good evening and welcome i'm diane meyerhoff post for tonight's brewington school budget presentation part of channel seventeen ongoing town meeting coverage tonight show is being aired live on channel seventeen and streamed live on you tube we welcome your comments and questions please join the  conversation eight six to three nine six six tonight i'm joined by the burlington school superintendent your bank thank you so much for coming out we appreciate it thank you been it's a busy time for you obviously so tell us what do voters need to know about the school budget i've been trying to do is thank the people of burlington i mean we've had some really good support over the last several years in terms of our budgets and our bond so people realize that we've got a great system and they need to invest it to continue to a number of working committee and oversight committees and in correlation with the city as well too and we're in a design stage so there has been consultation with different staffing groups different community groups and trying to gather information terms of the do the final design work so well well on our way in terms of getting so excited about that and we were i kind of want to share that with everyone that thank you so much for supporting our students and look forward to the progress on that and look forward to having that big day when we have the tour for him i can come in here and see twenty first century learning happening in your own time and that's a few years off i would imagine it's a couple years yeah yeah yeah so tell us what we need to know about the budget this year all right so let me  i've got some slides that i'm going to share some not going to go through the entire slide but i'll share a little bit with you but you know what maybe i should start with the what people would want to know first and what would that be just about the impact of the dollars and things like that so maybe if i could have technicians put up the the budget overview slide document and there it is perfect i can see here ok well there is so you can see if you can see that clearly there is there's an outline in terms of what our budget looks like so we started with eighty five million and general when we had that include general fund cost of one point eight we had debt service so our debt service is what we pay sort of like mortgage fees for capital needs so we had some capital needs in terms of deferred maintenance of our buildings and of course of course the high school band so that's already in bed it into the budget so we will need to worry that ok we're going to get hit twice for that analysis in terms of trying to be cost effective like what can we kind of reduce and what can we kind of maybe delay and use those dollars to put into investments to support schools so we're able to target non instructional areas we want to ensure that the direct supports the students in classrooms were not touched so we're we were able to find some some areas that we believe that we are able to reduce for this year which was one point eight million dollars which is great so we can put that back into the pile for investments and so that gives us an overall total of eighty eight million points eight point seven million dollars for our budget so increase to our budget is just a little over four percent and  but the tax impact what people really want to know is four point eight six percent and so if you look back the last several years last year actually we came forward and we were going to have a tax impact of eight percent but in reality it came out to be three point three two percent ok so so what happens is even though we've gotten the variables from the agency of education and we put the estimates forward things happen over the course of time so the legislature might make some changes some variable numbers change so by june july you get a different number and so people significantly different it's significant different yes so we're thinking oh my goodness we have to kind of let people know that the invest for eight percent people did but but in actuality they didn't have to pay that this year we're getting some added value because of the variable numbers we're able to increase our budget but a four point three six which is a good amount but we're paying less so if i were to do the and show you the increases over the last few years we paid a lot more for a little dollar yield for this year because the numbers are going to get some really good value for what we're spending this year and if you want to go onto our website or go into the budget you can see some more details some of the things and people are interested about is the tax impact for a common homestead at two hundred fifty thousand you'd be paying to two hundred twenty five dollars to twenty five dollars of  that's where we're at and gives a little bit of breakdown you can always go to our our budget website and get more detail before i forget actually we just released this yesterday a budget document which has details around the budget in more detail and has a detail line item budget which has pages and pages of different line items in it correlates to what we're spending and people can see that and you can look back and see the previous years as well too if you want to spend some time doing that maybe right kind of starts earlier internally we have to do all the work in the auditors to use the word from last year and then kind of gives us information in terms of how we can move forward in terms of the differences there the budget landscape some of the challenges that that we have to consider in developing the budget so some structural budget challenges rising wage benefits and cost with labor negotiations and certainly state of environment so the one of the significant things in the last previous years we've had legislation come in there had an impact on our budget so if you recall one year there was legislation piece that restricted us from spending at a certain amount and every time we spent over a certain amount we paid twice for it so that was really difficult for us right there was a small increase and we had we had need so those are the challenges in terms of trying to find the balance and cost and then the subsequent year there was the health care piece so they said ok braun to you to contribute to the health care we're never know yeah you never know but i'm you know i'm i'm hopeful that nothing's going to happen we and we've been kind of pushing that if you're going to have any sort of legislative budget changes don't do it in midstream once we've already passed a budget at the schools level yet at least do it much sooner and we've had that in the past where we have to go back and make changes right so move on a little bit so we go through our budget process it's a bottom up kind of budget so we start with stuff and put in our school leaders do multi sort of language groupings and try to get some conception of and then those are really fascinating because you know what you get some really good feedback from them and you'll find that there's a lot of commonality what parents are saying yet sometimes a few little nuggets have a lot of suggestions around that they usually talk about you know what they want to add sure well i guess that's why he right my job is to kind of look at ok what do we need to reduce or change and from one of our group stay said you know what stops there are some communications were happening there was a lot of paper waste story saying we don't need to have that paper that communication on paper because we get it from this source and knowing that we're compound because we were translating like ten different languages so we're multiplying so that's a cost right so you can take that little bit of money and use it for something else because they were really saying where we get this information from this source you don't need it so that was something we did and we think about you think you're being something helpful right that will be helpful  it was actually taken away resources that we could use so here's some examples of some of our forms and so out of the consultations you can look at this large here and these are some of the themes that came from our community  relate to what their experience in their schools and consistent mostly they can also you can see on here teachers and other social supports and supports to direct direct instruction in those type of things and usually last year this year when we actually did the raw kind of calculations of it was like over eight million dollars we know we can't get there right but i mean it's a start it gives us that opportunity to look at that so  i'm going to flash forward a little bit here to show some normal breakdowns so that i want to share this because as i said earlier we we review our mission and vision statement and we look  strategic plan but another layer that we added on this year is working with our staff and our school board we did a lot of sessions on what the priorities should be in try to cluster it and so through those analysis these were days of meetings  we came up with these areas around early learning opportunities for hire teachers restored or practices achievement gap social motion learning and student centered so everything that we invested in had aligned with these goals so it wasn't just at the superdome it thinks that's really a great idea it might be a good idea great but it had to kind of fit into one of these these pieces so yeah and so this is another review of what we did in terms of aligning and the other piece that i didn't mention that often in our budget there are a lot of state and federal mandates and compliance pieces that you know some things we have to do that we don't want to do and something might want to some things we do that easiest way to have a list you know it is easy to go through but i could do it through some of the slides here and that would they're both but you know what in the interest of time why don't i do teachers at our high schools we wanted to offer more options for students now we've consistently offered enough staffing to accommodate the courses but our students want more options under this in this particular one here early learning we know that when you spend one dollar at the early ages it gives you ten dollars yield ten dollars at the higher reaches so we've kind of make the shift i would say a couple years ago when we did the  spending more money at the top end at the bottom and so we're slowly making that sure that's nine yeah five question so you can see we've heard we've heard lots of conversations around paraprofessionals but and so we thought you know the best place to kind of invest that and is try to plan our budget over a multi year approach even though the budget cycles annually but i believe if we have a multi year approach we can kind of look ahead and say this is where we're going and this year we're going to be able do nine next year might we would do for more and then eventually like every class has it you know process believe we have about fifteen classes so nothing is significant yeah yeah yeah yeah so we're almost there we should be able to get it done phonics that is professional development that we want to continue to support our teachers in having those strategies move along look social motional learning this is a party that came out we did a survey last year looking at our climate data and social motional came up as the most singular critical issue from our from our staff and from our community as well too so we knew that we need to invest into social work and guidance counselors in these type of things that would support the social motional so inclusive teaching learning we honored that priority as well and then there were a couple of things that kind of fell off a didn't fit the priority but the board felt that there were sort of intrinsic little pieces that needed support so there's a good example we've got to in one of our middle schools a really robust band program and there's a lot of attraction to be in there so we wanted to kind of encourage that and to be able to provide some support so we're adding a ba paraprofessional in there didn't fit one of our categories but it's a need it's sort of an enrichment in terms of an area that's growing really well we want to hear what this is thinking that as well too and also one of the pieces here you can see it's ultimately frizzy in bowling  wasn't a major priority but in the interest of equity because one of the things we're looking at is that the activity participation rates right so activities like ultimate frisbee and bowling you can have pretty much insurmountable students participate as opposed the basketball team where i want only twelve kids whatever so you can have many kids many students be involved in these activities and for you know one hundred thousand that's a great value to get your engagement in and the students can one pay play ultimate frisbee frisbee on we have a unique program in burlington called parent university where we offer courses to parents and for the most part is targeted at our new american parents and we've had last year once a graduation i think it was about fifty curriculum like oh excellent well that we had the fortune for us we get many people in the community that volunteer their time from professors to business people that come in and offer a range of things from helping understanding things around english or even helping how you help students at home to their own personal you know to be cooking or something but it's all educational in terms of preparing them to be positive and good models for their students in our schools as well too and it's quite popular i think it's quite a bit of a social thing to the like to come because they get there connect with their friends and talk and share challenges and successes as well so it's really everything we do talk a little bit i know restorative justice i don't know if that's so yes yes talk about the different acts or actually yes restart of just as i like to talk about restorative practices as opposed to justice as more punitive and sort of judicial where practices are a series of actions or approaches that seems to heal harm and be inclusive around restoring community and culture the judicial system and in the in the police areas they use restored of justice because it's through the justice system that's here but that is actually the roots are in native american traditions right and so we're engaging in practices and we've seen some some gains for us right just seen from our staff and from our students we've seen our suspension rates go down we've seen more collaboration between students and it's a work in progress so we have to invest in imbedding these practice with our with our students in our staff so it's it can be an intervention but it can also be a culture is that it's really a culture that we're trying to build really right there our intervention strategies to it but we're trying to build a restored approx a culture where we can you know sit down and talk about you go to some of our classrooms or we have some teachers that are really well on their way they'll have one of the strategies a circle they have a circle with their students every day and the the person meets prompt with a question and they have the and then they start the conversations and then get into the lesson it can be any question they could be prompted or it could be just the hey there was a snow day yesterday did you enjoy that what happened and it kind of gets into the different conversations we you know it's really funny we've never formally kind of invested dollars into unify sports in the past and we did a las two years through one of our departments we said we need to put it up front and let people know that this is something we value and  we're going to support it all right and then i want to talk to me actually towards the end because about five minutes i started it with the with the bond stuff and this sustainable financing facility is about the capital plan that we have that we did a bond two years ago and then we did this year we were able to get the bond for the high school so that's embedded in the budget but if i did the thank you to everyone around the high school but the one piece that we did add on this line item besides the big c project is security system design so in this day and age and in our schools security is a major issue and so we don't want to collect i want to be preventive as opposed to proactive so we've been doing some analysis over the last few years in terms of our procedures and processes but one of things that we want to do is the design system for our schools so we can be connected and write the right communications in the right physical equipment features to do that so that's not a one time cost to you for that for that design piece  one of the pieces we were sharing a year ago was at the high school our nine one one panel was in effect in that really so that's that's a huge safety and if there was a call and we would know where to go in the building or what do with it right so those are kind of the things that we're trying to correct and so that's why that gives you a quick overview i know those are all a mouthful but you can see there's a lot of good investments and one of things i would say is that what we focused on  if we're off the mark we'll have to adjust but i think we've been pretty good that we've had four consecutive surplus budgets so we've been able to clean up the financial pieces and they were pretty stable so we're pretty confident about the projections that that we make and we want people to know that they go out to vote and support what we're trying to deliver and i think that is really important i don't think everyone realizes just how much things change if you start so early you have our vote and then you have the state sort of reconfigures things according to all the information and we should just let everybody know what's coming up so they should stay tuned of course to channel seventeen because we have candidate forms we have in depth presentations of school budgets and municipal budget so we hope you'll stay tuned for that going to couple more weeks left before town meeting and of course to vote on tuesday march fifth time eating day and watch our live results show i will be here at seven o'clock so you can find out if the budget passed and you keep it you're keeping your fingers crossed and also the thing i always forget to do is tell people they can vote early because now you're going to city hall and vote any time that they're open i believe yeah they had ballots by now we had this whole discussion but i believe they have their ballots ready so you can vote at your own convenience although i find it particularly fun to come out in time in the day but