2026 07 20 Board Meeting

Speakers are labeled SPEAKER_N. This transcript is machine-generated.

Recording

My pleasure to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Changes to the agenda on the public comments number one.
And if we can put the policy up on the screen and I'll open it to in-person people first.
And if there's anybody online who would like to speak, anybody in person want to speak,
and we have a line at this point to speak.
Okay, we will have a second session for public comments later.
All right. Next on the agenda, we should put it up.
So then our next item is the superintendent's report.
All right, so some of this is going to be repetitious for the committee that just met a little while ago,
but that's good.
good. You can answer any questions that might arise. So we are going to talk a
little bit about the track construction, window project, flooring projects,
so there's some facilities work that's been going on this summer. I see that House
Bill 130 is on a later part of the discussion, but we'll introduce that
conversation here. And then also just talk to you about a few things that are
going on in the summertime for planning and preparation.
for the school year coming up around professional learning communities,
curriculum development, and the MTSSB work that has been doing all three of these
things that we've been working on for years.
So this is just a reminder that we tore up the track.
And then once it was torn up, there was some repaving. Now some of that repaving meant that
that they needed to do some grading changes.
And so if you were to look underneath the final product,
you'd see that there are some areas that have been raised up higher
than other areas, just to make sure that it was all level
and what we needed to.
But they did a great job and we did this on time so that we would get,
this is the surface that people will be running on, right here,
or walking, whatever,
community or the teams use, and we also, when I say teams, not just our own teams,
we also have a memorandum of agreement with Franklin Pierce University.
We share resources.
We use some of their materials, not usually as much about materials anymore, but more with
their spaces and their bubble during the early spring time and winter time.
And then they utilize our track as well as they don't have one over there.
And then the final product, it's all lined, all numbered.
We have the Conan Orioles written across it.
There's, you can see a little bit in that middle one, the orange.
We didn't have orange before, but orange and black are the colors.
And so the individual who was doing the painting was able to mix the yellow and the red that he had.
And you got the orange.
So that was exciting.
So people,
So people can use that, and I believe have been doing so.
I did not go down there today, but it was done last best Thursday.
So on Friday, the 17th, when we said it was going to be open, it was open.
There's still some fence work that has to be completed.
JGS window replacement.
If you've gone by Jaffrey Grade School in the past week or two,
you would have seen that there was something going on.
And this is when all the windows.
all the windows on that front area on the bottom part of the building on the first floor had been removed so that's just there's no windows there right in these pictures and you see perhaps on that second to the right or from the right I should say that there's some there was definitely some rot and some deterioration of even the there was concrete there actually
kind of groove right there, so they've had to do some fixing and plugging up in those areas right there.
But that's those new Pella windows put in. This is still before it's all kind of framed in and finished off.
But you can see what those windows look like.
They're great windows. We're very excited to have those and a good choice.
And it's nice that we have done the bottom part because as we look to create that multi-year,
window replacement cycle in the district, which is going to really start with the elementary schools and finishing those off before we get to the middle high school, is we have an understanding of what these windows cost.
We chose the most needy of locations in both of the elementary schools so that we would deal with the rot that we hypothesized might exist, not as
bad as it could have been. We have had a change order for about $1,000 so far, which is far less than what we had anticipated, at least at this school, seeing as some of the handles of the old windows actually just broke off in our, when we tried to open them. So we figured that there was going to be a little more rot there.
But they've done a nice job. They've been working on that. I know that they anticipate having all the windows and both schools done
prior to August.
So there's going to be some painting done in one of the rooms at Jaffrey grade school,
now that everything was removed off the walls, while several rooms would benefit from
some paint.
One room needs a little bit more than paint.
And so there's going to be some plastering or some mudding of the walls and making sure that that's all situated and then it's going to be painted.
So, yes.
In that picture, all the way to the right,
it shows one of the old heat registers.
Yes.
I don't think it's in use.
So it's just one that wasn't taken out?
One that wasn't taken out.
Yeah.
Okay.
And this is over at Ringe Memorial School.
A couple of their rooms.
I think there's one more window that is not on here,
but that is the example of the window that.
We're going to have them.
Yeah.
At Jeffrey grade school, we talked about some flooring.
On Wednesday, I'll meet with the flooring specialist to talk about the first floor of the
Jaffrey grade school, because there's a little more to consider before doing that one,
because we don't do it right and not have some of the problems that we have been having with
that floor.
This is a classroom upstairs in the second floor, and last year we went through.
and actually we had covered the entire surface with a variety of kind of carpets
so that the peeling up or trip hazards that were there, you know, that kids were able to walk around the room and not trip.
But we've taken that carpet tile, which was not good, out of there and replaced it with this.
Should be a lot easier to clean.
Obviously it's, it looks nicer as well.
as well. This flooring right here is actually referred to as Hoot, H-O-O-O-T, which is neat because
they are the JGS owls. So, and then...
Is that the color?
That is the color right there. Yeah, it's the, or the style, I guess you could say, kind
of a wood theme. And so it matches a little bit better.
the facility itself and I think closer to what the original floor is actually probably
looked like when they were first done and these are two other areas that had them if this
there's a wall between these two spaces so if that wall did not exist and at one time
it didn't exist it would have been a full classroom so basically the
equivalents of two classrooms we had done any questions before going any
further on to a topic that's going to be a little denser in conversation.
That's great.
Just one note that Rubinette said he's going to look into grants.
Yes, Windows.
So the question was asked in our last committee meeting whether we were going to look for grants
possibility for the windows, as that can be, they do come up every once in a while.
So we have been able to, we do have all of our Homeland Security audits done in all of the schools.
And sometimes that is a requirement for any facilities grants within the state of
pressure anyway.
And also because we've started to do some of this work, we have information that we can use
for the grant writing purposes and also, again, because of other work that the district
has done with the HVAC systems and all the schools.
we are a district that is reflective of not trying to allow things just to go completely
and then ask for money to fix it.
We've been trying to upkeep, which is important when you're going for these grants.
They want to see that the district actually has tried to take care of things along the way.
So we will continue to go forward.
Thank you for bringing that up.
And when we think about grants, we think about money.
And so there's just a
just we go from one topic to the next topic in this state it seems almost rapid fire.
There's just so much change that continues to take place.
And what I'm going to briefly share here, and I know that we're going to talk about a little bit later,
is.
And we can actually talk about the whole thing now because I know you have company here to help with.
Oh, sure.
Yeah, I've asked Carrie.
Right, so it's as both yours of a discussion item, I don't think you can change the gender.
Oh, okay.
Then we can go this, do it a little bit deeper than the overall view.
Okay.
Well, and we use the same source, right?
So everyone, both of our attorney firms that we work with don't know exactly all the implications.
And so when you go to various sources,
you will read some differences or some opinions that are out there.
Reaching higher seem to be the best resource.
It seemed to be the one that was not as, it wasn't partisan politics.
And so it was trying to give you exactly what it was, as much as it can tell you.
Now, there's some other elements to this, some language that is a little uncertain.
that our attorney is looking at and will say that this House bill as it indicates
we are going to have a vote basically the ability to vote on the ballot in
November to see whether we want to as Jaffrey and Winge implement a school district
tax cap there's some language around some of this bill that there's some
looking into right now to see if there's going to be any litigation.
Our attorney indicated that it's possible that school districts may be looking to join efforts
to push back on some of this.
And a lot of that has to do with the fact that in the majority of locations, maybe, you know,
I believe the majority of locations across the state that have done something like this
had some sort of language like a tax cap on their ballots, on their warrants, I should
say. They've been voted down quite. And so the fact that now the state saying, no, we're going
to put this back on there has not pleased, I think, a lot of individuals. It's like, no,
we've already said we don't want this. Now you're forcing this to go on there. But not every
town has had the tax cap on it and hasn't gone full.
in at least its purest form.
And so I think that for now, we have to plan for this going on the ballot in November of
2006, which is coming up, right in the middle of our budget season.
Now, in order to pass this, meaning if this district is going to decide to go with a tax cap,
60% of its voting population that comes out is going to need to say, yes, we want this.
we want this. So it's not 60% of Ringe or 60% of Jaffrey. It's the total vote.
That comes out. If it doesn't reach that threshold, then that's not something we're going
to be concerned about this go-around anyway. It will, I believe, go on again in two years.
And then later on, I have some language in here that says that we don't know what's going
to happen after 2032. But I assume the legislature will act on.
something else at another time. Additionally, this kind of this coincides with what has already
been changed is that the school administrative unit, the SAU budget, and the school district
budget is going to have to be on two separate warrant articles. This talks about the fact that
the school, the SAU budget is going to need to be no more than 6% of the total school district's
appropriations. That doesn't just
mean the budget that we put forward when we say this is our proposed budget. This is
warrant article, usually number two, I believe. It means it has more to do with our adopted
budget. So all of the warrant articles that could pass that are brought together. So it's
important to know that that's the case and also that that's going to, that we're talking about
a budget cap to all of that coming together. So we're going to have to consider what it is
we want to do within, for instance, funding trust funds. Like here we just saw a presentation,
a short presentation on windows and things of that nature that need to be fixed and we
need to be on a cycle to continue to keep things moving in this district just because
it's the responsible thing to do. But that does cost money. So where are you going to get
that money from. One, Jared rightly said, we got to look for grant opportunities.
So other forms of revenue. Two, you can use your trust funds, but those trust funds have
to be funded. So how will those be funded is going to be a conversation, which is a conversation
we have almost every year. We've had differences of opinions. I think there will probably
be fewer differences of opinions on how that will go forward because of the, if this
were to pass, the tax cap. And then also you have the choice, I think, you know, goodness,
years ago, I think it was 2015, 2016. We tried to convince the board to put the facility's needs
in the budget right off the bat. It was better, it was better to keep that in there and do that.
That was not how it was viewed, and that's fine. A lot of places don't do that.
But if that's still going to be the case, and I think that if we had a tax gap, it would be harder to put money into that year in and you're out for big items or medium-sized items.
You're going to want to definitely focus on those trust funds. And so are you going to write your warrant articles as raise and appropriate funds for the trust fund, which I think we did this past year?
Or did we? Or did we fund it?
We did one and not the other. That's right. Or are we going to say we're going to fund this out of any money that's left over that year?
That's when we have that big debate about it says on the warrant zero tax impact, but then it really is a tax impact because you're not using it to offset the taxes and all this kind of stuff, but it's going to be an important conversation.
I don't have a lot of information about this.
I highlighted that if it did pass in November, that there may be another opportunity, I think, in March, to undo it, but the voters who would have to also pass that if they felt they made a mistake, you know, at a 60% rate.
Did you say at a 60% rate or a 50% rate?
3.5. Yeah, so 60%. Yeah, it's got to be 60, 40 or more than that.
So the tax is for the implications, right? So the implementation of a majority of voters in towns, this is, again, from reaching higher in New Hampshire,
if a majority of voters in town served by a school district approve the tax cap, school district taxes in that district cannot rise more than the cost of inflation.
However, calculating the net new taxable property growth may be challenging for many
municipalities. So there is a formula that we would have to go by and figure out what the likely
impact is going to be and use that within our budgeting process. You'll probably have questions
about that. That's why I ask Carrie to come and she can do the best she can with the information
she has so far to discuss some of these elements. The SAU administrative spending cap.
If we were to, for instance, just to give you kind of a round understanding, if we were to say,
all right, 6%, the SAU, right now the SAU, the SAU, with the definition that they use for SAU,
what would go into an SAU budget, which still needs to be determined whether that's really what is meant.
We don't know, we're assuming, because it says no special education,
in that budget. So if that's the case, and we put that aside, and it's not food service,
and it's not transportation, and it's not facilities, then it's just the administrative
runnings, like the business office, HR, technology, superintendent, and so forth, curriculum.
Those areas right there. We are about the 6% of the entire budget. So we're operating,
at that level right now.
So that will be another conversation about what is going to make up that number.
How do we want to staff for sustainability if we have that type of budget cap?
Or if not, either way.
Things to consider.
I think the bottom one there is the duration of the duration of the, you know, is the duration of the,
the tax cap. So, and also not just a duration, but when this would impact our work here.
So the bill specifies that if adopted in 2026, which be this November, that the cap would be
applicable beginning to the fiscal year 2008. Now, just because this is November,
we are actually in the 27 fiscal year, the 2027 fiscal year.
So that means next fiscal year.
What we're budgeting for this year would be impacted by this, if this were to go through.
And then this is what I talked about earlier.
The legislation does not clearly define the duration of the cap beyond 2032.
So there could be some different changes.
I mean, we seem to like to do that.
It just makes some adjustments and changes.
I do.
think that there's likely going to be some changes made at some point, whether it's forced
or whether it's just people realizing, oh, we've just had some confusion about language.
I think that at the very least next year there will be some language changes to make sure
that people understand and that what the bill is or what the law, sorry, is and that that they're
to take away any ambiguity that might exist.
I'll do this real fast and we can go back because I'm sure we're going to talk about the house bill a little bit.
This is just the picture on the right is a book that we had purchased for a large number of individuals in this district.
I say about four to five years ago when we started to focus very heavily on improving our professional learning communities.
And there are very specific approaches, processes, belief systems that need to take place
in order to get the best out of these professional learning communities, which are research-based
practices really or leadership mechanisms that allow districts or enable districts to go forward
and improve their student outcomes as well as cultural outcomes as well.
And so professional learning communities is
what helps us drive everything else because it gets everyone involved and when
everyone's involved, you know, the work is, I can't say easier, but it's more manageable
to do with more hands in a sense and more minds and more people invested in what's going on.
Curriculum planning, we have some days. You can see that those days, those three days up
there are planned for professional learning community work, one of them we've already had a planning session.
August 11th and August 12th will be going over the year-long plans for those as well.
And so tomorrow I go to the Department of Education for an MTSSB update and more professional development
on the grant, the implications of the grant that we have for this, and also the work and the goal setting that we need to do for the course of this year.
And I'll be going with David Dustin and Kim Baker from both.
who are working district-wide this year in a capacity of curriculum or the support MTSSB,
but also they have roles right here in this building.
Any questions or just conversation that you'd like to have around any of this and certainly
the House Bill as we are. I'll just say one more thing. This is we started one, two of you
were here earlier with myself and a couple other individuals as we
started the JREA negotiations today.
It was a planning day, getting your calendars aligned,
and all that kind of stuff.
We have seven dates that are planned out,
hoping to be able to use just six of them,
but we have seven just in case.
And two of those dates are after this November 3rd vote,
and this vote is going to impact our negotiations,
one way or the other.
So.
What do we give?
Judy?
I've also been reading about Hustville 1563, where they're going to change the way they fund special ed.
And I guess it doesn't take effect until 2027, but will that help our district a lot to balance
our budget, you know, if something like this happens or help at all?
I don't know the answer to that question.
I can, I have to research and find out more about that.
I have not had my briefing on House Bill 156.
Did that pass?
It looks like it.
From what I can see, wait a minute, let me.
Yeah, Kelly A.R.
signed House Bill 1563 into law,
broadening state special education aid eligibility
and allowing districts to seek partial state reimbursement
for a new tier of high-cost services.
So I guess they're going to change the way
they do the funding and supposedly give us more money for our special ed programs.
Well, if, I mean, I'd have to read the bill more carefully, but what it sounds like is that it's
talking about providing more support for the high expense situations, not necessarily your
day-to-day operations within the school district. Is that how you read it?
Well, it sounds like, you know, I don't, I don't want to, it says tier one, districts pay all costs
up to two and a half times the state cost per pupil.
Tier two, state reimburses 8,000 of the cost between.
85, okay.
That would be higher.
And three and three and a half times the state cost per people.
Tier three, the state reimburses 20% of the cost
between three and a half and ten times the state costs per people.
And the last year, Tier four,
state reimburses 10% of the costs above 10 times
the state cost per pupil.
So that's that's talking about how we're out-of-district placement.
I think for the most part.
It's our what used to be called catastrophic aid.
So she's what, again, I'd have to look at the details a little bit more,
but it sounds like if it's going to be a positive situation
for the district, then it would be by adding more revenue
into what we'd get back from those higher expense situations,
which don't really encapsulate
much of what we do here, it would be where we, you know, if we send our learners elsewhere,
maybe part of the transportation costs as well, because any time we have a day placement
or a placement that is full-time, you know, residential.
That's when the residential, that's when it's going to be costing, you know, multiple times
the average rate.
Thank you.
So it could help.
Okay.
It could help.
I don't think it would be costing.
offset. Okay. But maybe, you know, if it's 5% here, 10% more here and there of those
numbers, 50, you know, you could, maybe you'd get another 100,000 out of that.
Okay. Okay. Thank you. With the number of people we have. Is there any way to,
does this mean, does HB.3,300 mean we're going to, like, are already the budget
season started like trying to look at things for what we need for the future. Does this mean
we're going to come September, October have to have two budgets? We talked about that
in our committee meeting. That's one option. Another option is to create your budget so
that you have your worst case scenario. I think you go in with the illusion that none
of this is going to take place and then have to go backwards. That's a communication
challenge. I also think that, I mean, the board could take a couple different paths and
I'll explain. One, you could go and say, all right, listen, if our main goal is to make
sure that our budget is as fiscally tight as possible, maybe the approach is the approach
is to do our best to, you know, predict what's going to happen, make sure all our warrants
are written a certain way so that if this were to pass in November, that we're good to go.
Another avenue is to say, well, if we do that, we're finding that it's not really, potentially,
not helping us reach our goals or is going against maybe what we may personally believe
or what we believe as a board.
we're going to put forth another budget that we think is better for the running of the
school district. And then you have two thoughts or two bits of information or buckets,
I should say, of information, talking points that people can weigh when going to the ballot
in November.
Is there a way of saying,
If this had actually passed last year as this is written, we had different things for
our award articles, but if this passed, we had to do this for this budget, knowing the numbers
that we have right now, what kind of actual money difference is there?
So the operating budget we have right now is 33 million, 30 million?
32 something like that.
Okay, you're in that range.
325, is that?
Sorry.
So is there a way of just giving a ballpark of what,
if we had a tax gap, what that would have looked like,
what the numbers that we would be working with now would be looking like?
Well, it's based on, sorry.
Do we have the, I'm sorry, do we have a microphone for the audience?
so that those who are online can hear what Carrie has to say.
Yeah.
We have our finance director with this there.
So it's based on the assessments to the town.
So you have to look at what the assessments were, not so much your budget.
So you're looking at what's assessed.
So you have to consider revenues too, because if your revenues go down and that causes your
assessments to go higher than the cap, then you have to reduce your expenses.
So there's more than just the budget at play.
So I think we're going to have to watch revenues really closely and see what those estimates come in at to determine where we are from comparing a prior year's assessment.
Now we're operating on default budget this year too, so that's lower than our overall budget would have been.
So our assessments, I don't know this makes sense.
It does.
and how convoluted this is.
Yeah, it is, yeah.
Because we don't get those assessments for like November, right?
Well, the tricky part is that we estimate our revenues when we do the budget.
And we don't finalize the revenues until the fall.
That's when TRA does their tax rate settings.
And a lot of times what we're getting for special aid aid doesn't always come out to what in the past,
what it's supposed to be.
So you're estimating those revenues, conservative,
conservatively. And if you don't get the revenues you expect after doing all of this and you've stayed within what you thought the cap was going to be, if your revenues come in less, when you finalize the revenues, you then have to decrease your expenses because it will be disallowed because your assessments will be too high.
Easy enough, right?
Yeah.
And for me, one of the frustrating things about this besides the vagaries is in the fact that the state is
yet again saying school districts, you don't have any second what you're doing.
It's very frustrating that we keep losing local control.
But I was talking with a school board member from a town that does have a budget cap and they
said the reason this is being done legislatively, the legislators are saying, well, the town
meetings are not that many people come out, but at a gubernatorial election,
lots of people come out, well, not as much as a presidential, but more than a town election
shows, sure. So they want more people voting for this. But what ended up happening at this
particular school district is each year they have to go into special meetings to try
to fund their programs to try to fund their, so you're literally taking, yes, you have lots
of people voting for this, but then you have these special meetings with a tiny amount of people
making these fiscal decisions. And it's just like, it's just not, like this, this isn't
practical. Like, this isn't what actually, this isn't reality. You know, you still have
to keep the heat on. So, so you're, so you're having a special meeting to say, can we afford
more propane? Great. Now, this is, this was, this was irresponsible is what this is.
It's just irresponsible. So, yeah. So, yeah. There's any
anybody else have questions and what?
There, I'd like to know your thoughts on, I feel like I've read this so many times and I don't
understand what would happen to the JREA contract, which we are negotiating, what would
happen to a new contract in your opinion if the tax cap passes.
While she's thinking about that, I think, you know, part of it is that we have to negotiate with the understanding that it could pass.
And so any language that ties, any language that's tied to, you know, certain salary adjustments or whatever, you know, might have to, you know, might have to, you know, say, if this takes place, then this is how it goes.
And that said, I think that by the time we get to the time when we get to the decision-making as a board of whether to agree on a contract with the association, to put that forward to the
that we will know whether this is going to take place or not.
And so that if you have a tax gap, it could impact how much you have for raises, you know,
maybe even differently than what we've, are behaving differently than what we've done in the past.
Maybe we're looking at percent increases as opposed to, you know, which, you know,
which we do do percent increases, but we tend to like to keep things on a dollar amount,
making it nice and clean and understandable for all involved, but I have seen some other districts
that have language around, you know, CPI or other sorts of things, you know, like for instance,
like even in one of our contracts, a JRSSA contract, one, one, there is a paraphrance, a contract, one, there is a
paragraph or two about some special situations where while the group is getting X, Y, and Z,
another group of people get like a 3% annual increase. So we might have to look at things
differently, how we go about funding. We're going to be careful. Yeah. Yeah.
I have a question. Yeah. So I think it's going to be important to do, too,
the calculation first to compare the assessment and what the formula, where it puts us at,
to determine what room we have. And it's because it's going to compare it from this fiscal year,
here's assessments, to what we can increase for next year. So we're going to need to do that
formula. And I can pull the consumer price index because it's defined in the law as being the
prior year, the March of the prior year. So I can't wait.
until this March to develop it. So it has to be from the period of March 2025 to March
2026 because it's a 12-month window. So I've got to pull the consumer price index for
inflation for that period. So I can pull that. But it's knowing the tax, the property tax
growth, which I won't have that. And I don't know I need to find out when that would be available
to me because that needs to be included in the formula to see where our assessments,
how high we can go with our assessments. And then I think it's kind of working backwards
from there.
The other thing is what date will you use the property assessments on? What date are
they saying you've got to use that? Is it last year? Is that last March 2 or is it, is it
yesterday? I think it's, I think it's what this year's
assessments are. So I think it will be, actually that's a good question because I wasn't,
it doesn't say, thinking about that at first, but it would be when we finalize the revenues
this year because I believe it's the prior year, which is this year and we haven't finalized
revenues yet this year. But I would want to make sure I confirm everything in the formula
before we use it.
I had a question. The question I have is on the SAU, that's a 6%
I know you mentioned that we're running fairly close to that number.
So is that come in as a different, like almost like a ballot question or whatever?
So it's a separate warrant article.
Separate warrant article. So it would be probably warrant article three.
Or, well, which one the contract has to be.
It might be three or four. One of those.
Hypothetically, let's just say it comes in and, you know, we'll say $2 million.
I'm just making up a number.
Does the town that the towns vote on that as far as whether they agree with it or disagree with it or, you know, as a separate
warrant?
A vote as a separate warrant article.
And if it were to not pass, we would be, we would have to have the same, is it as current year?
Is that correct?
Legal counsel believes there's a language that allows for certain increases, but it's confusing.
according to him.
So we would have to really work it out with him on what allowable increases would be
if there's going to be a separate default type of budget built within that or not.
He's still working on that.
Yeah.
He did ask that question.
If the budget comes in lower than the 6%, there's still an option for people to vote yay or A?
How does that work?
They will vote yay or a?
on whatever is put forward.
I mean, they can't not fund a group or something, but as to, you know, something,
but as to, you know, get to operate.
There will be two different folks.
Karen, if we just look at the first tax cap question or Ruben or whoever,
can you sort of think, you know, how is it going to offer?
operate different than a default budget, just so that we can explain that.
Like, is the tax cap for two years, a default budget is for one year, like, things like that?
I don't have the answer to that right now.
Sorry.
That's fine.
I know.
I mean, default is for one year, but, yeah, I talked about this question as well.
I'm not sure, like, for instance, if...
I would think the tax cap would be for a
two years because then it will be voted on again in November of 28th.
So I would think the tax cap will carry over until the re-vote on November of 2028.
But I mean, I guess what I'm, like we, unfortunately, we are well adapted to working under
a default budget.
So I'm just wondering how this tax cap would feel differently.
That's what I'm, that's what I took a question.
Yeah.
trying to think of the fact like your default budget could actually be more in a sense.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Yeah.
I think it's likely that at some point anyway, it will become, that will become the reality.
But then, if you were to get your default budget and that were higher...
Your proposed would have to be lower.
You'd have to meet that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's something that makes sense.
Any further questions or discussion?
This is the first of many, I'm sure, that we'll be talking about this.
More to come.
Thank you for the report, and especially the pictures of JGS and the track.
That is very nice to see.
All right, we have a consent agenda with a number of manifest
thank you out the school year.
payroll, we have a budget transfer,
conservative services, we have some appointments,
many more than resignations, which is lovely,
and we have a stipend list.
So any discussion on the consent agenda?
I guess I just want to make the comment.
The fact that we have so many, we lost some amazing
educators this year and it is amazing and a true testament to what happens in this district
that so many new people are interested in working here,
even though we've had problems with our budget three out of five years, I think.
So it's a true testament to the quality of work that happens in this district.
We'll take a motion to accept the consent in general.
I will make that motion.
Thank you, Christine.
Is there a second?
I'll second.
Thank you, Sandra.
All in favor, say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Oppose?
Abstain.
Passes 600.
We have the minutes from the June 15th and the July 6th
meeting.
Take a look, make sure that you are all here.
I believe you guys were all here for them.
I think we can do these together.
Everybody is here, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
So we'll make the motion, take a motion to approve the minutes for both of those meetings.
I'll move that we accept the minutes for June 15th and July 6th as printed.
Thank you.
I'll second.
Thank you, Jared.
Any discussion?
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
Abstain.
That's a 600.
We just have the discussion item.
Thank you guys.
for that and thank you, Carrie, for joining us for that very much.
Action items.
The Offer Daniels Fund is a longstanding fund that we have.
If you would mind telling us more about each summer,
we expend some of the funds for education-related items.
In this case, you know, more expensive than I would have thought, but
but something that we have not budgeted for necessarily
or would like to use funds in a different way,
but we have this ability through the Arthur Daniels fund,
and these are allowable cost,
to replace the soccer goals and nets,
and then the wheels that go on them
so that they can be transported so we can
change what type of goals we have and where they are.
we have and where they are?
One thing that I love about this fund, I kind of look forward to seeing what is going to be looked at for each year.
Because when I worked here, I worked on the library and we were the recipients one year.
And I just remember it and said the goal of this fund is to do something that will directly impact students.
Like this is directly going to be going to so that they can absolutely have
And in fact, this isn't going to paper and pens, which is great, but I just love, each year it's creative, is what I think.
And so this is great point.
Okay.
All right, we'll take a motion to accept the, or to approve this expenditure from the author Daniels Fund.
I'll make that motion.
I'll second it.
Thank you.
Oh, is Dan.
Yes, you seconded?
Yeah.
All in favor, say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
All right, we have requests to waive facility fees for youth karate in the RMS gym.
And we don't have, what are the dates on those?
September to October.
September to October.
I am going to ask the board to hold on to this request because we're still in the process of setting up a meeting.
Just, I think, yesterday I got the final person.
and agreeing to a timeframe.
And so within the next two weeks, we should be having a meeting
with groups to talk about the policy KFR, uses of facilities.
We definitely want to get on that to make sure fall programming is set.
But more and more questions keep coming up.
And so we want to have a group meeting on this.
And I do have a question for the board on this.
So let me just ask it now.
Throughout multiple different meetings that have been happening and conversations happening.
And again, you know that I have been part of the policy on this and talking with the talents
about this for the last five years.
One thing that the board is truly concerned about is security.
And that's something that the board is truly concerned about is security.
that we cannot be complacent with.
And that's too important to not adjust the policy for.
And so one suggestion that came out by somebody is to keep,
so our custodians can't be also the monitors for groups.
They can't be always watching the doors.
always watching the doors.
They have a specific job, right?
And so what we wondered was if during the school days, currently the policy is capped
at 9 p.m.
That's when the last group needs to have lights out.
School days, that makes sense.
We don't have weekend custodians in any of the schools.
And while, yes, maybe we could hire somebody.
hiring custodians hasn't been that easy.
And do we want to do that for community groups?
Because we, it wouldn't be us using it.
And so one suggestion was to charge fees for all community groups
on weekends, on Saturdays and Sundays, not during the regular time.
And whether that means charging a fee to make sure it's done, or more likely
saying you have to give us in the registration documentation the name and phone number,
cell number of the person who's going to be monitoring on the weekends.
And something that also came up is making sure that they have a CPR AED certified person
on site during any of those events.
And so that's, before we have this meeting, I actually wanted to bring that idea to the
board before I bring it to like the community groups.
I want to see the board's temperature on that kind of a suggestion where we edit the application
process so that in addition to what they're already agreeing to, which is in policy KFR,
that they're also agreeing to put the action, like right now it's a vague, right now what it says is vaguely, a representative,
of your group has to be on site at all times.
And it also says that no minors can ever be unattended.
There has to be one adult per at least 15 kids with minors at all times.
Our understanding is that there were groups coming in
and there's minors all over the hallways and the cafeteria and they're not monitored.
And so already the policy is frustrating because it's not being followed.
And there's frustration on both sides, all sides.
So I guess what I'm saying is if we clean up the weekend conversations and say you have to not, so we wouldn't be,
so let's say with the adult pickup basketball, what that would look like is not saying you're going to be charged for that,
but you have to put the name and the phone number of the person responsible for making sure no door is ever propped open,
making sure every light is not, making sure that every window is closed and locked,
making sure that there are no kids unmonitored.
Who is the person that's, we have their phone number, who is going to be right there.
Wouldn't that be the person that requested the waiver?
No, actually, no, because usually the waivers are requested by the, like, the rec department director,
but the rec department director is not the person monitoring everything.
And so, like, you think about how many keys go out.
That's not, that's because the rec department director is not there all the time.
Like, there's keys and bobs moving all over.
the place, hopefully reasonably now, hopefully with, we have their names, we have
who's has them.
So you're saying add that information to this form?
Exactly.
So this is the person who is going to be fully responsible on making sure that no
minors are unattended, everything is the way you found it, and that everything is secure.
How does that, what is you, is that something that I can bring to the group?
It's a lot of responsibility, but I do think someone should, you know, sign up for it.
I guess I'd rather give it to them than have a story.
Right.
Someone should be responsible.
Yeah, someone should be responsible.
And it should, yeah.
I know we didn't discuss the youth karate, but I thought we actually voted on the adult pickup basketball frame.
This is for September?
So this is month by month.
No, but more season by season.
Yeah, timeframe by timeframe, whatever, yeah, whatever's request.
So I think this is a great idea.
Once upon a time, I believe for COVID, actually,
Jaffrey Wreck Department, who used to run the youth karate,
at least the JGS youth karate,
they, for a while, they actually sent one of their employees to,
with karate because they realized that they, this was now their program and they needed
to make sure that somebody was there with first aid and CPR, that they shouldn't have a program
and not have a staff person there. Now that, I believe, completely went away during COVID
and everything else. But I think the idea of having someone who's responsible, a point person
who's on site, not just the person filing the paperwork.
but an on-site person.
And that person could even just be the one who communicates
to the school, hey, a lightball
growth during basketball practice,
going to give you the heads up.
You know, whatever I know, whatever what happened.
They could be the person who communicates that,
because I don't know how that would happen now.
So I'm in favor of having that discussion.
It might be the only way that we could ever make JGS available.
ways to make sure that there's somebody actually watching.
And JGS is the gym that's most readily available.
If it can be safe, we monitored.
Lisa, you're suggesting we revisit this next meeting.
Is that what you're?
Oh, we'll be revisiting at every meeting, honestly.
No, I know.
I mean, instead of voting, instead of voting to waive these fees right now, hold off.
Yeah.
let the policy committee talk.
We can think about it and revisit these.
Yeah.
And there'll be more edits to bring before you guys.
But this is one before I went to them and talked.
I needed to talk with you guys.
And these are set for September, like you said, both of them.
Yeah.
Not immediate.
Temperatures? Thumbs up, thumbs down, half down.
It's not a vote.
We're just, I just want to get a temperature.
get a temperature.
This is something that I can go before there.
Two thumbs up.
Dan?
Yeah, I know.
I think we could push it off and figure it out.
Yeah, I know.
I think, you know, we could push it off and figure it out.
I hate to push people out and make it more and more difficult.
But, you know, if we get to discuss and go over some stuff and do it.
But I'm actually for these waivers to happen.
to happen, but, you know, I do know we have to follow certain regulations.
I thought the second one was a done deal, and we had that one under, that was already done,
but I didn't realize it was only for a short time.
So how often do they, do you got to do September, then you got to do October, and then you've got to do November,
or how do you, how do they do that?
Or do the quarters?
Or season or something, yeah.
My understanding is they want some of these to just run
the whole time, but yeah, it's because of, in the policy, I think it's 40 days that they have a cap because of our scheduling.
So our scheduling has to take priority and that's going to be a really complicated piece of this because we schedule every space.
We have heavy, heavy scheduling.
I mean, I'm in the process of putting together based upon the policy with all the language
that's in there, a procedure and based upon some feedback that the board has talked about.
But, you know, and I'll bring that procedure to either that conversation or I'll show it to you first,
certainly the policy before having conversations about it.
But just so that we know we're in the, we're all on the same page and also for the purposes of clarity.
Like, do we have any idea how long the youth karate is, how many kids get involved?
get involved. I don't know any of that.
The first event date is September 2nd to October 28th.
This is the last event date on his application.
It basically runs until, I think, April.
So two full months.
Just like this one, for the basketball, it's the first event date is September 6th and then it goes until October 25th.
as Lisa explained, they can only do 40 days at a time.
And then they'll resubmit just like youth correct.
So you've got to re-approve it every 40 days?
Yeah.
It's kind of a real pain.
I mean, I think it's kind of ridiculous.
It might be spring, like, it might be in some cases a seasonal thing,
but I think it was, I think the policy right now says,
you can do it 40 days out simply because of our own scheduling or timing.
You know, we don't have the dates for our drama programs right now.
But it just adds a lot of extra work.
for us to keep approving it or not approving it or going through this too.
So every 40 days, I mean, well, you can have a, well, maybe next time you won't.
And I don't, you know, it's kind of, I don't.
But you can see, like, for instance, youth karate is at the RMS gym, right?
After school, immediately after school, I think is when it starts during basketball season.
RMS gym is basketball central.
Right.
Right.
all the way out.
Oh, I know I understand you have timelines for each item, but men's basketball is done on a Sunday night or whatever.
So, you know, if you're reaffroving it every 40 days, it's like we've got to go through it.
We keep reboding on it.
I really do think it comes down to the idea that we're not a community center.
It just has to come down to that.
You know, our charter is that we educate kids.
and that we provide for our students.
We never have been, you know, by default, we become a community center.
But if we're out of money and we're trying to make our facilities last and we're trying to make our people last,
you're not a community center.
Well, you know, when you're out of money, I mean, there's other, we can pick on certain things like
what's going to really cost here versus, you know, is there other avenues to pick up something?
So, you know, it's, it just comes down to different opinions of people.
My opinion is I think that they should be waived, but I'm only one vote, one vote.
And what I'm suggesting like this is that there would be no money, that there wouldn't mean no fees.
That's what I, that is what I'm suggesting.
But we are, we need to focus on the security and make sure that we have a monitor and that we have people with,
CPR ADD. And I'm not saying the monitor has to be that person, but let's make sure that
these people are covered, that we have the security meeting. So, you know, it's, yes,
the fiscal piece of this is part of it, but what I'm talking about actually isn't. I'm talking about
we need, we have to look at our spaces much more responsible than we have been, much more
responsibly. So for the youth karate, that happens on Wednesday.
days. So, and it happens during, like, right after school. So this is not an effect for that.
This is more for the weekend programming, which there really isn't that much. There's not that much,
but the adult pickup basketball is one. So that's why I'm bringing to you guys now. This is, this was a
suggestion. I wanted to gauge a temperature. The majority of the board says, yep, that's something to talk
with them about. Yeah. Great. Okay. Thank you.
All right. So then, yes, the next meeting that we have, and in our board matters, let's talk about our next work session,
because I have a suggestion for that as well, but that will make it so that we can deal with this pretty quickly.
Okay. All right. Next on the action items is, oh, so are you, is the board okay with pausing this then for two weeks?
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Okay. Okay. Okay. All right.
Little Orioles Handbook Update.
So you can choose to approve this tonight, or we can, you can look at this as a first reading.
It's often what we do with handbooks. I know you're going to get a load of handbooks very soon
before the next meeting, as they have just come in for all the schools, and so you will need time to
look those over. But there are not a lot of changes within the Little Orioles Handbook.
but we changed the tuition and annually we've raised the tuition this year.
We took a little bit of a different tact.
One, we, in order to keep this program afloat for this year, and we do know that it's been a valuable program.
It's been a program that has allowed us over the years to retain staff and also provide
our learners here with some meaningful opportunities to learn about roles that they may
wish to pursue in the future in their own livelihood.
The what we did differently this time around was because we did need to cut down our expenses
regardless of revenue to make sure we hit our numbers right when we also heard from the board
to do the best we can to ensure that it's a completely paid for program by the individuals
who are utilizing it. We went, we cut an entire full-time staff member out of this,
so that was a 70 or 75, 74, and some change, $1,000 reduction. And then simultaneously, we
increased the tuition. And so the tuition rates are now different. They used to all
be the same for infants and for toddlers. Now the infants are more than they take, you have to have
to have a smaller ratio of adults to infants. And so there's a greater cost for infants if you
have children who are in that
age range. And so we've done the math. We based the budget off of 12 or well 12 to 13
children and then we have a couple part-time staff members, one full-time staff
member and we are relying upon volunteers from within the staff, sorry, the school
organization, people who are in, um, maybe
maybe a CTE program. We might do, you know, we could employ part-time here and there
to cover for other individuals. And also, we have a wide variety of individuals who are
volunteering. And as I was talking to Sonia Traffi, who's the one in charge of the center
this year, is she was asking if we could, at least for those individuals that
haven't had the Careers of Education 2 program. If we could make sure that they are,
in line with what you were talking about, CPR first aid certified, so that there's a greater
number of them who can act at any point in time in a responsible way for the safety and well-being
of certainly the kids in the center, but also their peers. So is that something we could offer
here? Well, that's what, yeah, so I just, I talked about it.
morning so we'd have to see what our nurses are able to do they do some of the
training and they're certified trainers to do so sometimes we have other
professional development where our we have large groups of individuals who are
being trained and could they just join that we just have to look at the
schedules right throughout the course of the year to be able to find out what we
can do and when will be best it can get expensive but again it's a small
to make sure that people are safe.
In the, I'm looking over the handbook, you've mentioned the high school students,
is there any kind of certification or recognition the high school students will get for their time
that they spend there?
You've had some high school students take, use it as an extended learning opportunity
and have had that as part of their graduation requirement around the school
requirement around their senior capstone.
So that's a couple of them actually that I'm aware of in the last year.
And then some of them are in careers in education too.
And if they have had all of that and there's over 16 years of age,
we have employed some of them and they've been very helpful.
For instance, we have, well, you know one of them well,
but we have a learner who used to be right here.
who worked for the center and when she's on vacation from college,
she comes back and helps us out.
And some individuals help us closing.
You know, while we have adults, we have three adults
who are the primary workers in the center,
two part-time, one full-time.
When adults have young children themselves,
they have to, you know, go and, you know,
whether it be an emergency,
or go to appointments or what have you.
So it's helpful to have some of these other individuals
who can fill in, get some real experience.
And so, like, if they're not doing,
if they don't have practice until, say, 5 o'clock,
then there's a couple of hours that they can work
in the center during that time frame.
And then there is no, that I'm aware of any other
form of recognition right now for volunteerism.
Apart from, we have other groups like national
honor society and interact who do,
not professional, but I'm sorry,
supportive community service.
They do community service within their local community,
and certainly this would count as that.
What age group is the little orias typically?
Three months, two, five.
And there's a fee for it, but I'm assuming it doesn't cover the cost.
It's budgeted. It's always been budgeted so that it was cost neutral.
There was a fee.
This year, what I was just saying was we, in order to do our best to ensure that
it is a break-even program without the use of, for instance, like one year I had a
year I had $150,000 in a grant that I acquired. So we need to be subsidized it with,
I think, 60,000 of that. So this would be without subsidizing.
So we do or don't get subsidized by the state or whoever?
We don't get subsidized by this state. So, like for instance, I can give you the numbers.
Like we've budgeted our staffing.
staffing at $95,000 to $97,000.
We have done the math to get, and we created the fees to be,
so that we would collect roughly $97,000,
a little over actually, $97,000, so it would be a break-even process.
And this was done where?
In through, and there's two,
There's two rooms that they utilize right on the side of that cafeteria.
I can show it to you after, actually, it wouldn't take that long.
Yeah, no, I was just kind of curious of.
So it's a very young group.
They come in and some of them can spend multiple days a week and some less.
Or how does that work?
You pay per day.
For a toddler, for a five-day week is $725 a month.
An infant for a five-day week is $725 a month.
An infant for five.
days a week is $800 a month.
So, and the purpose of it is actually for,
what is it accomplishing?
Well, the primary purpose is to provide the staff members here
with the support for their family
to be able to have, to be able to continue to teach here
and know that their children are being taken care of.
Okay, so it's somewhat of a date
is what we're saying in a sense.
It's a child care center, yet we do some early learning.
We focus a little bit more than...
Is that pretty common in all schools?
No.
No.
So we will take a motion to approve the Laurel's handbook.
I'll make that motion.
Thank you.
Christine.
Is there a second?
All second.
All in favor?
Say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
Ms. 700.
Six.
Six years ago.
Thank you.
Let's see Wendy's eyes glaring at me, too.
Okay.
All right, so we have a first reading of our spring policy updates.
The vast majority of these are policies that we've updated very recently, and there are new
federal changes that made small changes in these.
in these.
And so the full policies are listed there.
Please, please, please read these through.
But what we're going to look at is the summaries, please.
If you can open that.
The very first one is a policy that's actually
a request by the business office here.
They want to still look at the relevant policy timelines.
lines for I-J-O-C-R. And if you scroll down the summaries, you will see a brief notice about what each of these are. So keep scrolling down.
Rubin?
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
So I-J-O-C-R is a request to change the timeline of renewals from the school year at the end of year for volunteers.
This is our volunteer.
policy and procedures.
And so currently, volunteers are here for one year, one school year.
And the business office has said,
because of all of the background checks and paperwork,
they're wondering if we could extend that through the end of
September of the following school year
so that we can make sure that we have volunteers
for the first month of school, which does
come into pretty important activities that the kids would, you know, wouldn't have access to those adults.
So their recommendation is to just change the policy enough to say instead of school year ending,
that it would be the end of September following school year.
So that's when if you, honestly, if you guys are uncomfortable with it, let me know,
but I would feel fine with us simply voting on that one tonight if you were.
one tonight if you want so they can enact that this July I'll let you guys think
about that and I have the if you look back on our agenda IJ OCR is down toward the
bottom and while I'm talking if you wanted to open that up and take a look at that
you're welcome to I will keep talking the next policy ACD religious
neutrality and religious accommodations is a
recommended policy not a priority one usually we bring to you guys
mostly the priority ones but this one our policy committee felt strongly that this
is one that we wanted to have we actually didn't really have this policy this
is new for us and so for the Manhattan School Board Association this ACD
policy has been replaced this version is intended to reflect current
interpretations of both the non-establishment and free exercise
clauses of the First Amendment by the U.S. Supreme Court, the First Circuit
Court of Appeals, legal references are added. And so now it used to be an
optional one. Now it's recommended and when we read it through and I hope you guys
read it through please before our next meeting we felt that this had very
positive implications for our school, just how we speak and how we how we read it. I don't
know. How do I say it? It gives us good language.
to be using. So I thought we felt that this was an appropriate in
brother district. DAF administration of federal grants is priority
required by law. We of course have this. This new revision includes a new
section relative, actually this one was a crazy one. It is all priority
required by law, but there are nine different actual policies included in DAF.
So I do recommend the business office with this one over. There's increases of thresholds.
There's changes of timing. They added a new section relative to property loss still murder
damaged. There's minor corrections, but there's some language corrections. So this is one to definitely
be looking at. It was, excuse me, gobbledigook for me, when I read through it. I don't live in this
world. And so I hope that the business office can take a look at this, but it is priority.
There's not much we can say about it. So I'd be curious to know if the business office comes back
when it has any different changes to it. Semi, semi-decennial, is that twice a decade? I mean,
that's something I've never seen. It's in the small print.
Yep, it's a lot. It's got. All right. And then.
DFA is about investments. It's, again, priority required by law and requires an in review of the policy rather than nearly periodic.
Additionally, some investment vehicles approved and even require for school districts are not fully covered by the FDIC.
So it's just, I think this one in particular was saying we want you guys to have a much closer eye on your investments and such.
So, the funds are very.
EBCA, crisis prevention, emergency response plan.
This is revised to include the definition of school property
as required by revised at 306, with additional minor grammatical
and formatting changes, and it's now priority required.
EBCB, emergency school and district closings
is reflecting a very quick language change of distance learning
to remote instruction.
So that's literally the change happening with that one.
EEBA vehicle operation safety is a new policy.
We've never had this.
It's a recommended policy that the committee said, yep, let's bring it forward.
New policy created to request of member districts,
and specifically to include a clear provision
related to use of cell phones and other devices while driving.
So please read through this.
The policy committee said, absolutely, yep, we need to have this.
So we're bringing it to you guys.
EHB data records retention.
Revisions included a specific definition of the meaning of record,
using language better aligning to the definition
of government record.
IKL, academic honesty, integrity.
It's optional, but we have this policy and the language change
made really good sense.
In the previous one, they just talked about AI,
artificial intelligence.
This specifies generative AI as the language current is.
accurate. So it has a distinction to it.
So yeah, language changes there.
EHAG is also, it's a new policy for us.
And this is in conjunction, thank you, with ICL,
how the board wants the district to be using use of generated.
So this is, we have language about
AI and ICAO, but this is specific to it.
And the language was pretty comprehensive we thought.
So we would like the district to, you know, the administration
to be looking at that.
This is a recommended policy, but the committee is saying,
yeah, we should put sure that.
Then we have JFABD, admission of homeless children
and unaccompanied, priority required by law, includes specific language.
as reported by the New Hampshire Education Department in relating to requirements
of McKinney-Vento Act with the housing circumstances and living situation of a student
protected and the Act as confidential information may not be considered
directory information of the FERC or any proper corresponding district policy.
So this clarifies more language, but also the McKinney-Vento administration should definitely
take a look at this language to make sure that this is language.
accurate for everyone.
JLCD, administrating the education to students.
Again, prior to recovery law,
relative to authorization, training, use,
and supplying self-administration of epipatines in schools.
So that should be able to them as well.
But it's RSAs, it's laws, there's not much we can say about it.
Okay?
There will be more to come, but these are,
the beginning ones. The policy committee brought, I sent to Rubin, I think,
four or five others that are priorities that we need to act on soon, but we really needed
the administration to view first. So let me know if you need to send that email.
But there was enough, these are all policies we currently have that we've worked very hard on,
and there's some language changes and the literal position addition.
addition that needs to be with that. So, yeah, so those will be coming soon.
So please, when we save this the first reading, this is your introduction to them.
Please read the full policy before you come back to our next meeting that we're going to be voting as a final at that meeting.
Okay?
No discussion.
Any discussion on these so far?
Yes, Chie.
Okay.
I know I'm not the only person that had this problem, but
I was not able to do the school district's fingerprinting test, where I have had my fingerprints done successfully at Department of Safety up in New Hampshire twice in the same time frame.
I think the option to go to the Department of Safety and have the State Police and the professional do it should be an option for those of us that are older and our fingerprints are worn off.
Because it, not only was it kind of upset,
but it's just a practical matter that I know I passed. I took the test for Department of Education for some, you know,
things to be qualified to teach if I went in that direction and for my new job.
So if we could have that as an option that we pay for our tests with the professionals that do it every day all day long,
because there is an art to it, I can tell by having it done.
I'm looking at it right now and just seeing, I don't see anything in it.
I don't see anything in the policy, because what I'd like to do is approve the policy
if the court is a medical.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
So it's so we can't approve it.
Okay.
We won't.
Yeah, it's just, I would have, I would have paid whatever the charge was just to have the person who knows how to do it and does it every day multiple times.
You're not the only one and that's a huge frustration.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I know I wasn't.
wasn't the problem.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this is for shampers.
All right.
So no, there's nothing in IJ O.C. R that would make us so that if we approve it tonight, we'd have to
change it.
Right.
Right.
So, Ruben, could you please talk with the people doing the fingerprinting and seeing what needs
to change so that we have more options than what we currently have?
Okay?
Thanks.
All right.
So then back to IJOCR.
Anybody have an issue with extending the time to the end of September, the following school year,
would be the language.
Okay?
We'll take a motion to amend IJOCR to reflect that.
Motion to amend?
Thank you.
I'll second.
Thank you.
Thank you, Sandy.
All right.
So I think
Yeah, so it is. It's changing that language to...
Let me see.
It's fine.
All right.
So under, if you go down a little bit more, great.
And one more. Okay.
Under Volunteer Service Agreements on page 1 at the bottom,
it says, all volunteers are required to leave an electronic service agreement each year.
Volunteer serving in more than one school will be required to indicate
location on their service agreement.
The approved volunteer period shall not exceed one school year.
Let's change that to shall not exceed one school year plus the end of September fall like school year.
I know it's weird language, but one school year plus the end of September
falling school year.
Something like that.
I'll let you guys figure out.
Okay.
Wendy, you can get back to me.
I don't know.
but you have the intent. Great. All right. So we have a motion. We have this. All in favor? Say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Okay. Passes 6.0.0. Great. Thank you.
Policy is always jumbled me. Okay.
Back to the agenda. We are at public comments too, and I'm hoping that there might be some people in the public
that want to talk about HB-1300. But it's not.
But that's okay if you want to just wait and see what comes down the pipe on that one.
But I'd be happy to hear from the public on this one.
All right. Policy for the public is up on the board.
Anybody want to jump in?
Anybody online?
All right.
Keep our rating.
All right.
Then we're going to go on to board matters.
Our next meeting is August.
August.
I'm thinking August 6th, but I don't want to say it out loud yet until I think I just
Okay.
So.
August 3rd.
Okay.
Our next meeting is August 3rd.
And the board had agreed to make that a very brief,
non-video, just a Facebook live kind of a meeting.
and deal with the brief business. We can bring back KFR for that meeting
because we'll hopefully have that public, have this community meeting before that.
But I wanted to ask the board, I felt at our last work session, we had an extremely productive meeting.
And I wanted to see how the board felt about meeting.
When we were in that meeting, we kind of veered away from the strategic plan document,
which is perfectly fine. We had some good discussion.
But I wondered how you would feel about focusing on fiscal goals.
And I wondered how you would feel about really kind of just, especially in light of all the budget season coming,
being able to just have that work session talk about what makes sense for us.
what makes sense for us budget-wise and fiscal-wise and what are our goals for how we want to go into the budget season.
And I wonder if you're amenable to that, focus, if we could invite the two current budget advisory people,
Karine Walters and John McCarthy, who have been approved by the selectmen of the towns to come.
And just invite them if they're available to just be part of this brainstorming session with us.
And you really talk about what kind of
what we want to come before the public with, what we've been hearing from our constituents,
what we've been concerned with ourselves, and what our goals could be going forward
in light of a possible spending cap, but in light of all the cuts we've already had and how we want to grow as a district.
Does that make sense to you guys to do it that way?
So we'll keep it.
Sure.
And so I'll send an invitation out to those two.
and see if they will join us for that.
So, great.
All right.
Christine, I don't actually have John McCarthy's personally, I know I have Carlein's.
Would you mind emailing John for that date?
So we'll do that.
Okay.
We'll make it a very brief business meeting, probably half an hour.
We'll talk about KFR briefly, but hopefully if we approve the waivers, but what we'll have language.
All right.
Cool.
All right.
Any other, oh yes, there are other board matters.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
Christine, what I want to do is, Christine,
it emailed me and I actually want to open up your email
because the three things you said were
about you.
Do you want to talk about it or do you want me to?
Yeah, I can talk about it.
So I was hoping that we could have someone
from administration come and do a presentation
on our test scores, the full test scores.
I think the school board has seen some of
amazing test scores from the middle school.
And I'd like to see all the test scores and make sure the community
also gets to see those amazing test scores.
We'd have to wait until they are confirmed.
Yeah.
And then the embargo was taken along.
You can't go public until the department says we can go public.
All right.
Well, that's awesome because I know that in the J or AO contractor
are supposed to give them.
my month.
Notice, right, is it a month?
So I just wanted to make sure we heard that.
And also I wanted to hear a update on how the program of study
might be changing based on all of our new hires.
And that is it?
Oh, and any progress on bringing
cosmetology CTE program to the district?
So that's just thinking that.
It's just thinking when people can schedule those presentations.
Thank you, Christine.
Anybody else have anything for board matters?
No.
Any, there was a finance facilities meeting today?
Any information from that?
I want them.
Basically, what Ruben covered in the superintendent's report was that,
and we had more of a discussion on the bill and what we thought it meant.
financials, but not much else.
Christine, can you talk about the education meeting?
We have a fantastic education committee meeting with Heather Lindstad presenting
and her presentation is online.
I was just looking it up too.
Rubin, would you mind putting it on, like showing how to get to her presentation?
Sure.
All right, so, all right, school board, agenda.
Agenda minutes. We want committee agenda in minutes, right?
Yeah.
And education committee that was on July 9th.
So under minutes, which you figure the best way to do it was just
the presentation on there because it was, you know,
it was a lengthy presentation.
Yep.
It was an hour and a half.
Just took her presentation.
Yeah.
She did phenomenal.
There's a lot of good information here.
So I can't recommend enough to the board members and to the public to please look through this.
It was fantastic.
Just the growth that we have, the numbers of students that were serving each season,
the hopes for new things that she wants to have.
It was really neat.
One of the points that I wanted to share with the community is that
with the community is that one of the, some, we've heard questions about whether,
why we have a, for instance, a varsity swim team with only a few, with only a few
participants in it, I think three. And so what Heather has done is she has made a swimming club,
which is the middle schoolers, and they practice with the swim team. So now you have, I think,
10 kids and that they're actually sharing the pool, the Winchington Y pool with
Messenic to cut costs.
So it's all these steps that are in place to keep the cost down as much as possible
while keeping the participation levels as high as possible.
And some of the clubs, like as Ruben is slowly going through, which you thank you,
Some of the clubs you would see, okay, there's five kids here, there's four kids here.
You've noticed the middle school and the high school are separated out on different slides,
and many of those are actually combined.
So it might say middle school robotics and high-state robotics,
those are the same class time.
There's one teacher.
So it's not separate clubs of smaller groups.
Many of the high school and middle school are completely,
because we have a cohesive program.
they do those together. So it's pretty cool.
She also talked about how beneficial it would be to have some small buses or vans
for these smaller programs instead of paying for the large bus.
If we had some of our own, then we could actually even use them
when we're sending our kids or learners over to Keene or to Messenic for CTE programming.
So the vans would be busy during the day.
the day, and then at the end of the day, they could be taking a small team to a wrestling competition
or volleyball meet or something like that.
I think that's something that should be looked into.
I think it could be a good cost savings, personally.
Yep, that's what she's talking about.
And the coaches could be driving them instead of paying the bus company.
No, I think it would be a great idea to put some energy into that a little bit.
I knew I had notes here, too.
notes here too.
Yeah, asking for, or what I said, okay, give me what you really want.
And two 15 passenger vans that could be used for CTE as well.
We spent so much money shipping the kids to Keene.
It was very expensive.
Well, Keene, Conval, and...
Milford.
Milford.
I don't know if we send any bus over to Milford, but we also had one go to Alvern, you know, in Hudson,
so we had one go to Alvern.
So it could be dual purpose.
I think we spend a lot more on busing than we need to.
And I think we can somehow work that down somewhat, I think.
There's a bus that comes down all the way down my street,
probably an extra two miles every day to pick up one student.
She felt two 15 passengers would do the job, if that some money could be found.
Another thing.
That was just an interesting thing to note.
The NHIAA, who is the varsity junior vice city,
they are going to include middle school for 27, 28.
So that was kind of exciting that we already have middle school,
very active people in place to be able to accommodate some higher level.
Out of curiosity, and I know Ringe has a, they have a smaller bus.
Would there be any possibility of that there
any possibility they may be able to participate in, you know, like renting the bus for a lot less than what we're paying to do it.
At certain occasions, I don't know.
Yeah.
We do that with Jaffrey.
So just, these are just round figures and they might be different for the upcoming year.
They're going to be higher for the upcoming year, I'm sure.
But basically, I think we did the, I spent some time with David and with Heather.
prior to making some of the cuts to this last go-around,
and looking on average how much it costs per trip for an athletic team,
and it was $500 per trip.
So every bus, because you also, some of them are short,
so it's a couple hours and you're paying for the individual to stay there,
but some of them are, you know, six, seven hours.
Depending if you're going down to, like, you know, the beach or something like that,
in that area.
in that area of the state, that's southern New Hampshire,
southeastern New Hampshire.
So what she has done successfully is work with the Jaffrey Recreation,
because I don't know if they use their van quite as often.
The wrench wreck does use their vehicle quite a bit,
but we are able to rent that for a much more affordable rate.
I think 125, 150, so you're talking about, you know,
$400 off each time you use that instead of going with the large bus with the bus driver.
Yeah, I mean, if you're serving the same person, purpose, and you're saving money, it's not a hurting
us at all.
And then when you consider that if, for one bus route for a CTE per year, is about 45,000, some of that money,
we can get reimbursed from by the state, but not a lot.
And, but that's a lot of money.
So how do you, you know, might we be able to do it out differently?
That's per one of the other outcomes from the meeting,
and it kind of not really requests, but things that she would like the board to talk about,
is using the live stream that we do for fundraising.
and because there's ways of doing advertising through a program called play on live stream.
And we could advertise the live stream and fundraise.
And we'd have to check with our policy and see what we want to do.
But this seems like a really reasonable way of getting some larger corporations
to be able to help us fund some of some of our staff.
And so what we actually need, as we talk about this, is we actually need a fundraising committee.
We need some people to actually look at, she had a bunch of ideas, what's on the screen right now.
PlayOn is, I think, what we're using now for live streaming, but she's seen other people using it to have corporate fundraising with it.
And so we have things in place now that we could start doing that.
But we actually need to have an updated policy that can accommodate safe fundraising.
But we need a fundraising team to talk about things like using these different programs.
Different from a booster club.
Like a booster club, great, let's do that.
But let's get a committee of people to say, this is our fundraising goal.
Right?
So it's not just throwing things out there to see what's going to stick.
Let's do this.
responsibly because we're talking about kids.
So let's make sure we're responsible on how we move forward with this.
So what I would love to do is, first of all,
put out to the community and to the board.
Is anybody here interested in being a part of a fundraising group?
But also, yeah, so I think you're going to finding that one, that screen.
So does the board, first of all, have any ideas about
about how to start something like that, how to do a group,
what would you recommend us moving into this realm?
Because we want to act on it pretty quickly.
We have a great sports season lined up.
Well, I think there's a lot of little things like just looking at briefly here.
Of course, this pulls in my way, but the fence banners is a great idea.
It's something you do, and you can raise probably some decent money with it, you know.
We could get our own vans and pay.
them with different things.
I know.
I'm just using different things.
Let's get two 15 passenger bands and cover them.
Yeah, we'll cover them right up, you know.
Need a lawyer?
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, don't want to be right.
So, how do you guys feel about a fundraising committee?
Step away from the idea that you don't want to be on it.
How do you feel about having a fundraising committee?
Do you feel like this is something worth our time?
worth our time to invest in?
I'm not really too big on cow washers or bake sales.
I don't think they raise enough money, but that's just my own thing.
I think we're talking bigger.
Those are things that our groups do now.
So we have lots of groups doing that.
Yeah, no, somebody can do them.
They make money.
Yes.
But I think what we're talking about is real commercial work.
Yeah.
I think it's something we've been hearing from our community that we need to look responsibly
responsibly at new sources of revenue and that we also need to,
we've heard from businesses that they want to donate and they want to be more involved.
And so I personally believe that this could help meet both of those goals,
raising revenue and encouraging businesses, community members to become involved.
I don't know a professional fundraiser, but I don't know a professional fundraiser, but I don't
that somebody does who could guide us and help us set something up.
Okay.
I like the turkey truck, because in Andover, I used to always do the Feaster Five,
and there's something about having to do something challenging and athletic on Thanksgiving
morning and then you go and you can just have anything you want to eat.
So I do like that.
Yes, I'm just a hint more.
This was pretty cool because the Shataka, of course, I don't know,
I think we reached out for having it and said, what you would have to do with you to do some big, bigger, bigger ticket items and these were just some ideas.
And so, yeah, it was just great.
So how about if we start with our next policy meeting?
We'll look at the policy.
If the board is, I'm going to ask for vote in a minute, if the board is amenable to,
re-opening the policy for this to accommodate commercial fundraisal.
Is that something the board is amenable to?
Sure.
Yeah.
All right.
So we'll take a motion to reopen the policies on fundraising to more commercial ventures.
Go ahead and submit the motion.
I will make that motion.
Thank you.
Christine.
Is there a second?
Second.
Thank you.
And I'll get the, I forget what the policy in place.
I'll get that to you.
So all in favor, say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
Exane.
Okay.
So at our next policy meeting, we'll make this a priority to look at our next policy meeting.
We'll make this a priority to look at what.
would need to change to make sure we can accommodate online fundraising we'd look at.
We'll look at the fence banners and the visuals and just make sure we're keeping as safe as possible
with students.
Okay.
The, I would like to also ask for a motion to pursue what costs, what liabilities, what it would
would take to get to 15 passenger vans.
And I'd like the board to authorize the superintendent to pursue what that would look like.
We're not spending the money right now.
I missed that to get what?
Yep.
So I saw pretty much all board members say, yes, we'll save money if we could get
passenger vans.
So let's make a formal board vote to ask the superintendent to look,
look at what that could be, what the cost would be, what the liability would be,
what would that look like if we got district-wide passenger bags?
We should be able to get that pretty quickly, Ruben, from the Jeffrey Rec Department
because they just got a new van, and we have the insurance through Primax.
The only thing I'm questioning is if they need a CDL to drive the van.
On if it's 15, passenger or less.
Okay, good.
And the only other thing is we can't drive it from home to school.
It has, like, the kids have to have come here first, and then we can transport after that.
Well, that's cool, but I don't know that.
I mean, it makes really good sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because this is different from a school bus.
This is a different from us.
Yes. Yes.
Okay.
So is that, so the board is not saying we're going to get vans right now.
The board is simply saying as an act that we would like to.
the superintendent to look into this.
Okay. All right.
So anybody want to make that motion?
I'll make that motion.
Thank you, Sandy.
Is there a second?
Second.
Thank you, Judy.
All favor, say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
abstain.
That's 600.
Thank you guys.
All right.
Cool.
Yeah, please.
So again, just a quick review that was on,
if you look at school board committee minutes,
then go to education.
July 9th. That's where you find this presentation. I hope everybody takes a look at it. There's some incredible work being done with our athletics and activities. Just incredible.
There is one question that I did not. I'm not sure. I asked Heather, or maybe I spaced the answer, but I believe when we are talking about the cuts to meet the default budget, we said there would be no JVC.
sports. Is that still the plan? I think that it was more about the transportation.
The transportation with that changing the schedules, what it would look like. It may not
look the same as what, you know, we might play with more local teams, you know, that sort of thing.
There are some sports that we have that we don't have JVs anyhow. So that doesn't affect.
several of them actually but it's limited I know that I am meeting with David
Heather and Carrie either was it later on this week or is it next week one of
those I have it on the calendar it's within the next two weeks anyway to go over
and make sure that we have everything just right but we're gonna make sure that kids
have the opportunity to play
That was a question.
It just is likely to look different.
In varsity are likely to play fewer games.
And I'm driving people around.
I ask them, what do you want me to ask Heather?
Before the meeting and that was the, you know, will we have sports?
Will there be JV? That was a big question.
Yeah.
I have a question.
When does the...
When does the...
the year that just ended the school year,
when does that finalize, close out so that we know where we stand?
Yeah, so we talked about that at the Facilities Finance Committee.
And Kerry gave an update.
I'm about to say something you may want to fill in the holes.
But we discussed that with, I would say, unanticipated revenue.
And when I say unanticipated revenue,
revenue I'm not talking about unanticipated like sources of revenue more revenue in certain areas than we expected to get back and we've talked about this a little bit and you know a few hundred thousand to the good of the district plus we had a couple hundred thousand remaining after the school year when all of a sudden done we've had cash flow challenges and we discussed that as well and how we used how we were
fortunate to have at the end of the year been able to get in advance from the trustees to be able to pay for some of the work that we were going to do so that we had we had the cash flow that was helpful.
All those products run well.
The it's not finalized because we have some work that we still have to do with food service.
and just making sure that we're tracking down any invoices that just might be out there.
I don't know if we have any out there.
We don't think so, maybe one, but we still like to double check, triple check because once it's closed, you know, it needs to be closed.
So Kerry, do you want to add anything?
I think that the amount that the board is likely to be able to choose to retain.
retain is in the 650 to 750,000 range. Of course we have to see what happens
with food service, yeah. Now the other question I had is when do we kind of know
roughly what our enrollment will be for this coming year? We always use October 1 those
numbers as the enrollment. So going into the beginning of the year we don't really know.
We, I will email the board within the first week of the school year to tell you what the first day or the first couple of day.
Do we anticipate it to be up or down?
I would imagine that it will be up in some areas down and others for a total of either staying the same or a little bit down.
The NASDAQ charts that we have would indicate out going down for next year.
But I think also we've had a fair number of individuals move away.
Now, the question is whether people moved in who have kids to replace.
Yeah.
Well, the high school graduation had 68 kids go out, but the eighth grade coming up has 83 coming in.
So the high school is certainly going to be.
I think, and it would seem like our kindergarten numbers are in okay shape.
shape. So we have a, you know, there's always years where you have bubble years where they're a lot larger and then some that were, you know, smaller.
Like for instance, actually, this year, JGS, the fifth grade was a lot larger. You know, usually it's the reverse.
And the range was smaller. So it tends to go the opposite direction, but last year it all evened out. They just, you know, the opposite schools.
I was really pleased to see the recent news articles on the two construction, two major apartments complexes going into geography.
And I'm also using up some buildings that are not in use.
So that's going to be nice that made a huge difference in other towns near us.
We're just having some good workforce housing and affordable housing.
Yeah, that's what brings the families in.
So, all right.
All right.
Any of the board matters?
No good?
Cool.
All right, then we will
At 8-02.
I move. We adjourn the meeting.
Second.
Do we need a non-public?
I have an item for non-public.
If you'd like, it would take about comments.
Yeah, let's do it quick in our public.
So we can't, so Sandy,
you motion?
Do you seconded?
Okay, we're not going to vote on that yet.
We will do that after.
So we'll take a motion to go into non-public.
For personnel?
For personnel.
I make that motion.
Christine, thank you.
Anybody second that?
I'll second that.
Thank you.
So that makes me a roll call vote.
Sharon?
Yes.
Yes.
Sandy?
Yes.
Christine?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.