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MVSD 2024-2025 Preliminary Budget Consultation

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Mountain View School Division held a Pre-Budget Consultation meeting on December 4th, 2023 to consult with its stakeholders on any matters related to the 2024-2025 School Division Budget.

Show Transcript

Good evening everyone.
Welcome to our pre-budget consultation.
My name is Gabe Mercier and I am Chair of the Board for Mountain View School Division
Board of Trustees.
We will begin with a land acknowledgement and Mission Statement, Mountain View School Division is located on Treaty 2 and Treaty 4 territories, 
The original lands of the Anishinaabek, 
Ininiwak and Dakota peoples, and the homeland of the Metis nation. We respect the Treaties that were made on these territories and we dedicate ourselves to move forward in partnership with Indigenous communities in a spirit of truth and reconciliation. Mountain View School Division will provide as our mission Statement, Mountain View School Division will provide an inspiring, respectful, and safe learning environment where every student is valued, nurtured and enabled to realize their full potential.
I now call upon members of the Board who are present and senior administration to introduce themselves, starting with the Vice-Chair.
Jason Gryba, trustee, ward three.
Leifa Misko, trustee, ward one. Charlene Gulak, trustee.
Suzanne Cottyn, Assistant Superintendent.  Stephen Jaddock, Superintendent/CEO. Lori Slepicka, Secretary-Treasurer.
We also have Scott McCallum, who's online.
Thank you very much. And this budget consultation is to decide the 2024-2025 budget.
In this meeting, we look to parents, community members and all stakeholders in the public education system to identify their priorities as it relates to our strategic focused areas.
We appreciate the voice.
Or we would appreciate your voice in the planning process.
Our strategic planning areas are student learning and student well-being. In literacy, and under student learning, we have literacy.
This has to do with students' ability to make meaning of ideas or information received when viewing, listening and reading.
We have numeracy.
This has to do with students' procedural fluency in order to build mathematical confidence and number sense.
We also have credit attainment is another area of focus.
This has to do with high school credit attainment in order to increase high school graduation rates.
However, it's more than credit attainment.
It has to do with transition issues.
How do we help students make that transition from high school to continuing studies to university?
How do we help students to go to college?
So, and how do we help students make that transition from high school to work?
As we know, we do have a substantial number of students who continue on to university, but we have also large numbers, large numbers of students who go directly to work upon high school graduation.
How do we ensure that these students are making a successful transitions?
How do we work with employers to ensure that these students have the knowledge, skills and attitudes which will allow them to make that successful transition into the world of work and beyond the classroom?
We also have student well-being and we have mental health and wellness.
This has to do with students' positive mental health through strength-based approach to learning and and social-emotional development.
We have to help students develop good self-esteem and a good self-worth.
We have to work on that.
We have students of immigrants and students with working class backgrounds and Indigenous students.
We have to work with families who try to achieve that kind of balance in a student with good self-worth and good self-esteem.
We have to have safe and caring schools.
This has to do with the climate and culture in the school, by building strong relationships and inclusive environments where everyone has a chance to participate.
We also have student voice - and this provides a means of communication between the Mountain View School Division Board of Trustees and students.
We have to engage students more meaningfully.
I mean, 
I've been here for for five years.
This is my fifth year and I haven't really seen meaningful engagements between the students, the student voice students and Mountain View Trustees.
I haven't really seen meaningful engagements, and so these are some of the things we have to work on.
I remember as Vice-Principal at the DR when Dwayne was principal,
We had meaningful engagements.
We did a lot of work with students with the student voice over at the DRCSS in the early 2000s.
We had workshops and we took students out out to Gillam on workshops.
Gimli with workshops.
We also have Indigenous education and we have to support schools to implement the Indigenous education framework and the Anti-Racism program that was developed by our committee here in Mountain View School Division.  And I'll turn it over to the Division Senior Administration to continue with the process.
And so just just a few housekeeping items.
We have a full house here today with some guests in the room, so there's a few people online, but our emergency exits once again are at the doors
You came in or down the hall, down the stairs and out to the east side of the parking lot,
Should we have to exit in an emergency.
Washrooms are down the hall. For the people online,
The mics and the cameras are off right now.
At the end, we'll have a time for questions and comments.
We ask that you raise your hand and we'll turn on your mic and your camera at that time so that you can speak.  And anybody who has logged in and has only a first name or initials showing,
Please in the chat, 
Just put your first and last name just for record of attendance and monitoring who is online with us.  So I'll turn it over to Mr. Jaddock now.
Thank you very much, Secretary-Treasurer
Slepicka.
I'm just going to go over the
strategic plan and how it relates to the budget.
So we'll take a look at how those intersect, but before we do, I just want to say a little bit about how we've set up the strategic plan.
You'll see that there's three main circles.
One is academics, one is leadership and one is culture, and those come from the 
Leader in Me Framework - we're working with the Covey Institute and the Seven Habits, and those are the three fundamental areas of the Leader in Me Framework. And the framework starts off with being able to vision the possibilities that are available for students and staff in Mountain View School Division and the families of Mountain View School Division.
So the paradigms are as follows:
The paradigm of leadership - that everyone can be a leader.  The paradigm of potential - 
Everyone has genius.
Everyone has that potential within them and we have to find out what it is and develop that.
Change starts with me.
So in all of us, we are the change makers and we can do it when we understand that change lies within us.  The paradigm of motivation - empower students to lead their own learning.
So they take responsibility and express their own learning goals.
And then the paradigm of education - educators and families partner to develop the whole person.
So working together with teachers, EA's, all of our school staff and families to make sure that the student develops to their full potential, and we've heard that in our mission statement.
So that's what we're after in Mountain View School Division.
So in the areas of leadership, culture and academics, we have embedded our strategic plan. As you may or may not know, this is a third year of a single year plan.
Since COVID, we are just right now engaging, reengaging our communities in community conversations to develop a strategic plan for the next four years.
So we are just about to collate all of that information.
We've got one more community to visit and we're going to be visiting that community in January.
We're looking forward to that and bringing the information together and developing that robust 4 year strategic plan.  But this is a third year of a single year plan. 
So it is very similar to what we had in the past two years.  Falling under the areas of academics.
We've got numeracy, literacy and credit attainment. Falling into the area of culture where we want to develop the physical and social- emotional environment 
for students, we've got safe and caring schools, mental health and Wellness. And in the area of leadership, we have our student voice and Indigenous education initiatives.
So that's where they fall.
And then you can see throughout right in the middle where all of those three circles intersect is the learner.
So they're touched by everything and they're in the middle.
They're in the centre.
And again, that's part of our mission statement and our motto where learners at the centre.
So we really like to come back to that in Mountain View School Division.
And then of course, we have student learning and student well-being along with the mission statement in the other circle areas.
I'm just going to a bigger picture of that.
A little bit of technical difficulties here.
There we go.
And so we've also, on the paper plan, if you look at our website, you'll find this and you will see that we have our big ideas centered around the Leader in Me Framework and we have student learning and student well-being.
And then we have our mission statement, 
The MVSD mission statement where the areas of inspiring, enabled and full potential, and respectful safe, valued and nurtured are on each of those two sides.
And then we have the academics, the leadership and the culture.
And then the areas that we saw on the other pictorial there are just following through.
So I just wanted to show you that so you understand where we're coming from with those three major areas.
So now what I would like to do is just go through each of the areas and take a look at the goals and take a look at, 
Expressing the goal to you and then seeing what budget areas are affected by each of those.
So the first one is numeracy and that was to increase students' procedural fluency in order to build mathematical confidence and number sense.
So that students are aware of numbers, that they're confident with them, they can use them and we want to make sure that particularly in grades one through six, we are collecting math, running record data two times a year.
So we collect in November and we collect in June.
So we've just gone through a collection period.
So we've got that data.  Professional development - making sure that our teachers and our staff have the ability to
Show what the students need to do in their math.
We are also a member of the mRLC, which stands for the Manitoba Rural Learning Consortium, and we've been a member of the mRLC now for a number of years.
We pay a membership to take part, so therefore there's a budgetary item for that.
So because we pay a membership, we have to be responsible, but
Our teachers are bringing back many, many valuable things to use with their students.
They're using learning outcomes and learning rubrics that they share with their students, and they're able to lay out what the learning process looks like and to take in information at set points to see how the students are doing in their area of numeracy.
So we also have RTI initiatives, which stands for Response to Intervention.
So when we look at giving students extra support and help in their learning, we have the ability to fill any gaps that they might have and make sure that they are back on course with with what they need to do in the area of numeracy.
And then you'll see in each of these ones that I go through where the goal is there in the budget area, you'll see staffing, because we can't accomplish it without staffing.
So we need teachers.
We also have the ability to have a divisional Numeracy Coach that is able to help teachers and ultimately help students with their learning.
So all of those take dollars and we need to just be mindful of that as we go through. The next area that I want to share with you is literacy.
So in the literacy area, we want to enhance students' ability to make meaning of ideas or information received when viewing, listening and reading.
Again, professional development is important where we give teachers that training and teaching that is pertinent to the area of literacy and including using our Literacy Coach to help our teachers divisionally,
And in bringing groups of teachers, with cohorts of teachers together,
for learning experiences, mrLC is also there because the Manitoba Rural Learning Consortium is also based in the area of literacy and there are important meetings that take place and learnings that are brought back to schools and to classrooms with that.  Support for small class sizes - 
We know that in Mountain View School Division in K-3, we want to make sure that we are targeting class sizes of no more than 18 students so that we fall within what the optimum size of classroom would be for the K-3.
A little bit larger sizes when you get Grade 4 and up, but certainly we want to maintain that through K to 3 and it helps with the learning area.
And also there's a budgetary cost to that, because that means we might have to expand a little bit more for staffing to have the full time equivalents to be able to allow that ratio of students to teachers take place.
We also have RTI initiatives and reading running records.
So the math running records, there's also reading running record that twice a year, grades one to six, 
The students are assessed and that information is taken in and compared to past years and also looking at what the students need to do in order to stretch them to increase their level of knowledge in terms of reading.
Next we have credit attainment.
Credit attainment is for high school, to enhance high school credit attainment in order to increase high school graduation rates, and studies have found that particularly in grade nine grade,
Are we good now? Do we have audio? Good to go. OK.
Awesome.
Thank you.
So for the credit attainment, what I was saying was the research has shown that Grade 9 ELA and Grade 9 Math are very important, 
So we employ strategies to allow students to be successful and more likely to be successful.
So one of them is making sure that the grade nines may take a transitional math course.
So from grade 8 to grade nine, we do recognize that the province is recognized that that is a very difficult transition
And so they have a course called Transitional Math, and the students can take it.
And then after they take that, they go into the regular Grade 9 Math course.
So it's been found that students that are able to take that more gradual route into the Grade 9 math are a little bit more successful.
Also, we do have in some of our schools, non-semestered subjects for grades 9 and 10, just to make sure that they're making a more concentrated time for those subject areas, and then also limiting the number of teachers that they are having to go to and from with, so that it's almost like a home room type of scenario.
So those strategies have been employed. Also want to turn your attention to other budget areas such as technical vocational education, which we have in our high schools. Our technical vocational high school, DRCSS, where they have programming whereby students are able to get their first year level 1 technical accreditation if they are successful in taking all of the courses that are offered in that particular area of expertise while they're in high school.
So that is very advantageous and we do have a number of students that do take advantage of that each year.
We also have industrial arts and human ecology education, so some of our other high schools outside of the DR offer those courses and they allow students to again branch out into different areas such as welding, carpentry, cooking, those types of things, to be able to try their hand at something and see if it interests them.
And that might be something that they want to do as a career.
I just thought I would throw some acronyms at you: HSAP - High School Apprenticeship Program,
CDI - Career Development
Internship, where students in grade 11 or 12 can learn about a career. Once they spend 110 hours of volunteer in that particular area, they can gain a credit. And then credit for employment - 
CFE - is basically if a student has gainful employment, as long as they chart the hours they fill the paperwork, they can get 2 credits, one at grade 11 and one in grade 12 simply for being employed.
So that is available in the province of Manitoba. Career guidance - that is, in some of our schools, we have career guidance counsellors that help students with those choices for what they want to do as a career.
They spend some time with them,
They go through what they need to have, for example, in terms of high school courses to be able to get into post-secondary and also just answering any questions that they might have or the families might have. In our schools that don't have career guidance counsellors,
It's the regular guidance counsellor that would help the students through those areas.
We do have alternative education programming as well, where we have budgetary areas that go to. This year in Dauphin at the DRCSS, we are doing an off-site program in conjunction with the Dauphin Friendship Centre.
We've got space over at the Dauphin Friendship Centre and are running a classroom there. So again, giving the students a little bit more flexibility and also for some of the students coming to a campus that has 700 plus students 
Is just not the surroundings for them to allow it to be successful, so we want to look at doing things a little bit differently.
And again, you see the staffing word there because we can't do it without staffing, we can't do it without the guidance counsellors,
We can't do it without the specialty teachers that are teaching in the alternative educational programming and those sorts of things.
So we want to make sure that you are aware of that.
OK, I'm gonna go to the next one.
The next one is 
Safe and caring schools and that is to enhance the climate and culture in schools by building strong relationships and inclusive environments. And relationships are key for any student success and we are aware of that, 
Keenly aware of that, and we want to make sure that that is something that shows up in our plan.
So again, professional development is important, getting the training and teaching for teachers and staff to be able to work with students.  Respect in Schools training - 
We do that with our staff every three years, 
I believe it is.
They need to be recertified in that. Everybody just recertified last year, we hit the reset button.
They redid the Respect in Schools program, so we had all of our staff redo it and start in the entry level.
And again, that is good information for our staff to have and all new staff that starts in Mountain View School Division takes that training. It's an online training and they are able to have it. Also looking at PBIS, 
and that is is looking at making sure that there is the Positive Behavior Intervention Support. It's a whole school program that the school gets behind it and they're able to look at making a successful transition for student behavior. For the school, Zones of Regulation is used,
And also safe rooms, where we have special rooms in our schools where students can go and feel comfortable and to self-regulate.
So if they're dysregulated, 
They can go there,
They're not sent home, they go to the the safe room or the calming room.
There's different words, different schools, that they use and then they're able to regulate and then they can go back to the classroom.
So that's what we want.
We want to keep students in the school as much as possible. And then Restitution Practices -  making sure that we are training our staff in restitution, so making things good in terms of a consequence.
Maybe we are looking at something other than an out-of-school suspension.
What can it be that we can look at to keep students in school?
Also, maintenance plan is very important here because the physical environment of the school is so important.
So we have a maintenance plan that money goes to to make sure that those types of repairs and upgrades can be done to our schools on a yearly basis.
And again, we have staffing because without staff, we can't do that work.
Next area is student voice, providing the means of communication between the MVSD Board of Trustees and students, and we'd like to see that expand and go a little bit deeper.
We we do have a large number of students.
We've got more students this year than we had last year, so that's great to see and there may even be some of the student voice students that are with us online as well.
So, welcome to those students that are with us this evening. And the areas are Professional Development, MVSD Board Development, making sure that there is money spent on the students also.
Board chair Mercier talked about it in terms of students heading to a leadership opportunities, and we do that with our student voice group.
They do head out to student leadership conferences and we want to make sure that they're able to take those in and bring that learning back.
And then, of course, we do have MVSD staff that are responsible for the students and making sure that they are leading their learning.
So that is the student voice area and then we have Indigenous Education and that is to implement the Indigenous Education Framework for Mountain View School Division.
We've had the Indigenous Education Framework now for a number of years and we've done great strides in this area.  So, area professional development, making sure that staff and all of our teachers are trained, we have done some training with the Treaty Education.
Some schools have already done their two days of training and we were already doing this and implementing this and the Province of Manitoba
Decided to follow suit and make it mandatory for every school division to frame their teachers in the two days of Treaty Education training.
So it's glad to see when when you're ahead of that a little bit.
And so, we very much have been in the area of Indigenous education. The Elders and Knowledge Keepers in Schools funding, 
We were one of the first school divisions to get funding in the inaugural year that they did offer the funding.
It has since expanded to all of the schools in
Mountain View School Division and certainly all school divisions now are able to access that funding.
So we do have full funding again this year and we are having elders and knowledge keepers visit our school sites and work with students.
We also have our own Umbay Nagamon - Come and Sing with Me 
Program that is now in its third year and it was a Teachers' Idea Fund grant for five years and we were able to realize the dream of having that reconciliation group working within our school division and within our communities.
And they've been doing some great work, and by the end of the five years, all of our communities and all of our schools will have had the reconciliation training with Umbay Nagamon.
So they are very
Well spoken
And renowned, in fact, other school divisions and other organizations are asking them to present at their conferences.
So we know that that is a success.
We are also employing community networkers that work together with our team of Indigenous Education Facilitator and now just the new Coordinator of Indigenous Education that we have this year in Mountain View School Division that we never had in prior years, but with the
Ability to have the Teachers' Idea Fund grant that we are able to fund that position.
So, we do have individuals that are working in those areas and we're very happy to have them.
So our our new Coordinator of Indigenous Education is Carole Shankaruk, and she's doing a great job leading that area.
We also have the Indigenous Academic Achievement grant, which is funding that is given to the school division
For our budget from the province and then doled to the schools and to staffing to make sure that we are targeting those areas to ensure that our Indigenous students are successful.
And then of course staffing, we can't do it without the personnel.
And as mentioned, there's a number of personnel that were listed there individually that play into that.
So we just want to make sure that we are fulfilling all of our goals with respect to our strategic plan and it is something that is very important. And last but not least, I'm going to touch on the the last area and that's Mental Health and Wellness and we know that that's crucial right now after having gone through the pandemic. We are now in the what's called the ECHO pandemic where we're now actually really seeing the results of the aftermath of having gone through the pandemic.
It's almost like everybody is shell-shocked and everybody needs that little extra dose of
Wellness to in order to be healthy.
And so we need to be cognizant of that.
We need to work with our students and our staff to make sure that they have what they need to be successful.
So again, professional development, Mental Health First Aid training is the big target that we have in this point where we have all of our staff wanting to get trained in mental health first aid. And what that allows them to do, 
It allows them to identify individuals around them that might be languishing
That might be hurting and able to reach out with the available supports and needed necessary supports in order to help them.
So it's a very good training and we also have internal trainers that do that training for us right within Mountain View School Division.
So it's very handy to have them with us.
And again, that speaks to the staffing area, because without them we couldn't do that work.
So thank you very much for your attention and I'll turn things over to Secretary-Treasurer Slepicka.
So the first slide we're going to just take a glance at here is the budget timelines.
The budget is a bit of a long process.
We kind of finish up the the previous year's financial statements in October and then we start working on next year.
And so the current year is just kind of limbo in  October, but that's when we start our process.
We review timelines with the board.
We do preliminary budget preparations and review the process with Admin Council as to how we're going to gather up the information for the next year's budget. In November,
That's when we seek our pre-budget input from employee groups and stakeholder groups. This year,
December, is when we meet with the PACs,  stakeholders, Student Voice and the public - that's today.
Move into January.
That's where we continue the conversations at our Board finance meetings regarding the budget and sometime at the end of January is when we actually get the funding announcement from the Province.
In February, we take a look at the budget again, once we know how much money we're going to be getting and see how we can make that work.
And then in March, we do another public budget forum.
We get our special levies approved, the budget is approved and press release is issued.
So that's the budget timelines in a nutshell.
Take a quick peek at the prior year budget.
So for 23-24, that was the last budget that we set, 
That's the budget we're working within right now.
Our overall revenue increase was 3.77% from the previous year and our expenditures increase of 3.62%.
We had a deficit budget last year of $96,894 and a 4.37% increase in our budgeted provincial funding.
So we take a look at the charts, 
We can see where our revenue comes from.
33.18% came from municipal revenue in 22-23.
In 23-24, we had 32.93%.
Provincially, in 22-23, it was 62.56% and 62.93% in 23-24. And then our other funding is tuition fees, bus maintenance agreement, First Nations, other school divisions, and miscellaneous grants,  rebates.
So our revenue continues to shift between the provincial and municipal funding as the education property tax credit continues to be phased out and local taxation by school divisions is also being eliminated.
Last year we had some one-time funding amounts and additional grants that shifted the provincial revenue amounts slightly.
Then if we look at the expenditures, this illustration is of the changes made in the last year's budget. Salaries and benefits as a percentage of the budget decreased slightly to 82.5%, but you can see the majority of our budget goes straight to salaries and benefits.
Our service and supplies showed a slight increase of 17.5%, or to 17.5%. The majority of expenditure reductions were actually made in the service and supplies area to avoid cuts to staff, 
But each year that gets more and more difficult.
We have inflationary pressures that will continue to affect the budget - fuel, hydro, natural gas, propane and just general product cost increase.
We struggle with supply issues and we're also going to be feeling the effect from our aging infrastructure as the years go on.
So some of these things we can reduce so budgets aren't overspent, but things like fuel and utility costs are very difficult to reduce.
So some budget considerations for 24-25: a new funding model.
This has been in the works for many years.
We were expecting one last year and at the last minute they cancelled that and so we just continue with a broken funding model.
We have the new government in now, so hopefully we can see some results and see some some new allocations of provincial money.
In our expenditures, the cost required for contractual obligations, continuation of programs and services. All of our employee contracts have expired and our negotiations, our teachers' contracts are now being negotiated provincially.
So we we have representation but it's not done at a local level and then our support agreements, the CUPE and non-union are also being negotiated at this time.
So we don't know what those costs are going to be as of yet, 
And that's going to be something we're going to have to work into budget.
Obviously, the cost to maintain buildings, infrastructure and equipment, material and supply costs, inflationary, the supply and demand increases and then just provincial mandates and anything that the province puts forward that we have to cover the cost of, are some of the considerations we have to take into account when looking at the budget.
My next slide is a slide that was shared with us when we were all in an MSBA conference for Trustees, and MSBA had put out a survey to Manitobans to see what was important to them.
Now, it didn't pertain specifically to budget, but as we all know, money is tied to everything that's important to us, 
It seems.
So, I thought it would just be neat to share this with everybody, just seeing what was out there and what the public thought was important to improve and to focus on in public schools.
And you can see that teachers' salary and benefits is #1 on the list,
Funding for schools, resources for children and families, and so on and so forth.
So just thought it would be neat to see that from a provincial perspective.
And then the next few slides, I'm going to share some of the themes that we pulled from the surveys that we had online.
We had a pre budget survey online that people filled out.
We had just over 40 people respond to the survey.
So, one of the questions was what educational issues are important for you and why.  So these are just some of the themes that we pulled out of there: core academic subjects, curriculum, mental health support, inclusive and safe environment, post-secondary readiness, teacher quality, availability of resources, practical life skills, parental involvement, and music and art.
So these themes reflect a variety of perspectives and priorities within the community, ranging from a focus on core academic skills, to concerns about the inclusion of certain topics 
to the curriculum, and the overall well-being of students.
The next question is quite similar and you'll see some overlap in the responses.
Which priority areas do you feel the division needs to focus resources?
Core subjects, literacy, numeracy, mental health, curriculum, support for diverse educational needs, life skills, community engagement and outreach, infrastructure and facility improvement, technology and safety, teacher support and morale.
So these themes provide valuable insights into the diverse perspectives within the community regarding the allocation of resources in the school division budget.
The challenge for the school division will be to balance these very priorities, and then address the needs and expectations of the Community.
So if people are asking for more focus in other areas, it's not an infinite amount of money, so you if you're going to add something extra, you need to take something away.
So that's why we put this question out there, just are there areas where the division should eliminate or reduce support?
We didn't have a lot of suggestions in that area, but just a couple of the items were curriculum beyond core subjects and then international professional development.
So just a couple.
So it's just important that we note these themes represent the views expressed by survey responders and there is a diversity of opinions within the community. Balancing these perspectives while ensuring an inclusive and supportive educational environment poses a challenge for the school division.
And the last item we had was just other comments or suggestions related to the division budget: invest in arts, drama, sports and more comprehensive extracurricular opportunities.
So you can see there's kind of like a,
Put more into reading, writing, numeracy, literacy,
But then also put more into arts, drama, sports.
So you know
There's a wide variety of ideas out there, and all very valid.
That's for sure.
There was a request to review school catchment areas, economize resources by addressing underutilized school facilities, have more community information sessions to learn about the budget development process, challenges and achievements, adequate employee compensation, address bullying and have clean air in the schools.
So that was just a quick summary of what we got back from the surveys.
Now is the time when we get to open up the floor.
If anybody has any questions or comments, I'll ask Chairperson Mercier to facilitate the conversation.
I will just get online here and see if anybody has any hands up.
Mr. Jaddock can facilitate.
And so if anyone out there
Has any questions or comments if they could raise their hand and we'll just...
So there's just a few questions that we want to pose this evening.
And so the first one is, where should greater emphasis and support be provided?
So, we've seen some of the suggestions that were given, but is there anything that you specifically have that you haven't seen there that you would like to propose?
And at this point in time, it's just a listening to your ideas and seeing if, you know, that's something that the Board can take under consideration when they do their budget deliberations.
Secretary-Treasurer Slepicka, there was one question on your slide
when you submit, when you had the feedback, 
Someone asked, was it in order of the percent of responses?
So in other words, what the division should focus on that list,
Was it in order of percent
of the responses? No, it was just a general, general themes from that data.
OK, so hearing none in the first one, we'll go to the second one.
The second one, where should the division eliminate or reduce support?
So if you're thinking of, you know, 
Why is this something that is occurring or going on, 
And maybe you're thinking that should be something that
doesn't need to continue, 
Then you can propose that. We didn't have a very extensive list as what was shown by Secretary-Treasurer Slepicka.
But is there any thoughts there that anyone would like to share at this time?
Here we do have a question from the chat, that is
Asking what has been done for students with exceptional needs to help them transition out of high school and preparing life skills.
So typically for those students that require that type of specific support, there is community
liaisons that work with the school and with the family to enable that to occur.
So also just bear in mind too, that those students, many of them, are allowed to stay in school till the age of 21 and often times that is taking advantage of to give them that extra time to develop some of those skills and to make those connections in the community, particularly if they're going to be remaining in that community for employment or for living experiences.
So we want to make sure that we develop those connections and make sure that all of the supports that are available for that student are relied upon.
And we'll go to the third one.
Any other comments or suggestions related to the divisional budget?
Anything that you came here tonight and you were thinking that you might be hearing something about it.
Or maybe just something else that does have a budgetary 
Consequence that you would like to to bring forward at this time.
If not, I want to thank everyone for participating this evening and thank you for taking the time to be present and to share your ideas or even just to hear what the school division is doing.
And sometimes that is just as important to be aware of what is going on in the school division and what initiatives are being undertaken and where our money is being spent.
So again, thank you very much.

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MVSD 2024-2025 Preliminary Budget Consultation

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