Windham Southeast School District
Finance Committee Meeting – Tuesday, November 19, 2024
5:00pm BUHS Cusick Conference Room
Brattleboro Union High School
Members: Shaun Murphy – Chairperson, Kim Price (online), Ruby McAdoo,
Others Present: Mark Speno, Kristina Naylor, Maggie Foley Jodi Nutting, Martha Noyes, Tim Maciel,
Brian Remer, Nancy Goodhue
Board Recorder: Tracey Drotts
Agenda
SM CALLED THE MEETING OF THE WSESD FINANCE COMMITTEE TO ORDER AT 5:04 PM.
1. Approval of Minutes
SM MOVED TO APPROVE THE MINUTES OF THE 11/12/24 WSESD FINANCE
COMMITTEE MEETING. SECONDED VOTE CALLED. MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY.
Public Comment time was offered by Shaun Murphy:
Martha Noyes, Brattleboro Resident, asked that the committee to keep in mind the public and engage them as you work through this process. Ms. Noyes encouraged finding ways to offer meeting times to allow the public to be involved considering location to make it more accessible to all. Also Ms. Noyes asked for the budget information be presented in a user friendly format for the public consumption. She feels that all of these efforts could assist in the adoption of the budget when presented at the Annual Meeting
2. FY26 Budget Planning – Elementary & District Wide Draft Proposal
Mr. Rucker reviewed the WSESD Draft Budget Timeline reviewing how the budget timeline is determined based on the Annual Meeting date. He then introduced the Elementary & District Wide Draft Proposal document explaining how it is organized into two sections. seen in the second section (pgs. 1-116).
Section one (pages 1 – 22) show the budget information by individual school as well as a Budget Development Rationale
Section two (pages 1 – 116) is the FY26 Budget Detail Draft by individual school.
The final two pages of this document are the chart of accounts which are provided to assist with understanding the budget numbers.
Our district has a high poverty level, however the changes in the state funding moving from poverty focused to rurality focused weighting has negatively impacted our district. Mr. Rucker highlighted the CIP goals and data related to the achievement of our students as seen on pages 9-22 of section noting that this data guides the budget development. The ELA results are positive, and the math results are less favorable. The district has been implementing new programs in ELA and Math. This data is used when developing the budgets and determining what resources are needed at a district level and in individual schools.
The WSESD FY26 Proposed Elementary School All Staff Full time Equivalent (FTE) Data @11-19-24 document reflects the numbers behind page 22 of section one. The yellow highlighted section shows the information of FY25 for comparison when looking at the FY26 numbers.
The Supervisory Union is required by the State to carry the responsibility for areas that impact all of the schools in the district to ensure that all the schools have equal representation.
Transportation, curriculum and assessment, special education, food services, staff salary, etc all fall under these categories (this is outlined on page 7 of section one. ). Because of this, the individual school summaries (pages 1-6 in section one) do not show any information in these categories as the schools are not carrying those costs at the WSESD level.
Mr. Rucker then reviewed how to interpret an account number. The numbers are grouped into 1 digit to8 digit numbers, each having a meaning. The UCOA Financial Statement Account Code Definition document unlocks the code for understanding the account numbers.
SM ADJOURNED THE WSESD FINANCE COMMITTEE MEETING AT 6:42 PM.
