The Annual Meeting of the Lake Region Union Elementary Middle School district took place on March 10th. The first order of business was to elect a moderator and Jeff Coburn nominated Kristen Atwood for that role. She was elected unanimously by a voice vote. The audience was made up of about 70 people who live in the towns in the district. The members of the board then introduced themselves.
A breakdown of the rest of the agenda that was warned and contained things that were voted and discussed on. The previous things that were voted on had no discussion.
Article 5, which was to approve the reports of the town officers and therefore all the things in the Annual report was amended several times by the voters. It was amended to correct the spelling of the name of a board member representing Orleans Dan Johnstone. The warning was also corrected to change the figure that will be voted on for the budget of fiscal year 2026 (FY-26to $18,465,143, from $18,200,373.50, which was listed incorrectly for a reason that board member Debbie Brunelle said was as a result of some sort of mistake at central office. No representatives from central office were present to clarify the issue. A motion was also made to add the names of the board members from last year into the minutes of this years minutes, which passed.
Article 6, which was to nominate and elect members to the school board included a seat in Barton with a 3 year term which Freddi Very was nominated for, and then the people at the meeting voted unanimously by voice vote. There were two candidates for the seat in Brownington Celine Cote, a current member of the board, and Amber Hastings. A vote was done through paper ballot. Celine Cote won by 3 votes. Then the representative for the open seat in Glover that had been vacated by Davi Bock there were 53 votes for Sarah Elliott and she won the seat. In Orleans Carmen Cook was nominated and declined. Then Bryanne Marquis also declined because of a conflict of interest. A motion was made to leave the seat vacant so the board can appoint someone. It passed.
Article 7. This article contained the salaries for the board, treasurer and clerk. They were voted on as a slate and the measure passed unanimously.
Article 8, which was the presentation of the budget for FY-26. The link to this presentation will be in the bottom of the story. It was done by board member Celine Cote. She thanked the people came to the meeting. The budget went up 1,077,577 form FY-25. It is a 6.2% increase. Charts and graphs were provided in a slideshow presentation about the budget. The enrolments were then displayed. There was a discussion of a sister school plan that was apparently needed for the small class sizes that currently exist in the district. She then went through assessments and thing that district controls versus the things that are controllable. things that aren’t controlled are 17 million and controllable are around 1 million. Long Term Weighted Average Daly Membership, which is a thing done by the state to determine funding that is given to the district. A graph was shown how the district receives about 65 percent of its budget from the state. Tax implications for the budget for individual towns and how much it will go up with what the state is forcing on them. A slide on what needs to be done to keep facilities open for maintenance was displayed Mz. Cote said that the facilities part of the budget, and the projects done were based on need for an assessment done by Turex-Cullins. Questions were then opened up the public. A different commasked if there will be a loss of learning from older student learning from youngers and the inverse. A community member complained about how the board wasn’t putting out enough warning about large changes such as the sister school plan. The board was asked to put warnings in The Chronicle, and The Newport Daily Express. A community member said that the state controls a lot of things and that local control can be taken at any time. They asked how much of the sister school plan was controlled by the state. Mz Brunelle, and Mz Cote both defended the plan, without answering the question about how much the state controls. Dan Johnstone commented about the state part. He said that none of this came from the state, and this was designed to keep small local schools. Former member Davi Bock asked about how the Special Education line had doubled in the past two years. The board said they couldn’t do anything about it. Jeff Coburn moved to call the question. It was passed by unanimous voice vote. Per pupil spending would be a little more than $12,000. The budget passed by unanimous voice vote.
Article 9, the capital reserve fund. Dan Rook, the representative from Albany spoke on this matter. He said the capital reserve fund is needed and it is used to maintain the buildings. It is $1,000,000 to be added for the next year. The money doesn’t have to be spent and does carry over. Mr Rook said that there is a large expense needed for the replacing of the Orleans gym floor, and the concrete underneath which was contaminated with mercury. This was an expense that the capital reserve fund was used for. No comments were given. Mr Rook also said that this figure is about an 8th of what TruexCullins would have recommended for the district to have in a reserve fund to fix all the things that were found in the assessment done last year, and is what many organizations use as a standard for reserve funds. TruexCullins recommends that people have a reserve fund of about 7% of the replacement cost of the facilities. The replacement cost of all the elementary schools in the district is around 190 million. A motion was made to call the question so that there would be no questions made by the community and passed with only one nay vote. They then voted to appropriate the $1,000,000, that was asked for unanimously.
Article 10. Voters voted unanimously to let the board pay all debts.
There was some public comment that happened at this point including questions about playground equipment that is accessible to students with mobility issues. This was addressed by saying that when the need arises equipment that is suitable for individual students and what is recommended by physical therapists There was also a comment expressing frustration that the Office of the superintendent’s budget has gone up around 500 thousand dollars in the past two years, and yet there are no representatives from there at the annual meeting. The school board members also seemed to not know what exactly was causing that increase and the commenter said that this was what they were upset about. The fact that there was year after year no justification for these increases and yet they are seen as needed was also a point of concern. Superintendent Penny Chamberlin said when reached for comment that “I believe the details were in the Annual Report.”
Article 11 was amended so that the annual meeting for next year would be held on Monday, March 9, 2026, at 6 P.M. at Lake Region.
Link to Annual Report
Link to a revised FY-26 budget that compares it to previous budgets and is broken down by department, the office of the superintendent in this budget is still an assessment.
Link to the OCSU annual report which provides much greater detail then EMS from last year.
Link to presentation given by district principles about the sister school plan.
Budget report presentation, this included the charts that were mentioned above in the paragraph about Article 8.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1upsQg49L0BXTMEbug97uXRTSAH_tGBYs/view?usp=sharing
