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Author: Bea Eliastam

Agenda & Update for School Board 5/9

Hi All,

The agenda for tonight’s meeting can be found here. There is a Click Here button on the agenda that should take you straight through to the meeting with as little barriers as possible. 

A couple of changes since our last update. I got sick.. For obvious reasons, I will be zoom only for this meeting. Apologies for the late update due this.

Some changes since previous agendas, we are looking to run a tighter ship. Notably, I have attached times to each section of the agenda. The hope is we can provide information, hold discussion, and answer questions you may have in a more reasonable time-frame. 

On the docket, an update to our budget will be provided with our assumptions and most current methodology. For more information, prior to the meeting, please visit our Supervisory Union’s (SU) page for all the relevant documents for Windham that have been uploaded. Additionally, we are going to review / approve the FY23 Final Audit with Laurie Garland, the Director of Finance for the SU. After 2 reports (Principal and Superintendent) we will review / adopt the residency policy from previous meetings and have further discussion on the cameras at the school. 

One final note worth mentioning: We are looking at the ReVote Day timing currently and coordinating with the Town. There have been concerns about the warning time-frame. Once again, the legality has been questioned with conflicting standpoints within the community as well as within the Vermont Secretary of State’s Election office. I will note that our attorney previously spoke about these and other concerns at our last Special Meeting – describing them as “procedural gotcha” in open session.  Regardless, at this time, we are re-evaluating our options and the current ReVote Day of 5/18/24 may be moved. As a result, besides the budget discussion, we will not be holding an informational meeting today. As we have more information we will be sure to update the public as soon as details are more concrete. 

We welcome all that can join tonight and please excuse any coughing I may have during! 

Thanks,
Daniel Roth
Vice Chair
Windham School Board

UPDATE ADDED

Hello,

Here is the link to all the budget related documentation: Windham Budget Docs Thanks to Laurie for pulling this all together.

Also be sure to check out a recent article from Brattleboro Reformer: Windham schedules school building closure, clarifying vote – I gave an interview that is quote pulled about halfway through. Thanks to Chris Mays for taking the time to sit in with me and understand the issues at hand. 

See you at our meeting, 4 PM!

Thanks,
Daniel Roth
Vice Chair
Windham School Board

School Board Update 5/4

Hello Windham and friends,

We have a date for our second Windham Vote Day for the School Board on Saturday, May 18 at 10:00 am. 

See article warning here. 

Please come out, vote, and share your perspectives! 

Issues to vote on are:

Article 1:             Shall the voters of the Windham School District approve the closure of Windham Elementary School?

This article is meant to address our school district not having an operating public elementary school to offer our children. Our current status as a non-operational ceasing of operations puts the health of the district in danger financially. From a risk and liability standpoint, we as a town would open ourselves up for possible litigation otherwise. This means that if we have a lawsuit, everyone pays in FY26 and on. 

Important Notes for Closure: Our ability and obligation as a board is not in question regarding all tuitioning – we are required regardless. Also, the power of this closure must be in the hands of the electorate rather than 3 elected individuals. And in no way does this limit our ability to tap into any funding structures currently available to our district nor our ability to promote the school house building use in anticipation of sale in FY25.

Article 2:              Shall the voters of the Windham School District approve the school board to expend $546,344, which is the amount the school board has determined to be necessary for the 2024 / 2025 fiscal year?

Our budget reflects the cost of tuition students (Tuitioning – Elem: 74% and Tuitioning – Pre K: 3%)  along with shared supervisory union costs for Special Education (4%) and Board of Education/Audits (Other: 8%). Bus Transportation (6%) is the next cost category which includes Gas, Repairs, and Driver(s) Salary. Important Note: The Bus Transportation costs do not include the cost of an anticipated new bus, this has already been voted to be reserved from our FY23 surplus. 

Building Maintenance (3%) costs are included with less maintenance assumed than prior years. Originally, we proposed $50k but drove that down to $24k on SU recommendations and finally $15k which is to maintain for about 6 months of the year. The board is committed to maintain the state of the building without significantly lowering its value while the roadmap, community surveys, and selling options are finalized. Just because the $15k is budgeted does not mean that those costs will be the actuals. We are already working to further lower maintenance assumptions through addressing low-cost energy improvements with Efficiency Vermont and we have $8k of rental income which will increase as we finalize other opportunities presented to us. Consider the overall impact of the building maintenance to be $7k with rent money offsetting and more planned to bring these costs closer to $0. Transportation Stipends (1%) for families outside of the bus route and standard Legal Funds (1%). 

Finally, I will say a budget must be passed for next year otherwise the district is left with 87% of last year’s budget so $409k. At the next Regular Meeting this Thursday, May 9th I will detail exactly why this would ultimately cost the taxpayers more in the next few years. More information will show that voting for this budget will prevent the unstable financial health of our district thus preventing future tax rate increases that are anticipated otherwise.

Visually – This is what the above looks like:

image.png

Article 3:              If Article 1 passes, shall the voters of Windham School District grant general authority to the school board to pay tuition for an elementary student at an approved independent elementary school in an amount not to exceed the average announced state-wide elementary school tuition? This authorization is in addition to the March 9th, 2024 electorate authorization for the board to pay tuition to public elementary schools.

Finally, the board wishes to address families left out of the tuitioning structure currently. No petition has been filed and the board has been proactive to bring these families into our district again like Mountain School representing a significant number of our town’s kids. 

A lot of info was shared at our last Special Meeting on April 26th. In another update I will be taking clips of common questions asked and answered by either the board or Mark Oettinger, our board attorney. Additionally, an Informational Meeting will be communicated to address any other Q&A needed prior to ReVote Day. Here is the link to the BCTV coverage and the full video: Special Meeting 4/26/24

Our Next Regular Meeting will be this Thursday, May 9th at 4pm, I will provide a reminder and attach the agenda as soon as possible. The setting of the agenda is still underway and will be focused on the budget, forecasts, and tax information. 

Please join us and share this email! Our success as a board is dependent on as much sharing of thoughts and participation as possible from everyone. If you have any feedback to this or any other school board updates, don’t hesitate to reply and let me know. 

Thanks as always,
Daniel Roth
Vice Chair
Windham School Board

School Board Update 4/26

Message from School Board Re: Special Meeting on 4/26
Hello everyone, 

Since our last special meeting, conversations I’ve had with people along with correspondence the board has received/answered prompted me to meet with our legal to review the current warned articles for ReVote day. Mark will be available with us to offer any clarity on intention, and legality towards the issues at hand. 

At the top of the agenda is an executive session to immediately fill in the other board members on that above discussion and review / revise the articles if necessary. Unlike our prior special meeting, I expect this executive session to be timely and faster. Why is it before any public comment or other agenda items? And why not be public about that discussion? The intention is to have the rest of the board fully informed about the above conversation before addressing everyone else. The heart of the issue is not about transparency but, unfortunately, about risk and liability to the district, to everyone. We as representatives must ensure that we advocate for minimizing any potential risk or liability for the entire district. I do not take this lightly. We have received threats of legal action, not to mention an activist campaign to Montpelier, concerning the articles we prepared and motioned approval at the last special meeting. I fully support seeking counsel and activism, but also view this as a last resort. My desire is for there to be steps between a concern and resolution through litigation. The district has been in contact with those with concerns and their legal. We also do not take lightly any feedback – if our articles as presented are a cause for concern, we want to know. This goes for legal interpretation but also any work we need to do in clarifying our position. 

So after any changes to agenda and public comment, we have set the rest of the agenda for updates on our approved budget to acknowledge developments in rental opportunities, and then review / approve the revised articles with everyone, if any. Additionally we have recently received our final FY23 Audit Report which needs to be acknowledged and approved for any proposed spending of surplus capital in the next coming year.

Please join us if you can, see the attached for details, and enjoy the nice sunny day today!

Daniel Roth
Vice Chair
Windham School Board

School Board Update 4/17

Hello again,

It’s your friendly, neighborhood school board!

We had one heck of a 4-hour meeting last Thursday with a lot of community support and feedback. There was a clerical error on our last agenda that assumed a 3-hour public comment period. While the meeting did last that long, in the future we do not intend to keep ourselves away from our families for quite that long!! The next posted agenda will correct the meeting length and we will soon detail changes to promote concise, civil discourse in an effort to condense the agenda and open the floor to underrepresented voices that feel their words cannot find space to vocalize their opinions.

We encourage those that could not make it to show up for our next regular meeting on Thursday, May 9th. We welcome all who can spare the time to attend, even our sisters and brothers in our neighboring towns. The more inclusion and diversity of ideas we have at these meetings, the more ability our community has to reach mutual understanding and shared goals. As we face uncertain times within our world, nation, state, and town it is imperative that our community(s) can grow and be able to work with one another.

Board’s Current Plans

Here is a posted agenda for a special meeting to address some of the later agenda items we had.  These include (Re-)Vote Day, articles to vote on, and the wording of these articles.  We want to minimize the district’s (and thus our town’s) risk while reaching out to our families who choose independent schools and do not benefit from tuition payments. These articles are extremely important to carefully wordsmith, because, if voted in, they will have long-term effects.  Because of this importance, we are taking the time to meet with our attorney. The Town of Stratton has struggled with this very issue regarding their residency policy.

We anticipate that this meeting will mostly be in Executive Session to fully understand the warnings, and the implications to our district.  Once again, it is vital that we consult with these professionals because of their past experience with and knowledge of these issues.  They know the ins and outs of liability and can steer us to be absolutely correct on our wording.  Please know that the intention is not to narrowly focus warnings such as tuition to approved independent schools with Educational Quality Standards (EQS), but to apply the broadest terminology we can, while minimizing potential risk.

Here is a link to a clip courtesy of BCTV from that meeting with local resident, Nancy Tipps, arguing the legality of the article warning as presented:

BCTV Clip

In the face of uncertainty, as you see in the clip, we advocate for our legal minds to weigh in and guide us to the best legal conclusions. Their availability necessitated a special meeting as soon as they were available. If we thought that the discussion at 7:30 pm would get this cleared, then we would have pushed for another hour. In no way did discussing the building use, the budget, and other issues at length take away from that discussion. 

What’s Next? 

We will be providing another board update detailing key points of the 4-11-24 meeting as well as the special meeting guidance. We will be working with the town to set a date for ReVote Day and will offer more details on our stances as we alluded to in the previous updates – surplus use, this/next year’s taxes, and the arguments we’ve heard on (and off) the meeting floor.

If you would like to receive these updates via email, please send an email to droth@windhamcentralboard.org with the subject “Add School Board Updates“. 

Thanks,
Daniel Roth
Board Vice-Chair
Windham Central Elementary School