and representations of each of the elementary boards that will be part of the unified school district in attempt to present a recommended budget where at least some turning to recommendations for consideration by the new unified school board which all right hearing now and the next item on the agenda i think is for us to go to the presentations and summaries of what we have today and i guess i'll turn that over to bob and john just one quick comment before bob's going to walk through the summary sheets for each elementary district and mount mansfield union school district that we prepared really over the last three months so local elementary standing boards and the mou means he'll finance committee looked at the needs of the school looked at enrollment and they prepared these recommendations for this greater group to take a look at great if you have copies of the  increase and that's including the preschool partnerships increase without the universal preschool would actually be a dream decrease of seventy five hundred dollars is nine thousand dollars in the budget for preschool just a couple of quick notes some of the things that two to note driving what little increase there is there's an addition of tables for the cafeteria a new phone system and one of the things to note is the severance package that was put together and in fiscal year thirteen and that was paid out over three next up is jericho jericho a town jerkers looking at a seven point five percent increase on alpha preschool four point three seven percent increase hundred twenty nine thousand dollars was added for the universal preschool some of the big drivers for jericho is the preschool number itself hundred twenty nine thousand also health care coverage changes  of four point five percent without the preschool would be an increase of two point three six total edition for universal preschool ninety nine thousand dollars representing about thirty three partnerships of note at richmond that there was a bond retirement at richmond so their debt service drop considerably richmond is also contributing from the general fund to cover their food service deficit that was included in the budget about twenty twenty six thousand just one item that i want to mention that's common to all the towns in regards to transportation just a reminder that we in it is it is i just wanted to it's a common thread through all the towns in addition just briefly richmond also had some health care coverage changes contributed towards the underhill town looking at three quarters of a percent increase without the preschool be a decrease in the budget of a quarter percent some of the items that are included in the budget added fifty one hundred dollars for security doors added back the equipment about twenty five twenty six hundred dollars that had been in the budget in prior years and was cut in fiscal year fifteen so that was restored there was a one f t e reduction in teaching staff and had fifteen hundred dollars for substitute in secretarial services and also operational maintenance plant had some budget dollars added for a substitute that was a small food service deficit that they're covering from the general fund in fiscal year sixteen of about fifteen hundred dollars the budget but it was offset by carryforward or the general fund making good on deficit in food service forty thousand was added for capital or building improvements that and also health care coverage is impacting this budget as well and we have one f t reduction in teaching positions and again there we had some of the state indicating on november twenty sixth the day before thanksgiving that they were delaying the implementation of pre k by ear so at that point in time we took a look at the budgets that had been already approved and originally in the budget that was reduced proximately and half to the fifty four thousand dollars that i represented on the sheet here ok then i just want to walk you through quickly the modified assumption yeah sure modified assumptions list  is broken into and century four categories at the top of it we just wanted to put the pre k since that was a large number and affected everybody i just wanted that right up there at the top so you can the preschool is less costly than secondary and elementary school they have a weight of point four six one hundred nine and romans we estimated that it would be quite to fifty most situations what your overall role in it would be and then we look at just basic capacity we also have considered the fact that if you should be conservative in your estimate because you don't wan related to one school district but by the actions of school districts getting together in the case of browns river and underhill id making taking the steps to share food service and custodial staff after the merger actions that are listed there we have budget actions section and that is comprised of any reductions that were taken into the individual school district budgets any restorations of items cut in fiscal year fifteen added back in any updates that occurred based on actual so if we knew we had some information about electricity or heating costs we would reflect that and  don't have in front of me i don't know if there's anything else in there that under the updating or was there another section blind oh it's really good you know ok i had two sections on updating the budget expense and revenue side additions to the budget that's the one i couldn't remember so those are the items that were added they were new items to the budget  that were included in the various school districts and you can see how they didn't fight which schools that had that particular item added and finally at the bottom i have kind of a catchall some little notes  talking about their entire retirement incentive payout ending in fiscal year fifteen so there were some savings to some schools in particular amount mansfield union high school and browns were middle school with  big benefits of that program ending salary increase estimated three percent and we did get confirmation of health care final number four point five percent mentioned previously that was  and eligible according to our rules but as a result of the affordable healthcare act we had some dollars they had to go into the budget to cover those staff and as mentioned change to health care coverage people moving from one possibly two reduction in the number of kindergarten teachers in those three schools and that we decided to make it show up here we understand that the administration and  the parents involved may decide where that where those reductions might be so we might not have the reductions at the place where we were assuming that there will be but  the merger dudu did allow those three schools of the north to talk about having one problem probably two teachers next year and just just to say the same thing again differently your district has to this is not the modified but the high school into middle school also looking at a two point four four percent increase over fiscal year fifteen some of the actions taken  position there was a vacant position as far as principal went that was i guess reconfigured so that some of the tasks were assigned elsewhere so that's going to continue in fiscal year sixteen so that did contribute to some savings on that budget point as well it's career and technical education we had an increase in the tuition rate of student count down slightly so they did increase  that line by about eighty seven thousand dollars and those are pretty much the highlights on the expense and on the revenue side to wishin revenue purchases as some of the hardware purchases are actually end up in direct instructional services as well as in the library media ok so then the modified union budget two point nine four percent increase in the combined budget one point two million dollar increase over the prior fiscal year without the expenditures for preschool that would be reduced we would just see an increase of two hundred ninety two point one nine percent over fiscal year fifteen pretty much all the items that i've mentioned as far as highlights in the towns in that free and many school district reflected in these numbers and some will you know have offsetting a fax so that you'll see different numbers here in the combined project so then it take a look at expenditures and this case of separate out the pre k additions we are looking to figure out what our education spending revenue is so we will take out the total estimated revenue in this case since we looking just at the merged entity we're going to take out the portion of m m u five through twelve that belongs to huntington  and we will take that out of the education spending revenue and that is the number that we will then divide by our equalize pupil in this case it's going to include a fifty point one for attributable to the preschool and that will give us of fourteen and twenty this material here in the box is just to check to see if we're over or under the spending threshold we are under so we can pretty can ignore it thank you as a one point five six six eight rate we then apply take out the eight cent incentive  bit so i have listed here on on the left most in the prior year equalize rate the actual rate this information i got from the tax department and then i took a look at the incentive rate and subtracted out the prior year rate to see just how much of a difference there was between the two and the point of this column is to see how much of the five percent cap was going to affect these tax rates and you can see pretty easily that this is a huge number here walton and that one will most likely be capped and that that was the case so bolton could not move all the way to the merged tax rate they could only go the five percent distant distance from this figure which it was was equal to one point six three zero four however all the other schools were rate and the prior year actually so you can see that we have some good decreases except for underhill where there was an increase if you look at the priory actuals you can see that under underhill had the lowest equalized rate of all the schools but if we look at here in this box what would have happened had each town not merged what would their tax rate have been without fiscal year sixteen rate would have been based upon the budget said i've shown and then taking the difference between the two you can see at this point now everybody has a reduction versus their fiscal year fifteen tax rate it's with the point but maybe if we uses this shirt again the right color on there that doesn't have a label to it might show the you know the rate that the tax rate would have gone up won't be out until next week but we're pretty much well finished as far as we're concerned so we'll see on the next one if we take the pre k out the tax rate goes up  so the impact without the pre k you can see there are more numbers that are not red so they're not reductions on this side of the tax sheet still having  better results you know reductions overall versus if they if there was no merger and i'm just going to jump to the comparison she and this takes the tax calculation with and without the pre k putting them side by side and you can see that the difference is going to be about a two percent drop with the pre k able to get a full benefit of the a t m in the tax rate and that helps reduce our tax rate and ends up shifting some of the cost to the end fund so that we get more from the end fund for these rolling and that's why we go down the two cents we were using the same base set amount and stay away tax rate for those two scenarios correct so that we should have a different number depending on whether we do pre k because our decision to do pre k is not going to be sufficient to affect the state so you may make an argument that we should be having instead of taking the stage recommended number that we ought to have a higher number because many other school districts are likely to make a decision similar ours and require another penny here but it should be constant  them and i think since we don't have any i think our decision you know barring any other information will be similar to other districts where we're not making this anything different  i just wanted to point out one thing because bolton is affected by the cap they don't see any change in their  ok so i just wanted to bring up the huntington tax cheat just to show you how the calculation is going to just really continue as it was before i just need to go quickly back to want this one so normally if it was just theme high school into middle schools the five through twelve i'm representing here just the budget that belongs to that five to twelve grouping  then i would take out the revenue associated with me as well in school district to get to the spending figure i would then divide it by the equalize pupils for five to twelve proved to come up with a spending pretty cool eyes pupil run through the usual calculation see if there's a spending threshold issue does not apply the base a manhunt and end up getting a  skeel union tax rate and for huntington this would be the m m u component that we get married up with the local component in huntington when we go back to huntington respective tax rates in order to get the program homestead rate and we get a rate of one point five four zero eight for huntington made up to these two  can see the increase after the c l a what it will what what what it looks like in the last you know want to share with you is just it's history information historical pupil decreases but they do lag equalize pupil is usually based upon the prior to me year so i put in the columns here that feed into these equalized pupil numbers there are some other calculations that are dying it's not strictly an average of these two years is a poverty factor that's included this is an english language factory included just the people number  also a state wide equalization factor that is also quite so it does come out lower than just your average or to the color coding here reads from left to right it shows green the highest  equalized pupil for that particular school red being the lowest here so you can see the trend is down for most schools jericho is is bucking the trend having the highest equalize pupils in fiscal year sixteen over the last four years overall you can see that the trend is down in what the year year change is in total elementary and secondary so we're definitely seeing the effects of dropping  and that was the last year i wanted to share with everyone at this point changing the in prevention implementation timeline for act one sixty six which is universal preschool but they said it is full and the implementation can be delayed until sixteen seventeen school districts can offer preschool interact sixty two which is what we've been doing for the last several years or they can move forward to that one sixty six which is universal preschool bob showed you a couple different models we showed you what some of the tax department of children and families can't assure that the cost estimates are accurate so the estimates that we've presented they're saying they can't assure they're accurate what that exactly means elementary boards talked about the school and decided to add it in to their budgets and bring it as a recommendation tonight for you folks to consider and talk about i think everybody else to be sure so what are some of the implications we can encounter estimated preschool students in our a t m and in our   for act one sixty six i'm not even sure exactly what they would look like i wouldn't even want to guess but i would say that there are two pieces that could change the amount about voucher which would if you if were our estimates are incorrect and we underestimate pre k hell we're likely to run a deficit and if we a rack sixty two we designate the actual amount you're going to spend in the number of slots so it's a combination of school based programs and some very defined preschool openings or slots  dollars to where is an act one sixty six we've done some work to try to get census numbers but it's an estimate and everything here is based on one sixty six what we understand conservative in our estimate because you know we don't want to be here you know be read better to underestimate your pre k town and then be able to get you know really involved in your tax free or more education revenue in the next year john if we if we do under estimate which means we have more pre k than we've planned where's the cost to come out of our current year budget  also be able to hear if they would reconcile your a t m and you get more in spending revenue taking more money from the ad fun and last dollars that you have to generate locally from tax focused a little bit or more on the finances because you know universal preschool quality preschool is good polls it's a good program you know there's a ton of empirical data and longitudinal research that says over and over and over again that when you are able to provide quality preschool for students they are more they're healthier there's less incarceration less  as a policy matter as a programming educational programming matter i think the evidence is clear that this is a has a very good for communities and for children that's why we you know focused more for you folks tonight on what are the good financial implications but clearly the educational benefits are there and it's a it is over and over again  been shown to be a very very strong investment and is there any and you've been able to analyze whether the grant which we just read about in the media last week or so whether that's going to have any nice like to be a sub green tea and a new preschool expansion brain what that does is it provides funding so that economically disadvantaged students can get a full day program school districts are still obligated to pay the ten hours per week but what it does is it provides additional funds so that the some of our most at risk children  able to get a fall the program you an estimate  some school based programs and we did get there early and grant that opened up some slots and in richmond we had some private partnerships as well we do have some triply programs we have a of how many kids would participate in this i mean obviously some people have their kids already in some preschool programs that they're probably not going to change them because it's only ten hours a week have made still have to supplement or argue with another preschool program of some sort did you know was it strictly how many of you would take advantage of you know how many families and how many children therefore would take advantage of this program in your house or was it proposed some of the detail that we used you know that was based on some survey results and some of that was based on the fact  you know we really cut our overall estimate in half which was took a look at you know what are the potential over all eligible students that could participate preschool so with the number that you were you're using under yes we could be potentially we could be way low we could be i think we could be low i don't think we would be way low because that really is about maybe a little over fifty percent of all the folks that would be eligible who are families so i think that's a reasonable estimate radius and a lot of opportunities for quality pre k even those scenarios only sixty five percent of the ill people families and children took advantage of it we factored in any any additional transportation costs associated with this or not no i don't i don't think we would have any additional and part of that is because some of these are private partnerships most of them so you know w providing necessarily transportation to somebody that took advantage of this may change them you know it may be that some part of the ministry rule obey and they do have criteria that the state has laid out that says they have to have a certain amount stars to be accredited and that will be that would be done through the state of vermont one they have to get a license so they have to have space it has to meet certain requirements and then one of the other key requirements is that they the criteria and a license for preschool which is different than childcare the childcare center right and they are lessons teacher and they have the correct  for that's a good question i think because people would be really concerned that the state money to go force and that they would change something that could have a negative impact on programming or budgets so i think that is the main concern that we we don't know what those administrative rules really need and when the staples back in say they're going to take a that was my big concern that they would do something that would have a negative influence fluence on students number one children but number two not that they would mean to but when you start changing what some of the fundamental currents of the law are or what some of the ministry rules are you could do that unintended but it certainly could and there's a certain level but your tax rate is suppressed and i think what will happen is people are starting to say you know talk about that and say that doesn't probably make sense and i'm assuming that they were change i mean i guess the state could come out in april and say the the districts that are going to be implementing act one sixty six or earlier rate is this in the districts that are courageous that we don't know what they do or they could change the that's it's going to be what's in the best interest for the education of kids well why don't we then thank you why don't we just open the door to a general discussion of what your pleasure is with this with this draft budget that we have now obviously the quality across the five elementary schools to understand where they are in this budget not compared to last year book compared to one another and it doesn't come across in how the administration is sharing information you know what's the student to teacher ratio and teach of the elementary schools what's the instructional cost per student at each of the elementary schools  of course when you look at it they're not all the same you know you would expect bolton has won the lowest construction cost per people because they've been under such pressure and you know get their budget down  much more expensive so i think student teacher ratio is one thing student for education cost is that right different because the pay the teachers so different but on being able to say that's why it's different here versus there you know are we have we targeted a similar student teacher ratio when we could you know i trust that we did because the same administration work with each board but it's probably not the same so having that information available would be the first step and then analyzing it and say you know where we do have some gaps or me should another one district maybe this school right here needs to have you know for you know then in terms of the cost per student i mean also you know if you've got a more experienced teaching staff more than likely you're probably going to have oh probably a better quality education just because i mean not guarantee that you're you know if you get more experienced teachers i think you're going to have a better education experience for the kids because they know how to deal with different situations but but i think you know you know the student teacher student ratio cost per student all those things will kind of even out as time progresses you know depending of course that you know on i mean maybe certain teachers are really happy with the elementary schools that they're around and they have no  to leave or move in so that's going to continue to keep that cost high but you know that's just the variances within you know the system you get a large number students and then a large number of versus like camels have around forever already based on need at the school it's great so there will be education opportunities differences among elementary schools based and also i think you're right that we do need to understand what they are and right i think that's beyond our purview well so but this is a recommendation that's going to the new board in the new where he has to use this to make its decision in the market say ok great but start over because we don't have elementary board standing elementary boards was to analyze their budget and prepare a budget they felt they could recommend in this board based on the needs of the school current staffing teacher student teacher ratios so they they studied these budgets for three months and what you see is the recommendation that they come up with it or pop up within their we didn't know then they are within their school configuration gently ask so then we have to get there's some things that have to happen we've got to get information to for town or and so they need that really at the latest the second week of january so they it sounds like to the time the notion of doing that equality assessment and with an attempt to level up or whatever the right term there is this is out of the  other question but i'm wondering if we should budget some you know money which we haven't decided how exactly would be used but could be applied to that activity next year just so you know because we know actual work well welcome to you know just trying to bend it in a way that would get us closer on the same page but we may not know exactly what it's going to be when we actually put the budget out there oh i thought i've misunderstood i think you meant add money to the budget to do that sort of analysis but that's the first step short that i would say we don't need that what we would need is for the new board to say here  priorities which one of them could be to balance and make it make sure there's equity or if it's technology if it's maintenance if it's you know instruction but we're not going to save money doing that activity in my in my opinion if we're trying to level out we're not saving money so we should have some money there to do that work th the target come back with a recommendation for all the hard work that everybody has done all the committees the administration it's obvious that people have done a lot of hard work to put this budget together and i also think it's it's a very prudent budget i notice that the overall increase is a two point nine four percent increase including a new program an expanded preschool program without that it would be a two point one four percent increase and so i'm pleased that the budget writers did not say to themselves oh we've got tax incentives let's spend see any of that here which i think it's a great tribute to the folks who did this and i also think it provides a solid foundation we're taking this budget to the voters and securing their approval if you remember in the last budget cycle we also took to the voters that we thought were very frugal and we had many of them fail and of course nobody knows for sure why they felt but there is there is at least a theory that they failed because the overall statewide property tax system led many voters to some protest at least on the first round that may happen again we don't know but i think we have to as leaders think of think duracell's that we need to present budgets that we can defend in the face of that kind of kind of concern i share kevin's conser about the need for us to provide equal quality programs to our elementary students where perhaps i would take a different approach to solving that underlying concern is i would say given the time frame i think it's too compressed for us to try and rejigger all of those programs and i also believe strongly that it ought not to be simply an exercise of spending more money in each of the elementary schools that doesn't quite have the quality i think one of the things that we owe our taxpayers in the circumstances to say we've looked not just equalize of the programs through new spending but we've looked at them through reallocating resources and one of the things that i know from speaking with the administration is that we in this first year we don't have enough time to capture all the savings that emerge school district allows us to capture next year will be a different story and i don't know whether we can fully capture those savings that year but we'll have we'll have a much better opportunity to do that we'll have had operational experience under a belt we'll have starting in the summer i'm sure that will be a priority we're ministration to look at that and part of what i hope they will look at is how delete equalize programs to an adequate level in as cost effective manner as possible that just instead of just appropriating more money than we reassign resources to achieve that goal so what i would be prepared to vote for as a committee member is a resolution that that recommends this budget to the modified unified school board and that we make sure as board members that we're going to six of us are going to be board members and the rest of us i hope you're going to disappear into the into never never coming to these meetings and advising people what to do i think i hope that all of us will say look part of the project for that next board is to work hard to see if they can find ways to improve that point nine four percent increase there a second second and a discussion down right yes because i hear oh it what you're saying there about reallocation makes sense but but i would just say that our smaller school districts have you know cut some programs to cost money in order to get budgets approved in the last couple of years and it would be great if we could get those programs back in sooner than later and you know if we can look to transfer some of those savings even next year's budget versus realize them think that would be good and i'm sure that ministration can say here that you know here air the elementary school programs that would be the first ones to come back in  the discussion on the motion so i guess i'm just happy i just feel like i'm concerned about bottom line numbers going to taxpayers and what it looks like and i know we have sort of maybe an idea with a couple of different scenarios and yeah i mean it's like i said if we have to go back once we have the rest of those numbers say ok so new information for me having looked at i mean granted it's a big part of the friendship and with that but it's still a lot of new information i don't know that i could answer questions to voters to say yeah this makes sense and this is why this makes sense or doesn't because i feel it's too much new district so that's my i'm i'm as comfortable as i can deal with all the information in front of me and i'd be comfortable recommending it but i probably need a tutorial so i can answer questions with a lot of work to do to make sure we and this is not been an easy process but i you know compared to just the regular years trying to put budgets together to add on the modified union well it's whether we're preschool or not preschool and i really just want to echo what michael said and the rest here thank you so much for this because i think without your explanations and stuff i you know i wouldn't be able to go out and explain this to my  be there be there so