my name is howard wooden and i'm here to help coordinate moderate the south burlington school district budget presentation i want to introduce who we have on our panel here tonight i'll start with the students here because they're right here for a while and we and we know each other pretty well david i'm going to turn this presentation over to you but i do or remind our viewers that if you would like to call it a question we do have a way that you can call it in and all you have to do is dial eight six two three nine six six that's eight six two three nine six six and we'd love to get a live question i'm sure these folks would too so david i'll turn it over to you thank you howard and thanks again for seventeen hosting  us again we have a lot of folks here but that's obviously important to us and we're going to walk you through our presentation each of us will have a few things that we'll share and we do want to leave a little bit of time hopefully to be a call in and we also have a few questions if if there's some time we can respond to that were kind of our frequently asked questions so this is our two thousand and twenty it's hard to say that seems like time is really flying but this is our budget information for two thousand and twenty i'm going to hope that i can move through this without error messages but first light is our recommended budget objectives and one of the things when we first started school board provide some directions to me and then we formulate kind of our objectives for the year and what you see here are just kind of a quick outline of the things that we're considering around building the budget for the future and the first out of that is just opportunities that we want to make sure that we sustain for the year ahead for our students we know that opportunities both academic and other kind of co curricular type of events are important so this budget works to achieve that also our continuous improvement plan is a kind of are our plans around how we continue to improve we look at assessment we look at professional development and lastly also about making sure that students and staff feel safe in places where they teach and learn so those are again a quick overview of our objectives of our budget and i know david that you guys have an incredible i'm obviously in my senior year now and i've gone through all twelve years of chamberlain school to feed t m s to high school and so i've really got in first hand experience of all the programs and amazing opportunities that are schools offer and obviously i've now been able to get accepted into my top choice in college which is american university in washington d c so i really attribute that to how our school has helped me get to that point and i always talk about last summer after junior year i went to vermont boys stay in st johnsbury vermont where we really got to experience kind of a political climate and working with all the boys around the state and i know there was a girl state as well and that would have been possible without our guidance department being able to help fund  and help get us to that point and that was obviously a turning point for me and all obviously as i've gone i would start by chamberlain school is where i started and that was always a place where i always felt really welcomed and i and i mentioned how it's helped me for college but there are a lot of opportunities for students that aren't going to college after high school i know just recently there's a lot of workshops that are career development center posts for students who don't maybe see color jobs their post high school plans and so there's always kind of movement around how to help students in any way and then also i always talk about how there's a lot of dual enrollment with college classes so we can take classes that you v m and that c c v for free we get two free vouchers and i know cool takes that as an advantage and you can talk about yet so as a student you get to vouchers for doing roman and you get to take two college courses for free and then you also have the our ability to take early college where is where you're taking your last year of high school and your first year of college simultaneously and so i know a lot of our students here at the high take advantage of that our school has a huge like spectrum of our after school activities that get funded and so like i know myself i'm the student school board representative i'm the junior class secretary for student council i do so much with the drama program both at the middle school and high school and when i say the middle school we have the career development center at our high school where they help you with like getting internships in fields that you might want to go into and so one of the internships that i've done is i help mentor middle school students with their drama department and so i like to help them with seeing changes in learning their lines and all that kind of stuff and then i also done an internship in our school as a teaching assistant because i think i want to go into education and so i was able to be a teaching assistant in a math class and so that was a really great opportunity that our school provides something it's like a big draw to our school that's like awesome is that we're ranked one of the best high schools and best districts in the state and so it's just cool to like have that on your back like being able to be like i go to south burlington and so school being able to see that  so i'm going to recap briefly what our budget looks like for the two thousand and twenty year we are asking for four point one five percent total expense increase some of the key contributors to that percentage increase we have a one million eighteen thousand nine hundred ninety three dollars benefit infallibly contingent fee increase for the coming year we are currently collectively bargaining for three of our employment groups we have an eleven point eight percent health care premium increase about a large part of this something that's not really in our control we have five hundred thirty eight thousand and seventy four dollars an increase in our continuing services so basically the things that we do today moving to the next year are agreements with tuition for to rationing students out of the schools in special needs we have a bond principal payment for the first time on a bond that we started last school year contracts with vendors for preventative maintenance service agreements and vocational expenses are increasing for and we have a larger number of students attending vocational so so it's part of that increase and we have some lease payment obligations that are in that as well and then we have an additional seven hundred  seventeen thousand three hundred one dollars for recommended additions in our budget which we will cover in the next couple of slides also one of the parts of our budget is revenue that we get not from taxpayer dollars and unfortunately in twenty twenty and we're going to see a decrease in that revenue coming into the school district of about seven hundred forty six thousand one hundred fifty four dollars some of the key contributors a very large key contributor to that is activity five was the health care recapture rule that result in and a loss over a two year fiscal year period of four hundred sixty eight thousand dollars and so what that means is we spent down some of our fund balance to cover that low income that wasn't coming from the state from the our designated fund balance is now at a reduction of three hundred eighty six thousand from prior fiscal year there was a couple of errors in revenue that was projected for nineteen that is not going to happen in twenty so that was one hundred ninety thousand dollar off and the reason the larger remaining piece of the reduction is special education revenue is predicted to come in it's like two hundred thirty seven thousand less than our current two thousand and nineteen let's largely do in fact to the way that the funding model is changing in the next fiscal year there are going to be higher threshold before they reimburse you at a higher percentage and yes so things are changing ever evolving in school and the financial part of that so i want to just pass for a second howard and say that first of all there's a lot of information going for viewers important to note that we have all of this information on our website along with all of the kind of the school board meetings that have happened in the past but hopefully people who if they want to get a little bit deeper and review it they go back there in addition we also have a budget book that's available both online or if people want it they can let us know and we will send them a copy hard copy as well i want to move on just to talk a little bit so first thing tripoli which is early essential educations for our youngest learners we've had a program at both our orchard and chamberlain schools and this addition would bring it into our big market school which is over by the city center so there some staff being added to that particular area again a big part of tripoli or all over early childhood education is really to ensure that there's a solid foundation for our students obviously a solid foundation allows for things to happen positively after that because of that and not paying out to some of our providers there's going to be a reduction because that might that revenue will stay with us so that's that second ball that we're making some changes in the in the delivery service at the school level so some pair educators are being reduced and we're adding some additional special educators again wonderful people we have a good number of pair educators support our learners but nonetheless looking at those that are compensated to help do the necessary work that's needed point five guidance at the high school we have obviously a good number of counts we have some that have been fractional or were not quite full time this spring some of them up to full time in the main purpose there is that when your counselor isn't there on you know of thursday afternoon that's hard for  two days a week that's hard and so this will increase some of that and then lastly as security safety officers actually what we call this position and this isn't fun fortune i mean these are some of the things that you know we wish we didn't have to include it's a public related safety issue but nonetheless the school district is has that we currently have three this adds another for four and these are individuals that are typically in our front entry ways of our buildings we have five buildings so we'll be figuring out how we will get you know all five covered as well in addition to what david had just finished reading we have other half of the budget and that is an increase or an additional tire time position and the operation in the finance office where i'm working we undergone a lot of state and initiatives and are continuing to move in those directions there's going to be a new chart of accounts and new fiscal software that is being rolled into our jobs so we're trying to do our daily work and learn a new software and build these new so the there's just a really large need and we've had a few other new softwares from the state level that have just created a lot of extra work so we're asking for a little part time position in our office to help with those needs going forward even we are adding for point one two f the assistant student mentor coordinator which is a position that we currently have it's being funded by an outside source and in order to maintain that position we're asking for a small four thousand dollar increase in the budget to just maintain that position and that person works coordinating mentors with adults in the school students with adults in the schools  we have a citizens budget advisory committee and one of the desires of the committee was because we're spending down our fund balance due to that loss of revenue from the state they felt it was important that we put a little money and as a contingency in the event something like this happens that we might have a little bit of a cushion so we are going to add one hundred thousand for that just as our contingency plan we do have one hundred thirty four thousand nine hundred forty one in the budget for facilities stewardship and maintenance projects that are planned there not are large projects because we have our master planning in visioning program going on right now which is looking at the needs of the high school in the middle school and where those buildings might be headed so we're doing what we have to do to keep our buildings safe and secure and operating for our students and and the other three other schools also have some projects in them scuse me this also includes the leas purchase of two new school buses each year we have a part of our stewardship plan we do have a rolling cycle of replacement on school buses as they get past ten years we try to replace them so these two will replace two older busses so that total additions of what mr young covered and myself is the seven hundred seventeen thousand three hundred one dollars for additions so moving right along this is again this is a quick and i spend a lot of time on here but this breaks down on the expenditure side obvious you can see the revenue expenditure side you can see that you know the buckets the larger buckets that add up to the four point one five increase there's some obviously pretty significant increases that look on the percent wise but when you look at the total dollar amount four point one five again as amity said on the expenditure side i do want i do want to just make sure that you know anybody mention the budget advisory the school board really has been great to you know look for participation from the community and we welcome folks to come to the school board meetings and the budget advisory group has been a really good arm that supported the administration and also the board in bringing perspective from the community from where they see it and that's always that's been something really really visual on where where the budget is spending obviously a big chunk of that is the salaries and benefits this is are again kind of a quick overview of our budget where how that tax rate gets made up lower left hand corner is about are equalized pupils the number of students that are actually counted not seated but students at the high school get a little bit more than the elementary top left as our of our overall expenditure which you've heard me talk about earlier in the slides the top is our revenues and again you've heard anybody talk about that and that reduction our yield which is set by the state and the common level of appraisal set by the state all those factors go into that property tax i might add though you can't do the up you know and downs across around those circles and think you're going to get to the to the percent increase and we'll show you that in just a quick second here now this actually is a really good process for folks if they want to know more about how education funding is done it's still kind of complicated to explain but the math here is as i think really helpful so our expenditures of the fifty one million it's subtracted by our local revenues which again was my am anyone over and told you that there was l that then equals or at spending that's divided by the number of students what we call equalize students it's then that equals what we call our ed spending per equalised pupil we then divide that by the property tax year that used to be referred to in the past base education amount it's now called the property you again set by the state and that equals what we then call our equalize resit residential property tax rate that's then divided by how homes are being sold which is called the common level of appraisal and for us it's ninety three point two eight percent and that gets us to the tax rate of a dollar sixty twenty six there's a lot in there and again i would refer people back to you know look at the look at this presentation and there's a lot also in the budget book to help folks really understand that and what goes on there a little bit on our staffing our staffing obviously pretty  from last year current year to next year and our current staffing levels really are are unchanged we may need to move some staff or courtiers that are you know in the classroom so again just making sure that folks are aware  for our community members but if you look at the the last five years of tax free history we have seen three years of declining tax rates and we are seeing an increase this year which is still lower than the two thousand and sixteen rate but that's largely driven by the folks can understand that yield comes from the state and last year at the very end of the legislative session they that they raise about yield so that significantly drop the tax rate when we were proposing our budget and sitting at this folks are sitting at this table last year i think the pay the actual tax rate was almost identical to what it is what we're asking for this year so just to put that in perspective for folks it's a challenge for us because when we come in these big large swings you know it's a it's a tough sell sometimes and that's why that happened the state actually gave a one time funding into the education fund to help bring it to a healthier place this year we have been told it's a much healthier fund because they've changed how it's funded it comes from sales tax revenue and lottery revenue and things so it's a little bit healthier than when we've started in past years so i just wanted people to understand why the big dip in that you know that's a great description amity thank you and as far as looking at one of the questions we often get from community members is the disconnect between the or the expenditure increase and the tax rate increase and as amity mentioned there's a number of variables that are outside the school districts controlled and david went through that complicated formula but what we wanted to show here is really a multi year history and if you if that average taxpayer will look at this we looked at the five and ten year averages and in terms of spending proposed spending increases the five year average is about three point two percent the ten year average is about two point two percent and that translates into tax rate changes that range from anywhere from negative you know five point nine eight percent to increase of three point three are actually the highest was six percent but that in two thousand and twenty of what we're asking for three point three six percent so again i think the process we've gone through is very fiscally prudent and really focuses on what delivers a quality program for our students this sli looks very complicated so it's tough to see but it just overviews the city and the school budgets and the tax rates associated with each of those budgets and one of the questions that we found was very common with while the city's budget is increasing twelve percent but their tax rates only four point seven nine they have some footnotes as to why that would be and they have a lot of offsets to their revenue i revenue like we have some but they have a significant amount more so it only really results in a very small tax increase from their side from the school side again we have that four point one five percent increase on the tax or on the total spending however the loss of revenue makes our tax rate a little more than normal or not normal but past history  it makes up a bigger chunk of that three point seven combined tax rate increase and the lower half of the chart that you can see online it just shows an taxpayers rate from last year versus this year and what they might see as an increase in their tax bill and then the second column shows the value of the average condo value for south burlington and the third column shows the average home site value in south burlington so you would see one hundred seventy eight dollar increase if you had a condo at that two hundred thirty two thousand and a two hundred fifty nine annual increase and the tax for a home valued at three thirty in those averages i think are important to remember i  mean that's what that's what the averages are again people who really we want not to be deceptive because those those could change to be more favorable or less favorable it's really important on the one hundred thousand is to do that assessment based on that but that concludes howard are our  presentation pretty quickly and again on behalf of the school district and you know i'm extremely proud we have a school board that has been steady with us and we have worked hard i think as a community to really you know support our students and also be but for example if the budget is increasing by four point one five percent how is that the tax raising creasing by a smaller percentage i mean i think people want to know one's higher than the other and how does that happen it was a great question so we've kind of covered it but again the property tax base is the rate is not based upon our total expense budget that is a variable in it but it takes that total expense than our n revenue of local non tax payer revenue is reducing that expense budget to give us what's called our net spending per equalize people and from there the schools are funded through the state education fund which again we are talking about funded fairly healthy this year so that yield plays a factor in how the tax rate is calculated so because the yield is a little higher this year than it was and sturrock lee it brings our tax rate down lower than our budget increase even though it is even though we have a loss of local revenue it still brings the tax rate down increase down below the write the actual rate of our budget that's very well i think for just about out of time so  burlington links to self releases but just as they're there as well and don't hesitate to contact these folks if you have any questions thank you very much