five pounds six schools and there are twelve board members who sit on the c b s t board we have about thirty eight hundred kids about two thirds of those are in kate a third are in nine through twelve and we  have about four hundred fifteen teachers that we have in the district the piece of of one of the biggest focuses of the board is our mission and that's really easy to say it's harder to make sure that all your work that you do aligned aligns towards our mission but our goal at the end of of our k twelve experience for kids is to develop citizens who learn think contribute live and pursue excellence and this really does drive everything we do and it has the huge role in how we develop the budget  one of the goals of the board is to really involve every piece of the c v s to community whether it's teachers staff community members they all provide a sim put as we  together the board and we really wanted to thank everyone for all of the work it is not an easy process to go through and just a special shout out to rick detweiler who was our community budget buddy who came to all of our budget meetings and provided some invaluable help as we crafted the budget so in roland in our school when i already said that we have about thirty five hundred students pretty much we have stable in rome and i mean the slide shows that there's a little bit of a decline but that's not the whole story the decline there is an actual numbers when we look at equalized pupils which is the way that we are funded in vermont are equalized people numbers have gone up in the last two or three years each year so i think it's also a factor of how we we forecast our people count for next year fairly conservatively it's pretty easy to say the first graders are going to come second graders fifth graders going to come sixth graders gets a little trickier because we also say the eighth graders are going to go to the high school as ninth graders and we tend to pick up kids at that juncture there is kids that used to come to see of you who went to other schools who also have school choice and also the kindergarden numbers don't we have a difficult time forecasting kindergarten incoming kindergartners so we're a little conservative on  slide if you want to move ahead the next slide shows what that looks like in each town and one of the real advantages of the merger is that if we have more kids at a particular grade level there is an opportunity for parents to choose to send their kids to another district so it's all part of one district we do have a you know a bit of school choice requests made for a number of different reasons but so when we look at that whole big number it doesn't really tell the story about what's happening at each town and actually at each grade level and we monitor that a lot as jean said that's really one of the key parts of the work that we do during the budgeting process both for in terms of you know the revenue that we're going to get but also to determine what class size and that kind of thing and there are the averages so i just was talking about class size so we adhere to the education quality standards and that says that in k through two our class sizes on the average should be under twenty and three through eight should be under twenty five we go through a whole process starting in may in a late september october with the principals in each of the buildings to roll up the numbers at all the all the grades except for kindergarten and ninth grade and see what that's looking like and it's based on that that we determine how many teachers we need in each school and so we know very early if we're going to be moving things around so for example this year we know that we need an additional two teachers in one of our schools we also know that we have a couple schools that we can reduce the teacher so and one thing we didn't have on here is we just really just talking about the kates and of course we have quality standards at the high school but they get much more complicated  keep track of and so the quality stands at the high school and more about how many students a teacher is responsible for across the entire what could be five six seven sections lights five or six sections and there are too many sex too many over twenty five sections in this particular content area that then results in we need to add a position there so it's all connected to you know what's the learning opportunity for kids that we want to create and how many teachers does that take that's a little added a few degrees but i would say that's probably where the board spent most of its energy this round was on equitable class sizes equitable not just between our towns or between our grades but between math and it's high school math and we had we had teachers in math and history in social studies because of the class sizes were just getting too b so one of the big benefits of being a consolidated district this is our second year that we've been afforded is relatively stable and roman and so it allows us to look at our budget over a five year kind of like project out five years where we see what we were going to where we're going to be and it allows the board to set two types of goals we have the qualitative goals which basically says to the administration we need to meet or exceed the educational quality standards we need to make sure that we're achieving our mission and our vision we want to make sure that our key initiatives like proficiency based learning and our personalized learning and proficiency based learning are we continue with those who want to make sure that we get the community input all of those qualitative goals we give to the administration but being consolidated also allows us to say we have a quantitative goal and we don't want you to exceed this year was two point six percent and that's not just a number that we pull out of thin air it's based on the c p i and the new england economic plan which is more of a educational what is the consumer price index so we kind of balance those t number so those were goals that we that we presented this year and for the next four years looking out we come to know in the administration knows well no one really knows what the economy is going to do what kind of generally have an idea of where the budget is going to grow or shrink i think it's important to say that the board says to the administration here is what we hope you can come in on go do that work and come back and let us know whether you're able to do that and realize the qualitative goals that she talked about so fortunately in the last two years we've been able to do that with not having it's an important piece to like have in mind that it's possible that some year we would come and say you know we can come in at two point six percent but we can't do a b and c that we know is connected to the board's mission and the values that the board has articulate budget work happens here around i'm the one who has to put this light in there i think it is really i think it's really easy for people to imagine that the crunch that happens between november and march whatever the date is or for the board and of january and some date certain numbers need to get in is when is the only time that we talk about this stuff and in fact you know we were always talking about like what does year around budgeting look like and if you know like maybe we're not doing the number crunching but even before our next year's budget is is passed well i'm meeting with principals individual principals and my monthly go around to says last month there i can't tell you how many times i wrote year around budgeting because they're already thinking about beyond next year and their two year plans for ok well we have these resources this year but if we were to and i think that the board does that to you know we'll have a full day work day in at the end of may that the board will say here are our goals are these still our goals do we need to tweak one do we need to you know change it whatever that becomes my work plan and then that plays into all the work that i do with the principals so i think it's important for the public to realize that it's not like we seclude ourselves for a couple months do all of this number crunching and say please give us this money and then after that we took that away and we go along our merry business it really is all connected and so when you're doing that planning you planning for more than just one year out oh yes sometimes are way way out we don't know if we'll get there and it could be we're going to take like a different path once we get like halfway down the the road or even sooner but yeah i think people are always imagining what could be and i think it allows for a more thoughtful solution to a question so the board could be in a meeting at the end of november and say i heard about this great program at another school how c not doing it we should do it and instead of just saying ok well give me twenty four hours to go find some numbers to add to the budget you know we have an awful time to say that's an intriguing idea we haven't given that enough thought let's put that on the agenda for the spring to have a really thoughtful discussion about it and see what the plan would look like and they will include it in the next year's budget and if it's something that's obviously gravy or something that we think is really important then sometimes we'll get a little  disproves why or why not these changes need to be made as opposed to just a reaction oh that sounds like a great idea into the numbers so i didn't really represent it so much sure i mean we started the budget in october but again it's year round budgeting but this is this is a budget that  represents a lot of work and meets all of our goals not only does it meet our goals it meets or exceeds the kind of standards that the tax commissioner put out in his letter in december so our overall budget is up two point seven percent it was predicted in december that statewide the school budgets would increase by over three point three percent so we're coming in below that and then the big piece of the piece that drives the the tax rate in our towns is the cost per equalize people which is a two percent increase over last year which is well below the four point one percent that the tax machine are asked us to to come in at benefits we do have contractual obligations with our over a thousand employees we have four hundred fifteen teachers we have over a thousand employees so that's that's the biggest driver of that we have some increases in the special needs kids we always want to make sure that we're treating those kids with what they need to succeed and that that can change your year depending on the population that comes to us but our special ed budget at least four more year is built bottoms up our special ed directors get together and do a thorough job of really figuring out what our kids in our system are going to need and that's what we put into the budget so this year that's up a bit operations maintenance the care of all of our our six buildings and fuel costs and then everything else is about three hundred thousand dollars last minute see down there consolidation savings we've been tracking the the money that we've saved since we became a consolidated district and some of those are very easy to explain like we only need to have one financial at it instead of seven so that certainly saves the money we've had the opportunity in some of our essential services like maintenance and operations where we've we're now sharing resources across multiple schools instead of each school having to have its own electricians that kind of thing so that there's some real hard things you can you can grab onto then there's also just the i'd say the fat full discipline of having all the money in one place to make decisions that are it's very transparent and very open and the staffing costs that someone retires and is replaced by a new teacher we know exactly what that number is and we can show it to the board and the board can decide well let's that back to taxpayers or let's you know reinvest that somewhere else where before with multiple school systems you know one teacher retires the principal may decide been really wanting to do this program and they just reinvest it now it's not that that was ever wrong but now by having it all in one place you can really make some real strong priority decisions that's a really good idea but this sort of three things are in line ahead of it or this is the right time to take that savings or for example in the last two years last year and in the current budget we have a position held out anticipating that our kindergarten numbers might be higher and one school or another because we really don't know what those numbers are in the past each of the districts would have held out that money and then you've got that money and so of course there are always a million things that you can do to make it better every one of us sitting here can think of all of those things but now we have one and now we're monitoring that every time i meet with the principals and now i know that i'm asking what do the kindergarten registrations look like now so that we start thinking about that will we even need to use that money sell and what happens if that money is what was the point that gene was making before then there's a decision of the board makes that i we're going to decide where to apply it next year as fun balance to bring down the tax rate so the this is a little complicated this is sort of the explanation of how we get between all of our numbers to a tax rate they can see the top line there is the budget number you've just seen the way the state funding formula works that would be seventy eight million is what we are actually intending to spend and we subtract local revenues and a part of that are state revenues that come to us such as special ed reimbursements of twelve million dollars you subtract that and it's what they call net and spending  talking about are equal as people count you saw on the other side that we have thirty eight fifteen three thousand eight hundred fifteen students that magically turns into forty one forty three and when you do the equalized people count that is the state calculation that's given to us and it  essentially the people count essentially what it does is it accounts for children in poverty or children who are english language learners and it is a way of making sure that that communities that have students at those kind of needs have the resources they need to address those needs so the number magically changes and then you take your net and spending by that divided by that number and that's how you get to the sixteen thousand and seventy one then there is a state y number that comes out of that from the tax commissioner in december and it's essentially at a very simplistic view and i think all three of us i'm trying to untangle this but what the best way that the easiest way to explain it is the tax commissioner's estimating because this is an estimate what if if the tax rate property tax rate was one dollar how much could you afford to spend on each student in the state and that's the ten sixty six our number at sixteen thousand is one hundred  fifty one percent of that yield which makes our tax rate a dollar fifty one it's it's there are a lot of things that go into funding education in the state sales tax people pay on income tax second home rates are different and then homes and property right it's very complicating system but simplistically the other one that we tended to zero in on is this the homestead property tax rate which is what if you own a house the rate that you'll pay  of the dollar fifty one because when we consolidated the state was offering and they had it when you call an incentive it's a transition tax of transition benefit but essentially it's an incentive it started out we had a ten cents off the tax rate the first year eight cents this year next year will be six cents so that means we get to subtract six cents from the tax rate so we're at a dollar forty five tax rate which is actually down a penny your year and it seems kind of backwards because actually the yield the tax rates will be finalized until after all of the budgets are approved because the legislature needs to know how much it needs to break in taxes to fund all of the budgets which you don't know until the budgets are passed so this is our but we just pointed out on that slide that that spending per equalize people is pretty much right at the middle in the state where  so i said priest c l a that's common level of appraisal that's the state's calculation it does in order to make sure that that the property estate where property taxes fair between the towns and that we're all assessing our our properties at a fair market value so there's a different that's different by every town and that's a little complicated for our towns because we would all love if we could just go to all of our tax payers and say it's a dollar forty five but because towns still appraise at different times in different ways they the state looks at each town separately and compares how close is are your prey's values to your market values they come up with the calculation and that changes and now you see that everybody's got a slightly different tax rate i just want to point out that the will  properties you can have a big sale that's just an outlier and throws all the numbers often but that the states has been in the past very responsive to our towns who have opted to challenge that number so they're hopefully there now will come down little bit and then we can say across the board that almost everybody essentially the same tax rate across the board they actually put the language in you just plug in your numbers and basically is just asking voters to approve our budget and letting people know what our per equalised people cost is in greece or decrease in that cost from  like we had talked to you were asking what do you have what happens if you have that extra money well if we can't use that money it's our money it's taxpayers money so if we do want to use it we have to go back to the voters and ask them to use it and basically this allows us more asking to take five hundred thousand dollars of our fund balance and apply it towards revenue which if you remember back in that tax calculation helps to reduce your overall spending and we're asking to take a half a million dollars and apply it towards that then we're asking to take a million dollars out of our fund balance and put it into our construction fund we have a pretty lengthy and detailed five year capital plan capital improvement plan and if we can take a million of is our our our reserve fund too so we do we don't want that to go below a million dollars so we do and it just be a little bit conservative and making sure that we have the money in case we need it for an emergency of some kind and you know it's part of your five year pla fleet at eighty eight years which sounds that's and sounds old but if it's the averages eight we have sixteen year old buses on the road for the it's just our normal replacement rate of the town meeting election forums as i said town meeting day is on march fifth but early voting is open now is open now so there's no need to wait and you can join us on march fifth at seven pm for our election results show which will be covering a large part of changing county so thank you everybody for coming in today