Cover Letter

We're pleased to present the FY28 budgets for the Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union and our three member districts, Hartland, Mt. Ascutney, and Weathersfield. These budgets reflect our commitment to a high-quality education for all of our 1,137 PreK–12 students, and our belief that strong schools build strong communities.

#What's different this year

This is the first budget book we have built and published ourselves. For several years we paid an outside subscription service to host it. This year, we built the book in-house, and it shows in what the book can do:

• It is a website first and a printed book second. We also built it with mobile in mind as we know that's how many busy parents and community members will view it. Every page has its own address you can share or bookmark.
• Two new features, How the SU money flows and How Vermont funds schools, walk through the parts of school finance that voters ask us about most, using our own numbers rather than a generic example.
• The totals open up. On any fund page, click a function, an object, a program, or a revenue source and you land on the detail behind it, each with its own spreadsheet download. 
• The ability to choose between two different budget scenarios for our WSESU General Fund and its impact on the local assessments and budgets.
• Each district has its own tax-rate calculation page and a calculator you can use to estimate your own FY28 school tax, including the income-sensitivity adjustment, once the state issues its December yield letter.
• Every table can be downloaded as a spreadsheet. The whole book is searchable. The full book, or just your district plus the SU summary, is available as a PDF from the Download page.
• When we find an error or add information, the correction is live within minutes. There is no waiting for a reprint.

#Why we did it

Part of our job is to look at every contract with the taxpayer in mind. Over the current fiscal year (FY27) we renegotiated or replaced several software vendors, and together those changes save roughly $25K a year. The budget book subscription was one of them: rather than renew it, we built this publication ourselves with open-source tools and the same secure cloud services we already use for financial reporting, so it is now something we control, maintain, and improve on our own schedule. We plan to do even more in FY28. As you dig into this budget book, you can see that Technology Software is down to the tune of $42,680.

#How the book is organized

• Executive Summary. A profile of the supervisory union, the budget process and timeline, enrollment and health-insurance trends, staffing and enrollment trends, the two explainers above, and letters from the program directors.
• Organizational Information. Our geographic area, mission and strategic plan, and the basis of budgeting and accounting.
• WSESU Financials. The SU General Fund, the Early Childhood Program, Food Services, each with a summary, a comprehensive fund summary, and detail by function, program, object, and account, with several years of history for comparison.
• Hartland, Mt. Ascutney, and Weathersfield. One section per district: the board and principal letters, the general fund, the tax-rate calculation and tax-impact calculator, the AOE three-year comparison, the warning and results, and staff information.
• Appendix. A glossary written with Vermont finance in mind and the terms that actually appear in these pages.

The structure is built toward the Government Finance Officers Association's Distinguished Budget Presentation criteria and the Association of School Business Officials International's Meritorious Budget Award guidelines.

#Appreciation and contact

Thank you to our boards of school directors, the Superintendent, our administrators, and the staff who contributed to these budgets. Questions and comments are always welcome. Contact me directly at ldougher@wsesu.net.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about the financial health of our schools.