for wasting your time is gonna allow her to do it and lauren i'll work out with you in the dynamics thank you all right as the native policy committee still in someone's opinion yes yeah all right we will do that thank you guys okay uh quick aside agent these finance forms are for president not for hanover oh really do we need to run over here should we sign here [Music] all right business growing action can i hear a motion for approving items b through

166d by consent notice is not part of that move to approve item b through d by consent do i have a second one yes [Music] nelson yes okay marcelo de blasio yes yes that is unanimous uh second john i see you in in the owl action all right um i hear motion [Music] written and trust proposal decodable classroom libraries for option b or option two for twenty one thousand seven hundred and thirty one dollars and twenty nine cents as presented wait a second okay again um no discussion i'll go around the room kim brett minions strong but yes with gratitude yeah nelson yes marcelo de blasio yes and keaney will actually refuse himself in the first persons i believe i had a conflict of interest on this one so that is unanimous four to zero

167okay communications reports so chair that's me um we do have our next meeting on january 12th that will be a public hearing and budget adoption james is not here is that the one that's is that at the high school not yet okay february thank you so that will be here we will then have a regular meeting one week later on january 19th so board members two wednesdays in a row i apologize in advance and that is it for the chair i think we've heard enough from policy tonight and very other committees have a report they wish to make and um i know rick is not here and marcel's already reported now nothing on committees superintendents jay what's going on oh i get to go first look at that um first of all we're on the

168verge of a really really really badly needed break i i want to as i've done frequently at these meetings just thank our staff for working under the conditions that they have been for so long doing such a graceful and marvelous job of it but i also really want to recognize board member service there have been since september we've had nine regular meetings with people here that that's four hanover meetings three drafts and meetings and two sau meetings those meetings typically go three hours plus um two on a good day every once in a while we set a record usually here hannover but there's all there also have been uh just uh and just since our last hanover meeting there have been 18 additional meetings since that last regular meeting four committee meetings three budget meetings

169six agenda setting meetings some of them were pretty lengthy three negotiating sessions a chairs meeting and the strategic plan meeting and so since the beginning of the school year when you count those meetings and the additional negotiation committee meetings there have been 64 total meetings since september yeah and so i just wanted to thank you um as a member of the school community for the just the number of hours we were laughing many of us have seen each other multiple days during the week and it's my job that i get paid for and i know you all benefited that wonderful 700 salary but it's it really is admirable and really impressive the amount of time that you put in and i don't think people in the community understand that and so i just wanted to

170say thank you and uh with that happy holidays to everyone and i will see you in january any questions for jay from the board [Music] any other questions for jay anyone in the audience or on zoom [Music] hello everyone um we as you know had one coping case today that was our first attraction in two weeks so i was actually feeling pretty good about that um we are also beginning to collect data about our vaccine rates amongst the elementary students so that's exciting we're hoping that we get to the levels that you're at at the high school [Music] we are going to hold an information session with the publishers following break and that will be with the committee members and then i'm scheduling a meeting for all of the teachers to attend following that meeting

171once we hear some of the questions that the committee members have and things like that once that occurs i'm working with the company to also hold a meeting for parents as well as information sessions about that we have completed our first round of curriculum work with the all grade levels and subject areas so that's really exciting to finish up and i tried to finish everything up in november because i knew it was just going to be so busy in november and december so we'll start our second round in january when we return to school and um i'm excited about the progress that we've made thus far so we'll continue with that work and i've been working more recently with lauren and dan on our title funds and um determining the work that we're going to

172do with that those funds and how we'll spend the money in those areas so that's also going to work in progress and we're making some good advances there as well i'm happy to answer any questions um there are any stirrings about whether there should be any guidance about whether cases get to a certain point that we discuss anything more serious than our current responses we will um we still are following our guidance that we established at the beginning so again looking at the numbers of cases that we're seeing in schools numbers of cases that are continuing in the community you know i've been checking in pretty frequently with dr chapman about what he's seeing in the hospital and things like that and and we work with the nurses and families and um individuals who have

173contracted covet to find out you know what how it's transpiring so we have been very fortunate i think you've probably seen the letters but we've not had you know an ignorant amount in school transmission one case that was a potential in school transmission so we'll continue to look to make sure that we're not having clusters or operates within the schools and see how our staffing is doing in terms of you know being able to be present and being able to find substitutes to cover for our staff members so we do have plans in place you know and all those metrics play into it so i think we're just gonna have to keep watching what's happening and um and hoping that we continue along the path we are we still are not seeing severe illness amongst

174people that have you know have been positive um you know in our marion cross school we're doing all the surveillance testing the last two weeks we have not had any cases and in the case that we've had they've been asymptomatic primarily so still it's you know we are seeing more cases but we're still not seeing people being hospitalized and really extremely homeless so i mean that is the good news out of it our mitigation efforts are continuing it appears to work so and we keep a really close eye on that we're looking at you know where the cases are if we're seeing any relationships between them we're talking to individuals who are positive to find out you know what they think the source of the transmission is so so it still seems to be outside

175of the school a lot through travel and true families you know it's being passed through families and i know that's not comforting yesterday [Music] will be longer than usual so be warned and for you guys as well thank you [Laughter] um [Music] move to enter into non-public section under rsa 91-8 [Music] um [Music] yeah all right marshall do you have someone's phone number potentially all right yes [Music] just want to say happy holidays safe travels et cetera [Music] also the board members [Music] [Laughter] ben actually has a little over three minutes let's close this down before 10 o'clock last year i literally had a female waiting before luke got off every day [Music] session yes [Music] and then um generation next meeting is and we will properly warn it of course yes all right and

176do i have any other motions to adjourn so uh johnny first motion to a german meeting at 9 58 p.m [Laughter] nelson yes [Music]