Annual Hanover & Dresden Deliberative Sessions 2/25/21

001e e e rat e e e all right then we'll get started good afternoon hello my name is Tom Cher and I'm the moderator this discussion phase of the 2021 hanor School District annual meeting is called to order the first agenda item is the reading of the warrant so I'm going to go ahead and move with that the following warrant articles apply to the operation of the hanor school district which includes the operation of the Bernice a ray school grades K through five sixth grade tuition students at the Francis C Richmond school and the special education obligations of the Hanover School District as these relate to both the preschool population and applicable special education students from Hanover up to age 21 the legal voters of the town of Hanover New Hampshire school district are hereby

002notified and warned that the two phases of the annual School District meeting will be held as follows the discussion phase Thursday February 25th 2021 at 5:00 pm at the Hanover High Auditorium Hanover New Hampshire a virtual option will be available to attend via Zoom link and the information will be shared via the sau70 district dist website at sa70 ororgani New Hampshire absentee ballots will be available ahead of the in-person voting date during the discussion phase the voters shall have the opportunity to discuss the following warrant articles and to transact any non-substantive business that may legally be acted on during the discussion phase under article 9 all voting on articles 1 through 8 shall be conducted by secret written ballot during the voting phase as outlined in chapter 160 of the 2004 session laws of the

003New Hampshire legislature entitled an act relative to the voting procedures in the Hanover School District next I'd like to confirm the posting of the warrant the Hanover warrant was posted February 4th by Jamie T designa of the hanor school district clerk at the following five locations municipal building at the library Hanover food co-op Hall outside the Hanover High School gym and the ray School Lobby next I'd like to introduce chair Rick Johnson who will introduce the members of the board hi I'm Rick Johnson I'm the chair of the Handover School board uh when I volunteered and was elected to be the chair last year I did not realize how much of a fun and strange trip it would be um at this time I'd like to introduce the rest of our board members so sitting

004to my right is Kelly McConnell sitting behind Kelly is Kim Hartman sitting next to Kim is John Hunt sitting next to John is Ben Keeny sitting next to me on the left is Marcela deasi and I think that's everyone okay next I'd like to introduce superintendent J Adams to introduce the administrators thank you Tom um I'm J Adams superintendent of sau70 and I'm joined this evening by our principal from Bernice Ray School Lauren Amrine who's in the audience and from the SAU uh Jamie Teague who's been introduced our business administrator and I'd also like to introduce Josh Malloy who's our director of educational technology and Karen Wright who assists us with communication in the district and his our our Intrepid minutes taker okay thanks Jay sure so next I'll explain the school district structure the

005two districts in Hanover are the hover school district and the Dresden School School District the Hanover School District is responsible for grades K through six K5 at the ray school with sixth grade students tuition to the Richmond School The Dresden school district is responsible for grades 6 through 12 the Francis C Richmond school with grades 6 through 8 and hanor high school with grades 9 through 12 The Dresden District includes Hanover and Norwich students in grades 7- 12 and Hanover students in grade grade six The Dresden School District was the first interstate School District in the country and was created by one of the last Bills signed by President John F Kennedy in 1963 next I'd like to establish the meeting guidelines the moderator will recognize speakers before they will be allowed to speak speakers

006should walk to the microphone and state their names and addresses for the record all comments should be directed to me as the moderator I will not allow cross talk among those in the meeting everyone will be allowed to speak before someone has a chance to be speak a second time speaker should make every effort to be brief and not unnecessarily repeat comments that have already been made by other speakers all speakers should be courteous and respectful speakers should not should be certain they are addressing the business of the meeting this means staying on the topic of the warrant article being discussed it's my intention to recognize board members to speak to Warrant articles before allowing members of the public to comment I'll rule out of order any speaker who does not respect these guidelines or

007who acts in an uncivil or disruptive matter so next we will turn to the discussion of the warrant articles the first Warren article reads to elect by written ballot for one-year terms a moderator a clerk and a Treasurer and three school board members for a three-year term those who filed for these offices are for moderator Thomas chiter for clerk Robert L grael for treasurer it's an open seat but I understand Dan stanard is interested in being Treasurer but didn't get his papers in on time for school board members Richard A Johnson Britany B Joyce Kevin nudy and Kelly Fender McConnell any discussion okay we'll move on to article two article two shall the district vote to raise in appropriate the sum of $245,300 for technology infrastructure upgrades at the Bernice Ray Elementary School with the

008sum of 400 with the sum of 245,000 334 to be raised through the issuance of bonds or notes under and in compliance with the municipal Finance act RSA 33 colon 1 at SEC as amended to authorize the school board to apply for obtain and ex accept federal state or other Aid if any which may be available for said project to comply with all laws applicable to said project to authorize the school board to issue negotiate sell and deliver said bonds and notes and to determine the rate of interest thereon and the maturity and other terms thereof and to authorize the school board to take any other action or to pass any other vote relative th to the school board recommends this appropriation bond issue and John Hunt will explain more about it for you thank

009you uh technology and infrastructure warrant article for many years we've been in a reactive position handling the ongoing needs of our technology infrastructure at every level things have been challenging for a while but really intensified this past year with our need for differentiated off-site instruction the scope of environments or improvements will help with the struggles students and teachers are experiencing with our current systems every day the updates will provide capacity and reliability to serve the increasing technological needs of young scholars to learn and grow for years to follow is a list of steps we've taken so far we began by looking at historical data of the issues and speaking with technology staff on site we then looked at four floor plans for each building and did walkthroughs with different companies who build technology plant each

010building has differing and unique challenges as well as different classroom needs depending on content and age levels all needs will be determined by actual information and not speculated on a per people headcount from the early discussions and visits the following areas have been highlighted for infrastructure rebuilding cable plants wireless access points e911 phone systems Poe switches patch cables racks and UPS backups we're working with an eate consultant who is well-versed in the everchanging rules surrounding Grant process the eate required competitive bidding process follows very strict rules intended to Garner the best possible pricing for the scope of work we have already managed to leverage Grant funds to do a portion of the early work we're making sure to include vendors that support open source and nonproprietary solutions and we are making constantly we are constantly

011looking for solutions that are economically initially reliable and have low total cost of ownership thank you okay believe we have someone from the finance committee hello okay we can hear you m yes hi my name is Matt Gardner and I live at 8 Leen Road in Hanover and I am a member of the Handover finance committee uh the Handover finance committee had an opportunity uh in the fall to um get a presentation from Josh about the proposed uh scope of work and uh the warrant article and uh is unanimously in support of this warrant article and um the funds um needed for it uh in the interest of uh not repeating um as you say to be brief um I was going to speak of the things that you that was already discussed so um

012I think all there is to say is that uh we had a chance to um ask uh questions uh have a lively discussion and um was unanimous in in agreeing that um this was a a a well Worthy use of um of a warrn article in a bond great thank you Matt is there anyone on Zoom that would like to make a comment ask a question if so I think Josh they raised their hand Josh doesn't see anyone we hold on for just a second just to make sure there isn't anyone that wishes to speak seeing none I'm going to move on to the the next article then so that's article three article three shall the district appropriate the sum of $440,000 from the Don C Bridgman fund during the 2021 fiscal year in order

013to afford additional advantages to the students of the district not provided by taxes School Board recommends this appropriation and I think we'll have statement on the finance last say actually Marcel will explained it I'm sorry I skipped ahead thank you so in his will dated January 20th 1917 Don s Bridgeman left a portion of his estate to what is now the Handover School District these monies are known as the Bridgeman fund and are currently invested to provide a stream of income for years to come the balance of the fund as of June 30th 2020 was uh 1,600,000 2, wait sorry $2,954 with 87,8 123 available for school projects expenditures from the fund are used for special educational opportunities including cultural enrichment health and well-being and other classroom based projects such as math language history or

014science that would not already be included in the school's regular operating budget so as noted um in the reading um I'll just again emphasize that this this warrant has uh no impact on the tax rate further it might be noted that the Bridgeman monies have um never been voted down um although 40,000 is budgeted in a given year usually only between 12 and 32,000 are spent from the fund and just to give you a sense of some of the recent projects that have been included um the purchase of engineering is Elementary teaching kits uh field use microscopes called Magis scopes for the K through one grade and compound microscopes for fifth grade uh biology and science classes uh the purchase of Adera chairs to establish outdoor reading spaces um Horticultural planters for plant species education

015and beautification uh classroom owls to Aid in promote learning and demonstration projection specialized athletic equipment a coal Forge to Aid in history science and Vocational lessons um and then of course also the Via Lobos Brothers quartet so um some really wonderful projects thank you Marcela now um anyone from Haner Finance gonna say anything or just move on we'll just move on okay great anybody in the public that wants to speak raise your hand on Zoom not seeing anyone we will move on to article four shall the district determine and fix the salaries of of school district officers as follows school board members $700 per member with additional $300 for school board chair School District Treasurer $1,916 school district clerk $150 School District moderator $150 in accordance with RSA 19 194 D or col 10 and

016further raise and appropriate the sum of $ 7,416 to fund these salaries School Board recommends this appropriation and Ben Keeny will address it you good evening uh this article sets the stipend for the positions of the district clerk the moderator the treasurer and various board members these stipend apart from the treasur and the board chair have not changed in several years the district clerk and moderator Duties are instrumental in a District's annual voting processes together they officiate and record annual meetings set the official ballots monitor voting procedur and the polls direct vote tallying and ratify results the treasury receives a small annual increase between 1 and 2% each year their duties are mandated by the New Hampshire RSA revised statutes anotated statutes they are charged with the oversight and independent balancing of all district funds

017they review expenditures weekly and balance bank accounts monthly after review of expenditures by the board they then sign all district funded checks each board memb is expected to attend monthly meetings often far more than once from August through June in normal years meetings are suspended during the month of July during budget season additional meetings are often required additionally board members participate in various committees such as uh the budget committee evaluation negotiations networks policy and PT or the parent teacher organization a small addition was made in the 2019 2020 budget year to add $300 to the board chair styen as the chair typically participates in far more meetings this article's effect on the tax rate is negligible Le than 1% thank you okay thank you uh again I'll open it up to the public if there's

018anybody on Zu wants to raise her hand I don't think we'll have any so we'll move on to Article Five shall the district vote to approve the cost items in the two-year collective bargaining agreement reached between local 1348 of the afcme also known as service employees including custodial and maintenance technicians and the Dresden School Board which calls for the following increases in service St salaries and benefits for the year 2021 the estimated increase over the status quo is $216 for the year 2022 2023 the estimated increase over the status quo is $2,987 and further shall the district raise and appropriate the sum of $2,106 such sum representing the estimated increase in service staff salaries and benefits for the 2021 fiscal year brought about by this collective bargaining agreement School Board recommends this appropriation and Rick

019Johnson will address this article for us in January the board and the local 1348 of the afscme also known as our service employees which includes our custodians and maintenance techs reached a tenative agreement for the next two 2ear period 2021-22 and 2022 23 the local 1348 reached a very modest agreement with base pay increases set at 05% for 2122 and 1% for 2223 the addition of a retirement 403b match a two- tiered co-pay program for insurance and many language updates throughout the agreement the updates included updating the manner in which overtime wages are calculated based on weekly instead of daily and do do not does not include SI time an increased level of benefit eligibility from 15 to 20 hours clarification on the processes for vacation and personal day requests overtime requests on holidays when

020medical certification is required to return to work and the use and levels of allowances for Footwear and uniforms and finally a clarification on who's allowed to deliver layoff suspension and discharge notices thank you Rick are there comments questions from the public Josh Kim Frost okay Kim hi yes uh Kim Frost uh 494 Hanover Center Road in nna um former Kim Perez for those of us those of you who might remember me um I'm I wanted to ask about how our salaries compare with those of other other districts we know that this um this last year has been particularly poor particularly difficult for people who are making uh uh whose salaries are lower and we also know I well I suspect um from what we've seen across the country that the co custodial staff are working

021harder than EV ever um so I wanted to to see what the district has has done to try to improve Equity thanks for the question Kim is there someone who can respond would like to respond okay Jamie can you respond good evening this is Jamie Teague business administrator for the uh school districts so when we embarked on the sorry I'll remove my mask the discussion uh with the different uh with the Union uh folks we had gone out and looked at all of the other school districts surrounding us including uh masoma Lebanon um we also looked at our sister District in Norwich um we looked at planfield um and I believe there was one other school district but we did go out and look at all of the different districts around us we also did

022look at the uh towns of Lebanon and Hanover as well to see how we compared and we are competitive uh with all of those different salary schedules um for the union agreements that were in place at the point in time we looked at them great thank you Jamie are there other questions or comments in the public Josh is nodding no okay then we will move on to article six right shall the district raise in appropriate the amount of 15 million 67,341 fiscal year this sum does not include the funds appropriated in any of the other articles Les the school board recommends this appropriation and Kim Hartman will explain it to us in Greater extent hello and Jamie are we ready the slides great um so my name is Kim Hartman and I am the Handover

023District budget committee chair this year and I have the pleasure of presenting our proposed budget uh to keep it simple this presentation assumes all Handover warrant articles related to the fy22 budget are approved so that's many of those um actually all of them that you've heard so far um are included so this um uh you know again I would say that art bant article number two for the technology upgrades is not expected to have a tax impact this next year as that will be debt funded likely with the first payment coming due in FY 23 so in a sense you won't see that one reflected here um but the idea is to show what um could be the potential tax rate for the next year uh so I this evening I will explain our request

024to reduce the Handover District budget by $84,000 compared to last year's fy21 budget our requested budget decrease next year is primarily based on one factor fewer sixth grades students this story may sound familiar only inverted because last year the budget increase was driven by the same factor sixth grade tuition except last year we had more sixth grade students versus Less in the chart The Columns along the xaxis track the change from our current fy21 budget the yellow column to the total proposed budget for F1 y22 the green column on the right the two small columns in the middle break down the increases into two main categories sixth grade tuition and everything else or all other as you can see in the dark gray column the tuition for the sixth grade will decrease by $610,000 we

025will discuss this in further detail soon when combined with all other expenditures we are asking your vote to support a 0.53% decrease for the Handover District compared to last year's budget our all-in school tax rate for Handover is determined by the Handover and Dresden net assessments and the New Hampshire State education tax therefore the 0.53% decrease in the Handover District net assessment along with an increase in the Dresden assessment and a decrease in the New Hampshire State education tax all together bring the projected tax rate to increase 8% Which is less than the last reported 12-month inflation figure of 1.1% that's the January report for the Northeast CPI with all with this budgeted level the Handover district is still able to provide a safe and strong element education program but it also reflects the challenges

026our community faces due to the pandemic with that summary concluded our agenda for this evening will take us further into the story starting first with enrollment projections next expenditures by category then we will discuss changes in our Revenue sources after Revenue we will calculate the net assessment and discuss in a little bit more detail the all-in tax rate of 8% and finally we will share our progress report which will review the amazing work our school Community has done this year to educate our children with your support during the covid-19 pandemic first enrollment projections as discussed earlier the sixth grade tuition is a big budget driver this for a decrease this year there are two reasons for the downswing both of which have the same explanation fewer students first shown on the left of the slide

027the current sixth grade class in the 2020 2021 school year was smaller by five students compared to what we expected in the fy21 budget our tuition agreement states that we catch up the difference in the following year which would be the fy22 budget the net change in the prior year adjustment line is about $419,000 the $49,000 is much larger than a reduction of only five students from our budgeted estimate because we had a large inject adjustment amount from the fy20 enrollment sitting there from the prior year the second reason shown in the green on the right is that the current class of fifth grader is small is a smaller class and they will be sixth graders hopefully in fy22 and we expect to have 79 students in sixth grade next year down from the 91

028students budgeted the year before and that 12 student reduction will subtract an additional $190,000 from the budget combined this gives us a $610,000 decrease we saw before overall enrollment is usually a a bit difficult to predict but this year was particularly challenging because the district saw students withdraw to pursue private school or homeschooling but many plan to return once the pandemic is over looking then to our Ray School enrollment we projected that next year's enrollment would likely return to prepandemic levels therefore our projected K through five enrollment for fy22 is expected to be higher than this year's actual The Columns in the chart are grouped in threes per grade level the yellow columns are enrollment figures for the fy21 budget the gray columns are the fy21 actual and the teal ones are the fy22 projections

029again our projected enrollment requires us to maintain the 27th class section in order to adhere adhere to our class siiz policy of around 14 to 20 students per class even though actual enrollment dips below the budget in this current year we were very grateful that we had the 27th teacher this year because it helped us staff our remote learning program while it also kept our in-person class sizes within our social distancing protocols our staffing model has adjusted slightly lower to the projected enrollment uh in total we expect to reduce 63 FTE compared to last year's budget this table shows two types of Staff certified and other with a total at the bottom right the increases and decreases from the fy21 budget are shown in green and red respectively so these are obviously fy22 increases um

030with the sub total amount in bold on the right uh for each Staffing category the increases in certified staff are due to a02 FTE increase in regular education teachers for music the 0.11 FTE increase and other certified staff for additional Physical Therapy um is for additional Physical Therapy service hours for other staff there is uh one position reduction or 83 FTE in AIDS and tutors combined an additional 0.25 reduction in hours at the school administrator's office and the 0.14 increase in regular Ed AIDS and tutors reflects our projected student needs for next year Staffing is one of our largest areas of expenditures so let's move on to discuss the changes in overall expenditures now expenditures are mostly School uh controllable expenses spent in line with voter approval and board oversite however please note that we

031must abide by federal and state regulations in our service of Education as well as uphold the long-term contracts the board enters into thus there are varying levels of truly controllable expenditures from year to year this is the expenditure breakdown of the $1 5.66 million budget proposed there are seven categories of expenditures and we will discuss the major changes in each category the first is the largest and it's our Ray School operations the direct instructional operations of the ray School programming for next year is projected to increase 3.45% more than onethird of this increase or 100 $ 49,000 is related to a mandatory employer contribution rate hike for the New Hampshire Retirement System since this is such a large Factor we will discuss this in further detail on the next slide but other key drivers for

032the ray School operations in fy22 include Staffing contracts with a stipulated 2% increase for Union salaries an estimated increase of for medical benefits of 2.2% the SA board uh has decided to invest in technology maintenance and improvements by adding an additional 1.5 FTE to hire technology staff which would help implement the major infrastructure upgrade provided by warrant article number two that you heard earlier however sa70 Administration has advised us that the current outdated system is difficult to maintain at current Staffing levels and would require the additional FTS regardless to maintain existing infrastructure should the warrant article not pass this together with other changes in the sa70 budget contributes the nearly $46,000 increase in the Handover District share of sau70 expenses and finally as part of an sa wide initiative the ray school is investing $17,500

033for Di diversity equity and inclusion training and staff development but let's take a closer look at the New Hampshire Retirement System rate increase the New Hampshire retirement system provides lifetime pension benefits as well as disability and death benefits to full-time state county and Municipal Employees teachers police officers and firefighters it also provides a post-retirement medical subsidy benefit to eligible beneficiaries the retirement system sets employer contribution rates which would be us uh as the employer every two years the rate changes reflect the cost of benefits as they acre and pay down existing unfunded liabilities fy22 is one of these years that we received the updated rate and it was very large the contribution rate for teachers increased 25.9% and employees increased ined 18.1% in order of impact the increase was driven because of one a reduction

034of the long run rate of return from seven and a quarter to 6.75% update uh the second reason is updated postretirement mortality and the third reason is a reduction in the payroll growth factor since our full-time staff participate in the New Hampshire retirement system the double digigit rate increase hit the ray School operations line quite substantially resulting in that $149,000 increase those are the major drivers in the ray School operations and next we'll discuss the special education tuition hover District covers the special education expenses for Handover residents special education uh tuition expenses expect expected to increase 5.12% primarily due to increased need for outof state tuition in grades 9 through 12 special education estimates are based on current student census and next site and building improvements so safety in addition to technology was a shared

035District priority amongst the board Administration and STA and staff an increase of $85,000 has been earmarked to make safety improvements including new security door locks and a redesign of the vestibule and front office area this is offset by a $16,000 decrease in site Improvement project spending levels as we completed many of those projects this year thus the site and building improvements line is decreasing $ 68,800 from last year's budget the next category is Debt Service we do not anticipate any changes to the debt schedule for fy22 the 1% increase was previously scheduled from the 2014 renovation Bond the Handover District School Board is proposing to change the long-term debt schedule as you have heard about in the technology warrant article presentation however if the technology warrant article IAL passes then the first debt payment will

036likely not begin until FY 23 as I've said earlier so moving on to the Food Service fund the Food Service fund supports the free and reduced lunch program and funds any shortfalls in our food service program we are projecting no change in our free and reduced lunch participation also in fy20 before the pandemic we changed Food Service providers at the ray school and saw improved results in overall student and staff participation we are hopeful that we will return to the pre-pandemic performance as enrollment rebounds and Supply chains return to normal our next fund is supported with offsetting Revenue as well and you heard it explained by Marcelo wonderfully but the Bridgeman fund is managed like an endowment fund to support educational advantages for Handover K through six students anyone from the community can propose Bridgeman

037funded projects projects cannot be those that should be typically funded by taxpayers and have typically involved the purchase of student equipment materials or other experiences the amount we're asking to reserve is up to the $40,000 and it's the same as in Prior budgets and what have we done this year specifically um you've heard Marcel explain um kind of historical projects but this uh this past year we used the Bridgman funds to purchase the large concrete Planters uh to beautify and secure our Ray school entrance area and meeting owls uh to support our remote learning um needs finally the last expenditure category is one we've already discussed sixth grade tuition the 17 fewer sixth graders in the budget is a 24% decrease from last year's budget since we discussed tuition earlier um I think we can

038just move on to revenue these are all sources of revenue that are not directly generated by our new local tax assessment there are five sources of revenue outside of our net assessment we have a balance carry forward local s sources um State sources sixth grade tuition fund and the Bridgeman Reserve fund but in all of um but in all but one of these sources we we basically have less Revenue coming in from these accounts um than last year but that one is a real big one um and it's a favorable one that big one is the balance carry forward so let's talk about that the balance carry forward is sourced from known Surplus from this school year fy21 that will be applied to offset taxation next year thus it's a source of Revenue in next

039year's budget the balance Carri forward is 51% larger than last year mostly because the district is expected to release retained fy20 Surplus um that we have in fy21 that was generated when schools closed for in-person Lear earning These funds totaling $300,000 were held back in fy21 because the board anticipated its use to fund expenditures related to covid-19 safety precautions and programming thankfully during the school year the district was awarded covid-19 relief grants that made it so the district did not have to wholly self-fund our covid-19 expenses therefore we feel comfortable at this time that we will have a larger Surplus this year and can increase our balance carry forward in next year's budget for local sources of revenue we expect a 17.6 th000 decrease from last year's budget unfortunately where it is advantageous to borrow

040in a low interest environment rate we expect our interest income to take a dive of about $30,000 this is partially offset by growth in income from Handover Waterworks and rentals continuing with the unfortunate yet expected news the Handover district will not receive New Hampshire state adequacy aid this year this is reverting back to our typical experience with adequacy Aid last year we protected we projected to receive adequacy Aid of $125,000 which was the first time receiving any Aid of its type in recent memory at least since 1999 the calculation is based on equalized valuation of properties across the state and the calculation was updated now and we're back to not receiving any Aid last year in the fy21 budget we had to draw down uh $270,000 from the sixth grade tuition Reserve fund to fund

041the large cohort but since we have a smaller Clash this year it is not required an fy22 and so this is a a loss of Revenue in a sense uh the last source of Revenue we've already discuss but it's the Bridgeman Reserve fund um and it's really just a pass through donor fund and so here's um just for completeness the offsetting revenue to match the $40,000 expenditure shown earlier the total expected revenue is is 1.47 million so that is far less than the 15.66% proposed to be 4 14.2 million next year the net assessment um it's now the yellow arrow for the Handover district is combined with Handover share of the Dresden District's net assessment to calculate the projected tax rate the budget for the Dresden district will be addressed separately in the Dresden meter

042meeting later tonight so please don't touch that dial if you're interested in dressing overall the Handover School tax rate is estimated to increase 8% from last year with a tax rate of $123 if you recall $253 is exactly what we projected last year's tax rate to be before the March um budget vote due to additional Surplus realized and return to taxpayers and a favorable adjustment to hand over property valuations our actual tax rate this year was lower than what we projected and it was $124 thus a $253 tax rate is a 8% increase over last year's actual this would mean for example the owner of a home assessed by the town for $400,000 would pay an additional $40 per year please bear in mind that the projected tax rate can and will likely change before

043it is finalized in October most of the reasons for these changes are outside of the local control of the school district as they may be related to changes in state funding or property assessment values the town of hover is undergoing a full measure and listry assessment and so these tax rate projections may change substantially but we have assumed here and in the mailings previously sent that there is no change in the town's net assessment valuations from last year however we should note that there may be some additional good news here as the town of hover is in their budget is currently projecting an $8 million increase to the town's net property assessment valuations an increase in the town's property values means that the same school budget is spread over a broader tax base which lowers

044the tax rate therefore based on what we know today and all else being equal the tax rate um could be lower than the 08 % projected increase shown here so again to recap the 8% increase is less than the last reported 12month inflation of 1.1% increase and the smaller six grade class is primarily driving the overall decrease in the budget to $1.66 million and that concludes uh the presentation of next year's proposed budget but before I wrap up we wanted to share the extraordinary work our school Community has taken this year to safely reopen schools during the pandemic the preparations for this school year began shortly after the schools closed for inperson learning last March faced with an already approved budget and not knowing when or if covid-19 relief grants would ever materialize the school

045board and administration made the decision to shift the district into a saving mode in fy20 so that we could be in a secure financial position to self-fund the necessary co9 related expenditures we wanted the decision to reopen schools to be one based on education and public health recommendations and not Financial the sau70 formed an advisory committee consisting of Schoolboard members Administration teachers School nurses staff and public health experts from our community that was tasked with to recommend a re School reopening plan the plan the task force recommended and the board adopted provided for multiple phases of operations depending on the prevalence of covid-19 in our school Community following CDC recommendations and other public health protocols a key feature of this plan was that our schools provided families with an option of in-person or remote learning

046and gave students the ability to switch between the two learning modes at certain points throughout the year this option has been helpful to not only our students and their families but also teachers and staff who needed to make the best decision for their families this flexibility was not possible had we not worked to retain as much Surplus as we did the year before because um the grant the covid-19 grant funding did not arrive until well into the school year this retained Surplus now has a second life as we are able to return it to taxpayers in a time that our community may need the release most and uh here are some snapshots of what school life has been like during the past year the ray School encourage students to follow covid-19 protocols through a delightful

047schoolwide rocket to Outer Space theme in the top Center photo on the chalkboard um the ray School developed clever space terms for the covid-19 protocols like helmet is a student face mask laser check is a temperature check and operation Decon is wipe wash your hands and there are a lot of masks and social distancing here of course but there are also opportunities for Outdoor Learning and fun in the middle right photo students are roasting marshmallows outdoors and in the center and left middle photos here are students enjoying lunch in their personal space bubbles the ray school really did rocket this year and that's pun intended um my favorite photo is probably the heart in the upper left which is a note from a student to Ray School principal Lauren amine who thanked her for opening

048the school because it reminds me just how uncertain this school year was to start and how we're still going strong everyone this past year has has had to make difficult quick decisions with less than perfect information we appreciate Hanover's trust and patience with us as we built the rocket ship while flying it we are so grateful to our entire community that we've been able to keep our doors open this year um but finally a special thank you to the tireless work of our teacher staff and administration for Transforming Our Ray school for our students whether they be in person or remote this year thank you okay Kim thank you very much for that presentation and uh I'd last like to ask I think Ki a a will speak on on behalf of the Hanover finance

049committee go thank you Mr moderator my name is krie asmus and I'm the chair of the Hanover finance committee during a public meeting on January 14th the Handover finance committee voted unanimously to support the proposed fiscal year 22 Hanover School District budget uh in all suggested articles meaning this article as well as the Articles um or the amounts In Articles 3 four and five which we're just discussed we appreciate the work of administration and School Board to bring in an educationally sound budget which together with dresen results in a tax increase of 8% or perhaps less given the economic uncertainty of the times and the yet unknown impacts of the 2021 revaluation this approach to budgeting shows a balancing of the needs of the schools and our students with the needs of the taxpaying public

050as already noted the Handover District budget benefited from a 69,000 or 24% decrease in the sixth grade tuition line item and the availability of $360,000 in one-time fund balance due to the closures of the school last spring while we can hope that the fluctuations in tuition will become a thing of the past we all hope and anticipate the schools will stay open going forward as the one-time funds will present a headwin for fiscal year 23 budget the finance committee urges vigilance in contract negotiations in the coming year as well in the B as well as in the budgeting of Staffing levels uh an objective made difficult as was pointed out for the fiscal year 22 budget as enrollments fluctuated schoolwide during uh due to covid-19 in closing the finance committee would be remiss in not

051pointing out the tremendous efforts that everyone involved in delivering managing and overseeing Hanover's public education system has demonstrated these have been uniquely challenging times and while it appears that there is light at the end of the tunnel it remains unclear when things will return to quote normal in the meantime the staff Administration and school board have effectively managed the existing circumstances to the benefit of its students and the town's taxpayers so thank you from all of us the finance committee's full statement can be found on page 19 of the annual report thank you great thank you very much okay are there any folks out in Zoom world who would like to uh let's see make a com I don't see anyone thanks Josh for helping me figure out how to do that okay seeing none

052I'm going to move on to the next article article seven shall the Hanover district shall the Hanover School District vote to designate The Dresden School District as the exclusive provider of sixth grade educational services to its students effective for the 2022 2023 school year said vote being subject to a final vote by The Dresden School District at its 2021 annual meeting to amend its articles of agreement to allow for the provision of sixth grade educational services to members school districts the school board recommends this designation and Kim will explain this a bit more so Kim you're up again thank you I hope to make this presentation a bit shorter than my last and a good first step to this is that there's no PowerPoint so um for article for Warrant article 7 we are considering

053whether or not to designate Dresden as the exclusive education provider for Handover sixth grade students students frankly the substance of this um Handover warrant article is relatively straightforward and likely not controversial is this is in effect what we already do today um the Handover sixth graders attend Richmond Middle School Dresden building taught by Dresden teachers some might even think this Arrangement already exists because it seems so obvious um however the Hanover sixth graders are technically Handover School District students and tuition is paid to Dresden each year based on the estimated number of students we expect will enroll then in the following budget year there is an adjustment payment that TRS up the tuition payment to reflect how many sixth graders actually attended versus what we estimated this adjustment can go up or down and and

054as we have just seen with the budget overall the sixth grade tuition payment can and has swung wildly over the years last year In This Very meeting um for the budget portion I was explaining how we had nearly a million doll hike in tuition cost between one year in the next by and large sixth grade education is largely a fixed cost but the tuition Arrangement is based on an average cost per pupil that means in big cohort years there is a large Surplus for Dresden and a large expense for the Handover District then in the following year the cohort size tends to be smaller and perhaps that large projected cohort may have never materialized so not only is there a smaller tuition expense for Handover due to next year's uh small class but then Hanover

055gets a credit for paying too much the year before and the tuition payment is even smaller therefore almost every other year we see that there is a swing back and forth between hover and Dresden these tuition shocks Force the Handover board and administration especially the ray School to have to think about the size of the sixth grade class at RMS first before we are obligated to pay that tuition amount per the terms of our contract with Dresden before we can think of our strategic priorities at the ray school to start the budget process we are constantly analyzing the size of the current fifth grade class and speculating who might move in or out next year there are other drawbacks as well but overall this Arrangement has serious shortcomings for our ability to do long-term strategic

056planning and also effectively communicate the budget to you our community this year the Handover School Board first commissioned a joint working group consisting of members of the school board sa70 Administration in the Handover finance committee the working group which later included members from the Norwich School Board sought a way to F to solve these long recognized issues it is important to note that The Dresden Interstate partnership has been mutually beneficial to Handover and Norwich residents over the years in effect the warrant articles related to the sixth grade which have been proposed in Handover and Dresden aims to bring us more together in Dresden targeting Equitable partnership shares that are less sensitive to swings in student enrollment and that does not include enrollment estimates because the Dresden net assessment allocation will solely be based on actual

057sixth grade enrollment for the same school year as the rest of the grades grades 7 through 12 The Proposal under consideration by The Dresden voter seeks to include the sixth grade program under Dresden the cost will be split between hover and Norwich under the same method used for the rest of the grades something we call the average daily membership or ADM formula but would now include the sixth grade enrollment in the calculation this would eliminate the need for the Handover School District to pay tuition to Dresden separately and in the end both the Dresden and Handover budget books would more ACC accurately reflect the The Real World experience the Handover sixth grade program would officially fall under Dresden and to say that more clearly if both Warren articles pass in Dresden and Handover then the

058Handover School District budget will no longer have any expenses related to the sixth grade on it the specifics of this change to the ADM formula and the language of the related Dresden warrant article will be be presented in detail at the 7 PM Dresden deliberative session later tonight turning back to the Handover warrant article specifically please do not be troubled with how powerful the word exclusive may seem if one is concerned that this would restrict Handover sixth graders from access to special education services it would not all special education expenses for all Handover students with or without this warrant article will continue to get built back to the Handover School District finally if both warrant articles pass the Handover school district will need to find a solution for what to do with the remaining funds

059in the sixth grade tuition Reserve fund absent any other way uh to balance out the tuition swings in the past the Handover school board has been maintaining a sixth grade tuition Reserve fund at the end of this year we expect to have about a $100,000 remaining while this is a likely a decision for the Handover School Board uh These funds could be returned to Handover taxpayers uh however please bear in mind that Dresden has no ability to maintain Reserve funds like we can in Handover but the intention is that these swings will not be as volatile as the current Arrangement making the need to have a reserve Fund in the first place less important moreover there is a transparency benefit because the reason for the swings will be easier to communicate as it will simply

060reflect changes in the actual enrollment between the two towns over the same school year versus this cascading list of budget to actual Corrections spanning multiple years in budgets like my two circles uh but before I finish I want to sincerely thank my Handover colleagues of the joint working group my fellow school school board member Rick Johnson sau70 business administrator Jamie teag and most importantly the Handover finance committee members Ki asmus Carrie Callahan who chaired the working group and Matt Gardner uh this is quite a complex issue as and we have Smart dedicated community members who have helped us try to find a better way for our schools I hope you will join us in our gratitude and support warrant article 7 thanks thank you very much uh for explaining that and again Ki is going

061to speak on behalf of the finance committee thank you Mr moderator and uh yes again my name is k asmus um let me Begin by saying that the finance committee unanimously supports this article as noted in the explanation of the warrant articles and in the presentation the finance committee worked closely with the Hannibal school board but ultimately also with the SAU Administration the district's attorney and the Dresden School Board to find a better methodology to pay for the cost of Handover sixth graders a methodology that would work educationally financially administratively and intuitively the finance committee believes this methodology achieves all those goals and we are pleased to have served as a resource in this project project perhaps the one footnote that I could add to the board presentation would be to answer the one question

062that I've gotten a couple of times now which is why is the sixth grade at the middle school and not at the ray School while I was not part of that decision-making process I can say that prior to the ray school being built all Handover students grades K through 12 were on this Lebanon Street site along with Norwich students in grades 7 through 12 when the Handover board began to plan for a new Elementary School in the late 1960s and when the ray school opened in the fall of 1970 it was not Des designed to accommodate the sixth grade the intent back then was that the Handover sixth graders would be a part of the middle school going forward so here we are 50 years later and the sixth graders are still a part of

063the middle school and it makes sense that they should finally become dressed in students thanks for that bit of History um okay are there any folks on Zoom who would like to ask questions I'm looking I don't see anyone raising a hand okay then we'll move on to article eight article eight to see if the school district will vote to authorize indefinitely until rescinded to retain yearend unassigned General funds in an amount not to exceed in any fiscal year 2.5% of the current fiscal Year's net assessment in accordance with RSA 198 colon 4 hyphen little B woman numeral 2 majority vote required the school board recommends this authorization and Kelly McConnell will explain it to us thank you good evening um so just backing up a little bit there are basic basically three options for

064disposition of the remaining fund balance at the end of Any Given fiscal year first an Appropriations to trust funds or transfer secondly a uh it can be returned to the taxpayers when uh when they are utilized by the Department of Revenue Administration in calculating the local education tax rate uh which would be a reduction of District tax assessment for the following fiscal year this would be a return and then the third option is what we're asking you to consider tonight um with article number eight retention of unassigned funds or retaining so this article would establish a contingency Fund in an amount not to exceed 2.5% of net assessment from unassigned end-of-year balance that could be used to meet the costs of unanticipated emergency expenses that may arise during a fiscal year and as we heard

065from Kim earlier that was critical this year as we looked to bringing our students back into into the building um during this pandemic although state regulations had previously allowed the district to establish a contingency fund Handover does not currently have one established the combination of lessons learned during covid have led to the board's decision to request voter approval to establish this contingency fund the school board would determine the actual amount to be retained each year and any fund balance not retained would be returned so why would the school district want to retain a portion of the unassigned fund balance so first it would be to respond to an emergency or other unforeseen event such as an unexpected building repair or an equipment replacement secondly to cover unexpected Revenue shortfalls which would keep the district running

066in the event of late or lower than expected state or town payments uh thirdly it would stabilize cash flow and maintain good credit ratings approval of this proposed warrant article number8 would provide a level of financial flexibility to react to emergencies or other significant unforeseen circumstances it is considered to be a best practice in financial management that is currently used by the majority of towns and many school districts across the state Hanover School District's net assessment proposed for the fiscal year 2122 is 14,853 which if the article is passed would allow for ret Tage in an amount up to $354,500 is the same that voters have approved in Dr Dresden um although again like I said in my budget Dresden um does not have uh the ability to have Reserve funds like we do in

067Hanover so this really in Dresden is our only real emergency uh funding ability um in Hanover this gives us the option um why we were able to do it this last year is because the New Hampshire Governor uh ordered the kind of gave an executive order and said that all schools can do it and overrided you know whether we had taken this Vote or Not So This was um this approach is really kind of a a lesson learned from our covid expenses and saying can we have some sort of bridge funding to Fund emergency expenses um that arise after the uh budget has been approved in March but we know before the school year occurs and we have to as a school board vote every October um and so that is just a helpful way

068that to do that this isn't um these are very special funds that we have to appeal to the state and and give a reason for why we need to include them the these aren't um things that we can do to fluctuate the tax rate for instance um so it's for you know emergency needs that get uh certified and approved by the state um and again this is the lesson learned from from covid and um you know that happened to hit mid-march um and uh we want to have the school district in a better position this is not something that the school board has to do they do not have to retain it just gives us an option and perpetuity to do so thanks okay thank you are there any folks on Zoom who would like

069to uh make any comments raise any questions I don't see any hands raised there so we'll move to article nine which is just to transact any non-substantive business that may legally come before the discussion phase of this meeting see if anybody raises their hand on Zoom I don't see anyone I don't see anyone here oh Jamie thanks John yeah I just want to mention to everybody tonight that we are um losing one of our long-term board members uh if anybody didn't have a chance to um attend the Handover School District meeting um or the dresen school district meeting in the last couple of weeks uh Dan rockmore um is going to be a stepping off the boards uh he served uh on the both School boards for for the Handover for the Handover uh Town's

070people for six years um and we all had the pleasure of working with him he he worked on many different committees and he was very passionate about education so we'll miss him and we just want to thank him great thank you okay I don't see anything else that being the case this concludes the discussion phase of the Hanover annual meeting the voting phase takes place 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday March 3rd at the Hanover High school gymnasium may I have a motion to adjourn from so move any second okay second and uh all in favor okay we are adjourned thank you very much for listening in for those of you on the television on zoom and uh we'll see you at 7 o'clock for the Dresden uh meeting thank you e e e

071the discussion phase of the Dresden School District annual meeting of 2021 is called to order the first item is the reading of the warrant and the warning and so I'm going to move ahead with that the following warrant articles appli to the operation of the Dresden School District which includes the operation of the Francis C Richmond school and Hanover High School grades 7 through 12 and sixth grade students from Hanover who are tuition to the Francis SE Richmond School by the Hanover School District the legal voters of the Norwich Vermont school district and the legal voters of the Hanover New Hampshire school district are hereby notified and warned that the two phases of the annual School District meeting will be held held as follows the discussion phase Thursday February 25th 2021 at 7 p.m. at

072the Hanover High School auditorium Hanover New Hampshire a virtual option will be available to attend via Zoom link and the information will be shared via sa70 District website at sa70 high school gymnasium in Hanover New Hampshire for Hanover voters and in Tracy Hall in Norwich Vermont for Norwich voters absentee ballots will be available ahead of the in-person voting date during the discussion phase the voters shall have the opportunity to discuss the following warrant articles and to transact any non-substantive business that may legally be acted on during the discussion phase under article 7 all voting on articles 1 through six shall be conduct conducted by a secret written ballot during the voting phase as provided in the Dresden School District procedures for Australian ballot The Dresden warrant was posted February 4th by Jamie Teague design of

073the Dresden School Board District Clerk at the following locations Hall outside of the Hanover high school gymnasium the Hanover Municipal Building Richmond Middle School Ray Elementary School Etna Library Hanover food Co-op this time I'd like to introduce chair Kelly McConnell who will introduce the members of the board good evening everyone U my name is Kelly McConnell and I am a member of the Handover and Dresden and sau70 Boards uh and uh I'll just start as my colleague Rick did by um saying you know we none of us expected this year to be like this so when I started as chair this was not exactly how we thought things would go but um we were just talking before the meeting about how exciting it is that we've gotten to this point in the school year we've

074been in school the whole year and we're so proud of our district and all of our um leaders and everything uh everything that everyone as a community has accomplished to keep our kids in school so um thank you to everyone um and before I introduce everyone I just wanted to um point out to anyone who might be tuning in for the first time that the Dresden board is formed of the uh Handover board and the Norwich board that comes together I'm a child of the 80s so I like to describe it as the Power Rangers the Transformers come together as this resen board so um introducing first uh in the back Lisa Christie who's from the Norwich board and then Tom Candon next to her also from Norwich Ben Keeny from Hanover John Hunt also

075from Hanover Kim Hartman also from Hanover Neil Odell who is the vice chair of the Dresden board from Norwich and Rick Johnson and then attending remotely we have Marcela deblasi from Hanover and then from Norwich Kelly hery and Garrett palm and just a final word of thanks to Dan rockmore who um has served the Handover board and the dren board for the last six years and will'll be stepping off of the board this year so thank you to Dan for his many years of service okay thank you very much for the introduction uh next I'd like to ask Jay bams to introduce the members of the administration who are here thank you Tom my name is J Adams I'm superintendent here at sa7 and it's my pleasure to introduce the the administrators from se70 who

076are present with us and that is Jamie Teague our business administrator Josh Malloy who's our director of Education technology and Karen Wright who's our communication specialist and uh with us virtually are our our Dresden School administrators from Handover High School Mr Jim Logan our principal uh Deb Bo o pre and Julie Stevenson our associate principles from Richmond Middle School Tim Bole our principal and Anissa Morrison our associate principal thank you Jay so next in this part of the meeting I explain the school district structure the two districts in Hanover are the Hanover School District and the Dresden School District the Hanover School District is responsible for grades K through six K5 at the ray school with sixth grade students tuition to the Richmond Middle School the Dis Let's see this discussion phase for the Hanover

077School District was held today earlier at five five o'clock the dresen school district is responsible for grades 6 through 12 the Francis C Richmond school with grades 6 through eight and Hanover High School with grades 9- 12 the dresen school district includes Hanover and Norwich students in grades 7- 12 and Hanover students in grade six The Dresden School District was the first interstate School District in the country and was created by one of the last Bills signed by President John F Kennedy in 1963 next I'd like to establish the the meeting rules as the moderator um as the moderator I'll recognize speakers before they will be allowed to speak speakers should walk to the microphone and state their names and addresses for the record all comments should be directed to me as the moderator the

078moderator will not allow cross talk among those at the meeting everyone will be allowed to speak before someone has a chance to speak a a second time speaker should make every effort to be brief and not unnecessarily repetitive repeat comments that have already been made by other speakers all speakers should be courteous and respectful speakers should be certain they are addressing the business of the meeting this means staying on the topic of the warrant article being discussed it's my intention to recognize board members to speak to each warrant article before allowing members of the public then I'll typically ask if there's someone from the hanar finance committee that wants to make a comment and then uh turn to others and if you're on a zoom you'll have to raise your hand and we'll then recognize

079you and you can ask questions or provide comments uh I'll rule out of order any speaker who does not respect these guidelines or who acts in an uncivil or disruptive manner never really had any problems this way in this community but we do like to get the rules straight um so we'll turn to article one and article one is to elect by written ballot for one-year terms moderator a clerk a Treasurer and auditor for a three-year term an auditor for a two-year term and an auditor for a one-year term those who filed for these offices are for moderator Tom Cherry for clerk Carol bio for treasurer Cheryl Lindberg and for district Auditors there were no filings um not thinking there's any questions about those we're going to turn to article two article two reads shall

080the district raise and appropriate the sum of $842,500 high schools and further authorized the school board to issue bonds Andor notes in accordance with the provisions of the New Hampshire Vermont Interstate School compact article Roman numeral 7 and to authorize the school board to issue and negotiate such bonds or notes and to determine the rate of interest thereon the school board recommends this article and Neil Odell will explain it to us a bit more thank you Mr moderator so when many of us think about technology we think about a a shiny new computer or a phone or a tablet or some software or an app that we just bought that lets us do the uh the work that we do more efficiently this warrant article is not about that this warrant article is about the

081network infrastructure that supports all of the devices that need access to the internet and to the other devices that we use at all of our schools we've known about these needs for some time this isn't something that just came to light this year but that being said the pandemic and our increased use of Technology both inside and outside of our school buildings has really highlighted the importance that we address this need and that we do it now the proposed Bond or the borrowing is to support a four phased approach to improving our Network infrastructure phase one starts with our connection to the public internet and then moves from there to each of our buildings and finally ends at phases three and four which is all about connecting devices to the network thank you Jamie you

082are right on Q so as mentioned in the last slide phase one focuses on what we call the wide area network it starts with the connection to the public internet via firewall uh which is really just a device that's designed to keep us safe from external threats um to our internal network but it also helps to prevent users in our buildings from accessing inappropriate or dangerous content on the public internet from the firewall traffic then flows through a core switch which is just a way of Distributing the internet access to each of our various buildings then at each building we'll also have an additional switch a layer three switch that will help Route traffic appropriately so that when Tim Bole requests that YouTube video of the LSU football game it routes correctly to his machine

083and not some random student now um the equipment included in phase one is actually not part of this borrowing request this work is work that has already or will be covered with grant funding I just wanted to list it here though so folks understand that this work all fits together there you go paid with Grant Grant funds next slide Jamie The Next Step the phase two step is the cabling and while this may seem like a second thought it's actually quite important um older cabling can't handle the higher speed and the throughput that newer technology needs and supports new cabling throughout our buildings will provide maximum data speed to all locations throughout our buildings um and this cabling is used to route to wireless access points as well phones and wired access points moving on

084to phase three wireless access points Jamie if you can click one more time and again and again and again so what we are looking at here is this is my graphical description of how a wireless access point kind of works if you look at the uh outer structure consider that to be the footprint of a school building um most network access these days happens over a Wi-Fi connection and the proliferation of Wireless Chromebook smartphon laptops and other devices in our schools has put a strain on our aging wireless access points some of which are more than 10 years old at this point which is almost like two lifetimes when you consider technology the current access points don't support the higher access speeds nor do they um handle the volume of connections that are necessary for

085the work that is going on in our schools today because Wi-Fi access points have limited coverage we'll need to ensure we'll need to have several of them to ensure like you see from this diagram that we've got coverage for for all of our buildings go to the next slide uh finally phase four phase four um is the last phase of the project is upgrading our current phone system we'll provide updated phones for our classrooms and other locations within our buildings that are e911 compliant these no phones then will report exact location when placing a 911 call so if we go on to project cost so what is all of this going to cost you can see the numbers here for both RMS and the high school uh the number that's probably important to most folks

086is the number at the very bottom $842 764 or the amount of the warrant article that will appear on the ballot and that covers all of the work that you see listed above or the work that was described in phases two through four on the slides that we just showed um when we take a look at the borrowing um in order to give you an estimate of the borrowing cost of this article we've inquired with some local banks um using a rather conservative estimate of a 2% interest rate and a 10-year loan we're looking at an annual cost to dresen of $93,500 over and Norwich um just like we split uh The Dresden assessment and you can see those numbers listed here on the slide we're also showing the borrowing estimates for both Hanover and

087Norwich as well as we have corresponding Bond articles in those two districts too the total amounts for each town are shown in this slide you can see them listed there there is uh one item to note it may be possible to fully pay off the Dresden loan uh in the Third Year by taking advantage of the fact that our 2003 construction loan uh will be paid off in the prior year and this would provide us with the potential to pay off the loan without substantially increasing District expenditures from the prior year taking advantage of the that decrease in in the construction loan payment um finally just a little uh brief note here on e- rate funding um this is the funding that we are uh pursuing to try to lessen the cost of the district

088for the technology upgrades uh that is it is provided via the universal service fund of the FCC um it does provide discounts for telecommunications internet access and internal connections um to eligible schools and libraries you can anticipate discounts anywhere in the neighborhood from 20 to 90% um typically reimbursement happens after the work is done um and just one final cop up for folks to know they are notoriously slow so it could be quite some time before we actually figure out and determine whether or not the eate funding has actually come through and that is all moderator great thank you Neil that was very informative and interesting uh I think mck Gardner from the finance committee would allow like to say a few words to us yes can you hear me we can okay uh my

089name's Matt Gardner and I live uh at 8 Leen Road in Hanover the technology Bond warrant uh calls for the appropriation uh through a bond offering of $842 764 to be financed over a 10-year term at indicative rates below 2% as Neil pointed out there are savings to the current operating expenses that are expected to be gained as a result of this technology investment as well as an opportunity to apply for federal grants further reducing the net expenditures related to this project the rapid advancement and increased Reliance on technology in our everyday lives and the classroom highlights the need to bring our schools district infrastructures up to date we are fortunate that the expected useful life of this investment is significant and the interest rate environment is very favorable the Handover finance committee unanimously supports

090this warrant article and we would encourage our fellow residents to do the same great thank thank you Mac is there anyone here or anyone on Zoom that would like to make a comment or ask a question uh Kim Frost um thanks Kim Frost 494 Hanover Center Road in nna um is anything being done to try to increase access from home for students who uh don't maybe don't have either good internet access at home or the or laptops or other uh other things that would be needed to to enable access uh anyone want to grab that Jamie so I'll start but I I think that Josh Malloy would probably have a couple of things to say as well um thank you for your question Kim it's a very important one I know that we have been

091in conversation uh with Julia Griffin the town manager at the town of Hanover who has over many years been in conversation with uh Folks at the legislative level to try to get Broadband access expanded throughout our areas where we don't have that available so they at the school district level um I know Josh is going to speak to that but at the Town level I know that your town Representatives your County representatives for Grafton um both in the house and the Senate have been You Know spoken to and reached out to about those shortcomings so hopefully through their efforts uh there will be changes coming thank you for your question and Jos is getting up to come to the microphone and and say a little bit more not much more um just keep an eye

092on the FCC because I believe they just released that they're going to work on that and expand on ER rate to allow for funding to go into homes to to expand on internet everywhere um and the other thing is locally we have done a lot to try to help out folks that are working at home um and uh working on their school work from home our area is very difficult um based on the terrain based on what's available and the technology that's currently here right now so there's a lot of challenges that aren't just fixed by money right now but there's things coming up on the horizon that I'm excited about that might be able to help us out in the future great thanks Josh and thanks for the question um let me check and

093see if there's anyone else who'd like to have a question answered or a comment I don't see any so we'll move on to the next article which is article three shall the district determine and fix the salaries of school district officers as follows School Board member $700 per member with additional $300 for the school board chair School District Treasurer $2,567 school district clerk $500 and School District moderator $200 with in accordance with article Roman World 5 capital A of the New Hampshire Vermont Interstate School Compact and further raise and appropriate the amount of $1,967 to fund these salaries School Board recommends this article and Ben Keeny will tell us a little bit more uh thank you moderator and good evening this article sets the stipend for the positions of district clerk moderator Treasurer and board

094members these stiens uh as moderator mentioned have not changed in quite some time for most of those positions the district clerk and the moderators Duties are instrumental in a District's annual voting processes together they officiate and record annual meetings set the official ballots monitor voting procedures and the polls direct vote tallying and ratify results the treasurer re receives a small percentage increase each year typically between 1 and 2% and their duties are mandated by the New Hampshire RSA they are charged with the oversight and independent balancing of all district funds they review expenditures every week and balance bank accounts monthly at review of expenditures by rotating members of the board they then sign all district funded checks each board member attends monthly meetings for most of the year and during budget season usually have far

095more meetings on uh per month in addition board members participate in various committees such as including the budget and finance committees athletic advisory Central staff development evaluation negotiations policy program procedure and the PTO a small addition was made in the 2019 budget year to add $300 to the board chair's stipend as the chair participates in more meetings than other members and set the agendas in consultation with the administration this article's effect on the tax rate is negligible less than 1% thanks Ben I doubt if we'll have any comments or questions on that article so I'm going to move right right along to the next article which is article four shall the district vote to approve the cost items in the 2-year collective bargaining agreement reached between the local 1348 of the afscme also known as

096the service employees including custodial and maintenance technicians and the Dresden School Board which calls for the following increases in service staff salaries and benefits for the year 2021 2022 estimated increase over the status quo budget is $1,513 for 2022 2023 the estimated increase over the status quo budget is $2,517 and further shall the district raise and appropriate the sum of $118,500 such sum representing the estimated increase in service staff salaries and benefits for the 2021 2022 fiscal year brought about by this collective bargaining agreement School Board recommends this article and Rick Johnson will tell us more about in January the board and the local 1348 of the afscme also known as the service employees which includes our custodial and maintenance technicians reached a tentative agreement for the next two-year period 2021 to 2022 and 2022

097to 2023 the local 1348 reached a very modest agreement with PID base pay increases set at 05% for 2122 and 1% for years 2223 the addition of a retirement 403b match a two-tiered co-pay program for insurance and many language updates throughout the agreement these updates to the language include updating the manner in which overtime wages are calculated based on weekly instead of daily now and does not include sick time an increased level of benefit eligibility for 15 to 20 hours a clarification on the processes for vacation and personal day requests overtime requests on holidays when medical certification is required to return to work and the use and level of allowances for Footwear and uniforms and finally the clarification on who's allowed to deliver layoffs suspensions and discharge notices thank Rick thanks Rick um are there

098any comments questions and see I'm not seeing anybody on Zoom so we'll move on to the next article Article Five shall the district raise and appropriate the amount of 28,749 181 for the support of schools for the payment of salaries for the teachers and other School Employees School District officials and agents and for the payment of the statutory obligations of the district for the 2021 2022 fiscal year this sum does not include the sums appropriated in any of the other articles the school board recommends this article and Kim Hartman will explain more about the budget hello uh as the sign says below here I'm Kim Hartman and I am the Dresden budget committee chair this year and I will present our proposed budget uh for Dresden next year thanks Jamie for putting the slides up

099with the aim of keeping the numbers as simple as possible this presentation assumes that all Dres and warrant articles related to the fy22 budget are approved this includes our regular ones like board stiens um but it also includes warrant article number four the collective bargaining agreement for service employees that you that was just presented the warrant article two for the technology upgrades is not expected to have a tax impact next year as that will be debt funded likely with the first payment coming due in 2023 so in a sense you will not see the technology investment reflected in the fy22 budget presented here that being said tonight we ask the Dresden Community to support the request for an additional 4 1,000 or 1.44% to be added to the fy22 budget compared to last year early

100in the budget process this year the Dresden board set budget guidelines that sought to balance safety and excellence in our education programs with economic concerns faced by our community related to the covid-19 pandemic therefore the budget proposed tonight supports those priorities with a special note that the pandemic has put a spotlight on our outdated technology infrastructure our requested expenditure increase next year is spread over three divisions Richmond Middle School RMS hover High School HHS and sa70 districtwide which is the administrative body that Services both the middle and the high schools in the chart the smaller columns in the middle of the x-axis track the changes in each division from our current fy21 budget the gray column to the total proposed budget for fy22 the yellow column on the right of the $401,000 expenditure increase proposed

101103,000 comes from sa wide 19,000 comes from RMS and the rest comes from Hanover High however expenditures are are only half the story when we think about the next net tax assessment net assessment is calculated by expenditures less revenues and that gives us the total amount that would be divided between Hanover and Norwich taxpayers to fund similar to the chart on the last Slide the fy21 net assessment is the gray column and the new proposed fy22 net assessment is the yellow column the 41,000 expenditure increase uh in the orange there represents an increase of 1.88% to the net assessment there are two Revenue columns shown in purple on the chart and the first is an $819,000 loss of Revenue mostly tuition Revenue due to a smaller enrollment of Handover sixth grade students this is a

102big loss for Dresden and alone it pushed the net assessment 3.86% higher thankfully which we'll get to more later we expect to have a $500,000 balance carry forward from the fy21 Surplus that can help offset this loss of Revenue so this uh combined brings us to the 2.94 million in net assessment or a 3.39% increase compared to last year's budget our agenda tonight tonight will take us further into the budget starting with the enrollment Staffing and expenditure changes expected for sa70 districtwide Richmond Middle School and hover high school next we will discuss changes in our Revenue sources and then we will look at the net assessment again and calculate the assessment allotments for Handover and Norwich and finally especially because this year has been such an extraordinary Year we will share a progress report which

103shows the amazing work our school Community has done to educate our students in the midst of a pandemic and thank you for your support in that let's begin with the changes in sau70 districtwide expenditures the increase of $103,000 for the se70 districtwide expenditures is primarily driven by two items one found in the superintendent service line which is that largest line there that you see and the other the building maintenance and custodial line which is that second largest line uh first The Dresden share of the entire sau70 administrative Services is um is located in that superintendent Services line shown there the sa70 board has decided to invest in technology maintenance and improvements by adding an additional one and a half FTE to hire technology staff which would help implement the major infrastructure upgrade provided by the

104warrant article to that you heard earlier um but please note that sau70 Administration has advised us that the current system is difficult to maintain at current Staffing levels and would require the additional FTS regardless to maintain the existing infrastructure should the warrant article fail this together with other changes in the sau70 budget contribute to the nearly 91,000 increase in the Dresden District share of sau70 expenses the other significant change is related to building and maintenance and custodial expenditures this line has the impact of Warrant article four factored in and also increases in maintenance wages medical and New Hampshire retirement employer contributions the mandatory rate change in the New Hampshire retirement plan this year was significant and affected all of the Dresden schools um I would like to take a moment here to describe its impact

105because if one takes a look at the benefit lines and the detail budget you'll notice they jump up across the board and this is the reason why uh this is essentially the same story you have just heard if you attended the Handover budget presentation earlier this evening but for our Dresden audience the New Hampshire retirement system provides lifetime benefits as well as disability and death benefits to full-time New Hampshire state county and Municipal Employees teachers police officers and firefighters it also provides a postretirement medical subsidy benefit to eligible beneficiaries the New Hampshire retirement system sets employer contribution rates every two years the rate changes reflect the the cost of benefits as they acrew and pay down existing unfunded liabilities fy22 is one of these years that we received the updated rate and it was very

106large the contribution rate for teachers increased over 25% and employees increased 18% in order of impact the New Hampshire retirement system explained the that the increase was driven because of one of reduction of the long run rate of return from 7 and a qu% to 6.75% two an updated post retirement mortality and three a reduction in the payroll growth factor since Dresden is an interstate School District our teachers and employees have an option to either participate in the Vermont or the New Hampshire retirement system therefore any change to the New Hampshire employer contribution rate only affects dreads by the amount of staff who have elected the New Hampshire retirement plan this dampened the total budget increase but could still be felt Across The Dresden schools now let's see what else changed in the Dresden school

107budget starting with the Richmond Middle School generally our schools typic uh typically begin the budget process by projecting next year's enrollment at RMS our projected enrollment for fy22 is expected to be lower than last year's budget and also this year's actual even after factoring in the return of students who pursued other schooling options due to the pandemic The Columns in the chart are grouped in threes per grade level the gray columns are enrollment figures for the fy21 budget the yellow ones are fy21 actual and the blue ones are the fy22 projections even though actual enrollment dipped below the budget in this current year we were very grateful that we had the FTE available this year because it helped us staff our remote Academy while also keeping our in-person class sizes within our social distancing protocols

108looking to next year our staffing model has adjusted lower due to the lower projected enrollment in total we expect to reduce FTE by 2.38 compared to last year's budget the table shows FTE levels for two types of Staff certified and other with a total at the bottom right the changes from the prior Year's budget are shown with the subtotal amount in bold on the right for each Staffing category the combined 0.91 FTE reduction in certified staff are the result of a 04 reduction in math and computer Sciences some smaller adjustments and specials and the suspension of the 08 FTE what I need or win intervention teacher approved in last year's budget but was never filled due to pandemic planning in other staff of note there is a half FTE reduction in Administrative Office support and

109a one FTE reduction in special education AIDS the Staffing reductions helped RMS to plan for nearly level funded expenditures after accounting for our contractual obligations the total RMS budget for fy22 is up $1 19,000 or 0.24% from the prior year this chart shows the budget increases or decreases by function and the significant changes are explained on the next slide as referenced earlier the largest cost driver for RMS is the New Hampshire Retirement System rate increase totaling $85,000 this outpaced even our Union and non-union salary base increases of two and one and a half% respectively and track advances and steps combined of $84,000 we expect our medical benefits to increase 2.2% which after combined with retirement increase results in a 39,000 increase we had an increase of 18,000 in our maintenance and custodial operations services and

110supplies mostly related to the pandemic for upgraded filters and other HVAC needs the Staffing reductions combined with retirements proved helpful to balance these contracted salary and benefit increases as well as field trips and assemblies were not planned in light of the pandemic which helped offset the custodial Supply increases that ends the section on the middle school budget and moving on to the high school similar to the middle school we will discuss changes in the High School enrollment and how it Impact Staffing and expenditures whereas RMS expected lower enrollment Handover High School expects higher en enrollment overall it should be mentioned that enrollment projections were particular particularly challenging this year as we saw lower actual enr enrollment due to the pandemic than we typically would have this is true for um all of our grades except

111actually our senior class which grew 14 students over budget in fy22 we expect that we will have 7 720 students attending Handover High School fewer of them will be tuition students than the prior year budget which will negatively impact our projected Revenue Hanover High School reviewed our class sizes and sections in order to efficiently deliver the excellent programming we have available overall Handover high school plans to reduce Staffing by 2.21 FTE for certified staff special education needs are always changing and you'll see we have a 04 increase in ftes which is a 04 psychologist position initially funded an fy21 with offset in reductions in expenditure lines this position initially filled the need for extended on-site testing and other services which we feel are necessary to keep available to help students deal with any lasting pandemic

112related mental health issues due to some smaller class sizes we will be consolidating some of the number of special elective offerings which results in a 04 FTE reduction in regular Ed teaching in other certified staff the physical therapy area will be decreasing by 0.1 FTE due to changes in student needs and for other staff there is a small reduction in regular education Aid FTE due to a change in scheduled hours .11 we are also projecting a decrease in the need for special education assistance by two and a half FTE while there is no change in Personnel plan for the School administration office um and Department coordinators area we are working uh through last year's model change and have added some extra days for planning and curriculum work during breaks the total Handover high school budget

113for fy22 is up 279,000 or 1.89% from the prior year this breakdown by function is shown here um but perhaps more interesting um the significant changes are found on the next slide uh the impact of salary increases including track advances and steps for high school amount to 238,000 the New Hampshire Retirement System rate increase alone is 126,000 medical benefits are expected again to increase 2.2% and our nearly 65,000 um after including retirement increases additional work days are planned for Department coordinators as mentioned for the principal office and nursing to the tune of 25,000 maintenance custodial and services and operations are increasing again due to the pandemic and to round out the expenditure increases we have a 177,000 additional need for vocational education tuition hover High School found a 105,000 in savings from Staffing reductions combined

114with retirements contracted ground Services is also reducing 71,000 and textbook purchases have been reduced by 8,500 to recap The Dresden District proposes a 1.44% or a $41,000 uh growth in budget expenditures in fy22 given the expenditure headwinds the district fa this year um I would argue that this is a modest increase uh the last reported 12month inflation rate was 1.1% so this level is only slightly above that now due to now um to discuss the district's Revenue challenge dresden's sources of revenue are challenged mostly due to lower tuition enrollment in the sixth grade and at the high school this chart uh lists the current year sources of Revenue and how they have changed since last year as you can see they are all heading in the wrong direction and a total loss um to Total

115a loss of 819,000 the sixth grade tuition is the largest piece at a loss of $610,000 which we'll discuss more about in the next slide Handover High School tuition has been adjusted lower by 134,000 to reflect updated enrollment projections and the district forecasted 152 tuition students for the fy21 school year as of December 2020 we actually had 144 enrolled tuition students eight are part-time resulting in a total tuition payments of 140 tuition FTE we are projecting um 139 tuition students for fy22 representing 134 4,000 decrease in budget to budget tuition Revenue other local sources will be lower by 57,000 as we will not be transferring funds from um any reserves as we did um this year to help offset our first turf field payment we are also um projecting a decrease of nearly 18,000 in

116New Hampshire State reimbursements mainly from a change in construction re reimbursement and now let's explore that loss of sixth grade tuition there are two reasons for the down swing both of which have the same explanation that there are just fewer students in the f um than in the fy21 budget uh first shown on the left slide in teal there the current sixth grade class in the fy21 school year was actually smaller by five students compared to what we expected in the budget of 91 students our tuition agreement states that we must catch up this difference between budget and actual in the following year which would be the fy22 budget under a line item called prior year adjustment the net change in the prior year adjustment line is about 419,000 the 419,000 is larger if you're

117doing the math at home than a reduction of only five students from our budgeted estimate and that's because we had a large adjustment amount from the fy20 enrollment sitting there from the year prior this cascading volatility related to the true up payment is something we're trying to stop with our proposed Dresden warrant article number six W but there'll be more discussion on that later tonight the second reason shown in Purp purle on the right is that the current class of fifth graders is a small class and they will be sixth graders in fy22 hopefully we expect that to have 79 students in sixth grade next year down from 91 students the year before and that 12 student reduction will subtract an additional 190,000 from the budget altogether this gives us the $610,000 decrease we saw

118before but really all is not lost in Revenue land thankfully as you saw before we have a favorable swing in our balance carry forward the balance carry forward shown at the bottom of this chart is sourced from known Surplus from this school year fy21 that will be applied to offset taxation next year and that's why it's a source of Revenue in the fy22 budget the balance carry forward is expected to be at least $500,000 larger than last year mostly because the district is expected to release some of the retained fy20 Surplus that was generated when schools closed for in-person learning in addition to finding Savings in our current year budget These funds called retainage totaling 661 th000 were held back in fy21 in the beginning of this fiscal year because the board anticip ated to

119use um the funds for expenditures related to covid-19 safety precautions and programming thankfully during the school year the district was awarded covid-19 relief grants that made it so the district did not have to solely fund our covid-19 expenses and while this is a board decision to make by October of this year it's fair to say that we do not anticipate releasing all of the retainage as this is the district's only source of emergency Reserve funds in a normal year we have voter authorization to carry Surplus up to 2 and a half% of the current fiscal Year's net assessment to keep for emergency funds but of course this is not a normal year in response to the pandemic the New Hampshire Governor signed an executive order that allowed school districts to retain surplus of up to

1205% of the net assessment and not the two and a half percent after a review of our anticipated covid-19 expenditures the dresen board decided to retain 4.62% of the net assessment to cover this year's emergency expenditures the fy22 balance carry forward amount assumes that we return to our typical Two and A half% Levels as we begin to see the light hopefully at the end of this um pandemic tunnel therefore we feel comfortable at this time we will have a larger Surplus and can increase our balance carry forward amount overall there is a 319,000 budget to- budget loss of total revenue so to take stock we've covered dresen expenditures and revenues so what's left to talk about is the net assessment and how it will be shared between Hanover and Norwich as a refresher we are

121anticipating a 3.39% increase in the net assessment caused by that $41,000 increase in expenditures and the 319,000 loss of Revenue which brings us to the uh total fy22 net assessment of 2.94 million the 2.94 million net assessment is allocated between Hanover and Norwich based on student enrollment by a calculation of average daily membership uh for grades 7 through 12 in the graph on the left you will see the change of student enrollment between the two towns for the fy22 budget norch will be sending more students to Dresden than norch did the year before so norch will be picking up 1.5 29% more of the net assessment each Town share is calculated by taking the total dresda net assessment and multiplying it times each Town's portion of enrollment and then it is adjusted by some pre-agreed

122State and debt arrangements to give us the final share a small change in the average daily membership can result in significant changes between the town shares budget to budget particularly if there is a substantial swing in the total net assessment too this is the case this year and why Handover will see a 1.13% budget to- budget increase in its share of the Dresden assessment but norch will see an 8.22% with all warrant articles approved without warrant Article 4 Handover would have its share increase 1.05% and norch would have its share increase 8.13% with all worrn articles approved in combined with the elementary school assessment this results in a projected fy22 tax rate increase for Handover of 8% or $40 on a $400,000 excessed assessed home for Norwich and this is probably best described in the

123norch district by our norch board members with all warrant articles approved and combined with the elementary school assessments this would result in a tax rate increase for norch of 7.86% or $572 on a $400,000 excessed home in addition to the enrollment enrollment swing what is complicated matters for Norwich is that the common level of appraisal has again dropped considerably from 94.6% down to 90.2% which has caused more than half of the tax rate increase when we start talking tax rates that usually means we're we're nearing the end so I hope that we H kind of have joined our journey through the fy22 budget for dresen this evening you can see that there are many moving parts and most of which are um frankly out of the district's control but we have kept our students education

124and safety first and foremost and where possible shaped a budget that reflects the economic challenges faced by our community due to the pandemic finally before I conclude our presentation um we would like to share with the community um the amazing effort our school um has taken this year to safely reopen schools during the pandemic and this year perhaps more than any other year it seems fitting to show um how we've used the resources the community has provided for us for the educational benefit of our students um the preparations for the school this year began um shortly after the school closed for in-person learning last March uh we were faced with an already approved approved budget and we didn't know if covid-19 relief grants would ever come and the school board and administration made the decision

125to shift Jon into a um a saving mode in fy20 so that we could be in a secure financial position to self fund the necessary covid-19 related expenditures we wanted the decision to reopen schools be won based on education and public health guidance and not one that was based on finances the sau70 form formed an advisory committee consisting of school board members Administration teachers staff and public health experts from our community and that was tasked to recommend a school reopening plan the plan the task force recommended and the board adopted provided for multiple phases of opening depending on the prevalence of covid-19 in our school Community following CDC recommendations and other public health protocols a key feature of this plan was that our schools provided families an option of inperson or remote learning and gave

126students the ability to switch between the two learning modes at certain points throughout the year this option has been helpful to our students and their families but also it has been helpful for teachers and staff who needed to make the best decisions for their families too this flexibility was not made possible had we not worked to retain as much Surplus as we could the year before because the covid-19 grant funding did not arrive until well into the school year this Surplus now has a second life in the fy22 budget because um it is now in that balance carry forward as we're able to return it to taxpayers in a time that our community may need the relief most turning to the Middle School specifically if you recall RMS made the decision to forgo hiring the

127budgeted what I need win teacher which help us form and staff the remote Academy at the beginning of the school year year 30 students elected to participate in the remote Academy at RMS and four sixth grade students attended remote classes at Maran cross there are many benefits to the sau70 interstate relationship but I wanted to highlight this one in particular because it was a neighborly act of kindness in the short time between when families elected between inperson and remote and the start of the school year it was unclear how RMS would educate the four remote sixth graders from hover because the remote cohort was too small to create a separate class and resources were limited the Norwich School Board stepped up and offered to include these students in their existing remote class at Maran cross

128without requiring tuition or a separate tuition agreement this was very helpful so thank you um social and emotional curriculum was a priority this year and a new guide idance class was implemented for the remote students in particular perhaps in what is a surprise to No One the vast majority of students report no issue with the increased amount of screen time they have had this year um moving to our in-person learning program which uh most of our students elected this year the students were divided into cohorts of 15 to 20 students each and even smaller student groups of seven to attend for lunch and breaks supervised by a staff member for the most part this seemed to provide more stability and improve the quality of relationships the students formed RMS saw a high 98% attendance rate

129and 94% of RMS students reported that they feel safe at school um here is a glimpse of what life has been like at the middle school this year um there can see in the upper left there's decorated pumpkin signs hung up around Halloween to encourage adherence to covid-19 protocols in the top Center these are pedestrian uh traffic signs prepared to help each section um you know navigate safe distance during passing periods each cohort during breaks were given its own set of color-coordinated sports equipment and when students teachers or staff had to quarantine RMS found Creative Solutions to keep the learning going more time was spent outdoors in outdoor classrooms whenever possible which gives us this beautiful fall color photo in the middle there and concerts were moved to more spacious venues in the bottom left

130here corner um here are seventh and eighth graders who build exterior stairs to help community members improve their building access and in the bottom middle photo um this is a students Anatomy assignment of the knee which is beautiful um and so and actually so is the last photo which is a canvas painting by a student that was painted with brushes supplied by the friends of Hanover Norwich schools so I kind of moving to the high school I I think it's fair to say that the high school had the biggest challenge to overcome in our district this year as it is the largest and most complex program this was also the same year we had a leadership change in the principal's office with a new interim principal and Associate principal they both Dove right in to

131help us navigate the high school planning mid pandemic 94% of students enrolled for in-person and 6% of students elected remote at the beginning of the school year the high school did see um a bit higher elections for in-person learning than at the middle school the class schedule had to be completely rearranged with a remote dat day given on Wednesday so programs that had large groups like student council could still continue and this is likely not the last of the schedule changes as the high school has continued to um its work to propose a new block schedule that will likely see a pilot next year and this schedule provides longer classes um for courses that need more single blocks of time um like history and English and shorter more frequent classes for courses like math or

132foreign language that would benef benefit from more weekly check-ins um this current proposal would also carve out a more dedicated time for lunch each day so more to follow there our Athletics program continued and state um and followed State protocols um Behavior reports were notably lower this year and like the middle school the high school focused on school and emot a social and emotional curriculum this year and established a new advisory program to help help students build coping skills March intensive will continue this year but it has been moved to May hopefully with better weather in more outdoor um activities and the courses will stay local and really the school marched on of special note the sau70 equity committee work continued um its work from the year before uh the sau70 equity committee is an

133swide community-based um committee that is dedicated to improving issues of diversity equity and inclusion in our district this year there has been facilitated comprehensive professional development and training available to All District staff on these topics and in a related but separate work the student council is contemplating what it means to be a Marauder and whether or not the marauder mascot best represents Handover High School um so here are some photos of our high school students experience this year again it's complete with the daily health screening plexiglass tables social distancing and more individual projects all of which has kind of become our new normal and we not all that easy to implement in warmer weather as you can see in the upper right hand corner there is an outdoor concert and in the bottom center an

134outdoor theater and there were some real ingenious moves made to keep programs safe and active for example one change that was even featured on an nhpr segment was how Handover High could bring music back but keep the covid-19 risk low the school converted this Auditorium into a music classroom student musicians wore masks and even dampened the bells of their instruments with panty hose type covers shown in the left middle photo the district also purchased resonance masks which is a special type of mask design for singers it's truly really amazing how fast and comprehensive the district move to provide our students with the most normal school experi experience possible and so with that I'd like to conclude with a round of sincere thanks to everyone in Dresden because your hard work and diligence made this school

135year possible from students to teachers to nurses to parents and the community we all needed to rely on one another to keep us safe and the doors open thank you okay Kim thank you so much I think Jamie has an update on one slide though I do and it's um late breaking news uh it's an very encouraging late breaking news uh that has to do with the Norwich uh potential increase to their uh School tax rate um we posted an update on the Norwich School District portion of our website uh late last last night um and it has to do with um potential ratification of a new base yield law which will actually change the projected increase uh for the Norwich tax rate from where we were at um earlier around 14 cents actually down

136to about three cents so it's great news um once they ratify that yield law and that will actually change uh the projection of an increase on a $500,000 home down from what we thought was going to be the $572 uh to actually down to $165 uh so it's a drop or change of $47 so that information um has been posted on the district website for the Norwich folks and we'll go over that again um on Monday night at the Norwich meeting but uh Kim didn't have that updated information so so I apologize we'll get all of these um wonderful PowerPoints also posted to our website for everybody if you want to review them again thank you thank you so much that's very great information really good information to have uh Carrie Callahan I think is

137going to talk on behalf of the Han finance committee correct and he is let's see I'll Tom can you hear me yes we can now okay thank you um yes this is Carrie Callahan Vice chair of the Hanover finance committee 9 North Park Street in Hanover um let me first of all thank um Kim and all those who assisted her on what it was an exceptionally clear presentation of what even in a normal year is a very complicated um budget so um thank you Kim and others for a great presentation thank you too for the progress reports which were really heartening um of what's going on at RMS in in hanur high school um I I know uh the finance committee but really the entire Community is so appreciative of all that's been done to

138protect our students staff and community in this very challenging year a special uh shout out and thanks alongside yours to the Nord school board for the remote Academy contribution um and collaboration which was very much appreciated with respect to the budget um the finance committee um commends the resident Administration and the school board for a very well-run budget process in obviously challenging circumstances um the finance committee appreciated the timely response to uh covid-19 impacts uh the reallocation of resources to meet those demands uh really being an ex excellent example of fiscal management and responsibility um during a public meeting on January 14th um the Han finance committee voted unanimously to support the proposed fiscal year 22 Dresden School District budget of uh what appears in Warren Article 5 of 28 m174 181 um many difficult

139decisions were made in this year's budget with deferrals on certain Capital Improvements new textbooks field trips Staffing levels in order to reach an overall increase of 1.4% uh and those uh in the budget want those steps really help to keep other District cost pressures really the New Hampshire retirement system contribution health care benefits wage rates from driving the overall results higher um so um really um an exceptional job all around thank you thank you Carrie are there any other folks on Zoom who would like to make a comment ask a question I'm looking down I don't see anyone with their hand raised okay that being the case we will turn to article six and article six is a little unusual as um shall the drent school district vote to amend its articles of agreement specifically

140article D effective as of the 2022 2023 school year to read as follows and what I'm going to to do is I'm going to read the existing text and then I'll stop and tell you that what I'm now reading is the additional text and then when that's done I'll tell you that that's over and I'll read the remaining portion of the paragraph I think that's the best way to cover it for those of you who are listening so subp paragraph D the dresen school district shall be responsible for grades 7 through 12 inclusive and here is the new language provided however that Dresden School District shall be responsible additionally for grade six upon the affirmative vote of a member School District designating Dresden School District as the exclusive provider of sixth grade educational services to

141the students of such member School District which designation shall become effective no earlier than the fiscal year following the normal annual meeting or such later date as the Dresden School Board determines in its discretion is necessary to permit the construction of any Capital Improvements to accommodate the projected additional students such designation shall be conditioned upon the member district contributing its Equitable share to the capital as determined by The Dresden school board for incremental grade six building costs if such contribution is not made such designation shall be deemed to have been made on a space available rather than exclusive basis that ends the new language and then continuing on with the rest of the section the dresen school district May operate schools to for grades other than grades 7 through 12 for students reive on a

142tuition basis no tuition students shall be received from the Norwich and Hanover school districts by The Dresden School District except pursuant to a tuition contract approved by the receiving and sending districts School Board recommends this article and Kim is going to explain it for us and Kim has been done doing a lot of explaining tonight in both of these meetings and she's done very well and you're on stage again Kim go ahead yes I am back um so after presenting the warrant article with the biggest number in it I now have the honor of presenting the warrant article with the longest sentence in it um I'm not sure how I got to be so lucky but um while so while I'll be presenting the slides tonight um on behalf of the Dresden board uh this

143new arrangement for the Dresden sixth grade education is the result of a joint effort between members of the Handover finance committee members of the Handover and norch school boards and the sau70 administration the member names are listed here um on the first slide and this presentation was presented to Handover and Dresden School boards and each board has approved a related warrant article based on the joint working group's recommendation The Joint working group was first commissioned by the Handover uh School Board because we have along recognized that our current sixth grade tuition Arrangement between hover and Dresden has some serious shortcomings most importantly because it is a hindrance to long-term strategic planning for the entire sau70 the shortcomings are mostly related to the financial structure of the arrangement The Dresden Interstate partnership has been mutually beneficial

144to Handover and Norwich residents over the years this proposed change to the sixth grade tuition does not intend to disrupt this relationship nor significantly alter which town pays for what this is much more about changing how the schools are funded rather than the how much the Handover board requested the Handover finance committee be a resource to the school board on this financial matter as their constitution allows specifically on how to improve the sixth grade tuition arrangement The Dresden board is tremendously grateful in particular for the financial analysis and discussion contributed by the members of the Handover finance committee uh this proposal has two key Parts under consideration one is what the recommended formula change would be to improve the Handover sixth grade Financial Arrangement and two would be how could we get that implemented legally

145um under our interstate compact or simply put what this warrant article means in place plain English uh this evening I plan to walk you through the proposed change in the sixth grade tuition Arrangement and explain our request for voters to support this warrant article on the upcoming March ballot I will give you a fair warning that this discussion will some involve some detailed calculations and so I will do our my best to lead us through it um but I'm also happy to answer any questions at the end of the presentation and actually most of it is really just sharing what we do already maybe oversharing and so I apologize for the length um this is our dis uh agenda tonight first I will discuss the current tuition arrangement for this Handover sixth graders so we

146can understand the problem we're trying to solve then I will present the proposed change the sixth grade Arrangement including a review of its methodology and a cost benefit analysis and finally I'll disect the warrant article language to help help explain um how that warrant article enacts the change most changes especially to Legal agreements uh can have a ripple effect so the reason for the lengthy sentences in the warrant article is really meant to calm these waves um which we'll discuss more about when we get to that section so let's get started okay current Handover sixth grade tuition Arrangement um what do we do today to understand that let's discuss really who's in involved uh due to our Interstate legal and governance structure we have four districts but really three major ones in sau70 they are

147Hanover Dresden and Norwich and each play its own separate educational role and the budgets are voted on separately the responsibilities of each district are listed uh below and at least in part under the buildings um but most importantly for our discussion tonight tonight the Handover School District includes the ray school which is K through five and then also it pays tuition to Dresden for the entire sixth grade for the interstate compact shared between the towns of hover and Norwich Dresden is technically now grades s through 12 with the other grades like sixth grade available to be provided via tuition Arrangement let's now explore what this tuition relationship is and touch a little bit about budget terminology although thankfully we just reviewed budgets in the last warrant article so hopefully this is an easy review so

148as I said earlier the Handover District pays Dresden tuition um for the sixth grade and before we take a look at how that tuition is calculated I um wanted to review these budget terms um we use them commonly and they can sound familiar but they are a little different so first at least in this presentation uh budget typically refers to just the expenditures which is that like grossed up amount um kind of what the school can control whereas the net assessment subtracts the revenue the district receives from it and the net assessment is what gets requested by local taxpayers to fund shown here are the major components of the net assessment for hover and Dresden and the sixth grade tuition expense is found in the Handover District budget and it also appears as Revenue in

149Dresden and imp impacts The Dresden net assessment keep in mind that all sixth grade expenditures and revenue are within the Dresden net assessment which is then shared between Hanover and Norwich even though Hanover is the only member that currently sends sixth grade students to Dresden with those terms of budget and net assessment under our belts let's dive a bit deeper into how the tuition amount is calculated currently the current sixth grade tuition payment is calculated on a projected average cost per people basis the calculation is found here on slide six and we first um first we take the average cost per pupil at RMS from the prior year or um the last completed year so not all of Dresden we just take the RMS average cost per people then we multiply that by our best

150estimate of how many sixth graders we think will enroll in the budget this year and this is where we need a crystal ball then we add back the capital cost of um building the sixth grade Wing at RMS when RMS was built it was built a bit larger to accommodate the Handover sixth grade Handover taxpayers alone will finish paying that Wing off over the next few years however it is important to note that all of RMS including the sixth grade Wing is dresed in property despite Handover taxpayers deciding to pay for more of it back in 2003 then um we have to True up the prior Year's estimate uh to actual or the difference between how many students actually enrolled versus what was estimated in the budget the year before and this adjustment can go

151up or down this current method particularly with the projections and trups can make the sixth grade tuition payments swing quite substantially year to year here are the payments or sorry here are the the year-to-year changes for the sixth grade uh tuition payments over the last 10 years as you can see we've had some rather large swings close to $1 million in fy21 it's almost every other year that there's a swing back and forth as the size of the six grade cohort changes but also because there were those makeup payments when a class siiz estimate appears to be edging toward one extreme or the other like in fy20 with a small cohort and fy21 with a large cohort we have found that the extreme doesn't often materialize so then there's a makeup payment the following year

152that tends to double down on the tuition payment swing the next year um interestingly the the average if you took the average of these columns the 10year change in tuition is a mere $27,000 decrease per year but that mild average doesn't reflect our experience each year crafting the budget these swings aren't just interdistrict transfers that wash out every year they're real and impact the school budget planning across the SAU so much that budget need to be adjusted around them as an example let's take a closer look as to what happened to the district budgets over the last couple of years in the fy21 budget which is the last year's budget or this current year that we're in um there was expected to be a large sixth grade cohort which means a large tuition expense for

153the Handover District let's see what the final budget was for the Handover District that year first and then we'll see what happens the following year the fy22 budget uh so this chart steps through the changes between the Handover District's budget in 2020 2021 compared to the year before um overall the Handover budget that year increased 7.57% that seven plus percent budget increase is quite the headline of course after some further digging um it was mostly driven by the increase in the sixth grade tuition as you can see here because of this large swing um we as a Handover board thought it best to keep all the other cost increases modest to help cushion this increase and deliver a budget that the town would support and thankfully did you may be thinking but isn't hand overpaying

154itself is there even a real tax impact and and the answer is well somewhat it's a bit complicated Dresden itself is about 2third Handover and onethird Norwich a split we'll get it into more later therefore the Handover taxpayers pays itself to Dresden about 66 cents for every dollar of tuition money that gets transferred that means Handover taxpayers will have a real tax impact of about a third of the total tuition amount or the remaining 33 cents and norch will see a real assessment benefit of about a third of the tuition Revenue that comes into H to Dresden and one might think well maybe it was just one large year or hm that's still sounds like a Handover problem good thing we're in Dresden um well no as you see the following year which is this

155budget year currently up for a vote we see that it's really not just a Handover problem um as we discussed in the last warrant article this budget cycle Dresden is feeling the loss of the sixth grade tuition that it had the year before and this loss is a major driver of the fy22 net assessment of the 3.39 % net assessment increase proposed the vast majority of that increase actually 82% of it is due to the loss of the sixth grade tuition Revenue alone or 2.78% of the total increase since Norwich doesn't pay tuition to Dresden and thus won't see a benefit of a small tuition payment reflected on their Elementary School books like canover does fy22 is an unfavorable Year to norch taxpayers all else being equal um especially when their Dresden share is compared

156to the year um to the prior year when norch received its share of the benefit of the large tuition payment the year before um therefore unfortunately we as a board had to have a similar discussion in Dresden that we had in Handover the year before in keeping expenditures nearly level funded to accommodate the loss of tuition in addition to being in a pandemic um as a board member it is frustrating and disappointing to have our budgets be so dictated on something that is essentially a fixed cost which is sixth grade education and here in lies the problem with our current tuition arrangement in a nutshell the current tuition Arrangement generates larger than necessary swings that make it at best confusing to voters and worse um the current AR Arrangement restricts our ability to plan in

157the long term again the Handover and Dresden budgets are voted separately so the combined tax rate is really only presented in these Town Hall meetings and board meetings discussions and mailing so so it's possible that an average voter may only look at the overall budget or net assessment percent increase from a news headline and think what's going on at the schools um each Town Handover and norch are exposed to roughly onethird of the tuition payment swings each year and so we really are in this together the interdistrict tuition payments make it hard to understand the real budget drivers for example um norch will face um a larger increase that 8.22% increase of its share of the fy22 Dresden net assessment but uh Dresden is only planning to spend 1.44% more and sixth grade tuition is

158a major factor there um because the tuition swings can be quite large it creates an obstacle to including new strategic Investments or even routine maintenance items in the budget year that we'd most like to do them which wrecks Havoc when when thinking about long-term strategic planning um a couple other points the first of which is that some have compared the tuition rate that Handover pays with the tuition rate for our out ofate District students and this creates an awkward discussion is one will ask why one is paying more than the other and the other is that the true up payment um seems to um increase the volatility of the tuition payments and improving our forecasting accuracy isn't exactly feasible at this point um so with all that said is there a better way that doesn't

159significantly change the Equitable amount each Town pays into Dresden but rather changes how Dresden gets paid to fix these issues and this is what the school boards and Joint working group look to accomplish and here is our recommendation so after what has been a quite a complex discussion uh the recommendation is actually rather straightforward um despite the warrant article language um The Dresden board recommends that the sixth grade should be included in Dresden and therefore follow the exam exact same Capital assessment allocation called the ADM formula currently used for the rest of the grades 7 through 12 we will talk more about what the ADM formula is on the next slide uh this is only if a member district Hanover or norch votes to designate that Dresden is an exclusive provider of sixth grade education

160currently only Hanover does this in practice but but this option would be open to any member district there is a warrant article on the Handover District ballot this year proposing to designate Dresden as the exclusive provider of sixth grade education that is contingent upon this warrant article passing assuming both warrant articles pass the Dr uh the result is that the Handover school district will no longer pay tuition to Dresden and all sixth grade expenses with stay within Dresden Handover taxpayers would still pay for the sixth grade education but it would now be included as part of Handover share of the Dresden assessment so what is this ADM formula well it is what we're already doing for the rest of the grades but for a little lecture on that um ADM stands for average daily membership

161and it's a measure of enrollment that is certified by the state a ADM uh for Dresden is the average daily enrollment uh currently of grades seven through 12th grades who reside in hover or Norwich ADM is important because after some pre-agreed debt and revenue adjustments are made the Dresden net assessment is allocated between hover and Norwich based on the average student enrollment or ADM from each town over the last completed school year this end ends up effectively a two-year lag between the year from which the ADM is calculated and the year that the net assessment is being allocated for example the ADM from the 2019 2020 school year dictates the allocation of the fy22 net assessment the Handover sixth grade students have TP have historically been removed from the ADM calculation because they were already

162accounted for under the tuition arrangement however um again recall that Hanover and norch is um still share the Handover sixth grade operating expenses and the tuition Revenue by the percentage split determined by ADM for grades 7 through 12 or for those who are more visual Learners like me um what does the recommendation look like and how does the ADM work um so if you can recall what's happening now in the current method the dresda net assess investment or all expenditures less all revenues including sixth grade tuition gets allocated between Hanover and norch based on the ADM for grades seven through 12 and this is what it would look like under the new proposed method if dresen were to officially include the sixth grade just like the rest of the grades then the net assessment would

163be higher because there wouldn't be any tuition Revenue but Handover would be taking a larger share of the net assessment due to a a higher ADM enrollment percentage because Norwich does not currently send any sixth graders to Dresden in essence this is simply consolidating Hanover's contribution to Dresden into one calculation below the net assessment line versus having it as a revenue piece for the sixth grade and an ADM piece for the rest of the grades so how much is this larger share of the net assessment uh to do this the working group looked at the last 10 years years and figured out how much the ADM would have increased if we had added the sixth grade and then that would have that would tell us how much each um Town share would have changed if

164the new method would have been implemented so first this is our actual 10-year ADM enrollment history for grades seven through 12 Handover is the dark blue columns and norch is the light blue columns you can see that Handover tends to send roughly 2third of the enrollment um and Norwich oneir which is why I said Dresden is roughly two3 Handover one3 Norwich um if the Handover sixth grade is included in the ADM then approximately 3% would be added to Hanover's ADM share each year this means that Handover would pay about 3% more and that purple section of the chart um is the 3% and nor which would pay 3% less based on the new ADM but remember the Handover District would no longer have to pay any tuition expense on its books and nor would not

165receive any of the tuition Revenue as before so now let's figure out how much each town would have paid over the last 10 years had we been using the new method and bear with me this is where the math comes in um so and actually before before we look at the new method this is what um is done now to calculate each Town share of the dresen assessment what do we currently do now Handover share is calculated first then norwich's share is backed out of that against the total assessment so to calculate Handover share of the Dresden assessment first we adjust the Dresden net assessment based on the pre-agreed method that adds back the New Hampshire State Building Aid and subtracts the 2007 Athletic Field Bond or debt then we take the adjusted net assessment

166and multiply it by Hanover's ADM percentage for grades 7 through 12 and that gives us Hanover's preliminary share it's preliminary because we have to add back those same adjustments from up top to give us our final Handover share of the Dresden assessment the new method will look exactly the same except the ADM will be changed to include the sixth grade and the dresda net assessment won't include the sixth grade tuition those changes are shown here in red and the ADM on the Handover share of the 2007 Athletic Field bond is also highlighted red because it is tied to the ADM thus Hanover will pay a slightly higher amount of the remaining Bond payment if its ADM is higher now let's take this ADM formula and fill in our 10 years worth of data to compare

167the new method against the current method we already have the current figures available um the history so we need to figure out the Dresden Town shares under the new method starting with Handover um and norch is the inverse of that so again this is simply the ADM formula we walked through on the slide before now um only now the numbers are added uh the far right hand column gives us what Hanover's final share of the dresine assessment would have been under the new method and this would include all Education costs for grades six through 12 if we wanted to compare the costs of the new method against the current method we would have to take this far right hand right hand column shown here and compare it against the current method which would be the

168sum of the sixth grade tuition cost in Hover district and Hanover's share of the drna assessment when the ADM was grades s through 12 if we wanted to see what the difference looks like on a graph we can look at the next slide here's the current share compared to the new share of the dresen grades uh 6 through 12 cost for hover and Norwich the dark blue line is is Hanover's contribution under the current method the light blue line is Hanover's contribution under the new method the purple line is is norwich's contribution under the current method and the TL line is norwich's contribution under the new method yeah they're really are four lines there um the two method result in a strikingly similar end result overall but there are some differences um the net changes

169from handovers perspective um are listed in the boxes on the top for each year and norch is essentially the inverse of that like I said before so as you can see some years one method requires Handover to pay more and some years Handover would have to pay less compared the method and vice versa for Norwich based on this data um hover would face an average annual increase of about 40,000 more under the new versus the current method this represents approximately 0.16% of our local School tax effort in Handover uh there are three reasons for the variance between methods uh first as mentioned before Handover share of the athletic field debt is calculated by ADM about 6,100 of the 40,000 average differences related to that the rest involves timing the second reason is that the net

170assessment being charged to the sixth grade is based from different budget years in the current method the tuition rate is based on the prior Year's average cost but in the new method the active budget year net assessment is the one being allocated the third and final reason is that the number of sixth grade students is different in the current method the class size is estimated and then Tred up the from the following year in the new method the ADM is from two years PR but it never has to be Tred up because it's an actual just like what is done for grades 7 through 12 we noted that the year-to-year increases have been problematic with the current method and so in addition to checking for substantial variance between the current method and the new method

171we wanted to see if the new method would be less volatile than the current and this is what's trying to be shown here so what's interesting is that when we compare the methods against themselves so the change year-to year comparing the current method over the current method or the new over the year new over time is that the average annual cost increase or how much more on average Handover would have to pay every year or Norwich in the inverse was nearly identical between uh the two methods but the new method had lower volatility in fact six out of the nine years the new method had a smaller annual increase and as a result the new method had a standard deviation that was less than the current method therefore it is more likely than not um

172that the new method will be less volatile yet still relatively Equitable okay so that seems like the new method is more straightforward relatively Equitable and less volatile but that was all looking backwards um all the data up and this point has been historical and um but if the warrant article passes this method would not really begin until at least FY 23 so we wanted to look ahead into our crystal ball and see what the projected Dresden enrollment which is a proxy for ADM could be the roughly 3% average uh increase to the ADM still holds in this projection and since the new method involves a larger population since will now be including the sixth grade class it means that the impact of one additional student is less so dampening those assessment swings meaning that the

173new formula is less sensitive um to going to the cost benefit analysis for the benefits there there really many benefits to this method um which is why we're proposing it um in addition to the lower volatility and sensitivity the new method also improves alignment with what is happening in the real world as the Handover sixth graders in practice are already part of Dresden they attend a Dresden building taught by Dresden teachers and aside from the capital cost to build the sixth grade Wing we don't currently treat the expenditures associated with the sixth grade any different than we do for the rest of Dresden therefore when Dresden costs are kept within Dresden Dres um then the only District that really needs to worry about the dresen sixth grade is Dresden um we can plan accordingly and

174voters will see a cleaner net assessment also there won't be an IND District student rate a tuition rate for anyone to compare against and something we haven't touched on yet but the new method reduces the opportunities for kind of calculation errors as there'll be fewer calculations required we would all be following the same formula for the same enrollment year moreover this change would provide a streamline legal Avenue to include nor sixth grade into Dresden should there ever be be a desire and finally this makes Capital Improvements to RMS more straightforward since the entire RMS building will fall under the same Dres and allocation method going forward um of course there there are some considerations to the proposal and they are um one the new method could potentially be more expens uh expensive to hand over

175on a 10-year average we saw as I said before a .6% of the local um School tax effort increase or um that 40,000 per year in total for a $500,000 assessed home in Handover this would represent an average increase of $8.74 beginning in 2223 and would decrease by a133 after the athletic field um bond is paid off also the Handover sixth grade Reserve fund um would would no longer be a tool to balance out swings in town tax assessment as a sixth grade would be in Dresden and Dresden cannot have Reserve funds for the interstate compact however hopefully we wouldn't need to do this as much because it's a less volatile method but also please note that the current method does have added costs added to it too and one is that the Handover School

176Board absent any other ability to do so had been maintaining a reserve fund to smooth out these wild fluctuations by the end of the year we expect to have about $100,000 remaining in the reserve fund which the Handover school board will need to discuss how to handle but that could be returned to Handover taxpayers and finally we will need to confirm but it is our understanding that Bridgeman funds could still serve Handover six graders as in the past there may be some work to do with Bridgeman uh trustees should the sixth graders be officially considered Dresden but we are hopeful we can find a solution there so finally how do we make this change happen on the March 2nd ballots um the Handover School District may vote whether or not to designate The Dresden School

177District as the exclusive provider of sixth grade education and that will be contingent upon the passage of the Dresden warrant article which is that the Dresden School District votes whether or not to amend the article's agreement to expand Dresden sixth grade education only if a member School District designates Dresden as its exclusive provider if both passed then the Handover sixth grade could join Dresden as early as FY 23 school year uh here again is that recommended warrant language for Dresden the new Under the new material to the articles of agreement is underlined and one may think that the warrant article language could be simple because we're saying let's have Dresden include in the sixth grade too we could just delete seven and write six right um um but the legal jargon is so that we

178can have a fair process to account for the possibility that Dresden may see norch students join the sixth grade as well this is the ripple effect I mentioned earlier so in the spirit of the interstate partnership we wanted to provide each member district Handover and norch with the same option to access a drent education thus we didn't want to say that this change would only apply to Handover even though Handover is the only one sending six graders now however if we were to Simply say that Dresden now includes the sixth grade for our member districts and call it a day assuming Hanover designates Dresden um as the exclusive provider for six for dresen sixth grade this would now make Hanover pay roughly 70% and norwi 30% of all future capital and operating costs and that

179would seem fair because that's how enrollment would fall however if and when Norwich should ever want to send their sixth graders over to RMS and there would be a need to expand the RMS campus let's say build another sixth grade Wing to accommodate the norch students then without this added language described in the warrant article Hanover would be obligated to pay 2third or whatever the new enrollment number would be um for the new construction and this really would be against the precedent um that was set in 2003 when Handover taxpayers agreed to solely pay for the Dresden expansion of the Middle School in order to construct that sixth grade Wing that would be used for Handover sixth graders and that Arrangement was deemed fair by voters then because Handover was paying 100% for essentially 100%

180of its use um but concerns were raised while drafting this warrant article that should Norwich sixth grade students ever require the same Capital expansion it would not be fair that Handover taxpayers would likely have to pay for most of it therefore the working group consulted with our legal council and constructed a process described in the warrant article that would let the Dresden board determine each member's Equitable contribution of the incremental sixth grade building cost what's not stated here explicitly is that any large Capital Improvements would likely require a bond and per statue that proposal would have to be sent to voters for approval so this really isn't solely in the hands of the dress in board but I guess I digress there um another issue to resolve was that we wanted the Dresden District to

181retain some control over the timing of when a member district would begin to send their sixth grade students basically we wanted to prevent the chance I'll be a very small chance that a member district would vote to send its sixth graders to RMS exclusively but RMS wouldn't have the space available to educate them so in plain English this is the process C described in the Warren article this is my attempt to say it in English U the member district Handover oror needs to vote stating its desire for Dresden to become the exclusive provider for the sixth grade this requires the Dresden board to investigate and determine if any Capital Improvements would be required to accommodate the new students over a projected time period and not just with one small class class if the new students

182trigger a need for incremental construction then the Dresden board will determine what the Equitable Financial Arrangement should be at that time and the member district cannot send students on an exclusive basis until the construction is completed however the member district could send them on a space available basis even if no construction is required there needs to be at least a year delay between the member District's vote and when the new students enroll so that Dresden can have time to account for the additional operating costs in the middle school budget so that concludes our presentation of Warrant article number six and we hope that you will join us in support of the change to the sixth grade Arrangement proposed thank you well Kim thank you very much uh that's a very complicated presentation and you did

183it very very well frankly um and I think Carrie is going to speak on behalf of the uh finance committee yes thank you Tom um and Kim a absolute tour to force um thank you so much that was incredibly thorough um so and I think reflective of the enormous amount of work that Kim put into this process so thank you for that um Kudos are also owed to KI osmus who in the middle of this process had the simple but radical idea of Simply including sixth graders in the ADM membership which is um um an elegant and simple um solution um I think the case for um article six is it can be clear it's less volatility to taxpayers it's increased transparency for the budget making process it's the elimination of that tuition Reserve fund

184which is a real um dollar set aside by Han taxpayers which will not be necessary going forward um it absolutely facilitates potential future enrollment from another member district namely Norwich um and reduce complexity and chance of error all those I mean there were a few more I know Kim you mentioned but a lot of a lot of good to come from it um I guess I would just say also reflecting the um unusual and but highly productive collaboration with the finance committee and the school board we're grateful for that collaboration and input um I think when we entered into this process um we realized it had was tried but didn't happen in 2008 and I think eventually we realized why it didn't happen because it was a whole lot of work sounds simple but hard

185um and particularly that wonky awkward language reflects um those the solution to the issues of equity around Capital contribution that was kind of um hard to get to but um so apologies for what's arguably the longest runon sentence and any RMS English teacher would strike as absolutely not acceptable but um seem to um fit the bill with respect to um the legal Necessities so again um thanks to all involved it was a great effort okay any uh anyone else have any questions or comments okay there's a yeah the mic's down here or another one over there too I might say as as the moderators an attorney and looking at the language I don't have any difficulty with it at all being long go ahead hi uh Debbie mlan Carter from 55 Bramble Lane norch so

186I have a question somewhat related to article two and somewhat related to this one will Handover pay for Tech upgrades in the sixth grade Wing if that's a capital Improvement for go ahead just give is Kim on okay great thanks um so when I was explaining that that we really don't treat uh you know sixth grade Wing expenditures any differently the rest of the building I mean this is kind of an as an example of it right so um so the answer is is Handover going to pay for you know the sixth grade Capital expense for for the technology warrant arle sure yes we will pay our fair share and that fair share going forward right will be as a signed by our ADM which is what that whatever that new capital piece of it

187is um the number that you heard in Warren Article 2 earlier is for the whole building we don't treat you know the sixth grade Wing any differently and so um so yes and so the question is how much of that and either we could do it in the current method which would be we have that amount included in that average per pupil amount kind of because that's how it would be calculated and kind of it gets flowed through on the tuition cycle or it's going to be included in the um ADM increased ADM piece because sixth grade will now kind of be included in that ADM portion so I guess the answer is it gets paid either either way in one one way or another Jamie and that and that's exactly correct so it would

188it would totally depend on whether or not all of these changes go into place right or take effect if the if everybody votes yes on these two warrant articles in the two districts then the debt isn't going to start hitting any of the it's not due to hit any of the budget until 2223 so then it would therefore follow through with the regular with the new method which would be just the ADM split of how many Handover children are in RMS for their portion of that you know versus how many Norwich kiddos are there um if that doesn't if we don't get to that um resolution with a new formula then correct it would follow the regular formula that we now use to set the base rate for rs's tuition okay any other questions and

189I don't see anyone on Zoom raising their hand so we'll move to article 7 which is to transact any non-substantive business that may legally come before the discussion phase of this meeting is there any non-substantive seeing none this Con concludes the discussion phase of the Dresden District annual meeting the voting phase takes place from 7 to 7: on Tuesday March 2nd at the Haner high school gymnasium thank you for participating everyone thank you members of the board for a very uh well done meeting frankly in the presentation and I want to thank Kim for her incredible effort um all night long all day long very very well done very very clear on a on some very complicated things so thank you everyone and good night