The day after Town Meeting, the new Maple Run School Board met for the first time, and held its' annual Reorganization meeting. The Board consists of 10 members living in Fairfield, Saint Albans City, and Saint Albans Town. All voters in the three towns that make up Maple Run are eligible to vote for every Board seat. This year, two new people have joined the Board, Alisha Sawyer from Saint Albans City, and Joanna Jerose from Fairfield. Two Board members were also re-elected, Nina Hunsicker and Sally Lindberg, both residents of Saint Albans Town.
The first actions of the meeting were to elect new Board officers. Jeff Morrill was elected as Chair, Nilda Gonnella-French as Vice-Chair, and Susan Casavant Magnan as Board Clerk.
Once the formalities were out of the way, the Board got down to business! The Educational Support Professionals (ESP) contract which had been negotiated earlier in the year and had been ratified by the union membership, was ready to be signed. This is a one year contract from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020. Why just a one year contract? The State passed legislation requiring that Health Insurance for all school employees be negotiated at the State level. Those negotiations are going on now, between representatives of Vermont School Boards and the VT-NEA. And because they will override existing contract language regarding Health Insurance benefits, the State declared that no one could negotiate a new contract extending past 2020.
The Board voted to accept the new contract, which included approximately 3.66% in new money.
We then discussed Town Meeting Day results. Thank you so much for your support of the Maple Run School District. All of the Maple Run ballot items were passed by pretty favorable margins. Thank you for supporting our budget, which the Maple Run Administration has worked very hard on to keep affordable while still supporting our students. Unlike most other districts in the state, we are not seeing our equalized pupil count decrease. This budget includes money to support a double digit increase in health insurance costs, yet we still kept the increase in per pupil spending down to 2.17% over last year. I don't have a crystal ball, and many things which affect our tax rates are out of our control, but I hope that we can continue to keep tax rate increases down, while providing our students a solid education.
Thank you for supporting the BFA Bond, which will allow us to make major repairs on the North Building (which anyone who has driven by can see that it needs). It will also allow us to add sprinklers to the South building, increasing the safety of everyone in case of fire. By the way, adding the sprinklers will take the longest to do, with the work spread over the next three summers (hopefully). And last, we will finally be able to connect the two buildings with an enclosed hallway and provide a central entrance to BFA for visitors. This will make the transition of students and staff between buildings much safer and also protect the school by enforcing a single, securable entrance for all visitors.
Just as important, by supporting the bond for BFA, we will have the money in our Capital Improvement Fund to make some major changes at the Fairfield Center School. We plan to pave all of the parking lots, making them safer to use. We also want to add an addition to the school, so that students will no longer have to use the Common School for Art and Music. These two projects combined are anticipated to cost about $1.2 million.
As the new Board Chair, I'm hoping that this blog will help keep more people informed about what the Board and the District are up to. My intent is to post new entries every month or so to let you know about some of the major things we are working on. The Board normally meets twice a month, on the 1st and 3rd Wednesday. The first meeting of the month is usually held at the Maple Run Central Office, located on Catherine Street in Saint Albans City. The second meeting is usually held at one of our five schools. Visitors are welcome.
If you find this information useful, please leave a comment, or email me at jmorrill@maplerun.org.
Again, thank you for all your support of the students in the Maple Run School District. It is appreciated.
Jeff Morrill
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