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Grantham School Board Meeting - Jan. 6, 2026

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Grantham School Board Meeting - Jan. 6, 2026 - The Center at Eastman, Grantham NH

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minimize stop well let's just well done um first on the agenda is the approval of the agenda I would entertain a motion to approve the move first from fail second and Jerry all in favor say I I agenda is approved uh next on the agenda is public participation we do have some public members um you're welcome to speak your mind if you'd like and or just listen as we proceed but it's exciting to have thank you for joining us numbers of the public if you can sign in at the she sorry at the table thank you um and if you would like to share any uh participation or feedback please do share your name and your address when if you would like to speak we just usually wait a minute to make sure you really made up your mind can you okay and seems like folks are settled so next on the agenda is our student School Board liaison Olli Hermanson Ollie and Report yeah our report's gonna be really short this week like they go wherever you want all the guys so he's gonna yeah you know um make it happen is really really sharp this week because we had our Long Winter Break um and my last report I sent you guys at beginning of December um since then we held our bonfire our senior bonfire which was really really fun I spent uh 5 periods of my day building that bonfire and watch it go on the plane so that was really fun um we had something like 5 7 8 on that on fire um as the first year and like 4 years that we haven't had to rebuild it because it broke fire code so that was exciting um let's see I don't have my like my computer this time so I have to think um a whole lot going on uh we just quote from theater on the theater side we just closed Water for Elephants this is our biggest performance I've ever participated in the biggest performance weapon players ever done um and then we just announced our play which we're doing clue in March this is going to be super exciting um we just opened audition signups today and more people signed up for a play a straight play that I have ever seen sign up for the 1 play players ever so I was really excited about that um sports team are doing amazing are basketball teams are doing really well um are uh female basketball team um 1 of the star players Veronica gel is the grandson student um and she's just like dominating I went over break I went to 4 their games to girls with you guys and it was really really fun to watch so my classmates just absolutely destroyed so much um let's see I don't ignore it yeah Nordic we've got our posting first rates tomorrow at Oak Hill so we've been on skis for um probably 4 weeks now and we're hosting all of the local teams so here's our just going to be there Proctor is gonna or I guess yeah Proctor's coming Hannah's gonna be there let's go to a good group um but yeah we're all just hanging out we've got um uh midterms in 2 weeks so everyone's buckling down cracking for that so but a whole lot going on going on over the high school but awesome very well yeah thanks for all the questions anything you guys want to hear about specifically we appreciate you coming good to see you yes all right I've been in a while thanks Holly take care see you soon okay now on the agenda is uh gptgen Grand Theft parent teacher group update did you guys do choreography know so this evening sure I'm Nicole and I'm president of the grand Heritage group um so a couple updates of what we're doing we're trying to be really more Community focused and have more free community events so weight hosted uh free movie night at the school we're hoping to do that again because that actually had a larger turnout um than expected there were actually like 55 people that showed up would expect um so what I'm going to do like a glow dance party in the gymnasium for kids to try to get some energy out during I mean it's been incredibly cold um colder than normal so we're hoping for things like that and other movie night um and then our big thing that we'd like to do is um in conjunction with the Olympics a multicultural night um in February so that we can celebrate diversity and any Olympics um and then we're still working on some Spirit where and um and then I have actually been in touch today with another assembly the bionic project that I think came to the school a couple years ago um so we're shooting for an end of spring um date for them so we're just trying to work out the logistic sign can you sign in okay and um and then Emily can talk about our um 1 big fundraiser yeah it's starting to so I'm Emily Karns I'm I'm the treasurer uh I have 3 kids who go to Grand fun um and and I have been working um to get this Dominoes Pizza fundraiser go and it's starting tomorrow actually which kind of I forgot about but we're ready to go so it's kind of cool we haven't done it yet so this will be the first year we're trying it um but basically we partnered with dominoes and they do a lot of the um back-end work uh what we are doing tomorrow is basically the teachers are going to show a 5 minute um video on their classrooms talking about the fundraiser and then hand out pre-made packets all printed by dominoes and everything they're already in their mailboxes to then have the kids go and do their own fundraising and what the fundraising is it's um a card uh that it costs twenty dollars and then and there are dominoes around here um you go to Domino's use the card and you buy a large pizza you get a free pizza um along with it a free 5 Peter as well so Super Bowl coming up you buy 10 large pizzas you get 10 free pizzas but the the point is this card is purchased for $20 10 of it goes to the Grand Theft or teacher group 10 of it goes back to Domino's it's a 2-week fundraiser um each kid and with parental supervision can go and do their um own online fundraising page which they can then send links to for their family and friends outside of this area because it's it's National participation with the with the um restaurants so we're pretty excited um there's lots of prizes the kids can get to which could incentivize them or who knows it might not make anything but there's no cost to us which is great also so it's just really to see where um so that's sorry tomorrow um and I can give an update on how that goes um you know when we're when we're still done with it and um yeah we did we did the um directory which also went really well this year um we have some extra funds that came in for that so we're just sort of figuring out where the needs are for the school or teachers or whatnot um to do to do with those right yeah yeah so we're excited it's been it's been fit so far I mean we've been sort of talking about like playground equipment um oh yeah for the for the larger pulling down yeah so that was the sort of the idea with the Do's pizza and sort of the extra money we hadn't allocated that came in through the um directory to um get the the playground equipment that basically you can describe it better than I but it's like so for the walk around path around the playground you can set up little stations so like music stations where um students who you see a lot of students out there just taking walks around sometimes and that you can um set up these little stations where you pipes you know station so again to get kids who needed breaks or something to just have something to do when they're walking on that outside um you know having some alone time and everything so that is sort of the idea um yeah that's all I have really yeah no I think that's it I've been kind of handling the spirit wear but we just kind of took a break from it for over Christmas break and we're going to get back into it figuring out logos and figuring out how we're going to set that up and everything and get the word out and all of that hoping to get that going come March or April so okay yeah questions thanks for all of it good work um I have a question do they pay ever provide input or feedback about ideas for like obviously the the out of equipment but like how do you communicate with the students or I mean my kids do at home yeah Mommy we should buy this with the money well I think in our newsletters that go home in the sea folder so depending on your kids's age you know how much they were anticipate in their student folders or not so I think my 7 year old very little um but you know we share through some of the C folder communication sometimes on our Facebook and parents can share with their kids second the last year we did a penny wars um and the kids were super excited about that I'm not I'm actually I mean it went on Facebook and it went in a sea Boulders but I'm not sure I spread um yeah I there's a lot of communication I think from you out I'm wondering about information to you like on ideas or things that maybe we'd be happy to like put out like a little box like people want to write stuff in it yeah I mean we we would love to know parents as well um but the period as well like what the funds would be most um what would you like them to be allocated for you know and we were thinking about doing like a survey almost like sending out a survey saying you know your funds that you are donating or what would you like to see them go towards um obviously we did that for the kids they would be quite a different yeah but I know when we got like the new playground um or even equipment for the playground the kids really excited about that um so yeah but it's a good idea to definitely figure out what the community wants or I mean with a fair amount of emails from parents just random ideas um but if there isn't like a formal mechanism as of is that the best way if you want parents to reach out just to email with ideas is that yeah we also have records that we can follow in the monthly meeting yeah great yeah it will take any help or appreciate you guys good to see your faces thank you for your hard work please don't feel like you need to stick around for the rest of it if you don't want to um next on the is uh the discussion of um GVS School counseling and mental health programming the presentation and then some discussion um I would also add for the board um I am also going to seek a vote from you because 1 of the things that is new in the minimum School approval standards my lovely 306 rules is that your the local board should be approving on a bi-annual basis the uh School curriculum program that you offer um so we were kind of building this into a lot of things you know we had that discussion around mental health during the budget conversation we built that into showing you what School counseling program is like and in that they've embedded how do we need the requirements of 306 control so then later I can have the chair ask for a motion that we usually approve them so we're we're kind of doing a lot in this presentation for you so do you all know Mrs Whitman do you want to introduce yourself I'm Chris Whitman I'm the school counselor at at Brandon and I've been there I've lost track maybe 13 years perhaps I was going to say Chris you can grab your chair and you can go sit by first I don't have to sit way out onions right there yeah so we developmental health and the effort for the mental health issues mental health is really our services that we provide to students um I'm gonna do a little bit that I'm gonna hand it over to and then so unfortunately bored you're going to have to look over your shoulder or if you've got your device go ahead and go into the to the packet or the email I sent you if you saw the packet there's a lot of words so we're not going to go everything it's really not providing you with the information yeah so 1 of the catalysts for doing this besides I was asking questions in the past was um what's bold and at the top Children's Mental Health domains in Nashville emergency and that published as early as October of or as recently as October the 25th and I'm not going to read all of that but some of the things I just wanted to highlight or what's in Black National Emergency for Children's Mental Health Urgent barriers to accessing pediatric Mental Health Services which we've talked about here in the past um and then just the last quote we continue to urge our country's leaders to advance policies that by organizing with mental health like got cut off so I have all this so we want to share that at Grants and Village School when we talked about um in the past multi-tiered system this is supports we talked about the 3 tears so we considered the 3 tiers in student mental health as well and the first 2 for the Tier 1 and tier 2 tier 1 is um full school so all students get it 02 is get to need some intervention but it's not like serious trauma type of intervention Mental Health and so tear 1 in tier 2 the um it's generally focused around anxiety and stress and this is Whitman does most of the um Tier 1 and tier 2 interventions that our students and again there's a list of the effects excuse me um for students of anxiety stress that I'm not going to read through for you um so then the other side is we have a school child psychologist does some tier 2 and she does tier 3 into tier 3 is more that intense intervention and that's more for kids with better suffering and Trauma and again huge long list of the impact of trauma on students in space um and most of the kids in that in that group our kids who might be um distractions to obviously themselves because they're they're thinking about things all the time but also distractions to the other kids in their classrooms so again I mentioned that Chris does Tier 1 and tier 2 which focuses on more of the anxiety and distress um so I just thought it was an important uh slide to note that a school counselor generally provides General supports the entire student body focusing on academic routine main career planning and social emotionalism so um you may know this Christa's lunch bunches every day with students um she needs individually with students she's a godsend when something going awry in the building and it's just like oh my gosh I need someone to help me not help me but help me help students and so again school counselor GVS psychoeducation about emotion self-regulation problem solving skill building with individual small groups of us you want to add anything to that I know I mean most of the psycho education is provided during the Lunch Bunch program it was very cool to see Ollie here because he was in Bunch Bunch and most of the school is in it so I'm not outing him or anything but during coid he was remote and we he would come every week and that little he was in ated the time we we had been reading this series and after we all after he went on to Middle School another book in our series came up and let me know and when we read it together I love it no move on to Chris taking over to talk about school counseling uh program at Grantham Village school and then we'll kind of come to child psychologist after that yeah sure um so I wanted to talk about the school counseling Core Curriculum it's it is delivered in the Lunch Bunch program and in um in classrooms it's the Tier 1 um interventions and and prevention work it also we also use the past program um this and the teachers present the past programming in their classrooms and um they both Focus sorry just trying to catch up so pass pass is based on the cast of competencies and those are um self-awareness self-management social awareness responsible decision-making and relationship skills and then the American School counseling Association also has its its focus and those are learning strategies self-management and social skills so we're we're really giving them a lot of social emotional learning um today was the that we started for the first time in the new year with my my lunch bunches and we're working on goal setting and um we we read Jabari jumps and then um and then the kids get to if this is a boy who's very scared of doing a jump but he wants to do it really badly and so then we wrote some goals that we had for 2026 and it was really very next 1 yeah okay this is just this is about um sixth grade uses in instead of the past program they use the um the slide doing when trust adult rimble Journal I'm looking at curriculum resources and then some of the teachers are um using the responsive classroom development designs philosophy and start their warnings with a warning meeting which has been really powerful um this year um Kim McFarland and I are going to team together to do the career exploration unit which really excited about just and she's so excited about it too and I love that buddy Mentor program this year every student has either a buddy or is a buddy or both and it's it's phenomenal watching those kids together and it brings out the best that have been it does so I think I shared with you in 1 of my my newsletters are going to principal reports at the Holiday movie that we showed for the kids the book buddy sat together and they could either be at the movie or doing it was going to be coloring and then they end up games and everything else is there are so many kids but the quote unquote big kids just shadowed their Littles and it a couple of them are like I want to watch the movie but I'm going to go color and it was just so cute to watch them just take them under their wing and and help them and when we're waiting out there in Carline they're the kids are lined up waiting for their big buddies you know it's very very okay so we did that side so the next plan okay you want this 1 or you want to go more go ahead to the next 1 okay yeah you can go ahead and that talks about the past program the kids are um they're they're wearing pens this year instead of having to park out money for stickers which is awesome and they they seem to really enjoy being the best in the diagnostic to usually be the first 1 in line and but they really seem to enjoy that program so we can go to the next 1 okay the prevention and awareness so all of our teachers and staff um and um are trained in the middle youth Mental Health First Aid we've all done that we've done a lot of vector prevention um videos um we also offer different things for parents and just for the series um with the center for safer communities and that is the former turning points we did a S Series partnering with the Dunbar free library and Center for safer communities in it is body safety and boundaries consent and um so we had some parents come but we also um have a video that I sent out to parents and we're planning on doing some more of those it was is a really cool um collaboration because um Carrie brought for hay from formerly turning points Kay gave gave the talk to parents and then um on Wednesday when the the it's time for the after-school program at Dunbar Free Library she gave a talk to them on the same subjects and the kids were so excited about it they wanted to come back so we're going to continue that so I'm excited about that um the other prevention work that we do is suicide prevention and  Abuse Prevention and we use the um the care for kids helping relationships project it's out of um the prevent child abuse from Vermont this is the to use prevention project um Pro program and we've done this for about 3 or 4 years with the center um never remember the safer communities um because they were turned away but she comes out and helps me with the very last 2 2 um lessons and um we went on doing that again this year we're also hoping to start in um in the older grades third through 6 um continuing with that healthy relationships boundaries consent um recognizing healthy relationships and being um just more confident and recognizing things and I have those here if anybody wants to look look at those I think ready okay yeah I mean you all know I think the 504 case management and um our SAS testing is coming up um we're moving away from some of our testing and moving to from the niwa to Star and uh so I won't be as involved in the the district white testing um and then I again I'm going to plug the doing the work with Kim and really excited okay so every month every week we meet with our mental health Team which we we call it we have um we have a a flea therapist who volunteers with us she's a retired play therapist and that's been really exciting to have and then Melanie blogged our our clinical psychologist who we contract with and Lesley um Brown who is RB CBA and myself we meet every week to talk about some of our to our at risk and just different interventions we want to make sure we we try and also some kids that are kind of coming up to our radar that we're consuming back and that's that's I think Chris is worth also mentioning that your arm and knee vent out the a Zone yes and foster care foster care yeah okay we We Gather a lot of information um behavior um Behavior sheets and attendance logs um I attend the mtss meetings on Friday to find out about the kids needs that are coming up throughout the week and um all the intervention teams we we have morning intervention team meetings yeah we're we are always collaborating with have the families and teachers and staff and the the community I think it would be nice to open things up to the community I know 1 of the um actually Jenny you were able to put it on the Eastman of the survey oh yeah yeah thank you for that um because I think you know I think prevention work is all of us or in terms of collaboration do that um Chris collaborates with mental health providers in the state that our students see with parent permission which is really helps us within the school yeah what what we noticed is that um I think Health therapists in the private sector are tapped out and so it's it's sometimes really hard to to make those connections and and so we work really hard on that that's good reason is Extreme 1 nice to be able to have somebody of skilled with us that's it yeah I'm doing next slide yes so tada this is women and she's amazing and then as I mentioned we also have a child psychologist to do our tier 3 which is really focusing on the anxiety and Trauma um child psychologist in in a clinical setting is different than a child psychologist in a full setting um our chat psychologist works with students who are um at risk as well as their their families which is super helpful to us um hey ants I know as part of this Christine were you going to share now about the yeah absolutely to that role yep I absolutely can so we pass off to Christine at the request of the board and it's in my um board report I won't project it out there we can look at it later if you want to but um I did include the survey Jillian gave the great idea uh but didn't actually Julian worked with Kristen and I around some of the questions with it um and we got 16 responses from the survey which actually is a good turnout because I only sent it to basically the southwest and Upper Valley region of the state because I knew I'd get a better response than if I blanketed the whole so that's 16 different School districts we heard from so that that's actually a really good response rate when you pluck out all the different schools that are in this area um 100% as they should reported they employ a school counselor because it's required by the rules right the interesting thing I found in the data was that 93.8% of the districts actually employ their own School psychologists what was interesting around that statistic is yes we employ a school psychologist um she's actually a child psychologist not a school but we contract it and it's on a very limited basis but we don't have an official school psychologist per se but what's interesting about that percentage is that um almost all of them said they funded that through their local budget so the 2 big positions funded locally where school counselors and school um the next part that becomes interesting is huh what was the percentage 98 93.8 of the people that responded so 93.816 what is that 15 um said um you know they do and they locally fund it um because we did I had a question on the survey that said okay what positions do you have for right now using those same positions having you fund them and that gave us some really good data there um but when it came to these other I called supplemental positions social work right that's something we talked about or any type of school-based mental health counselor therapist I kind of put that into 1 category and the bcba so 87.5% of them did have cbn's and for the public that's on board certified behavior analyst um but the interesting thing is that when it came to those 3 categories the funding then started breaking down like people were locally funding it especially actually the 1 with about providing a school day and mental health um person or uh a therapist you know there was federal grants there were state grants funded through local there was Regional cost sharing and some blogging my insurance and other funding sources which means um 1 person wrote me a comment that they did it through the New Hampshire Charter which I thought that was interesting and I know you had mentioned something about some of that by the um so I I think this is I mean I've got the contacts of everybody that responded you know I'm not going to share them publicly and told them I wouldn't um but I I do intend to reach out to a couple of those folks that told us about it um so definitely school psychologist in school counselors seem to be the trend right now but there is a trend people are exploring with specifically these mental health positions um and how they can support them in the schools and support the student accepted was that 3% didn't say if they were uh actual employees versus conference Services um I didn't ask that question says that they had but what I did phrase the question is I'm a direct employee of yours so I'm gonna assume they were employees there were a couple of comments though particularly tied to the schools that were that that said they actually only used their school psychologists in the realm of special ed so they were very specific and they didn't necessarily cross over to that Mental of Arena that was going to be minutes if they were Services provided to a point of IEPs yes it seemed like people were making that clear in their responses on that so can I piggy back that absolutely and I think it speaks to I really appreciate you passing about how um a child's mental health can impact the greater population and I wish that I put maislos hierarchy of needs on there because um into the fire right but if a child basic needs aren't being met they can't be educated and and they are not only interrupting their own education but they education of other children around them and the teacher trying to meet those needs uh so I I just think our mental health team does an amazing job and really helps teachers to be able to do their jobs in case it would be better times so any other questions for Chris or Kristen just a question in terms of the the 13 units you've been there how do you see things have evolved over that time I know we have a little thing called Co somewhere better than that time yeah um but my sense just from what that that that other sources is that things are harder or challenging more kids in trouble is that a fair assessment I I think it's very fair I think we've seen an increase in numbers of um diagnosable things like ADHD and autism but also um just generally gets our our more reluctant to feel uncomfortable I think just being comfortable with feeling uncomfortable is is our concept for for that and just pushing through some some things that are hard is harder so we've we've definitely noticed a change yeah thanks are the services that the psychologist is provided for us related to special ed by APS predominantly or predominantly not it's a hard 1 to answer and that's okay I think the person that we employ is a clinical psychologist which is different than what a lot of people call a school psychology that's sort of what schools I apologize usually and I'm speaking on a turn but usually does a lot of Neuroscience does the that's you know this film um and then a Clinical Psychology this is a clinician who sees patients you know who's like doing therapy mostly so therapy I that's yeah separated from an IEP office that does the the testing for the iOS and I think where I'm having a hard time answering your question is just be identifiable it's a variety it's not 1 group or the other thank you this is super helpful yeah thank you very much the time and effort to put in that up next on the agenda is leading right into the 306 rules which is minimum standards for the state and for our schools um do you guys want I do need an a motion on your approval of the school council program and the Middle School um yeah go ahead so from Phil second from Jerry all in favor say I I that motion a motion to approve the school counseling program at random Village School it was in okay thank you for okay sure yeah in connection continuing on with the 306 rules so 1 of the things with the new rules um and you have them in your packet let me just share it for a public that you'd have to have 1 but the state doesn't provide us with it do I leave that right say that again Jared did I reiterate that the state doesn't provide a standard even though they say we have to follow well okay so here's what the good question Jerry you've got the the you get this the gold spot on line um so what the rules actually say is that um the 306 rules indicate that competencies rest at the local level how you define your competencies what you want students to know and be able to do and how you're going that is a local decision however your competency should be built on State academic standards or locally board approved standards that comes into your role so through my 30 ICS work throughout the state well we have built my little 306 team and I is this template that we are now seeing to all districts you should bring this forward um because um if the rules also say if you are not accepting the State academic standards then you definitely have to have lived standards and so this list um that you all received in your packet um it was vetted through the Core curriculum team at Grantham Village School so that team looked at it then I emailed it to the full staff gave them about a 3-week period of time to look at it to say I got some feedback we need some adjustments but these are the academic standards that govern the like when Chris did her curriculum presentation you'll see in her supporting document that was uploaded to all of you and sent to you tonight um that she um lists What's called the ASCA standards so that's what's on your list here is that for our school counseling program we defer to the National ASCA standards and in some instances you will see this list shows you what does the state have available for academic standards and currently the state does not have academic standards available in all areas so therefore you do need to look elsewhere um and then what we're using and a little bit of a notes of why we chose to use what we're using um and so that's the it it runs all the way from Arts music PE Health School counseling to our our multi-tiered systems of support structure to our um she talked about the path program our social emotional learning program we use the What's called the Castle competencies and standards for that work um so this is the driver of of how it helps teachers to 1 make sure programs they're choosing are in alignment to what we know is best but also how they decide um their competition IES and they're reporting system at random Village School on what they want kids to know and be able to do um and so this is kind of the foundation to it all and um so I'm looking for our emotions for you guys to approve that list that that unless that's been questions or discussion before we oh please call Transit and clear ah I would entertain a motion to approve the on Saturday the uh grandson School District academic standards so first from Nancy second second from Phil all in favor say I motion approve uh next on the agenda is a budget so yep Meredith and I are going to team on that we're going to actually lump for you your items 5 6 and 7 all together Bravo is open enrollment yes and well suddenly get a you got to go sorry for consolidation you got just closed a few things I got too many things open you computers not like that that's okay see here we go okay so we have kept our running slides all together we're just building a huge slide deck for all of you so when it comes time to talk about how you want to present your um at the budget hearing and actually I mean you're gonna have tons of slides you can pick from um and so for the public you can continue to just track what the board have been doing around the budget so tonight the first 20 slides in here are your Revenue updates because at the last uh meeting we talked about your expenses and a discussion around your articles your warrant articles what you back to consider the remaining slides are just uh uh carryover from your December board meeting um I'm going to let um Meredith take it in terms of our estimated revenues and um tax rates yes it's all yours Meredith so this first sorry excuse me the first slide here outlines our estimated revenues for next year as you can see everything's remained pretty level for the most part uh there is a slight the special ID which is due to um it used to be funded at 67% it's now funded at 80% I still didn't quote to 80% just they guarantee it but they don't so you'll see a slight increase there uh unassigned fund balance it's based on our last it's our average of the last 6 years on balance how to put in that is the increases due to I know where base rate increasing by 8536 um we also had an increase in our ATM which is 418.37 and last year was 410 those things so and our swept has remained pretty consistent as well the next 1 just to review our creating budget our proposed operating budget which includes our general fund and like our food service fund grants um before and after school program so our overall operating budget is proposed at 12 million 978,778 um of that 157280 is the Food Service fund those costs continue to increase um the program does typically run in a deficit a forceful program that we are increasing our fees for next year just to make it a self-funded program so we don't see a deficit in there um and our grants are based on what our allocations are estimated to be next year we are seeing a decrease in Title 1 and title 2 so that's why there is a decrease of that 1 so then if you want to go the next slide because so overall we are our proposed budget would be an increase of 1.25 um this year we were at a total of 1814 at the proposed budget would be 1443 then remind me it's a dollars per thousand per thousand yeah yes the next slide yep I just I'm gonna pause here do you have any questions on the revenue and the projected back not a question just just an awareness question of how little the state provides to support our school for the general audience out there yeah it's less than 6 or about a 6 of the total yeah um and I think Phil thank you for kind of bringing that awareness um because Meredith and I talked about this all the time um so even though it says local tax rate right there's that implication that that's what we're raising but when she said the sweat the stew uh Statewide education property tax which is that right there her second line right there that's not state raised it's just so everybody knows the state comes in does an assessed value then dictates to the town what they need to and they call that estate tax I'm I'm just going to be totally candid here so both of those are really what's on the local Grandpa Community to raise its that the state is not contributing that dollar 39 they're they they will get what we say has to be generated for our budget and then based on the assessed value of the community they come back in and say well now to contribute to the state tax base they don't even collect the money and send it back like to Grant they go grant them time to grant them you raise it you keep it now you know so it is a Mis I like to say it's a huge misconception that it's called the state tax because it is a um I will say that I did an analysis on the conval lawsuit and I don't know folks are aware of that but that was the lawsuit that said the vase adequacy amount of about 4,300 dollars is not where it should be based on actually the minimum School approval standard rules that we talked about earlier tonight and that analysis alone for grant them if the state legislators actually upheld the legal decision by the Supreme Court that said it should be at least 7,300 per child that would be be another state Aid of over 1.2 million coming to grant them what that would actually do to your local tax rate is see that 13 dollars that's projected right there that would drop that to $11.55 because you'd be um you'd be reduced by a dollar 45 cents if the state actually held the legal decision by the Supreme Court and if the members of the public are curious in last month in December I'm pretty sure in our public packet there a slide deck that you you'll see again and contained in it was an analysis analysis Christine's talking about so if you're curious you could go back and really see it that detail that so the state does contribute very very little in New Hampshire which is is a miracle in itself because New Hampshire continues to be a high-performing State education when it comes to public education but we are the 50th state in the nation on how poorly we fund our school at the state level we are a yeah how how do they get away with it or like the 64 million dollar question it's I mean you have to react to vote for legislature legislators who are going to do it differently because there was in the 90s there was a Claremont lawsuit very similar to conval and the state supreme court then found that the funding formula was unconstitutional and then we went through a period of time in the state where they were address it and trying to rectify it and bring it more into line and then as politics moved a certain direction they've been chipping away at it and now we're back to almost the same lawsuit the combat lawsuit was like very very similar to was in the 90s and we had to hold them accountable again and and yet the lawsuit the decision in the conval case stopped short of holding that accountable I think we're gonna have to see another lawsuit frankly because the lawsuits had progressed so when the Claremont allows you to occurred the Supreme Court came out and said yes you are not paying enough but didn't put a dollar amount onto it didn't say you should have minimum pay that well then Conrad comes along over 30 years later which is what it was um in the in the judge said nope I'm putting amount but again both the the the circuit level judge ruled on it and then the Supreme Court failed to say and I'm going to give you a deadline legislators by which to get it done and they stopped showing that and and basically said we're not going to crush branches of the government we're going to respect our judicial role you need to respect your legislative role you need to fix the problem because it is a legislative issue and they stopped short of that so did also an exchange inequity in the district like Anthem versus the district like writing and the state of mind has minimal it really is dramatically different this week to District yeah so I mean here's here's an example on this Slide the the board had asked us to put together um some uh uh data around the cost per pupil because this is data we're going to have to show um associated with the warrant that gets posted publicly now um per the law that got passed last year by 2 years ago sorry so you can see here the interesting thing that we did when we did some analysis here Marinette is you um first of all for FY 25 we can't compare to the state because the state hasn't released their data yet we know what ours was what we said to the D on their required form but we don't know what the state is so we don't know what the differential yet they haven't released that so at least looking at the last 6 years up through n 2019 to 2024 you can see Grand them um it's 6 year average is a little over 22,000 per student you I mean yes have you grown but if you start looking at that percentage increase which I did for you over your 6 year you're a so a 6 year percentage increase for you is 14.6% I mean simple math is if people talk about inflation leveling around 3% per year you just expect an 18% increase there right so you've been you've been doing your due diligence in terms of the cost per pupil if you look at the state on the on the other hand um they're sick while they're 6 year average is about $500 higher than ours their percent increase over the 6 years has been 32.9% increase so um and with as we know we've got some districts but part of the cycle is districts that are wealthy have 1 of the least cost per pupil dollar amount versus districts that are struggling that have you know lower I mean higher poverty rates that would say their cost per pupil is higher and so there is a vicious cycle around this cost per pupil meaning districts that tend to struggle tend to have higher cost per pupils than districts that tend to have more financial stability and when you put that against the 4,000 whatever it is the state is you realize where the money is not the state right the state's not coming from the money this the burden of public education in the state of New Hampshire rests on the local taxpayer there's no doubt about it um so we did with that in there so you guys have that and just a quick note on politics the state legislature is considering putting a cap on local funding yes um just so you're aware that that's coming down the road from the legislature obliterating local control yeah the other thing I will just call out for the folks that are here that weren't here last month that that correct me if I'm getting this wrong but the increase projected in the budget right now for next year is lower than the mandated increases in aggregate like the things that we're contractually obligated to do that are going to increase you've all figured out how to have a spend less than our our mandated increases contractually are are over 1.1 million um however we brought in a fiscally responsible budget that's up 770 we're at 76976 right which is a 1.1 million dollar right so we've found some Cuts you know those to 400,000 give or take um to keep even your mandated your requirement cost increases down you know we had some tough conversations and decisions were made but yeah yeah there's a really good uh PowerPoint set of slides that show that the area referred to yeah I think it's 1.2 million was the mandated infection and we've actually brought list right for sure yeah we brought them in last night 30051965 yes exactly a lot of other things like contractual staff that's a special education things Healthcare health and dental things that we don't really have much control over sometimes um you also asked I think Nancy asked for this and we dug into this Meredith and I data geek so we love it when you ask us these questions do what savings might have with the Led Led project um I'm going to skip this and she's going to get right to the grass but this was the data chart she used to create these graphs and I'll let you take this 1 yep so you can see uh the LEDs were installed um last May and since then our costs have really leveled at I mean it's been able to become predictable for us now um so the cost of decreased and also leveled up for us so and then so I think just to clarify by for anybody looking at the graph what she did is she took the same time period before the project was completely in place so she put took from May to December of 2024 which is your top line and then compared it to May to December of 2025 because that's when the project was complete and fully in place so you could start to get a sense of what's Happening yeah thank you yeah and the same with this chart the blue is with LED lights the Orange is prior to the LEDs so for usage um you can see for the most part it has decreased even somewhat leveled out you know there are some spikes there over the summer there's more equipment you know being run to some summer projects um and then the same in December we had a little Spike so I think it's due to our H issues yeah I mean you have to remember still a lot of hours is everything alright a lot of people so not just our LEDs right when you got a are running it's nonstop it's drawing a lot of electricity I have indoor sports now yes right yeah yeah but what we're seeing is a nice light like it's becoming very predictive which is which is what you want with an LED project yeah and it did exactly what because projected it would too I mean it did lower all of our bus so yeah Russian okay all right we're going to jump into war articles say um and we're going to bounce off of each other on this 1 um your typical first 2 articles are right up here it's your standard language it's what you've always used um but the articles that we wanted to talk to you tonight about and we're not advocating 1 way or the other that what you should take for Action we just always want you to have options as a board and what you want to consider um so uh first couple we're going to talk about is related to your trust funds and 1 of your capital reserve funds and we've got some slides there we're going to talk about contingency fund which is under a specific RSA Marin this is going to talk about that you guys looked at that probably 5 or 6 years years ago elected not to do anything with it we're we're not bringing it back because we feel you need to do anything with it we just putting it on the table to say these things you always want to think about when you're discussing articles and I'm going to let the chair weigh in on open enrollment um discussion around that article in health lead that conversation um so here are your current balances in your Expendable trust fund and your capital reserve fund um keep in mind you've got a couple capital Reserve funds here you got the building maintenance and you got the school construction 1 um you've got some balances here I the 1 the ones I would draw your attention to is your building maintenance capital reserve fund sitting you know over 95,000 your special ed Expendable trust fund um and there are some differences in the in why they're called those 2 different things is around 247,000 and your school tuition is over 176,000 your others I mean the scholarship fund that's nothing you can really play with at this point um but those were the 3 that we'd like to draw your attention to um and the reason why is we did a historical dive into your annual reports this was good for me because I went back and looked at all of your annual reports back to 2011 I read them all um and this um graph uh chart is showing and when you've added lasts to those funds so in 2012 you did an interesting thing the board did an interesting thing and added to the special education Expendable trust in 2 ways so when you add to the trust you can do it 2 ways 1 you can make a direct appropriation which that's add to your budget so that's going to be counted in to your final budget number in a tax implication or you can say I want to fund it based on your Reserve balance at the end of the year right so that's going to draw down that 350 um thousand dollars that Merida talked about that we put as a as a general fund right Surplus is a lot of people will refer to it right so you can say hey if we have a surplus of on a dollars we're going to set aside you know 50,000 of that to go in this trust fund and then we're going to set it aside maybe 35,000 to go in this trend line keep in mind how you order those articles on your warrant dictate who gets the money first so for example if let's say you only have 75,000 at the end in Surplus and you say you're going to put 50,000 into your maintenance right and you say up to and not to exceed 50,000 then out of that 75 immediately is coming 50 say the next article you have is your special ed and you say I want to put 35 in that well you're only going to have 25 left that's only going to get 25 so it draws from that fund balance you have at the end of the year okay interesting did you explain a little bit of these trust funds to do and having why they why they exist yeah and I'll Meredith can jump in she's she's got more of the background on on some of those because she did all of that history around when they were set up why they were set up and what their purposes were do you want to jump in there Meredith yeah yeah argue that yeah I haven't got too many open for me right now yeah that's fine so our GVS building maintenance trust fund was established in 1996 it's for the purpose of repairing and maintaining the school building then we have the GBS special education Expendable trust fund established in 99 um it's for the purpose of providing special education services in the district the secondary school social Expendable trust fund established in 2003 it's for the purpose of different the costs of high schoolers and their High School tuition then we have the legal services Expendable trust fund was established in 2014 and it's by the purpose of funding extraordinary legal expense as may be inferred from time to time by the school district um because the playground Expendable trust which we've used so I'll just kind of skip that happen um the grant them School construction capital reserve established in 2004 and it's under the provisions of RSA 35 um all of those there's a lot there it's okay it's fine so yeah um all this information I kind out there ended up a little yeah and you have access to this document too and the folder so special and if there's suddenly a change in the needs and the special ed Department that you know is just some flexibility that's the purpose of that for example yeah um and the scholarship fund is exactly what it says on that then yeah that's what I was doing scholarship student scholarship yeah scholarship there's um different stipulations under those the ETFs the ETFs are the ones that I think are the most important to us right now they're higher balance and really are the ones that are like provided to give us some safety and contingencies we have a student move into District who we have discovered has extraordinary extraordinary costs associated with their service it's a great that's where we draw money off the trust if we need to Secondary School tuition if we have more students move in or we have a weird demographic bubble and have cover more tuitions than we projected it allows us to do that without having to Scrabble around so it gives us it's like a savings account right like that we all have in our personal lives it's a way for us to hold money to provide contingencies and in my town on the board we've put in and taken out for planning purposes and then for contingencies right and and how they are originated and designated Expendable versus capital reserve also dictate how you can the money out versus public hearing versus votes um yeah you know so it's not like the board can just go in and grab and take any time they have to have public hearings they have to have you know do their due diligence and seeking the voter input um but to clarify what you were saying at the beginning in terms of funding them our options are that we could put you can appropriate to build it into the operating budget right up front right then commit to it from day 1 of here or how the town say if there's anything left which is generally the way most people do it um but in 2012 there were 2 articles on your work want to appropriate a hundred thousand dollars into the Expendable trust so that did add to your overall budget line and then you had another article that said if there's any unspent funds um up to 64,000 and so that's how got 164 that year into it um and then you've done that you've done the special ed education trust fund a couple of times you can see in your history um you've done legal services and I'm going to guess in 24 14 you did Legal Services because I think that got an established in the early 2000s was it yeah so they you wanted to put some more money in there probably um and that legal services people have that Expendable trust because if you end up having a legal situation that ends up costing you you've you've got that um and then you did a tuition you in the history that I looked at the 14-year history you did tuition once uh playground you did that's you know that that's part you Bond anyways that you usually set up and then you did maintenance and repair once um and so but you haven't done anything in terms of replenishing um Over The Last 5 Years um and that's something we just wanted the board to be aware of um the ones that sort of sticks up to me is the capital of the boys that started maintenance that's fun a lot of times in terms of the building is not getting no I know you're going to talk about that yeah and so so Phil as your Superintendent at 1 of the recommendations I would say that you need to prioritize is potentially that maintenance and repair capital reserve fund um in thinking about um yeah you're right yes if the building itself is not getting any younger but we've done a great job maintaining the building but we have to think about the systems within the building now and they are aging our HVAC system is aging there's no doubt about it and that is I mean you're looking at easily a hundred thousand dollars repair on on a major component of that system going down this is not funny came home from school on Monday and saying mom he is so perfect in our room it's not too hot and not too hot I'm like oh my God stop fiction don't let him don't let me know tracking of I got like yeah I know a thing here about that Rodney page is working diligently diligently with Seamans but we you know we're still in the The Challenge period of figuring out that control system and you know or yeah so to simplify a little bit with with Christine is presenting to us as the board and frankly while there's public here listening is deciding and gauging the appetite within our Town taxpayer base for whether we there are very clear needs in terms of putting money into these accounts in my opinion I'm I'm actually shocked that it's been more than 5 years since we've been we've been moving money around anyway um we have all expenses I we have special ed costs and the things that we know are coming the the question is gauging whether we if we decide to present to the community that we want to put this money like wrap it into our operating budget that's 1 course or if when we have money left over which we work really hard in on this board to return money to the taxpayers usually around 350,000 to the town whether we don't return 350 000 and we returned less and put money into these trust accounts so that we can cover our specialty Capital expenses but I I think we're also concerned about tuition and special ed so I'm not I'm only looking for you all to list be listening and then that's really issue for us to think about is like how do we want to try to have that dialogue amongst ourselves and how what we present in the town meeting there's sort of the same thing but they're obviously not because 1 is BAS on how much money we end up with at the end and we have a goal but there's a lot that can happen between now and that goal and but then our town it frankly is very used to getting that money back so it's a political question really honestly it's a financial and tactical 1 but it also is like a political question of having less at the end yeah and I think I nicely said I think the Board needs to think about particularly these 3 that I'm zoning in on a which is the building maintenance the special ed and the tuition is think about as a board what do you want those goals what do you want to set as a goal figure for those where you say okay this is good we're okay sustaining that as long as we can sustain this amount right and let it grow over time then we're good because I think that's where the bowl the board sets some goals and then you can say we're working towards these goals like if you say hey I want to get that special ed um trust fund up to 3 because we know easily and how to District place number 1 is going to run you a lot more than that but multiple even day placements you at 300,000 you're talking maybe 2 or 3 kids um so you know you you want to think about it as a board what's what's a good figure there based upon what we know expenses and rates are today yes they're going to increase in the future but it also needs some guidance from you in terms of what would be your with these numbers thinking is that enough is that I don't know I don't have a sense of that at this time realistically I'd like to see your building and maintenance at least around 250,000 I mean we already know we have more than that the needs yeah yeah yeah I I'd like to see your special ed Road who probably buy another 100 thousand so around 350 I think secondary tuition um that's going to play into our open enrollment conversation coming up here shortly but at least I get you at 200,000 around there but I'm not saying you need to make those leaps overnight I mean right be strategic yearly about what you can do and I'll insert here that on the agenda a little further down the pipe is uh another meeting in January and I would suggest that we have a bit of that conversation now like we're having but then we probably need another meeting at the end of January before we have our public budget hearing and meeting in early February we're on a tight timeline there for a warrant articles so I'm going to suggest and we'll talk about it whether we have another meeting at the end of January so that we can think about this conversation and start to have and by that meeting leaving it have like a good sense of how we might manage over like a 3 year period putting money into those buckets so I'll put that there yeah it would be helpful I think in the interim to have some input perhaps from the community you gave to a lot of Leslie or we talked about 2 different options Each of which consequences as well as benefits in terms of what you've described yeah I mean you're I would encourage board members to have their own conversations that's really the big goal for the February meeting is that we will that we'll have a packet published people can see our this convert like these numbers and and the basically the slides that we saw from December and some of this the public can see that in advance come to the meeting in February we're going to basically do a very similar version to this presentation but really walk through the budget again and that's where we're really looking for that's not a board meeting the board meeting comes afterwards that's where the public really should come read the packet and give us feedback that's why we do that bubbling Public Presentation of the board of the budget so can you remind me on timeline um if we do operating budget um or an article when would those funds be available for use and I'm just thinking like Building Maintenance capitals Means versus if do it um as the leftover funds when when would those funds be available great um on July 1 of that budget cycle would have actually put them in the operating budget for July and then otherwise it would be the following yeah like they think it was from the end of June saying from fund balance I mean we'd have to determine that over the summer sort of thing so that would be a long time but yeah either way I mean either way they they come in until effect in 1 July with the budget it doesn't matter if you want or yeah same here okay yeah yeah yeah so oh do we have a question no I thought that was a good question um so we did give you some samples so you can just see there is a typo on the last 1 again we made up these numbers Meredith and I are not proposing these numbers we just gave you samples of what they look like you've seen them in the past um so there is a typo in the last 1 where we say some of 50,000 but then he said 25 sorry about that you know oh my God okay yeah they're just oh yeah there you go that's right it's okay you know don't take suggesting Christine that we would consider obviously having the speak Parks District of these 3 world articles are some similar type in our final proposed I'm not recommending to the board right now that you consider a direct appropriation to the budget budget I would say if anything if you want to test this water out you don't necessarily have to test with all 3 but you test it out as a leftover from a fund balance right yeah we had to actually talk about that 2 years ago um I think in the budget presentation we had talked about um returning less money to the taxpayers and I think I can't remember who this but I think we talked about putting in special ed um ETF yeah um so that's something that we've done talked about recently we didn't end up having to do it we talked about if you do the direct this is a little technical but if you do a direct um preparation thank you um is that a separate warrant article from the operating budget you know we'll add to it similar much of like when you negotiate your contracts your CV right yeah it's an add-on so if the taxpayers aren't fever and support of the operating budget as proposals but are not in figures they're in the add-on of funding 1 these are multiple leads it is a separate phone yeah it's a separate mode has to be yeah and that whether it's at the beginning of the year again yeah right okay um so the other thing that we wanted to just give you another look at is the contingency fund um Meredith has been talked about this um and this is under your RSA 19804 B um and it just it really gives you this just kind of um opportunity to say we're going to commit long-term to an up to 5% of your net assessment and I think the best way Meredith can explain it to you is the example she's got at the bottom yeah so you guys want take a look at that so your net assessment um is the amount that is raised from local property taxes so so that so I took for our year um for 2526 our net assessment is 10,145 927 um I did this example because this is kind of the reporting requirement that we have to do uh So currently we have nothing retained I think we were to do 5% of that be 500600 um then with our proposed budget saying if everything were to pass um our net assessment increases up to 11,000 we've retained 506 but our campaign on that 11 million is 554 747 so what you do in those circumstances is it's just the net difference so that second year we would only do 48,451 because the total we could have is that 5547 47 does that make sense different the first year you do this it's a huge hit it's a huge hit to your budget right because you don't have any amount retained previously because what you're basically building is You're Building yourself a savings plan of 5% every year you know you're building in a an automatic increase or or 50 degrees I guess went down but but that could be used in any part of your budget there's no specific to where those funds would be allocated meaning special and special ed the first tuition First Capital Etc yeah there are there are no parameters except how you go to pull it out the process here is you got to hold the caring right you got to do the annual court and all that so this would be instead of what we just saw in the previous screen it could be yeah could set of the warrant articles to add it to the operating budget and this is a cat in other words you don't have that much let them use that much right yeah right and this is just putting this option out there to you guys just to make you aware that this does exist if you wanted to but I think what you need to realize if you went this route you're adding a half a million to your budget right now because you have to commit to that saying we're committing to have this which yeah dramatically impacts what we refer to the taxpayers at the end right is there anyone who's lived here longer than 20 years it's it's capped at 5 years it could be make them be lower it can be a 1% so any any yeah I'll just I mean your 6 year average on your um fund balance has been around 350,000 right you it's almost if you could predict the future like you want to do this in a year when you know your fund balance is going to be bigger than what that 5% back can be which has happened in my time and frankly you had that last year you had over a 500,000 fund balance yeah so if you can put a predicted a year ago we probably should have had this article yes you know and then you might have been able to you know this pros and cons to this you know people say well how is this really different than having a fund balance right versus doing your articles and laying out and replenishing your trust you know this does for some people it feels like okay you're patting the budget right for unpredictable whereas if you do your fund balance the way you have you're very transparent you're clear this is the fund balance this is what we committed to a fund balance to return anything above that we'll use to do this project or that project right so that's a little more transparent for some people putting it through the articles with the trust is also more transparent that those are more structured because it's very clear what they're for what their purposes how to draw them no I mean if you do this it's something that can hear you to hear in other words it will go on the potentially fund apparatus once set up continues yeah that's the other difference from the word that would have to be a year yes 1 continues until you were send that right right yeah that's a big difference from what we just talked about yeah okay right yeah this is a this is like a very long term but no kidding I mean for the most part I think we've explained um we do the RSA do that and we gave you sample language potentially if you wanted to all right have 1 1 open enrollment um and and I'm just going to kind of do this for our public that's here tonight and online um so open enrollment um open enrollment has been on the books with an RSA in the state of New Hampshire um since 2009 so it is not you know um however until last year only no public schools had ever tried it and they did um and so open enrollment basically allows is it allows for any District to receive any students who are non-resident and they can charge them so if you are receiving open enrollment School District you are guaranteed in 80% cost per pupil of wherever that student is coming from um and so and you can as a receiving open enrollment set many parameters around what you receive uh meaning you can um be very selective in the students that you choose to receive and you can deny students based on typical categories that honestly in every day would bring office of civil rights complaints on to the rest of us um for discrimination um so it did occur we had a state Supreme Court ruling that went uh between Pittsfield and Prospect Mountain then the state Supreme Court ruled because Prospect was an open enrollment Public School District Pittsfield was not basically um parents and field elected and Prospect Mountain accepted students from Pittsfield then backfield Pittsfield um for that tuition bill which was close to a half a million dollars with no notification and said you need to pay us Pittsfield said we never budgeted its and we're not an open enrollment District so they went to court to say shouldn't both districts have to be open enrollment for this to happen and the Supreme Court said no Pittsville you're on the hook to pay for that and there's another case that's likely not going to see court because I don't think Epsom school district is going f*** with this do it but Epsom is similar to us where we have an area agreement with evidence so we are contractually committed to sending School uh to sending students to Lebanon has an area agreement with Penbrook Academy situation happened there Epsom actually last last year double paid for students they had to pay for the kids that went to Pittsfield and they had to pay Pembroke Academy because it was in their area right now um and so this is is it open quite a um discussion and the Supreme Court ruling has basically put everybody on if you don't take action as an open enrollment you take no action because that's what Pittsville did then you are going to be held reliable because right now the RSA says this is all locally controlled and I emphasize right now that's what the RSA says because there is legislation right now uh 2 house bills 1 sin bill that want to remove the the ability of the voting body to make this decision in each town in a that every public school in the state of New Hampshire will become open enrollment if these bills pass in this legislative here's your quick down and dirty um breathing on open enrollment what questions because that would probably be the best way for me to address them um but we have some talking points in the slides uh but Christine 1 of the keys is if you take a district like let's take on corporate and they send us a student there per pupil costs are significantly lower than ours it's not well maybe I'm saying their cost is 80% it's a lot less than ours we're going to take a hit to a significant amount per student line correct we could yeah yeah but we can be selectively I mean if we were receiving open enrollment District we we can be selective so the board can set the capacity um as frequently as you want on what you want to receive through open enrollment the bigger question is without being sued yeah right now right now Jill in the blog yes yes and I'm going to continue to emphasize what the RSA exists today okay a year from now I can't guarantee that but the bigger the more concerning thing is um open enrollment goes both ways you can be receiving and you can be sending um and that's why Pittsfield um ended up having to pay is because they never took a a vote on they never did an article on their warning know they needed to but they didn't um that they didn't say were 0% sending because Prospect mountain did all the collaboratives all they and all the other little towns that makeup Prospect Mountain Academy um did the same article and basically what their article said was that they would um open to be receiving open enrollment but they would be 0% sending for any resident students and now legally what all the attorneys are telling us is that if and it's a big if because we don't know if the Supreme Court would still make that same ruling if its field had end an article that said we're 0% said but the attorneys here's the thing there's so much Unknown about Open Enrollment the only way we're going to find out how the law gets interpreted is unfortunately through court cases and what it's going to come down to is District sending each other to figure out the interpretation which is what is happening in this particular case so that legal services trust fund really so maybe that got a priority right so Christy and I have talked about it quite a bit um and we're we're talking about it with especially within our Upper Valley um region and Leadership and also frankly within the area agreement group meaning us Lebanon and specifically because our area agreement is long-standing from the late 60s I mean it's it's renegotiated every 10 years but it is a very long-standing relationship um but frankly none of us are interested in dinging out the window because it's tried and true um and so we've also been talking to each other about strategies um it remains to be seen whether the area agreement could be um like negated invalidated by a new active the legis but in the meantime um what a lot of schools are are talking about doing is what Christine was just alluding to that we bring an art warn article to the community that says we will be 0% sending which I'm very much in favor of because have an existing area agreement we have a contract in place that says we agree to send our students to LMS and LHS it would be very strange and basically in violation of our area agreement if we brought warrant article that some of your willingness on our students elsewhere in terms of our receiving then we're looking at GVS which has very very very little space um and so a lot of schools in that sort of predicament or in that situation are saying that 1% receiving giving us like very tiny window it's sort of like almost pro-forma meaning like we're doing this we're an article to protect ourselves or to cover our bases legally and it gives them what what you just said the governing body the legislative body is all of you and everyone who lives in this town will come to the district meeting and that's for you to decide the that's the legal body what Christine was referring to because the hope is that if in our town our taxpayers we saw very vividly how the tax burden is on your shoulders if you say this is the parameters we want for open enrollment it's really hard to imagine how anyone can argue against all of the tax base entirely possible but seeing you we're hoping that that legal strategy will help protect us from chaos basically so in the slides and I kind of whip through them because there is so much unknown there's there's a variety of um language you can have for your article around open enrollment the 1 I'm going to draw your attention to which is the most recent from legal is sample number 3 um and it's shall the Grantham School District vote to designate Grantham Village Schools specifically grades K to 6 but you adjust that you you can in your article get as wide as you want or as specific as you want um as an open enrollment school pursuant to RSA 194d thereby allowing non-resident students to attend Grantham Village School in an amount not to exceed your you you can put a whole number there you can put 0.01% you can put a small like you can say not to exceed 2 students there's your article um of the schools to or a percent of the schools total enrollment and further to set the percentage of grant them School District resident students permitted to attend open enrollment school programs outside the Grant from school district at 0% you can um and that does protect you that if somebody does say I want to send my student to X school which is maybe a receiving open enrollment program or school now that you can actually deny that as a board and saying no because we have an article that was voted on and approved by our governing body our our so we're not liable for the tuition right we're not liable for the tuition you have to you have to think though putting an article out there the question is remember any article can get amended on the floor so you can control the conversation as much as you think you have can control something um but you also can get ahead of the communication game in terms of communicating and helping people to understand what is this open enrollment about um and for the record I'm just going to say this publicly because I know that we're being recorded but open enrollment is not in existence right now in the state of New Hampshire for anybody to pick any public school in the state of New Hampshire it is not I get more calls now on well I don't want my child to go to grant them because everybody's open enrollment now nope you grant them still has its non-resident tuition policy which is is very well defined um and who you accept in terms of non-resident students and people are are putting 0% in the hopes that if a lot of districts I've always said well if you could get a 100% of the districts to agree in the state of New Hampshire and everybody actually got 0% passed then nobody's sending so how would you be receiving yeah but can can you limit the receiving as well yeah you can yeah so why what's the benefit of putting 1% for 0% I mean if we want to really follow our contracts and how they why would we put the positive percentage there what's the oh not for sending no what about receiving what's the what's the benefit there besides maybe the dollars potentially but also does a loss um there is some legal interpretation of excellent question Julian because it got asked on our recent webinar like when I just put 000 yeah the legal interpretation and again I'm going to say legal because we have nothing to back this up but the legal interpretation was that you could lose that in the court argument because the Spirit you the base assumption is that the spirit of the Open Enrollment RSA is to provide per parent parental Choice when it comes to educational rights then by actually doing that you just shut down correctol choice in Legally if you took it to court you could lose on that because your article is um not in the spirit of Parental Choice which is why a lot of people are just doing the 1% 0% okay yeah well I think you could lose either way yeah I agree depends on your lawyer I agree I'm on what happens and I tend to be a higher risk taker than others so you have guys have to make manager arrest okay um that's a good explanation but that's that's the legal interpretation of the question are you somewhere suggesting this number 3 would be the 1 that you would 3 is the 1 that our legal counsel is leading us towards although I'm still in conversation I also am saying this Glenn the law actually explicitly says the only percentage you have to give is of your sending so the law doesn't say in the article you must designate what your percent of receiving or your number of receiving are um and so I'm back and forth with our attorney right now saying maybe we don't but again the law doesn't say I have to designate an amount in terms of receiving because the law does say you all control the the criteria for receiving area of a policy on that so I say you could still run this article and strike uh to attend Grantham Village school right and you not put in in amount not to exceed right right right just you strike that whole phrase and then leave it in further to set the percentage of Grant from school district residents permitted to attend at zero percent because you can say yep yeah we're we're gonna we're going to be in open enrollment program but we'll let you know on a monthly quarterly basis what our capacity is but as as a word article it's also not just the board it's making that decision it's not the talent it's making that decision on an article so that gives a different legal standing on the plan yeah yeah but then also the agenda sure I'm also sitting here I haven't actually asked you or our lawyer about this but it kind of strikes me that with the existing area agreement that we have yes I'm sitting here like bringing this warrant article again we're in like talks with our partners I'm not worried about that those relationships but in a certain way it kind of like violates the area agreement even bringing this warrant article to the floor I know we're trying to do it to protect ourselves that I'm I we should probably I can or you can ask Jim that question again we don't know because we have it hasn't been challenged in court we have like existing enrollment agreement that should cover us across these bases so yeah well legally though Jim and I have talked about that and and legally he is going to say you're talking about apples and oranges and that they're because I've asked the question about how can 1 RSA Trump another and and he is basically saying they're not in the same field here's why the RSA around open enrollment is designed to promote mental Choice the RSA designed around area is about boards designating schools of assignments or Student Assistance so in that RSA you control the assignment of where students go whereas the other Thursday as parents control the assignment of where students go which is probably going to be the lawsuit that we see so you know 1 of the things I can tell you right now what Lebanon is doing I have full permission to share is doing a 1% 0% right um in the and they're only doing 1% receiving and they are doing only 1% receiving at a specific school at specific rates and it is not any of the grades within our area agreement to protect the area agreement um Plainfield is likely doing something very similar as well right and this 1 is is similarly um scoped because it's GVS which doesn't violate right the area agreement that's about grey 7 as well and a lot of people are doing the 1% 0% to protect our neighbor schools yeah I mean when you look at 1% of our population to kids right we'll take 2 2 kids that's it you know and and we we we don't I think that's going to crush any of our neighbors but it could it could it could yeah I mean depending on the needs and I mean that could be huge on some of these spots could we also me the language if we do the 1 0 could do you say not to exceed 1% of total enrollment in accordance with a policy that we need to write so like what if what if we say it's 2 kids but we've literally don't have chairs for I tried to do that I actually threw in language to protect the area agreement and Jim told me legally that won't stand your confusing your money in the water get it out I tried hearing I I cracked it all kinds of language to to refer back to the area but he's like you can't cross the 2 RCS because they're I guess I was thinking yes yeah like the board still looks at a policy about how many operationally manage that yeah so should the should the district to power the board to enforce its own policy so that we don't have enough chairs well they actually are so the key language in the article that that the voters in power of the board to do is when it says um as an open enrollment school pursuant to RSA 194b because how it lives right now 194d there's an entire section that you're control got it yeah which is around like reporting capacity and yeah yeah the big question I asked is we passed this article under the existing rule of 194 it gets changed yeah it's going to does that overrule what the the voting body agreed to that's the key question and we're not going to know that the answer I got legally was that will be up to the legislators because legislators can write in their own rsas if people have already adopted this that they would follow the existing rules and anybody that adopts after a certain date would have to follow the new rules they could write that they could write that they could also not they're not going to if these past I will say there is a bill look for it I don't know the bill number yet but I'll get it value that is that was just an open enrollment commission that's where I would say we get bipartisan support around to say look we're not saying shut down open enrollment altogether but we're saying there's a reason why this wasn't used for almost 16 years right Folks by public schools it's got a lot of problems right so put a commission together study what the what the problems are develop some core policies that can be shared and consistent by all districts right and don't pit Public Schools against each other in court in lawsuits right so I would love bipartisan support of that bill I'll get you the number but given the needs of the current environment something like this is a way to protect ourselves yes yeah we don't have current if you do nothing we are much more vulnerable if you do not then you're going to lose every loss of you you face so that's and basically that's what protective lead lead so it says action on here but I think probably is worth um the action happening in the next meeting in January so people can think about it a bit um oh it's fine um if that's okay with folks to give it some thought late January agreeing to have a second man in January yes yeah move this yeah so that we can craft the warrant article that we might as well as then give it some thought yeah okay do you want to do that real quick and that January date or you want to make okay uh all right um we Christine and I had looked at 26 27 28 that last week of January uh Tuesdays are often when we do it but okay uh or Monday or Wednesday or whatever my child Fridays so 28 the only 1 I can't do that we just the 26 and I agree with Julie and I'll do Friday Also writing I wouldn't advise writing his backing really close into the February stuff it's really close you don't have much time yeah probably Monday or Tuesday is probably Jerry Monday or Tuesday do any of these but I also want to do the Thursday before that too soon a second I am out of the country I mean you all can operate without me doesn't make sense you have a vice chair yeah can we do an email after this meeting so I can yes we'll do that sometime later yeah in the last week sometime that week of the 26th yeah got it it's thorny yeah um okay we ready to move on to yeah next on the agenda is a resignation and I'm looking to for some action here um Christine do you want to would you want me to just leave you received the resignation of um Mrs Jennifer Cota who is our GVS special blood coordinator and our interim director of special education um she indicated in her letter that you know right now we position as is looking for next year really isn't going to be a fit for her and our family um we definitely have valued her service in Grantham Village school and all that she has done over her time here and um you know what she's provided General Ed special ed families our students um and so we uh bring forth this resignation definitely with um much regret and appreciation for our service we would entertain a motion to accept with gratitude for service someone someone from Jillian okay second from fell all in favor say I that's a hard 1 um okay next on the agenda is uh um policies to see if I can okay um we have 1 for second reading and induction we have 3 for Lindsay and reaffirm and we assume for first reading so I'll just go in order that they're listed in our agenda um so first up is policy gve for second reading and adoption this is employment of relatives or persons with personal relationships so I had some feedback from the board I did remove the paragraph that was kind of like because we're a small district and I got rid of this I did go back to will Phillip so you all know and just said how do I make this sound not as intrusive as it is and Will's response was this is the most basic legal language we can give you Christine he didn't have many recommendations for changes so you're not going to see many there but what I did do is I put it into Gemini into Ai and I gave you that second page there and I'm fine if you want to table vote on this tonight um and if you like kind of how Gemini went about it um I kind of thought it was weird it it may make your policies look a little different it like it may look different than how you typically read your policies but um it does still get at what the core principles of the policy are you know which basically we're being sensitive to any potential conflict of interest in in any relationships that might put people in situations where they have to supervise and manage people where they do have personal connections with them and again remember this is all coming because of our federal fiscal audit yeah I actually did kind of like the bulleted version took out some of that yeah yeah but I also the first thing I thought was loud this looks completely different but I'll be open but I I don't mind it especially in this case it feels like it makes it a little more black and white yeah and I think everything didn't I did I did a cross check I mean I literally read both of them and checked them off and said did it cover this job did it I mean it's very succinct it's just to the point it's not doesn't have all those for the purpose of in the event of and the you know and then sometimes that extra transitional language is that just makes it feel I mean we're other room makes it really better the original version um but I agree it's still a little ungainly all right like because I was like Jim I mean will can I take out you know some of the for the purposes of this policies the relatives and he's like no I wouldn't because legally that's then I'm like okay can I did you happen to run like this Gemini version by anyone to make sure I didn't I can you run it by will if you want to but I'm pretty confident that it's going to cover I yeah I the Gemini version of more professional that's what I kind of and I said this feels like somebody preaching at me compliance maybe it's the beginning of a new era for our policy and student that's true says the English teacher who loves prose writing but I mean if there's anything you like from the more prose version I'll just say versus the bulleted diversion just let me know and I'll work to incorporate it you know but you guys think I'm I'm really okay with a policy that doesn't look like the other ones you know policies it's nice for them all this is again coming from a type A person who likes every especially in English teacher likes things lined up but they're really for to cover us operationally right so this covers Us operationally and makes it clear what we're trying to do for the other 1 is definitely a little murky to read especially when about things that we really want to just make clear I like that this is more clear and concise yeah um we need to do a second first reading so it's a different but I don't think so they could they could take this as the second read and adopt because you've already commended it yeah gentlemen can you review it yeah make a motion to approve the second reading and adoption of the concise version from Janet yeah I'll take that off just to get that the first from Jillian so moved second from Nancy all in favor say I I there you go okay okay um next policy is um these are Financial ones um this is your last dih internal controls do you want me to do them separately yeah yeah I don't know why I asked you um the image internal controls policy key for review and reaffirm any questions in place I would entertain a motion to approve CI Asian internal involve the same thing there's no changes second first from Jillian second from fell in favor say I I next is uh d i h a fraud protection and fiscal management P for review and reaffirm changes here so some of the first from Jillian the second from fellow all in favor say I next is so moved uh next is DJ purchasing revised and updated P for first reading yeah so I could have brought you 1 2 3 4 5 6 separate policies but I thought no we can and I in in hsba allows you to do this so if you notice I what I changed in this policy you already have in purchasing policy much of what was in all those other policies but nhsba has now literally segmented them out where like you only have a paragraph As the policy and I'm like no let's just put this all packaged into DJ so I added the statement of is to say we're linking to it right um and then the only other thing you all didn't have actually on your books that I had it was the last part which is djg vendor relations that was missing from your truth and so I just made that the last section and all I did was pull what d j j g would have been on its own and um and put it into your policy so that's the only changes there that's why I kept it I the first for you because it had revisions that's awesome yeah um so the Russian Jillian to approve the first reading of the policy DJ second second all in favor say I okay uh next is the view and reaffirm for policy and DK payments checks and manifests no changes but entertain a motion to approve first resilience second from Nancy all in favor say I I DK is approved and lastly policy DFG a crowdfunding our first reading this is new so that's why you have in this first reading um this this is a fairly new policy that uh nhsba came out with I think it was 23 2023 um and it is all of this um support of going like GoFundMe online right um and you didn't really have anything in this um there's in in this realm I didn't I pulled this right from an hsba I mean I Look to make sure it applied to us uh checked anything but the order no changes that I needed to make um keep in mind this parallels your policy kcd which is the policy that the um Brandon parent teacher group really is involved in right with fundraising um so this complements to that um and this speaks more to the online environment our fundraising and all of that and so that's why I wanted to make it tonight at first reading so you could have your first glance have some time in between uh to really take a deep dive into it look in it and bring it back anything you want I kind of wondered who was duplicative to the fundraising policy like if we could just plug in that with something less but it seems like there are different yeah they're different they're different yeah yeah yeah I would entertain a motion to approve the first meeting of policy the FDA regressions um just a comment so you would be developing a form for after this was fully open okay yeah uh so moved to approve the first 3 days of data million second from Jerry all in favor say I I and first reading is approved policy uh next on the agenda oh additional meeting based January and February so let's look at that time I mean we talked about the January meeting but I think it's also good to just room ourselves of the timeline on this back to that yeah um Brandon created her very nice integrated doc that you guys have on the Grantham timeline the annual meeting and election timeline um and tight timeline ghost is um you're scheduled for your public hearing on February 3rd the last day that somebody can submit from the general public a a petition for an article is February 2nd the day before so that's kind of why we said you don't have to rush right now to approve your articles um because not only are you going to have your public your budget hearing on February 3rd but during your regular meeting that's when we'll actually approve all your articles because we'll wait to see um if you get a petition article so the best way to look for this if you haven't found it already well Christine has it in her superintendent report also um working back from the annual meeting on March 3rd which we can't we often traditionally had it on the 10th but there are good reasons related to the town meeting that we have to have it on the third um so you can see February 2nd February 6th February 16th February 24 there as dictated by the March 3rd pound meeting or I should say that the annual School District meeting so the question I guess we're we need to think about the January that week of January will will coordinate on email but I guess there is there a February question or just this is just a way to remind ourselves of what's coming in February no I don't think you need an additional February meeting because I think we figured it out that you sticking to your February 3rd meeting you just put a it's going to put a tight timeline on if you get a petition or able if you give 1 comes in on that day I'll be emailing all of you yeah because keep in mind you don't approve petition articles but you you should take a vote to approve place it on the warrant area you're not going to vote I mean you can actually vote on whether you recommend or not recommend viral but it'll go on your warrant no matter what right yeah okay that makes sense yes okay um I can commit to the 27th if we can move it to 7th yeah like I have a problem yeah great okay thanks Jillian is not totally fine now we officially focused okay thank you Gary next on the agenda is the principal's report that has been waived because she just wrote US 1 and we are getting back on vacation although it feels like a lifetime last couple days okay um and then uh superintendent's report to follow you all have it that's submitted yeah the only thing I just want to draw your attention to I will be in Dallas Texas next week Monday through Thursday for the leadership cohort that I was supposed to do in September but you know I mean events preventing me from participating at that time um nhsba is offering some sessions this week that if you haven't thought about you might want to think about um in there in the evening Zoom 1 is tomorrow 1 is tomorrow and the next day yeah 1 is the 8th which is um uh the public school open enrollment options so if you wanted to jump into that you certainly could okay yeah great I have a transportation oh yes yes we didn't put it in my report because we didn't want to jinx it so I passed my school bus so I am officially backed up driver from the White Knight yeah so you're amazing I'm gonna try to start the process too now you're a hero and so many ways thank you I'm so excited uh next on the agenda that can approval of the consent agenda any questions or anything there I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda so the first and Phil so second from Jerry all in favor say I I agenda is approved public participation is not I'm sure everyone is tired but you're welcome to ask questions of course I mean we've we've talked about some heavy stuff spicy things right so please feel free if you would like to provide any insight now or Russians this is a good time to do it purchase digest we've told you well I don't know how satisfied tired maybe um and I've been chatting with you know she's good doing it on public I don't know all right so I would entertain a motion to adjourn first from phone okay second from Nancy all in favor say I thank you

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