Minutes of previous meetings have been sketchy – more dialogue than decisions. These give a pretty good synopsis of where the Committee is at and the votes that will be taken next Wednesday at the high school Library. – Lil

Unapproved Minutes to be approved at the next meeting on October 14th

Articles of Agreement Committee Meeting Minutes

Fall Mountain Regional High School Library

October 1, 2019

Craig Vickers called the meeting to order at 5:05. Committee members Rich Nalevanko, Joe Levesque, Brenda Melius, Garret Neil, Lil DeCoste and Becky Sethi were in attendance.

Approval of Minutes: No Minutes were available.

Address voting rights on the committee: The question was raised about who should vote when we are ready to do so. Representation from each town varies. Acworth has 2, Alstead has 2, Charlestown has 4, Langdon has 0, and Walpole has 4 in attendance at the meetings.

Those present agreed that we tried very hard to get equal representation and that goal was never met. We felt that those people who have been in attendance at the meetings have earned the right to be counted as voters ( Brenda, Linda, Rich, Joe, Garret, John, Michael, Alissa, Craig, Peggy and Lil)

All votes to be taken will be announced in advance.

Decisions need to be made on:

– the fairness of the funding method

– can it be made more understandable, ie. Lil’s suggested format

– changes in governance, ie. Peggy’s suggested separate elementary school boards or empowering site-based committees

All decisions we make are only recommendations to the school board. As the elected representatives, they make the final decision.

In general we agreed that clarification is needed that:

Only 20 cents of every tax dollar comes under the Methods of funding. 80 cents is attributable to the town’s direct expense.

Methods language should be simplified with an appendix of details. Our draft can be submitted as a starting point but will need to be verified and refined by Jim Fenn.

Definition is needed of ADM-R and ADM-A. This seems to be creating a great deal of confusion.

Article review provided the following agreement:

Article 1, no change

Article 2, vote will be required

Article 3, change to “responsible for grades Pre-K through 12”

Article 4, Clarification needed regarding “empowered to lease such buildings within the district”

Articles 5&6 have to do with the methods and are numbered with Roman Numerals

Article I needs simplification and clarification as stated above

Article II requires the definition of ADM

Article III transportation issue should be part of the annual report/review by School Board prior to submission of the MS25.

Article IV and any other references to grade levels K-… should be changed to Pre-K…

Article V – what does it mean?

Article VI – can be moved to Appendix

Article VII – more explanation needed

Article VIII – is this done with the signing of the MS25?

Article XI – where is this report? When is it done? Review should include Methods 1 & 2.

Articles 7-12 are fine as is.

Articles 13-17 should be removed

Article 18 is fine

We recommend that the pages be numbered.

Next Agenda (10/4/19)

– Approve Minutes

– Review changes into a working document

– Preliminary votes:

Fairness of methods

Changing articles based on our review

Governance

Respectfully submitted,

Lil DeCoste