me read the official warning to get it started see to fisher warning mount mansfield modified union school district feb twenty sixth twenty fifteen and march third tw fifteen legal voters of the mansfield modified union school district comprising the voters of the town school districts of huntington grades five through twelfth and bolton jericho richmond underhill town and under the incorporated school district at which time the polls will be open until seven pm at which time the polls will close to transact any business involving voting by australian ballot article one to elect the following officers moderator for term of one year clerk for term of one year treasurer for term one year article two to hear and act upon the written reports of the district officers article three shall the voters of the mt mansfield modified union school district authorize the school board under sixteen b s a five six to nine to borrow money by the issuance of bonds or notes not in excess of anticipated revenue for the school year article for this time serves as a public information hearing for the public preview of the twenty fifteen twenty sixteen proposed budget for discussion purposes only article five to transact any other school business thought proper when met march three twenty fifteen the australian ballot question article six so the mount mansfield modified union school district adopt a budget of forty two million nine hundred four thousand three hundred ninety two dollars for the school year twenty fifteen twenty sixteen but in closing of the polls the ballot boxes will be sealed something middle school in the town of richmond the ballots commingled and publicly counted by representative of the boards of civil authority of the towns of bolton huntington jerko richmond and underhill under the supervision of the clerk of the mount mansfield modified union school district legal voters the mount mass field union modified union school districts are further warned in notified that an informational meeting will be held at mt mansfield union high school in the town of jericho feb twenty sixth twenty fifteen commencing at six thirty pm for the purpose of explaining the twenty five twenty fifteen twenty sixteen proposed budget and the polling places are in bolton huntington jericho richmond and underhill so this is our our work for the c evening will move directly to article one which is to elect the following officers moderator for one year clerk for one year and board nominations in our order for the office of moderator for a term of one year tom requires that local official be elected by paper ballot unless the elected by australian ballot accordingly it is appropriate to move that the clerk be directed half the single ballot in favor of william wilson if moved in with a second all those in favor please say i opposed the eyes have it and wayne wilson is elected moderator and i will now turn the meeting back thank you congratulations all right we now move on to the election of the clerk for a term of one year or the nominations for the position of clerk has been nominated other other nominations thank you the if there nerve for the nominations of the agreement the meeting the nominations are closed and as has been mentioned so i won't read it exactly again there is a requirement for paper ballots so it's appropriate if someone moves the clerk be directed to cast a single ballot in favor of laurel kimball is or if a motion to that effect i have motion is or second and there is a second thank you so it's moved and seconded that the clerk will cast a single bout in favor of lower kimball for clerk all those in favor please say i chose nay the ayes appear to have it and the  a lower kimble selected nominations are open for the position of treasurer for a term of one year tom the back has been nominated it's not necessary to have a second in this case so we have the nomination before us other other nomination if there are no further nominations with the agreement of the meeting the nominations are closed and accordingly it is appropriate to move that the clerk be directed to cast a single ballot for tom of dec for the position of treasurer for a term of one year as  motion to that effect it's been moved is there a second and there is a second all those in favor posed the eyes appear to have it and the i said thank you so that completes our work on article one article two to hear and act upon the written reports of of district officers and the way we generally handle this is a motion is made and seconded to accept the report of district officers which places the reports before us and then we can have discussion and questions you may have on the report so is there a motion to accept the report and is there a second it's been moved and seconded to accept the written reports of the district officers and you can find this on pages looks like three through thirty three is there any supplementary supplementary comments the board w es to offer at this point he not only are open to the questions you may have on the report other questions on the report you last chance on this are you ready for the question is moved and seconded that the voters of the mount mansfield modified union school district authorized the school board under sixteen b s a five six to nine to borrow article for this time serve as a public information hearing for the public review of the twenty fifteen twenty sixteen proposed budget for discussion purposes only to turn to the board for presentation richmond bolton talents and fifth through twelfth grade to the huntington t so i have a chart here for each of the schools and it's same chart for each school and you might want to refer to this after the presentation so people come to these meetings to know very specifically wondering what's going to happen at a particular school other people are more interested in a district wide level i'm going to talk about many of the changes that had a consolidated district level but these charts break down the changes that are now we're looking at and each given to schools so they go in some places actually wanted to killer jericho's picking up three students next year that looks like right now the high schools are relatively flat richmond elementary school smiley world elementary school in bolton hundred central school and see that one has a pretty significantly significant drop in the role the next year at a percentage basis under a light he is also losing a pretty significant amount of their role next year all right so look back now and another reason there was just to make sure everybody understood what the schools are that this is what it's going to be covering for those for the schools so this is the new district board members they're listed there on the  we have a little bit of data to share with you this data is looked you know this data is has taken at the high school level but we do feel like it's representative of the entire system from home after school through through high school  look at the scholastic assessment test or commonly known as a c t's the students who took the test in our district on average performed better than the vermont average as well as the national average in all three categories under sixty five zero three students took at least one course we offered thirteen different courses and forty five percent of seniors took a course and when it came time to exam time we had two hundred  thirty four separate exams taken that g p a three or higher in terms of the grade three or better is representative of college graduates i think there's a lot more data if you're interested behind this in the well compared to rest of the states and according to the other information i've already shared with you our school system is doing well compared to the average in vermont right  school student staying in the state finding a job with the salary of that student is when they when they reach the workforce that type of measure so you know how well once we've trained the t preschool partnerships opportunities their wages and benefits for staff president student roland the statewide property tax rate and last year's one time budget cuts that were taken so i'm going to go through each one of  these in more detail but these were the things that really became topics of conversation after developing this year's budget so what did the district merger of bringing bring to the table there first of all we do have the tax incentive comes into fight there was also transitional funding provided by the state about one hundred fifty thousand dollars was provided as part of this further and with that the cost associated with any transition does not need to be included in the budget because it will draw from this funding source and then thirdly there are some cost savings that we were able to take advantage of as a result of the district i'll get to those in more detail later  so we talk a little bit now about the preschool partnerships you may have heard that preschool universal preschool was voted into law last year and subsequently over the summer the agency of education five school districts that in the following year the year that this budget is four so next year's school districts have the choice of implementing it will be mandatory in the following year fiscal year seventeen but in f y sixteen it's it's optional for school districts implement recently we heard that about a third of the supervisory unions are are implementing it and one of them we've chosen to implement universal preschool this year there's a large different reasons why why we chose diplomated and there wasn't really a reason why we didn't want to so what does that mean well preschool has always been a goal of this supervisor union to have we promoted it tried to get it in as much as we can budget it's been challenging to it to include in budgets up until now the other reason is there are some tax advantages believe it or not to including the preschool partnerships and th program in our budget when we start calculating the tax rate later on in the presentation you'll see that equalize pupils is a is an important number and if you request people's increase that's helpful to bring your voucher that we will give to each parent who hasn't held a ball preschool student to bring to a qualified private preschool institution so we have a lot of private preschools around that are preschool is the law and it's mandatory they hear that children have to go to the school so i think we have to be careful how we communicate not that we don't want our children the other things but i think it's easy for the already wages and benefits are currently in our negotiation year with our contracts so all of our contracts are up for renewal they are in negotiations right now so what we've had to do is estimate what we think we need to budget you course i would agree to it could be higher could be lower but that's what we put in the budget for planning purposes we're also seeing next year changes to employee coverages so we're seeing employees collecting different coverages in terms of health care and dental and so forth and those are generally increasing the bu charts that show some significant drops in some of our schools so that had an impact in some of the decisions that we put into the budget the state why property tax rate that's that's the basis for our tax rate that we have locally the state has provided us guidance to plan for a two cent increase to that tax rate do want to point out that that that is an estimate the tax rate is not set until after town meeting when the majority of budgets have been approved but the so last year you know we had an estimate and it did change a little bit we don't know what will happen to the tax rate until after our meeting in the legislature have has a chance to nion school district budgets were were defeated so when we prepared to modify budgets we took out some things that you know were hard things to take out but we knew we could be taken out y over year there are things that we could take cut off first for one year but we knew we'd have to bring them back into the next budget or else we would have some pretty significant consequences so those items are listed up here varying degrees of  amounts one significant one is a bus replacement we have a schedule where we like to replace three buses every year when the budget got defeated we reduced it we reduced it by one of us so this year's budget that we're working on t ok one more here i'm so now look at the budget in total first off i want to explain a little bit about how the budget came to be misery could be so you know so like you guys just got this new district together in november and you're putting together this forty three million dollars budget that seems pretty quick well there was a lot of work done and in a short period of time but the war didn't start when this district was formed by any means the work started in september just like it always does the the her original districts you know they're the smaller districts that are now merged started building budgets just like they always do at their individual school levels and then once this district was approved in november and then the new board was officially brought together in december those budgets were presented id school board still out so i you know i was able to represent that force in the budget pretty strongly and we had members from every other district familiar with the budgets coming into the new the new district so i felt like the  board members and they never said no very responsive very helpful in getting us all up to speed with what's in this budget so well further ado what's the number so the number there green forty two million nine hundred four thousand three hundred ninety one dollars is the proposed budget we did took some liberties consolidated last year's budgets from the various districts so we can do and have those to apples comparison that's just under three percent increase to last year's budgets you can see some historic information about the increases in the budgets over time the three percent increase is in the middle of what the budgets been doing in the last couple of years well point just you know high level information here about two thirds of the budget is directly associated with construction and hard to read there that part of the four hundred forty one thousand dollars also the hundred and nine preschool partnerships that we've included in this budget at three thousand dollars a piece that comes up to three hundred twenty seven thousand dollars there so those two items all pretty significant amount of the total  the bus we talked about we also included some additional funding for a long term substitute something that we didn't budget for in the past with what these long term substitutes are going to enable us to do now that we have  bigger districts and more schools is really be able to have substitutes you know on staff that we can move from one school to another previous where we had separate districts managing the substitutes it was more fragmented this will enable  program support so we'll see where that out pops up later on and in terms of the sending grease but we've consolidated all the food programs in the various districts and the food programs are intended to be self sustaining program so your revenues you get from from food sales and reimbursement from the state federal are intended to help you know pay for all of the costs of your food program we actually have some for food programs that are running in the red there they have asked and deficits associate with those food programs to the tune of about forty thousand dollars so far are funded has to include that  carry over deficit in those food service programs mentioned a little bit more about those later but we don't see that as a long term thing we do think we can get the food service program sustainable in the future that's one million one hundred sixty one thousand and then there's sixty thousand dollars of various other increases that and then you add all that up and that accounts for the the total total net increase propert so those are election changes so if you went from single to family or family to say no obvious you go single the family that drives the number up if you decide to if you let's say you have family coverage and you had been carried out or your spouse  under a different employer and you know it chose to shift coverage to the school district so you know both of those types of scenarios are are real and we're seeing that and that's what's driving that increase it speculative on my part but one with one one could say that our our health coverage and dental coverage is our more attractive than alternatives driving that cost driving those ever changes is a full time position but not necessarily one particular person it could be a fortune of several positions that are not up to one full time equivalent so the first year reductions of we took on staff position dropping in richmond elementary as a result of consolidating the custodial staff program centrally on that campus between the camels up in the school and richmond elementary school  middle school brought down a foreign language budget by two tenths of a position to keep pace with the needs of that of that program based on roman in that in that particular area and then at the school it's all or four point seven f t's think that it's very important point out that as a result of these reductions we're not taking away any program for services just keeping pace with the needs of the after school schools times already and there's been two questions that generally popped out one is with respect to the central office of the ship and the supervisor union line item and then the other one is the increase in the in the  service services line through the percentage change so at the end of two new supervisor union we're seeing that go up one hundred sixty two thousand dollars and thirteen percent and several different reasons for that one is  d budget accounting change we were directed by the state in our last audit to budget our cost of audits of the various districts at the supervisory union level not at the individual district level and of course next year will be hotting last year's budget last year's books at the individual districts that will no longer exist but we have to audit them to close them out increases are reflective in that in trees and then there was also a change to how the end of the year last year they pay to support a surplus they haven't but it wasn't quite as large as it hasn't dissipated so that brought the budget for the deficit that the food service program sort carrying right now we have like i said a few minutes ago a couple schools we have food programs that for various reasons are costing more than they're receiving for revenue and at the end of last year when we closed the books and audited we had it we had these deficits and those deficits have to be included you know our in our next year's budget now this year you have two separate food programs to do two separate staff to use separate menus everything separate into buildings that are about one hundred yards apart from one another and that's a result of them being operated by two different school next year will be one school district we can consolidate those programs we'll be able to run them much more efficiently and likely provide better opportunities for the students as well and if we get rid of that that budgeting perspective we're able to see that we can consolidate you can you know work work on our staff it differently you know certainly there are students in brown for middle school more opportunities there for a different you wouldn't anticipate that the kitchen will be the mafia like in in those two buildings i think they'll get creative they have the equipment on the police for the first year they're going to make a decision about you know me like i don't want my kids go to underlie these schools so i'm pretty familiar with what they offer there and they they have a salad bar sometimes and those items you know you just wrap up in the fridge and bring back out the next day so storing you know food in in that building certainly be and piloting and get the necessary equipment to make sure that who taught and tasty and that in the long run i think we're going to save money we're also going to get a better product the result of you know pressures from voters so that number represents the consolidation of the districts historical contingencies you're right up on a on a on a percentage basis of the total school board we have dues we have to pay any time there's a like a professional development opportunity where we attend a course or something those are reimbursable and there and so yeah six districts to the to do we have you know a smaller amount to do is we're going to have to pay next year will they will they change the membership policies you know as a sole for the in a bigger district of funded we do anticipate spending the last thing but we just four aren't quite sure what the number was going to be in with the new district training within that actual cost what happens is a lot of period of time and we need to hire leases teacher to come in for somebody who's out on a long term medical leave and we need to hire a substitute to come in and what would happen in their budgets is we'd be running stop those savings were never meant to say that they're going to happen in the first year so those at numbers are accurate and i believe will see those savings and subsequent year but it was never stipulated that these are all going to be savings that we're going to be and we'll see that the board of education not one of the items are on the start but here are some of the things that we did commit to realizing you know next year most things we've already talked about so consolidating  in the northern part of the district where we have three hundred schools within about six miles of one another we were doing so leveling of the kindergarten classes to try to right size voluntary to solicit volunteers to enroll their kindergartner in one of the schools where it will help us with rightsizing those classes so in both underhill central and under we've budgeted for just one classroom teacher with no hope with the plan that we're going to be getting the right number there and the remainder in our larger school in jericho so we've  that position is we do seem significantly next year so we've taken on over one hundred eleven thousand dollars out and similarly to the reduction in number of districts a number of books that we have to manage this office level with lot of other opportunities that people have shared with the board and board members of broad and said can we do this can we do this as cost savings opportunities things that are remaining those are the things that take a little bit more time to plan for to think through prioritize figure out what exactly the budget will look like and you know i posited that next year we'll have additional items on a similar list of other changes that we've seen as a result of  consolidated district d through taxes are education spending based on the budget we just went through it's going to increase three point seven nine percent higher than the two point seven percent over budget the reason for the spending going up is you'll see a pretty significant reduction in our federal state and local revenue lines so some of the drivers there are intice of a drop in tuition from  neighboring districts coming to the high school save less per look at actual tuitions coming into versus what we budgeted last year and this year it was lower so we brought our projections down to be more in line with  to and paid for from neighboring areas and that's and then some also some various reductions in other grants that are funded through other programs besides education spending doesn't project doesn't factor in next year's and roland looks at the last two years of enrollment and it waits different students slightly differently because high school students are waited a little bit higher think kindergarten students because i school students have  more costly programs that they require that's one thing that drives and so are equalized pupils is down very slightly just too and if you're if you're trying to fall nine equalised pupils which is fifty four and a half i'm sorry we played one hundred nine dollars for pre k which is fifty four point five equalize pupils so without that  four dollars the state way tax rate very talked about that goes up our tax rate goes up or it spending we just saw that goes of which this tax rate goes up and then even though we're one district and many of us this is the these are factors that the state sets to try to equalize the the value of everybody's property because we all get assessed at different times and we know property values fluctuate that c l a helps normalize everybody's property value if the c l a goes up compared to last year the tax rate goes down and vice versa so you have to calculations i'm going to share with you it so if you don't get on the first one look at another one to follow through reason why we're going to do it two different times is because it's a different set of numbers same path but a different set of numbers for those towns that are all in if you will through twelve in the district versus the town huntington which is only fifth through twelve so what we'll start with is the bolt richmond jericho underhill idea underhill the poll tax rate calculation see the spending is a slightly different number because we've taken out the amount of the spending that we're going to see on the next chart which is attributed to huntington so it's less money in five hundred twelve so we took out i ad spending for the boys people for these towns is up three point seven four percent then to get the tax rate to calculate we divide that number by the base at amount which is just a number that is set by the state for this  formula to work and we get a spending adjustment factor in our spending in just one factor is up one point three percent that spending in just one factor is multiplied by the base statewide tax rate next year of rest where we're told it's going to be destroyed one dollar so the math is quite easy when you're fifty six times one and so are estimated people as holds a tax rate based on the budget that we just reviewed and the guidance from the state will be one point five six spot which would be just under four percent increase five which is actually a reduction to last year's tax rate tax rate of one point four percent now that's the district tax rate it then gets adjusted by by the base at amount multiplied by the state wide tax rate get equalized olmstead tax rate of one point five four or which is just over six percent higher than last year and you'll see under bill town on the other side their tax rate is one of the other is probably the only town on this chart where it actually is going up compared to this year but compared to what it would have been significantly down now of course every every town tax rate was different last year under bill that was the lowest so it only stands to reason that if you got the lowest tax rate and you're now getting a composite of the i think it's a hope that on the bottom it shows that the about of the tax changed on your property for every one hundred thousand dollars of property value so i suppose any questions on that a wanted to make sure that everybody understood that there's really two ways to pay for your education tax one is through property tax which is based on your property about the other one is y three thousand dollars in tax if you did buy a fricken sensitive you would only pay about fifteen hundred dollars so it's not half so if you qualify which is basically if your household income in here as well if you want to go through it and get a chance to go out all night if i get to present all the charts that you have available so there's more information there but at this point  with the business office try to break the chart of accounts out in administrative leave and you know and try and from a board perspective try to understand how it's going to happen has been complicated they're still working through it but  a difference so just making sure that we are clearly doing that consistently as well as taking a look at the assessments with the aaa i'm quoted this year was we're going to do the central office assessments and all the assessments are the same actually it was this new c s u board that did that but that might be something that they'll look at again down the road but as far as because we have we now have you know we've been doing five twelve for so long this particularly here it wasn't challenging to separate out those costs and determine revenue based on of our financial situation so you know to perth the hope is that we can actually do something to sort of purify the education and get some of the expenses out of the been there should really be hoping to work out a plan to do that which would make a substantial difference in the tax rate if you took forty five billion dollars out of the education rates so but the other thing that i really want to own geographies basically expand to be the entire town next year next year for their comments or questions on the budget year but could you talk a little bit about how you work with that number and how you how do you develop it into a budget how do you do that so those are the students are being educated outside the district so at the beginning of the school year we look at a service plan and we take a look at what the needs of students are just one thing to point out on the special ed in terms of how it's funded there's there's two funding sources for high level two funding sources for special lead one is through special lead grants that come from state federal areas and then whatever our social life budget exceeds from those those grants is itself included in that spending as a as a poet so  it's funded from multiple sources which is which is why as an extra layer of complex any further comments or questions a question on other comments or questions