Stratham School Board Meeting 11/19/25

001All right, hang on. [laughter] >> Hi guys. >> Okay, >> we can do pledge. >> Just nice. >> Yeah, slow pledge. Slow pledge. >> It's nice. >> All right. Good evening everybody. We're going to get started. Um, thank you so much for coming tonight. We got a lot of exciting stuff on the agenda. Um, so why don't we start with the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, great. Um, so before we start the business, um, is is everyone here at this point? >> Still waiting. Okay, perfect. [laughter] Okay, sounds great. We're just going to hold off for the student council report for just a couple

002minutes. So, let's go ahead um and take a look at um our minutes. Taking a look at both the minutes of October, public and non-public for October 15th. Anybody have any edits? >> I thought they looked really good. I think I had a nitpicky thing, but I don't remember off the top of my head, so it doesn't matter. [laughter] >> All right. Anybody else? >> Anybody else? Okay. So, taking a look at um do I have a motion to approve the public and non-public of uh No, October 5. Let's see. What am I looking for here? >> Was it the 15th? >> Yeah, of October 15th. Thank you. Um, >> I move to it accept the minutes. >> I'll second it. Um, all in favor, please say I. >> I. >> All right. So, anybody

003opposed? So, that's 4 Z. Um, with Eric not here. All right. Do I have all student council now? All right. Great. You guys, do you want to come up and just use this microphone? Thank you so much for being here. >> Thanks for having us. >> Fourth graders. Yay. It's too tall for me. >> Yeah, >> that. >> So, we have a lot of people that listen at home. So, just kind of talk, say your names, and just talk slow. And thank you. >> All right. Welcome school board to our student council speech. I am Win Gregoire, the class representative for 4B, also known as Mrs. Bastigas' fourth grade class. And I'm Sloan Lavota, the alternate for Miss Bastigus' fourth grade class. Last month we had the Halloween howl. We we decided to have a

004student council run bake sale. Most members of student council baked spooky treats and each had 30 minute shifts to work and take donations for the cause of more recess equipment such as Gaga balls, basketballs, and more. We raised almost $600. We recently had our student life conferences. There was so much to show. Everyone here at SMS has had glows and grows. We all had fun showing our guardians our work. All of the teachers had something good to say to the students of SMS. We also have our first spirit week of the of this year. This week today was multiples day which meant we were able to match our friends clothes. Tomorrow is mismatch day and Friday is PJ day. >> We recently had Haven come to our school. They brought puppets and taught us how

005to keep our bodies safe. They also taught us about comfortable, uncomfortable, and confusing touches. Along with that, they taught us about safe and unsafe secrets. First grade just had their field trip to Cobble House Farm. There were lots of fun things to do. They went into the corn mazes, which were each designed to make a picture. First grade also had holy pumpkin day where parents could come into the first grade classrooms with tools to help drill holes in their pumpkins. Then they lit them up with candles once it started getting dark. In fourth grade math grade and supports we've been learning about patterns, a hint of multiplication and division, rounding as well, place value, addition and subtraction, word problems, algebra 2. Based on our math skills, they put us in different groups for a math

006skill such as 4D, 4 W, 4 N, 4 P, and 4B. Thank you for listening and coming to hear what's been going on at SMS. >> Thank you. [applause] >> That was so great, you guys. Thank you. I feel much more educated now. [laughter] Thank you so much. I I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit about student led conferences because maybe there's some people listening that that don't understand how they work. Do you feel comfortable telling us a little bit how it works? >> Um so student like conferences is like where you get to show your guardian uh like what you've been doing and what you've been working on. Um what you've been doing really well on and like what you need to like learn and grow on. >> Yeah. Um,

007and like showing them what like mostly what you've been doing and like your teacher will talk with them about how you've been doing class with you like >> Yeah. >> So, you get to show them around your classroom, show them your notebooks, maybe some science. >> Generally, just been uh generally just showing them what you've been doing with like reading, writing, math. Um, so they get to see what you've been doing at school. >> That's so cool. What was the funniest anything but a water bottle? >> Somebody was drinking out of um like they put a plastic bag in a boot and then put water in the bag, drink out of the boot. >> That was that was uh really funny. >> Oh, okay. Stylish. [laughter] >> Okay. >> Yeah, I love it. >> Um,

008anybody else have any questions? >> That's right. >> All right. Thank you guys so much. >> Really appreciate it. >> Come back anytime. [applause] >> All right. Wonderful. [laughter] Um, so let's move on to the superintendent report. >> Sure. Molly's going to take over your manifest and financials. >> Oh, sure. So, um, the pile's right in front of you, Jennifer. >> Yep. >> Um, it seems really large, but it's just, um, I think there's only four there. They just have all the receipts attached. Okay. Um, so in your board pack is a current year financial and so this is the first time we have the comparison page because we're comparing what we're saying in the November meeting to what we had reported in October. Um, so we do finish the board pack several weeks in

009advance of the meeting. So at this point in time, we were still building a lot of the encumbrances specifically around special education. Um, did anybody have any questions? I did list out what all of the expenditures were or at least generally what they were. At this point in time, we do not have any revenue different than planned because we literally just said it just two weeks ago for the tax rates to come out. >> Mhm. >> So, did anyone have any questions on those expenditures? >> Anybody have anything? >> And so, you can just pass the manifest back. Okay, sounds good. And then >> did we want to talk budget now or is that later? >> Um, we're going to do uh teacher contract first. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Oh, perfect. Okay. >> All right.

010Great. So, moving on. We're going to talk about the teacher contract and um and the budget tonight. This is kind of the first view we'll get of the budget. So, um we're excited to talk about that. So, first off, looking at the teacher contract, um Cameron and I served as the board reps for the negotiations with um a lot of heavy lifting by Chris and by um uh [sighs and gasps] by Heather and um the teachers that we worked with were amazing. And so, it was I think overall a really positive um experience. I guess I have a couple things I want to say. Do you want to start talk a little bit about >> um Oh, I'll just say that it was um really collaborative and I appreciated the teachers union um working with

011us and teaching us some of some of the process as well. Um >> I guess that's do you want? I think Cameron and I felt a lot of responsibility and we said that at the beginning because obviously salaries is the biggest part of the budget and um you know anytime you look at the budget really what you're considering is is salaries um which you only get a say on at the start of every teacher contract. So, uh, you know, we really, I think we wanted to be very respectful of the union and, um, the teachers that make SMS what it is and at the same time have something to say to the taxpayers and that we were being thoughtful and considerate of, um, you know, what they what they were facing and paying um, during

012these four years represented by the contract. So, um, as you guys can see, um, we put together or, uh, um, Heather put together this, um, collective bargaining, uh, summary. Does everybody have a copy of that? So, you can see, um, what the increases over the previous year. So, one of the things that um just to talk about financials right up front, one of the things that was really important to the teachers is um their cost of living wage increases. Um during the previous contract, they had been stagnant at 1.5. And so that was really important to them that this contract would represent an increase. um you know and we started pretty high and I think we came down to uh numbers that we felt comfortable with. So really like in the first year of the

013contract to give them that 3.5 increase and then the next two years come back down to the three and then the final year before they go and negotiate again to go back up to the 3.5. >> Can I ask a question about that? Why go back up to 3.5? Well, um I think it was all part of negotiation. You know, they had um there was a pretty big number proposed, then we went lower and so it was really just negotiating back and forth. But I think the idea is to bring them up again before they go back in and negotiate [clears throat] another contract. That makes sense. >> Sure. [laughter] >> Um all right. Do you want to talk about longevity because I feel like you talked about that so much in the >> the

014negotiations? >> Um, sure. Yeah. So, um, as part of the negotiation, we were discussing the longevity, which is I'm trying to remember this now. There's the longevity and then there's the the step thing. So, we learned all, you know, [laughter] about how all this works. Um, and the I mean the the financial piece, I think the biggest impact was the wage increases that Jennifer just talked about. a lot of this um the longevity is obviously a way to reward [snorts] folks that have been here for x period of time and there's the you know we learned all about the step tracks and all that but I think as far as the financial impact the um longevity increases going from uh uh increased by 500 per span of years listed. So really it when we looked

015at the numbers it wasn't a giant impact to the budget more so trying to make up the the cola um to like like Jennifer said the previous contract was at 1.5%. So when we compared that to the inflation rate over the last year or last four years and tried to, you know, kind of true that up, we obviously also looked at the healthc care benefits which we're going to get into later. But um and I think that that was all considered. So the longevity I think was a more less impact, but I think important to show um the value, you know, that that we >> Yeah. >> have for the teachers. [snorts] Um, another goal I went into negotiations with was just to look at, um, conferences. So, we, you know, SMS staff want to

016go to these national conferences, um, which of course we want to support, too. You know, it brings excitement to the school. They share their information when they come back. It's also a nice reward for work they've been doing. Definitely something, you know, really important. Um but what happens is as a board member we will get these requests to go to a conference and really we had no real cap budget cap on that. So we would just say yes and so you know these different conferences would come to us and we would say yes and there was no outer limit. So really what we wanted to do is have more of a structure for how conferences got proposed to us. So now with this new contract, any contract under 25 any conference under $2,500 goes to

017um Kate Lucas and she can say yay or nay. If a conference is over 2500, it comes to the board, but there is this budgetary cap of $15,000. So that means the board will get these conference requests all at one time and then can review them and approve them. So, it's not um our goal was first of all to have a budget cut just to control spending, but also to um not have the same people go to conferences every year so that you know newer teachers could go and teachers who hadn't been in a few years would would be able to go more often. >> So, that's that was something we negotiated >> at the same time then. >> Yes. So, we asked for them all to be coming. >> Nice. Um, from what we've

018heard, national conferences you can know about into a year in advance. So, it seems like that's not not a huge hardship. >> That be in the fall. >> Yeah. >> There's probably September meeting, I'm guessing. >> Yeah. I think we had a date October. October. October. >> It was October. >> That makes sense. >> Okay. >> And so, the other thing is this is maybe getting too in the weeds, but it's um conferences are part of a larger budget line. So, this 15,000, it's not an additional budget line. it's just within our current budget line. >> Um, but just something we'll keep track of. >> And then I think the other edits, um, you guys can see here. We don't need to go like through them. Although Cameron and I are happy to talk about

019any that seem to be, um, interesting to you guys. We wanted to kind of look at some of the definitions like who gets bereavement leave, you know, as um, Heather said. So, right, you know, we're not ranking who you claim bereavement for. So, you know, we kind of clarified those definitions to include a loved one. We also looked at sick bank, how that was defined because that's something I represent the board on the sick bank committee and that's always like uh is this a catastrophic injury? You know, it's just like for us to be judging that very hard. So, we tried to clarify some of those things. Um, and then a lot of administrative stuff that was more things that um, HR was concerned with that Cameron and I just agreed. [laughter] You know, things

020like um, pay pay schedules and things like that. No, no cost um, associated with those. >> Anything else you want to say? Um well just about you know you mentioned the professional development because we did have like a pretty extensive discussion about the conferences and how some folks learn better by going conference or taking classes and that's all part of the same professional development costs. So like you said there's no there's not a change in how that's allocated but it's just for those larger larger conference expenses. So we'll see them. Um and then there's obviously other provisions for things like taking classes outside of outside of you know or while doing professional development I should say. >> Yeah. >> Just a clarification. So the 15k cap is that's not for all conferences. That's just for

021conferences over 2500. >> Just conferences the board will see. >> Okay. Gotcha. >> Yeah. So the total amount for conferences could be much more than that. >> Um for smaller priced ones that are maybe more local. Yeah. Because that was also our idea is we want to encourage like if there's a conference in Boston versus a conference in Orlando, could you go to the conference in Boston? >> Um and those would be one Kate works, if I'm understanding, Kate works with um the teachers on >> Okay. >> approving those which is what we want, right? Because Kate knows a lot more than we do. Yeah, we definitely defer to her. >> Great. >> Okay. Um, so I am aware that I don't have public comment open yet. I think what we're going to do is

022um I guess um >> Jennifer, before we do that, >> yeah, >> we do have to ratify this. So the board will have to agree >> to approve this um contract that you have. >> Public comment though before we ratify it. Um I think you can get public comment after. Um they won't they won't we won't be able to release anything to the public because this is still until it's ratified. It is not a public document. >> Okay. Okay. >> And if I can just one other thing I just want to highlight that I think it's really important that comes through the budget process and thank you to um the teachers also looking at that is that we push the retirement date up. So if you remember in our contract previously, we didn't have to

023be notified until January 15th. Now it's November 15th, which actually gives us the chance to budget for it properly in our first draft budget, then three through two or three renditions of the budget and then have to retroactively put retirement into the uh subsequent years. So I I just want to highlight that. That was a that was a great part on both pieces to get that to be more consistent with our budgeting process. >> Yeah. Thanks. >> You're welcome. >> Anything else you want? >> No, I think you you you guys did a great job of of of mentioning everything else. >> No, I'm good. Okay. Anything you guys want to add? Yeah. Okay. Okay. And uh any other questions from the board? Okay. Okay. So, uh we will um I'll make a motion to

024ratify um the teacher contract um as proposed. Do I have a second? >> I will second. >> Okay. Um any discussion? All right. All in favor, please say I. I anybody opposed? Okay, so that's 4 Z. And I have been talking to Eric, too. So, um, thank you very much. And thank you to Cameron. I can't say enough thanks to Molly and Chris and Heather, um, and the teachers union. I mean, it's just, um, I think both Cameron and I were very overwhelmed by the idea of doing these negotiations and, um, anyway, it we got a lot of support and, uh, I think it worked out well. So, thank you guys so much. Um, okay. So, now to our next exciting thing, looking at the budget. And so, I think what we're going to do

025is we're going to take a look at the budget. Um, I know the fact is here and so I would um maybe even before we talk about the budget, I would love the fact to just introduce themselves so everybody everybody um can know them. Then we'll hear a little bit about the budget and um the board will have time to ask questions. Um, I'll I'm going to give the facts some time to ask questions, but I think really the idea is we hear about it tonight and then there's a more, you know, a larger discussion next month. Um, so anyway, with the FACM mind introducing themselves as we start moving into budget season. >> No, [snorts] not at all. >> Just grab the mic. >> Do these projecting right now. >> They never do. >>

026Feel like we'll I'll check the I'll check. >> Thanks. >> Okay. >> Can you hear me? Is that good? because I thought they were just for like the recording. >> All right. I'm Abigail Daring. I'm the chair of the FACK this year. Um I am a mother of two girls here at Stratam Memorial School and I am also a resident in Stratum. Um I am we're we're somewhat new to Stratum. I've been here about a year and a half and I'm active on the PTO and um trying to get as involved with the community as I can and I really appreciate the school and um here to also balance the needs of the community um looking out for taxpayers and and trying to find that balance that um that we all seek. So I'll >>

027where do you do you mind just giving us your address just for >> 15 Patriots Road. >> Awesome. Okay, thank you. >> I'll hand it over to Allison. >> Okay. >> Hi Allison Nab 112 Tidewater Farm Road. Um both my daughters went to Strata Memorial School, spent six years here each and I am the select board representative on FAC. So thank you all for having us. >> Thanks [clears throat] >> Sean Dempsey. I'm u I'm actually Abigail's neighbor at uh so right next to her on 20 Patriots Drive or Street uh road. I'm uh my our daughters are besties so they hang out every day. Um, and I work as CFO of a couple organizations here in New Hampshire. Um, and I'm um, looking forward to working with you this year. >> Peter Bra, 912

028Pines Drive. Lived in Stratam for 44 years. I voted for this building when it was first opened years ago. Uh my my uh my daughter was in first grade, my son was in third grade when this building opened. So um and I'm on the fact obviously I was in the fact last year as well. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Hi, good evening everyone. Shane O'Brien, one square away in Strat, New Hampshire. Uh I have two little ones here at SMS, one in second grade, one in kindergarten. uh love everything about the town, the school, and uh honored to be on the fact here. Thank you all. >> Yeah, thank you. Yeah, and thank you so much. You know, this is obviously the most important we work we do as a board. So, um having

029you guys help us and um look at this is a great help. So, thank you very much. All right. So, looking at the budget. >> Sure. Um do you need copies? Anyone? >> You can give some copies up there while you're doing that. >> Okay. >> Just want to preview. So when we do it, this is our first time looking at the budget. Um our goal coming in knowing where we were financially and hearing from the town is that we wanted to be 4% or lower. Um so that was a lot of hard work that we started back in August to get to where we're at here and we know that this is the first draft and we'll get uh recommendations and questions and ideas from the fact. So thank you ahead of time. We

030had a fantastic meeting with the fact to kind of organize and talk about questions to streamline it because something that we'd heard in the past to to make that a little bit more efficient. So appreciate them meeting uh about about a month ago now to to get that going. So um Molly will go over some of the high uh level um concepts of what we did and some major changes both uh plus and minus and then obviously administration's here for any specific questions that you have about the budget. >> Can you guys hear us in the back row? >> Yeah, as long as you're speaking directly in it's it's projected. >> We just got to get closer to the mics, I think. >> Okay, I'll just move closer. Okay. So, there are some documents going

031around and what we did is I'll just describe the packet before we dive in. So, the first page is the summary and I broke it out with general and food service funds and then the bond um because this is going to be the first full year of the bond. So, it's going to add quite a bit of expense and we did vote for that separately. So, I just wanted to call that out separately. I didn't put the percentage next to the bond because it is comparing apples to oranges because in the first year you only have one interest payment where the f first the well the second year which is the first full year you have principal and interest. Um below that is the major changes. So what I do is I look at the

032the categories. So when you see salaries that is every salary in the budget. So looking at the account code structure, the third section of numbers always starts with a 50. Anything that's a 501 is a salary. So what I did is I added all the salary lines together. Um and so this here lists the major changes, which I'm sure principal Lucas will help go through um afterwards. And then behind that is the next page is grants. So if you remember in a joint board meeting and for several meetings I'm been trying to tell in every meeting I go to we will be appropriating the grants as part of the district budgets. Historically they were always appropriated in the SAU. So what appropriate means is the authority to spend. So you need the voted authority to

033spend and that's an appropriation. And so per the recommendation from the auditors for several years now it really should be part of the appropriation in the stratum budget not in the SAU budget. But for grants, what happens is we expend the money, but then we get the grant revenue back from the state. So revenue equals expense. And so when your revenue equals expense, you don't have to raise that money in taxation. So it's really important to know that this 221,698 is a projected grant amount. We don't know how much grant money we're going to get. So we look at history to determine what's an amount we that appears reasonable with a little bit of extra in case more grants come because that does not impact taxation. Okay. Then behind that is a line by line

034budget. So this is directly out of our accounting system. And so you'll see all the different account codes and the diff there's different functions. So the way you look at it is the 11 the first two digits that's your general fund. Anything that's 11 is general fund and 14 is your food service fund. Both of those funds are in this pack. And then it's grouped by function. So 1,00 is regular education. Anything that's 1,200 is special education. Um other functions include 2600s are facilities. Um 2700s are transportation. You'll you'll see as you go through it kind of what is each function. Then in the very back, we'll skip to the very last page. I put a copy of the bond schedule. So this is the bond schedule that shows the repayments. In in the second

035to last column, it they actually they know what our fiscal year is. How it goes from July 1 to June 30th. They actually tell us what the fiscal year payments are. So you can see this year the payment was 286,000. It's really small. Sorry. And so then next year it jumps up to the 1.12 million. Um and then the page right before that is an analysis on what a teacher would cost. So in the past we did have some reductions after some retirements. And if we were to add a teacher back into the budget, this is what the cost would be. So when you have a teacher, you have different parts. You have the base salary which we always use middle of the road masters plus six and then FICA which is 7.65% of salary

036and then all teachers that are over 80% full-time essentially full-time you have to pay 19.23% to New Hampshire retirement system and then for health and dental we usually assume a twoerson health. So if we were to add an additional teacher, this would be that additional cost. So we did not add the teacher in the budget. We gave this as an alocart at the end. So that's how the file is organized. Um, Principal Lucas, I don't know if you want to talk to some of the major changes. >> If you look, I think Molly's summary page is really the changes. Um, and I'm sure I know you got this um, budget in your packet. Um, we um, I think we've been really motivated by a couple of things when we were looking at the budget for

037FY27. Um the first is that we were really conscious of um some of the unexpected costs that we don't have control of. And what I mean by that is our increases in health insurance was a surprise for us. We have an increase. It was much more significant than we were anticipating. Um as we've been talking about for the past couple of years, the cost, special education cost across the board, whether that's contracted services, whether that's transportation, um have increased significantly. Um and so that's something that we're really thoughtful about and as we vote for our budget. Um and then there's a couple of things that we um also [snorts] prioritize and what we think is essential for our students. Um and so while the teacher is reflected as like a the last page of that

038that remains very very important to administration and the staff but we also wanted to present the budget with the current staffing as it was this year so that we could it would be very clear what we were talking about because after last year between two teachers and one teacher we really wanted to make sure it was clear for everybody including the community in the board and so that was done intentionally to offer some transparency around that. Um and then the other piece that we had spent some time with and we've talked about this as the board is we um when the building renovation project started really in 1920 um there were a number of things that we didn't put into the budget assuming it would be part of the building project and a lot is

039that like the soft cost of things like furniture. >> Um >> and last year um we the board ended up having to make some hard decisions around reductions and one of those was $55,000 in furniture. And so we're putting those things back in um because we can't pick that down the road. We need the furniture. Um an example of that would be our cafeteria will be bigger next year. We need tables to sit on the mat. Um and so things like that were also part of the budget process for us for FY 27. So I'm certainly happy to go down any line in particular if there's somewhere you see something that feels significant or you want more information about. Um I also know this is your first real look at it. So um so let

040you do that and answer any questions. >> And I also just want to remind you on salaries here we have two different unions. And so when an union is negotiating like the teachers, this budget in article one, the teachers will be coming across at current year salaries. So no increases in article one, article two, which will be the collective bargaining agreement. That's where you're going to see the increases related to the teachers. Um, and so anybody in the PAR professional union would step per that collective bargaining agreement because it's an active collective bargaining agreement. And anybody not in a CBA, CBA stands for collective bargaining agreement. Um, we put in at a 3% increase. And then also just health and dental, I'm sure you're going to see a large number there. um we receive our

041health and dental rate increases in October for the following year. We have several plans across the SAU and it differs per plan and so the rate increase I think was between 14.8% and 21% across the districts. I think a great example of what Molly was just talking about if you look at the very first line of our budget where it says regular instruction teacher salaries as Molly just mentioned that would be represented in more article number two but you do see a slight increase because we do know certain teachers that would be if this contract was to stay in place would be tracking and so that is sort of representative of that. I think that's important it gives you some clarity of an example of what she was referring to. >> Yeah. So if if

042Warren article 2 was not to pass, then we would still need to honor the track changes. And a track change is when somebody earns additional education. So if they go from like a bachelor's to a master's or masters to masters 15 um or if we just have a change in personnel because we make this budget over a year in advance. So if one teacher departed us and a new teacher came, you might see some differences there. Uh, can I ask a question about the reduction on the contract? >> Oh, sorry. >> Bring the just bring your mic closer. >> I said, can I ask a question about the reduction on the contracted services? >> Sure. Um, in so over the past several of years, we've been talking about um the number of contracted services organizations

043we work with to provide specialized services for our students. Um, and one of the things that um, we've been trying to um, troubleshoot or work around or figure out like a long-term solution that also serves our students and our school community um, is to think about having those be our staff members versus contracted service members. And so we've been able to look back over the last five years of what particular contracted services we were using and for how many students we were using them for. Um and sometimes that um because the way contracted services work, we have like a board-certified behavior analyst. Um and right now we have one on staff and so she supports a number of our students and a number of our um registered behavior technicians which are the people that often

044work with those students. Um and then but because of capacity, because of the number of hours in the day, and because she has to then supervise those people that's part of their lens, her and hers, um we sort of maxed that out. And so we've been contracting that out outside and that's usually like one BCBA for one student. And so that really isn't building capacity in our building and isn't maximizing efficiency. And so we reduced in our contracted services and offset it looking to hire a second BCBA, which is pretty much a wash like financially for a year. Um but it then over time is a substantial savings for us and helps us build capacity [snorts] within our building. Um the BCA PCBA can also then because we would have a second BCBA, we have

045a significant number of RBTs um because they can then supervise in addition to our current BCBA. And so that again builds capacity and then we're not contracting out for registered behavior technicians either. So it's a long-term solution to building capacity and serving more students and it's cost efficient. Is that similar to I know one of the things that came up last year was there was I want to say it was speech >> there is where there's like one person that has the Okay. So it's it's like >> it's a related service. Yes. >> Okay. >> So it's because I think at the time it was a savings to have >> speech Yeah. the speech assistant versus Okay. >> Yep. >> Okay. And is there like a threshold for I I only know this because we

046just talked about it with um like and I know about this specifically but like here to learn right the that's obviously not something you have somebody here >> correct >> so I guess is there like a threshold where it's like hey we should think about bringing that in you know insourced. >> Yep. So um an example of that would be like physical therapy right so only a limited number of students through their IEP then are eligible for physical therapy. And so if it's like 20% and you can only employ someone for 20% of a week, you would look at a part-time employee or a contracted service. If you're depending on your IEPs and the services are identified in that, then you would that's how you sort of justify whether you need to have it on

047staff or someone you contract with. >> Okay. >> Um the other part I would offer is that um sometimes if the student is new and we also have preschool, which I think is a huge part of this, is that we get students at three, which I love. I'm so glad we do, >> but that's an unknown for us in so um then you're stuck. it's January and you're like, "Oh my gosh, we now need A, B, and C." And then you end up contracting service. Um, which we should do. I'm not arguing, but it puts us in a bind because you don't have time to hire and you need to be able to you want to take the students in as possible. So that >> this sort of helps alleviate some of that. >> And

048is that is three when the school becomes responsible? Is that the Okay. I'm just trying to remember some early intervention prior to SMS, but at three, yes, they are with us. >> Okay. Okay. Um, and I got one more question. um the the special ed tuition on here is that um that is stratum students that are going out of district and do you know if any of those are um by I guess I don't know if to say the right word like by choice as far as like we had a discussion at the other meeting about students that opted to go to another school but the district was still the >> no these are IEP team decisions so they're collaborative conversation families and and us and knowing what that student really needs and sometimes it's

049more than we can offer even a public school setting. >> Okay, thank you. >> And so I also just want to remind you about the SAU assessment. So we worked really really really hard. So the overall SAU assessment was a 0% change. So what the SAU assessment is is our SAU office does not have an individual budget that goes in front of the taxpayers. It's divided up into all of the district budgets and it's done so it's weighted equally half on ADM which is your um attendance and then half on equalized valuation which is the valuation of your homes. So the overall assessment across SAU was 0% increase over the prior year. However between the districts you moved in relation to each other. So East Kingston might have gone down while stratum went up. So

050the change here does show an increase, but that's only because you changed in relation to ADM and EV with other districts within the SAU. And then also I know the fact we did send you the the staffing list. And so how we structure that in Excel is if you have a question on who's in this line on the Excel spreadsheet, it specifically says the account number and it will tie to the total here. So you'll be able to see all the individual salaries that add up to that line. Okay. >> Okay. >> Uh can I ask a question about the the estimated value with um does the town doing a reevaluation have an like if another t like we reevaluate I think in 2024 something like that. >> Yeah. >> Does that have an impact

051because we've done it recently? >> So equally valuation is a calculation that is done at the department of revenue. Okay. >> We don't do that calculation. >> Okay. >> But it would impact it. >> Okay. [snorts] >> No, please. >> Okay. Um, yeah, for the tuition private New Hampshire, um, almost 400 grand. That's insane. Uh, and I was just looking at the percent change, it says 113.51. Um, but I think it should be 213.51. I'm on page two. It's 185 was last year and this year, well, this year is 185 and next year 395. Um, so I was just curious about that percentage. >> When I calculated it, it was um 213.51 instead of 113.51. So, I just wanted to make sure. >> You're on page two. >> I'm on page two. Yeah. For tuition

052p uh private New Hampshire. >> Yeah. So the that percent should be budget to budget. I mean I can double check it. So it would be going from the FY26 budget of 185,000 to the proposed budget 395,000. >> Yeah, I think it should be 213.51. >> So it's almost twice as much. >> Well, that's going up 100%. So that would be doubling it. >> Okay. >> So if it's going up 100% that would be doubling it. Gotcha. Okay. Okay. >> So, um sorry, Molly, could you explain um just so we are all on the same page what exactly that line means? The tuition private New Hampshire. >> So, I think that principal Lucas might >> attend a district place. >> They attend what? >> District placements. Okay. Similar to what came. >> So, this was

053this is the special ed >> after the team has decided. Okay, perfect. Thank you. that represents how many kids. >> Do we know that? >> I know. >> Okay. Okay. >> It's a very small. >> Um I had another question about um the food services. So um for food it actually went down from 120,000 to 110,000 on on page eight. It's curious. Don't see prices going down often. So I was wondering why that is for food. >> So if you look at the actuals from last year, the actuals are 95,000. >> So if we are actually spending less money, then we bring the budgets down in line with actuals. >> Okay. Is that what's going on with food service management as well? Because it's 30,000 and that's just stayed flat. But by 25 actuals is

054only nine. >> So the food service management line that's that's a bit tricky to explain. >> Okay. >> So you have two funds. You have fund 11 which is your general fund and fund 14 which is your food service fund. At the end of the day well the food service fund we receive federal money right. And so the fund 14 cannot be in a negative position at the end of the year. So what has to happen is the general fund fund 11 has to pay fund 14 revenue to get the expenses equal to revenue. So that food service management line is the food the projected food service loss meaning how much expense is higher than revenue in the food service fund at the end of the year. All right, I'm just gonna let that sink

055in for a minute. [laughter] >> It's a lot. >> Those were my only questions. >> All right, Kathleen. >> Um, >> if you have any. >> I have a few. Yeah, >> I just want to go through everything that's already been >> that great. >> Um, so just looking at software, does that represent anything new or these just renewals? >> Um, no. One of the things that's been really helpful over the past couple years with Molly and Jason Hills is our new IT director is um we get in the summertime um things that used to be filled to like the co-op um now it's clear what's filled to SMS ahead of time. So we're able to put them in the appropriate lines versus sort of like administrative line. We can actually put them in the

056software like time what specifically we're being built and how much we're going to be built for. Um and it's much more because of that communication. It's really nice because it's like based on actual number of students and actual then it's really been fine more actively now lines. >> Okay. So it's not that we're getting a new math software nothing like that. Okay. It's just kind of [snorts] billing. Also I just want to ask I think I missed it but I I see we have costs for a teacher. Are you saying that you would like to add a teacher to the budget? Okay. And where do you see that teacher going? What? >> So, uh we feel really strongly that having five teachers at every grade level, okay, is important. We currently have four uh teachers

057in our second grade, which was a decision that admin made. So, the the board put forward a budget to reduce two teachers last year, two teaching [clears throat] positions, not 12 teaching positions. And then at the town meeting, what uh the equivalent of the cost of one was put back. So we reduced by one and the admin made the decision to make that in second grade based on enrollment. Um and the the dynamics of the group of kids in the cohort. Um it so right now currently there's 19 or 20 kids in each of our second grade classrooms which is a lot by [snorts] is appropriate for a second grade classroom. Um but it extends beyond that. um when you have a grade level that has four teachers and all the others, you are impacting

058teams every single year as you change. And part of a really good school system where kids are getting what they need and it runs well is continuity and teamwork. Um and our model for MTSS which is the idea that we share kids across the grade across the grade level to really personalize their ingredient supports both in the terms of intervention but also in terms of extension depends on those five people trusting each other sharing students being able to collaborate really well communicate really well um and that will be disrupted all the time. >> That's a really hard thing when we're trying to build a comprehensive system of service. >> Yeah. Um and we believe and we I believe [snorts] our experience as experts is that the number of children in the classroom matters and so

059at 19 or 20 kids in a classroom particularly in >> um second grade third grade it's really hard. >> Okay. [clears throat] >> And you know when I'm looking at these major changes right I see 374,000 for health insurance which we knew was going to be high. I guess it feels um you know that 4% includes that 374 which seems crazy to me. Um I'm just wondering like what could you just mention maybe one or two things that were really painful to cut that you would add if there was a number >> is that an answer >> the teacher. >> No question. Um we bec because of the other financial factors in this year's proposal going in front of the town. >> I mean we made $1,500 cuts thousand just as much as we could

060to be really respectful and >> not short change students and staff but to truly be as critical. >> You'll notice even things like books um >> it only went down by $6,000 but $6,000 matters. We're working really hard to be really thoughtful about that and we are using new literacy programs and so it's like okay that's a place that we know we're going to be deeply invested in those programs so we don't necessarily need to be purchasing as many books. >> Um which is like an odd thing to even say as well. >> Um >> so I think we did but if you were to ask us any of us it would be >> okay. Okay. So right now, if we do not add a teacher in, what you're saying is one of your teachers

061is going to have to continuously switch grades every year basically. >> Yeah. Hopefully it's not the same teacher. >> It wouldn't stay very long, [laughter] but yeah, we would have I mean those those are the decisions we would have. So that would be very difficult to kind of form a curriculum and and a lot to ask of a teacher to constantly have a teacher that one year's teaching third grade and then another teacher is teaching fourth grade and then you're they're very different ages. >> Okay. Um this ESY summer is that summer instruction? >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Y um we um that includes students that have IEP based services but also includes students that receive intervention throughout the year. um and that the idea of not having instruction and practice throughout the summer would

062have impacts on their academic growth those students. >> Okay, perfect. >> Anything else before we get the fact? >> Um so I did want to say so I appreciate you kind of pulling this out because I I did want to say I think last year there was confusion there was confusion among the fact about what was being proposed, right? So, I just want to clarify that even if this position is added back in, it's still a net reduction of positions with the early retirement last year, right? >> It actually would make us even. It would make us flat. >> Oh, okay. >> Yeah. So, we reduced [clears throat] by one for 20 256. This would put it back in and have us at 32 teachers, which is what we had last year. >> Okay. Um,

063so as we said at the beginning, you know, I think this is just our initial viewing. Obviously, we're going to go home and uh take a look at it again. Um, the chair is going to send questions, which we appreciate, but I wanted to give the fact a few minutes. Um, if you guys have any particular questions, we would welcome them >> and I'll probably just limit it to 15 minutes. >> Peri again. >> I have a million questions, but I'm only going to ask two at this point. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Um, so the salaries that we saw in the packet do not include the increases from the what was just passed, correct? Terms of the uh the uh bargaining unit agreement, >> the teachers collective bargaining agreement would be article number two. >>

064Yeah, I understand it's a different warrant article, >> but as as a fact, we want to know if that passes, what's the impact on the operating budget, >> right? >> It's still going into the operating budget. Correct. So that three and a half% equals how many dollars is what I'm I think >> it would yeah it would be added to article article one and article two would be added together >> but as the fact evaluates >> yep >> the impact of what what kind of a percentage increase are we talking about we need to know that >> is that >> so it could be a separate piece of paper you just say >> oh okay okay >> we'll publish >> you know what I'm saying Chris right >> you know it's very helpful to understand

065what the real impact is going to be >> of the of the uh three and a half three then three and a half, but we're worried about the first three and a half for next year. >> Yeah, we just had to wait for the board to ratify it now. >> No, I understand. No, no, no. But it needs to be said. Yeah. >> So, it'd be helpful if we can get that. >> Yeah, we have we have all those figures. >> Okay. Thank you. Um, then the other one was um you know, the big the elephant in the room was the 16% increase in health. Um, and I didn't hear any discussion about that in the in the contract negotiation that happened. Um, I mean, I was an owner of a business, one of five

066partners, and years ago, you know, when those, you know, healthcare costs always go up by a lot. Some point in time, all companies said, "Wait a minute. The employees need to have skin in the game in terms of co-pays and and deductibles because part of the reason that increases happen is usage. And that failed what was the name of that uh school >> School care. When I read the article about school care, the biggest problem they had was usage. They're like the estimated because you get rated by the insurance companies. They're going to say, "Well, does your company use a lot more healthcare than any other?" You're going to get a better rate if you if you use less. So, you know, I think we [laughter] I have a feeling we're missing an opportunity here

067uh to to address that once and for all. Now, are there any co-pays and deductibles in the current plan? >> Mhm. >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> Okay. Okay. We'd like to see a look at that plan, please, as as another request. U so we can see get judge what that is. Okay. So, um, and I think I'm going to leave it at that. Uh, it sounds like we got some of the data today. I haven't seen it yet that we requested the information that we requested. So, I'll leave it at that. Thank you. >> Thanks, Pat. >> Anybody else? >> I just have a couple of like detail questions. Um, the long-term and permanent substitutes, why is that? How what's the reasoning behind the changes in that those numbers? um for a number of years

068or I would say probably like between six and eight years ago you could often hire like uh permanent substitutes who came every day and filled in wherever needed that's really hard position to fill now positions >> um and yet we know that we have teachers go out of FMLA or we have a variety of reasons and so and historically if you look over the past couple of years particularly we've had a number of positions we've had to fill for long term so we wanted to make sure those lines were more accurately okay whereas we had been keeping in um money to to try and hire permanent substitutes as you see over the past few years. We've just been unable to fill it. Okay. >> And so what has been happening is we've been using that

069correctly auditing and putting in the right line, but it's actually been coming from that line. So it just is more accurate reflecting what we've been doing. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. And then the psychological services had a pretty big jump. Is >> that's the position I said came out of the contracted services. That's where >> Oh, that's where you're adding. Okay. new position. >> And did you also like add a speech assistant or is there another like halftime person or >> we did not we did last year for this year. We don't have another new staff member for next year. >> Okay. All right. That jumped from 47 to 81. That's just because the position it's on page three. >> One second. Sorry. What page was that? Three. >> It's page three. It's a

070speech assistant salary. >> Yeah. I didn't know if the hours just jumped or >> um it's like the fifth line from the >> Thank you. Um one of the things we did last year is when one of our speech language pathologists retired, we filled it with a speech language assistant. So Okay. >> the speech language pathologist line went down and there was like a $40,000 difference. Sorry. Thank you. >> Okay. >> Teamwork. Thank goodness. >> All right. Thank you. >> Thanks so much, Alison. >> Good for now. >> Anybody else? We have 10 more minutes. >> I just have a couple questions. >> I also have a couple detailed questions. Um, regarding the the change in oil, the gas to oil. Um, is that related to the um, renovation? >> Yeah, >> we went from

071oil boilers to propane boilers. >> Okay. >> Um, we've had actually a lot of conversation about whether that should stay because they are going to be much more efficient and we actually talked about it tonight when we were touring with the building committee. Um, about whether that should be reduced knowing they're more efficient. Um, part of the other flip side of that conversation has been it's really hard not knowing like we've had a couple really mild winners and so we're like what does that mean and we're not sure about cost, but we did talk about potentially being able to reduce it um at least a percentage based on just the fact that they're more efficient >> and being able to reflect that in the next round of the budget. >> Okay. Um and then I

072see a couple software and equipment and things that they show up in different areas. Is that because of the different funds? So that's software for one area versus software for another area. >> Yeah. So the second grouping of numbers is your function. So 1100's regular education, 1,200's special education. Um I believe 24002 is technology. >> Yeah. >> Okay. So the software and the all those needs are broken out by area. >> Yeah. So you'll see like supplies. You're going to see supplies in every section because facilities has their supplies, the principal has her supplies, special ed has her supplies. >> Okay. Um, hold on just I think that was Yeah, thank you guys. >> Thank you. Anyone else? All right, so we'll definitely one more. Okay, >> just more uh the uh the line um

073provision for retirement obviously went down a lot. I just want to remind everybody that in that line last year was 75,000 for the buyouts for the early retirements. So that went away. Um but we but we're still left with uh 50,000 and something we can talk about later on, but that's probably about right. But um the uh again that's that's where the retirement money the incentives were put into that line. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. and we still maintain a level because we still do have people that are eligible to retire. So while we hope they work forever, we understand they would like to retire. So we have to be able to afford to do that. >> I think that's one of the benefits of the new CDA as well because part of the reason

074that there's you have to keep some money in there is because we don't typically know until January 15th if people are retiring. And so you have to have appropriate appropriated the funds to be able to pay them. Um, and once we now know earlier in the year, we'll be able to have a much more accurate number as we draft the budget based on who's submitted their retirement, which is really helpful. >> Forgive me, this is just my ignorance of the school budget, but life >> say your name for Sharon. >> Sean Dempsey. Thank you. Um, life insurance, is that on like is that key person insurance on staff or is that a employment benefit? >> Yeah, benefit. It's >> It's part of their >> pulling in with >> Yeah, it's part of the benefit package.

075>> Life life insuranceances. >> Yeah. >> Okay. For every for all employees. >> Well, I know it's in the CBA, is it? >> Yeah. >> Jennifer, just two things, too. Um, to answer one of Sophie's questions, remember this year we we have a school to farm grant, which is close to $6,000. So, that's why we were able to reduce the food cost as well because we'll be getting that. Um the other part we asked about uh software cost in the increase that is also the switch from all but to infinite campus the first year is a significant change and it will go down for us to have the training the switch over and all the capabilities. So I just want to put that fresh into everybody's mind. Those were two other rationale of why we

076reduced and why software went up because of those two changes. >> Welcome >> Chris. Could you just remind every I don't think everybody saw the joint board meeting about the switch to Alma, how that's going to save us money in the long term. >> Yeah, great great point, Kathleen. Um, so Alma is our our school information system that we have right now and that our contract was up uh will be up in 2026. So over the summer we created a um committee to look at different softwares. We've not been um getting the the bang for our buck, so to speak, from from Alma. Um, if you're a middle school parent, there's been some calculation issues with our with our report cards, which is super unfortunate that a company can't get to where we want to

077uh after multiple conferences and conversations. Uh, and there's some other things on the back end that just didn't make sense to us. So, uh, the committee was put together with representation of, uh, employees across all of our different, uh, um, schools within SAU16 and they vetted out, um, they started with four different companies that are school information systems, uh, and went through a true vetting process and, um, Infinite Campus became the, uh, overwhelming choice for us to switch over in the first year because, uh, we did not budget for the the transition and you do need to do some uh, training on the scheduling piece, on the report, ing piece. Um we we had to take that out of of this year's budget. Um so we did have some money that set aside. So we

078about $50,000 that we were able to use to offset, but the other piece would had to come out of next year's budget. So that's why you'll see going forward the cost in that three-year contract is significantly lower than what we were in the last three years with with uh with Alma. So it will be an overall cost savings after year 1. Um, so year two and three will be a significant cost savings uh for software spec specifically for our school information system. >> All right. Thank you so much. So then Chris, while you're talking um let's just refresh so that um collects um any questions give them to the chair and then the chair gives them to you. >> Yeah. So, I'll work with Abigail and then, you know, work with the team with the

079questions that they have, obviously, administration, Molly, and then I'll always inform the board of what we're at. And then at our next meeting, I think it's really important that we have some some deliberation time as a board in the fact to go through questions and processes. I'm going to ask Molly also to get kind of a function code for you because uh you know, what does 1100 mean? What? So, we'll give that to you. So, that's really helpful, I think. So, we'll get that to you and then anything else that uh Abigail asked for. And again, if you just get it to us at least a week in advance, we try to put out our agenda a week in advance. Um, but any questions so that that way. Um, and again, we'd love to work

080with you right up until the board meeting. However, we have seven other boards that we're doing this for as well. So, I just ask if you you do that. There is really two people in Molly's office that are in depth with the with the u with the contracts and the budget. So, um, I think we've got a really good process and and that that will meet the timeline. >> All right. I'm going to start public comment now. Um [clears throat] did does anybody any public comment out there? >> Yeah, I have a comment. >> Sure. Just name and address and then uh Andrea Zipen six Winggate Court. Um I just want to comment that I I have uh a daughter in second grade. I am a sub in the school. Um I also have a

081seventh grader. uh been here for like nine years. Um and I find it really I was very shocked when I went into like second grade and saw that every single class had like 20 kids in it. Um when that has not been the case like ever and my son is in seventh grade. So I really highly think it is super important that there should be another second grade teacher. Especially also I didn't even think about like uh a teacher's perspective how like I I also have like a master's in education and for a a teacher to have to uh switch grades and learn curriculum every single year like nobody wants to do that. like that's a really difficult you don't get better when you there's no consistency and you're just keep learning and learning different

082things. So I find it very >> troubling that there I think it is super important to add another teacher in there and make it consistent for all of the kids. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Thanks. Any other public comment? Yeah, >> just name and address. >> Well, Monaco from Gford Farm Road. Just one quick question. What's an enrollment this year and what is it for this budget? What's the expected enrollment numbers? >> Um, is that something very smoothly? >> Yeah, give or take 500. >> It's here on this last page. Just let me scroll. >> Yeah. >> Is it is it on here? >> Um, I'm not sure. We had them added to our agenda. So, enrollment K through 5 is 479. If you add in prek, it's 500 >> for this budget.

083>> Is that projected for the same budget? >> Yeah. >> Okay. So, about the same as last year. So, it's it's flat. Okay. Great. Thanks. >> Thank you. >> All right. So, I'll keep the timer open. Did you have something, Alison? >> I just wanted to make sure you discuss the change in the January date before we >> Yep. We're moving on to that right now. Yep. Um, so I think we're still on superintendent report. So, Chris >> Yep. So, you have any comments? Um, last year it was brought up by the fact and I think it's a really important part in um, my era for not looking at it when we set the uh, the schedule for our meeting this year, but we set the public hearing a little bit earlier. We have the

084ability to switch back and give us two more weeks to have the public hearing. Okay. By by statute, we just have to have the public hearing no later than February 6th. So, I would make a recommendation that we give ourselves two more weeks. So, if we push our public hearing and our January board meeting from January 14th to January 28th, that gives us the time to be able to go through um if we have any changes um before we have to put everything on the ballot um from from that time for the public hearing. Um it seemed a little rush and and the fact reminded me of that. So, um I wanted to bring that up to the board for a proposal to switch our public hearing date and board meeting in January from the

08514th to the 28th. So, cancel the 14th. We do everything on 28th. >> Correct. >> Okay. >> Um, that is fine with me. How do you guys feel? >> Fine. >> Yep. >> I agree. >> Okay. [snorts] >> Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Um, schoolboard goals. So, um, they nobody made any changes, so I think we're good to go with those. >> Great. Yeah. So, I'll post those. Will you send me the final document you have? Yeah. Okay. Um, district clerk appointment. >> Yeah, we're still still searching. Um, yeah. Uh, we did have an applicant but had to uh pull their name out due to some u some personal reasons. Um, so maybe in the future. Uh, >> said yes. >> What's that? >> I think Aaron said yes. >> I

086did have a talk with a resident and said as long as she doesn't have to keep notes and can't do all the other stuff. So, I think if we can find someone to keep notes at the public at the uh hearing that we have someone. So, I'll I'll further update that conversation. >> Okay, sounds good. [laughter] >> Yeah. Um, okay. Sealed minutes recommendation. >> Yes. So, thank you Cameron and and Jennifer for coming in. Was it Jennifer and Cameron? No, Jennifer. Just Jennifer. >> Yeah. So Jennifer and I got to review the the public m the sealed minutes and by policy we're supposed to review those in a timely fashion. Um per council we can make a recommendation to review those again in 10 years which would be our recommendation tonight. But Jennifer and I

087went through the list of different public minutes and we would not unseal anything because it the information in those sealed documents would reveal names u that we feel would would uh uh adversely affect reputations or and information that we do not feel would we should share. Um, so that would be the recommendation, but the board does have to vote on it to keep all of the currently sealed minutes uh continuously sealed with the recommendation to review them again in 10 years. >> Yeah. >> Does anybody have any questions about that or >> Yeah. Um, not a lot of details, but the names it just there was no reason to release them really. >> Yeah. Thanks for doing that with me. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> Anytime. [laughter] >> Um, okay. So, uh, we've got a

088move motion. >> Yep. make a motion. >> Okay. Um so I'll make a motion since I was there to um keep the um select minutes sealed. >> Um I guess do I have a second? >> Okay. Thanks, Kathleen. >> You're welcome. >> Any discussion? >> All right. All in favor? I >> I >> Okay, so four 0. >> Thank you. >> Okay, perfect. All right. Now, it looks like we have an MTSS presentation. Anything else from you guys? Good. >> Yeah. Okay. Hi there. Um, for those of you who I haven't met yet, I'm Brianna Martin and I'm the MTSS or multi-tered systems of support coordinator at SMS. Um, and I am presenting on just one facet of MTSS tonight because you've all been here for a long time already. Um, everybody who left already

089saw my presentation. They had a private showing earlier. It's not that they weren't interested. Uh I think at SMS we're really proud of the work that we've been doing around providing supports for students and um so I'm excited to talk to you about this and I'm focusing specifically on the work that we do around our child study team and the types of interventions that we're providing. Um so please stop me along the way if you have questions. Um but I'll just go right into it. Oh, that didn't do what I thought I was going to do. Swipe. Do we have a clicker? >> I'll sit over here. >> Oh, thank you. >> Teamwork is a really big part of our collegial relationships here. So thinking about our child study team, um our child study team

090is it's not one group of people. It's a comes together in a number of different forms, but it's a group that um we meet every um four to eight weeks. So regular intervals of people to come together to monitor student progress, um provide opportunities for team communication and collaboration and develop solution plans. the exact members of the team would be dependent upon what the students needs were. Um so if you see if you want to take a look at the graph we have um numbers of students per grade level who have current active CST files. Um you can see we're kindergarten we're about 11 grade 1 up to 12 grade two one more. And then often by um our upper grades, we tend to have our plans kind of more in place. So we're not

091asking as many questions. Um so we tend to feel like, okay, we you know, we're not meeting quite as often. We're more um monitoring plans that are already kind of set. But our earlier grades are when we're making sure that we're gathering the information that we need to have to support [clears throat] students. And that continues as needed throughout the grade levels. So our current um student our students with current active files uh are total of 57. Uh if we included our students that we have on a monitor status that would be 74 students. You click for me. Oh thank you. Yeah. So like I said the CST team is going to vary dependent upon what the student needs are. Um looking over our current roster I saw for those um 50 students 50ome students

092there were 20 different team compositions. So teams could be comprised of math specialists, literacy specialists, our school psychologists, case managers, classroom teachers, our social emotional services um team members, speech OT, PT, any really any um member of the school team who could be involved in supporting that student has and is relevant to kind of what we're trying to figure out is the best path path forward for them. Usually when a student is coming to CST, it's because there's a question that we're trying to figure out um in terms of we either we don't quite know yet what our path best pathway of progress is or they may have a learning profile that involves a number of providers and in order for us to support them with consistency um we need to be communicating amongst each

093other. And so when you think about oop I'm going to go uh 77% of our students are receiving support in two or more areas. So providers need to have a time set aside to communicate. Um 35% of those students are receiving support in three or more areas. Um so we just want to make sure that those providers are getting together regularly so we're all touching base and making sure we're supporting from the same place. And I gave you an idea just some examples of some of our most common um team compositions. I am the one I guess unifying factor through all of them. I'm the facilitator. >> Can is that 77% of the 57? >> Yes. >> Okay. Got it. Okay. Thank you. >> And then if you wanted to take a look if if

094you're curious um just organized by support area how our um CST roster tends to fall. So we can see our highest numbers are in literacy and counseling. Um speech tends to be either IEP based or if a student is receiving maybe articulation support through CST. That's not something that we need to meet often as a team to talk about. That's something that typically that speech provider is going to be the one managing with occasional talks with the classroom teacher. [snorts] Thanks. [sighs] On top of the 57 students I mentioned who are on our current um active file roster for December, we have 15 or 14 new students who were referred um actually 13 students and then one classroom. We've added in the past couple of years a classroom study team to the CST process. And

095that's for when a classroom teacher is feeling like this isn't a conversation about I'm not quite sure how to support this one student or we need to get some more information to better support this one student. It's you know a classroom dynamic, maybe a culture piece, maybe a work around um in some cases it could be I feel like we need to intensively kind of refigure our math block whatever it is. Um teachers have the option of putting in for a classroom study team as well. So, that was one of our new referrals for our December round. And as you can see, we in those group of new referrals, we have students from just about every grade level except for fourth. Um, and we had one student who has an IEP and one student with

096a 504 plan in that group. And I think it's really important to understand that students might be and you'll see um some numbers that to follow that up, but students who have an IEP or have an existing support plan might receive additional services that are not through their IEP that are through the CST process um because they're not necessarily a component of their educational disability. um and being and that would be much more fluid and flexible compared to what is in the IEP which is very um you know certainly legally guaranteed set for a year unless there's a team meeting to to revise it. One thing um that I am taking as a really good sign and I think we're all feeling good about is the change in the number of September CST meetings we

097had this year compared to last year. Last year we started the year with um feeling a need to have 47 student meetings and we had about 70 students with active CST files and this year we were down to 36 meetings and about 60 students. And what those numbers mean is we had a significantly smaller group of students that we felt we really need to touch base because not everything is in place quite yet and we want to make sure that we're you know getting this all together though they're starting the year off right. We had a significantly higher number who we thought their plans are in place. They just need to keep on keeping on. Um, and I think that's our goal is to just keep bringing those num numbers down and down and down

098so that we have these kind of self-managing plans. CSTs, our meetings are data driven. Um I wanted to give you some examples of the data that we use whether it be classroombased like formative and summitative assessments. Um progress monitoring which be collected typically during interventions, our benchmark assessments, additional screeners. Often in CST, one of our first steps for gathering information is to request additional screeners to look at, hey, is there information that we don't have about what this student might need? And then certainly at some point we think we need to dig deeper maybe we need to look at formal evaluations. So we're taking into account um as we're making decisions for student not just within CST but as within all of our all of our practice within the school taking into account data from

099all of these sources to help us um with our decision- making for students. And here's just a diagram of our data collection and decision making and evaluation process. In terms of academic intervention, I put together this is just in when we have um specifically math and literacy intervention, students getting those services by grade level and how many students are receiving both. And then the bottom column is if that student also has an IEP, but they're receiving an intervention service on top of that IEP. Um, and you'll see with the kindergarten services pull out, it's really for the vast majority of students, it's best practice to wait until midway through the year to start pull out intervention services in K because so much of their work in those first few months is really learning how to

100be in school and in their classroom. And um we will provide our lit team will go in and provide supports in classrooms, but that's the pull out interventions aren't really appropriate for most kids at that time. And that's it. Any any questions about CST process or interventions or anything else? MTSS. So, um, can you explain? So, if a child already has an IEP and then you say additional services that are not like in addition to the IEP, what what exactly would that be? I know it's probably different from child to child, but just an example. >> Absolutely. No, and I think that's kind of it's kind of nuanced, so it's a little tricky to picture without having that example in front of you. So, for example, I might have a student who has an IEP

101for a specific learning disability in reading, but they might also be a student who, just because this is true for many students, benefits from small group reteing. So, when their class is working on math, they might be someone who goes to the math center for math intervention, you know, maybe for the first couple weeks of every cycle because that's just helpful to them in how they learn. Um, or it might be some students may have a behav or um an IEP for speech and language and they're mostly working on maybe articulation and sentence formation, but they also need that little boost in literacy here and there. So it just at some point the team if someone is consistently receiving that intervention and we're not seeing because we're progress monitoring we're really looking at that growth

102that we're seeing and we're not seeing the growth that we would typically expect in that level intervention and we want to intensify it. That's when the team starts to ask, huh, is this maybe more of a component of their educational disability? Should this be preserved in their IEP so they're guaranteed this service long term? Um but we usually we always start with the least restrictive environment. >> Yeah, of course. >> Uh can I ask a question about the makeup of the teams? So is it primarily specialists or do you have like I I know you were like talking about behavior specialists and that sort of thing or is there a lot of classroom teachers that are part of the child study teams also? >> Oh, I'm sorry. I should have clarified that earlier. It is

103always the classroom teacher and typically the classroom teacher is the one who initially requests the CST. um because they are feeling like they need some more information. So the classroom teacher is always there. I'm always there and then it would be the team would be made up then based off of where the areas of concern are for that child. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Mhm. >> Any other questions? >> Thank you so much. All right. >> My pleasure. Thank you so much. Um, anything else for administration? >> I I didn't I actually didn't see it in the board packet and no, >> we've had some wonky printer issues, so I don't know if I just missed it because it wasn't in my packet, but there was a uh our normal typical monthly administrative update,

104but I don't know if it just didn't print my package. just in case. I printed them out in front of you just in case um yours >> they weren't in ours. >> Okay. What happened? Things happened. Um but I just wanted you to have that. There's um a lot of exciting events going on at school right now. A lot of really good learning. Um we've had some we had our student led conference day. Oh, I actually shared this down with Chris this morning in our coaching session. Um, one of the things the SAU is looking at, we're talking about at the principal level and the administrative level, um, in front of strategic planning is like community engagement, [snorts] investment, and involvement. And so, one of the things, um, I decided to do was to sort

105of look at what percentage of our families came to our student conferences. Um, and then I broke it down into what percent also wanted to have one-on- ones with um, the >> Oh, yeah. >> the the guardians and caregivers um, and parents. And then also um, if they didn't come, did you also were you in contact with them and then scheduled another time? because that's also an important piece of information. >> Um, >> this off the top of my head, I'm think I'm pretty close. Um, 93% of our families did have a student led conference. >> Um, 52% also had a adult part. >> Um, 10% scheduled for another time and 2% we were unable to make any contact with after repeated contact or try to do that. So, that's >> that's great. That's like

106I love those numbers. really good to think about the number of families that we're collaborating with and partnering and communicating with and coming in to see their students and then it's really great that that many families are taking advantage of that opportunity to talk with >> the teachers one-on-one as well. >> Well, I also noticed like the fabulous Miss Harrian, she said, you know, we you can talk to me anytime, right? And so I know that that's always true, but sometimes you just feel like as a parent, I don't you got enough going on. You don't need me. But that seemed very genuine and um yeah, it was it's becoming a more positive experience for me. I think I was critical at first, but [laughter] >> um yes, it's good >> like critical important. >>

107Um the other thing I wanted to talk about maybe just a little bit for Sophie or for people that don't have kids at SMS is um gradient support. Um you know, I know my kid comes home talking about gradient support. she actually uses those words. And so, [laughter] um, I just wanted to make sure more people knew about it because it has been, um, great for my family and I think other families. So, would you want to talk about a little bit? >> Yeah. Um, it's actually an extension of the work R. So, what Brianna focused on for tonight's presentation was the CST part, which is the intervention part of gradient support, right? So, during, so we have two gradient support blocks every day. One of them Oh my god, I'm talking to teachers. [laughter]

108>> Yeah. Um yeah, one of it uh one of those is specifically for mathematics and one is specifically for uh language arts, ELA. Mostly I would say really focused on reading, not as much on writing. Um I would like to articulate we would love to have it for writing as well, but we only have so many minutes in a day. Sort of >> um >> what happens. Um, so during that time, based on the data that we are collecting that's current and up-to-date, we're able to analyze that with the help of our literacy and math specialists during our PLC test, professional learning community time. And then we can group students together around a strategy they might be learning or a skill that they might be learning um and offer some really personalized learning that's really

109targeted and specific but really um also often can be really um exciting for kids because an opportunity to really stretch their brains in ways that they don't typically get during more of the universal yeah um core instruction. Um and as the students age um certainly when um students are young like kindergarten first and second it's really in reading in particular like really skill specific because you're working the foundation but as the students age three four and five um you can really get into once you know like maybe you're working on fluency or comprehension you can really spend time with kids and like what are you passionate about what are you excited about how do we use that to drive the comprehension work we're doing. Yeah. um in math they they were doing um they actually

110created a hospital um because they were doing order of operations and so they played you know there's the really um cool ways to offer 25 minutes a day for literacy and 25 minutes a day for math where we can um personalize and be really specific targeted instruction. >> Yeah. >> And I I know as a board we've talked about like enrichment and things like that and you know I think this kind of >> Yeah. It can push a kid further. It can help a kid, you know, rise to the level. It's >> It's wonderful. >> Yeah. >> Can I ask a question about that? I feel like a bunch of times I'm like, I don't I shouldn't ask this question because I should know the answer to this already. But >> the the gradient support

111block that is I'm just trying to understand because I'm like, well, I have kids that go here and I still am very confused about what that means. So like the there's students across the whole grade that are grouped by what they're working on or >> potentially. Yeah. So um some I don't want to say it's necessarily um always skill based. Sometimes it's strategy based some so I can give you an example. Third grade right now when they're doing their literacy it's you might be working on fluency, you might be doing comprehension and and so they go and they get really targeted instruction in a in a smaller environment and they get to be with kids that are experiencing some of the same learning in the same way. So they can really be thoughtful and intentional

112in that time because when you have a class of 18 to personalize in the same way it's much harder because you have kids in really different places. This really gives us time to be concentrated in our efforts. >> Um and with the way it works it can be much more fluid which is really nice so that like two weeks from now if you're collecting data and 80% are like getting it. You're like all right we're moving on to something else and you can then be fluid with your groups. And that's really the reason we call it gradient supports is because it is really fluid and students move among these as they should when they're ready to do that. Um, and it's a which feels really nice as a system so that people aren't feeling like

113they're being held back but also aren't being pushed so far beyond their edge that they're then not even part of engaged in the learning. It really is an opportunity to be connected with the learning and the adults >> and it's like built into the schedule. It's like a formalized Okay. So that's why I'm thinking to myself like oh you're going to music or you're going to what? Right. They're like, "Okay, okay. continent to pull and inevitably but for the most part it know they're not missing something else >> and we can flood. So for example if it's third grade math gradient supports it's no other grade for math gradient supports at that time. So our entire math team is available to hear that grade level at that time or our entire literacy team like wonderful

114benefit of like really being able to >> decrease the size of the groups and personalize. It's really >> and that's like the again this is like the specialists or it's also like as far as like when you're saying >> specialist and the interventionist. So we have like a math specialist and then there's a team of four math interventionists that work with her but their degree is not math specialist. They have a ton of knowledge and expertise but they are not a specialist. >> Okay. >> Or tutor. Oh, okay. Thanks. >> I have a question. So, is that just for kids who are kind of struggling in that area? Okay. So, it could be it could be any kid for >> extension is included. >> Okay. So, even Got it. If they're above grade level, then

115they go there too and work on those things >> all at the same time. >> Yep. >> Okay. >> So, like if you have 87 kids in a grade level, 87 kids are doing that. They're >> Oh, wow. So, every everybody Okay. All students are good. >> That's what makes it great is if you if you rock fractions but decimals are hard. >> Maybe you're an extension fraction but then in a different group for decimals. You know what I mean? It's very fluid. >> So it's a few I guess I'm just trying to visualize it. Where where does this happen? [laughter] >> Okay. >> One classroom teacher might be like okay I'm taking the kids who didn't quite understand our volume unit. We taught it like I'm at it. The others are like, "We did

116some pre assessments around multiplication division. We've got 18 kids that need multiplication division. Let's make it for them." >> Okay. >> Fraction. Let's make two of those fractions. >> I got you now. >> Yeah. >> Cool. That's really cool. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Okay. >> One of the things that has done particularly for our fifth grade students is um really helped us be thoughtful about how we prepare our students who might be really strong math students right now. Might not be two years, who knows, right? But this is where they are right now. And so really thinking about preparing them for the experience in middle school where there are options for seventh grade for sixth grade students and really we've been able to collaborate with CMS around what um particular math strands and standards would

117be really important and for those students that are ready for that extension and provides some really explicit instruction and preparation for that. >> Cool. >> One thing I really enjoy students to go, >> right? And now we go to everybody what they need and so now Is this probably a question for you? This is driven pretty much I mean it just seems like it's exactly lined up with the MTSS objectives like Thank you. >> I think that's why I was asking about like that 57 number that you were giving out because do you also have files on kids that are ready for seventh grade math or you know what I mean? Like is that something you're also aware of? >> Not that maintained still have the strateion grouping that don't have a CST because that's

118just know that's just part of their usually CST because Got it. >> Okay. >> Yeah, [snorts] it's really it's exciting. >> Can we get a copy of your slide thing, the slide deck? Because >> I'm just thinking of like I don't know. To me, you had that demographics one. I just wrote that down as we're getting to the like budget push back portion of the year. So, I'm thinking like look at the breadth of things that are being covered and the different specialties that have to be I'm I'm thinking like that's a great data point for us to present to the public as we're talking about the budget. >> Do you mind just using the microphone just because Yeah. Thank you. you know, financially, of course, we're doing what we do because the kids need

119to have it, but and it's best practice to do least restrictive environment on a practical level. It's also a cost savings to when we're thinking about the students who are getting intervention on top of their IEP based services. That is less expensive than providing it as an IEP based service. it's not in their best interest to provide it as an IEP based service. If it is not a component of their educ, you know, it's not ethically sound to provide it if it's not part of their educational disability. If it is, it absolutely needs to be a part of their IEP. But understanding as you're looking at those numbers where you're seeing a student who has an IEP but is receiving intervention based services on top of it, our ability to do that is also actually

120saving the taxpayers money because we're able to do it's more cost-effective to be able to provide that intervention rather than having to do it through special education which just inherently has to be more expensive. Um >> the slides we'll also share with um Sharon and she will add them to the minutes when you approve the minutes as well and then they get added to the voice over when Eric publishes the board meeting. >> Oh great. Thanks. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. All right. Anything else? Thank you guys very much. I'm trying to avoid the Alice conversation but >> um Okay. >> Still doing the admin update or we moving on from that? >> I'm moving on. >> Could I ask one quickly? >> Yeah. So, uh, actually I have two, but so you have on

121here it says, uh, safety committee is November 24th, but your email said it's Tuesday. >> We had to change it. Um, the there was a conflict. So, the email you got is correct. That is not that was older. That was like three weeks old. >> Okay. And the I probably just read it. Um, the Homeland Security, it says recently announced I haven't heard about that. Could you speak to that real quick? >> So, for years there was always money. Let me rephrase that. For a few years, there was money that was released to New Hampshire to apply for grants that had to do with safety and security. And we were under the impression that we probably wouldn't see that this year. And so when we had our first SAU safety committee meeting six weeks ago

122or so, we were talking [clears throat] fortunate because it's really nice to have that to offset when things come up unexpectedly. And then we recently got notified two weeks ago maybe. Yep. that there is actually money available. Um, and Rich Kane, who's our chief security officer, SAU wide, notified us and we've already started talking about how we what we'll apply for and hope to get in terms of supporting some safety measures in our building. >> Okay, that's great. >> Thank you. >> All right, thanks guys. Looking at board reports, building committee. >> Yeah, so um exciting times with the renovation. Um, we had a building committee walk through right before this meeting and um, everybody in the building committee was really excited to see the renovations and the new boilers. They're so shiny. >> Um,

123I know my toddlers would just love to push all the buttons [laughter] and do the touchcreens on them. Um, they look very fancy. And um, yeah, the slabs um, set for one just one of the wings. Um and then um the steel delivery will be uh December 22nd. So it's been delayed. So they won't be able to start that renovation. >> Yeah. >> Um but they're going to kind of squish >> in instead of like fully completing one and then moving to the other. I think they're going to squish so that you're going to go straight like from steel from one side into steel to the other into steel for the cafeteria. So hopefully they'll be able to stay on schedule with a completion by the end of the summer for the external work for

124the additions, but they still might have to do some internal work. Um they won't be able to fully like replace all of the ceiling tile and do all of the electrical and finish work by the start of the school year. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. Um Kate, do you want to add anything about when the um the what's it called? the extra building. >> The cottage. Thank you. >> Lovingly, it's called the cottage. >> Yeah. Will you give the cottage update, please? >> Um, so I just I actually have to like it's important to publicly comment on the professionals that work in the cottage because we are asking them to box well, they're not doing the physical boxing, but starting on Monday, we have a moving company coming to box up all of their

125stuff on both sides and move them into the building. This was something we thought was going to happen over December break. We were like, "Yep, that's great." But um we really want to first of all we've really enjoyed working with the companies. They've been great. Um and they because of this deal delay have sort of put them in a kind of bind because it really we want to be at the start of next August ready to roll and in a way that we know little things will happen but to be really up and running. >> Um and so I went to the lovely humans in the cottage and was like so >> I really like to cash in a favor. Um, and so there the moving companies will be here on Monday to box them

126up and move them into the building so that when we return from Thanksgiving break, they will be fully back inside the building um, and running their programs out of the building so that they can start dismantling the cottage and getting that down and getting the um, foundation and everything laid so that they can basically be simultaneously doing >> whole. Okay. >> Um, you should also note preschool has been amazing because they're losing their playard. Um and so we're going to be actually f fencing off the garden area beyond like where the pergola is and all of that stuff and they're going to move the play structure over there. So um preschool has been great and flexible about ensuring that we can do that and still keep the kids safe. But really everybody here has been

127so gracious and kind and flexible um as long as we're not impacting kids. >> Yeah. Is this a lot of your time? >> It's okay. >> Yeah. But is it a lot of time you like you're >> Yeah. >> massaging it. Okay. appropriate stuff. [laughter] >> It's good work. It's good. Like it's all good stuff. Like that's >> Yeah, >> appropriately. It's good stuff. >> I think always in COS online, I see all these schools just starting like they were talking about one of those Portsmith schools just starting to think about. I'm like, "Oh, [laughter] >> yeah. All right. Um, evaluation committee." >> I don't have any updates. >> Okay. >> Sorry. >> Okay. Um, safety and security. Oh, I just recently learned that the school [laughter] got some homeland security drop on Tuesday. >>

128Thank [laughter] you for that update. >> Thank you, Cameron. [snorts] >> Okay. Um, communications. >> Oh, yes. Got a handout for you. Take one pass down. Um, so I shared this with Cameron and Chris who provided some basic comments, but um, because we're expecting cost increases to the town um, to the tune of, you know, up to nine maybe even more percent um, to pass the operating budget is going to be a little bit of a lift. Um, so we need to really think through our communication. So I was thinking of um, this is a ve, you know, draft proposal, two-pronged strategy. um one with a physical onepager which is on the other side. I'll get to there. Um so that will just have the basic facts and numbers to be distributed through social media.

129And I know that there's an error. I said 14%. Don't don't look at it now. We'll get there. We'll get there. Um basic facts and numbers to be distributed via social media, printed copies in town hall, and um regular updates in the newsletters just to make sure folks really know what's going on. Um, and then the second one is two presentations. Um, ideally with Jennifer Straford, Molly O'Keefe, and maybe, um, a stratum tax representative, maybe Debbie Bakey, and um, Cameron and I can host. And so, one would be in person. Um, currently I have town hall booked for that date, but I can change it. And then a Zoom meeting. I was thinking of it doing it right before the district meeting because I'm assuming that's when everyone's going to be fired up and wanting

130to have that information and like talk about it, but maybe we want to move it earlier. So, um yeah, those I'm just really trying to get ahead of communication so that folks know what's coming, they have questions answered before they ask them um and understand the why behind the numbers that they're going to see. So, um, yeah. Any questions before you flip over and we can look at the draft flyer, which still has a bunch of blanks, but, um, >> I guess first just general thoughts and then, um, the second question is thoughts on the dates and just timing of everything. >> So, I'd love feedback on those things and then we can flip and look at the actual draft pamphlet. Yeah, I'd love to like take this home and give back to but yeah,

131this looks great. >> Okay, so any any comments on um I guess yeah the specifically like the timing of those things. The district meeting is March 4th. So kind of thinking backwards, do we want to wait until March 1st to do the Zoom? And does February 10th sound like do those dates sound like they're in alignment with the budget process? And does it give folks enough time or too much time? You know what I mean? >> Yeah. When's the Do we know when the vote is for the the board vote date for the budget? >> Talking about the ballot vote. >> No, no, no. >> When the board approves the budget to go to the >> You'll need that January. You'll need to Yeah, you'll need to approve it after that that public hearing. >>

132January 28th. >> So, >> I think these dates are great personally. >> Yeah, I think so, too. >> I think because we're going to have January 28th where we have this meeting and then we're going to you're going to not quite two weeks. You're going to have your inperson meeting and then another Zoom meeting right before the district. >> Sorry. just that that way you I think you're providing multiple opportunities people can come to the schoolboard meeting they can see how that qu those questions get answered then and then there's another inerson meeting after we finalize what we're going to put on the the warrant >> and then the Zoom meeting in case anybody has missed anything and still has questions. So I think you're hitting all the the highlights. >> Okay. We can also

133record the one on the 10th and then have that available. >> Um, so if folks want to watch that, if they have questions about it, they can watch it. And then the Zoom can be for any stragglers maybe. [laughter] >> Yeah. >> Uh, well, I want to ask a question. So, I reached out to um the state reps for Stratam after um I think it was the last joint board meeting. Somebody mentioned that they had the Brentwood rep came and spoke at their meeting and I'm wondering if you think or I guess this is a question for everybody in the board if there's I know either one of these meetings or value they would kind of referred me to some folks that were sitting on the education committees that are in the area if it

134wasn't specifically our reps um just to look at the or speak maybe to the state portion only I think when we get into it you know I I don't know like we're all in the weeds on this a little bit. So, I think we know about it, but I'm wondering if it would be valuable to have, you know, some of the folks, I guess, on the education committee speak to like the odd way that New Hampshire funds things and that, you know, I mean, just so people are kind of aware. >> Well, especially will we know more what's happening on the state level in February, >> January's crossover, so you'll start to get an idea. But I did put out a email to chairs today. I don't know if you get to see that, Jennifer.

135um trying to plan a um New Hampshire Fair funding project which is a bipartisan they they do not take one political side or the other. They dig into uh funding public education. Uh I put it out to the chairs to get some factual information that we could put out in a one page or to all of our towns about how funding is actually happens in New Hampshire and some of the barriers that we have through our our tax rates. So I want to have about an hour and a half informational session either with the chairs or represent representative from each board that can take that that could be part of that that conversation. I'm not sure our state legislators will give um be the best person for that at this time. Um we will bring

136them in um for superintendents. We're going to try to do another meeting like we did back in um September with our state reps to talk about some of the topics that are coming up. But sometimes that still does stay very political. So we don't always get the most accurate information. So I'd like to work with an organization that that focuses on that and is not giving one political side over the other and giving more factual informations of where we're at that we could hopefully provide. >> So that's that's an avenue. >> I bet they could give you like a cool graphic or something that would kind of pop, you know, I'm sure they >> they can. >> Yeah, I actually interviewed with them. >> It would be nice to have something from that program. I

137mean that group just so that um I think having something in writing >> is a lot easier than trying to digest a bunch of legal jargon. Um >> especially if they are working together bipartisan trying to get this um funding solution >> y >> completed. Um I think that would be fantastic. So, we are also working on and and Kate and her team are going to do a video this year. So, that will go out and I she's gonna she's going to crush it, you know. Um, so we'll have that video >> for the budget. >> Yeah. For the budget and we're also going to put together a one-pager which will be a front and back about factual information and part of that will be the Rand decision, the um Conval decision about, you know,

138adequate funding. Yeah. Yeah, >> because I think taxpayers have to understand that that is still being held up and there's about $3,000 per per child that's not coming in uh to support public education as well as some of the other significant factors. Um reductions in grants, uh reduction in federal funding, um reductioning in federal staffing to be able to support special education, uh special education costs and adequacy funding with special education not changing even though it's been asked at the state. So, I think there's just a lot of factual information we want to give out that is out of our control. >> So, when we're doing our local budgets, we are really diving in as Kate said, you know, we we we gave you a budget at 4% knowing that that's, you know, there might

139be other things we need to add into it. >> Yeah. >> And like I don't even understand how the federal department of education impacts you guys, right? Like [laughter] >> it's not a lot. >> Um [clears throat] but yeah. Okay. I think the more facts >> the more fact sheets we can have so that we have bullet points for people >> that they can look at and they can read and they have they can reference. I think that's going to be the best because everything's very confusing these days. >> Sure. >> Well, and I started gathering some stuff and I guess I'm I'll probably have to rely on you Sophie because I'm very like verbose and talk a lot. So, I'm like, "This is good information, but how do I distill it down into like

140a bullet point?" Because, and to your point about, you know, trying to avoid being partisan, there's some things that are like, you know, just facts that I think we can say as far as like, hey, New Hampshire has the lowest funding from the state, like that's just true. And whether you agree with it or not, but I think like we can look to those things. And >> I don't know. I I just looking at it comparing to other states and that sort of thing has been interesting to say like >> I I think other states I wouldn't have expected are spending a lot less than we are but as far as under putting the burden on their local folks to do that. So >> and you know what a privilege that we live in Stratam.

141We have way more resources here than so many other towns in the state and I don't think that >> a lot of folks know that either. Um, and what a gem of a school we have. Like this is SNS is such an incredible school. Like I'm so proud to be on the school board and to be Yeah. sending my kids here. Um, and we have to fund it that way. Like if we want to keep it that, you know, we have we have to fund it. So >> yeah, a lot of communication necessary. Um, but I don't want any surprises at the district meeting. Um, yeah. So, definitely want to make sure the community understands where the numbers are coming from and why. >> So, um, >> all right. So, if the dates sound good

142with everybody, we'll keep the dates as is. >> The only thing I'm looking at is the first is a Sunday, March 1st. Is that what you meant to do a Sunday? >> Yes. Yeah. Because I figured, you know, Sunday, Sunday evening might be a nice time that people are actually in their homes and can attend a Zoom. Mhm. >> Just trying to think of like what the most I don't know. >> Yeah. >> The times that people could attend, >> but um feel free to shoot a note if you >> I would Yeah, that would be best for me. I think right now it's >> just to have more time. >> Yeah, just to Yeah, just to give it to you tomorrow, >> of course. >> Okay, so turn it over. So this is the

143sample of um current draft of what would go in town hall just like laying around. Um so just a little intro at the top and then here like the main bullet points that are happening at the same time. Um what this means for your tax bill. actually probably um going to use the um tax calculator that Paul Tini created last year and um so I'll I might work with him to kind of figure that out. Um >> I think that's great that um we have an actual number for people because >> seeing the overall budget is very daunting and you're like, "Oh my gosh, that's so much money." But then if we can break it down per household, I think that's a lot more >> tangible for people to see y >> to see this

144is how much is going to affect myself personally >> and that's what everybody wants to know at the end of the day anyways. >> So >> yeah. Um and then just yeah important dates for input and questions for people to engage in. I think also it's going to we're going to have to rely on Molly a lot for the calculations because it became apparent while we were doing the district the co-op budget that a lot of things are being calculated differently. So one of the concerns was like this number looks like it's increasing by this percentage but it really is because hey those grants are now here instead of being at the so I think we'll need to I don't know have like a bullet point of those things to say like this isn't an

145apples to apple year-over-year comparison because I know what we're going to get is that right like oh this is a temper whatever it is but I think there's a lot of things that are being changed with charge codes and things like that that we should try to succinctly just mention that's what four bullet points are here. >> Right. Right. Right. >> Yeah. Are those the main those are the main four, right? Are there other ones that are not in there or that? >> No, I think these are the four main >> Yeah. Okay. [snorts] >> No, I just meant like that was, you know, something somebody brought that up. They're like, oh, 71 million versus whatever for the district budget. It was like, well, yeah, that's not really the story because there's a whole bunch

146of stuff behind that. So, I I just I'm I'm just trying to look ahead to like what we're going to hear, you know? >> Totally. And I think too, you know, Pat brought it up tonight, but the the difference between the operational budget, the teacher contract warrant, like we can understand in theory that those are two different warrants, but to a taxpayer, you're still getting one tax bill. And so, I think we have to be careful how we talk about that that it's not >> we're not hiding behind this one warrant, two warrants. It's like there is an overall tax cost. >> Yeah. And I think, you know, to this thing that's showing the bond, right? I mean, to me, that's also important though to like that was approved last year by the voters. So,

147I'm like looking at this going like, well, 9% starting looks, but it's really like incorporating the thing that was approved by everyone last year. So, I I just feel like that's the number that's going to be like there's the percentage and it's like, right, but >> you guys all approved that last year. So, >> it's just like the teacher contract, you now know too much. >> Yes. [laughter] >> I know, right? [snorts] >> Yeah. >> All right. Thank you so much. This is really great. >> You're welcome. Yeah. So would love feedback from anybody, everybody. Um >> Okay. >> Yeah. The sooner the better because I want to get this out so folks can have it for the December meeting. >> Yeah. I don't think I've ever seen Deb do kind of these events. Does

148she would she be up for that? >> I don't know. I can talk to her. >> Yeah. >> Friends with her. >> Okay. >> And it is 16% in healthcare, right? I changed that at the last minute. Huh. I had 16 and then I changed it to 14, but it's actually 16% in healthcare. Uh, you just ask Molly. She'll give you the exact number. >> Yeah, I should give the range. >> Okay. >> Are you okay if we move? >> Um, yeah. >> Okay. >> Yeah. So, yeah. >> All right. Awesome. Uh, chair update a nothing that we haven't talked about. Strategic planning committee. >> Um, yeah. Sorry, that's me, too. Uh, we have a meeting in December. The notes said November. That was the nitpicky I had about the notes. It's actually December 3.

149Um and then we'll work on the strategic um planning. >> Yeah. At that time, I'm going to give everyone we've we've almost finalized all the KPIs, which is the backend metrics of where we're we're measuring. And as Kate talked about, one of the metrics we're looking at is is participation at school events, you know, and not just athletic events or the school play, but actually like academic events. So, that was a key one. Uh we have an MTSS one that we're still that's a hard one for us to measure but so we're almost there and then um we have a couple surveys that are being uh collated and and created for us. So January everybody in the board will hear that to be able to get it approved but we're we're close. So thank you

150for the patience and uh the committee will get firsthand to kind of dive into the work we've been doing. >> So I'm excited. We're almost there. >> Sounds great. >> Yep. >> Um okay. So Eric is not here for these policies. Um, but I did not see I did not have any concerns with any of them. Did anybody have any concerns with them? >> I can give you quick updates on them if you want since we just did it last night at the co-op. So, okay. >> Your first two, the reason that those are revisions, right? And they're revisions based on the ED 306es. So, those are changes that the ED 306es are law. So, a lot of the wording those were changes. So, I would recommend as the wording came out through the policy

151committee because that's what the ED 306es said. uh policy AC. Um that's just a revision as well. And the revision is that um it used to say Boy Scouts in there, but the Boy Scouts changed to Scouting of America. So it was a changing to to um recognize that. Um your ACA was just a review. There was no major changes in ACA. Um so that's just a review which you'll be doing tonight. ADC tobacco products, it was a review, but it it I mean it was revision. the revision because of the changes in the way that tobacco can be uh be intake. It's not just through cigarettes anymore with vapes and different types of devices. So, it was updated to to represent the technology for that. Um your um GBAM that's a revision and that's

152a revision based on the changes back in Title 9. So, it now replicates what the the legal findings of for title 9 are in that policy. And then your pledge of allegiance was just a review. So no changes just to review as an anti- policy. So my recommendation in uh following other boards would be to follow the uh the recommendations of the policy committee to approve what you have. >> I just had a couple of quick things. One is um there was on page 44. Uh this is very silly and little but it says page eight of seven. So that was [laughter] a little confusing. Um, and then the other thing I had, look, reading through it, I was wondering, um, and Chris maybe you can speak to this, but if somebody has a complaint

153about the superintendent, um, I didn't really see a way, um, if they don't feel like the human resource officer addressed that complaint to like then maybe they could go to the superal uh, superintendent evaluation committee with their complaint or concern because where do they go if they don't feel like HR is handling it. >> Yeah. So, I can have Heather give you guidance on that because um I I wouldn't know that right now. Um typically everything goes through Heather and then you know um >> she would work probably with your your chair, your joint SAU chair. So, right now that would be Patrick that's your chair. >> Okay. >> If there's a complaint. Um but I will get a I will get an answer for you on that. >> Okay. And then the um the

154policies that the superintendent will come up with a plan. Do you already have the plan? >> I do not. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> I think you have to give it to us every other year or something. >> Um Okay. Do you already have a plan? Are you working on it or >> I will review what we have currently? Um but that that is on me to do. Yeah. >> Okay. Those were my only things. I mean everything else was like pregnant students were in elementary school. >> Yeah. [cough] Yeah, [clears throat] >> I hope not. >> Um, do you feel comfortable voting for that AC1 then? >> Yeah, I mean it's just because of the nitpicky thing of seven >> because Oh, we're waiting for the plan from the superintendent. >> Oh, well that's

155just the policy. Yeah, we can pass the policy. It's just then Okay. >> He has to follow through on the policy. >> Okay. Uh, can I ask a question about um I think this is J this instructional materials on it was um now this doesn't like represent any actual change it like this looks like it's from whatever it says New Hampshire code admin rules 30606 because there was like just a couple of weird things that stood out like striking out the thing that says need the needs of all learners must be met. It just kind of I was like why would that be is it like addressed somewhere else or something? >> No. So ED 306 has went through about a two and a half year revision. Um and there was a lot of input

156that was given to the former commissioner in the board of education and um some of that was heard and neglected. Some of that was heard not acted on and some of that was heard and then implemented. So what you see here was what was approved from the previous commissioner in the state board of education and his committee for ed 306. So this literally comes from the wording which was passed in law. All right. Any other policy questions? All right. Uh, do I have a motion to approve these? Um, do I have to list them out? Um, I'll make a motion to approve IG J, I KB, AC, ACA, ADC, GBAM, and IMDA. Do I have a second? >> So moved. >> Thanks. Okay. Any discussion on these policies and this approval? >> All right. All

157in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Okay. Okay. So 4 0 >> and that was Sophie second date. Sorry. >> Thank you >> Sharon. [laughter] >> Um negotiations and no update. You heard our update. >> Yeah. Great. >> Um okay. Any old business? >> Oh ma'am. >> Okay. New business? >> No. >> Okay. >> Um just a reminder to do your shadowing. I'm going to shadow kindergarten this Friday which I'm so excited about. Um because my daughter is going to start kindergarten next year. So >> Oh, I was going to ask when you start. Okay. >> Yeah. very excited. >> That's great. >> Um, so I'm gonna shout kindergarten, which I'm pumped about. So, reminder to shadow and Yeah. >> Okay. >> That's the first I've heard of that. What that's like >> shadowing

158>> a board thing. >> Um, yeah, it was one of the board goals that I put forward. I just think it's helpful, especially for those of us who don't have kids in school yet. You guys are different, but um, yeah, just to shadow a classroom that your kids's not in, to like be a fly on the wall and see it. And I've learned so much and really loved all of the time I've spent here. So, >> [snorts] >> It's fun. >> How long will you go in for? >> Um I think just a couple hours. >> Yeah, two hours. >> Okay, sounds good. Okay. Uh any non-public? >> No, not non-public s. >> Okay, so we'll see uh next meeting December 10th. >> All right. Do you have a motion to adjurnn? >> Go ahead,

159Kathleen. >> A motion to adjurnn. All right. I'll approve. I >> I >> All right. >> Thank you, everyone.