001e e e good evening ladies and gentlemen good evening ladies and gentlemen W welcome to the 2025 annual meeting of the holla School District your regular moderator Liz Brown is called away and and not not available for this evening but I've been duly appointed and sworn in as your moderator proem I call this meeting to order I'd like to start with the Pledge of Allegiance those who can please stand thank you I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation undivided indivisible with Liber and justice for all I'd like thank you please remain standing I'd like to introduce third grade students from HPS uh being led by music teacher Carrie [Music] Cormier oh say can you see [Music] theight for the we
002where G stream [Music] our BL [Music] [Applause] thank you very much good job third grade students from HPS led by Carrie [Applause] Cormier I would like to invite all veterans and serving me members of our military to stand and be recognized thank you for your service I'd like to invite School Board chair Carol Roy to invi introduce members of the school board I'm not third grade height hi everybody good evening I'm Carol Roy chair of the hollow school board over here we have Raphael Zach he's our vice chair and wake de Pasqual she's our secretary we have member Jessica lens and member Amy Kelner thank you all for coming tonight I invite budget committee chair Tom Gan to introduce members of the budget committee happens every year uh good evening everyone I'm Tom Gan uh
003rafy Zach from the school board is a representative of the bucom uh seated at your right on the table Mark Leo is a select board representative Mike Harris Darlene man Chris Hyde Mike levit and uh absent this evening is Mark coast thank you and I'd like to invite super attendant Andy Corey to introduce members of the uh Administration good evening and thank you for coming out uh superintendent elect Gina burog business administrator Kelly cely director of student services Lauren de Janeiro assistant business director Donna Smith Hugh's principles candy F HPS principal Paula isii curriculum coordinator for Hollis Abby Diaz and coordinator of special education Sarah PR thank you all I have a number of folks here helping us out our regular attorney uh Jim o shanesy is home sick with the flu I'm told uh
004we have Michael malagi who is filling in our district clerk is Diane levit supervisors of the checklist and ballot clerks are on the back checking PE folks in as are the assistants and counters who are also in the back there are two fire exits in this more in this building in this room in the back Corners the fire department would like to ask you to please keep them clear this meeting is being streamed and you can find it uh on the sau41 website um by clicking on um where is it voter information resources board meetings on demand and it should be right near the top also on SAU 41. org if you click on resources then voter information then annual meeting materials hollist FY 26 budget you can find a copy of the final meeting
005warrant which is also posted in the back of the building um the ms27 which is the official budget form that contains uh the budget detailed budget by line item and a copy of this presentation we're almost done with meeting and election week we have this tonight and then we have one more holl toown meeting will be Saturday starting at 9:00 in the high school gym we are here tonight to discuss and act on the subjects brought forward on the warrant by your school board to do so effectively we need rules which provide order and structure to the business of the meeting rules must be set for each meeting so folks understand how to get get things done I will propose a set of rules then ask the voters to adopt them once adopted it takes
006a 2third vote to change them as a reminder Roberts rules is only a guide they do not control how this meeting is run you can find a copy of my rules in the hollist town report on page 223 in the next few slides I will touch on a few points if you wish to speak come to the microphone and show your voting card please wait to be recognized by the moderator this multi-purpose room is not designed as a meeting Hall so it is sometimes very difficult to hear announce your name and address clearly so the clerk can hear it you may speak only once until all other firsttime speakers have a chance your time is limited to 2 minutes and cannot be yielded or transfer referred to someone else sponsors of amendments may have 5
007minutes when you get close to your time limit I will give you a signal when you're out of time I will give you a second signal be your main and if possible brief avoid Point repeating points that have already been made above all be courteous it is possible to disagree without being disagreeable speak ERS are limited to registered voters from Hollis members of the school administration for presentations or to answer questions and District Council malaguti other people may be may speak if Allowed by a majority vote of the voters here in the room disruptive behavior or personal attacks are out of line out of bounds and out of order to clarify speaking without being recognized or failing to stop when your time is run out out are examples of disruptive behavior the moderator is responsible
008for keeping the meeting on track and maintaining order if things get out of hand the moderator has various tools to work with the purpose of a point of order is to bring to the moderator's attention that the meeting rules are not being followed if you raise a point of order please be clear about which rule or rules are not being followed the motion can also be used to appeal a ruling of the moderator it cannot be used to ask a question nor make a motion those can only be done when the voter has the floor if you wish to make an amendment you may do so when it's your turn at the podium if the amendment is longer than 10 words please write it down legibly and bring it to me after you propose it
009dollar amendments should be made in final dollars not percentages or amounts to be add added or subtracted amendments to the operating budget only affect the bottom line unless you are completely zeroing out a line item otherwise the school board has the authority to move funds around as they believe are in the best interests of the district if a line item on the ms27 is zeroed out then the school board may not spend any funds on that item over the past few meetings I have been trying different approaches to how we end debate listening to feedback from voters this is my proposal for this meeting a motion to end debate may be made only after waiting for your turn in line it may not be made after making a speech and I will not accept it
010if there has not been sufficient debate in my opinion for example the first Speaker after discussion is opened should not try to end debate the motion is debatable and requires a 2third vote to pass if the motion passes debate ends immediately all voters still in line should return to their seats at that time the item under discussion is voted on this is a change from previous meetings we will I will not allow a motion to pass over at this meeting the purpose of a motion to table is to pause consideration of an article it is not debatable and cannot be made until the article is brought to the floor for discussion the article requires only a simple majority the article can be taken off the table again by a majority vote however it can also
011be restricted from reconsideration which leaves the the article on the table a motion to reconsider is useful and appropriate if new information comes to light or spending approaches the 10% rule limit it allows the voters to discuss a matter further and vote again the motion can be only be made by a person who voted on the prevailing side it is debatable and requires a simple majority to pass a motion to restrict reconsideration does not block reconsideration of a previous motion or article if passed it requires that any subsequent reconsideration of the vote cannot occur for at least seven days the motion can be applied to any previously completed and declared vote the motion is not debatable and is in order at any time the voter has the floor articles will be taken up in the
012order listed in the warrant all articles must be acted upon before the meeting can be dissolved acted upon does not mean that the article receives a final vote it simply means that the meeting takes some clear action on the article for example tbling an artic article is sufficient the article the order that articles uh are taken up can be changed by a 2third vote of the members present my copy of Robert's Rule is is more than an inch thick it is simply not possible in a few slides to take into account all of the possible motions and situations that can occur the moderator has the responsibility for making rulings on such matters as things come up however this is your meeting state law also gives the voters at the meeting the ability to appeal and
013overrule any interpretation that the moderator may make if you disagree with the ruling come to the microphone and raise a point of order being clear what you are appealing a second is required the meeting then has the opportunity to discuss and vote on the ruling an appeal is successful by a simple majority vote if the ruling is a direct application of one of the meeting rules you need to suspend or change the rules rather than make make an appeal so shall the holla School District vote to adopt the rules for this meeting as proposed by the moderator moved by Mr Mr Harris second by Mr Leo Mr garuba I move uh that we amend the proposed rules uh in in regard to the motion to end debate and my amendment is to allow anyone who
014is presently online uh to say their peace or to speak until the you know the debate is cut off all right is there a second miss laalo the motion on the floor may I speak to that sir yes in a minute the motion on the floor is to amend the rules I just read that if a motion to end debate passes people in line don't get a chance to speak the motion on the floor is to allow anybody still in line at the time the motion is made to to speak Mr garuba so uh specifically we use these rules during the co-op meeting and I think I counted two or three times where there might have been only two people standing here in line and yet um they lost their opportunity and in some cases
015it was one person more than once and it really only would have taken the patience of uh four minutes to allow folks to hear their neighbors so that's all I have to say Thank You Is there further debate on the motion Mel Chris opela more Hill Road um I've looked back into my Archive of uh Town report and this rule that we had up until last year has been standing written for at least since uh um we are Char this the town uh meetings we are it is our delative session and voting session um we are are charged to deliberate reasons for and against a measure to vote on Town business this the 2023 rule has worked for a long time and should continue as it was written in 2023 I know further discussion on
016the amendment if you are in favor of amending the rules to allow people in line to speak please raise your cards thank you if you are opposed please raise your cards I believe the the opposed haven't so the motion fails Mr boo uh Brandon buto Buttonwood drive I have a question about um the motion to end debate when you were going through your reading of it you indicated it was a debatable motion but the slide said it was not debatable and the printed version says it is not debatable and it is my understanding it's not supposed to be debatable you are correct I misspoke it is not a debatable motion thank you that's I just want to clarify M oel I just have a question about rule 27 I'm sorry I think that you um
017had some I want to make sure I understand it um and um it is the Motions to postpone indefinitely Or Passover yes I'm looking at my copy of the word okay um is that to be brought to the floor after standing in line um I'm not allowing a motion to pass over at all this at all at this meeting okay um what about postpone indefinitely yes you would have to wait in line to make that that motion okay um and it is required a second and is debatable and I um only because of what went on in the co-op meeting I think that it should also be after the article has been read in its entirety because people were getting up and making motions to uh postpone indefinitely Or Passover before things were even read
018yeah I that's fine I don't have a problem with that okay that's how I was other people to I understand I that's how I was going to do that tonight so that doesn't require an amendment okay um I'd like to talk about uh rule 6789 in this year's Town report I wish to amend these rules to revert back to rule six as written in the 2023 hollist Town report which says time is generally limited to 2 minutes per speaker you will see a signal if your time is running out extra time will be allowed for questions and answers sponsors of petition articles are allowed 10 minutes to present their CA case and voters proposing an amendment are allowed up to 5 minutes um again I feel that this is our deliberative session and voting session
019we are to deliberate reasons for and against the measure and vote on Town business it's worked for a long time um and I think that uh two minutes for a petitioner and five minutes for the amender doesn't seem quite reasonable um there are no petition articles in this meeting right so that's that's not a concern in terms of am Menders I think it the rule says as written says five minutes and I think what you just read says five minutes am Menders yes but it's the uh 10 minutes for the presenter and I didn't know if you know if uh I guess we can't change the rules to be for all of the meetings no you can only affect the rules for tonight okay so because we don't have any petition that's not an issue
020okay thank you is there further discussion on the rules seeing none all in favor of adopting the rules as as presented please raise your cards thank you all opposed and the rules are adopted we have a full warrant tonight eight eight articles and the usual anything else um we have two contracts to to discuss one for the support staff and one for the teachers we have uh SAU uh budget which is uh approved by needs to be approved by all three districts we have SAU Building Maintenance trust the school building maintenance trust a study uh for a possible expansion of HPS conting gency fund and the operating budget Mr Gan good evening a little afraid to touch this there we go I don't know did trying to recall recall some of my quips from prior
021years but nothing comes to mind um we've got a couple slides here to talk about the uh impact on tax rates for what we're contemplating this evening and also uh what the effect will be on the overall Town property tax rate if all the articles in all of the meetings pass so this first slide here is uh the Hollis School District only what we're considering tonight uh I'm not going to um try to read off all these numbers to you um you know the high points here are in terms of looking year-over-year the operating budget only goes up about 3% um waren articles are the big mover 76% uh almost $900,000 $850,000 that's driven uh almost entirely by the collective bargaining agreements that we'll be voting on this evening um you know this occurs every
022time the typically for example the teacher cont contract is a three-year uh agreement once the first year is passed the subsequent years go into the operating budget so every third year um it's not there are no increases in the operating budget so you see um a big increase it moves down to the warrant article line uh revenues are down um this is I don't want to call this artificial but we're conservative in how we budget for Revenue um because of uncertainties with state aid or federal grants um this type number typically goes up by the end of the year and eases the tax effort as you can see last year we had 1.2 million in Revenue but are projecting only 80 870,000 um state aid and State uh retained tax are fairly flat that yields
023an overall tax effort increase of 12.7% um which would increase the holla School District portion of the tax rate 11 a half% to $640 um we have to pay an additional State education tax the portion assigned to the hollow school district works out to 62 cents so of an overall holla School District tax rate of just over $7 $7 and two cents which represents a 10% increase over last year so this is how it ties into the overall tax rate um again the upper left there assumes all the Articles and all the meetings passes they're written that did occur at the uh Co-op tax or Co-op local um tax rate U reflects that all the Articles were passed there so the town and invite everyone to join a Saturday for the town meeting um 449
024you see the increase from the prior page on the second line the Hollis School District local tax increases at 11 and a half% state tax is going down slightly Co-op went up 7% the state tax for the co-op went down slightly as did the county tax the overall effect for the holl tax rate would be an increase of about 7.4% to a rate of $195 um you know that come that comes after last year I think we had an increase of uh 7% and the year prior to that an increase of 177% so after a couple decades of relatively uh low tax increases we've seen some real movement in the last few years I think that's it thank you Tom article one I will remind you that it if if even the people in the
025front seat can can read these ey charts um the all these slides are available online so if you have a tablet or even a phone you might uh you might be be able to follow better online to see if the school district will vote to approve the cost items included in the three-year collective bargaining agreement reached between the Hollis school board and the Hollis education support staff Association for the 2025 26 school year which calls for the following increases in support staff salaries and benefits at the current Staffing levels for fiscal year 2526 estimated increase is $350,500 $44 for the first year 2025 to 26 school year such sum representing the negotiated increase over the 20242 salaries and fringe benefits majority vote required the estimated net tax impact is 12 cents a th000 the school
026board recommends this article 500 the budget recom committee recommends this article 800 moved by Carol Carol Roy seconded by rafy Zach I will also um note that collective bargaining agreements cannot be amended there what what this body can do is an up and down vote uh Miss wake to pasal sorry after what happened to Tom I don't know if I want to touch this thing so um good evening I'm Ann wake deep Pasqual I have the pleasure of presenting to you tonight um the collective bargaining agreement between the hollow school district and the Hollis education support staff Association um I was a part of this negotiation as was member Amy Kelner um so the first thing that we need to understand was what was the situation at the bargaining table um we have for I'll
027start with Hessa they came to the table with an incre with a concern that last year their insurance increase was 18% um as a result of that people who had Insurance were taking home less pay and uh it was it hit our our our support staff members very hard as it did our teachers um they wanted to change some Antiquated titles so um provided this is passed this evening the lovely people who are greeting you at Hollis primary school and at the Upper Elementary School in the main office will no longer be secretaries there will be our administrative assist assistance and our senior administrative assistance and they were interested in simplifying paperwork and making payroll more efficient which we were interested in as well um for us we have been consing consistently facing hiring challenges
028particularly with our pair of professionals which I'll get to soon um that that challenge with hiring par professionals has resulted in a high cost of Contracting employees um in addition we also wanted to improve it efficiency let me make this a little bit clearer so why is it so hard to to hire pair professionals our labor market um if you go to Target Walmart Amazon you're going to get $15 per hour or more for unskilled work um some off their health benefits to employees starting with as little as 25 hours a week unfilled pair professional positions require Contracting through Employment Services which costs three times that of our hired employees what's the result of that if you have been paying attention to our bdcom meetings we are over budget right now and the reason for
029that is because we do not budget for when we have to hire outside and not hire ourselves PA professionals or any other position and as a consequence we have to find that money somewhere else so right now we have 11 or at the time of this presentation we had 11 employees that were contracted costing us three times more than would have been if we had hired our own um as a result also of this situation um we do not have insurance for our par professionals we are losing par professionals to the co-op and other districts um you're going to hear me talk about insurance tonight there are many aspects of this contract this evening um that we're presenting to you but what matters to you what results in the the bottom line the 350,000 um
03084 $44 is that we are offering our PA professionals now insurance for 30 hours um every single District that touches the border of Hollis right now offers this benefit with the exception of Brookline so who comprises Hessa um Hessa has 39 PA professionals right now six Food Service workers custodial workers our administrative assistants and our regular education support um of those people right now you'll see we only have 15 people who are eligible for insurance so if you want to work with children and come to our school you're looking at somewhere between $4 and $17 an hour to start at and you are probably not going to be eligible for health insurance it is very difficult to attract quality employees with that kind of a situation um so if we provide service um to our
031par professionals and our other 30-hour employees the majority of those eligible are going to be our Paras making the total 59 people so highlights if you look at year one um you see that's year 350 844 year two it drops to 198 801 and year three $137,100 first of all we are um capping the insurance the the first year we'll be offering $84 a month for all plans that would be the equivalent to what we anticipate would be 75% of a single plan um there would be we anticipate the participants to be to cost another $3 38,5 and then of course there's a salary increase um some of you might be thinking we offer this benefit to the pair of professionals what did they give up in return um of course has asked for a
032larger salary increase than what you see in front of you um we are with this deal 2% for those who are on step and 2 and a half% for those who are off step the people right now who are in the Hessa organization who qualify for full-time as full-time employees and qualify for insurance they are only getting that salary increase they we they could have negotiated for more Hasa agreed to take a lower salary increase because they acknowledge this wonderful benefit that we're doing for the majority of those in their Union um so we appreciate them taking that for the team um by comparison the co-op Hessa negotiated a 2.75% increase for onstep and 3.4% increase for off step so um as you see I think that you really should pulled this up on your
033phone I don't think anyone wants to hear me go through all of this but our our cost increases change in year two and year three that will have to be approved each year year two we increase the cap to 1,158 per month which is estimated to be about 100% of a single plan plus a $1,000 op um opt out and the following year would be 1,250 why does Hiring Our Own matter um I wanted you to be able to see the numbers of the salary difference when we have to contract out versus when we're able to hire our own of course there are many quality Al ative reasons why we would rather hire our own we are building a community these are the people who are working with our most vulnerable students um and they
034touch every single child in our schools they they're working with everybody's children I'm sure many of you have heard your kid come home and talk about the lovely person who assists their teacher and how important they are to them um but if we're talking just quantitatively why does this make sense um right now for the 11 contracted peras we are looking at about $ 62,700 so you're looking at that number of $689,900 that's a difference of $414 997 so that is a huge difference and if you go down the column it's a it's a one over 1.4 million over three years it doesn't mean that's all that we're saving because of course this is just the salaries we are talking now about adding insurance onto that um however when you calculate the cost of insurance
035we end up actually with a small Savings of about $882,000 plus we're still paying if we don't give this benefit we are still paying this cost it's just coming from somewhere else so this is a wonderful deal uh for the town it's wonderful for our support staff um and it it it allows us to meet the goals that we had sought so we have an ability now to retain and attract high quality employees we have a competitive support staff insurance benefits and it's a difficult labor market and insures favorable management rights and includes clarifying language it improves efficiency in time card submission and payroll processing and it maintains reasonable salary increases for the next three years so um for our children for our wonderful people who serve them um and for yourselves in your own
036pocketbooks I I highly encourage you to support this article [Applause] article one is there discussion on article one seeing none I'd like to count the vote Melinda so what we're going to have you do is at the appropriate time raise your cards and hold them up so that our counters can count them ready all in favor of approving this collective bargaining agreement please raise your cards for thank you all opposed to this uh agreement please raise your cards thank you you can put them down survey says I 24 NOS 24 the article is [Applause] adopted article two this is also a collective bargaining agreement which is not amendable to see if the school district will vote to approve the cost items included in the three-year collective bargaining agreement reached between the Hollis school board and
037the Hollis Education Association for the 2025 26 2026 27 and 2027 28 school years which calls for the following increases in professional staff salaries and benefits at the current Staffing levels for fiscal year $387,900 se4 for fiscal $25,300 and further to raise and appropriate the sum of $387,900 such sum representing the negotiated increase over the 20242 salaries and fringe benefits majority vote required the estimated net tax impact is 13 cents a th000 the school board recommends this article 5 the budget committee does not recommend this article by a vote of 7 to1 to zero moved by Carol Roy seconded by rafy Zach Ms Roy thank you sir thank you Mr moderator I'm an attempt fate and try to move this a little bit Tom did you see that it happened without any noise member Jessica
038lens and I were pleased to negotiate the Hollis Education Association contract this past fall with the support of superintendent elect Gina Berg scog business administrator Kelly cely and legal counsel Tom clawen the negotiation was respectful collaborative and successful going into it the district had four goals oh I think I went forward we bounced here we go here are our four goals to maintain or increase our management rights incorporate the learnings from the salary committee ensure that the district is competitive in attracting and retaining the best staff and to make decisions that balance what is best for the taxpayers with what is best for our students here's how we were able to accomplish that management rights we wanted to add language further clarifying and regulating unapproved leave time maintenance of the credential for which a staff
039member was hired and timing and notice of resignation anecdotally everyone knew how things were supposed to work but we wanted to make sure all of it was in writing so it was referenceable defend able and enforceable we wanted to eliminate the intermediate term income protection or IP and replace it with an haa member managed sick bank and we wanted to consolidate health insurance plans down to a single offering salary committee formation of the salary committee was dictated by the last contract negotiation 3 years ago and the committee ran September 2022 through May the desire was to examine to examine wage schedules and pay scales of comparable districts and then Define a clearer and more consistent progression that benefited all Hollis School District staff members several different Hollis school board members participated on the committee throughout
040that time and engaged in regular open discussion with haa representatives to establish recommendations and Common Ground in preparation for this negotiation this Comm commit work provided necessary Insight so we would know the impact of several of the decisions and offerings including adjustment to the salary step table and health insurance cost coverage by the district which leads perfectly into goal number three ensuring the district is competitive in attracting and retaining the best staff this one's the big one hiring teachers for the hollist school district historically has been very easy there always were strong candidates in large numbers applying for any openings we had the teaching profession and individual's desire to enter it drastically changed during and after the pandemic response the applicant pool is significantly smaller and for the first time job offers made by the
041Hollis school district have been turned down and two teachers left midyear we looked very closely at why that was happening until this contract Hollis was one of only three districts in the state of New Hampshire to offer capped dollar amounts toward staff memb health insurance rather than percentages of cost coverage this meant that if cost of insurance fluctuated out of sorts the teachers bore the entire brunt where whereas if they were employed at a district that offered percentages of cost coverage the risk and responsibility would be shared the candidates only needed to go to down the street to Amherst or Milford or Bedford or the co-op to receive that coverage losing top candidates for this reason is unacceptable to us when we can make that adjustment so in response to the current market conditions we
042did we decided to remain competitive by offering 100% coverage to single 90% coverage to two person and 80% coverage to family plan holders we have selected the health insurance plan that is lowest cost to the district and the taxpayers while still meeting our teachers needs to clarify we are not committing to a specific plan for the entirety of the three years regardless of its cost rather we will evaluate the cost of plans coming into each year and where fiscally appropriate and necessary switch to another plan as the contract progresses up on the screen now you will see that these percentages are very close to if not the same as the dollar amount caps we had been offering it is the shared Assumption of risk and responsibility that our current staff and candidates considering joining our
043exceptional District are looking for and we have chosen to deliver there have been concerns that the Hollis School District may be assuming too much risk by using percentages here is a chart showing the Hollis Brookline Co-op School District's costs over the last 10 years using the percentage coverage model while there are fluctuations they are within reason I know it's small I apologize I made it as big as I could get those glasses up there I know I can't even read it on the screen in front of me I'm so sorry to everybody in the back in addition to the adjustment in health insurance cost coverage we expanded the salary table to 20 steps and moved all staff members back onto the table this one's a little tiny too but we can talk about it if
044you have questions this means that regardless of time with the district each staff member will receive a 2% increase each year plus whatever step increase they have earned with the previous onstep off-step model there was was no consistency across the board where increases were concerned this change directly addresses the objective of the salary committee additionally we have opted to offer deeply regulated school loan repayment of the $20,000 per year that we make available staff members on steps 1 through five only which are the newest teachers usually fresh out of college May request reimbursement that reimbursement is paid directly to the institution rather than the employee and the employee may get $1,000 per year from that $220,000 bank that we make available and finally we elected to keep the longevity bonuses which are paid out every
045five years starting after the staff member's 15th year of service this is not an annual longevity bonus the values of these bonuses range from $1,000 to approximately $3,050 depending on years of service and professional SL educational achievement level such as Masters plus 45 the longevity bonuses are totally independent of the salary table and progression and act as a thank you for loyal years of service to the Hollis School District the board has a responsibility to the district and you the taxpayers to make sound financial decisions during negotiations and ensure that the level of Education you have come to expect in this town does not falter this remains top of Mind throughout we also have a responsibility to the children of the district to ensure they are receiving top quality education from topquality Educators it is
046our privilege to be entrusted with providing this assurance these factors drove the choices that we made for this contract such as keeping the salary increase percentage low and flat over the 3 years but consistent across the entire staff removing the extra health insurance plans establishing a sick bank and increasing our management rights all of the items that we just reviewed we are proud of the contract that we have brought forth to you for approval tonight and are confident that this will contribute to the continued tradition of Education excellence in Hollis for years to come I ask that you do support Article 2 and support our wonderful Hollis teachers thank you so [Applause] much thank you Mr Gan thank you um as you can see from uh the top bullet the budget committee did not support
047uh the three-year contract uh for the concerns that I'll cover here in a moment um it's you know not a reflection on the teachers um we value them I think we have some real concerns about the the cost of this deal and some of the um uh Provisions in the deal so first off the cost uh each year and I I think Carol explained this teachers will get an increase of a step which is a move down the the uh step table and they also get this uh this contract would provide a 2% increase in the value of the table so a step is 2.8% increase and adjustment of the table is 2% for a total of 4.8% um inflation has come down significantly since the time the last deal was struck um three years
048ago and as you see here in the bullet um someone who was on the step table throughout the entire six years of the previous agreement this year and the agreement if this were to pass would experience a 34% increase in salary over six years and we felt that it's important to compensate the teachers but felt that this was beyond um reasonable given that the fact that in inflation has come down so significantly um another Point here and I made this when I was talking about the tax increases uh if we pass all of the Articles at all the meetings this cycle um the last three years in 23 our average tax bill went up 177% 7% last year and will go up 7.4% if all the Articles at all the meetings this year pass and
049that's a a accumulative increase of only of over only 3 years of 34% so that's just a coincidence that's not 34% related to the first bullet here but uh it is the effect of the cumulative increases that all the voters have supported over the last few years uh removal the dollar caps we thought that was an important provision management rights um there was some concern that uh given big increases particularly last year that it put an undue burden on the teachers however we felt that that uh type of thing has been addressed by sidebars in the past and could be addressed again if that were to occur uh the expanded step table again um as employees uh become long tenur they've tended to move off the table and are rewarded with other uh means to
050increase their compensation without using the step table uh we thought that extending or increasing the step table and putting more employees back on it um will limit the ability to manage those uh salaries effectively and finally Carol mentioned longevity bonuses um we thought that was kind of counter to the notion of expanding the step table where we're taking tendered employees the deal would put tendered employees back on the step table they would enjoy the same uh salary adjustments in the table and steps but the longevity bonuses would uh remain in place and uh I think that's the summary of of the budget committee concerns thank you [Applause] article two is there discussion on article two yes sir uh Jonathan Fontaine 42 Iron Works Lane so one of the helpful things when determining some of these
051monetary components at least at the co-op was cost per pupil adjustments does the budget committee have any projection of what the cost per pupil would be if we were to adopt this particular article are we still below the average for the state are we moving up on that average chart how does how does that end up looking uh short answer is no um the cost for pupil per pupil is not simply taking the total cost divide by the number of students uh conquered Department of Education makes adjustments takes out things like transportation and some other factors um having said that uh and I don't have the presentation open in front of me at the public hearing we did talk about cost per pupil as it compares to I think a population of about 109 other
052school districts that we consider to be comparable and we are in we're below the 50th percentile in cost per pupil I don't know um you know there's a lag in that because it's calculated by the state but I'm not sure exactly where we'd be If This Were to go go through sure that makes sense does that help yeah um one other question I had was for Carol actually um can you explain uh well two things one um a little bit more about the sick Bank versus what we had originally and the secondary one is were there any um retirement or other compensation items put into the contract or adjusted um versus adding the uh longer term staff members into the St chart like in terms of balancing out the okay you're coming up on retirement
053yes your compensation during the retirement period the town is going to do XY or Z versus we're going to increase your salary um I'm going to answer the second one first because it's easier y no okay okay um so that's pretty easy yeah yeah no that's good um the first one is about the sick bank so a sick bank is populated with I'm popping on this I'm so sorry um a sick bank is populated with days off and how it usually is populated and I'll give an example they do it at the co-op and they do it in Brookline as well the sick bank they do it in Brooklyn as well and so every member of the staff gives one of their days off into a bank and that group of people manages the bank
054so if somebody needs extra days off they get to go to their Brethren and say this is why I need this and so from what I've heard heard because obviously we haven't experienced that yet in this District but we will after the vote tonight um is that it you know it helps them police themselves so the it I I will never say it correct Gina is laughing at me the IP plan the intermediate term income protection it was that you would be paid 80% of your salary for an extended period of time so it actually was going to be more expensive for the District to keep that versus a sick bank now to be clear we didn't dive too deeply into the sick Bank in this presentation because it wasn't necessarily something that was a
055hot button issue but what we decided to do in order to not take away uh PTO days paid time off days from the teachers right away with putting this in because you like to keep about 300 days in the sick Bank we as the district are pre-populating that sick Bank initially as new staff members are added they will no matter what the total is with this pre-population take one of their days and contribute it um and then they will be able to administer it um Gina and I were discussing this and we can talk kind of about the co-op sick Bank it was years and years and years for them to deplete that bank um it obviously got depleted heavily during the pandemic response with the required absences and things like that but it has
056built back up so we foresee that this pre-population of the sick bank and the addition by the new employees bless you is going to last for many years here in Hollis okay thank you thank you Morin masteron Milton Place my question is for Carol sorry quickly gotting my steps in hi Carol um I was listening to the deliberations of the hearing and was was the primary reason for the budget committee or with the for the voting down the was it really the um the the health insurance cap of percentage versus yeah you're shaking your head yeah yeah well this is kind of more of a question for them I can tell you what they said but they can they can probably do that but that's that's the reason why Tom wanted to address the the
057concerns because of the vote um do you want to come up and and chat about this specifically or was it was one well it I guess my question is do do we know are there other how many other schools are districts um have the um the cap dollar the fixed cap versus the percentage how many have the fixed cap Brookline Salem Hollis in the entirety of of the State of New Hampshire everybody else uses percentage model okay thank you um so I will be voting in in favor of this um I do my my big fear is teacher retention I my one of my children uh had a substitute teacher for a duration of a whole school year and I that was a long time they did great it was a Pera they did wonderful
058um but you know attracting teachers is tough and that was pre-co so um I do feel it's very important so yes I will definitely be voting in favor of it and I hope everybody else does too thank you and and I can note that we already have no you can sit sorry um we actually have experienced two retirements or will be experiencing two retirements of very long tenure teachers here in the holl school district this year so those are two full-time teacher positions that we will need to attract the top applicants for Mr Barry yes Dave Perry uh three West Hollis Road couple questions one relates to the uh method of comp compensation I didn't see anywhere in this presentation anything about Merit raises or things related to goal achievement compensation tied to Excellence versus
059average performance is there anything in the compensation of our teachers that uh address those points a great question um in the contract language and I'm thinking back to the words so forgive me I'm I'm deep digging deep um as they move through the step table do you mind popping to that step table it's back a few slides please sir one more keep going there right there so as you uh are here right say if you come in at step one with your bachelor's degree that's what that b means the following year you move to step two so as you go down the steps it's the time you're here and you move across the table once you take graduate classes achieve other professional and educational uh things so we don't have Merit increases in the plan
060as far as I understand that has not been part of it at all um they're they're affirming thank you for confirming um what we do have is an opportunity for the superintendent along with the principal who's in charge of the staff member if there is a performance issue they can hold them back from moving forward a step until there's performance Improvement but there is nothing that says you've done a great job this Year we're just going to throw some money at you that's what the longevity bonuses are for as thank yous and of course then we have the new compensation schedule with this new salary table yeah it's my belief in an organization that requires um strong professional skills that that Excellence should be compensated in a different way than average and so I I
061would not support this my second question relates to conflict of interest I don't know what what the rules of conflict of interest are are direct beneficiaries of a um uh what do we call these they're not motions War articles sorry articles got you yeah if there are direct beneficiaries of an article are they required to recuse themselves are they asked to recuse themselves how does that work they are some of them not all of them but some of them are registered voters in hollas and they are entitled and do vote okay yep pretty good return on investment thank you thank you sir Miss McDonald Erica McDonald TR Road Hollis um first of all I would just want to say thank you very much to the board and to the staff for um for this contract
062and keeping in mind the uh the needs of the taxpayers as well as the staff um just two real quick questions what happens if this fails maybe it's not a quick question but what happens if this fails what happens there is um the the current contract continues and they go back to the bargaining table presumably to pres produce a new contract for the next annual meeting okay so there's nothing that this body could do to change this article tonight no thank you m oel Chris helela More Hell Road uh I want to thank the teachers and school board and the budget committee for uh the job that you do um I did visually uh observed the budget hearing meeting and I've also read the um minutes I thought the budget committee put ex a lot
063of thought into the reasons why they did not support the article and I did appreciate also Tom enri input regarding the health plan and how it is working or not working in the taxpayers favor for um the co-op um I don't understand why the step table is redone every time we have a contract to negotiate it's it just seems to me that it's um some underlying business going on there um I'm glad the budget committee shared all their reasons for not uh supporting it I thought they had many compelling reasons for not supporting the article and why uh and if the contract did not get approved they uh also discussed that 34% over 6 years comes to 5.6% a year I don't know anybody who gets that kind of a percent unless they are Stellar
064thank you Brian Loveland Brian Loveland Toddy Brook Road and just want to follow up the 30% 36% raise is actually not nearly as much as people would think like just a back of the envelope rough calculation so I may be off by a couple percent is that inflation has gone up over the last six years by about 22% give or take depending on which um provid you use so it's not a huge 36% raise where someone who was making 100,000 is now making 136,000 it's something where they are getting a raise because they work their butts off and provide a stellar education to our kids which is why we're one of the best school districts in the state to keep that exceptional School District we need to pay for it unfortunately nothing is free taxes
065are going up but we need to we the return on our investment is Stellar in that we're getting one of the best school districts in the state that has supported our um Rising home Val values and quality of life the other just a quick question is um one of the reasons the um budget committee said that they rejected the um new contract was because the long longivity bonus how much did that cost last year oh we know hold on we have to do a quick C because everybody gets it differently depending on their years of service and Status so give us one second do we know right so um just to reiterate it's once every five years so once you've been here for 15 years and you have continued with the district not I'm done
066at 15 years and I get paid as I'm leaving you you reup your back you get paid um the value can vary between 1,000 and 3,50 depending on that status um do you know how many people are in that group of people between 15 and and more Gina is firing up the laptop we'll get you that answer in just a moment okay thank you you're very welcome thank you so we'll move on while uh the administration figures it out yes sir rude she's looking it up I mean you have to figure it out my apologies yes sir uh longtime listener first time caller uh can someone from either the administration or the um uh School Board uh talk about how enrollment has changed for the primary school over the last few years oh buckle up
067you're going to hear a lot about that in one of the later articles um obviously expanded that's why my colleague on the board and wake to Pasqual is going to be presenting an article later about that expansion study and she does have a lot of information about that enrollment I can tell you that we've had to add how many full-time teachers five fiveish five FTE uh in order to accommodate that since the last contract was negotiated okay so we're maybe one of the uh one of I we're one of the few districts in uh New Hampshire who are increasing enrollment so that seems like a big deal you mentioned that it's been harder to retain and attract top talent uh as far as cost goes it feels like that's what the cost of the market
068is uh I think you made a good case about how the the changing the uh cap to a percentage is in line uh I don't think we should really uh hurt our teachers for that so I I support this thank you I believe if you look at the handout in the back it does show project somewhere in there yes ma'am Miss Hicks sorry uh pmex 8 Maple n Drive while we obviously do support our teachers tremendously we have a huge issue of the taxes that are increasing and they are not sustainable and we do have some issues out there concerning testing where we are do have falling test scores for Science and Math um but outside of that I would like to hear an exact number for what the difference is between the cap and
069the percentage for the health insurance where and I do understand that we're one of few districts that do it this way but this also has to work for the hall as taxpayers and just because it might feel good this year and might sound like it's attracting Talent or doing something this is going to signif this could significantly impact our tax bill going for today and going forward so I'd like to know exactly what the differen is in the budget to make that change this year and if there are any projections going forward for sure so one of the ey charts on the slides had that um Drew can pop back to it keep going keep going one more back there you go I can read so you can see here so forward back forward back
070back so you can see fy2 numbers across the top that's what we're existing in this is our fy2 year this is year one year two year three of this threeyear teachers contract and those costs look like for single uh double and family PL right so those are the percentages can I have the dollar I cannot read though I I'm sitting here and I I just I don't think we should be voting on something that we can't read or that has to be clear to this voting body the presentation is available online I know but we should be able to see it here well the numbers are next to it okay so you've got so those are for the individual plans I'm talking about the total budget amount so the budg the full budget amount from
071what we have budgeted for this year with the cap and what that total budget number is going to be with the changing it to the percentage I'm not sure how to how to answer this question you should be able to take a snapshot with that okay pardon me they said you should be able to take a snapshot with your current population yeah we should can which is why I'm calling these guys up because I don't have thank you thank in terms of the cap to the percentage uh we don't have that exact calculation here we've done it uh at probably four or five school board meetings budget presentations so I I I am concerned that the information has been out there and has been out there for a while um in terms of the ex
072dollar amounts the problem will be the change I have two staff members retiring those two people like myself you get to the point where it's only a two-person plan I go out and I hire the best probably going to go on to a family plan so we don't know the calculation till we get to the fall of exactly what health insurance costs us I know but you guys should have been able to provide us with some type of a set number right now looking at our current population and I I didn't get to attend those meetings I had the flu I had no ability to go and we should be able to have that information at these meetings where we are expected to vote I don't I really don't think it's fair that you are
073asking us to vote on something that you cannot give us a set dollar amount these are huge dollars amounts putting those me putting those numbers up there that's per plan how many people do you have on your family your single and your two person and again all that information goes through the budget process during the budget season I know this isn't transparency though I I don't I don't think this is fair agree and I respect that and if you're not satisfied then I would simply do what I would do in my town and I would vote no all right there are a lot of residents in this town that are struggling and we do have to find some Fair ways to keep people but also find ways to provide release to the to the residents
074Drew can Drew can I hand you a piece of paper I'm sorry may I hand you a piece of paper yes Tom Right Ultra Drive uh just a touch of relevant history I've I've been in town a while I voted for um at least 30 teacher and support staff contracts I've never voted against a contract um I have in my Schoolboard years been on at least 10 negotiating teams that doesn't mean I know much but does mean that I'm familiar with the Contra the contract and the process I oppose the pro uh the proposed contract because it establishes a new compensation system that unfairly favors the most senior teachers the highest earners who are now off step it penalizes the current onstep teachers who are the majority and are the lower earners for example in
075the current in the current contract the contract under today uh the onstep teachers received 16% total salary increases over the past 3 years very fair and deserved increases in the proposed contract those same teachers are reduced to 14.5% salary increases which takes uh at least $1,000 or more uh Less in salary increases because of the new compensation system penalizing the lower earners is unfair but that's not the end of the story if if you slowly starve the lower end of the salary Spectrum as the proposed contract does do the district is sewing the seeds for a hiring and retention problem it is educationally prudent to push the lower end of the spectrum as high as possible to attract young people to the teaching uh profession consider a starting salary for a Nash RN with a
076four-year Nursing degree is $65 to $70,000 our back Bachelor starting salary is $449,000 takes 10 years in our system to get to $70,000 that is wrong finish up Tom all right well I've got more so I guess I'll have to I've got another half minutes e you want me to go back to line if you wish that's fine you've had your two minutes yeah I know I have thank you um my I think that my question is for you um my name is Karen biseri um Sherwood Drive first off I think um do you have a voting card yes thank you yes first oh sorry first off I think um that I'm here um for the teachers I think as a testament to um the community everyone that walked in the door said this is
077the biggest crowd we've ever had um we're here for the teachers because the amazing teachers that are in this town and support our children every day um retaining them as one thing but also recognizing their work is another thing so thank you to all the teachers and all that have come um I will say the comment about Stellar staff it's beyond Stellar staff I think that the voting for the par professionals alone said it all they're they they're so needed and they're so underpaid at this point so now we're looking at the teachers I just need you to help me with one part of this article when you put this up I don't know of any teacher friends of May in that are getting forward and a half% raises every year in getting like 30
078something thousand you know can you just explain like how I guess I when you put it up it stunned me but I just know for a fact that none of my DJ friends are getting this so how does it impact like what year you are I just need an explanation on that for sure so it all guys goes to the step table um it's coming keep going oh I just I think that I many of us have this but to explain it clearly so everybody understands it so we're not these big numbers and panicking and understand the teachers and the value yeah absolutely so when you're talking about a 2% increase it's the flat and as they've been here they go through the steps yeah and then obviously they move sideways if they get educational
079professional opportunities so it depends on where they're moving to and what other things they've done what they actually end up earning and how their salary changes so if you look at the table behind me squint you can see it I understand understand it but I think when you post something up like that and you say the teachers are going to get this much of a raise over this many years it's mindboggling because it doesn't it doesn't really pose the right information you have to look at this correct right I just want to make that clear to everybody that that's important piece yep of it thank you thank you Mr B uh yeah I am not here to move to end debate on this question yet I have a I have a question um and it
080it relates to what you mentioned earlier about having had to add five new staff members since the last time we did this contract yes is that correct so can you can somebody estimate how much of this contract would have been reduced total cost if if we hadn't had that growth in other words how much of that cost is due to natural growth of the staff we're pulling in the business admin yeah um because I know this is going to be a rough number but just to give us an idea because clearly the contract would be smaller if we hadn't had to hire more staff right right so I'm GNA have Gina come up and she's gonna welcome Madam so um so it's actually six FTE that were added over the course of the contract okay
081um so we're at about 78 now um some are part-time Etc but we're at 78 would have been 72 um so the increase of six okay that is what we're looking at and I just want to take a moment to answer the question that was before we have 19 folks on single 10 on a twers and 19 on a family plan so um so if you were to kind of average out their salary and their benefits that's the difference between like 8% 8% difference or something like that I don't know I'm just looking for a round a rough number sure you folks are asking tough questions oh man just guess so if they if they were making looking at this step table like right in the middle they're making $70,000 and so that's just salary
082multiply that by six right so you're talking about $420,000 and that doesn't include health insurance benefits and doesn't include obviously if they're more senior right versus more Junior understand but thank you of course thank you for the question yes sir hi my name is Victor Orlando 266 Depot Road um quick question regarding when we were negotiating this new teaching contract did any Merit based bonuses or things like that not come up is there a reason they're excluded is there a reason we don't have any Gina is going to come and talk about that one thank you for the question so that's not typically something that you see in a union negotiated contract we actually tried that out in our Co-op CBA years and years ago and we found it to be completely ineffective and so
083it has since been removed so it's not something that we're um looking to add back in okay um the main reason I bring it up is because in almost every job field in the private sector when you simply just do longevity and you've been here for this many years so you get a raise what that results in is mod you know basically moderar you know no one's doing anything extra because why would they why would you go out of your way to work as hard as you possibly can and then just get the same flat rate everyone else around you who's not pulling their way does you're encouraging people not to work hard and the thing is all of our teachers in the school district no one's arguing they don't deserve race cuz they do
084we're arguing that this plan is not good for them it's not good for us by not having anything Merit based at all even if it's small nothing in there you're encouraging all the teachers to do the bare minimum and just that's not what they're doing and we're ripping them off Mr Man Robert man 29 narof Road um I served on the compensation committee and has also uh successfully negotiated numerous um teacher contracts in this district and I'd hope to bring a unique uh perspective that I hope voters would consider um converting the long-term Insurance caps to percentages are not caps they remove the ability for the district to manage risk and they um also uh we had in the past handled any hardship of teachers by providing uh sidebar so um that's how we handled
085that they also hindered the district to bring forward their best possible proposals during negotiation um the percentage caps scale automatically that removes the opportunity to discuss assess and negotiate the appropriate level of dollar caps at the time you're discussing them the second major problem I have with this is moving the teach back on the salary table creates a structural problem with the table itself um it also drives cost significantly causing the district to top out much faster when we're putting negotiations on the table it locks the district into Perpetual um uh scheduled CH changes every time you go to negotiate and finally over the next several negotiating Cycles if you notice the bottom the very bottom step 20 more than 50% of your teachers are going to pull at that bottom and over time the
086step the jump between step 19 and 20 will grow historically we've seen those that jump easily being 8 n and 10% for no apparent reason finish other than the structural issues that moving the teachers back on the table creates yes sir Austin Rios 47 Farley Road I just wanted to point out um a lot of discussion run the 34% over 6 years uh inflation was 27% over the past 6 years and the FED is expecting at least 20 um over the next six years and the only reason I bring that up is and that's those are large numbers we're expecting to lose a lot of our income I think all of us are on top of the taxes but no one should plan to have a flat income or even less income year-over-year so we're
087looking at 27 to 34 it's only really a 7% increase over a six-year period of usable dollars and that's assuming the federal government's telling its truth in which most cases they're probably not so thank you Tom we have some firsttime speakers speakers here so I'd like to let the two of them speak before you and Mr B please come to the front of the class I was trying to gather my thoughts thank you Mandy Hoffman 13 Iron Works Lane um I think that for a lot of people this scale looks very unfamiliar and frankly scary and intimidating so I wanted to attest to I am a uh proud Union member of the transportation workers union 579 and our steps look very similar to this this is common and I understand that each step Stone while
088sometimes the people in the beginning have to quote pay their dues um and may seem unfair it is a very common stepping measure it's common to negotiate within step eight and step nine when working on another point so this is a common negotiating tactic even though it may seem unfair even though some of the jumps might be startling um for anybody else who is a union member uh this is standard and this is um something that is familiar and so for my fellow union members as teachers thank you for all that you do I am proud of your union as well yes sir David Dy 17 iron works as well uh just a quick note it was earlier brought up that the 34% over six years is the 5.6% seemed excessive just note that one
089way easy way to attain that kind of increase is by job hopping which we're aiming to keep consistency and keep our teachers uh giving them the raise is a way to do that also leave thank you Mr enrite so I was trying to make the same point that uh Rob was making um and I was talking about the lower earners uh getting it tuck to them and that's not where we want to be on the other hand the high earners and I'm talking about all of the uh off-step um teachers fa significantly better under this contract under the proposed contract for example a $90,000 salary with a 5% increase uh gives you a $4500 um increase per year a lower earner at $60,000 with a 5% increase gets $33,000 per year so in that case
090and the change system uh drives us to the to these cases the higher earner gets 50% more dollars added uh to his or her salary then does the lower earner each and every year and um as far into the future as you can see that's not fair it's not the system we have followed successfully for years where we have attempted to distribute uh all new money evenly among all teachers I support all of our teachers and that is why I will vote against this contract and ask for a new negotiation that keeps our current compensation system in place thank you Mr bro probably not necessary at this point but I would like to move to end debate this is a motion to end debate it at there is nobody in line so the all discussion
091will cease if the motion passes it requires a 23s vote if you are in favor of ending debate at this point please raise your card thank you if you are opposed raise your cards and the eyes have [Applause] it I have received a petition to make this a ballot vote I need to make sure that the petitioners are in the room Miss Hicks wave your hand Bob burkeman David Sullivan David Sullivan thank you uh I think it says Josie McMillan got it and Hilda burkeman all right we have sufficient people to request it you when you checked in you should have received uh one of these so um when we are ready which we're not quite yet um there are ballot boxes somewhere in the back it doesn't matter which box you use fill in
092the oval for yes or no and deposit it this is not an extended vote the vote will end as soon as everybody goes through and we're ready to pick up again Melinda are you ready to to start voting not all right the polls are open e e e is there anyone in the room who still is voting is there anyone in the room who still needs to vote if there is come on down because we're we're almost done here hurry hurry hurry hurry spe I will ask I don't see anyone more voting are we ready to close but polls are closed I have a voter who is missing a voting card viian Johnson if anyone picked one up on the floor uh please bring it up to me while they are counting we will proceed
093with article three article four three three this is the SAU budget by law this is also a ballot vote and the totals from tonight will be added up with the totals from the co-op and Brookline School District which we already have for a grand total and this will pass if the grand totals of yeses and NOS are are make a simple majority SAU budget shall the school district vote to raise and appropriate the sum of $773,000 SAU budget of 2,438 355 for the forthcoming fiscal year this year's adjusted budget of 2,389 654 with $758,000 school administrative unit the estimated net tax impact is 26 Cents a th000 the school board recommends this article 500 the budget committee recommends this article 800 this will be voting by secret ballot no extended voting the polls will be
094open just like this last one until all the voters attending have voted Miss Johnson I have your voting card moved by Carol Roy seconded by rafy Zach Mr Zach okay uh hello um so for some of you that might be newer I figured I would point out a couple um differences here uh relative to the previous warrant articles um so bear with me if you're a longtime uh attendee of these meetings uh one thing of note is um this 77347 number is the total uh a portion uh portion of the SAU budget um for this year as opposed to previous two warrant articles were talking about the estimated increases um another thing about terminology that was new to me previously um was the use of adjusted budget um that is referring to uh the fiscal
095year 25 approved budget plus increases due to debt service contracts or other obligations uh previously incurred minus any uh onetime expenditures so that's um kind of how you have that difference between uh the 2,438 355 and the 2,389 654 um next um the uh committee that worked on this budget uh involved Hollis District Brookline District uh Co-op District as well as the sa sa representatives to make sure that everybody was involved um and uh to give you an idea on uh the makeup of uh of the SAU uh for those less familiar it's composed of superintendent and assistant superintendent um business office maintenance Human Resources student services and information technology um and then uh we could go to the next slide um to give a sense of the composition of the budget um vast majority
096I think it's about uh 93% are salaries and uh benefits so that's the the large chunk there um and on this slide we're showing that the proposed amount relative to fiscal year 25 is a 2.5 uh% increase um so the dollar amount is at 6,593 the uh bottom table that you see there those are the major major drivers so that's not showing um every item it's showing um the the M the the larger numbers um that led to that uh 60,000 um so salaries uh are that the resulting salary increase of 12326 um that's involving some saving because of savings because because of the change um in superintendent salary um uh but then also taking into account the 4% increases and then um the minus $ 48,8 um are based on the um uh the
097change in the uh funds available relative to the the previous year um so I think that's what I have is there any discussion on article three Mr BH yeah um I'm a little curious about the change in available funds to offset cost where do those funds come from last year anticipation of the superintendent ch we realized that we were going to potentially uh be able to keep this what I'll call Cost neutral about the $122,000 so we were able to use the unreserved fund balance that the SAU has and use $488,000 basically as Revenue that doesn't exist this year and that's why we go from the 48 plus to 12 no that's it was coming out of unexpended fund balance okay thank you just wanted to know thank you is there any other discussion on
098article three well I'm not going to call a vote yet because we're still counting article two so we'll just um sit sit quietly for a few minutes chat chat gently with your neighbors district meetings are important legislative opportunities because we vote on real dollars and so on but they're also social opportunities it's a chance when you get to meet with people that you don't usually see e e I I e for fake b mean one of those tear ones oh oh was that's why I I VAR things from election to election survey says yes 165 no 99 the collective bargaining agreement is [Applause] accepted meanwhile I will add them up the vote on the entire District entire uh SAU and I'll have those numbers in a few minutes uh we are ready to vote on
099Mr boto I'd like to restrict reconsideration of Articles one and two motion to restrict reconsideration on articles one and two um that would be moved by Mr Boo seconded by Mr man this is a majority vote if you're in favor of restricting reconsider ation of Articles 1 and two please raise your cards if you are opposed please raise your cards and the eyes have it as I was going to say um you can now go to the supervisors and the ballot clerks go to any one you don't have to go to the original one and you'll get a new ballot uh it'll be a different color and you can use it for uh this boat on the sa budget bring your voting [Music] card e e Dem e e e has everybody voted who wants
100to like there was a lot of confusion to listen I know part of the confusion was they didn't hand out the second ballot ahead of right is there anybody in the room who still to V vote I see one all right I'm going to close about the polls on article three and move on to four the sa Building Maintenance Expendable trust fund to see if the school district will vote to raise and appropriate a sum of $23,900 to be added to the previously established maintenance Expendable trust fund for administrative and Associated structures at four Lund Lane in Hollis map 56 Lot 2 this amount to come from the unassigned fund balance available for transfer on July 1 of this year this amount represents rental proceeds and un expected unexpended maintenance funds to be received from
101sau41 further to name the board as agents to expend from the fund majority vote required estimated net tax impact of zero School Board recommends this article at 500 the budget committee recommends this article 800 moved by Carol Roy seconded by rafy Zach Miss Kellner thank you Joe so this is an article that you've um seen in the past um and just to refresh your memory the holla School District owns and maintains the property at for lond Lane which is where the SAU administrative offices are um located and they charge the SAU rent for the space the purpose of this article is to allocate uh rental income to the Expendable trust which serves as a savings account for major maintenance the way this uh trust fund works is Major expenditures are proposed by the administration uh
102final approval of the expenditures is made by the school board with input from the budget committee the projected opening balance is 108,000 731 we are asking for funding of $23,900 and then a proposed the proposed project is to rebuild the porch um due to safety concerns and if that happens the ending balance will be 87,7 [Applause] thank you is there any discussion on article four seeing none we will bring it to a vote all in favor of article four please raise your cards all opposed raise your cards and the eyes have it Article Five the school buildings Expendable maintenance trust fund to see if the school district will vote to raise and appropriate up to the sum of $125,000 to be added to the previously established school buildings Expendable maintenance trust fund from the h
103School District's June 30 2025 unassigned fund balance available for transfer on July 1 2025 majority vote required the estimated net tax impact is zero the potential forgone tax reduction of 4 cents a th000 the school board recommends this article 50000 the budget committee recommends this article 800 moved by Carol Roy seconded by RAF Zach Miss lens good evening so similar to the last article this um is again an article that we've seen regularly in the past this functions as a saving account to carry forward funds for maing major building maintenance it avoids spikes unexpected spikes um when we have things that we are repairing or changing uh this is funded from the unreserved fund balance Surplus this is not funded from new taxation um in terms of oversight how is this manage major expenditures are
104proposed by the administration the school board then evaluates those proposals and presents them to the budget committee for input and then the school board makes the final decision of expenditures um you can see in 2026 our projected opening balance is $230,000 we're proposing funding $125,000 for the following projects projects there's an elevator retrofit at Hughes that would cost $38,000 classroom flooring at the lower level at Hughes that would cost $35,000 entrance security upgrades at Hughes that would cost $255,000 girls bathroom stall Replacements at Hughes which cost $20,000 an administrative office flooring replacement at Hughes that cost $7,500 and an exterior door removal and replacement at Hughes which would cost $5,000 the total cost of those uh proposed expenditures are $130,500 and the projected 2026 ending balance would be $224,000 $224 and 500 is there any
105discussion on the school buildings Expendable maintenance trust fund seeing none if you are in favor of $125,000 for this fund please raise your cards if you are opposed please raise your cards and the eyes have it article six I will tell you that I have received a petition for a ballot vote on this one but we need to get through it first preparation for potential HPS expansion to see if the school district will vote to raise an appropriate up to the sum of $164,400 to be used to study test and prepare documents and materials to support a potential future bond to expand the Hollis Primary School based on current and anticipated future enrollment majority vote required the estimated net tax uh impact is 6 cents a thousand the school board recommends this article 500 the
106budget committee recommends this article 800 moved by Carol Roy seconded by rafy Zach presentation by an wake dequal um while I'm presenting uh if you'd like to have more information about this if you've missed some of the other presentations that have gone on over the past couple months um please consider um you can Google um sau41 enrollment committee under documents in 2025 you can find the PowerPoint from the information session that Mrs Vicki and I ran um back then um you also can see on July on January 14th at the budet committee um public hearing there's also another slide um presentation that also provides more information um about this proposal so uh the purpose of this study um is to fund a comprehensive site assessment um architectural Consulting Services necessary to plan a potential renovation
107and expansion of the Hollis Primary School building including improved site access circulation and parking um so why is this necessary so I'm going to be talking about numbers over the past 10 years just to make things um concise for everybody so over those past 10 years we've incre increased by 39 students but our spatial needs have increased by seven classrooms what does that mean um anyone who's paid attention to education knows that things change all the time um not only do we have more children but we also provide provide more services that means more reading Specialists more math Specialists more more intensive needs um Specialists working with our children's in classrooms to accommodate all of that um the Department of Education specs also require 50 square feet per child our current classrooms are already at
108the limit for this population and some rooms are over uh we have a cafeteria uh that is also our gymnasium um pressure on that cafeteria has increased with the addition of full day kindergarteners um and overall increased enrollment um that cafeteria is also a gymnasium and that space dominates the scheduling and it limits our programming at the school um is this a nightmare for our PE teacher our custodial staff and our principal who's trying to make that school run every day and our latest um nezda projections please forgive me the number here is incorrect it's at 435 students in 5 years with a 43 increase from where we are now so how have we been coping to date um and parents in this room probably are that last year we had to convert the beautiful
109learning Commons that we had that provided opportunities not only for our tudents students that needed extra support but also enrichment activities for our students such as chess um different kinds of group work with our technology instructor with with programming and and additional challenging information for them in addition to just having a beautiful library that had to get cut down and turned into three classrooms because we could not accommodate the students that we had that library is now in a former classroom our uh we have a prek classroom that is located in an open hallway if you go to that presentation that I mentioned um the documents from January 29th there is a picture of that and if you attended you got to see it for yourself the two hours out of the day we have
110a morning preschool classroom conducted in a hallway outside of other classrooms um our administrators are sharing offices we've combined service areas and we have converted for utility closets into staff offices uh and to address this we created the enrollment Committee in March 2024 it's also noteworthy that lovely teacher that you saw here earlier today who had our children up here singing for us she is in a room that half of which is comprised of storage because there is no place for all of the equipment that she needs to deliver the wonderful curriculum that she's trying to deliver so what does this warrant article provide we have um obtained preliminary proposals for civil site Engineering Services which would include the pre-design design um soil and wetlands analysis land survey permitting meetings Etc um it's going to
111provide us with a traffic study which would provide transportation planning and Engineering Consulting Services anybody who has been down 122 during morning drop off or pickup at the end of the day you know that you're going to be sitting at that light for an awfully long time um we are hoping that as we replan the layout of our school we can also figure out how to better direct that traffic um in summary this warrant article is necessary to pave the way to a better educational experience for our students teachers and administrators safer classro conditions maintaining the high standards for education and student to teacher ratios which we in this town value and we have benefited from greatly and improve traffic for the town on Route 22 I welcome your questions and your comments discussion on
112article six Mr Matthews yeah my name is Bill Matthews Crestwood Drive um one of the things I would strongly encourage you to study is moving the third grade up to the house upper elementary school and reconfiguring as necessary the lower uh primary school for prek through two um my understanding is there's plenty of room at the house upper elementary school for grade three I know there's some challenges to make accommodate the building uh to move uh just pre too but I'd encourage that to be one of the options that's presented uh as well as the bond for an expansion thank you thank you Miss opela um I just have a question uh can I ask questions but not propose an amendment at the same at the yeah I mean questions is part of what we
113do can I do both yes okay thank you very much um I've read a lot of your minutes I've gone to your um open house my children have uh attended that school there when it was K uh K through six so imagine that um and at one point we did have Portables until we were awaiting for the high school to be built um you guys have been working working it quite at warp speed if anybody reads your minutes um and I read it and I said this is a fate to complete you're going for a bond and like Bill Matthews when he went to the hearing I also um appreciated his uh input about asking for um some information that I really feel that should be included in this study not necessarily the money because
114you're assuming you're going to go for a bond um can can you get to your question there is an elephant in the room here regarding any expansion if you don't have water you can't open school I can see the November 2022 water system feasibility assessment final report at the town website and I see the hall is facility Improvement plan of 50,000 for water system/ Rocky Pond study do you expect a different kind of study and different results that's also only planned for 2029 that will be too wait late for your uh exp expansion and also your um uh proposed Bond uh that's supposed to be maybe phased in the lond Lane was an apple orchard at one time use of pesticides was an issue as was arsonic when the town bought it these things need
115to be um taken into account and the soil retested um I would greatly like to see documentation of a study on the pros and cons of moving the third grade up to the Hughes or or a school swap or eliminating prek I believe pre is not mandated in New Hampshire Hollis could eliminate prek to free up space yes I know there is a special education population of 3 to 5 year olds my son was one of those people who went to a private preschool among his peers he then had speech and language OT and academic services at the Hollis preschool while he was at his private uh PR school I transported him to every therapy at Hollis Primary School when those therapies were scheduled special ed 3-year-old 3 to 5year olds can be placed in
116community programs among their peers finish up please okay and lastly Hollis cannot afford to give valuable space to children who are not residents of Hollis if one non-resident child tips the grade numbers over the Ed specs it opens up an added expense for a classroom and teacher and most probably a parah okay you're done for now okay you can go to the end may I address some of the things that were said there or we just should I address some of the comments she didn't ask a question that I I didn't hear a question in there I heard A Long uh spee I asked I asked about um the um documentation of um any kind of consideration for um other options that you've studied well we if you said you were at the open house
117as you know we did address other things that have been considered and we will continue to consider among them is we have discussed moving the the possibility of moving the third grade to Hughes the major challenge with that is our fire codes so you saw how there is a ramp on one floor where we currently have second grade students we are not allowed by New Hampshire fire codes and we have talked to Jen gestes on multiple occasions about this she's our inspector at the fire department um she will not allow prek kindergarten or first grade to be housed on that floor because of that New Hampshire law fire code now that was not in place a long time ago when we had you're saying 6 through K through six if you you want to know
118the exact year that went into place I would have to do a search for that but things change all the time now Mrs Vicki used to have children that age on that floor she had children in the staff room which you saw currently has three steps leading up to a window which you really can't get out of safely where teachers can get out of for the staff room she used to have children in there until of course she was told that was not legal many things were available before which are not available currently laws change regulations change and also mandates change regarding what we are required to provide for our students with special needs and so when people's children who went to this school 10 15 years ago there were different regulations than now I
119promise you I am a taxpayer I am not just on the school board I am a resident here my children will not benefit from the changes that are going to happen at this school I am going to be looking out for a deal that is fiscally respons possible and addresses the educational needs of our children and the needs of our administrators and our teachers but the reality is we currently have a preschool in the center of a hallway we have an internationally recognized teacher who has moved every single year she has been at our school because we have not had space for her so you know things things change over time we moved to full day kindergarten um and we went for from two classrooms to five classrooms um our prek has gone from one
120to three classrooms we have an intensive knees classroom that's another classroom now we have environmental science that's seven classrooms that housed up to 20 students before that we cannot house now the situation is dire this is for a study and in that study we will be understanding the land the soil what is around what permitting might be available and we are going to explore every option that we can um but the reality is the situation right now is untenable okay let's if you're going to continue the conversation let's let other people speak now um I have the vote on article 3 the SAU budget yes 125 no 49 combine that with the Brookline School District vote of yes 566 no 421 and the co-op vote of 166 to 67 we have a grand total of
121yes 857 no 537 so the SAU budget passes the district the SAU Miss Hicks uh Pam Hicks eight may old drive I was wonder if you could tell us what the impacts of the new construction the new homes that have gone in the last 5 years have done for the enrollments at the elementary school it's hard to tell so so we have invited Kevin Anderson who is our town planner to start attending our meetings and we've met with him recently but um we're actually in the process of also Consulting with Mark fer who's our consulter with the town with the planning board um we we found it very difficult to track so you have some developments such as Keys Hill not too many children came in from there um but you see that there's building
122happening all the time Racin in is is approved for a 35 unit construction so that exact data while we trying to obtain it you know we have multiple emails going back and forth trying to to pin it down it's hard because we also have as you've heard probably Mr Corey Say on multiple occasions meetings we used to have people come in where kids were already in the school but people are moving in with toddlers and babies now so we're having a very hard time tracking that and that was actually it's been a topic of conversation because we are a SL thinking for a while is this a bubble is this something that will pass and we realized it just it just isn't we're already we're already there okay and that was my question because we
123have had bubbles before yes um we've had very large classes go through um and in an effort to not do a knee-jerk reaction I mean are there other things we can do like we have had it doesn't sound very nice but like the trailers or moving you know classrooms from from one school to another or whatnot and I know it's not a discussion for here tonight but we do we have this incredible building that is going on these Builders are coming in they are maxing out their developments I don't think the town is doing a very good job on trying to minimize the developments they're allowing waivers and all sorts of things and I I think we need to do a better job minimizing those but I think the biggest issue is that they're coming
124in they're building and they're putting some significant resource issues on us so they make their money and we the taxpayers are stuck picking up all of the new people that are coming in for our public services and I don't know if the if anything can be done for mitigation monies or something that in the future that these Builders and I know this has been a topic at times but these Builders can actually would actually have to have monies be put into the town to help help offset these costs we actually asked that um of Kevin Anderson what we met with him and he said we needed to have a capital Improvement plan in place and so please come on Saturday that is that is a formation of a committee to develop such a plan um
125is is up for the vote and if that happens then once that Capital Improvement plan is a place we can start charging educational assessment fees and other fees for the municipalities I'm very glad to hear that cuz that absolutely needs to happen thank you absolutely Miss fared Tammy fared nine Winding Valley Road um I have served on the school board I've for a number of years and I uh am now free to say I resent any suggestion that these efforts are uh run through at lightning speed or any other euphemisms about things going too fast um the superintendent has been talking about enrollment pressures for three years since even during covid uh my last year on the board ended last March we talked about it at every meeting the past year that I have been
126blissfully unaware of what the school board has talked about has we miss you Tammy no you don't and I know you don't um has been uh fixated on this topic it's a subject that has been visited at I'm sure every budget committee meeting which I've also been blissfully unaware of and um so anyone who wants to vote on this needs to not accept any assertion that this problem has not been um widely discussed and brought forward uh for several years I'm concerned as a uh former parent that any suggestion of arsenic Etc the waters in our all of our school buildings are tested more than annually is it monthly for a million different um pathogens and other contaminants and so do not worry about the drinking water in your schools Lindsay whoa sorry Lindsay McGovern
127373 Pine Hill Road um first off thank you an for this presentation I just felt the need to come up and say that if this is your first time hearing this presentation this does not even you know this is the tip of the iceberg I've heard this presentation given a couple times um this committee has thought of and has not left a single stone unturned in trying to um think of ways to improve the space at the P at the primary school um if you were not there to take the tour and see with your eyes that they have literally used every square inch of that school to accommodate um the growing numbers um it's amazing what they have done um what I'm about to say is not a knock on what what they've done
128but it is unacceptable that there is a Kindergarten class in a hallway it is unacceptable that there are Specialists um literally in closets uh as their office space and they deserve more um for what they provide for our children um one last thing that I just wanted to say is um I know 164,000 is a lot it's about I think $40 $42 a household um but if people again this is they are asking for this to do the homework and do their due diligence and get the information on all the really great suggest questions that have already been voiced here they need to get that information and that is what that will go for it is not just for the school it is also for the public please correct me if I'm wrong but I
129heard at one of these meetings the chief of police would love to see this go through because this traffic on 122 is a safety concern for our children and for our residents of Hollis thank you thank you yes sir hi my name is sorry Hi my name is Victor Orlando 266 Depot Road um couple things uh for one I definitely think the school needs to be expanded but one thing I would like to see is a little more transparency and how they're budgeting this $164,000 like how much is set aside for architectural plant how much is set aside for surveying how much is set aside for each specific thing and how are we bidding out those projects out so we're not just essentially picking one service and letting them charge us whatever they want because
130they know someone or something like that the other thing I think we should also be doing is balancing this with other options and not just saying oh we need to expand the school at some point as enrollment continues to increase which it will because holl is a desirable Town especially if you're looking to retire and there's someone who's willing to pay a million dollars for a little single family house because they want their kids going to the best school what's going to happen is more and more kids are going to come here more and more kids are going to come here this expansion isn't going to be the last one we should also be looking at cost in terms of what if we separate from Brookline and we look at holl as an individual because
131then it gives us the flexibility to move fifth grade up to the middle school and third grade up to the upper elementary school there's plenty of room in the Middle School plenty of room in the high school we should be looking at how much that's going to cost us versus expanding because the problem with these expansions is it seems like every few years we need another expansion we need another expansion we need another expansion we're not fixing the problem we just keep digging the hole and dumping the dirt back into it thank you and the preliminary proposal that we received are linked into to our minutes um if you go through them I'm sorry I can't tell you exactly which site but those are are linked in and you can see them and they I
132made the promise at the open house we will consistently be posting in our minutes what's being spent and to where yes sir hi um Todd kulage 10 curn Lane I would like to motion to end debate okay we have a motion here to end debate is there a second yes sir all right I can't hear much what's your name the no the m one who made the motion oh um Todd kulage Todd kulage and the person who seconded Brian Loveland Brian Loveland Brian Loveland this requires a 2third vote if you are done voting done hearing discuss discussion and want to vote on it please raise your cards if you are opposed please raise your cards and the eyes have it thank you now this is going to be a ballot well actually it's not yet
133stop um Joe Park W wave your hand Pam Hicks ad Stevens Charlie Stevens and Mike Julian okay we have five um this is going to be a ballot vote again you can go to the ballot clerks and get a replacement ballot uh and then ballot polls are now open c e e e has everyone voted who wants to to seeing no one else a vote I poose the poll Mr BAU I'd like to move to restrict reconsideration of Articles 3 four and five second okay a motion to restrict seconded by Mr Man all in favor that's is for articles 3 four and five all in favor of restricting 3 four and five please raise your cards thank you all opposed and the articles are restricted we will proceed to article 7 while our dedicated counters
134do their thing contingency fund to see if the school district will vote to establish a contingency fund for the current year for the unanticipated expenses that may arise and further to raise and appropriate a sum of $95,000 to go into the fund this sum to be raised by taxation any appropriation left in the fund at the end of the year will lapse to the general fund majority vote required net tax impact 3 cents a th000 the school board approves this article 500 the budget committee recommends this article 800 moved by Carol Roy seconded by Rafi Zach Miss Roy thank you moderator Drew you're welcome so we have to have some fun with Drew we appreciate him stepping in uh while Miss Brown couldn't be here so thank you drew we appreciate you the purpose of
135I'll buy you another bag of rollos the purpose of the contingency fund is to cover unanticipated major expenses that might arise during the school year for example the funds might be needed to help defay the cost of an additional classroom teacher if there's a dramatic increase in summer enrollments or help to defay the cost of an unexpected mainten need the funds are only available if the board votes in favor of the expenditure after a public hearing is held so we can't just appropriate these places unused funds are released to the general fund at the end of the fiscal year and to be clear the general fund is where dollars end up and that is what we can generally give back to the public when they are unexpended this is one of those articles that happens
136every year so it's very familiar to all of us and probably to you folks who've been here a few times but happy to answer any questions if any exist discussion of article s seeing none all in favor of a contingency fund for $95,000 please raise your cards thank you all opposed raise your cards and the eyes have it article8 the operating budget to see if the school district will vote to raise and appropriate a sum of 16, 950,000 this appropriation does not include Appropriations voted in other warrant articles majority vote required estimated net tax impact $580 a th000 the school board recommends this article 00 the budget committee recommends this article 800 moved by Tom Gan seconded by Carol Roy Mr Guan [Applause] must be my Magnetic Personality uh okay operating budget um each year
137early in the budget cycle uh the budget committee sets guidance for both the town and the hall School District cop goes through a similar process for the co-op where we provide guidance on how we feel the budget should move um this past year our Guidance the Hollis uh school board was a 0% increase now that's tempered somewhat or uh altered somewhat by uh some items that are outside of guidance for example special education costs we uh exclude those from guidance because it's a very volatile uh cost type and we don't want to um have one of two things or or either thing happen where if special education costs go down which has happened in the past that would leave a windfall if you will in the budget Baseline so we exclude it by the same
138token as we saw in this year sometimes the special education costs go up significantly and we exclude it so that it doesn't crowd out regular programming for the rest of the students so as you can see here um the math worked out that the guidance bud as as we requested would come at over just over $17 million the proposed budget that we're going to uh review right now in this article came in $3,635 underneath that amount we um you know that was an iterative process and appreciate the effort of the administration the school board to bring that down a little bit um first question we often get is what is you know the impact on the staff on uh student facing personnel there are no Staffing Chang changes um in this budget I'll go over
139the major movers the major increases and decreases I mentioned just a moment ago are alluded to special education costs that we hold outside of gadance you can see a number of um those costs are significant movers Transportation uh increased $114,000 uh health insurance uh small percentage only 4% but because the base is so big uh that equates to 50 $6,000 contracted Services um you know the the school board the administration tries to maximize delivery of service to special education students within the district um sometimes we don't have the appropriate staff we either have to tuition out or um we have to contract with Specialists to provide in District services so those costs increase about $53,000 speech pathologist um this is actually open position um we increased that to kind of uh Mark to market the
140position um hadn't been looked at because it's been vacant for a number of years I was talking to Kelly on a break a few moments ago that uh speech pathologist along with uh School psychologists are among the roles that are very difficult to fill so it's been open for a while and uh put a budget line in there to better reflect what we would anticipate the cost to be and finally retirement benefits is uh a contractual uh benefit for uh a limited number of retirees um last year we had no expense there and added in uh 41,600 for budgeting purposes so you can see the increase we talk about the decreases um classroom teachers uh salaries went down about 2% um when I I had remarks about the teacher contract um I made note of
141the fact that every year the teacher contract is up as a separate warrant article it's not in the budget so as a result um you know kind of see the uh impact of the current compensation structure I think we had um some relatively Junior teachers come in who may have replaced more tenured Folks at a lower cost uh bond interest came down uh $28,000 Lane changes um you know those are reported uh by the staff as they attain them throughout the year but for budgeting purposes there's an expectation that we'll see fewer of those in the coming year uh nurse salary that was another kind of salary Arbitrage situation where more senior person went out and uh was back filled with someone with the lower expense level and finally maintenance salaries came down about 4%
142or $14,000 and I think that's what I have okay [Applause] I have the results from the uh article six construction study yes 109 no 37 and the article passes is there discussion on article 8 Mr BAU um yeah I have a question about about the speech pathologist thing um if if that is that somebody we've been trying to hire for a couple of years or something and we haven't been able to find fill the position so if we budget that again for this year but we still can't fill the position what happens does that money go into the unexpended fund balance or what a lot of that money would still be used for contracted Services because we're required to provide the services okay we just wouldn't have the hired staff to do it correct so
143actually it might cost us more because we have to contract it out correct okay so and whatever would not be spent would fall down and go into the Surplus and be returned to the tax pay okay thank you seeing no further discussion I'm going to take a diverg for a moment um we had an election yesterday and members of the holla School District um and the co-op School District were elected and we we can swear them in so if any of those folks are here and are ready to be sworn in uh the co-op folks should see Diane sorry the co-op folks should see me and the holla School District folks should see Diane I would also gonna jump the gun and make a personal expression of appreciation for Andy Corey I've as moderator I've
144had the opportunity to work with him for 10 or 12 years something like that and I've always appreciated his willingness to to work across the diverse view points in the district and support me in in what I've had to do so um Carol you want to take a moment right now I just whispered to dud that I wanted to say something and then he starts saying something I'm like I had already planned this Andy Corey has been the superintendent of this district for 10 years and has guided us with calmness he's very cool he's very collected he's very smart and he cares deeply about the students of this District we will miss you this is a well-deserved retirement and thank you for everything that you've done for us [Applause] all right we're ready to vote
145I would like to count this one Melinda I'm not going to spend 16 Mill doll on a on a eyeball vote thank you if you are in favor of a budget operating budget of 16,950 312 please raise your cards okay you can put them down all opposed please raise your cards thank you and yes is 101 no is two the budget [Applause] passes is that the price for returning my pen motion is to restrict reconsideration of Articles six seven and eight made by m Ms Roy second second by Mr man all in favor of our restricting reconsideration of Articles 6 s and 8 raise your cards thank you all opposed please raise your cards and they are restricted Mr garuba thank you um under article nine uh I would like to move uh to take
146a motion for the sense of the meeting to see if this body will recommend to the school board to hold this annual meeting in a larger venue uh next year all promise to keep showing up you know what'll happen is we'll have 40 people in the main gym is there a second I think the admin oh ol Babcock chair of the co-op seconds move to a larger venue for this meeting is there discussion can you buy it all in favor of having this meeting in a larger venue please raise your cards thank you all opposed looks to me like the eyes have [Applause] it Mr Man to dissolve the meeting motion to dissolve moved by Mr Man seconded by Miss Roy all in favor of dissolving raise your cards thank you all opposed raise your
147cards we are done [Applause]