001e e so YouTube caught the moment you held up your um um your uh the badge that the Dr J bams um thing so that's currently showing on the screen is the was it backwards Josh no it's the right way which is interesting because huh that's interesting usually it is backwards I'm surprised there's nobody else on yet yeah they like to wait till the last moment it make me think uh oh did I come at the wrong time or do the wrong usually about 7:56 is when I start seeing PE or 656 is when I'll start seeing people show up so okay everything is set recording is active YouTube streaming is working and everything's configured so you're good to go great thanks Josh and I'll explain to K Kelly's a a host right so I've
002made you co-host um I think that gives you the power to assign other co-hosts but I'll I'll be sticking around in the room for just a little bit longer um while I get started with the other meeting so if she pops on I'll make sure she has the co-host or if you want to see if you can grant her co-host yeah probably I'm guessing I let's see under more yeah see if you can make Jamie a CO co-host see if it gives you the option uh no I can only change her role to attendee oh interesting okay or remove her don't worry Jamie I'm not removing you I think she's still connecting to audio hello hi Jamie how are you I'm good three more meetings this week I'm good all right well Josh has to
003take off he's got another meeting so I'm co-hosting and we'll get Kelly set up too hopefully all right [Music] Dan you're the sole board representative I hope we get a quorum all right well we've got we've got four minutes um I hope everybody remember it got moved yeah well we'll need to remind everyone as they come on that Josh set us up we're recording Live on YouTube right now okay our first snowstorm ready Jamie absolutely I can't tell are they saying six inches first real snowstorm D I've been so busy I haven't even looked at it yeah I don't get worried until the 400 am in the morning thereof right hey Jim if I were you I'd cut a little hole above your Christmas tree there yeah who know we are recording live right now
004all right I'm going to go out and come back in CU for some reason my video is not pulling up so [Music] hi everybody Kelly joshh has another meeting he has to go to so he has set us up we're on YouTube and we are recording um ahead of the start of the meeting excellent thank you for the heads up sorry I was a bit delayed just can I also get co-host status or sharability status so when we get to item four I don't know how you should already have it I see that all panelists can share oh great thank you oh yeah you you are co-host right okay so my video is not working for whatever reason and I'm wondering if it's because I skipped the update today so I'm going to work on
005that for a minute you guys have fiber out there in quy of course are you kidding quei we got all kinds of stuff where do you think I am well Jamie I gotta say sometimes yours comes in and out well I don't know that's not has to do with the fiber and quicha it has to do with the amount of stuff we have hooked up to it too many TV sets all right Kelly looks like you have a quorum I was just trying to count that are we good yes uh one two three 4 five six ah there we go okay seven eight we're good all right so I'll go ahead and call us to order then and the first order of business is is um any members of the public who might want to
006address the board on any matters not already on the agenda for this evening all right seeing none I will move right on uh to agenda review anything to add or rearrange um I will just note for the board that we do have um need of a non a brief non-public at the end of the meeting so just as a head up on that um any other items to add yes Jay Kelly on the non-public um we we I think U we're going to be talking about some possible necessary additional FTE for the high school which we uh we haven't uh brought to the board prior so that would require them potentially a motion coming out of non-public correct okay super so we'll add that um as we get to that point or Jay if you
007think um if you think it's appropriate to add it now um please feel free to do so with your with your all powerful editing Privileges and more TOS thank you all right anything else okay then we will move on to the budget presentation Jamie yes I'm sorry I was you know I was printing fine I was printing so let me just do speaker view there we go we can make this smaller and I am going to I can one second do share screen over to board dos sh there we go all right so um on the wrong meeting one second sorry I was there and then you guys are too quick all right so as you can see here in board docs we have attached the budget book and supporting documentation um I'm just going
008to pull this up really quickly so everybody can understand what it's all about it has a narrative about all the different changes and all of these uh supporting documents are except for 12 because I'm awaiting um more information from state of Vermont okay so we have prepared we have prepared a budget presentation I'm going to stop my video because Jay jinx me um and my roommate's home so I don't know what she's streaming anyway uh here is our proposed District budget this is a like 20,000 foot overview of Ben and where we are now uh moving into the end of December um I do believe there will be a few changes made to it prior to the January version uh that will be brought to the board for ratification uh principles um Jim and Tim
009uh will be helping me with this presentation tonight when we get to their sections um and I'm sure that the budget committee members um chair Hartman uh Garrett pal um Kelly I believe is on Dresden yourself and I Know Dan attends dresing sometimes and so does Rick Johnson and so does Tom uh Tom Candon so without further Ado uh we started the process um this year was a little bit weird because we were dealing with the covid pandemic and how we were going to open schools uh all the way up to the end of August beginning of September so we still embarked on the journey and tried to keep it on target time time wise and so we set a budget guideline in September after uh compiling a quick model with indicators that we knew
010to be true or were projected at that point in time I won't read it for you and this is a Consolidated version the original budget guideline is a two-page document can be found on the Dresden uh September meeting uh this gives you an overview of the items that we knew at that point in time and then what some of the unknown factors were the budget guidelines set was set at not to exceed 3% we'll come back to that so this document is large has a lot of information in it I'm not going to really speak to it on this screen however I'll make it a little bit larger and and I will also attach it in board docs um by itself so that people can go out and print it if they want to without
011printing the whole PowerPoint uh what this document does is it shows you the budget as adopted for 2021 which is the first column we have been through four uh versions of this budget build for Dresden uh version one was an internal version that wasn't shared version two was our first version that we shared back I believe on November just don't think um would have been early probably November 2nd uh and at that point in time the version we shared was at 3.41% so obviously we were over the target um we never we don't really know what it's going to look like the first version as we bring it together because there are four or five people building different sections and then it's sent to the finance office and we compile it into the one big
012budget that you see before you tonight uh we went back uh with a charge to come in under the budget guideline and so proposed version three Compares again to the budget adopted so you can see what changed in version three and so we came in at 2.80% overall so we were within the budget guideline and we thought wow what a great job uh we'll come back to that again because this truly when we look at this percentage uh only looks at the expenditure side of the budget as built it does not take into consideration Revenue in the resulting assessments to each one of our towns Norwich and Hanover we we then in between um built the revenue budget and saw that the result of a 2.8% uh as built budget was going to drive assessments
013out to uh our our towns uh that were in excess of uh 5% in Hover and in in excess of 11% in norledge that's the assessment change itself so so you can see all of those documents on the Dresden budget committee under the board docs um you can go up to the right side of the board docks and there's a a section up here where you can go and so all of the attachments are there so we came back and we had a bunch of meetings and the principes are going to talk about that um we and we have a proposed version for um and it had many different changes and I call this 4A because we have a proposed version four that's um posted in our Dresden budget committee meeting on December 7th that
014is uh a tenth of a percent higher than this one uh the high school came in with further budget cuts so at the end of the day this is the version that we are presenting in the budget book it is a one 37% increase over the budget year that we are in right now and it's an increase of $82,700 documents to the budget book which would show you the other view that shows like salaries benefits um you know um different services for custodial and transportation and all of those types of things um equipment and supplies this doesn't give you that view this gives you the view by function so this is the budget we have built together and moving along uh part the reason why we went through four versions of building the budget is
015what we call a revenue challenge in our Revenue challenge uh the budget committee members asked me to speak to this um challenge so people could understand why it seems to yo-yo up and down somewhat each year we have a situation where the Hanover School District tuitions their sixth grade to The Dresden School District to the Richmond Middle School we project this number a year in advance basically based on October 1st um actual students attending the fifth grade at the ray School the uh calculation also includes a true up for prior year adjustments which you can see in yellow here in the chart that I'm sharing with you this true up can compound the issue and then it makes the revenue stream which is this dollar amount here that is paid from Handover to Dresden go
016up and down as you can see from 1920 uh Handover paid Dresden $1.5 million then in 2021 it went up by almost a million dollar they paid them 2.5 million then this year it dropped Again by 720,000 000 hence the yo-yo effect of the revenues in Dresden without any other changes occurring um so that affects the assessments um so this is the base amount in blue here and that is based on the enrollment sizes that we project over here in the second column uh so we have been working uh with a working committee with a Handover working committee uh about studying the issue and it's not the first time it's been discussed and we're hoping that through all of the uh work and efforts of the committee we can bring forward a suggestion uh regarding
017this sixth grade tuition Revenue challenge that Dresden faces each year um this schedule is also included I believe in the support documents if not for Dresden it is for Handover and it shows a 20-year view um this is going to be spoken to a little bit later tonight in the dresen uh board meeting okay about the sixth grade study group um okay so moving on this was the budget summary for districtwide basically the budget is built in three sections okay dresen is three sections we have one section that's called districtwide This is the function overview of districtwide it's the smallest of the three budgets um and it holds the different costs that are not directly attributed to the schools but shared uh by everybody in the schools um so we have some costs in regular
018education which include um the volunteer coordinator she's housed here and then build back to the different schools that use her Handover um and Norwich uh for her service to help with volunteer coordination also included in that 1100 section would be some technology costs for equipment that are shared across the districts um the superintendent services that is the cost for the SAU budget that's dresden's share of the SAU budget you can see this is increasing this year uh and that is based on a technology uh increase of Ft e in the districtwide in the SAU budget that will be used districtwide uh as we move forward hopefully with a technology infrastructure upgrade um and we can take a look at that a little bit later in the presentation um School admin is flat Building Maintenance and
019custodial is up a little bit you can see that that's going to be up throughout all of the budget builds for the simple reason the New Hampshire Retirement System rate increases for both teachers and employees uh if you're not a certified staff member uh such as teachers or other excuse me types of certified staff you would be included in the employee section um and both of them have had significant increases this year coming out of New Hampshire retirement the good thing about Dresden is uh folks who participate teachers can choose between Vermont or New Hampshire Vermont is much cheaper for the Dresden School District to be participating in so that helps to keep a little bit of this cost down the teachers rate is going from 17.8% to 21% uh it's an increase of 18.1%
020in the rate and then the employees rate is going from 11.1% up to 14 over a little over 14% And that's an increase of about 25% for the rate uh also included throughout this whole entire budget build uh is health insurance increases we initially had built the quick model at 5% it came in with a not to exceed at 9.7 I believe 7% and then we had what they call a rate discount from Surplus that they give back against the rate and so we have built into here a rate of 2.2% for the teachers and support staff Union the not to exceed rate for the service staff and non-union is in at I think 4 and a half% 4.4 actually um okay so overall the districtwide increase is $1,862 it's 1.91% over last year and
021it represents a total of uh 3610 of a percent of dresden's total District budget growth all right the enrollment forecast was a very interesting uh situation this year with our covid pandemic um normally we're looking going to look at this two different ways this year as we have at both of the other uh districts under the se70 umbrella on September I think 8th right we open the doors um this is the amounts that we had for actual students okay in the 2021 column so as you can see we had projected 378 we came in with 358 this was on October 1 it does go up and down we have gain students uh in most of our schools um at the high school we had projected 727 we came in at 703 so overall we were
022down quite a few uh students um we're gonna speak to sorry Jamie can you just remind us that includes remote Learners as well right right so yeah we're g to talk to that on the next slide Kelly here we go y so as Kelly mentioned um we have now a covid-19 adjusted slide here and we chose to do this because um budgeting with pandemic numbers is not um is not easy but it really doesn't tell the true story of what will most likely occur when when and if hopefully we go back to school in a somewhat normal situation uh next September so we had homeschool withdrawals that we know of for for the six seven sixth through 12th grade in the amount of 22 students of our own we also had uh students that were
023withdrawn who would normally have been here uh tuition in um and some of them have gone to part-time status uh which will affect some of our numbers a little further in so what we chose to do was take the uh 1920 actuals and we are pushing those forward along with including the homeschooling students and normal adders and subtractions that we would do based on historical numbers uh all of these in their entirety on the build can be viewed in our uh budget build discussions um you know and our class size is you know incoming in the sixth grade this is mostly all based on Handover seventh grade is where norch students join us um and then we also usually take in tuition students in the lower grades somewhat a few as you can see five
024been maintaining five we've been as high as eight or nine um and then we we drop off the graduating class of tuition students and then we bring in we speculate based on class sizes and percentages of the schools that send to us uh from prior years and we push those numbers forward um okay so we take a look at that information and based on what we think the class sizes will look like we then uh do the Staffing we project Staffing and here's where I am going to if Tim's with us uh ask Tim to join me Tim Andor Anissa to join me as they uh have built this portion of the budget H okay as I am here uh my video is acting up so it's just my dulset tones this even evening um
025but you can see our certified staff um we've actually cut down on some of our staff this year uh we had a staff position the intervention wi teacher that was passed in last year's budget that was never hired because uh we knew that covid was going to cause some problems that was at 08 we have through some reshuffling uh and some retirements proposed that we also go down a 04 um in math Compu science sort of depending on how things work out uh that obviously doesn't add up to 0.91 but um the sort of vagaries of our schedule when you shift um increased sections to the eth grade the English picks up uh a portion of um an FTE in order to cover the English class because they have double periods um so that's part
026of it and then we also this year made um uh we had some other increases uh involving um some technical support that were obviously not that that large at that point we are proposing taking back right now we have a an ed assistant who was part-time in the front office to help out with clerical work um we think that we can absorb that through other people in the front office and looking at the numbers um from Special Ed for next year it looks as if we'll be able to eliminate one of our Ed assistants as well we have a number of people who have one-on-one requirements um moving out um I can say though just in terms of fluctuation that this is something that can change um we were pretty solid about these numbers until
027about six weeks ago when we've had a couple I guess one person move into the ray school who is looking as if they might need some more support in sixth grade and then some things that have happened at marry and cross that may uh may need us to increase there as well so that number is always a bit of a moving Target in terms of the number of AIDs that we need based on IEPs which are you know mandated we can't really fudge that so um that would give our our lowers in the FTE and that represents a a large portion of um sort of uh the cuts in our budget that we are proposing for this year so I don't know we want to just keep going Jamie yeah we'll move right into your
028budget highlights from uh okay high level overview of you know what occurred this is the high level overview and this is where you can tell that I I was the social studies person because it's all in the narrative and not so much in the uh chart part of this but um we took a chance we took an opportunity this year with the pandemic to convene our building level budget committee um and rather than just sort of we knew that that things were a little bit up in the air and rather than just roll over what we had had in the budget previous to that um we decided to take a look at the budget as a whole and make sure that everything that we were budgeting was actually representing what our sort of mission and
029vision were for the school um and to sort of you know at the base level put our money where our mouth is and say that if we're really trying to privilege one area or another we make sure that the the money is where it's supposed to be so we went back and forth as Jamie had said we sort of proposed a budget and then came back with another one and then another one so um but the bottom there the focus has always remained on the student experience which leads us to really uh privilege and put forth uh FTE in the classroom that students are best served by highly qualified teachers in the classroom rather than uh stuff so next slide I guess and we know that this year is going to be interesting budget year
030we knew that going in so the things that we had originally requested that ended up not being included was that we had um an original proposal our original proposal was part of the dresen budget that was 3.4 included um about $60,000 in upgrades for our library and maker space areas and $10,000 for a virtual reality cart those are both things that we had cut out of last year's budget um we thought we would go ahead and try to put forward this year and when it became clear we couldn't then we went ahead and took out the shelving and the virtual reality cart putting those off for another year and then we took out $21,000 in equipment which is basically um desks and other classroom equipment um we were able to uh in the covid situation
031we were able to get um some new desks into our classroom so that we can maintain distancing so we thought we could go ahead and use those so the next slide would be oh and we also knew that we had spent we had gone over budget in the um um creation of our remote Academy so we were trying to make sure that we you know sort of even things out a bit so our main budget reductions for this year include the the 04 professional FTE which will allow this year we have our Tech coordinator which previous to this had been a full-time Tech coordinator or a08 Tech coordinator 0 2 teaching um and we're basically going to increase that position to be more teaching um which allows us to eliminate 04 total FTE between math
032and computer science um we gave back the wind teacher which had never been filled and then we talked about the Ed assistance there as well the combined uh reduction with retirements because we have a couple of retirements as well um of people who are at the top of the spectrum we're hoping to be around $150,000 in savings we also cut field trips uh PE and other equipment assemblies the idea being there that um we don't know if we're even going to be able to do those and if we do we think we can probably pursue private funding for those areas because we want to have things coming in we cut back on textbooks uh we're going to do a pretty concerted study as to how many textbooks we actually use as opposed to um sort
033of uh uh internet subscriptions which a number of things are using and then we also cut back on our we had a lot a lot of money in there for transport for students from RMS who are going to take High School classes at the high school uh depending on what the high school does in terms of their schedule um that may become a little bit less tenable so we can go ahead and cut that out of the budget and then we had a power of we integrated unit um who's main proponent had retired and we really don't have anybody stepping up to take that mantle so we eliminated that from the budget as well and the next one I think is the last one um and we had been asked too that if you know
034with all those priorities of cutting and almost getting to a flat budget if we were able to add things back in I think our original thought would be to add back in to 04 uh FTE knowing that that's an ongoing position um but it's more in line with what the district wants to do in terms of our Tech integration and having somebody there who's fulltime who can dedicate more time to the technological needs that we're going to have also gives us a little bit more flexibility in terms of our math program so that if we need to offer more sections um in specific areas we can do that uh finally you know ideally we'd like to re we probably will hope in some way to restore some money for field trips or assemblies um but
035we plan to do this as opposed to doing it on a line item which we had done before um we're going to try to create one um sort of bucket that that money will come out of and we'll create a building level committee that will basically like the csdc will take uh proposals from different people and decide okay which one of these field trips actually makes the most sense in terms of what's educational how many people is it going to serve how how efficient is it are we getting you know a fair amount of bang for our buck um just to make sure that we're doing something for a lot of people as opposed to sending four people a long way away so that's uh basically where our budget is uh right now thanks Tim
036and I would like to I I neglected to say this at the beginning uh my apologies I would like to thank Janice starky who is the bookkeeper at the uh Richmond Middle School who did these beautiful slide setup the she designed this last year year and we we're using it again it's quite lovely with the two schools um she's been very helpful in all things Tech technological here thank you uh and I would just say um Financial I would like to thank Janice uh incredible amount too um just for her patience because I keep coming in and saying I don't understand this so uh thank you very much to Janice and Anissa for helping me out with all this and our building level people who have um did three Monday afternoons right before Thanksgiving to
037sort of hash all of this out thanks Tim so the budget summary for Richmond Middle School is here again it's by function not object if you'd like to look at it by object please go out to the budget book and look at the um um backup documentation uh as you can see what Tim mentioned with some of these Cuts here um if you look at it by object you'll see what he mentioned on the changes in the salary reasonal uh the RMS increase as mentioned is 15,23 it's just slightly over last year's budget and represents about 510 of a percent of dresden's total District budget growth uh next to the high school and principal Jim Logan can speak to they have a lot of changes in staff I think at the high school there's not
038a lot of changes in staff um we're going to be reducing um a a certified staff by 04 we're or I'm confident that we can do it um internally um and we could pick up um those classes um and then educational assistance um when we look at that um there's two positions that are being cut um from educational assistance and then another um we're hoping up 0.5 um so and that's all due to IEPs um through special ed services so we're confident that we can make those cuts so it comes out to a a total cut of 2.21 right and I guess what I should mention there Jim is that even though there's not a lot of changes in FTE for the high school um as was mentioned in the signif in the uh supporting
039documents for the budget book The High School had a significant amount of teachers who are attaining track advancements so uh a lot of the increases in the salary lines are not because FTE were added uh it was because there's been a lot of um um a lot of learning going on at the high school level for some of the teachers and it you know it goes in spurts uh a couple years ago Richmond Middle School had a lot of teachers that were attaining track advant um so that's what I meant by the changes in the Personnel Jimmy when you said that we'll move along here so our budget highlights um I believe that we're going to continue to provide the outstanding opportunities that um for all students in grades 9 through 12 um and you
040I can't thank the coordinators enough this was my first goar around with the Handover high school budget and you know there was a lot of conversation that took place um collectively and individually and I can't thank them enough and the staff enough for all their work with this um the process began uh in mid-september and uh the the guidelines were shared with the coordinators on the 21st it's just it bullets the process that we had um then we had Department discussions with the staff input on September 23rd coordinators presented the budgets to Administration um from October 5th through the 13 um we had a CPP budget meeting um to discuss the cuts um for a half day on October 14th um and then we met with the coordinators individually to discuss department needs um as
041this process was going forward um we had three uh rounds of budget cuts and I'll be sharing that slide in a minute and it comes to the final proposed budget today the major areas of the cuts were technology and text books and um you know the technology piece we had multiple discussions with Josh and and Martha Campbell at the high school and and and Jessica Ean to see what we can um push off to next year and you know we had to make the cuts and we're confident after talking with Jamie and Josh that you know we have a plan in place to address the technology needs um in the coming years um and then the textbook piece there's a there was a a lot of cuts in textbooks um and we're going to have
042to think about how how we're going to utilize textbooks in the future uh there there was a lot of requests and the coordinator said we can get by another year and you know I I just want to make note that you know we're going to have to face this textbook issue um as a school and and come up with a plan because there's some significant Investments that are going to have to be made in textbooks in the coming years um so the pieces that aren't included uh when we look at at thanks Jamie um when we started the the original budget um you know we we have the the sound in the classrooms um that the teachers can turn on their their sound machines and put a microphone on we were we were going to
043try to include that we've been peac mealing it or they've been peac mealing it for a number of years um some have sound others don't um some have um they need AV upgrades um so there's there's a lot of pieces that have to be put into the classrooms um then there's electrical needs in the music theory sound room um the auditorium sound um from what I understand it was never finished um when the renovation was was completed um Auditorium lighting they wanted to upgrade to LED lights um the chorus room infrastructure sound um iPads um for staff members we don't have enough iPads to go around and they're using it for instructional purposes now um remote classroom um equipment we were hoping to have uh a pilot so putting owls in the class in in
044a classroom or a conference room so we can have a remote classroom set up to see if it would work if we ever have to go down that road and then the the textbooks request social studies science in English they did a lot of cuts to their budgets and textbooks so this is the budget um reductions so the first round was $76,000 um and you could see there it was the science textbooks um the tuition between the hardford career center and looking at that uh Jamie and I thought that we could reduce that a little bit so um we took a reduction there Athletics Megan sharpened her pencil and she reduced some of the athletic expenditures social studies textbooks um online services and speaking with Martha and Jess um and Josh um there was some
045changes made for for services there along with the firewall services that we were using and the E procurement um services that the district was using and and zoom licenses so there was a lot of Technology Cuts there on the second round of cuts that's when the point4 position came up and the educational assistant position um came up and Megan um we negotiated and the strength and conditioning coach we reduced the hours that we were requesting for that position um and that was to go in line with the the the wait room being redone and then after the board meeting a few weeks ago we went back to the to the coordinators and um we came up with an additional $26,000 in cuts and again it was the field trips and textbooks um where we were
046making significant savings so our total cuts at the high school come out to about 186 well $186,600 have to come up with a plan for textbook Replacements thanks Jim thank you so there are as we're building um you know the budgets from version to version to version I will say that the dollar amounts that they're sharing with you may not tie out exactly to the penny you know back to the differences in the versions because at the same time we in the finance committee realm I mean in the finance realm are making adjustments and updates you know to the benefits sections uh so if you if you go back and you're you know you like to number Crunch and you run the numbers and they don't come in exactly you know give me a ring
047and I can walk you through it uh anyway at the end of the day the high school budget summary is here again it's by function not by object code the increase for the high school is approximately $266,000 or 1.81% over last year and it represents just below 1% of the Dresden District's total budget growth this year as as I mentioned before there are a lot of changes within um the teaching salary lines for track advancements at the high school uh totaling in base salary wages about it was just under or just over because there's been some additions around $50,000 um so the proposed total budget we had a budget increase guideline of 3% again we had the uh Revenue challenge there we had adopted a budget last year just over 27 well uh just under
04828 million at 27 million $83,900 2 a budget of 28,1 186,187 this is an increase of $382,000 or 1.37% we are below the corridor approximately $451,000 so what does that mean this is a most important page in the budget building process we put everything together here we then take a look at revenues and we see the differences in the revenue streams the changes that cause us to go back and rebuild the budgets two three four times you can see the sixth grade tuition challenge here of 720,000 lower that was again a culmination of three different factors um High School tuition students we're we going to be down we have taken um the last couple of years numbers and adjusted them downward uh due mainly to the fact uh that some of our sending schools in
049Vermont have pulled back a bit we believe this is a act 46 related issue um our other local sources this $57,000 was the money that we had um the one and only fund uh Reserve fund balance that we had for Dred in as they're not allowed but it it happened once and they put money aside and then we've been sitting on it for many many many years uh we decided to pull it out this year to use it to offset the first payment for the uh Dresden turfield so that will go away because there's there's no more Reserve funds there uh the other change was the change in the state sources which is the monies uh that we get uh the the source for the change the the reduction is the money to offset the
050large building uh project that was uh embarked on in 2002 2003 every year New Hampshire pays you when you have a large project they don't anym they've uh suspended the program but back then they pay you over a period of time that matches the length of your bond and it goes down a little bit every year uh so you can see revenues were down projected to be down $729,000 or almost $730,000 or 11% lower that is a difficult problem to overcome hence why we went back and rebuilt the budget and right now the net assessment is breaking down to uh 14, 88477454400 uh which is 2.94% above handovers prior year assessed to Norwich is 7 million 4441 155 approximately $686,000 or 10.17% above last year there's two things that make this Dynamic occur in the
051assessment one of them is the difference in our student ADM that average daily membership we use a formula for dresden's assessment I'm going to go to the next page because it speaks about it here we use a formula where we look at the 7eventh through 12th graders and we use the New Hampshire ratified doe um report and then we look at them as a percentage of the whole total and these percentages are shifting for the 2122 school year by about a a percent and a half um in going back here the other Dynamic that occurs here is that when we did the large um Bond and changes to the high school and built the Richmond Middle School um construction funds were bestowed by both towns in Vermont they give you the lump sum or they
052did back then they give you the lump sum upfront and you invest it and then you pull money off every year and it goes against your expenses because dresen is a New Hampshire school district those funds can't be shown on this budget so those funds offset costs in the Norwich District's direct budget because Dresden is a New Hampshire school district the New Hampshire dollar amount which we spoke about up here is directly offset to hand over's assessment portion okay that's why if you take this number of increase and you do it by the percentages down here of what the assessment Shares are supposed to be they don't match exactly and that's why and I will continue to tell everybody that every year because I always get that question it's a little confusing you can look
053on exhibit eight in the budget books um um items that are attached and that explains how the breakdown works and how the dollar amount uh for New Hampshire's building Aid is is factored in okay see okay last slide I have not um sorry I'll go back up here for one second just kidding almost last slide um I have not shown the effect of what the assessments will do on the tax rates here at the Dresden meeting the tax rate assessment the tax rate um are shared and the projections are shared at each one of the district Towns at Norwich and hover um Handover will be in flux a little bit as we need to go back and take a look in January at the enrollment numbers that we'll be sending into Richmond Middle School right
054now we have enrollments that are based on sorry to do this to y'all are based on 74 that was our early projection we know two new students have enrolled in the fifth grade as of this point and we have three students in the fifth grade that are presently being homeschooled or are at other uh private school locations that will be rejoining us if we are in a more normal uh school year and the pandemic is a bit under control so that would mean that this number would increase by five students so it's a very circular thing when we deal with expenses and revenues between all the districts because what that means is that uh the expenditures in Handover will go up a little bit for the five extra additional students because we we vet that
055in January that also means this dollar amount here of sixth grade Revenue 1.7 million almost 1.8 will go up when this Revenue goes up these assessments go down a little bit okay so when we bring you the budget for ratification in January all of this in updated for those meetings okay last slide thank you for your patience everybody's been great um there are other potential warrant articles uh that we will most likely be bringing forward there is a dresen Handover service staff negot iations going on right now we have a meeting tomorrow um we hope to TA the rest of the agreement soon I don't know if it'll be tomorrow or if it'll be early in January but it will be something hopefully will be ready by the date that you will need to ratify
056for Handover and Dresden for Warrant articles in later in January we also have been talking about a technology infrastructure um project Josh has shared that many many times uh it can be seen uh out on our uh budget committee websites and if somebody has a question on I'm happy to pull it up here um also a sixth grade tuition potential methodology uh discussion Andor warrant article change uh and that's going to be discussed a little bit later tonight in our meeting um and there we have it thanks Jamie um I'm sure there's some questions I see Tim's hand up already I was just going to say that that the number of the sixth grade is also incredibly important for us in terms of projecting the number of sections that we need because I know that
057question has come up um and when we get closer to 80 student um that really makes the difference between sort of a a 15 16 person class and a 20 person class which doesn't seem like a lot unless you add people at mid year um and the other thing that happens is that the fewer number of sections we have the less flexibility there is so it never adds up to 20 in each of the classes um and you get overloaded fairly quickly that's what we went through last year and that's the main reason that we decided to stay with five sections academically in the sixth grade going forward despite what looks like a low number and it will also drive up the net assessment and Handover um on the Handover side of things not on
058the dresen side per se but on the Handover side so um yeah I I think to the extent that I mean hopefully we'll have firmer numbers for January but I think definitely important to to keep it mind that five students can represent almost $100,000 there right so um or exactly $100,000 so um that's a big swing uh Dan uh yeah um so Jim I I i' would like you to say a little bit more about the textbook um problem uh so I mean from my perspective textbooks are are crucial uh if the textbooks are out of date I mean whatever to make a cartoon of it then the teachers aren't teaching relevant stuff um and uh that's especially worrying for a science Tech textbook which I would like to believe at some point uh the
059ways in which science is presented have gotten better um and uh i' certainly I certainly don't want our students to not get uh the best kind of Science Education um I'm also sensitive to the social studies curriculum uh especially we've had a there's so much that's been done l lately uh surfacing all kinds of issues and the ways in which social studies has been taught I think it feeds directly into our Equity kinds of uh concerns um and uh that's a really big number in terms of what we're not spending on social studies uh the English uh books I can't speak to them if it's a question of just getting a better version of Pride and Prejudice of course we don't need to do that um so it's the but there may be other uh
060books that that you have in mind where the same kinds of of of issues are surface and again it might feed into an equity thing if you're telling me that we're not buying books uh written by people of color uh people um from various underrepresented groups um I'm troubled by that and I'd like to believe a quick back of the envelope calculation says that buying the textbooks is another two10 of a percent I'd like to believe that we could stomach a 2/10 of a percent um increase in the budget to uh address that problem or if we really can't that there's got to be some kind of um uh you know uh part of um Capital expenses that we could foro for a year uh because a year in a kid's education uh is significant
061but uh you know if the bleachers are a little rusty um or uh there's a wall that isn't painted I think that's not as important so uh thanks for um uh being telling me a little bit more about that and uh so I'll start with science when we look at science um the non-negotiable for science was replacement of the entire of chemistry textbooks um so that was a non-negotiable that we had to that we have to purchase for next year um in that um the science department also requested a new set of physics honors textbooks and after speaking with Tom Hermanson the department coordinator um he suggested that we can go another year um the um re we we we're going to have to talk about replacement uh biology textbooks in the in the near
062future and uh they also had a new set of chemistry honors textbooks in that in that uh original proposal and he said that we can we can table that for a year um in his rationale he's stating that the textbooks are approaching 10 years um and that they don't have a lot of digital materials to go along with them so his priority um for this coming school year was the the chemistry textbooks after we went back and forth a few times um and we're going to work out a a comprehensive plan moving forward when we look at Social Studies um there is the the replacement of warant Tex and that's very very various texts across different classes um they were requesting um the essentials of world history in a digital format for next year um
063and there's a religion class and they were asking for textbooks for the religion class that that we put into the budget um and then um an American government uh digital access textbook for $5,100 um she said that we could table that um for next year and then um there was another um digital access for United States history um that she said we could also um table um we have texts we have print text but they they were requesting digital texts um there's a human geography textbook um that we were going to table for next year and that was basically it um for those two subject areas math is putting requests through for digital textbooks and the the piece with the with the digital textbooks um Matt has a a high digital uh has a high
064textbook request but there's I believe they're fouryear licenses or six-year licenses on the digital textbooks um so you know when we look at the school I you know we might want to think about having some type of a replacement Cycles if we're going with these digital texts um because there are savings from year to year between departments if we're going to go to a digital format um and then I I discussed this at one of the the budget meetings you know philosophically do we want to have digital text for every single area um I don't know personally I don't know if I would want digital textbooks or digital books in English um I think that there's some advantages to the printed media and students are are are studying or or reading or um but that's
065a discussion that we're going to have to have as a school and and as a division you know working with Robin on that so they were the the major pieces of of the textbooks I'm confident that you in conversation with the coordinators um that we can get through another year but we're going to have to have the discussion next year what we're going to do with the [Music] textbooks sorry so Jim what I'm not what I'm not uh hearing uh from you is like I mean are these are these literally the old textbooks put online um or are these I mean a 10-year-old I would have to I would have to think that they're that they're updated updated materials updated curriculum and content that that goes into the books yeah I I I mean um
066well I'm to be honest I'm I'm not actually not agnostic about the medium but we don't have to get into that um but uh I what what what I what I what I'm am not that I mean just to repeat what I said I mean a 10-year-old textbook um uh on government it it just that that that wasn't social studies that was requesting that that was that stated that that was the science department that stated that that their books were coming up to 10 years so I I hate to cut you guys off on this but I think we're kind of getting into the Weeds on some of this I think this falls into the area of where we set some budgets and we our administrators and department heads to give us their priorities okay
067but so soorry I I I I am going to push back though that I do feel like we can absorb two10 of a percent uh or some fraction of two10 uh to update our textbooks um I that that just strikes me as as a real need that is the core um of our of our of our educational materials and I think so um that I think that feedback is is very valuable um I think again I would say you know if if we have two10 of a percent to give back then I think we would task Jim and his team with figuring out where they most need to give that take to take that money back it maybe textbooks I don't know um but I think that falls into the category of you know what
068would be your next two10 of a perc addback so um but thank thanks as always for the feedback Dan on that um I forget who was next I think it might have been Kim Kelly so um the chair of the Dresden budget committee and I just wanted to applaud the administration and staff for really not only meeting our board guidelines but also understanding and adapting to the challenging times particularly as we really um digested the revenue challenge um and really kind of delivering a an version of a budget um that still tries to get at the best education for our students but also at a level that our community will likely support um you know do note that um our Norwich Neighbors in this version has a 10.17% assessment increase um and I just for
069for those either new or just just to understand that Dresden is about half of the total Norwich um uh School assessment so just to kind of give you a sense of um where that that number could could likely Fall um you know this was not an easy task or request from our administrators to achieve in particular um we have those various headwinds that really all of our schools across the state are facing with um The increased retirement plan actually our towns as well um and we already had you know Union contracts in place um which is helpful for for long-term planning but um not it in you know in a covid crisis right so it just kind of um is more challenging and the budget process really is not over so I I hope um
070that you know I you know I appreciate from a budget committee perspective you know hearing the full board's comments on ways that we can improve um I think there are some um you know expected changes coming in January like Jamie mentioned with tuition can kind of have a little bit of a change but also I think we're going to hear later this evening about kind of where are we in the current budget and um I I have a question out there of whether that carry forward number which is a revenue number um you know is that at the right level or um is it something more favorable so I I don't there's a lot still to be done um and I think that uh you know we can kind of look at some of these
071priority projects or you know in my opinion honestly some of these are more bread and butter field trips and textbooks but um you know just to kind of get a sense for um kind of what the total level of funding um would be kind of helpful for this meeting too so as we uncover and kind of develop you know another version um kind of where some of those pain points would be would be really helpful so and finally the biggest pain point is the sixth grade tuition we will be talking about that later this this evening and know really looking forward to to finding a solution there too so than thanks Kim and yeah to Kim and Dan's point I mean I think um any of the feedback that we get is valuable for our
072school administrators who who will definitely take that into consideration as we go through these final rounds of budget um additions or or subtractions so um thank you guys uh Ben uh sorry uh Dan got to the Crux of most to my questions I just want to thank again everyone for holding to the line and I agree with Jim's point about having a scheduled replacement system as a long-term textbook thing thanks thanks Ben Garrett yeah sorry I didn't want to necessarily pile on it Dan but I do agree in that just as a quick context for everybody including Dan I think so on our last Dres in budget call you know we did send the high school and Jim back to you know kind of one more round of cuts and um to the textbook issue
073I guess if there's one thing that came up tonight that was last clear to me I'm not sure if I'm going to sleep so well knowing the potential impact of those textbooks because I heard it come up you know a few times from Jim and it sounds like there's true concern there so I do think you know to Kim's point if there's a little fine-tuning to be done I think that's probably something that you know maybe in my mind having seen this budget develop it might we might have overshot a little bit now on that textbook cut um having sent Jim back to you know cut again so anyway I think that's something we should maybe think about because to Dan's point I mean it's 50k and a you know on that um you know
074five thou sorry it's $ 50,000 on a $15 million budget right so it's it's a pretty small number um so it's just something I think we should maybe look at again because I think it's all bothering everyone around the table thanks Garrett and I I will just reiterate my point um before I call a Neil but I I think and and it may be that we add back in those textbooks at the same time um I guess I want to kind of acknowledge that you know it's it's Jim and his teams it's their job to sort of look at that critically and say yes we need maybe 45,000 of that or maybe we need 35,000 of that or where are we at with those textbook decisions right um and then if we authorize it sort
075of putting that money where they think it's most useful um for them no I absolutely agree maybe it's just coming back and you know maybe Jim says you know 15 will get us there right so we're not in such a bad Spate that that that's my point I think it's bothering everybody on this call so I think that's one point where you know we went too far maybe now it needs to come back just a little anyways that's my point awesome thanks Garrett Neil sorry thanks Kelly um first I want to say a huge thank you to um the budget committee and and the administrative team for putting this together um this was some really good work I think to get the numbers um you know where we think we ought to be um especially
076given the current um you know economic conditions related to the pandemic and um certainly with the Norwich assessment um going up as much as it is I am I am loathed to recommend additions to the budget nevertheless um I do want to ask a question um and one of the things that struck me over the past um several months is um the um social emotional and mental health aspect that the pandemic has had on students um and there have been several articles even within the Valley News over the past few weeks related to this and I'm wondering um if Administration was thinking about that as they put the budget together um taking a look at whether or not we forecast an increased need for counseling social or emotional support systems for the I'm not even
077talking about the current year because I think there's maybe a case to be made there but for next year so when school starts up again you know hoping we're back to what we had previously considered to be normal schooling during the budgeting process was there consideration given to perhaps an increased need for those types of services next year I I think we definitely that's something that we look at at a lens in the middle school all the time um and that's one of the again one of the main reasons why we tried to keep our staffing level as high as we possibly could um and that a lot of the social emotional work that we're finding is better done in with sort of more people in smaller classes uh gives more of an opportunity to
078um have students connect with somebody that they feel close to um that's important we had not gone to the point where we were looking specifically at increased counseling um just because that's one of those positions that's hard to do on an interim basis or sort of a one-year basis um but yeah that that's definitely the the lens that we're sort of looking at and we're looking at it in terms of many of the different things that we do um so we're rethinking for example we're rethinking our homework policy um we're rethinking we're looking at sort of one of the positive outgrowths that we never foresaw of cohorting this year is that we have um some cohorts have really formed strong and supportive bonds among the students just because they're with the same people all day
079every day um so we're trying to figure out if that's something that we can uh leverage for next year as well but it's something that we're looking at I would love to say that we you know it would be great if we could add a few more people in terms of the counseling staff I don't know how that would work but it's something that we're definitely looking at I think that's a great Point yeah I'll take a step from the high school um perspective on that um and Julie could add in also because she's got the historical perspective on on that but when we were went back to the to the coordinators for the budget because I know there was a significant discussion on field trips and we felt that the field trips were were
080really important for next year um to to get the students out um and to help them with that um the the counseling department uh we didn't make any Cuts in that department um and Julie I don't know if you want to add anything about that with yeah I think yeah I think in the past few years you know we had requested a new counselor over a five-year period and a couple of years we ago we got that um and then we um added mental health as part of our rtn program we changed or switched over some of those fifths last year and put them towards mental health and so I feel like we have a really bang up mental health team with Tom Gamble and Devon voke and Chris cyel um and then we also
081have you know this counseling department that's I think well staffed you could always it feels like we could always use more in this area and as the years go on it always feels like it could use more but I think we're really lucky with what we have um and then I think the side benefit sort of like Tim said to covid if you know you're always was looking for the Silver Linings at least I am um and is the advisory that we have this year and the work that um that people have done with also Devon wght on advisory and having students cohorted or having those eight people or nine people they have lunch with every day has really added to you know the social fabric of the school and the safety net of of
082each other and I um when with the schedule that we're proposing for next year assuming that it's what we end up with um rather than going back to having just once a week Common Ground the hope is to stick with advisory and not only have an advisory Circle which has the social emotional component to it but we've added an advisory lunch so that we're breaking bread together at least once a week with those group of people and not just the one time to do the curriculum piece and so I think that'll be really great going forward in terms of the connections there I know I they're they're huge like even to the point where and I told the staff the story the other day where I was missing on Thursday not like in a bad
083way missing but I wasn't there and um and my advisory called me during advisory said just want you know we're all here someone's taking care of us but we just want to make sure you were okay huge right that just wouldn't have happened before and so I think that's helpful it's not necess a mental health counselor um but it's a setup that that I think is better for mental health um so and I I think we're really lucky with the people we have so we didn't ask for more going forward I do believe there was one slight adjustment though in the high school FTE count um if was the point four that we had initially last year redirected funds that we normally would hire consultants and instead we are sta so that was in that
084was in this budget the point4 it shows in the special ed teaching section um but we had made that change because it was it's not really unbudgeted it had been budgeted as a Consulting fees and instead we're keeping the person on staff yeah J Neil to your question uh we're also preparing sort of a an update for the board and the community for January on both academic and social emotional impacts of of well actually just a kind of a status update on school year and uh we'll have data for you on that as well great thanks Jay and I R I did see your hand up I don't know if Jamie um added what you were going to say with the point for yeah between Julie and Jamie they covered what I was goingon to
085speak to so awesome thanks nothing nothing additional all right thank you other questions on the budget all right oh oh members of the public okay um kiasmos K I think you're muted but here let me try to unmute you car you have to unmute yourself I think Ki can you unmute yourself sometimes K has some technology lag okay so I will um move on K I'll come back to you um and uh I will move on to Steve McConnell full disclosure this is my husband Steve you have to unmute yourself hello is that better we can hear you hi there my name is Steve McConnell I am the head coach for track and field at the high school boys and girls winter and spring track and field um I just wanted to uh talk to
086you tonight to ask about uh repairs and or resurfacing of the track I didn't see that as a line item I don't see it in the warrant articles so I wanted to ask about it see if it's there hopefully I missed it hopefully it's being planned for um but I just wanted to sort of let you all know that it's out there and it's in need um just for a bit of background uh the track team is one of the largest teams in the district uh very committed this year with no chance of a competitive season and no uh chance of running inside not being welcome in the school 34 kids signed up to run Outdoors all winter um even though they won't be able to compete or have any meets or anything so the
087kids are really into it um and so uh I like to try to do what we can for them uh the normal lifespan for a for a track surface is 7 to 10 years probably closer to seven years in our climate given the freezing and Tha and freezing and Tha and uh our track surface was laid down in 2006 so about half of my team is older than the track surface um when it should be replaced every seven or eight years um and that leads to a couple problems um a safety issue of uh the the repetitive running on a track a normal track surface is cushiony with the rubberized track our track has long ago lost any cushion it has that it had and uh that contributes to a lot of overuse injuries shin
088splints ankles knees and such also um a a temporary patch was done to a part of the track that that was Frost heaved uh and that has failed pretty definitively and now there's holes in the track which is you know also worrisome the track's home to not just the track team in winter this year and spring but also other teams that Ed the track the middle school team team used the track members of the community you know including Olympians and world champions and such um so it really is a community resource uh and it's a bit of a a liability right now honestly um so I know well I know I've been talking for a long time about getting it replaced I just wanted to make sure it was on your radar and and hope
089that Uh something's in the works thank you thanks Steve uh I don't know if anybody wanted to address that if not I see so I guess I'll address it because Tony's not here it is not in this budget build if we were going to resurface the tra everything that we can cut that's considered non-essential going into the economic environment we're going into has been cut from buildings and site improvements uh it was my understanding that items such as this were going to be reviewed by the athletic director along with with the athletic committee that we um that we started holding meetings about again um so it's not on my radar because it hasn't been brought forward by them um and I would think it would be a bond article if it was to be brought
090forward as um that's a big project so I'm sorry Steve um that's all I have I'll follow up with Tony to see if anything was brought to him uh I do know that we had it cleaned and we did do quite a bit of repairs to it and so um if those have failed we'll take another look at that again thank you thank you so I believe I'm unmuted yes Ki okay thank you and unfrozen I I do know how to unmute but sometimes I just disappear so thank you for fig my name is krie asmus and for those of you who don't know me um I'm the chair of the the Handover finance committee I also served on the school board for nine years and so um very much appreciate the process uh that
091you're going through um and when the finance committee met yesterday um that sentiment was echoed by everyone um I want to say that of the budget presentation tonight it's been very helpful um to see all the thought behind the three categories of requests not included uh the budget to budget reductions which in the past we would call those cuts the things in the first category um were sort of reductions to the increase um but of course even just knowing that you're looking at budget to budget reductions and knowing that sometimes um not all expenses need to go forward it's it helps us to um confidently explain to the community that that that you went through that process and then also the third category but priorities so that you're very clear on if you are going
092to add back x what is the top priority so you know I just um can't say thank you enough for for that um I having gone over the um budget somewhat in the finance committee um one comment that came up was also the appreciation for being very conservative on the tuition revenues um that seemed like a prudent approach um there was some concern um about looking at the enrollments um we I know have the finance committee has uh talked about this before that it's helpful we think to understand the budget to budget um changes in enrollment and in concom uh Staffing so for example um in the packet on page four it says medal School enrollments on an actual without homeschool um are projected to decline by 18 but if you look at the budget
093which is what the Staffing we should have in the budget Flo um it's a 38 student Decline and I'm I know that this year in particular with covid it's very difficult to figure out what next year's enrollments are going to be my point just is that it helps us understand if there is a explanation that's based on budget to budget rather than um actual to budget because it's s of more of an Apples to Apples um so I don't know if we can hear something more about that in January um but again just my overview um is that people are were very pleased that you have taken the uh the financial environment that many in our towns find ourselves in um also the pressures being faced uh by for example the uh town of Hanover
094uh budget um Etc um in in coming back with a reduced budget of your own and um we we just sit here and we'll we'll listen to what what more you have to say and I don't know if any other uh committee members um are listening in tonight that want to speak but somebody may want to put a finer point on my comments thank you yeah Jamie go ahead thanks car I'm sorry I don't know how to raise my hand when it's so many folks doing great I see you okay um I would say that for the January meeting uh I know it's not in the packet this year and we did uh we did put it in last year um that we hope to bring a a breakdown of sections and or class sizes
095like we did last year we just honestly have not had the time to look into doing that and we could per so you could see what the differences might look like I don't know if that would be helpful um I would look to my principles to see I think that could be done um the high school is the most difficult one obviously because the the the number of electives so normally what they do is they share uh what the um I think second semester signups look like to get kind of an idea of what it looks like moving forward so that's perhaps something we could uh embark on and and share at the January meeting that help Jamie I I don't have any problem doing that the one caveat that I would put forth is
096that because of our cohorting the numbers are are strange just because we have to put you have to build the schedule so that everybody stays together as much as possible and then switches with math so it it's not going to sort of all align the way it would in a normal year so that's again just one of those other things that this year has done to us is that we do have some very small cohorts and even the people in the building were like well why don't we just switch them to the other cohort it it's not as simple as that because then you have to change everything about it um and it makes it really complicated so we can definitely run those numbers but just know that they're not a reflection of what next
097year's schedule would be whatever do you think would be useful for us to have just a better understanding because I would say that was one one area that uh wasn't necessarily lining up for us okay thank you all um are there any other questions on the budget if not I do have a question question um and that was just um do we know whether or not there is still the potential for a sabbatic uh G leave um out there or is that door closed I see Anissa shaking her head Anissa yeah the date is passed for uh staff member to and Dresden to apply for sabatical okay and does any can anybody speak to Handover by chance it's all of so our uh cstc our Central staff development committee is joint and it's all uh
098Handover and Dresden and we would have looked at a sabatical um in November I believe those proposals come for so no sabatical for this upcoming year okay thank you one less budget question mark to exactly awesome thank you krie any other K did you have any other questions I apologize I don't to move off yes no I um I believe that was my only question question excellent thank you so much and thank you to the finance committee members as well um any other questions on the budget this evening so we will um we have a couple I think Kim one more budget committee meeting or two more coming up we have at least one and I think we'll go from there okay so at least one more um so if you have any other thoughts
099or comments between now and then please um feel free to share them uh Neil uh do you know then when we would have information on any potential um warrant or Bond articles related to technology I don't know if you're asking me I always direct my question thank you ni um I we I think hopefully would have that by January um Jamie do you know if that is indeed true yeah absolutely you have to have that by Jan s um I have been in contact with uh ryell [Music] lauler uh and I have um secured the checklists for everything that we have to do in regards to having warrants uh brought up for a bond um and I'm moving forward uh Gathering all of that data um I'm working with Josh who's working with the um
100oh gosh I'm blanking the eate funds consultant to see uh you know what what can be done in that respect um but I'm going to move forward with the bond information based on the numbers that we had uh our legal council has said that you can do that and then you just don't draw you know whatever the offsets are you don't draw the difference and then they just they disallow the difference and you never you know you don't write it based on what you don't need basically so so for the next meeting Neil we should have all of that wording and all of that information worked out and will we have a sense um of tax potential tax implications at that point as well okay super absolutely yeah thank you so much Damie good question
101Neil any other questions on budget um I will just point out I know we're going to talk about the sixth grade uh tuition ongoing discussion committee work uh momentarily but did just want to point out this point that that will not have a budgetary impact next year um should that go on to the um on the the warrant articles this year Kim that also is true for the technology warrant article at least what it's currently drafted as okay super that's good information thank you Kim Okay so so moving along uh to the rest of our agenda this evening um Casey you've been patiently waiting through all of our budget musings thank you for sticking with us um hi so the last time I talked um I spoke about the mascot um and the mascot motion
102that was brought um about changing it for Handover high school and we haven't talked about that in a whole group meeting we've had a lot of leadership and executive meetings about it to kind of decide how we want to better get um full School SCH full School feedback because it's definitely become a larger conversation um and so that motion is being brought again this week um and we're talking about having some way to get feedback using um kind of advisory discussions in a form after that but um we're waiting to see what we want to do with that um for after break and then during that time a lot of other motions and things that we needed to get done um were brought so first of all uh Miss Stevenson originally brought a motion about
103the dress code um to council and it ended up going to jcom instead um to use that so the Judiciary Committee um kind of brought back a motion to council based on a specific case um and that motion ended up being passed um there was definitely a lot of debate on whether or not um some language was included and a lot of students um or a group of students met with the ACLU about the motion um so we're really happy with that and then also the scheduling committee presented the schedule that um Miss Stevenson also referred to previously but um that was brought to council and presented and then um people ask questions and then also um I presented with a group of teachers and community members to the staff um and so the vote
104for the new schedule for the um 2122 year will be next week um from w Wednesday to [Music] Friday great thank you Casey are there any questions for Casey this evening Dan hi Casey uh so can um I I'd like to hear just a tiny bit more about the scheduling um conversation uh I I understand that there's a hybrid model on the table uh can't remember what you call them thin periods and block periods skinny periods can't remember um and uh I my sense is that hybrids can be uh complicated um and uh and I I would like you to say a little bit more about that but I have a suggestion um because I I my understanding is that there may be students who because of the way the the classes fall there might
105be classes they can't take um because they just don't match up and uh I would um offer that if you took this year's class schedule all the choices that all the students made and tried to see if how many people would not get their schedule in a hybrid schedule that would actually be a sanity test for whether or not the hybrid schedule um might cause problems for students or take last year's schedule and a sort of more normal um period so uh that would that's a suggestion but maybe you could say a little bit more about the conversation um yes I can so I actually um I was the student member starting my sophomore year on this committee so it's been going on this committee has been going on for three years I think the
106larger scheduling conversation's been going on for 10 or more years um but essentially we have been kind of going back and forth between block schedules and shorter periods because there's definitely classes that lend more towards longer periods and classes like Spanish um some math classes or languages not just Spanish um that lend more towards shorter periods more touches during the week and so the skinny block model was actually um one of the greatest compromises I think in terms of our committee because up until that point it was really hard to kind of come to a consensus and have everyone behind One schedule because um some teach teachers felt that they just couldn't teach in that block schedule because of kind of the way that their class works are the way that um their curriculum Works
107um and so that's why there's the skinnies and blocks um and we haven't from what I know no one has tested what you we're just talking about Miss Stevenson might know differently um but I don't I guess that's like kind of the background behind the skinnies and blocks um but they would have the skinnies would have 200 minutes a week and the blocks would have to 10 minutes a week and right now they've sent out classes are requesting a certain like either the shorter or longer periods based on the course not based on the specific class and so right now there are 60 I believe requests for um like thinner periods and then um I want to say 123 um I'm not completely positive with that number but the last time I looked is around
108123 requests for Block um block periods for courses yeah Julie and I just wanted to add um so we did exactly that today Dan um we Ran So I'm not we is I'm using that broadly Martha Campbell who's an absolute Superstar um has run the schedule five times for us this year and and to redone the schedule we normally do it once so now she's really really good at it so we are worried that we're we want this schedule and it's not going to be able to happen and it's going to cause lots of conflicts and so we asked her to to try to do it so today we went through that process um and the numbers we got from it were 94% of the requests were satisfied of students 68 without conflicts and so
109it sounds like a lot of people had conflicts but that's like our normal first run every spring like in March when we do it that's actually a good number so because we have the same conflicts you're talking about with the schedule we have now where if it's a single ten a student can't take it so right now it looks like it's starting out to be exactly the same as the schedule we would have run the seven period day or the schedule this year so we're hopeful um because we would love it to work but we were worried and she was really worried and so she went ahead and just tried it on in our sandbox and it seems to it seems to be okay maybe I hope that helps thanks Julie uh Lisa yes um
110I hesitate to ask this question having just gone through the budget presentation but I am wondering um if in the discussion of the new schedule Casey and Julie um and Jim I guess if the te if the teachers we talked about social and emotional support for the students and I'm wondering if there's any support built into it for the teachers because I'm assuming no matter what this new schedule looks like it requires a different way of structuring your classes um for either longer or shorter periods and I just am wondering if there's been any talk of professional development to help teachers who need help in expanding to the new schedule or Contracting to the new schedule or if I'm just dreaming that there would even be money for that and what you all are thinking
111um on that issue and I don't know if that's even been discussed but it just occurs to me that the teachers might need some support too as this new schedule rolls out I'm I might let that question hang out there unless somebody wants to answer um I might in fact let Jim and Tim sort of roll that into their comments if that's okay when you guys do your reports to the extent that that's rollable I guess um that KY can I add one thing just because Martha just texted me because obviously people are watching so be careful what you say it's actually better apparently it was 92% in the first round last year was 94 this time and then she wrote a bunch of stuff about going crazy and running it five other ways with
112the skdy thing and apparently it's doing even better in ways she can't imagine so she'll correct me on that a minute on the phone but it's better so it works thanks Julie um did anybody else have questions specifically for Casey and I'm sorry Lisa I just wanted to make sure that we um were able to address questions to Casey yeah I again I I don't know if I need an answer right now it just was a question that occurred to me as I heard the presentation thanks Lisa anything else for Casey I will just uh sorry I I will just reiterate I spoke to uh part of the council later on or late last week about council elections and I just wanted to offer up the uh the RMS Goose as a possible uh mascot
113for hover high school so we have talked and we think that that would be a good thing that would transfer right over we already have the logo so it's already ready to go so just as long as we're having the discussion I wanted to throw that out there thanks for your problem solving Spirit Tim as always excellent um any other questions for Casey this evening all right Casey thank you so much I this is later than we usually keep you so I really appreciate um you sticking around with us tonight um and thank you to you and the entire Council for the work that you're doing um moving on to our principal reports and Jim actually sent me this wonderful elaborate update so if you guys refresh there is um an update now loaded into
114board docs um so you should be able to see Jims yes Jay um Kelly I'm just wondering if it' be appropriate for um Julie has a report on the work of the equity committee as well and rather than making her wait until my report at the end of the meeting could we have her join the principles after their presentations certainly great that's fine with me um okay so we'll start with Jim and then go to Tim and then have Julie does that sound fair to you Julie yep okay I just go ahead with Julie right after Jim it makes sense for Julie go right now I'm I'm okay with Julie jumping at e well one of you needs to talk so all right let's start with Julie all right I must look like I need
115sleep so um so I just wanted to give you it's a really quick update um as you know the we had an equity audit which then told us that one of the major recommendations was that we embark on Equity PD as a district um and so we took that up and started this summer and and I told you the last time I talked to this group that we did a the summer the leadership group did a um some work with ground swell change over the summer um and now we are going to meet a few times starting in January with ground swell changes followup as a leadership group with them in terms of equity PD our staff if you didn't know has been doing Equity PD we started early this fall um we meet twice
116a month one time as a whole district and one time with we meet with our RMS as the high school and then um Mary and cross meets with the ray School the other time a week is a followup to the all district meeting each month um and we've been doing that um the training is really focused on Dei and Multicultural education um and we've been looking at the last couple times we've done breakout groups where we look at lesson plans and small groups and and try to work to improve them through a multicultural lens um and we've been trying to pay attention to Impact versus intent um and even with the lessons that that we create that we intend to be the right thing and sometimes they are so very wrong our our impact is
117not what we expected so we've been talking about that um we're going to continue that the rest of the year and the proposal um we have a proposal from Groundswell change to potentially continue into the following year and we're looking that at that as a leadership group and what we can do we not do surrounding that I think we're committed to the work we just have to figure out um how that plays out in terms of you know do we contract with someone do we do work within our schools with the knowledge that we gain from this year you know where where are we going to land there so um it's been it's been good to do it's it's hard in this year and you know I wish it was live versus in on Zoom
118um that would be helpful and as you know and you've probably heard from people if you talk to people is we don't have much time as a staff in in with all our covid protocols you know trying to separate always eating with students which we love in many ways but also don't have a whole lot of time and so um we're putting a significant eort effort and and time into this initiative which we think is worthwhile obviously we wouldn't do it if we didn't but we don't have a lot of time so the you can see the stress on people's faces surrounding it so um anyway so that that's where we are I don't know if people have questions Lisa is part of the Equity Group too and I think I saw Nicole is a
119in attending this meeting and she's been helping a lot at the high school and then helping with the whole group so um yeah so if you have questions we're here to answer them thanks Julie and I will just add um that there is a summary that um Nicole sent us um with the ACT sort of a summary of the activities of the equity committee thus far um that you can find in the superintendence report so if you look down in that portion I think we kind of rearranged when we were having Julie talk so um it is available in the superintendent report if you want to look at that summary um which is basic essentially what Julie just summarized for us so are there questions for Julie all right yes Lisa um not a question
120but just an addition um that hopefully in the spring we hope to have some parent and Community workshops based on the work that the teachers and the leadership team are doing so that the community can sort of all be on the same page so look to these meetings and all the school updates for details once those have been um [Music] finalized Thank you Lisa and thanks to the entire district and this is really a districtwide effort and and as Julie said there has been tremendous time and energy um and diligent effort put into this really important initiative so um I think this is It's a in my time on the board I think it's the first time that the whole district has really participated in this same initiative this way um so I I am
121grateful for that personally so thank you guys other questions for the equity work at this point okay thank you um Jim thank you report thank you um so I'm gonna be brief on this because it's I could talk about the high school forever um but I do want to congratulate the high school the Handover High School quiz bold team uh we were notified this morning that they the team finished first in the nation on the AY covid-19 full tournament um Bill Murphy sent an email out to the staff informing us of that win um so we're going to be letting the community know that in our Friday update um I we're all looking forward to the holiday break uh we can hear the coral students walking around in an Atrium singing um it's a festive
122atmosphere in the school I know I'm being invited to um advisory lunches and things like that just to show my face um and say hi and have have a happy holiday um Casey did a nice job um talking about um the council and what the council's been doing and the update with the scheduling committee the scheduling committee also gave an update to the staff at our staff meeting last Wednesday um and the staff is going to be voting on the proposed schedule uh next week um to just to get input from them uh they've been transparent they have questions and answ ERS that they're sharing with everybody as they come to the committee um and we're hoping that we'll be updating the board in January on that um I want to thank the committee for
123all their hard work they have put a tremendous amount of work into this and as Casey indicated it's it's been a long process I can say that the the scheduling committee was my first meeting I attended um when I when I started at Hanover High School and I was impressed they it's thorough um they share data and they have really really good discussions about the schedule um to answer Lisa's question I think to help answer Lisa's question um the staff has been involved in this um I would you know from my time I know the staff has been involved with it um the committee members um asked for feedback um at the last department meeting they had the discussion about what classes they wanted skinnies what classes W as blocks and that the staff had
124input on that um and it it was related to curriculum um as far as the the long periods and the short periods I I believe that with the schedule that we went to this year the staff has had PD it's been minimal PD on the long periods I believe that they're they're ready for it I I think there's always room for professional growth and we'll have those discussions there is money in the budget for PD and we're going to support the staff with with the schedule that's chosen um March intensive there there's been conversations about March intensive I know I brought it up at the last board meeting and what it could look like for the 2021 school year um the staff voted um to move it to May um they were asked if if
125they'd be willing to move it to May and 67% of Staff indicated they would favor the change um and there's been a lot of discussion about it um the staff um some the staff um was um a little upset that they didn't have a a say in that of having it or not I know um there's a lot of questions with it right now um it was presented to the co task force today and they were in total well this is me thinking we're saying that they're in total support of this they want to be updated as we move along Matt Prince has did a great job presenting um to the co task force today um and the the the takeaway from that meeting was let's continue to move forward with planning for the for
126the March intensive that's going to be taking place in May he's hoping to have presentation or or I guess sessions um finalized sometime in January and he's hoping to have a catalog for the board um to look through for approval um sometime late January or in in February um the the the takeaway was is that the criteria really needs to be communicated um the staff has questions about that um what they can do and what they can't do um with the community so Matt is working on that the task force invited him to run anything through them if they have any questions at all as far as safety is concerned with covid um the end of semester uh it's coming up fast um with that I know this was a conversation at last month's meeting
127um we're going to have a regular class session um through the end of the semester and students it's going to be up to the teachers um they're going to have a culminating experience it could be a major project it could be a an end of the course exam um it could be a number of things that the teacher um decides um as a culminating experience um I included the schedule there for the um the end of the semester and then the start of the second semester we'll start on uh January 26th and that's also outlined um in my overview the remote learning program for second semester um we're anticipating 40 students coming into the program um we're going to be offering 26 courses through the remote program um there'll be 14 core classes three supportive
128classes and nine elective classes um which include three independent studies um and it's going to include about 19 staff members when everything is is scheduled out um staff members could be teaching one class up until a full load through the remote program um running parallel to that those students in the remote program some are also requesting if they could start registering for VX classes if they don't have a complete schedule and they're they're running that through Kathy El as as we start this process Athletics um winter sports tryouts officially start on December 14th um they were participating students were participating the skills and drills prior to that um Megan informed me today we have 269 students registered for winter sports um they're offering all the regular winter sports except for unified basketball um there weren't
129enough participants um for that um swimming they had to make cuts to swimming um because of covid they can only fit so many people in the facility um indoor track you heard it um just a few minutes ago that uh indoor track will not be um taking place this winter um so they're going to be doing everything outdoors um Megan's informed us that they're going to be wearing reflective vest and headlamps and there's 35 students um currently signed up for that um they're going to have a development skiing a Nordic skiing program this year that's going to meet three to four times a week um beginners are welcome there's 25 students signed up for that and basketball will still be um they're still going through tryouts and they'll be making more cuts and to keep
130the numbers at a minimum in the gym um masks are being worn inside at all full at all sports um and they're being required for all Outdoor Sports if they can't maintain six foot distancing and competition begins January 11th um Megan is at the co task force meetings weekly and she gives updates and answers any questions that come her way um at this time no fans are going to be allowed to attend the home sporting events and we're going to continue to monitor that as the season goes through and then she also puts some links on there about the the Handover um Athletics website and what's on there and then um she's also instituted an out of school out of season requirement where no um winter student athletes and team sports May participate any outside
131teams including practices workouts scrimmages and of course that's for covid individual sports student athletes must have permission to do so um and again it's because of Co so that's my update a nutshell I do want to I I can't thank you know I was remiss to thank Kathy EB for everything she did on the budget and everybody else that had input on the budget and I'm confident that um we're going to have a successful year next year with everything going on thank you thanks Jim Jay I want to thank you and the staff for trying to figure out a way to preserve March intensive um with everything that our kids are losing in terms of traditions and uh activities that are fun that unfortunately um are precluded by covid uh the fact that we're willing
132to flex and try to maintain this is is really important I think um and that's a you know hats off to you and the staff for trying to keep that going yeah and I you know I can't thank the committee enough the committee is is doing a lot of work uh they're they presented at the last staff meeting um they're publishing the questions that are coming up from staff so everybody's on the same page moving forward um the questions that are being raised are are real and I'm I'm confident that Matt Prince and the committee is going to have the answers um they're reaching out to community members and they're being creative with what they're doing um and I'm looking forward to it uh you know that was one of the reasons I you know
133I accepted the position I you know March intensive Council the whole Democratic school thing and I'm really looking forward to seeing um a March intensive take place whether it's a May intensive or March intensive I'm looking forward to it so thank you uh John thanks Kelly uh first Jay thanks for pointing that out I think that's really great that we're trying to find a way to still do March intensive I think one of my favorite parts of these board meetings are when Matt comes in and presents and talks about all the exciting things that I want to sign up for for March intensive so it's really great to hear that we're still moving forward um but I do have a question about the um the unified basketball um it's sad to hear that that's not
134going to happen can you talk a little bit more about the where the the disconnect is where the numbers might be is it more of an issue with covid or is it just a lack of something um you know I think that's a really neat program and and really again one of the best basketball games I've ever seen was a unified basketball game last year at hover so John it's interesting uh because we had that in my previous school system and I agree it's it's a great great um event to watch and to participate in um and speaking with Megan about this there just weren't enough Handover High School participants um from what I understand it was um it was a number of schools that participated it wasn't just a Handover high school team and
135we just didn't have the numbers to support it this year um I can get more details on that with Megan but when I spoke to her about it a few weeks ago she because I was excited I thought it was going to be Runing also and then she said we're not going to have the participants um well John you remember like if you've watched a game you often two you know the participants the helpers are Handover high school students and the the main participants a few are Handover high school students and then we probably had students from three or four other schools and we can't bring them in um in the environment we're in right now and so because then we're mixing with another school and so I think that's the main reason I we
136all want to see it happen it's it's just that it's the co it's co really because it it we never had enough Handover High School participants to make it happen we had other we we mixed with other schools and we're unfortunately not mixing right now that makes sense thank you I I figured that was the answer I just was curious thank you Dan yeah uh Jim thanks for that and I was uh interested and uh pleased to see a kind of more flexible um kind of Capstone end of semester uh schedule that said um it might be early but have uh those uh classes which are going to have exams TR thought at all about kind of a plan B if we're in the unfortunate situation where uh students aren't in school and how uh
137exams are going to be administered um remotely uh in some sensible way at unfortunately um seeing uh all kinds of um sorry cheating scandals uh all around the country um uh related to online uh assessment um so uh anyway that's that's my question thanks yeah and those conversations have not taken place as a school um as a staff that's something I could put on the next agenda item um right now you know we're we're I guess we're being optimistic that we're going to continue to to March forward in person um but I I hear what you're saying Dan and I'll go ahead and I'll put down on the agenda item so we can have a a plan B if necessary yeah that that anyway I I think it would be a good idea it's it's
138complicated and uh and uh if anyway if I can be of any help uh I'm happy to to to speak to you or whomever so thanks Jim thank you thanks uh any other questions for Jim all right moving on to Tim okay well this uh this meeting sort of falling in between uh Thanksgiving and the winter holidays we wanted to take some time at RMS to thank some of the people who have made the fall what it is uh the first thank you goes to the Friends of the Handover norch schools we received three different grants from the friends um this which we were actually able to procure the stuff as I guess it was um from Friends of Hanah Norwich schools so one of them was for PE equipment and we managed to get
139a soccer and a football for each one of our home rooms which doesn't seem like it should be a big deal for middle school students um but if you watch all of our students at lunch running around outside playing any different kinds of ball games um it it really is sort of a nice reminder that that is part of of what middle school is about especially when you watch a cohort try to play basketball with a football which is of course one of the things that the middle school students try to do but that's been fun um we also got a great Grant so that all of our painting on canvas students have their own paint brushes which means they can spend most of their time painting and not cleaning all of the brushes so
140that the next cohort can use it so that's been a lot of fun as well and then um finally we've been able to get a lot of science equipment that our science teachers have been able to use so that we can keep our idea of learning through doing going so we've had a number of different uh experiments running at this time today I was sitting out in the hall watching people throw ball of wood airplanes up and down the hall trying to figure out exactly how to make them fly all of that is through the grants that we got so that we don't have to spend all of our time washing the airplanes um which is you know sort of our new normal uh thank our PTO we had a great uh PTO appreciation breakfast
141on Friday and we wanted to thank them too for not forgetting our remote Learning Academy teachers um and making sure that each one of them is going to get a gift card to one of our local bookstores um and they actually did enough research to get gift cards from bookstores that are on the correct side of the Connecticut River so that we're not uh making people cross the river and you know have to quarantine after they use their gift card um and also thank you to Jamie and the SAU staff and and everybody who's helped us with this budget presentation as it's gone forward um from late night emails saying wait I don't understand what's going on here um so that's been really helpful um at Thanksgiving break I think all of us sort of
142did a quick transition to um from sort of survival mode to now everybody on the staff seems to be thinking about going forward um and what we're going to try to do um in the year that is coming we feel like we have a pretty good handle on how to make school run in the situation that we're in um and one of the things that we decided to do even before people had asked is to sort of do a comprehensive look at where our students are compared to where they would normally be um and try to figure out what we would need to do going forward um so we're going to do much more of that for our January meeting most of that information will be qualitative because we really don't have a whole whole
143lot of quantitative data uh on the students since last March um but the one bit of quantitative data that we didn't run which often uh nationally plays into sort of school morale is our attendance uh numbers and I don't know about other people but when I ran our attendance numbers I fully expected because of quarantine and um travel and we have some students who are having difficulty getting to school that our numbers would be down and in fact it's exactly the opposite so if you take out uh the number of students that we've had who were in quarantine um not in the mass quarantine that we had uh but in other things and we have some students are out our student attendance is about 98% if not above um which is a pretty phenomenal number
144for a middle school um and the other thing that latches on to that is that our faculty attendance is also way down is way up um so we've had very very few absences from faculty um throughout the fall which again just shows me that uh while people were really nervous and anxious about coming back to school the sort of energizing part of being in school in person has really paid off so uh thank you to everybody who made that happen um preliminary feedback that we get on the academic part is that students are not as far behind as we thought um and that a lot of people are noticing that the depth of the learning for the student St is much deeper even though we're not doing quite as much in terms of breadth so
145we may not be covering everything that we covered before but what we are covering we're covering deeper um and it's actually giving students they seem to have a lot more confidence in their understanding of what's going on so we're hoping we can look at that going forward and we're hoping that that's something that we can continue um but we definitely need to examine that we were talking today too about we need to do a comprehensive exam ination of our students in the remote Learning Academy to see what being out of a traditional school for almost a year means uh in terms of social emotional learning um and a lot of other things we're uh not worried I don't think I think that's the wrong term but you know maybe questioning to see if if this
146is something that we want to keep going with um since we've made a concerted effort to sort of mitigate all stress at RMS before the end of the year we really don't have a whole lot going on at the end of the year we do have a uh one uh theater performance on Friday night that will be all virtual which I'm looking forward to I think will be really neat um but we've sort of done away with uh the parties we do have a little bit of a spirit week going on this week um and combined we're going to have a virtual ball drop on Tuesday afternoon for the new year but we're sort of hoping just to keep everything as calm as possible um and we also uh last week um through a number
147of the home rooms and nurse Abby sort of went tried to set up a situation where we could send uh notes and cards and decorations to our neighbors down at Handover Terrace um who are going through a bit of a tough time um so we were able to get all of that obviously people asked immediately how can you send that don't worry it's being held in a room for a number of days so we're going to keep everybody safe um but it is kind of neat to see uh the students doing a lot of Outreach to the people who aren't quite as lucky um as we are we did have the the other one big I know it's coming up but the the we did have a a covid event yesterday at school um which
148was just sort of showed again I think how adaptable everybody is and has become throughout this and we managed to get everything taken care of um so far everybody is safe and healthy uh we'll know we should know more of the next couple days but um that's sort of where we are we're really looking forward to planning the next semester we'll start that process in January I think we're all just trying to get through the 22nd of December um and get some needed rest and relaxation and sort of recharging for everyone but um the energy is still really high in the building um but in a good way and not nearly as frenetic as middle schools can be so that's where we are we're looking forward to it we're I we feel very lucky I
149think every day to be coming into the building um and especially when something like this happens um to be perfectly honest you wouldn't believe it but the students who have had to go home until Monday are really mad that they're going to be out of school which I would not have predicted a year ago at this time um but they really are upset um they're like well we want to stay well so we're doing the best we can we're zooming some people in um and we're taking care of that so that's uh that's our update thanks Tim uh any questions for Tim Tim it looks like you might be getting off easy here tonight all right thank you guys um for those wonderful updates um we will move on to policies and this is a
150second reading of these policies and um Ben can you remind me I think we actually have already approved some of these at other districts is that right did we already approve at Handover last week yes I believe they're approved at Handover I think all of them were approved at Handover and I do not think there were any edits based on the first reading either okay I think I know I had received an email about one clarification question um yes uh Lisa go ahead yeah um sorry that was me and I'm sorry I didn't catch this on my first reading of these but on on jcd um The Dresden policy of student discipline in due process um under e process for expulsion it says that a people may be expelled by the school board um for
151all the reasons and I'm wondering is that where the process starts or where does the process of a I mean I'm just assuming we wouldn't as a school board it wasn't clear to me how the referral of someone who needed to be expelled would happen and so um I don't know if that needs to be in there or if it's implied that probably it would follow a suspension which is clearly outlined in part D but it just when I read it this morning I was a little confused about how we would get a referral for someone who might have to be expelled so so um I suspect that it might be State Statute that the school board has to be involved in that Jay go ahead yeah Kelly you're right it's a an expulsion is
152a quasi judicial proceeding in which the board acts as both judge and jury uh and the administration recommends expulsion that would come from the principal to the superintendent superintendent recommends to the board board actually oftentimes has an attorney present U because you're you're essentially removing someone from their their right to an education right no I I mean I was fine with us being the deciding vote I just was less clear about how it got to us because the other part is really clearly outlined um y so I was inferring but I just wanted to make sure that my assumptions were correct so thanks sure are there any other questions or comments on these policies thanks Lisa Neil I've got one and it was relative to um ke um and I just think that it might
153be missing a word so policy k 2 paragraph um it's the sentence that says any relief granted by the board will be bounded by the leadership principles that distinguish the and then I think after that I think it might be missing a word I'm wondering if that word might be difference yes there is a word missing I don't recall this excisive a word it probably might have come to us that way J think the if you take the word the out that may work yeah I think Rick's right okay we will note that and word Smith that's that word out uh thanks for the catch Neil yeah and then I had one more General um comment and I don't know if we want to it's related to the the sexual harassment policies um it was
154my understanding I think based on some previous experience that we had with this that um the the reporting requirements are not limited to the school year is that correct these are 365 days a year for events that might happen that don't necessarily have to happen on school grounds but still could be reported to school administrators or teachers correct okay yeah that's correct NE yeah there's uh there is no time limit um except that when there is a time limit right so once the process starts if the process starts outside of regular school year we still need to adhere to all of the timelines that may be included in in the process moving forward right and I guess the only one that kind of I wonder about then is that do do staff know that if
155they get a report outside of the regular academic calendar that they need to act upon it right away like if they if if for some reason some student were to contact a teacher that they have a really good relationship with but it happened to be over the summer months does that teacher know that we need to get on it like right away right yeah Jak they may not know that right now Neil um we're in the process right now pending the the the approval of these policies U Megan Glenn is going to be providing training for those of us who will be administering the policy and then we'll be updating our policy that we have right now um that that all of our teachers and all of our staff in fact take so um this
156is sort of step one and then I'll be participating in both the um Investigator training and the the decision maker training those are the two separate sessions that Megan is setting up so uh all the nuances and all the the deadlines and and the timing and so forth will be I assume covered by Megan thanks Jay Rhett uh yeah thank you um I think to one of Neil's questions is the the piece about the school districts responsibility for Title 9 is if it's you know occurring either on school property or at a school sanctioned or uh event that's overseen um by the school district so there may be An Occurrence that's where something happens over the summer between two students and if it doesn't involve the school district um that wouldn't be a complaint that
157we would investigate we would want to ensure that those students um have an equal opportunity when they return to school to not feel discriminated harassed um during the school day in the school environment so just um to clarify Neil for voting purposes was this something that you felt needed to be revised in the policy or was it more an implementation question um uh I think well probably more impl I think it's just you want to make sure that for for clarity sake like if these are the if this is the document that folks are going to reference to determine what they need to do that if there are things in there that relate to the difference between the Academic Year and the calendar year as far as reporting and responsibilities and such like that we
158probably ought to capture it in the policy or the regulation um but I'm okay passing these the way that they are now um and then following up maybe with attorneys or understanding like what the you know how this plays out and to see if they need to be revised later on okay thanks um Rick wondering does the cbas cover this can you elaborate sorry no just the the whole requirement uh I don't know if the cbas actually have the requirements that uh you're basically on the clock 365 days if a a complaint is lodged against you good question I don't I don't know the answer does anyone want to field that one um my best guess Kelly is that I think we probably I mean these are um these have been fairly well vetted at
159this point and you know I would suggest that the board um pass them tonight and that maybe some of these outstanding questions then get referred to legal counsel to find out whether or not they need to be addressed or if these types of things are already covered in language in there we just aren't interpreting it correctly okay thanks very much any other questions on the policies themselves okay we will be um voting on these later tonight um of course policies always have to be revised so if there is anything that comes up for you um Ben is is your guy to reach out to thank you all right uh update I know Kim has been eagerly awaiting on the sixth grade tuition working group thanks actually I am going to see if Ki asmith could
160um Red Rover on over um to prepare um so we in Handover just as a quick reminder um have in the Handover board has asked the Handover finance committee as one of their many duties to actually help us with some financial analysis and it was to help us understand um really how do we kind of resolve and smooth the sixth grade tuition swing and um Ki is actually uh filling in for Carrie Callahan who was the chair of that working group that is convened um which consisted of Rick and I uh from the Handover board side and uh and Ki and Mack Gardner and Carrie Callahan was the chair from the Hanover finance committee side and Jamie Teague also sat in um uh participated at every meeting sat in um so I just wanted to
161have uh give krie the kind of the floor to introduce um and kind of basically share what recommendations those working group has had in this sixth grade tuition kind of where did we come up with so K was that a fair introduction yes I um so good to see everybody again here um there's one thing I would add is that we worked from um an objective that we got from the Handover School Board um and that was to consider the sixth grade tuition formula Alternatives that reduce volatility and ensure Equity so that was our charge uh the group first met on November 2nd um in studying options we considered 10 years of data from fiscal year 12 to fiscal year 21 after considering several Alternatives uh we came to a consensus recommendation last Thursday December
16210th uh this recommendation was presented to the finance committee as a whole yesterday and all members concurred with the recommendation uh but to clarify I want you to know that we understand um that we are making a recommendation and that it is up to you the Dresden school board and the Handover School Board to make the final determination of what changes if any should be made um you could even tell us to go back to the drawing board um of the options considered the working group recommends that the boards consider adopting a new configuration for the Dresden and Handover districts in which the resident Hanover sixth grade students are members of The Dresden District rather than the Hanover district with this option Hanover sixth graders would be included in Hanover's average daily membership ADM that
163we talked about earlier and tuition payments would be eliminated in terms of our objective the volatility in tuition payments would disappear but there is also a good chance that the shifts in the ADM split between Hanover and Norwich would be smaller um as a larger population base is generally more stable than a smaller one and in fact for the years that we looked at the shifts in the ADM split would have been smaller in seven of the nine years and just about the same in uh the eth year so um that that should help um in terms of um you know that tail that sometimes Wags the dog in terms of equity uh we looked at what the financial implication would have been in each of the past 10 years had the Handover sixth graders
164been included in the Dresden ADM versus is paying tuition and what we saw is that in some years uh it would have been a benefited Handover and in other years it would have benefited Norwich but on average Handover would have paid approximately $40,000 net more per year than it did um a little over 10% of that uh or 4,500 um was related to bond debt payments that we will uh you know end in the next uh several years that's an in an example of how looking in the rear view mirror does not really tell you about where you're going uh but the great share of it um has to do with the tuition formula itself in which the per pupil cost for any given year is based on the previous year's Richmond Middle School budget
165so that means there is a lag in updating the costs associated with the operating component of the tuition amount um there are practical reasons for why it has been that way um in terms of budget preparation as well as concerns that changing the formula um would have made things even less fair so just to put a finer point on it with the recommendation that the working group is putting forth the contribution for every sixth grade resident Handover student would be calculated the same way it is for every other Handover and Norwich resident student in grades 7 through 12 uh further it would put an end to the awkwardness of comparing tuitions for the Handover residents with students um who reside outside the district and for example uh attend the high school other advantages of this
166recommendation are that the annual calculations are simple compared to the Alternatives and quite a bit more transparent for the public uh this option would require a Dres and warrant artic to amend the articles of agreement as well as an article on the Handover warrant uh but it should be kept in mind that the dri the district had already gotten legal advice that any substantive change to the tuition agreement would be best adopted by the voters of the two school districts um so that is our our recommendation I'd be happy to answer questions or to uh let your colleagues add their thoughts thanks very much Currie uh Tom uh curri very straightforward thanks for the great overview but uh do you have documentation on this that we might be able to review to there's a lot
167of information sure what are you looking for exactly I mean there's the spreadsheet that shows you know in any given year the comparison and the average uh but was there something else that you're looking for no I just love to see the uh comparisons you were just referencing uh okay in in a spreadsheet or paper to and then um and then having it laid out I think for the board as far as what the steps would be moving forward in terms of the uh having to change the dresen Compact and uh and other things as well would be would be great as we move forward here right and just to be clear the compact itself would not have to change that's the part that requires the act of Congress but there's this other set called
168The Articles of agreement and that has been um amended a number of times in in my time in Handover which is now over 20 years um and there is uh some you know question about whether you could have it on the same warrant or whether uh it would be better form to have it on a a like you'd had everybody two pieces of paper um so that's uh you know that's sort of a finer distinction but um Jamie has been in touch with uh attorneys who for one maybe she should speak to that part um but it's it's a fairly you know straightforward uh warrant article that's great no I just yeah if we could just get that uh what it would look like uh and and I'd just like to see the calculations of
169the references you made to the seven of nine years and and the other examples you had would be great to just have in front of me I guess thanks very much yeah one of the um sort of other little uh pieces of information that I didn't work into that but um I know that on the Handover side there has been some concerns about all right well so the um Handover share of the ADM would increase and we know that that's a pretty you know that even a small change in that can mean a big swing and on average if the sixth graders were in the uh Dresden ADM Handover share would increase by 3% on average so this year we're sort of what at 68% so it would be at 71% um and kind of
170just did in your own mind figure out wow that's you know it's it's a big junk of change that we would you know pay routinely as opposed to the swings that you see in the sixth grade tuition thanks Currie uh Ben thanks I Echo Tom's comment about wanting documentation additionally with something like this where there's lots of moving parts and lots of complexities I worry about unintended consequences hitting that we're not foreseeing so it would be great if um this committee can come up with sort of a pros and cons list or something equivalent from both the perspective of Handover and nor which that would be great to see as well as we uh debate this decision thank you yeah I was going to say that we um did sort of think that we wanted
171to stay out of the political arguments so we can um you know again the we know that the calculations for figuring out the ADM would be simpler than the tuitions that we have but um we did suggest to Kim and to Rick that if there were political considerations that they would be the better ones to articulate those thanks and I think Kim that's your cue thanks I will lower my hand um so I you know this it was on the agenda as an update and this was a recommendation very quick turnaround recommendation so you know I think um we wanted to get this in front of you because could be a worren article but I think January is probably a more realistic kind of presentation and so kind of definitely happy to hear feedback on
172this so we know um we can kind of come back with some of those to get to some of um the other um kind of pros and cons because you know we we did talk about this um in the working group as well but um I think one thing that uh can't be uh appreciated enough from the school side is that really eliminating these swings um allows to do long longer term planning for both for all the districts frankly even you know Mary and cross Ray um because there isn't this crazy swing yo-yo effect that is now having to cut textbooks and field trips um just because so I think you know I think that this is something that is really helpful um you know just from a Bor sense you know Tim do Tim
173Bole and RMS doesn't show up at our Handover meetings even though we paid sixth grade tuition you know I think there's just a lot of practical sense that Handover sixth graders are in Dresden and um to have them be treated like seventh through 12th graders makes just a lot of sense um and um you know really to get to to a con you know I I think we did try to think how many cons are there um you know Ki said you know for Handover it looks like it could be on average based on the last 10 years potentially about $40,000 um more a year U for on the Handover side um you know is that just a transaction cost you know that's basically to tuition students um we can kind of think about different
174kind of ways on how that would make a lot of sense um but that also gives us longer term planning Runway um the another kind of con and this is really more for a Handover board to to think about um but for uh you know we'd be shifting swings that would come to the Dresden side and as we know dresdon doesn't have Reserve funds um we have historically um although there are reasons for and against it but we have we have adopted and currently have a sixth grade tuition Reserve fund um and you know just to to help balance out some of those swings now hopefully we wouldn't have those swings to begin with so we may not need a sixth grade tuition Reserve fund but the uh the flexibility in doing that is basically
175uh out of the Handover District so it's just something to consider although I I hopefully we wouldn't need it because we we don't do it for seventh through 12th grade currently so um those are some of the that we can kind of elaborate more on that um if there's any questions too I'm sure I I didn't hit everything I would say for me personally based on my time on the board um in the last six years it seems to have been a period when we've had these ups and downs and then we have catch-up payments because we were supposed to have this you know smaller sixth grade class but then we got seven new kids in the sixth grade class coincidentally and that's you know an extra 140,000 that we hadn't expected to pay and
176and it just it makes it impossible for our principles to um create the Strategic plan that we're tasking them to create and set priorities for their buildings when they have these huge um numbers that are completely out of their control and unpredictable um and so I I'm I'm a huge proponent of anything we can do to smooth that out so that our our building administrators can start to put forth their agendas um without other things directing their their goals um sorry Garrett can someone just um and again I don't want to go back and revisit time but can someone just point me to we the existing tuition calculation like how it's done cuz I have a feeling that you know that ex the know the the the tuition calculation may also just have been a
177little bit inaccurate which is what's causing that you know overall difference if you add up the difference the sum of the differences for all the years because I've always been looking at this and kind of saying okay like there is some sort of I've talked to Kim about there you know putting this all in tuitions obviously put this as like a variable cost right where where a lot of the building and everything else that that seventh and eighth grade and then Handover high is a lot of it's just fixed right doesn't matter how many kids you have in it you still have you know kind of the same number of teachers and a lot of the same cost to run these schools um so my guess is that's probably where this kind of 40 Grand
178difference is is there is some mismatch between the tuition calculation and what the true kind of fixed costs are that the sixth grade should be burdened with right but anyways it would just be interesting where to understand a little bit about the existing tuition and how that's calculated um just for those of us that are kind of looking at this thanks gett uh Jamie were you so I think I initially misunderstood his question you're talking about the base tuition rate not this Cal yeah what how that rate is calculated exactly so like that 22,000 like where do that number come from every year it comes from taking the entire budget for the Richmond Middle School and a portion of the districtwide and then it carves out the um certain expenditures that are um you know
179borne by the school district as what you would consider nonvariable expenditures um so I can share that with you it's in writing actually in the tuition agreement it tells you exactly what gets carved out and what gets us used um I I have the document and I will share it with all of you I shared it with the Hanover our finance committee for the budget build uh for the prior year so okay okay yeah and again I don't want to overthink it yeah my guess is if you add up the 10 years and the difference over the 10 years is close to zero then it's probably correct anyways because at the end of the day it's the swings that are causing it if the tuition's been pretty calculated accurately then that's you know you're probably
180pretty darn close with this new method okay thanks Garr um so if there aren't any other questions at this point um you guys are going to bring this back to us with sort of a formal um warrant article proposal in January is that correct I think that would make sense yeah so I think we'll talk um you know with the working group kind of next steps and whether it's the the board members presenting or whether the working group kind of continues on but we'll um we'll get back to you and definitely provide um the data behind it and kind of answers to those questions tonight in addition to the war in article language obviously all right super and and just a a quick question for my norch colleagues there isn't any talk going on in
181Norwich at this point about sixth graders moving over to the middle school is that correct that is correct okay I know that has been tossed around in the past but not at this point that may be I mean I think looking on out it's something that might be a topic of discussion for the Strategic plan okay super thanks yep Kim uh just to that point um I would say that this move could potentially kind of Grease the wheels or show that um we can assign Handover sixth graders as part of Dresden and so it I think um it may not require the act of Congress to um make changes as we say so just I know it's for a strategic plan and not not my purview but um just wanted to share that there is
182that opportunity okay thanks Kim all right uh moving on to our covid update see Robin's still awake so that's I am and we had our covid happen on a different day for once yesterday so we had our second case and this is our second case at the middle school and our last occurred over two months ago October 11th so we've done very well it was once again we always learned new things from each of these cases so this time we ended up having to send our nurse home and that created some problems for us because we really need to have a nurse at the school so we've been working for the last two days at the beginning of this meeting included trying to work out a situation where we would have a nurse covering at
183the middle school but the middle school did an amazing job they got all the lists together um so the process was smooth I feel like every time we do this we tweak it a little bit and learn something new so I think once again it went very well as well as one could expect um we did have our covid committee meeting today and we did some followup on the situation from the middle school yesterday and um we heard a presentation as you heard previously from Matt Prince about the now may um intensive not March intensive and we try to provide some guidelines to that group and we'll continue to do so we've told them that that they can bring any questions that they have to us and we're happy to work with them and try
184to answer and I just reiterated the importance of keeping an open mind and knowing that things are going to change and it might be more restrictive now but hopefully things can open up and become less restrictive as we move through the process um other than that we do have some testing going on in the Norwich School they'll do the second round at the state level so all of the teachers will be tested who have signed up with um covid tests and that is basically it for now for our covid update thanks very much Robin uh questions for Robin all right thank you guys um and I did did just want to also say a quick word of thanks to Kari aspas and that working group that is um volunteering their time to help us look
185into that very complicated question so thank you guys for that um moving on to business requiring action uh so there are quite a few things on here I have one small change um but I think procedurally I'll take a motion and then um we can open discussion I'll take a motion in a second and then we can open discussion and then vote um but move to approve items B through F by consent and I'll take a second John thank you and my only um my only comment was on the minutes um somehow Garrett uh was left off of the members who are present He's listed as making comments but so we just need to add him for members who were present um Rick yeah I just I know we're going to do it by consent
186but there is a donation from the boys soccer club so I don't know if someone wanted to thank them on behalf of the board I think that would be wonderful I also wondered if either Jim or Megan who I see has joined us I'm not sure if Megan's still there um but if I don't know if either of you wanted to speak to that very briefly perhaps they have stepped away for just a second um oh there's Megan I can speak to that Kelly thanks Megan yeah it was a so we had um as we were wrapping up the wait room project with um the fundrais money we had just put a call out to the Friends groups to see if anyone else wanted to donate and that's where we got that lovely donation um
187so that is what that is for great thanks Megan and thank you to the Friends of boy soccer for that contribution to the entire school yes the other thing is we slightly amended one of the policies I don't know how you do that with a consent whether it's consent as amended I think it's a wording right it's a it's a wording Amendment so I think we're okay is that right yeah I think we're just going to take out the so we should be okay it's not substantive if that's the case thanks Rick all right uh if there are no other questions or additions um I guess we'll just do a roll call vote uh starting with Rick Johnson yes Tom andon yes Neil Bill yes Ben K yes Lisa chrisy yes Kim Min yes Dan
188John Hunt yes Marcel I think that couldn't hear it but I think that counts and McConnell yes okay um excellent and reports and Communications um committee reports anything additional to share we've heard from I think most of our active committees this evening okay yet Neil uh just at the well you were there the evaluation committee um met um with uh new round of membership um continued the discussion um related to um uh starting to I think get into the discussion more procedurally of um you know how we're going to go about doing um the evaluation process um some of the models that we're looking at and the implementation aspects of those things thanks Neil um I did actually I had mentioned I think at the Hannah Mee perhaps that I would reach out to nhba
189and just see if there was any discussion of um K through2 teachers sort of moving up on the priority list for vaccines and I I did get a response back that at this point there hasn't been any discussion of that but things are just kicking off so um if I hear more I will follow up with you that meeting is coming up in January I need to double check the calendar date um but NH hsba will be meeting virtually in January to vote on um the items that have been put forth and I'll be sure that I send that out to you guys um so that you have a chance to see the resolutions and we can formulate an opinion in January uh any other committees all right um I don't have anything to report
190I'm so grateful that we were all able to move this to the 15th so that we're not doing this three-hour meeting on the 22nd of December so thank you all for that um and our next uh meeting will be January 12th 2021 and will include the public hearing and the budget adoption I'm sure it will be another short meeting uh moving on to our superintendent report thanks Kelly just a few things um first of all I I just want to add my thanks to everyone who's been just so so uh diligent in following all of our protocols making School a safe place for our students and our staff to be uh Robin thanks again for leaping into action as soon as we got notied that there was a case um the folks at RMS did
191an outstanding job of were getting to be experts at contact tracing and um and the staff has been extremely flexible and responsive and uh and unfortunately this is becoming sort of routine at this point um that said I I'm sure you're all with me and being really excited about the fact that we have a couple of promising vaccines that are actually being distributed and uh to Kelly's point know that Michael Hensley is advocating at the state level in New Hampshire that um our teachers should be treated our school staff should be treated as as Frontline workers in in this distribution because so many of our other Frontline workers rely on the schools um for for safe places for their children to be while they're doing their important work uh so he's been making that argument
192and hopefully he'll get some traction and and we'll we'll see U our teachers move to the head of line um I also promised a sort of an update on on the equity work uh Julie did a fine job of sort of summarizing where we are I've attached a document that um the committee prepared that sort of takes us through um from the very beginning of the work a couple years ago um through our current training and then and then goes into a plan for the coming year uh in my conversation with some of the leaders of the equity committee we're we're really looking at turning the corner from staff development which is something that was identified as a need in the original audit um to curriculum work which which um we fully intend to have
193Equity be one of the pillars of both our strategic planning and our curriculum development work moving forward um I guess to that end Robin and I have been meeting uh we're starting a a series of weekly meetings to re-energize the strategic planning and curriculum work and um it's been kind of refreshing to spend an hour or so actually talking about education instead of qu maining and following the rules of Vermont and New Hampshire alternatively um so uh making progress on that I'm I'm going to share with the board that I think uh we're looking at is probably moving away from having a um an external uh facilitator uh now that Robin's joined us we feel that the two of us can help to um organize that we also have a whole cadrea of staff at
194the ray school who have been through a facilitate facilitation training uh through uvi and so we feel like we can expedite the process a little bit and have in-house uh facilitation which should help us in terms of scheduling meetings and so on as well so we hope to really jump start that second semester um and looking forward to it U it's something that unfortunately fell by the wayside with with covid um the other thing I need to update the board and public on is that um and Jim's with us and and understands that he was hired as an interim principal and so we have a choice to make as we move forward about what we're going to do as far as that search and uh so I have administered a survey to the staff um
195responses were due by the end of the day yesterday um I've begun to to summarize the feedback I also got feedback from the board um and when we uh go into nonpublic this evening I'll share I share a brief update I haven't done a complete analysis yet but I'll kind of let you know where we stand on that um really grateful to the work for the work that Jim has done uh to this point uh keeping the Train on the tracks uh with all of the change and and all the pressure of covid and um and uh we we'll move forward forth with so um that's uh that's essentially all I have the only other thing I would offer to the public is an appeal that we've got a a rather lengthy holiday coming up
196and it's it's just you know there's there's that obvious um excitement about the fact that we've got a light at the end of the tunnel with these vaccines but since they won't have been distributed we still need to be really careful and it's I think everyone's done a wonderful job of working together to keep our schools open um but it only takes you know a bad one one bad lapse in judgment to um to cause an outbreak so we really need to be careful take care of each other and think about what it means to um to follow those protocols even though we start to see a chance for a vaccine um and make sure that we take good care of ourselves and our community so um urge people to continue on doing all the
197the things that we've been doing to make sure that we keep each other safe and uh we will need a nonpublic to discuss a couple of items and um we can talk more about the principal search at that time thanks Jay uh questions for Jay all right um moving on to our assistant superintendent report I think we have anything else to add Rob well I I'm happy to add that I had some time last week that was non-co related and I did get to work with Jay on the strategic planning which was exciting and I've had some time also to work on some evaluation pieces and work with the high school in each of the elementary schools and middle school so it's been it's been quite nice and enjoyable so not all covid related this
198time I'm sure that is it nice a nice break chance to get back to that excellent uh and Jamie our business administrator report I think some current financials updates good evening again um so I had a chance to sit down and take a look at the financials with all of the moving parts that have been going on and I share it with you here tonight um in an abbreviated un audited format um with my opinion of what the encumbrances will be from now through the end of the fiscal year which um I don't have a crystal ball but I I'm basing it on you know some assumptions that I would normally make um let me walk through it very quickly because I know the time is getting late so the the top part is the
199expenditure sections uh in a very abbreviated format there are other reports attached that you can take a look at if you want to look at specific areas um these are the projected budget balances that I'm projecting to year end uh based on going through all the different line items and making the assumptions that I normally would um keeping in mind some things you know I cannot predict um Dresden revenues again it's a bit of a tough year because of covid the local revenues are taking a hit predominantly in our rental income lines and in the interest income lines uh which is to be expected as the economy has taken a hip from the pandemic uh we've talked about the tuition projection it is a moving Target right at this point this snapshot in time says
200that we will not make our initial um projection from last year so those two variances in Revenue are um are a shortfall of $270,000 um I'm projecting about a $425,000 uh potential fund balance totally depends on what happens over the next six months I'm hoping knock on wood that we'll be as you know as stable as we have been uh we had a $200,000 fund balance we carried into revenues we have been awarded by the state of New Hampshire as everybody knows we got the $200 per student uh Grant uh that came in uh then there was an additional $10 million which was made available um from covid funding and you had to gather your expenditures and submit uh an application for the balance of what the initial monies they sent to us did not
201cover um I've also attached that copy of that report that we sent to the state of New Hampshire uh you could only apply for f for expenditure coverage from March to December 30 30th actually for this year in 2020 which we did we prated everything that needed to be prated um we filed for a total expenditure dollar amount of $360,500 538 um of the 360 , 591 we requested an additional $182,900 uh which was pro-rated because there was a bunch of other schools that did the same thing so they prated it to 67% um and I'm sorry and we received an additional 123,50 38 our initial first uh dollar amount that we were received let just do some quick math here uh was 177,000 so all total we've been given awarded through grants $3,138 uh
202to cover our initial expenditures through December 30 of 360,000 because we have not moved all the expenditures out of our expenditure lines up above here uh we will need to do that the state has said that we have to move them out into uh special Grant fund lines uh so that would mean that we would have um an operational potential operational fund balance after moving those expenditures out um of approximately 455,000 674 um projecting a $400,000 budget surplus offset and so that would say we would have total unassigned surplus of 55,67848 that we you know that is set aside for emergency purposes of which this is considered Co expens expenditures are considered um emergency um Pro emergency expenditures um but as of this point time we have been able to cover those expenditures you know
203assuming our grant money offset uh and we move them out so that's what Kim was alluding to and she said that I I have changed the projected budget surplus offset to 400 $100,000 uh in the budget as built for Dresden we can increase that amount um utilizing some of this fund balance retainage that we have not yet had to dip into two of the biggest um variables or maybe three of the biggest variables in this early projection um is that the tuition number here the tuition Revenue received number can change you know every other day it changes kids come kids go um and the other part is that if we God forbid something happens and go remote and don't run you know one of the athletic programs uh this local Revenue number will also go
204down because that has you know assumptions in there that we will continue with Athletics um as we have some of the assumptions the third the third uh variable that I don't have control over um is God forbid should something happen and you know we have to hire um multiple additional staffers to cover outages or you know um other unforeseeable issues you know this projected balance budget balance could absolutely change and go down um we saw a similar phenomena in um Handover due to the dollar amount of this the state you know covering some of our expenditures um so that's what I have at this point it is early for me to do something of this magnitude uh I want to you know wait until December ends and then revisit it again when we when we
205have a better idea of what the next um semesters look look like for our needs um but all in all I think it's good news based on where we were at in August thanks Jamie uh Kim thanks Jamie so yeah my question is around retainage and thinking about next year and um actually what what is our cap for retainage next year so this past year and why we have a retainage amount of 661 th000 I believe it's that like 4.6% of our of our possible 5% um kind of am possible amount that could retain of our net assessment of the Norwich side of the r net assessment I um so I think but I'm questioning going forward the reason why we could have the 5% um this past year is because covid and because the
206governor's number 38 order allowed us to um increase that cap from Two and a half percent retainage to 5% and um I'm not sure what uh next October will look like when we need to make this decision again um I am reminded um that our warrant article that um was passed in Dresden um had a two and a half percent kind of as as the cap which is what the RSA said up until covid um and so uh you know I just I'm wondering um how much of that 661 a do we even need and then B how much can we actually retain you know falling within our our guidelines and our warant articles and Governor's order and everything so um something for January I think to discuss um and something for the board to
207kind of consider too you know just I I think that there's something more to think about there so to your point the uh the governor's order allowed you to to retain up to 5% that's why even though we had the warrant article that had been voted that has not been rescinded in place that's why we had to do the last minute you know signatures that we had had the discussion and send it to the government to to the doe um the RSA I believe is changing and has been changed up to 5% starting with the next fiscal year it's was not made clear to me that we would have to revote that I think once you vote an RSA I think it stands unless it's rescinded um yeah and I think it's something maybe take
208offline but I think if we look back I think maybe it was actually two the two and a half percent was written in the Warren article from my my understanding um we can go back and see if that is if it's not true you know we can kind of I just want to share that I think we maybe need to have some more discussion about sure that's because the RSA at that point was two and a half yeah this first to looking do sure thanks guys other budget questions for Jamie at this point all righty thank you Jamie I know you have been working more than overtime and here we are at 10:00 working over time some more um so thank you for everything you're doing for us this year I know you're dealing with
209two years budgets all at once so really really appreciate it um and with that I will take a motion to enter non-public session we will need to come back to take a vote after the non-public session anyone Ben move to enter a non-public session under RSA 91 hyphen a colon 3 2C Personnel thank you Ben is there a second John and I'll take a roll call starting with Kim minus Tom Candon yes Neil B yes Ben Keeny yes Lisa Christy yes Dan rockmore Yes Rick Johnson yes John yes Garrett yes Marcella and Kelly McConnell yes Marcel your microphone seems to not be working just as a heads up can't actually hear you but I saw your mouth move so we'll count yeah Jay Kelly I missed the second uh the second was John ask a
210question yeah do we know that the other link is live because Josh usually Josh is here oh he is okay well Josh has got it up he's got another meeting but um but he he said will be ready for us okay thank you can someone can someone send me that link me too it hasn't change but yes yeah never had it okay all right see see you all over there for for e e e it started sneezing just as it came back on how to make an entrance on Zoom we could all have our own theme music as we come in like basketball players do in the NBA your walk up music for baseball all right uh I will take a motion to approve those positions I'm sure we're all trying to get back into
211board docs is anyone ready to go with that motion Ben I'll try it and apologies for any mispronunciations of last names uh move to approve increasing Handover High School social studies teacher Noah Brennan from 6 to 1.0 and science teacher Dagmar kert from 0.5 to point6 FTE and decreasing Latin teacher Brady eslon from 1.0 to 0.9 and Spanish teacher Jean Essex from8 to 7 FTE for the second semester of the 2020 2021 school year as presented very very well done thank you uh Rick is that a second okay all in favor take a roll call John Hunt yes Tom Candon yes Dan roore yes Ben Keeny yes Marcel El blasi yes Neil Odell yes Lisa chrisy yes uh Rick Johnson yes kimman yes uh that's me McConnell yes I was about to ask Josh to
212vote uh okay and I think that is all that we have for tonight uh if you guys have agenda items for next meeting please let me know um and with that I will take a motion to adjourn at 10:34 nobody wants to leave okay Dan move to ajour and a second Kim and a roll call John Hunt yes Tom Candon yes Dan rockmore yes H Garrett M yes Ben yes Marcella B yes Neil yes Lisa chrisy Yes Rick Johnson yes kimman yes and McConnell yes thank you everybody happy holidays enjoy enjoy the break thanks everybody thanks KY bye guys everyone