good evening everybody i believe it's six thirty eastern that's our start time that's of all the meeting to order we certainly welcome you here i'm john will rue the chair of the underhill central school board i would like to introduce some other people that are sitting up here at the far end is michael marks he's a member of the richmond of the moment field school board and he lives in richmond that's where that richmond comes from and he was  the merger committee and you wrote secor is a member of the under health board undergo metry school board and he was the representative from the school board to the merger committee sitting next to and over here is making her from huntington she was a member of the huntington school board and was also a member of the study committee of the merger study committee tony district to provide information about that so that the voters of underhill will have an idea what to vote for how to make their decisions and we know that we're not necessarily presenting picture tonight in part because we don't know what each of the presenters are going to say but you will at least have some written information that you can take from here and you will have some information that each of the presenters give you as you listen to them and there will be an opportunity for questions and comments to the presenters as we move through them i think you have the schedule that that shows that we're going to have presenters a couple presenters first with without interruption and then after their time is up there will be a twenty minute block for up to twenty minutes for questions and comments directed to those presenters other people sitting at the table up here may also respond if they want the presenters it it may happen that for some questions or comments that they don't choose to respond and that's fine too we'll recognize the people up here that they want to if they want to respond they'll put their hand up to after a comment or question has been given and they can respond at that point the vote that comes up in ember fourth may be one of the more important votes that has occurred for quite some time in the school district or it may be just a little bump in a row different people have different opinions about it or maybe someplace in between that you'll note on our schedule that we have blocked out time periods for presentations and questions and answers and tony has a watch on and he's going to be our time keeper and try to keep it so so that we can get through this  whole block of presentations and questions and comments in a reasonable amount of time yes thank you very much our first presenter will be michael marks from the commentary merger committe and sixty six voting members to run six elementary schools two medical schools one high school and one central or about fifteen thousand residents and a total of about twenty five hundred at the mansell school district has been in place now for about fifty years this is what motivates us to recommend a change if you're having trouble following this that is the administrative superintendent now the school principals and the now teachers and support staff and it's a fundamental concern that we have as a committee that that structure doesn't work for students doesn't work river this is an effort that's been ongoing for a long period of time some people think this is a new enterprise and we started working on this for years and there was a study there were twelve public meetings there were seven community forums and there was a we had a total of fifteen public meetings if you go to our web site you will see that we have studied a lot of data lot of information a lot of reports some people who observe that we did not consider a wide range of data  perspective of students we came to the conclusion that clinton would do better and it ended in a unified government that one of the challenges we face now is that we are not always in the same page or getting us on the they're debating whether students would be better off starting middle school and sixth grade fifth grade with their maturity and whether the curriculum would be better for them all the things you think about and educating students well with now i don't want to repeat myself too much but i will say a lot of my own basically my intent is to show you that i think we can do a better job you're having a hard time hearing  still pay the bill as we consider undertaking this huge task of creating a new governance structure dismantling the one we have as we consider the climate occasion monies that we that  spent a legal one accounting specialist to assist with this major transition the border should expect solid evidence that this money close to one point eight million by the time we get to four years will be well be programming is we are in different schools of voters these are some discussion of this such as what different choices are needed and and walk and how would transportation and equal access be assured high level classes in both technical and academic hearing oh well the signs for merger study would consider how to provide better twenty first century small choices for high school students as well and chance to learn and grow the merger will make the sharing of resources building and staff easier but there's more to consider the challenge of providing equalize programming opportunities for all  technology it is read that technology is a vital part of our twenty first century communications and education and that schools must invent in add up to date with infrastructure and knowledgeable staff the question that has not been achievement here we recognize that not all children to school in the benefits provided to the most fortunate children and some struggle with disabilities that require you need and dedicated oversight how will this merger provide more for our goals needs to those who are currently not driving this is one of the biggest concerns of ours of our state educators in general  will we see additional richmond activities guiding services and supplemental help in academic areas does this merger expect to provide programming for those students and if so what communities have historically overseen our neighborhood elementary school buildings where our children spend their earliest years or years with the proposed governance change oversight of the buildings will be transferred to a group of about thirty and more school buildings an additional six buildings there will be fewer days on the building with representation limited to a fifteen member board there will be only one or two voices for farther away from the regular monthly meetings the smaller outlying towns are partially smaller voices so issues that are unique to the smaller communities are less likely to make it on the agenda of the unified for the continued participation of the community in our schools gives you the article and the governance structure should encourage positive engagement with the community as written the new government structure makes no are really confident so confident that we're all looking out for everything that this disparity between voices in different communities won't create problems as long as each town has its own common level of appraisal which is part of the formula for taxing the tax burden will continue to vary town to town so we're together but we're not the issue of fair representation is more  how one's going to be can feel here it's because the merger many made a conscious decision that they would not tie the hands of a future board in the decisions that it would make so as you read that  merger report and you question that next pass that was a conscious decision it's not like he couldn't think of things that we might have fleshed out but that that was a purposeful decision so that the new board has looked at all of the there was never any study never any educational data educational data from the teacher from friends from people in education across the state as to what's appropriate for a through fourth that level of students would never stress specialization it's the wrong thing to stress you can get information from your you read and reading and scores and is the most accurate indicator of success in college even today there's been lots of complaints about those deaths but they're still the number one indicator of your success so they use those scores to consider  better outcomes for our students to know better outcomes for the students but yours that's where education happens it happens in the classroom and then teachers are known teachers who has been have a common feeling about this is uncommon out of town and they don't read it or does the stuff even the letters or the people come in ask questions three ten minutes on time and you never get any answers and i know how that is and school board meetings elementary board his wife has also been on them and the new morning the elementary board and she's a professor at u b s these people are educators and you had great success with the budget very complicated budgets at the college level  local control of last for me the issue is the lomo input to school decisions the essential question for the voters then becomes the invective the merger on and but when local boards of the elementary school level are replaced by one single central board with a much more limited you can put from local citizens as citizens or as local board members in you're never going to hear any discussion of the elementary i've had the good fortune to work with and there you for the last decade i believe it is a model that we work often below to meet the needs of all students our district is twenty six hundred substantial substantial amount of scholarly work out there that indicates that small school districts in particular save money efficiencies and  but i have another herd of up to twenty minutes for questions and comments no ideally they should be directed to the content that you heard there but questions or whatever questions are will start on this si based learning differentiated instruction whole child theory all of those things from the twenty first century learning common core so everybody uses that one big phrase twenty first century learning to lump all of that together rather than me talk about this work load the trolls are local and put it really comes from the communities of the community members and the parents the board members oversee and everyone worries members and our parents are still going to be advocating for our students for sure the building is in i have no doubt and whether or not we get councils again that's one of those things we're not document that defines what are you government structure has a governing structure as outlined has fifteen board members and it outlines how many representatives are from each town the idea that we can has a new board create school council is true however we cannot create school councils that have governance so if we want to are a vote that would be part of the larger board that has to be set up as the governing structure once we've set up the governing structure we cannot create councils that have a voice that has and he legal authority so that's one thing i want to point out something we can explore if we step back and took more time the reason that might be important let's just say for example that under no central school it is designated as a school that has to feel children and the fifteen member board struggles with which school to close and besides students from this community will go to another school and the money and field that the mansfield academy will be located here to save money as as you  read the report no it is the intention to close the mansfield academy and move it into one of our buildings whichever that may be one of the schools is going to face that issue  another issue is where are we going to have a central office in the plan is no longer paying the town of richmond to use the town office space but to move the central office into one of the buildings is not necessarily bad but if you're from a community that has one vote on that board you may wish that you had an extra vote that's a point i want to make and the other point is  it was mentioned the committee talked about the unified elementary district as a concept this is not true when i was selected to be a representative from running to and our board members who tested them i came educated about what the choices were that the new law gave us it included several merger option when i came to the first meeting the second meeting third meeting well first back to our school board meeting when i was selected i was selected to be on a committee that was going to study merger option i was not selected to approve or disapprove of i modified unified union district i was selected to help study all the merger options however at subsequent several meetings of the committee i was told no that is not the charge that this committee was given the executive committee has told us we are only starting a unified system after repeatedly bringing this up at several meetings and being told we could not discuss it we did discuss it one time for a few minutes and everybody on committee said no we don't want to consider end of story we did not study the real options of the unified elementary district it may not be the best option but it is incorrect to say that we stud we didn't consider how an elementary board at a high school board could work together board in a uniform case through trial governance or curriculum oversight so that's a fact i want to clear  decisions because talking about spending less money on education in our supervisory union we're talking about paying less taxes because we are tied in with the whole state of  taxes when we go over that threshold montpelier has a real problem on and right now we hear the governor saying school boards have to  who are they're saying we can't cut anymore so there's this fantasy that by doing this merger and we get four years of tax breaks where our taxes will go down a little bit and they'll go down a lot for those schools are spending over the threshold we have a fantasy that we're spending less we are not talking about having lower budget people you're isn't going to see our numbers go down for what we're raising what we're spending in our schools it's kind of smoke and mirrors i mean it's we all want to pay less taxes but the real problem is with the structure of how we  citizens raise money to pay for our schools and what we're willing to pay and how we create habitable system i agree that i'm sympathetic to the schools that right now are  however if you have an urgent situation that requires urgent action it's not necessarily the best time to make a decision that's going to be permanent and what i see here as that we're making a huge governance change that has some big flaws and it's not all wrong but it has a big fluffy that and we're rushing to do it so that we can get tax breaks  but we're not talking about spending less on education we're not really fixing the problem we can look at how to coordinate pre k to twelve we don't have to change our government to do that but we do need to fix how we finance i've been to all the meetings this year except for a couple and sandy hill and went to those i was on vacation i do not feel that that as a new member on the merger committee and a regular thinker about this business questions that things were put over on me i i was provided with a lot of material and i read a great deal and i listened and  sort of tried to think about how this could best suit us i did not make up my mind until the spring and i decided to vote in favor of the merger for a couple of reasons that i think are pretty good  i i have worked in every school in the district receptacle at different times and i see a one unified group of students and teachers and administrators i don't see essays just under old sunrise d s s the whole whole group of us and we have had a lot of cooperation with each other but i think with the unified board we could have even more talk to some teachers and one of the issues for teachers is that if they move from one school to the other especially with enrollment dropping and sometimes the teacher needs to be riffed let go because the enrollment is just too low and then sometimes or sometimes the teacher retires and moves on and they need to get a teacher from another district that teacher looses seniority in terms of how long she or he has worked for the school bus so that has happened a number of times i think i people are worried about if there is no longer a five member board here in underhill that somehow we won't have any control who will be able to input into our schools all of us  how much a new parent volunteers people get involved with their elementary schools that's still going to happen there still will be volunteers there still will be school events there still will be ways to talk to the the board the unified board the main thing will be communication with the principal and continuing to have volunteerism and people in the schools sheet which explained here yes quote and when you get in the in the voting booth i'm going to see a pretty complicated looking ballot i urge to we're going to try to place these all people who had the most influence on the day to day operation of the schools were the involved parents and i think that that is the case in a large district that's the case in a small district and i don't think any of us has any interest in designing the govern change that so yes this would change the governance of our schools but in terms of the community involvement i think probably look very much the same i believe that we're going to have good schools either way i think we have good schools now i think we'll have good schools if we merge i see the difference as being one of flexibility as many have already very eloquently expressed this would allow us flexibility that we don't currently have for instance i spoke with one teacher who talked about technology in schools on the one hand the district as it currently exists is very capable of designing a common philosophy to get everybody a certain department in the same room they can knock out a curriculum the problems that we're faced with tend to be ones having to do with the budgets of the individual buildings princes with computers we can all have the same technology curriculum but if the computer to student ratio is different and you idea from what it is here even if you have the same curriculum even if you have qualified staff in both buildings the experience of the student will not be the same and so while you may have an equal philosophy in both places because you do not have equal resources you don't have an equal education and if we have emerged school district matters like that to be addressed i don't believe that a merger would serve all of our problems i don't i don't think that remaining as we are will solve all of our problems i simply believe that by merging we have a more flexible system and we can explore more options than we can now perhaps having a magnet school is not such a great idea i'm not sure it is perhaps having school choice of nots to great ideas i'm not sure it is but the problem right now is that with the government structure as it is we can't even talk about it there are limitations on what we can do and how we can use our resources in terms of building in terms of stuff in terms of funding simply because of the government structure and that to me is is unfortunate i do feel very strongly that we do have two boards who have expressed very clearly that they don't know if they can survive long term with our government structure i believe that all the students in the su all the students in vermont are our students even if we do not govern them directly we are responsible for for their education too and so if this is what is best for all the students in our community and i mean all all five towns all six districts then i believe that that is the best thing for us to do thank you  merger committee not the people who are here now but some of the others handle the public input poorly i went to a couple meeting greyson concerns dion got back to me with the email i appreciate that accept that the actual product is just is that it's not perfect i'm still up in the air a lot of people feel really passionately about this on both sides no matter what happens i gree but i have supported all of the you know i've supported exploring all of the merger options that have come through over the years i voted for the last time it had occurred and i expect to vote for the merger proposal this time the state has put some money on the table and some of the advice you have is don't leave money on the table however we as educators when want to help our students understand that we need to do first some of our gratifications and applying that to the money that of the state is put on the table that tells us that don't make that the only thing that you consider when you're making the decision squirrely part of the background is that there is excess mortar and brick capacity in this district quite a bit and so we need to address that to keep up to address the cost part  underhill birth data showed while our under hilts population under his central school population went from two hundred thirty six about twenty years ago down to you heard barbara throughout the state and the population the number of burst per year in and these five towns has gone down about fifteen percent over the last six years or so or from two thousand and four to two thousand and ten the real reason i support the merger and in addition to that the main reason is the so content its position the job that we have to hire a person for is really quite a difficult job with all of the evening meetings and then pulled in a lot of different directions so i think that's the main reason and i think we should support this it will make that job meetings are five member board was our principal there gives us a report of the school with this new fifteen member board will there be nine principals  of the logistics were the realities of having nine plus fifteen twenty four people sitting sitting in a meeting it may be fun but i'm just saying we haven't necessarily talked about the logistics of how we do that here again if we had six elementary boards combined into one and they kept our m m u board we could still board eighty two boards have we thought of everything before we really write this constitution and make it a legal document directors from jericho they'll be free from under four from richmond yes we will all be part of the same community but we do have art and are different neighborhoods and i think it's important that we all feel like we have a fair share in the vote so i think that that is what you're feeling here tonight might be reflected in the future if we don't have a chance to really address that  best to fix this for the chair of the senate education committee is not in favor of merging schools furthermore some of the ideas are  rather large such as having districts that have more i don't want high school who is to say that if we just take our supervisory union changing governors and color a unified district that we will meet any new criteria that the state deems necessary that the state worked hard to study this issue this year both the house and senate and in the end they voted on nothing and they cited they needed to do do i think we should be part of that process we are going on and purchase a case in the states discussion about what are the best ways to finance education and equalize opportunities do either got this in the mail or we'll show you the polls or some other meeting that you can go to and listen to the comments there and hopefully make comments yourself or ask questions there also we are going to have another meeting it's listed on here october twenty eighth a tuesday the families ten days that required by state law prior to the vote were the underhill board is going to gather now and decide what our format is going to be for then and we solicit especially the person presenters here and others of you to join us and helping to make the right kind of a format for