yeah yeah yeah it's fine with me other community members if we're scheduled to have an executive session to deal with the student issue posed so we need to clear the room and you can excuse me we we will go to the science lab and that  twenty two thousand seven hundred eighty eight dollars which is a four point three one percent increase in the budget so what what kind of issues are we dealing with well for dealing with the current economic climate changing students populations salaries and benefits and especially around health care this year special education the capital plan and debt service in our facilities and then finally you know what are the tax implications of all  this you know is that there's another thing that's not listed here but it's also the end of the federal jobs money which affects us to the sure to the tune of about seventy thousand dollars which was in the f y thirteen budget which will not be in the f y fourteen budget so in these issues the current economic climate i mean as everybody knows we've been in a recession for nearly five years now and you know during that time to between two thousand and eight and two thousand and thirteen the in two thousand and twelve the second part of two thousand and twelve the state's general fund has reached the revenues for the general fund have reached the levels that they were at and peaked in two thousand and eight so the revenue for his has come back up on the state level to where we were but the shortfall during that time between two thousand and eight and this last quarter when we finally reached where we had been the shortfall was over three hundred million dollars in revenues to the state so it's been route from just to the general fund and it's been it's been a tough tough time  the home prices on which a lot of what we do is is based that the five year change in vermont is still down and we're still negative three point one percent although in the third quarter two thousand and twelve we did have a small increase like a zero point four percent increase in home prices but it's but still overall we're down and the grand based on the property values throughout the state is now forecast to recover not before two thousand and sixteen kate to its peak levels which were in two thousand  nine so we have a number of years still where this is our c l a a common level appraisal was going to put pressure on the on the tax rates the jobs of started back up but unlike any recession in my lifetime even though we have you know one of the lowest unemployment rates in the in the country about eighth in the country they were only about halfway back up to where peak jobs were before the recession and it's growing slowly no recession has in my lifetime has lasted this long the frightening thing from the economist point of view is that he chose subsequent one on a national level has tak england but we're not back to where we were and then of course at the federal level we have this whole issue of the fiscal cliff and that has some implications for us because the sequenced ration will cost us about one hundred thousand dollars in special ed fun guidance and the debate amount would go up to ninety one hundred fifty one dollars now i don't anticipate that to happen the tax commissioner has made his recommendation last week the week before really quite recently and they're recommending recommending a couple things and the last point here pressure to hold cost level the governor would like us to not increase our budget at all  which is completely unrealistic frankly but there but there the recommendation is that we use three cent increase in the state by property tax and and only increased the base set amount by half of what the statute would say now that will be finalized until we're well into session this spring so when we build these budgets we make our best guess and last year we were actually off by a penny in the state my property tax to when  all was said and done the statewide spending increases came in higher than had been and to support it at this point and so the property taxes went up a penny more than the state wide tax with a penny more than we had use in our budget that could happen to us again significant issues more ok student populations you'll see that overall we're down twenty nine kids in the entire district which is that the green numbers at the high school which is the orange ish color  we're down it's hard to read that last number tate sixty six and we're down twenty four kids at the high school in the middle schools are pretty much without significant change so what's i mean for our student teacher ratios here we have a ten year look back on that and in all three school case of all three schools were within the range we've been over the last ten years and no really drastic deviations from where we've been and i will tell you that you know when we compare statewide and i don't have any of that for you tonight but it's it's always in the annual report we have significantly higher student teacher numbers then other schools changing student populations so what that those drops have allowed is they'll be a point for reduction f t s at the high school there are one point three f t s at the middle school one one f t is actually planning room person at the browns river who has been changed from a teaching position to an intensive staff position as opposed to the teacher which puts them in line with the other two schools in terms of how that that area is staff d and then we also have a five student increase at the tech center which will drive our cost for the tech center up that runs on a three year running average so we will continue to see that having some effect over the next few years so we are in the process of trying to reach a one year agreement with the teachers the teachers have not ratified it yet and i correct tentative agreement  teachers and we're in the second year of a three year agreement with the support staff one of the things that completely caught us off guard was a fourteen percent increase in health insurance premiums for that the teachers  there's the biggest piece of that has to do with the fact that the two big pieces are that as we're coming out of recession there's more utilization of health care  it's been actually interesting to watch nationwide that with the recession people use less health care and that's regardless of whether they had the doctor bills to pay and that sort of thing or not and people just use less health care in the in the recession but so that's a big piece of it and the other piece of it the big other big piece of this is that there's a over the last two years they've held to the increases down very low and so they have actually dug into their reserves at be high over the last two years and so we're getting with all that right now there's a small increase you know one maybe one and a half maybe one point two percent to do some state mandates stuff and that is primarily around drugs  starting in two thousand and fourteen there's a limit to your out of pocket drug expenses of twelve hundred fifty dollars but that's that's really minor v i also attributed some of the increase to something that next year didn't actually happen which was a requirement for vaccination which actually didn't even passed but somehow in their letter they attributed six hundred thousand dollars of increase to that figure ok so on the salary benefits side with the instructional programs there's an increase of two hundred twelve thousand dollars that's a three percent average wage increase for the teachers and three point five four increase for the support staff and the two hundred twelve dollars is not the whole cost of those increases but includes some the f t e reductions and some savings when because new hires tend to be less expensive than old hires and i'll show you something a few minutes that also  big difference on that that by the benefits actually down slightly and that is largely because more than expected of the new hires didn't take family plans and that adds up fairly special education problem local assessments going up almost twenty nine point five three percent or four hundred eighty thousand dollars for local assessments what we raise by my taxes  the m m u share of that is about two thirds of the special ed budgets there will be some revenue increases across c s u but the seaquest ration the fiscal cliff stuff a ten percent reduction and that is built in here so if that never happens we're in slightly better shape than us  that service down a little bit transportation is is up one hundred forty seven thousand dollars transportation last year when we felt the f y thirteen budget we had a surplus from the previous year that surplus isn't here anymore and that surplus was two hundred plus thousand dollars to two hundred sixty thousand  what offsets some of that is the fact that they're pitching enough to better shape that we have decided to to buy two buses instead of three this  year you know fifteen years ago our fleet was a mess and we really struggled with this but but good mcgee who runs our transportation system pretty much ensured us that that the fleet was a good enough shape that this was this was ok to do this is not an ongoing thing this is really a one year where we can afford to not do that otherwise we'll get back to where we were operations and maintenance there's a forty seven thousand dollar increase two point two percent two point zero two percent and basically that is that that is where this increased money comes from there's actually reduction in the browns river building budget and the electricity and fuel increased  what we actually spent last year number we didn't know exactly when we built the thirteen budget what all of our facility improvements in energy efficiency programs were going to do so we're using real numbers but that doesn't change a huge amount that the big changes really in the  staff cost c p s u budgetary increase of point three five percent and basically this has to do with the fact that there was a  increasing the technology assessment with increased tech support i mean as you know more and more we're using using technology there's going to be this is going to be an increasing line there's always going to be an increasing need as we're increasing the usage  of computers there's going to be increasing need for tech support so this is a busy slide but just starting at the top instructional programs you see the dollar change is a negative change three hundred seventy three thousand dollars so how did that happen we have a couple hundred thousand more in staff salaries if you look down to the health services lime the fifth line down you see a big increase there and what we're doing there is we're aligning ourselves with how every other district in the supervisory union does it and that is that they include their guidance services on their health health services line not on their instructional programs line so that movement of you know five hundred eighty six thousand dollars down there is why you end up with a net negative in the a structural problem other big numbers you know we did talk briefly about the special ed number the transportation services we talked about plan maintenance we talked about so that's you know that's really it and the bottom line in the bottom right hand corner  four point three one percent which is our budgetary increase on the revenue side we have an interest paid any change in our driver said reimbursement you see we get fourteen thousand dollars we spend four hundred eighty thousand dollars or so on driver's ed we get a small small piece of that back in reimbursements education spending revenue three point eight five percent the second line that's really what your taxes are based on the seventy thousand dollars from the federal jobs fund is that third line which goes away this year unfortunately the tech edge transfers up twenty two thousand dollars you know you don't get hit with the whole five students going there because it's a three year running average so a little less transportation paid as anticipated some more special education grants but not enough to offset the increase in costs a slight increase in dissipated intuition revenues and that's really think about it the other is high school completion money and what we rent space out when rents are space at other organizations and you can see that at the bottom line we've been very frugal this year and we actually have a uncommitted money to help reduce the increase in taxes doesn't change your budget but it reduces the increase in taxes so here's a historical perspective and this goes back to ten  years you really can't compare things before the zero eight zero nine year because then we made a major county change and and so anything before that is really not comparable to starting in that year we started to have our own tax  m u and they're on a separate tax rate for the elementary schools and so so really the only comparable numbers are the top five there and if you look at that you know over five years the total increase is six point nine percent or about one point four percent a year over over the last five years that's that's pretty small when you when you think about it i mean that you know they ministers have done a remarkable job  tell me if i'm wrong but i think that's what it turns out to be and you know it so the last five years three have been up to have been down but again your taxes aren't based on our budgets they're based on the education spending so that's anything that doesn't have another piece of revenue that offsets it so the education spending really is what we need to raise the tax in the top line you'll see for y fourteen a three point eight six increase percent increase in that again if you look at those numbers over the last five years and again we didn't even have this this term education spending before five years ago so there's nothing prior to that the compare it with but i mean if you look at that again it's more like one point two percent on on the education spending per year if you average it out over five years which i don't know anybody mean for taxes so the them out me and still homestead tax calculation remember you get them out maybe separate you get an elementary school rate and the combination of those determines your taxes so if we look at f y fourteen here we got three point eight percent increase in our education spending but our equalised pupils dropped two point three five percent so our education spending per equalize people went up more a three point eight six it went up six point three five percent so how it works is this if i were education spending for equalised pupil is twelve thousand nine hundred forty six dollars and the base set amount which we are guessing at this is just what the the director of the tax commissioner recommended but if that is what the legislature decides will be the base that amount we would be spending one hundred forty five point two two percent of the base at amount ok and then we have to state my tax rate and our m m u rate would be a hundred forty five point two two percent of the statewide tax rate now once again we're guessing at the ninety two cents state right tax rate you know has been one of smartly absolute frustrations of building these budgets is that you're working with guesses and so many areas so that would give us an equalized homestead tax rate for m m u of one dollar thirty three cents point one dollar thirty three point six zero cents and that would be a seven point five seven percent increase in the m m u tax that's across all the towns but of course every town doesn't have the same percentage of kids at m m u so we have to temper that by what percentage of kids from bolton are at m m u and it's sixty five percent huntington sixty one percent jericho sixty nine percent so forth so we take that percentage of kids in the m m u district we multiply that by the m m u rate and i give you the m m u rate which will then be added for that town which will then be added to the elementary school breaks for that and you see there's you know there's some range here but it's not it's not really you more angus and you were talking of you know pennies here and would it be that we were done then but we're not because we have this thing called a common level of appraisal and the idea behind a common level of appraisal is to the house and barnard that's where two hundred fifty thousand dollars should be taxed the same as a house  bolton that's worth two hundred fifty thousand dollars so this looks at the sales over the last three years in every town and it tells you how they sold compared to their praise a number below one hundred percent means that the value of your house has gone down is going now and if you look down the list just see that the only town last year where the prices went up was that were in huntington these are not this year's numbers we do not yet have this you know we we do this because it was a question a few years ago but the earlier we do this the less form anything is the less you know the less it can be really really trusted so anyway so you take your common level praise all because it's less and less stand up for market value that will raise the tax rate a little bit to get the same amount of revenue if your values lower you've got to have a higher tax rate to get the same amount of revenue in the end so looking at the m m u rate these are some pretty big numbers we haven't seen numbers like this for a while eleven point three percent increase  huntington five point one four percent jericho eight point nine two percent i mean it's and so i mean that but we really haven't looked at numbers like that for a while it's concerning it's going to be hard to sell this budget  so this was last year we had equalised homestead tax rate of eighty nine now it's up to to ninety two and then we add the common level of appraisal down here this year one dollar forty three point one cents or fifteen point eight fifteen point eight cent increase what does that mean he's for one hundred thousand dollars of house value  will pay one hundred fifty eight dollars more in taxes for each hundred thousand dollar value of your house unless your income sensitised he made any questions about that the deal with the reds were that the right and the legislature finally recognized that they cannot get school mergers to happen if there are winners and losers right off the bat and so with the red it gives everybody in the district a temporary reduction in the tax rates it's eight cents in the first year six cents in the second year four cents in the third year two cents in the fourth year so for four years there is some reduction in your tax rate had we approved read which we did not  be saving this year our taxes would be reduced by a hundred thirteen dollars per hundred thousand but you know i mean this is it is still possible that we will get a read the new law says that if the majority of district elementary districts in a supervisory union want to join the majority of districts want to join then they can do that and the others that don't want to heart forced to they can cannot join the  red but that they won't get all the tax savings here so property tax relief if your household income is ninety seven thousand up to ninety seven thousand dollars you can get property tax relief if it's below forty seven there's an additional calculation that will increase the adjustment or reduce your taxes further it appears on a credit on your next property tax bill in the forms come with your income tax return a look like this he said no i said well why don't you do that and he said well that would be charity and i watch here i said i know i make a lot more money than you and i pay a higher tax rate than you so me paying a higher tax rate you paying a lower tax rate is actually pretty he said no he said we need to really look at the this the same way i mean it's not charity it is the law it's just you know this is to a chest for the fact that the taxes are really high here but it was astounding and we see the same thing i can health care with where half of the uninsured folks in the state are how legible for state programs half of those people are eligible for programs that where there's no co pay or deductible miss really standing but they just won't sign up so anyway what would happen in jericho ideally if if you were income sensitize with your income fifty thousand dollars and house to house worth two hundred thousand dollars your taxes would be reduced from twenty eight sixty two to twelve seventy or nearly a sixteen hundred dollar reduction in your property taxes you know it really is a progressive tax so how are we doing on class sizes you see on the left here these are the middle schools current year next year and you see there any difference i mean schools changing maybe three kids into subpoenaed and high school class size see a little bit reduction in english classes a little bit of increase in the math classes and social studies that you know it's not not huge variations in class size how  statewide average and you'll see that all the way across with writing math reading we're doing not where we want to be necessarily i mean there are some numbers here which we're addressing but but definitely we're in the higher part of the stage s a t s again c s u is higher than the state which is higher than national average on all three areas of the s a t s graduation rates we're running at ninety one point nine in the state of vermont is a little bit lower dropout rates high dropout  rate is lower than the statewide average student teacher ratios remember i mentioned earlier we have a more a higher student teacher ratio or students for per teacher in the state averages of levon point nine five w sixteen point nine two compared to other schools in the area and some other schools that we get compared to just for other reasons by the d o e this student pupil you know we this is data from two thousand and eleven we hope before the end of this year to to get the data for two thousand and twelve so we did the budget presentations in february who have updated numbers here but what you see where we are where we stand here special ed numbers he saw that our special ed assessment was going up substantially special it spending was going up substantially i've mentioned several times that as we try to build a budget where we're guessing at numbers well this is guessing about what kids how many kids are going to need services of what kind a year and a half from now i mean who's going to move in who's going to move out of i mean we project a lot of things but this is far and away the least accurate i think of things we can project but what you'll see here is that we've needed you know we've kept up t this full time special educators pretty pretty constant recently but what's going up is the need for one the one aids in the classrooms and you know in that that's the benefit to the kid who needs the service but also benefits the whole classroom five zero for services so these are not special ed hello school but they're kids who need extra services and you can just see that that is just federally steadily climbing just put a lot more stress on the system and more expense so that's it you know i think our schools are doing well i think it's going to be hard budget to sell because of the level of the tax increases i think you have to work real hard at that  you know hope that you know over the last four years we've built up some goodwill with keeping that paid off the lid on really tight questions in the teacher's plans as they stand like any plan that existed before in this market to so small an individual group markets any any plan could be grandfathered ok there's nothing special for teachers or anybody else any one plant could be grandfathered but there are some really strict limitations on first of all it had to be in effect when the law was passed back in two thousand and ten and looking back to the time the affordable care act was passed if you're going to stay grandfathered you can't change things stange you can't change the teacher's percentage of what they pay of the health care premiums you can't change their car sharing your deductibles or co pays that sort of stuff i'm more than just about inflation and and this goes back to you know a couple years before anybody kind of realized this so the estimates are that before the changes even go into effect in two thousand and fourteen over eighty percent of plans will have failed the tests to stay qur'an father now how long the teachers plan can stay grandfathered this is really going to depend on you know on what happens with with with changes that you know it would be in our best fiscal interest for them to stay grandfathered because people coming out of these association markets like this this this kind of this kind of group where they're graded based on their own experience you know teachers have lower health costs than the general population so if you look across all of the the groups that will you know could be grandfathered if you look across these people who are rated on their own experience on average if they jump out of that into the exchange on average their rates are going up eighteen percent now there's no way in any negotiation we ever could garner that much that much more so it is fiscally in our best interest if they do stay  if they do stay grandfathered so that means it's the premium goes up one hundred dollars and they're paying you know fifteen percent of it you know they're going to they're going to pay fifteen more dollars you know th percentage is what will stay the same as long as they're grandfathered in we've had mixed opinions about what whether one of our plants will fit the grandfathering the plan was in place but none of the teachers have accepted it yet so we've had mixed legal opinions about that board the full board takes it refuse it over the holidays we get back together january third and that's when the board has to approve it could could things change then yeah you bet we've had years where we've made changes to t his new information comes comes up once the board approves it january third whatever we come out with that night then that's what's going to the voters and now mansfield we're starting to get ready for the whatever vacation this time between thanksgiving and winter break is always kind of hectic teachers are starting to gear up with the idea of midterms in mind coming up after the break in january on so a lot of teachers staying on their schedule winter sports have started i've talked and specifically i've talked to the girl's ice hockey team and everyone i've talked to it's been a positive experience so far with the merger with south burlington tough loss against rice at the season opener and the mansfield but going in with what specialists were saying what the outcome should be the fact that we lost by  comes to mind as our junior class for a piece of history is getting ready to go see wait get next week for a field trip which is right because that city's in the course yeah so i actually saw the movie previously it's going to be a fun break through before the winter break so it's a nice solution oh and what acts are starting which are always one of the more entertaining for a theater departments they're completely student run they we have directors that normally are upperclassmen that it's kind of like a fantasy draft where they get all the actors and they kind of get to pick and choose who they want for their specific scats a friend of all year round and i know a lot of them looks so bored being able to direct the themselves to what they're like to give the board a heads up with and i'm not sure if this will materialize but the a p language in composition course is doing an education unit we're reading essays and a lot of stories and for a project we're writing what we'd like to see it's kind of like a opinion based on the education system and some of them are pert jack to what they'd like to see change and our teacher is really advocating to have it be published either in a newspaper and i know there have been some people who have expressed some interest in presenting to the for their ideas and concepts again that this could not even come to the board because miss our teacher miss agnes and says that they need to be really well written and the idea needs to be actually valuable and not just issues that are discussed in the memo are affecting the amount means field right now a couple of those are the state continues to see a decline in its equalized pupils next year they're looking at about six hundred  seventy and that looks like because people are going to drop below ninety thousand which is i think something people would have never thought of even a decade ago would happen the property values are going down  this means that foia rates would generate less money and that's putting pressure on the tax rate george talked about to go up and it right now it really is an estimate coming from the commissioner of taxes statewide right now it looks like the budgets are going up approximately four point eight percent that compares to three percent last year now regionally at this time last year right around this time i thought was going to be one point seven and ended up being three percent or so and that was the shortage in the tax rate that george was was talking about  george also talked about the recommendation on the tax rate but those issues are impacting m m u and shinin east as a whole and i wanted to read one of the  paragraphs from the commissioner's report and talk a little bit about it commissioner said we respect local control but must acknowledge that within a state funding system the spending increases in our larger school districts reverberate loudly across the state the entire state benefits when these districts are doing everything possible to maximum maximize their economies of scale at the same time many communities value their smaller expensive schools again a matter of local control that with our fine funding mechanism is felt across the state we all benefit by being open to bold new education futures for our students ensuring both quality and affordability which was i think essential theme that you saw on one of the slides that your show i'm going to be discussing with the executive committee and with other issue boards talking about some bold  moves potentially that we can do around the fish and seize and structuring and bringing up to the executive committee again the potential of going back out and talking about governance and and seeing if people are interested so i thought that particular paragraph really illuminated a lot of what george was talking about tonight and some of the pressures that all vermont schools are  explaining all how all those pieces impact people's pocketbooks and i also was shocked and i know it's it didn't happen but i was shocked when i saw the impact that th the folks that are interested in bolton right now is going through a feasibility study taking a look at their school and what the priorities are for the community and what they feel like they can and can't afford so that'll be rolled out in the next month or so to the community you know be interesting to see what people have to say but i'm hoping we can engage in a positive just conversation around things that we can do to try to keep the cost of education affordable for everybody and continue to keep the quality where it is quality of education i can send the feeling like to people yeah and send the link to what's interesting is that when you and this is i think george goes along with the presentation is that when you look at the indicators and their methodology of how they did it some of their academic indicators are actually higher than two and three but you get dang for having a higher student teacher ratio so what that does which sounds a little bit perplexing but that's the way they do it and what i think that can show the community is that they're they're getting a good value for their money and you know i think that's something that we're going to probably look to put in our fire and really tell people about maybe make us do a slice as as well as the kneecap results and science for the middle schools last year that where they had i think browns river number rank highest proficiency as number the second highest and i think the camel's hump was number three is that accurate  think will be for to focus on those so that all of the other piece i want to share was that we do we have a sign tentative agreement with the teachers union and the green mountain n e a that i think i believe they're going to to die and called me she was just really want to and we spoke about this we're going to be looking to approve the bullying policy at our executive committee on monday night she asked me to get if people have feedback then to take the tour and share that with her and i will do that the bullying policy as it was presented to you is pretty perscribe and so you can be stricter but you can't really take anything out of it this is based on legislation that passed last year so i would say there's not a whole lot to talk about unless you want to make it more stringent currently is so people have questions or if they have anything that we they want me to share with diane i'll take that back we did have a conversation also about the weapons policy firearms and student conduct policies cover the weapons policy we also had an attorney give us their opinion and they also agreed that the weapons policy was really antiquated and the fire arms and student conduct policies were comedy bearings is the postcard we're going to send out about the annual report this way for us to save some money so just take a look at that i also have the from tonight until march fifth or budget timeline things that we're going to do so we used to mail everybody a copy of the annual report and and we had a lot of ways to coffees and a lot of wasted look dollars and so now we're we give folks an avenue to view it online  ask questions and if they do want to have a copy ridicule to the point that the target student is not able to fully access the school's programs how is that gauge does that so if you have a student that was for example being  sed cyber in a virtual way and they was impacting their ability to come into school and access their education the administration this is a new part of the law just investigate that and make a determination as to whether  it is intimidating them or humiliating them to a point where they can't participate in school but how is that i'm just trying to figure out how that's measured able to participate in school if kids  say that is very difficult to manage and there was a lot of discussion about that at the legislative level just talking about the difficulty in trying to manage that because we don't control what happens twenty four seven everywhere and so will do we're going to follow our policy and our procedures and do the best we can the actual rate if the actual rate differs either more or less than three percent then the district refunds or tries to collect the additional percentage i've asked the board to twelve at eleven thousand five hundred fifteen dollars