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Grantham School Board and Budget Presentation, Tuesday, February 7, 2023

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Grantham School Board and Budget Presentation, Tuesday, February 7, 2023

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hey we're going to go ahead and get started so I'm going to call the meeting to order at 6:35 and we are our first order tonight is to open the public budget hearing so we'll go right ahead and I'm open the public budget hearing for tonight this is the public hearing before the annual meeting to come in March just so everyone at nose at the camera pans around we do have a referee in the room just in case things get a little Mister Britain is here doing double duty as a basketball referee and attending and I are sharing tonight so everyone for coming we do have some people here in the room with us joining us in person and we also have some folks joining us virtually and so what we will do is the board is going to give the presentation of the proposed 2023 24 budget and then we will open the floor for questions or comments from the community as a part of this public budget hearing so to get started a short yes we're going to do actions of the folks that we have here at the front of the room so I'll start down to my right we have the school board and so we have school board members Nancy Mackenzie and Upson Leslie I'm Brittany pie the school board chair we also have doctor Sydney like it with us our superintendent Kristin Reed who is our principal we have oh my God Meredith what's your last name Butler I was going to guess and then I was going to get it wrong Meredith Butler who is our bill administrator we have read the Malloy executive assistant to the SAU we have to Emily our district clerk is here as well alright so we are going to get started and doctor like it's going to bring up our presentation for the public hearing all right so during our this is sort of our hearing and test drive or are March meeting and so at our March meeting we will have our moderator Carl Hanson running the show for us here so we will go to I think the second or third slide wrecked all right so to start things off just a very quick thank you we like to start our presentations just by a knowledge mean and expressing our gratitude to the Grantham Community we continue to just be a very grateful our district is very lucky to have such strong community support this these past few years have been challenging for everyone inside of the school community and in the greater Grantham community and we just continue to appreciate everyone's operation their support their understanding as we move through these times our staff here at Grandin Village school as well as the staff and faculty at Lebanon Middle School in Lebanon High School who see you today health safety and education our children every day and and of course to our community members thank you to the community members to are here this evening and also the community members to express their support in a variety of ways this year we have continued to see strong collaboration with Community I'm everything from helping to pull out and plant things in our star Garden from the Garden Club to community volunteers coming into the school and in a variety of different ways, and I think we are starting to see that places to bility return for our school community and one of the ways that were able to do that so successfully is through the support of all of you so thank you so as I was saying we are seeing a return and stability both in terms all of our staffing needs our operations within the school the attendance that we have here within the school and moving forward we're really noticing the impact of the work that we've been able to do and the ongoing commitments to things like early live what are social emotional learning and then the roots of the beginnings of a really strong math program here we also want to just recognize the collaboration in the support that we've gotten as our grounds playground I'm renovation project moves forward we are starting to be able to see some big tangible evidence of that as you can see maybe you could see through the dark cuz he came in our Pavilion is up the walls have bm2 been raised the roof has been raised and is up and available for our students to take advantage of and Hazard weather does start to warm up which it will again someday we know that we're going to see great you saw that coming our way so we just continue to be really grateful Our Community Partners set made that happen and it's a huge first step of our grounds and playground renovation project okay so Article 1 of the presentation will be to hear the reports of Agents committees and other officers here to for chosen and to pass any vote relating thereto we don't have a huge number if we don't have reports 3 tonight but that will be done at our March meeting and so that brings us to the end of the Article 1 presentation and we are moving forward to the budget so before we get into the specifics of the budget presentation tonight we want to just highlight and draw your attention to something that you will notice during the presentation and that is a proposed change so there was a change made between the last meeting of the school board to our meeting in January and the presentation tonight at our January meeting the board move forward with a budget that included a case manager position since that time there has been new information concerning parent Educators and other special education needs for the coming year that has caused the administration to recommend to the board that this position wait until another year the part of our conversation tonight will be looking at do we want to move the budget forward as it stood at the January meeting that would include this case manager position or would we like to move the budget forward removing that position that vote and that decision will be taken by the board after this year but that's going to be part of the conversation that you here tonight and we just want to draw attention to it from now the B impact on the budget would be a reduction of $56,677 and you'll notice and some upcoming slides the places where that difference he noted I will be made in red okay so as we get into article to Article 2 is the operating budget to see if the district will vote to raise an appropriate the amount of 10000700 $3,996 for the support of schools for the payment of salaries for the school district officials and agents and for the payment of the statutory obligations of the district and to authorize the application against a broker oceans of such sums as are estimated to be received from state and federal governments together with other income the balance to be raised by taxation by the school district this article does not include Appropriations contained in special or individual article addressed separately it is recommended by the Grantham School Board and a majority vote is required I just wanted to make a quick note that that number is without the case manager so future slides have the comparison number this number is without the case manager so as we go into the details of article to our operating budget I'm going to turn things over to Leslie Brittany so I'm going to review a few key drivers of the proposed by for next year the this is the first year that our CBI our collective bargaining agreement has gone into effect so last year it was not part of the overall budget and this year it will be so that's part of an increase that you'll we work for cash while we were at the Grantham collective bargaining group to come to a really great agreement there she'll see that is a change we returned free buses we were operating with four on our routes last year we could not get a fourth bus driver and so we fixed the roots and this is working for us so that's a reduction there we have proposed shared position with Plainfield and Cornish districts for a director of curriculum instruction and assessment and I'll talk about that in the next side would like we have proposed to put in a new phone has a GPS on this really well improve safety and efficiency went inside the school were still operating with an actual sort of a landline phone system that is digitized in some ways but relies on actual like phone line still to some degree and this I have looked at a couple different systems and really feel strongly that this would improve particularly the safety inside of the school we also are looking at a digital required finding for student contracted services for special education and related services such as Hearing in vision for some of our students good news is that our tuition for our 7 through 12 students in grades seven through 12 is currently level so the director of jokingly called director of the CIA instruction and assessment position this would really offer us a great opportunity to partner with two districts nearby towns who with whom we're actually having a shared interim situation with Sydney it would allow us to really closely collaborate and share resource of having a person who's working closely with the schools to improve curriculum instruction and assessment also allow us to sort of allocate our resources a little more broadly so that we can really focus more and use this person as a resource for professional development data driven strategies for growth we just raise all boats so the total cost in our budget is 132350 which is salary plus Associated benefits Plainfield and Cornish would contribute 60% of the cost which is around $79,000 so our total portion for this position would be 50 2009 40 that's part of a nut so you'll see as we go through the budget the line item in our budget is 132,000 350 split offset by the seventy nine thousand four hundred that we would receive from the two other districts I'll pass it over to my colleague at thank you so much for slide we have here is really just showing the the current your budget you're currently in it 10203000 and change what we're proposing for next year that you'll notice in the black is what the board put forth or approve to put forth before the case manager can I change from the administration in between which was that 10850673 dollars without the case manager that obviously drops down to New 10793996 essentially with the case managers an increase of just under $647,000 case manager it's right around 590000 general fund budget for 22 in 2023 10112 thousand 505 are proposed budget again with the case manager 10599000 or without the case manager 10542000 inch this would represent with a case manager about a $486,500 increase or without the case manager just try 430,000 if you look at the overall increase overall increase to expenses would be about four and a quarter percent year-over-year when you factor in the additional revenue from the shared director of the CIA director position the budget actually coming in about 3.47% increase year-over-year major breakdowns have the budget a big portion of the increase is coming from our special education areas contract and related Services that's up just north of 194000 our contractual increases do any benefits from the CBA that we negotiated at stop 140 1680 $2 and then the bonding will payments that were approved last year for the playground renovation for this year's coming in and I'll just try it $57,000 included in this budget are some discretionary items that the board has approved to put forward is the phone system that was we was talking about that's coming in at $17,764 again that is more to modernize our own systems here in write some updated 911 services as well and then the director of curriculum and instruction and assessment the net cost of that is the $52,940 and that's taken into consideration the revenue from the other two districts as far as far as anticipated tax in packs for this year for Century looking at a $0.72 increase that and that includes the case manager which the administration is recommending the drawing if we withdrew the case manager we're looking at about a $0.65 for $1,000 increase the Jesse swept or last year came in at $92.92 per thousand chariots coming in a dollar 32 4000 which is a 40% increase or 43% increase year-over-year and then the total education tax you can see this year was $10.88 and right now it's looking at a dollar or $11.93 per thousand the doubt about a dollar five increase or right around 9.65% to 40% of the overall changes due to swept calculations in the changing foot binding to put the sort of an impact of home values were essentially wither with the case manager we're looking at about a $72 in $400,000 and assessment I believe grantham's assessment a versus estimate is between 3 and 400000 without the case manager that drops down to 65,000 4400 assessed value and I will turn it back over to doctor like I said I just want to review a couple of things here because there's some because of the pandemic and because grants and because of the sweat changes it really looks like a bigger jump than it is in actuality and I wanted to make sure that everybody understood that in addition to that there is a question that the word will have to address in terms of special education so this current year we have had I just got the updated report today we have had or see an overage of 116600 $8 in special education expenses this year what that means is that we had either students move in or students IEPs change and new services are required after we finished two budgeting last year so these were onion needed special education expenses that we've had to pay this year in cases like this the board has two options so you can either pay them with the current budget and just run the budget down more which will impact the tax rate when you have less of a surplus the tax rate will be a little higher next year or you can have the option to go into the special education trust for about $100,000 is what we would be estimating and then that would come into our funding for this year which means that you would have a higher Surplus next year so this is also something that the board will need to discuss tonight and decide on what they would like to do during the board meeting so just the pro is that it increases the current year Surplus to lower the tax rate for next year the con is that it uses the trust fund because there could always be another emergency coming up and I may not have a large impact on the overall tax rate over multiple years which is something else that I wanted to go over with everyone the pandemic has really caused a lot of a lot of wonky financing with the special at trust if we would looking at the $72 or the 65 without the case manager without the special education trust it would be an increase of about $78 so the board would need to decide and if you wanted to basically look at the tax rate what you want to do in terms of having a surplus this year and then also think about what you want to do in terms of the special ed trust so the special ed trust as our last report has it now has $412,390.64 which is it might seem like a high balance but the current cost of one out-of-district residential placement averages about half a million dollars so there's always this idea that you could have somebody move into the district or a situation happen with one of our students where they might need to go to an out-of-district residential placement they're not all that expensive but sometimes they can run you know between four and $500,000 so those are all of the things that need to be taken into consideration when thinking about using the special address I'm going to skip ahead to looking at some of the other tax information where they go so again looking at the Revel so this is what I really want everybody to see is that the pandemic has caused a dip in school a good kind of for taxpayers are really good dip over the last two years because we've been able to use grant funding to offset some start regular cost we've also been able to have a higher Surplus than we normally would have an in addition this swept the State education tax rate which is we all know actually still a local tax that that you pay for was Ricky Kris by $0.40 last year so as you can see if you look at 20 21 and 22 2022 those are going to be lower tax rates and that's where the school really benefited from some of the finding that we had coming in during the pandemic so what I did was I looked at the at the two options you know 23A which is the yellow would be using the special ed trust to increase the Surplus this is the tax rate would be and then green is if you didn't use the Surplus and the tax rate would be a little higher I adjusted this her evaluation so that we could really look Apples to Apples because you know as you all know the valuation really changed the tax rate so this is adjusted for prior years tax rate so even if you did not use the special ed trust and the Surplus was a little lower the tax rate compare to 2020 before the pandemic is still lower than where we were before so I just wanted to know we need to we need history here because every district is working with the same thing where there's a decrease in taxes over the last year or two so the increase actually seems like a larger increase than it is in reality we did that one the other thing that I've been working on is a compound growth rate for local area schools and I hadn't done this until this year and I think it's because I have been working and other local schools but looking at it I was pretty proud to see where Grantham is so if you look at our per pupil spending history in Grantham which is this shaded one we have the lowest compound compound growth rate of any per people spending in the Upper Valley area I wanted to put this light into show how careful Grantham has been with financing with money and respectful of community taxpayers as we go through this process okay and I'm just going to do our our update our annual update that we do I play in the role of Denise Sullivan tonight where our GPS students are and how we're doing some of the metrics that we look at we assess that so as always as a school we really look at our students holistically we look at their social emotional health their physical well-being as much as we look at their academic and that's something that we're able to do work of our staff here and there are only so many of those things that we are able to report out to you and quantitative later in this report and so we'll look at that more as we move forward through this presentation so looking quickly at our enrollment so we Reese's or where we have been you may have heard that some districts in New Hampshire are seeing stagnating or decreasing enrollments we certainly are not seeing that here and Grantham we are seeing a pretty steady increase if not holding within a few you know 10 to 20 students and that number is changing I think it's actually higher than its on this grass now what we're up to 277 so okay so this is not include our Pre-K students in the number so if we include our Pre-K students which we didn't have in previous years that you see on this graph excluding of students to 55 include in the morning 277 you can also see that that has an impact as we move into looking at our numbers for LMS nlhs so while those numbers dropped for a few years we are starting to see a study increase in those numbers because those larger classes within GPS then move up into the middle and the high school so if you walk around the school you'll see that there are smaller class of students you know 6th grade classes and then their sparse very large classes of students coming up in 4th 5th and some of those grades and they will become those new LMS nlhs students are enrolled at numbers continue to increase if we look at some of our performance. play System of that quantitative data that we can give you looking at our history here of our students these are the percentages of students reaching proficiency and that dark red column is what we see here at Grantham Village cool and the orange column is the percentage for New Hampshire so the stove Statewide percentages so you can see there that we continue to see a really nice percentage increase over what the state average is we look at the same thing for mathematics again same GPS would be in the darker red New Hampshire averages will be in the orange of percentage percentages of students reaching proficiency and then if you look at our science performance data again GPS is in the red New Hampshire is in the orange you can track if you have been noticing on those three slides there are some dips in those 1920 years in their 19 20 21 which we would expect to see from the pandemic and as we look at this one of the things that we're noticing is that the response and also the recovery rate for GPS units has really been remarkable getting back up to those levels that we were seeing in 2018 even 2019 levels is really something that were tracking much more than how our students looking necessarily year to year because some of those years most recent to us were so different in terms of what students were able to access in their educational environments that we're really looking at how is our recovery happening in some of these data points are certainly places focused and whatever the board looks at this mrs. Reed reminds us that there's places that they're focusing on to have increased Improvement but we really can be proud of the work that you BS is done to support students in their academic work over these really a few years so that is the end of our article to presentation at our meeting article 3 will be any other business to come before the annual meeting but for tonight we will open the floor for any public participation questions comments that you might have about this budget presentation and if there are particular slides that you'd like us to return to please let us know we're happy to pull those up on the screen I know folks have copies of them but we're happy to put those on the screen if there's anything in particular you'd like us to reference when you do come forward to make your comment if you're here in person please give us your name and address to the dock and be part of our record for this meeting and if you are joining us virtually if to provide your name and your address at the beginning of your comments then they we can read them and feel free to come you can come right up to the microphone here if you'd like to make a comment or ask a question Christine Conroy 32 Spring Valley Drive I wanted to ask a couple questions about the CIA director do you expect the bad person who feels that position will reside here at CVS or is that DVD tbdm all schools are packed turn on space so we would have to figure out what a home base is for that individual okay and I assume this depends on boats in Plainfield and cordage to approve the funding from now it does just finally do you have any estimate on what savings you might expect in professional development costs by sharing with the other districts that we haven't crashed any actual numbers but part of the a big part of the plan for the CIA director is to be able to do a combined professional development among the three symbols so you know we would usually spend time thinking probably somewhere around 15,000 year on professional development if we bring people in so hopefully we will be able to cut that down by having all three School share different Purdy and be able to bring more teachers together okay good thank you oh and thank you for all your work to put this together do you miss it alright I'm Leslie McGregor and my address is 55 College Overlook I wonder if she could give some history why the case manager position was thought to not be right for this year why it was but that we needed it and why we decided not to have it or some people that so we I still this is Myra emendation just not to have it this year so we believe that having a third case manager is going to work very well for the model that we have for special education but it's not a natural need right now so we have a search Malaysian where you know we are trying to obviously be financially conscientious and we were able to add a case manager and reduce to pair of Educators to try and offset the increase of the cost and since the time of making that recommendation we've already needed to add another paraeducator for a student who has a one-on-one needs and so financially it started to not make as much sense and it just seems like since there are some other increases this year that it could wait a year or case managers that we have currently are not overloaded in their caseload so this is more about a model of moving into case managers and teachers doing more co-teaching on so I believe it's a direct CVS will go it's just not imperative that it happens this year the board can always keep it in though just a reminder we do have folks joining us for Julie you are also welcome to comment just provide your name and address at the beginning of your comments hi Aaron Saga dialogue 178 Meadowbrook Road very impressive presentation question about historical tax rate graph does that include the bond for the playground as well those tax rates that it does because the tax rate is only what we're actually spending each year for the bond so you know you never raised an appropriate the entire $700,000 for the bond all at once so those numbers do include for this year we paid just the interest and next year it does include the interest and principal for that one goes without saying that it's even more impressive in that contacts that you were able to keep it low and raise money for the playground at the same time so thank you give it another minute or so here of I meant for the budget this is where I try to guess how fast people can type Randy if we go with the zoom for our phones could we ask them to add like the little bubble so I can tell if someone is typing yeah okay not seeing any other comments come in I'm going to go ahead and close what is the hearing for the budget thank you everyone who asked great questions and joined us for that we will move on to the hearing for the special education trust so as Doctor like it mentioned another proposals in front of the board tonight will be looking at the option to withdraw up to $100,000 for unexpected expenses from the special education trust and as is board policy anytime we are looking to withdraw on this to be like us from a trust account we do open a public hearing before the board makes the decision so if there are we don't have a presentation for this but if there are questions or comments from the public out the use of special education trust to offset some of the unexpected costs this year the board would love to hear those as we go into making our decision hi my name is Brad lizer and I'm a 13 by slow play Eastman and the only thing I would say is that I have given the presentation I don't think it's wise to draw down that hundred thousand dollars I think as everyone is seeing the budget is nearly level really when you look at we've had the we've enjoyed a nice dip because of covid-19 in a few look at when are you going to come up to 2020 and if we don't draw the hundred thousand dollars we still won't see 2020 tax rate and for that reason there's no reason to save that money by what I think is being a little too short-sighted to draw. $2,000 or better off saving it for a rainy day thank you Christine Conroy 32 Spring Valley Drive what swayed me to support this gentleman statement is when doctor Leggett said the cost for residential placement is now for to $500,000 I think it's too risky to draw down the trust but a small amount it's better to keep those funds in case of that serious event coming to to happen okay not seeing any other comments for the hearing for the special education trust we will close the public hearing so the board is going to move into our regular February board meeting are we changing then you are we staying staying fantastic we used to change venue just to give things a little to shake things up a little bit but we are going to stay here for our February board meeting so I think we can move right into that correct perfect okay I'm used to there being like a break where we can say hi to people then go to our meeting we won't take a break this year just going to power on through and so we will open our February board meeting and we will open with public participation the public participation for the regular February board meeting if there are items on the board agenda that folks would like to comment for my comment on your welcome to do so again for public participation we ask that you state your name and address if you a person with us and then also put your name and address at the beginning of your comments if you are joining us virtually and we will open our first public participation session now which is 7:12 and we will leave it open as we see if there are is anyone who would like to participate for this meeting and I just know 2020 when the kids doing remote learning in that storm was awful and I'm sure you bring this up but just I don't know I know since you went two hours we haven't had to go late but I didn't know how much cushion we had built-in because I guess to me that would have stopped when if we do a remote and and honestly know what our policy is now other than last I paid attention sorry it was 3 days and we're already there if I can count that high so I just for working parents is really hard and kids love their snow days so I just wanted to be thoughtful about that and I think of these guys compared to the middle and high schools definitely different for everyone whether I think I made an online Sydney not that I can see but Brenda was reposting the link I know we have people on so the link is working but she's reposting at now okay not seeing any additional public participation we will go ahead and move on with our agenda before we move into our discussion at and action items we will review our agenda items are there any changes subtractions additions to the agenda tonight from anyone I just have one I don't know if you want to do it in the superintendent's report or if you want to make it an agenda item but I've been asked by several parents to discuss the recent incident at Lebanon Middle School with the board yeah I think it makes sense to make that and discussion an action item for the board so the board can discuss if there's anything we need discuss rather than that part of the superintendent report so we will add a discussion of the situation that occurred in Lebanon to our agenda I would say let's go ahead and put that after the snow day conversation all right any other changes to the agenda text me the motion to approve the agenda as amended I have a motion from Leslie and a second from add all those in favor please stay I I alright any opposed say nay okay so the agenda will move forward to our first item on the agenda is to move the Articles to the warrant I think in order to do this at our most in the order that makes sense let's look at that l'education trust decision first so we'll look at on what action if any of the board would like to take regarding the special education trust withdrawing up to $100,000 from the trust for unexpected expenses this year are there any faster. from the board on that item I'll just say that I agree with the community input but I think we've done a really responsible job with our budget this year and it's a little it feels a little hard to justify such a I don't think we need to take that stuff I'd rather have the insurance and the trust a relatively intact there for emergencies I guess one of the questions I would have is let's assume that we have a residential placement at some point in time for $400,000 we tried out a hundred thousand into trust now we still have sitting there if and when that occurs we would have to appropriate that additional hundred thousand through increased taxes so as I sit here I kind of go back and forth where it's nice to have the same gym safety-net there and end the truck there but the finance side of me goes back to a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow so if we still have raise $200,000 if and when this happens compared to using it now make appointment as I think I'm waiting to her pulling 100,000 now to lessen the impact a little bit of the other tax rate not saying that we don't have a responsibility cuz I think we do but my my opinion using $100,000 now or saving it for if we need it down the road I'm not sure gets us a whole lot we're going to have to pay that hundred thousand at some point whether it's this year and keep it for the placement or we you can hunt that down the road to if we ever have a place in that comes in at the 400,000 you have to raise it then just my two cents on it thought I knew what I thought we should do now I don't I think my what I have I've seen the the benefit of being able to potentially Paul are having that more rollover money that will potentially bring down the tax rate for next year is I find that appealing and I think grab them as a disc we've been on this budget roller coaster for 8 years now in all kinds of ways that we have not been able to predict or influence so you know 67 years ago we were dealing with the budget not being stable for us because of the Dover lawsuit money that we were receiving and then we went into the pandemic and we went into changes and swept and so it's things that have been really outside of our control and I see this as something that is with or control that we can use as a tool to offset some of the budget impact for people for next year if we bring that $100,000 in to offset expenses from this year correct me if I'm wrong that will mean there's additional roll over into next year's so you would have right now we're estimating a surplus of of $200 so if you brought the special education trust and you would have a surplus of three $300,000 and $2,000 got that last part would be increasing or Surplus by $100,000 which is what would cousin tax rate to pump down I also have and I think that what the thousand dollar figure is a figure we need to go where I was and it's a really remarkable one but it is an outlier figure there are there are there are places where special education needs will not hit that $400,000 mark sort of like worst case scenario I think it's important for us to be aware of that and absolutely could be in a situation where we would be looking at that kind of Bill but I also think it's one of those situations where that trust is there for us when we have unanticipated expenses and were were experiencing an unanticipated expense of about $100,000 this year and so I think in terms of responsibility to our taxpayer the taxpayers have funded that trust over the years through you do a variety of ways of weed as we've transferred money into there and if we are have a responsibility to our taxpayer how to use that money when we need to use it it is those trusts are such a tricky thing because it's one of those situations where it's like will save it until we really need it but how many times do you say but we might need it more another time and for me it feels this time is one of those times when we need that we've had over $100,000 in an unanticipated expense we have four times that in the trust so it's would be responsible of us to go ahead and use that and it would that benefit the taxpayers but in terms of bringing that that figure down obviously no one has a crystal ball but I would also throw out that you know 18 months or so consumers have seen price increases across the board from discretionary cost all the way down to your Basic Essentials and you know I think if we have an opportunity to you lower that impact even slightly for four people Grantham and still maintain a healthy 300000 + balance for that rainy day I I honestly think that's probably the Avenue that I would support any other thoughts from the board what was the figure of what we I was just looking to see if I could see what the trust holds right now it's currently four hundred $12,000 at 396% city do you have I know the what that we looked at in the hearing was up to $100,000 do you have a recommendation of an actual fish yeah if you choose to withdraw from the trust I would withdraw $100,000 okay so nobody's little late is turning on that's how I can tell if you guys have anything else you want to say cuz your microphone like about this is handy so it would ask for a motion to withdraw $100,000 from the special education trust for unexpected expenses for this year I have a motion from a dad and a second from Nancy all those in favor play may I I any opposed say nay all right so we will move forward to our budget article so moving the article to the warrant we need to first you have to decide on the case manager yeah that's okay yes so the first item to do that will be looking at the cat that case manager position three completely empty and i would support the administration's recommendation that it gets removed do you need us to motion since we're changing the budget that we move forward you're actually making we're moving at to the Warren so we're going to use the numbers that remove it with everbilt and you actually have to move every article so you are going to have to move one in three all right so our first article is to move we need motion to move article one to hear reports to the warrant of emotion from Leslie and a second from Ed all those in favor please say I buy a new posting alright our second article and we make sure I have the right number okay and so the number that's listed in on that side is the amount without the case manager correct so we need a motion to move article to the operating budget and this is to see if the district will vote to raise an appropriate the amount of 10793000 $996 for the sport of schools for the payment of salaries for the school district officials and agents and for the payment of the statutory obligations of the district and to authorize the application against appropriations of such sums as RS made it to be received from state and federal governments together with other income the balance to be raised by taxation by the school district this article does not include Appropriations contained in special or individual articles addressed separately I have a motion from add in a second for Leslie all those in favor please say I I any opposed say nay all right and a lot of side chair 3 is article 3 any other business to transact any further business to come before this annual meeting we need a motion to move article 3 to the warrant of emotion from Leslie and a second for Nancy paper please say I know right that's all of our articles correct is okay excellent anything else we need for the Warren or the budget looking at the very smart people who keep keep on track for those things you know everybody's looking. Okay all right so our next agenda item will be a discussion of snow day and remote learning we have the board doctor like it shared some feedback with the board about remote learning days and what else would you like to share with us where I am this I just wanted to collect information from the staff about their initially their thoughts about remote learning days so we did have three snowdays right in a row which causes everybody to think of the schools around us that are doing blizzard bag days or remote learning days when we had started talking about whether or not we are going exercise those options we had said or the board had decided that we would have three straight snow days that were just snow days and that after that we would decide if we wanted to move into a blizzard bag or a remote learning Day Option from that way so I just put a quick survey out to the staff and you have all the I just gave you the link so you can see all of their comments it's somewhat of mixed response from the staff there are a lot of staff we're to believe that the remote learning days aren't as useful learning wise you know and that they're difficult some of the staff believe that if we are going to do anything remote that a blizzard bag day would be better where we I have to worry about Equity issues with kids who might not have internet at home that day we wouldn't have to worry about power outages you know where it would still be some instruction and maybe a check in by Zoomer phone but that it wouldn't be real and the way that we were relying on the real-time face-to-face remote learning what kind of turned covid so that was another option other staff members were on the page of we can do this we're ready we've done it before we're all set to go that's the biggest issue is in Kristen I don't know if you went through any of it but the biggest issues were really the value of learning that we would have on those days the effect that I would have on working parents because it is different if you have little ones especially trying to coordinate remote learning versus a blizzard bag or versus a snow day that that puts a a different household spend on everything and whether or not we just you know hope that we make it with ours to the end of the where we add time at the end of the year if we have to equity Grantham power outages trying to think of the other common themes that came up are are we right on the cusp of ours we are fine with ours this is just because we've had those three snow days and so now's the time that the board said that you would address do we want to look at a different option now or do we want to just keep going nowadays do we have a sense of how many hours for a cushion that we currently have given the free sodas already it's enough that I didn't calculate it before the meeting answer my question I think this the idea of the three and then make a call and I'll make the call in the future Call It by one that was something that was like a best intentions sort of thing and now we're looking at we put it into practice and I think what we're hearing from staff is at that's really tricky what we're hearing from parents is that's really tricky and I will say the weather also makes that really tricky and so what I have noticed is that the storms do not make up there buy one and one of the things that I have wondered is how like realistically would you be able to make a good call by 1 to be able to put that activity into place because I think sometime at 1 the day before the storm is still like I might I might not and you're not making the call until much later in the day and the situation that I would really want us to avoid is out of an abundance caution but also wanting to use one of these remote days we make a call at 1 by 5 we realize the storm isn't going to do anything and then that day kids are home trying to do work at home when they could have been I think we've had very few storms that they've been we've really been able to make that call by 1 which is something that I think we didn't realize would be the situation until we were actually trying to see this work the ad but I would go from the staff point of view that is their concern is when you hear from I want the amount of time it's going to take and then takes away from that day's learning also because they're trying to get stuff together for remote learning day that's the other piece that I heard from Seth it's fun watching Randy run around to find charging cords though we can still have that happen right okay we are going to move on to an update from Sidney regarding the situation and lab just very quick context for folks there was a student safety situation happened at Lebanon Middle School earlier in the week or last week last week it's still early in this week that happened last week and there were some concerns expressed about how the scope and the response to that tuition was communicated out to parents families community members since we have students at Lebanon Middle School there was some concern about the communication and if our district was made aware of the situation and end it were we able to provide support and communication to our families and so we in our ongoing dialogue and relationship with an area agreement sure that we are keeping those lines of communication open we also want to make sure that we have permission we need some more soup play safe so doctor like it has been doing some of that intermediate-term the work of communicating with love on moving and how will we ensuring that our students and our families feel as if they're getting their communication I don't have to much to add after that except that I did have the opportunity to meet dr. Roberts yesterday and then met with our shared attorney today to go over more detailed information because there's obviously not a lot I can say about the confidential parts of of the situation but I do want I did want to bring to the board that I've heard from a lot of parents are very concerned about safety communication so I've been trying to work hard with Lebanon to make sure that some of their safety procedures moving forward are very clearly expressed to all parents in into our office as well and that some of those things are going to be happening through like the see something say something training and small group discussions that Lebanon Middle School will be doing with your through their advisories so that they have a small group where they can work with their counselors in their teachers and their advisories to have the hopefully the Comfort level to be able to discuss now they're processing the situation there are students who didn't feel comfortable to school last week because they were named on the list that was produced by a student and and that's a huge concern I think obviously for all of us you know of making sure that kids feel safe going to school so I know that Lebanon is working on that obviously working with the student working with students and families who were directly and in the situation and working my we had our conversation yesterday about how we can have better communication to make sure that on the Grantham side of things we can also be a support for our families no matter what is and Lebanon because the in a situation that is concerning student safety you can't have too much to let me know so we can offer support from our superintendent office our SAU our school we know our parents so well and if they can do the same thing and we can just combine forces to try and make sure that everybody feels a comfort level moving forward so those have been the main parts of our conversation in terms of overall safety planning to reach out directly to Colleen McIntyre who's the principal at Lebanon Middle School and to dr. Roberts they know their Logistics and their operations better than I am I are better than I do so I've asked parents in a letter I sent out today to just be able to contact the school directly to find out more information about their their literal Logistics & operations planning for school safety and how they're going to move forward I do need to do

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Grantham School Board and Budget Presentation, Tuesday, February 7, 2023

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