WEBVTT

METADATA
Video-Count: 1
Video-1: youtube.com/watch?v=uZ1kYfNbNvQ

NOTE
MEETING SECTIONS:

Part 1 (Video ID: uZ1kYfNbNvQ):
- 00:09:58: Meeting Called to Order: Flag Salute and Compliance
- 00:33:19: Roll Call, Quorum Established, Superintendent's Report Begins
- 00:33:35: Crew Team Victory and Student Success Updates
- 00:34:08: Aspiring Leaders Academy & Budget Hearing Announcement
- 00:34:56: Budget Process Improved and Middle School Expansion Updates
- 00:36:51: 2026-2027 Budget Presentation Introduction & Team Thanks
- 00:38:58: Budget Preparation & Unbudgeted Expenses Discovered
- 00:41:09: Proposed Budget Maintains Quality, Adds Pre-K Classrooms
- 00:42:33: Facility Maintenance, Improvements and Capital Projects
- 00:45:35: Technology and Safety Investments, Security Enhancements
- 00:47:31: Special Education Program Highlights and Streamlined Services
- 00:49:13: Budget Highlights and Financial Stability Focus
- 00:50:53: Student Enrollment Overview, Trends, and State Aid
- 00:52:53: Residency Verification and Charter School Concerns
- 00:55:23: Free and Reduced Lunch Status and Additional Benefits
- 00:56:59: Revenue Sources: State, Federal, and Local Tax Levy
- 01:02:58: COVID Funding Impact and Staffing Level Analysis
- 01:06:52: Budget Challenges and Revenue Source Visuals
- 01:08:14: Adequacy, Rising Costs and Collective Bargaining Agreements
- 01:12:15: Lease Reductions, Terminations & Potential Negotiations
- 01:15:49: Proposed Staff Reductions and Streamlined Services
- 01:18:14: Equitable Additional Compensation and Tax Impact Information
- 01:20:08: Assessed Value vs. Market Value and Tax Comparison
- 01:21:59: District Transparency and Thank You for Attention
- 01:23:51: Budget Presentation Feedback and Public Comment Open
- 01:25:08: Budget Public Comment Closed and Finance Items Motion
- 01:25:40: Budget Item Voting - Trustee Garo Abstains on 5.1
- 01:26:17: Budget Item Voting - Trustee Gillis In Favor
- 01:26:51: Budget Item Voting - Questions About Information Sharing
- 01:29:11: Agenda Items Public Comment and Resolution on Board Action
- 01:30:00: Resolutions Personnel and Purchasing & Business Services
- 01:31:08: Remarks by Citizens Open and Closing Motion
- 01:31:42: Board Trustees Remarks and Adjournment Motion


Part: 1

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Mhm. >> Mhm. >> Mhm. >> Good evening everyone. The time is now 7:10 p.m. Can we please rise to salute the flag? Thank you everyone. Please be seated. Miss Ikayo, can you please read the statements of compliance?

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Open public meetings act. Notice of this meeting has been provided in accordance with the Open Public Meeting Act. Excuse me. N.J.S.A. 10:4-6 by the board secretary. A written notice was posted in the office of the Board of Education, filed with the Township Clerk, and sent to the

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designated official newspapers at least 48 hours in advance of this meeting. The notice stated the date, time, and location of this meeting, and to the extent known, the agenda to be discussed. The New Jersey Open Public Meetings Law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of, and to attend the meeting

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attend meetings of this board, except where specifically exempted by law, at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon. >> [clears throat] >> In accordance with the provisions of this act, the Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting to be published by having same advertised in

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the Ledger or NJ Advance and the Record. Also, notice of this meeting has been mailed to the members of the board, the borough clerk, all elementary schools, the middle school, the high school, Hornblower Early Childhood Center, and posted on the district website. Also, this meeting is being televised via the

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district's YouTube and Facebook pages. Thank you, Miss Ikayo. [clears throat] Can you please call the roll? Trustee Garo. Here. Trustee Gillis. Here. Trustee Munoz. Here. Trustee Pacheco. Here. Trustee Santana. Here. Vice President Dr. Misagia. Here.

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President Leon. Here. We have a quorum. Thank you. Uh we are now moving on to the superintendent's report uh from Dr. Alfonso. Good evening everyone. Although it's been only a few weeks since our last meeting, there's been a lot of uh great things to communicate.

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So, first I want to shout out our crew team. They uh two of our students won the Garden State Scholastic Championship over in Camden. So, I want to give a Amanda Mr. E and Camila Sotomayor uh a big shout out. They won the lightweight doubles event.

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As far as our PILAS uh students, an update with them, they went to Caldwell University. They met with the administration there. They received gear. They had a tour. Talked about scholarship opportunities, which was a fantastic opportunity for them to ask questions. And Caldwell is known as a minority serving institution, so they're focused

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on really serving our youth and making sure they connect and seek higher education opportunities is fantastic. An update on our Aspiring Leaders Academy, we've actually met twice since the last meeting, and there's so much to go over, so much to do. Our aspiring leaders are actually

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piloting AI platforms. So, there's three AI platforms that we're currently piloting themselves, which is our SchoolAI, Magic School, and Brizz. They are going to be using them from beginning of April to June, and in June we're going to decide, based on their feedback, which is the platform we're

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going to be using. So, they're really having a hand in our the trajectory and the where we're going as a district as far as our innovation. Also, we've been working on policy as well with our aspiring leaders. So, we've been we opened up our grading

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policy and looking at if it's reflective of our mission and vision of the district. We've had some great conversations, some great feedback, so they're preparing a proposal on some uh revisions that they would love the board to see. The board, as we know, is the governing body when it comes to policy, so we'll

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follow those processes after the fact when uh we present the potential revisions to the board. And tonight, as we all know, is uh the preliminary the the actual budget hearing, and I would love I'm very happy to inform everyone that this is the first time in at least 5 years

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where this budget being proposed today is the same as the preliminary budget proposal. In years past, that was not the case. It was extremely high number preliminary, and then a complete different number when it came to the proposal. So, we were very methodical

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and stringent when we came to our budget, and we're very happy to announce that it's exactly the same one from the preliminary budget. Also, I would like to highlight uh agenda item 9.4, which is the approval of a proposal for our architects. One of the first things that was

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mentioned to me when I came on board here was about the middle school expansion project and the bond and what's going on with that. So, we met with uh all constituents, saw where some of the lags were, revamped. We sought out a different architect, and the ball's been rolling.

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We met with the town, with our town manager, to see what some of their wants were, and we are on on a great pace. So, hopefully for next month, we will be submitting to the planning board. Once the planning board approves it, goes to NJDOE

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submission. That takes about 6 months for turnaround. We get approval from then, we'll be breaking ground not this summer, the following summer. So, we're definitely leaps and strides over the last 10 months. And that is it for my update today. Thank you.

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Thank you for that, Dr. Alfonso. We are now going to be doing the 2026-2027 budget presentation by Dr. Alfonso and Miss Tina Ikayo. All right, everyone. So, thank you all for coming. This is our 2026-2027 budget

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presentation, and we're just going to kick it right off. So, first off, my name is Tina Ikayo. I'm the school business administrator here, appointed January 1st, but I was fortunate enough to join the district as a consultant in the fall. Um so, we're really excited to bring this product to

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you today. It represents 6-plus months' worth of discussion, strategizing, uh you know, collaborate collaborating uh with a myriad of people, including uh and definitely not uh at the lowest of the

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totem pole is the board. Um so, the board has been involved, especially the Finance and Operations Committee, in these discussions from the beginning, um really helping us keep students at the forefront of all the conversations we had. So, um among all the people we are going to thank tonight, uh my Finance and Operations Committee, uh I I thank

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you guys for all your hard work through this budget process. So, just to go over this uh budget overview, this is how long prepare budget takes. We kick off the school year, and then as soon as September everybody settled in, we're working on the budget. It's almost crazy

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to believe that working on next year's budget when we're just getting kicked off a year. But, the big big part that I want to highlight as far as our phase one, we had department meetings, we met with curriculum, technology, food service, buildings and grounds, custodial, instruction, and we did an audit, an audit of

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everything fresh out of eyes, and we found a lot of redundancies, found a lot a lot of redundancies, some overlap, and we were able to streamline these services. And if you will circle back to our November meeting, by November we had a savings of approximately 1.7 million just from this preliminary process

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alone. And then fast forward March, you saw the preliminary budget hearing and now we are here for our final. So, we want to start off with the elephant in the room. These are some of the items that upon discovery this year

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as we progress through school year were items that were actually not in our budget that was prepared last year. So, we had we currently have 60 out of district students placed. It was about half of that number. So, we were very low on that number.

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Our school resource officers were not in the budget. Our Bucks program, which is a trademark, a hallmark of our district. It's the reason that a lot of our district a lot of our district students graduate and we keep them in district just because of this Bucks program.

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$600,000 was not in the budget. Our high school graduation, surprisingly, was also not in the budget. $35,000 is on the lower end. It's usually about $50,000 for high school graduation. And our health insurance was actually flat funded. Which we all know that health insurance

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has been a talk for the last 2 years. Every school district was told budget a minimum of 20% for the following year and we all know we were not even remotely close to that. Average district was about 34 to 36%. We were flat funded so we had to make up for that amount. The total

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amount that was not budgeted that we had to reintroduce to this budget was $3.6 million. So, right off the bat, it was a giant hurdle that we needed to overcome. So, all things considered, now with our proposed budget, one of the

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things we would love to focus on is the instructional quality and instructional day for our children is not changing. We are fully supporting all the curriculum materials for our pre-K through 12. Our Bucks program is reintegrated to the budget. As we said, it's non-negotiable,

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it's an essential part of this district. Our summer bridge programs are running full fledged. Those summer bridge programs are geared towards tier two students and making sure the summer slide doesn't happen and our students who just made it at the end of the year, making sure that we give them the resources so they're

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ready for the following school year. And a very big one that last two, we were actually granted three additional pre-K classrooms through our TEA funding. Which we'll get into more of that in the next slides. And the last one, if you've been in communication or hear

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about different districts, everyone's in a bit of a fiscal hard rock and athletic programs are actually being cut. Athletic programs are being cut, clubs are being cut and we all know that that's part of the identity of a district.

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That's what makes a district a district. So, being able to keep these programs is an essential part of what we're trying to do here. So, uh for facilities wise, so in the proposed 26-27 budget, if the board approves it tonight, it will continue to

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support all of the preventative maintenance programs we have in place and this includes our HVAC systems, electric, water, fire alarm and other safety systems, our pest management programs, lead and environmental testing, all of which are necessary items and safety. Our students need to be safe

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and comfortable before they can learn. Uh maintenance of our district fleet of vehicles, including all of our buses, buildings and grounds vehicles and then a grant funded and this was in place before Dr. Alfonso and I got here, grant funded implementation of EV chargers, electric vehicle chargers, 10 stations

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throughout the district, which does align with our sustainability goals. So, you guys will hear more about this in May. We're going to have the second reading on the EV policy um and then we're going to be making that available to the public to be able to charge their EVs at one of our 10 stations. So, more on that to come.

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And then this is one of the big things. We streamlined our space usage to reduce our overall footprint and fiscal impact. We're going to get more into the leases and our buildings later on in the presentation, but when you think about buildings, it it we're not just talking about the building and the lease. We're talking about the insurance for the

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building. We're talking about the utilities for the building. So, there are a lot of things, you know, staffing, thank you for the building. So, we're talking about the holistic picture here. So, um we really again, as part of auditing everything, looked at our whole footprint of buildings and we were able

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to streamline some space as well. Definitely worth highlighting was the middle school expansion project, which I touched upon in the superintendent's report. This is a tremendous move. You know, from 2021 we tried to launch and get it off the ground. We actually have landmarks in place to get this

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project going and break ground by summer of 2027. So, this is uh monumental leap from where we were back in July when I first got here. Um and and it's important to note that that middle school expansion project, that's not coming out of operational budget. You won't see that as an

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appropriation for 26-27. That is still coming from the bond that was approved years ago. So, we're just still feeding off those that bond uh money. Um so, the planned improvement projects. So, as part of the revenues for this year, you will see a $1 million withdrawal from our capital reserve.

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That's reserved restricted revenue that can only be used for certain things like capital improvements. Um that $1 million withdrawal, uh two of the biggest things in it are elevator modernizations at school three and the high school. Um long overdue and in order for us to

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maintain safety and full ADA compliance in the district, we do need to do modernizations there. Uh some repaving. We have some safety concerns at a couple of our lots, uh variety of window, floor, gymnasium wall padding and some roof repairs throughout the district. And as with any capital

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project and that withdrawal, any of those funds not used or if the project come in under budget, all of those monies just go back into capital reserve for future budget years. Um so, technology and safety, this is obviously an integral part of our school community. We have very robust

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technology here. Uh so, our 26-27 budget continues to support our safety enhancements, including district-wide security cameras, firewalls, cloud backups, etc. Um some of these things, just so you know, are absolutely they're not luxuries. Our insurance company literally won't insure us if we have if

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we don't have some of these things in place. In fact, since I uh got here, Mr. Peripato and I have been working together to put multi-factor authentication on some some sort of missing pieces like our budget software. So, we're we're always looking at this. Uh Google Classroom Enterprise, uh

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including GoGuardian for student safety, that's our student facing platform to monitor students on their internet activity, um making sure they're not interacting with strangers, um searching for bad words, things of that nature. Um all of our software renewals and contract obligations. Some of these contracts include contracts that were

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set up before we got here, uh but safety and technology related items. The 26-27 budget will honor all of those contracts. One-to-one devices for students and staff, we will still be supporting that. And our shared service agreement with the Belleville Township school resource

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officers is now back into the budget. So, we look forward to continued collaboration with the police department. Um over the summer in some of the improvement projects we're excited about, we have some server updates, um some security cameras that have become obsolete. Uh we're going to be replacing those. A radio

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communication audit, which I think is huge. Um right now we've got some some great radio communication devices, but we're looking at uh pairing the buildings together to sort of increase the safety and communication between the buildings. So, we're working with Dr. Sullivan and Mr. Peripato on that initiative. Some

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battery backup replacements for buildings and some rekeying, which is another initiative as well. So, and we look forward to updating you guys on those as they happen. And now one of our premier programs in district our special education program. We have one of the most robust special education programs in the county, let

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alone the state. And currently we are servicing 60 out of district students. When you take into fact that we have 5,000 students, 60 is a a percentage of a percentage. So, kudos to special ed department for that. Mr. Klein, Mr. Nader, thank you for being here. Uh

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Mr. Nader. I'll call you Kenneth, all right? So, upon this this uh very comprehensive array of programs, we have our self-contained programs, which we actually have other districts contacting us to try to bring their students here. So, that's how fantastic these programs

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are. We also have traditional push-in and pull-out uh resource room as well. So, push-in is when a special education teacher literally pushes into a classroom and works in co-teaching model with our general education teacher. Our resource is for students who need a little more support to be pulled out

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into a smaller group setting receiving additional services. Our 18 to 21 program, our life skills program, that is also a hallmark program within district. We're teaching our older students the transition from high school into real life, learning what's truly their life skills, skills that are

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necessary to function every day life and to also hold a job and become successful. Our transportation staffing, that's one of the audits we did. Big kudos to Ms. Ikayo and Ms. Barabasco, transportation supervisor. They looked at all the routes and there were some routes that

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had two or three students on a bus, two separate buses that were going to the same place. So, streamlining those services, those routes, we saved six-figure numbers over the throughout the year with this. And our extended school year, it's mandatory program, but also is a costly program. So, we

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want to make sure that we have that highlighted as one of the costs this year. So, uh just some budget highlights. We've mentioned some of these already, but these are some really things we want to point out again and really highlight. Um again, Dr. Alfonso just mentioned we've consolidated several

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transportation routes during the year this year, so we were able to again, of course, capture those savings for next year. We added a middle school volleyball program. Of course, as you may know, that happened during this year, but it wasn't necessarily in the budget. Dr. Arcelino, I think captured

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it within his operational budget, but now that has been added into the budget for next year. And really, we're maintaining excuse me, fiscal stability with this proposed budget. We are setting ourselves up for success into the future by not utilizing fund

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balance in in in our revenues. We're meeting all contractual obligations, and we do have five collective bargaining agreements. We'll talk a little bit more about that when we review the appropriations. Continuation of academic program initiatives and summer bridge programs, and of course, three

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additional classrooms added to preschool. So, I just I want to highlight real quick that our fund balance when we had our audit from our auditor, he actually mentioned our fund balance was a little low, a little on the cautionary area. So, having that fiscal stability for that fund balance, which

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is in case of crisis or disaster, emergency repair to a roof or something of that magnitude, it is critical to have. So, the less you could touch that fund balance for these emergencies, the better. So, uh now we're just going to review our enrollment really quickly. Um this is really the basis of of the budget is

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our students and the number of students. And and really the enrollment, which we capture on October 15th, oddly enough, gives us the state aid number for the following year. So, you'll see that October 15th date come up here a couple of times. Preschool first, you can see we've got preschool spread out

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throughout the district with the largest number of students at Hornblower, 270. Um and then we did highlight in orange there Sandy Lane. We are adding two additional classrooms there. And they're sort of maxed out, so that third additional classroom we were able to

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capture will be at a new private provider, My Little Playhouse. So, we're really really excited that we've gone from, you can see, can I release it real quick? You can see the um last year, the preschool, we were servicing 96.9%

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of our preschool universe. This year, we are at 109. So, we are fully servicing our entire preschool community, three and four-year-olds in Belleville. So, we're really proud and excited for that. For a total of, if you add in our self-contained students, we have 678

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preschoolers total. One thing I want to highlight, if I may. With our universe at 109, questions why 109. 100 should be the number, right? It varies drastically. So, we do have a transient community. We have students who will leave during high school. We have families coming in at pre-K age

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students. That, and also the fact that our class numbers change from year to year. So, the projected number, we might have a larger class incoming the following year, and it'll supersede 100%. So, that is where that 109 comes in, cuz it is an odd number.

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And our enrollment, so one of the things when I first came on board that was mentioned by several parties were the amount of students that we believe currently do not reside in Belleville, but are attending Belleville schools. So, one of our large initiatives this year were residency checks,

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communicating with parents, sending address verifications, contacting families we had all return mail, return to sender. Every single data point that we could use to verify an address, verify residency we have. To to the point that we've actually This number is actually higher from when we

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first did this presentation, but where our net difference is, we're down 74 students off of our enrollment just on our residency measures that we put in place. Which again, this is more money that goes back to our students. Now, this is our very standard enrollment

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number. The one I do want to point out to you is our charter schools. Charter schools are an issue when it comes to public education, especially in the state of New Jersey. A lot of the funding is being pulled from the public K-12 sector to charter schools, and charter schools are being

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opened up throughout the state. And different to our vocational schools, our students can go to a school, a charter school in any county. So, they could be going to Jersey City, they could be going to Englewood, they could be going anywhere in the state, technically, with charter schools. So, they make them very lucrative. They'll be a arts-focused

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school or architectural-focused school, and our students are, you know, going into those schools because of the business model that's behind them. So, that's something that all schools throughout the state are currently battling with, but our vocational numbers are fantastic. We're only up three, and our out-of-district

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placements are actually down one, which again is a testament to the special ed services that we currently have. And I just want to point one more thing out. The the charter school tuition, so charter schools students can go as early as kindergarten. So, kindergarten through 12th grade, they can enroll in charters, and they can jump in at any

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time. New Jersey is a choice state. Vocational is is just the 9 through 12, but just to give you an idea of it, and and we do absorb the charter school tuitions. So, if someone chooses today to go to a charter school tomorrow, the board the district absorbs that, and

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it's about 20 to 30,000 per year depending on the the charter, and there's there's really no regulation. It's They're kind of rogue. So, our free and reduced lunch status, this is this is super important for a number of reasons. So, as of the time you guys had the budget

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presentation Belleville last year, 25-26, the current percentage was 66.67 at this time last year. So, we're really proud and excited that we've captured, you know, additional eight or so

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percent, 73. You know, four give or take, or excuse me, >> [clears throat] >> 74% a little bit. So, we have now a big jump in there. This is this is great for a number of reasons. We have the opportunity to capture more state aid,

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including e-rate and higher rates of reimbursement. So, we just fall into a different category based on our percentage, and I think the threshold was right at 70. So, this did put us in another category, but more importantly, families are just getting the resources that they need. However, we do still

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have 1,200, almost 1,300 students that have just never applied. This definitely hurts the district. We're definitely looking to do more initiatives and and and capture more applications in the future, making sure we have Hunger Free New Jersey at all of our events, making sure families don't

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have questions about the application, and it's offered in a multilingual setting. So, as again, something that we're proud of, but because this number raised after we did the October 15th capture, unfortunately, we're not going to see all of the benefits of that high number.

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So, for next October's capture, we're really excited to try and keep it that high and continue to work with families to get what they need. So, revenues. And really, the whole budget, this is this is the meat and potatoes, right? So, you've got the revenue side, which is our incoming

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money, where we're funding everything, and the appropriation side, our expenses. The revenues and the appropriations, when we submit it to the county and to the state, they have to match to the dollar. So, the $139 million budget

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we're about to show you, we have the expenses tracked right down to the dollar. So, it's a tremendous task. It is a balanced budget that we're very proud of, but we're we're really anxious to show you also some of our challenges that we dealt with in in creating a balanced budget. So, on the

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revenue side, this is our sources. You've got three main sources, state, federal, and local. So, our state aid, I know we talked about this during the March 15th preliminary budget hearing. State aid is not something we have control over. The

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governor gives her address either the last week in February, first week in March, and basically says, "Here's what's going on." And then everyone just gets their number. It's not negotiable. It's just handed to us. As you can see, we got a 1 and 1/2%

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decrease on our budget, which was a $1,055,193. This was a tremendous hit to us. As you recall earlier in the presentation, we did talk about a hole we were already digging out of from this year. We were we were underfunded on several lines.

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So, state aid, $1 million cut, give or take. And then there is our grants and federal sources. So, this is a little bit complicated. I want to break it down a little bit. So, during 25-26, we had a little over $14 million in federal grant funds.

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Of that $14 million, about $9 million was the preschool expansion aid portion. All right? So, this has to be designated to the preschool program. We cannot use it on anything else. Preschool is really actually supposed to be a self-sustaining program where the state,

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in theory, gives us enough money to have a facility and custodians and nurses and staffing and everything we need for the preschool. So, it cannot be utilized for anything else. For 26-27, here's the the complicated part. They give us our preschool expansion aid

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number now. The rest of the grant funding, they're telling us to anticipate a 20% reduction. So, although we got about a million dollars more in preschool expansion aid, because we took a pitfall on this side, it still works

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out to be about a a drop of another million dollars. Okay? And like I said, this portion must be used for the preschool expansion program. We were awarded through our application. Mr. Vargas worked super hard on this. Uh three additional classrooms, that money is allocated to to those classrooms and

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that program. And then finally, the local source, right? So, we've done state, federal, and local source. Uh this is where your local tax levy comes in. So, I'm going to break this down. I know it looks like a lot, but um we're going to go through it together. So, we've got the 2526

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local tax levy number. This is the number that you guys have been uh paying to to Belleville all year and they're remitting to us, 49,657,745. We are perm- It is permissible for us to raise the levy 2% without a public vote. So, if you take 2% of that number, we

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have 993,155. We're using 100% of that, 2%. Now, there are two other ways that the state has afforded us the availability to go above 2%. One is called banked cap. Banked cap is

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when during the course of a budget process, a board decides to not use all of their permissible levy. It goes into what's called banked cap and it sits there for 3 years and then it drops off. This $1.7 million,

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I don't want anyone to get confused. This isn't like money sitting in a bank account somewhere that we can just grab. This is just the state saying you are allowed to go that much further above the 2%. You are we allow you to tax the community that much more. It

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is not money that's readily available. It would be coming from the community. Of that banked cap, we are using $0 of that. So, this will fall off and not be available next year. The other way the state is giving us permission to go above the 2% and and

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really this is basically every school district in New Jersey is in this bucket. They're giving us what's called a health care waiver. They come up with a percentage based on our projected health care premiums for next year that they say you can tax your

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community this much more above 2% because your health care costs are going up that much. The number that they gave us was $3.7 million and and change. Of that $3.7 million, we're proposing to use 1.98, which is about 53% of that

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health care waiver. The total tax levy from the 2% and the portion of the health care waiver is 52,630,900, which represents almost a $3 million increase. This is a 5.99% tax levy increase.

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If we had utilized the entire banked cap and the entire health care waiver, we were allowed by the state to tax Belleville 13% without a public vote. So, I I just want to be clear here. The

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state says we can go to 13%. We are proposing 5.99. I also want to highlight real quick that the proposed tax levy is slightly under 3 million. Going back a couple slides, we walked in this year into a $3.6 million hole.

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So, it is nothing short of a miracle that our tax levy is under 3 mil, but we also inherited a pitfall a pitfall of 3.6. So, this is uh it was some revealing information cuz in order to understand where we're going, we need to understand how we got here.

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So, we decided to use a landmark, COVID. COVID's a landmark for everyone. And one of the things we need to highlight with COVID is COVID, everything shut down March 2020. At that point, the government decided we needed to get additional funding to make sure mental health was taken care of for our

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students. Some students who stayed home, some who came back into the building, additional uh resources that were needed. So, that's where the ARP ESSER funding was uh created. Now, the ARP ESSER funding is over here. So, 2020-2021, we received $4 million in excess.

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The government was very specific in telling all districts it should not be utilized for reoccurring uh reoccurring costs. Whatever you use it for should not be something you need to sustain long-term because this is technically a one-off. This is a uh an assistance of sort to get

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everybody back from COVID. So, nonetheless, we received $4 million in 2020-2021 school year last summer. And one of the things that also, when I first came to the district that was mentioned to me by several parties was the amount of staff

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that we've hired over the years. So, I kept hearing that, I kept hearing that, and when we kept running the numbers, our numbers weren't adding up. We were just barely getting by. We're plugging one hole and another hole was coming up. So, we ran our staffing for these years. And from that $4 million that were given in COVID

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funding, we the following year we were net positive 65 hires. So, not 65 hires, 65 hires above what we were the previous year. So, we're net positive 65. Then, the following year, 21-22,

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received 3.2. That following year, 70 additional staff members, net positive of one of 70. 2022-2023, almost 3 million as well, net positive of 14. These are not falling off. These are cumulative. And then the last year, 23-24, another 3

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million, 26 additional staff members. For a grand total of 175 net staff positive for those years. And if you look at our student totals, we were a net positive of 180. So, the hiring from the previous administration was almost one-to-one,

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student per staff. Which again, we were told not to use reoccurring funds. We were not to use reoccurring items for this funding. And you see the year we don't receive COVID funding, previous school year, we let go we were at nine staff members.

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And then over here, 41, the proposal for this year. I also do want to highlight as far as tenure laws, it's 4 years and a day. So, these 65 that were hired in 21-22, they're tenured. They're here to stay.

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These are coming up on tenure and proceeding each following year. Now, another thing I would also like to highlight. This was the tax levy year-to-year. If we were to take those net positive in

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staff and actually not have the COVID funding and integrate them into our operational budget, the tax levy would have been these. So, can you imagine what these numbers would have been compounded over years to what we're at now? It is

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it is not that we're downsizing, we're right-sizing. Because we only have a net positive of 180 students, but at this moment we have a net positive of 175 staff members. So, that that was the number that really stuck out to us.

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And Tina and I were just bashing our heads in trying to figure out where this money's coming from. How are we going to sustain this? And we did find some uh some patterns here that pretty much the story tells itself. I don't think we need to highlight any more than we have at this point.

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So, now you got the picture, you got itemized picture year-to-year. Net 75, net 175 staff members. You add these pitfalls, these shortfalls that were not in the budget this year, 3.6.

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Going to the 5.99, we're only if the tax levy is 2.9 mil, we inherited a 3.6 million shortfall and net positive 175 staff members. The math doesn't match. So, there's a lot of difficult decisions like many districts throughout the state

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have to make, and this is where we're at. And also keeping it under six, which for those of you that I've reached out and communicate with the county, we're on the definitely the lower end when it comes to the county. So, I just wanted to give you a visual of our revenues. Um you can see here in

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light blue, uh that's what that's our state aid, okay? It's just under 50% of our overall revenue. Um so, when we're talking about a 1 and 1/2% cut to our state aid, it doesn't seem like a lot, but that makes up the biggest portion of our revenue. So, um that really hurt us.

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Um and then you've got uh the next biggest source, which is our local tax levy uh in navy blue. Um and some of the other miscellaneous sources are up there. Our capital reserve withdrawal, um the miscellaneous revenue line you'll see in there is 800,000, give or take. That's sort of a moving target. We have

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to estimate that. That's incoming tuition, uh you know, revenue generated from our facilities usage and things of that nature. Um and we're not going to spend a lot of time on this, but um this entire presentation will be available on the website starting tonight. So, if you want to dig into it more, it will be

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there. So, adequacy. We hear about it every year. This is a very much more popular in urban districts. So, un- Adequacy is what uh the New Jersey school funding formula is constructed of several hundred data

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points within a district. Then, that school funding formula is put up against our New Jersey Constitution of what is deemed a fair and appropriate comprehensive education for our students. When those numbers are ran, we our

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adequacy is supposed to be 123 million. That's where we're supposed to be at. Our current adequacy is at 109 for a shortfall of 13.3. Again, it's one of those things that's just reinventing the wheel and trying to figure out how to best support our

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students with the means that we have. So, this something that for some of you might not be very common to see. For some of us that have grown up in very urban districts, this is a very common slide in a lot of budget presentations. And real quick,

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this is a lot of self-explanatory information. Our staff benefits, we talked about the benefits, how how far they've come up. The projection from our broker is anywhere from he said 20 28 to 35%. We're hearing some

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higher numbers even even higher than that, some rumors at 40%, which again is out of control. There is no regulation on that. And if you're part of the state health benefits plan, you are submissive to whatever their cost is. So, our energy cost, we all know the

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energy cost is going up. If, you know, we're currently at war right now, if that continues, those numbers are definitely going to go up. So, conservative was 7 to 10%. I'm going to say the lower end is probably going to be 10%. Our insurance insurance goes up every year just like your car insurance, everything else goes up, your home

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insurance goes up every year. Tuition, special education, charter, that number is actually very high. Part of the reason is our special our out-of-district special education schools, they're private. They don't have any regulations. They

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could charge whatever tuition they want. So, depending if there's a need of a very specific child, we're at the mercy of whatever they charge you for tuition. Charter, the same thing. They could charge anywhere from 20 to 30 plus per child. And they start as early as

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kindergarten. We can imagine what that interest has compounded. And which is actually the largest part of our operational budget is our collective bargaining agreements. So, a lot of our collective bargaining agreements, as you've seen when we go back to the previous chart, were all

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done during COVID times. We had where we were flushed with cash. We're talking about approximately 15 to 20 million throughout the years that we received. So, we have very aggressive percentages for collective bargaining agreements. 3.6, 3.5, 4.4. And then the custodial agreement, which

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was actually done this year, this is a little more reflective of what more streamlined numbers would be looking like. So, we're at 3.25. And the reason the bus driver and paraprofessionals are just apart is because it was a part of a money that was given to them and they

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figured out what the increments were with amongst their association. So, we're still absorbing some of these costs as you see 2028, 2027, 2029. We still have a little while with these, but these are very reflective of very high collective bargaining agreements. That's not including stipends and additional compensation within their

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agreements. And very big thing here, as Ms. Iacobucci mentioned previously, appropriations have to match 100%. It's very clear to the last cent, every single dollar, every single cent has to be appropriated for use. So,

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we're going to have this up on the district website as we mentioned. There's 139 million that we previously talked about and the appropriation straight through for a total of 100% and our salaries and collective bargaining agreements including compensation is roughly almost half of our operational budget.

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So, I I wanted to give an update on the leases that we currently contract and what we have as part of our school community and our uh building footprint as I mentioned earlier. Uh so, a lot of these are built out into, you know, separate phases. You know, the the district would do a lease for one and

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then add additional space, that's why there's phases for some of these. Uh but I highlighted in red uh two of the leases that we eliminated during this school year, 25-26. And so, obviously we're able able to capitalize on the savings for future budget years. So, 387

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and 335 Union uh we no longer occupy those buildings. Um the one that will be sunsetting uh during the [clears throat] course of the 26-27 budget year is uh 522 Courtland. We do have three leases there. Uh one is the indoor training facility, one is

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Casa, and one is the additional office spaces. Uh that one that's highlighted there is for the indoor training facility, it's for the biggest one. Uh we will not be renewing that lease after February of '27. So, you can see there I've got I'm sorry, Doc.

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You can see there I've got this 542 number. That's what the rent would have been if we were going to renew. So, we would have had to budget that for the '26-'27, but only budgeted is 359 because we will be eliminating that lease um as of February.

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And also just want to highlight with a lot of these facilities, staffing, you know, keeping the lights on, our maintenance staff that also has to go and clean these areas. There's a lot of additional funds. These are just the lease, these are just the numbers that we're giving our landlords. And

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as far as uh the facility, I've actually reached out to Ms. Stern to see if, you know, we can negotiate an early buyout of some sort because it is an exorbitant cost. And although initially the proposal was this facility was going to generate revenue, we are not even remotely close to

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generating any revenue. I mean, not even remotely close. Did I say not even remotely close? Uh it's it's been hemorrhaging money. And another one we'd like to mention is over here, which is uh Heck and uh central office.

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We are up for our term. I reached out to Mr. Dorsal to talk about our renewing our agreement. He's been fantastic to work with. He knows the budget shortfalls and constraints that we have. So, we're projecting a 2% increase cuz we definitely feel that that's where Mr. Dorsal and us would agree upon, but

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we're waiting for that confirmation from him. This is uh a hope and we definitely believe that working with him, he'll be at a 2% with us. Oh, one thing we also did not have here because it feels like eons ago, the lease for St. Peter's parking lot was

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also an additional lease that we also terminated. So, we're talking about three leases in a matter of 10 months that we've not renewed. And then the fourth one, which is a big is going to be a monumental one. Over $50,000 a year we're paying for the facility. I just want to mention that um the Ralph

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Street properties, um obviously they they're a big chunk of what's up here. The Ralph Street properties are allocated into the preschool expansion aid because of Hornblower being there. So, that actually comes out of grant funding. And further difficult conversations. So, as of right now, the facility we're

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going to not renew. It's a great space, but it's a space we can't afford. And these are some of the staff reductions that are being proposed in this budget. We tried to be as consistent throughout and not pull from one department more than the other. We really truly assess what the needs

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are and spread it out. So, the proposal these are staff reductions. Clerical secretary will be five, instructional staff will be eight, support services will be 12, administration two, custodial maintenance two, for a total of 29 actual staff members.

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In totality, it's going to be 41 uh moves because our teacher coaches and our interventions will be going back to the classroom. They have their classroom certificates, either K-6 or whatever the case is, their specialty. It is a fantastic program to have our

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teacher coaches and our interventions, but it's a luxury. And right now we have to focus on keeping the lights on and making sure that our students receive quality instruction and their day-to-day is not affected. So, this is a very difficult decision that we had to make for a total of 41 positions as you saw in the previous chart.

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Um also, we streamlined a lot of professional services. We had some services that we had in-house in district, but we're also paying an external provider for. So, we streamlined those. We eliminated, as we mentioned, four leases. Our bus routes we've also mentioned.

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Uh this these two are actually tremendous tremendous gains. The previous administration could pull certain costs from federal funding, depending what the cost was. And they were actually in our general they were being pulled out of our general funds and our federal funding

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was not being tapped into for some of these programs and services. So, upon doing a complete audit of all our programs and services, we saw that a lot of them would qualify to be under the federal umbrella for you, title one, title two, title three, whatever the case may be. So, reallocating those freed up some space

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in our general funds, which as we know is direly needed. And food service, the same thing. Something as simple as our lunch aides, some of the staff that works with our lunch program were being pulled out pulled out of general funds. They should have been pulled out of food service. So, just appropriating to the

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right budget line made a tremendous difference when it came to the overall number. And reductions in in ex-comp and additional compensation. So, these are some of the stipends within our collective bargaining agreements and their hourly stipends. Previously, there was no cap on how many

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hours some of these stipends would have. And they were all over the place. They were some of them were very flagrant, some of them were non-existent, they were just very inconsistent. So, again, doing an audit of it based on the building size, for example, school nine would not have the same amount of hours for a particular stipend that maybe

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school eight would have. 140 students to 500 plus students. So, just making sure that it was equitable as far as our additional compensation. So, the moment I'm sure you've all been waiting for, the tax impact. So, the tax rate increase, this number right there

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in the middle in blue, 285,650, that's the average assessed home value that was given to us by our town manager. So, there is a big difference between the assessed value of a home and the market value of a home, which we'll get to on the next slide. I know that

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can cause a little bit of confusion, but we also built it out 20 and 40,000 dollars below, 20 and 40,000 dollars above that assessment value, that average. So, it equates to about 268 dollars annually or about 22 dollars and

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31 cents per month. So, I just wanted to elaborate a little bit more on the assessed value versus market value. I know you're probably thinking the average home is definitely not $280,000 and you're absolutely correct. So, the assessed value and we actually pulled an actual Belleville tax bill

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here. This is someone's actual tax bill. Um if you ever if you're curious about the assessed value on your home, you pull your tax bill. And again, this this slideshow will be on the website if you want to refer back to it. Right there in that yellow box, I've blown up that yellow box. You've got two components that make up your assessed value. The

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land, which for this particular home is $110,000. Um and the improvements. The improvements is actual building and the structures on the land. That's $155,000. So, this home on this example is $265,800.

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Their assessed value. That exact home, if I go to Zillow and get the estimate, the market value, is $534,000. So, just to give you that I mean it's it's almost double. It's almost exactly double, right? So, but if you're trying to figure out where

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is my tax impact going to land, do not go by the market value of your home. Look at the assessed value from your tax bill. Um and then we wanted to show you how we compare. This is the spreadsheet given to us by the state. So, it's got every single municipality on it. Uh

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we've got in orange the county property taxes. If anyone here is colorblind, it's the bottom chunk of that bar. In the middle, the uh the pink, average school property taxes and then at the top is the municipal. So, the left bar is

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Belleville. In the middle is Essex County and then New Jersey. So, I wanted everyone to have a reference point for how much of their taxes are going to the school. And as you can see, we do fall far below the county, uh far below it and then uh below the state as well as far as

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percentage of your property taxes that go to the to the school district. So, we actually pulled the spreadsheet before coming here cuz I was curious. I said I know we're one of the lowest, but are we the lowest? We're actually the bottom five

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amongst 22 or 23 districts within the county. I believe Essex County is 22. So, we're bottom five. That means the percentage share from the town, we are at 39%. So, substantially lower than the average. The average is quite above 42, 44. Some districts are

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up to 60%. So, we have a lot less to work with when it comes to the actual percentage allocation from the town. And hate to end up on this this last slide for us, but it just wanted to in an effort of transparency, this this

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administration, one of the things we said from day one is we were going to be open and transparent and this is all of us. It takes all of us to run a district. It takes the residents, community, the taxpayers, the town, our board members, which are volunteer, and

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all the ministers and everyone that it takes it takes a village. And it takes a large village to run this district. So, we want to make sure that this year was a bit of a different uh presentation than in previous years where you have all the information up front. And one very big thing that we

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highlighted previously that I want to highlight again, these numbers didn't change from our preliminary budget presentation. Which at least over the last five years has not been the case. And this board has worked very diligently on this budget and scrutinized every single account line

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and that's why they felt comfortable unanimously voting for it on the previous uh meeting. So, just once again, reassure everyone that we're an open book. This is going to be posted up on the district website and encourage you if you want to fact check us, go ahead. Everything is pulled from reliable

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sources. As a matter of fact, some of our information is there. Some of our uh the pictures that we used for the presentation, we're very transparent when it comes to everything. So, if you want to uh reach out to us if you have any questions, absolutely. We have the user-friendly budget up here also. If you want a copy of it for yourself.

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And um it's a very difficult year throughout the state. And we truly believe that this proposal encapsulates the comprehensive needs of our students. It gives them the day-to-day quality of

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instruction they deserve and it does not affect our school day. So, some very difficult decisions have to be made, but ultimately the safety, well-being, and the education of a child is at the forefront of every decision we make. It's always been from day one and this proposal, we believe, is a true reflection of it.

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Thank you for your attention. Thank you, Dr. Alfonso and Ms. Iacono for that very detailed budget presentation. Just speaking for myself, uh compared to last year's presentation, uh it was very transparent. Uh a lot of information and and I'm I'm I'm I'm very

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pleased with it and I'm sure the board feels the same as well. All right. Moving along, uh we are now going on to remarks by citizens on the budget. Can I please have a motion to open? So moved. Can I have a second? Second. Uh all in favor. Aye. All right. We are now

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open for remarks by citizens on the budget. I do not have any names on the list, but is there anyone in the public that would like to speak on the budget and budget only? Hearing none, seeing none. Okay. Can I please have a uh motion to close remarks by citizens on

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the budget. So moved. Second. Second. All in favor All in favor. Aye. Thank you. Uh Moving on to finance. Uh can I please have a motion to approve uh agenda items 5.1 and 5.2.

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I need a motion, please. >> So moved. Can I have a second? Second. Ms. Iacono, please call the roll. Trustee Garo. Good evening, everybody. Um I am abstaining from this vote. As an accountant, I believe the under- understanding of expenses is essential

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to evaluating any budget. Unfortunately, those details were not disclosed. Additionally, there was a lack of accessibility to the full budget, making it difficult for me to make an informed decision. Thank you. On 5.1. How do you vote on 5.2?

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Yes. Trustee Gillis. Um so, for 5 5.1, I had several questions regarding the budget and I appreciate that Ms. Iacono addressed each of them while providing clear data to support the information presented. And plus with the presentation today, um

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based on the information I was given, I'm confident in voting in favor of the budget. Yes. Trustee Muñoz. Yes. Trustee Pacheco. Yes. Trustee Santana. Yes. Vice President Dr. Messagia. Yes.

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President Leon. Yes. If I if I may ask, uh Trustee Garo, what information exactly wasn't presented to you or it wasn't shared with you uh that might have changed your um vote on tonight's uh vote?

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Um I put uh this is my first time seeing this amount of amazing detail. Thank you very much, um Dr. Alfonso and Tina for the presentation. It was well informed. Um in my committee meeting, when I was presented with the budget, we spent most

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of our time discussing the three options of how our taxes will increase. Um and it was based upon seeing that we will eliminate 41 staff members and there wasn't as much details. Also, the

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board the actual um budget wasn't posted. I wasn't able to access it until Tuesday, which gave me very limited time to actually go through the numbers. And unfortunately, I did not have time due to not understanding how an

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that we weren't going to be able to discuss this in our closed executive meeting, so I did not have ample enough time to ask my questions on the budget. But Ms. Garo, it was posted [clears throat] on April 15th for us to view it and when we introduced it initially, it was

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unanimous vote. So, what had changed? The vote the budget that was presented to us initially was unanimous. Nothing changed. It got submitted to the county, got approved, and here we are tonight and then you're saying that you didn't have the information, but it was posted

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on April 15th. So, I'm just I'm just curious. As as a board member, as a taxpayer, was there something that you saw or didn't see and do you have any recommendations as to what maybe could be different or for future references with your accounting background?

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The budget has line items on there that I don't fully understand and I did not have time to ask my questions, so therefore, I'm abstaining. I'm not saying yes or no to it. I'm just removing myself because I feel like I'm not well informed.

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Got it. Thank you. All right. Moving along to remarks by citizens on agenda items. All right, can I please have a motion to open? So moved. >> Can I have a second, please? Second. All in favor on all in favor. Yes. Uh thank you. We are now open for

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remarks by citizens on agenda items only. I do not have anyone listed on this sheet, but is there anyone in the public that would like to come and speak up? Hearing none, seeing none, can I please have a motion to close remarks by citizens on agenda items only? So moved. Second, please. Second.

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>> All in favor. Yes. I. All right, thank you. Uh we are now on to resolutions on board action and board policy. Can I please have a motion to vote on consent uh agenda item 7.1?

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So moved. A second, please. >> Second. Uh Ms. Ikaeo, please call the roll. Trustee Guerra. Yes. Trustee Gillis. Yes. Trustee Muñoz. Yes. Trustee Pacheco. Yes. Trustee Santana. Yes. Vice President Dr. Masagio. Yes. President

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Leon. Yes. On to resolutions personnel uh agenda items 8.1 and 8.3. Can I please have a motion? So moved. A second, please. Second. Ms. Ikaeo, please call the roll. Trustee Guerra.

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Yes. Trustee Gillis. Yes. Trustee Muñoz. Yes. Trustee Pacheco. Yes. Trustee Santana. Yes. Vice President Dr. Masagio. Yes. President Leon. Yes. On to resolution resolutions purchasing and business services agenda items 9.1

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through 9.9. Can I please have a motion? So moved. A second, please. >> Second. Ms. Ikaeo, please call the roll. Trustee Guerra. Yes. Trustee Gillis. Yes. Trustee Muñoz. Yes. Trustee Pacheco. Yes. Trustee Santana. Yes. Vice President Dr. Masagio. Yes. President

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Leon. Yes. On to remarks by citizens on any issue, can I please have a motion to open? So moved. Uh second, please. Yes, second. All in favor. All right, we are now open for remarks by citizens. Again, I don't have anyone here signed up, but is there anyone in

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the audience that would like to speak up? All right, hearing none, seeing none, can I please have a motion to close? So moved. Second, please. Second. >> All in favor. I. All right, we are now closed. Um >> [clears throat]

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>> Before we join the meeting, is there any uh board trustees that would like to make any comments, remarks on tonight's budget meeting or anything in general? I would just like to say um to Dr. Alfonso and to Ms. Ikaeo that it was an

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excellent presentation. I know how hard everybody, especially you, worked on the budget budget itself and the presentation. And I thank you for the presentation. It was extremely enlightening and probably

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the first one that I've seen in a long time that I actually understood. So, thank you very much for that and I'm just very pleased to vote for it and I'm very glad that it passed. Thank you. Anybody else? I'd like to also uh second

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what Dr. Masagio said. Um I'm new here and I really appreciate the openness to the budget and to how we were able to in my speaking for myself, I was able to uh

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ask anything that I felt I wanted to know and I know that this took a long time and a lot of hours, so I just want to say thank you for that. Anyone else? All right, I I would also like to to echo what Dr. Masagio and Ms. Muñoz uh

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stated about tonight's presentation. Um being the second year on the board, uh this is night and day from what at least what I'm used to in terms of presentation. It was very detailed. It was very transparent. Uh we worked night and day for it. Um I certainly do not

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agree with um anyone saying that this information was enough or wasn't shared with us. We we spoke all the time. We voted on this uh last month on the introduction. Everything was good. I don't see what

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changed. Um with that being said, it was not an easy process. When at least I'm not going to be one of the people who say it's only $260. I'm not going to say that. I understand parents are going through it with everything that's going on with the economy.

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Uh but when you think about some of the stuff that were handed to us in terms of the insurance premiums, the reduction in in state aid, um just rising costs in general, um to deal with all those those uh hurdles

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and to come back with one of the lowest increases in the county is is is a credit to to Ms. Ikaeo and Dr. Alfonso. So, uh we don't take it lightly. Well, every trustee that's here is I believe we're all taxpayers, renters, homeowners, we all pay taxes

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one way or another. So, it affects us as well. Um we didn't take it lightly, but when we had these discussions, right away we said we don't want to touch programs. We don't want to uh take away athletics. Uh we don't want to hurt the children's education or programs. Um and I think

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that's what Dr. Alfonso and Ms. Ikaeo put together for us. Um I don't believe we're downsizing. I believe we're right-sizing as you see in the presentation earlier. Um we had a couple of hires when we had that extra, you know, money from COVID funds. Um and when you look at our student

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population, it wasn't correlated with the hires and what we had in district in terms of students. So, I don't believe it's downsizing. I believe we're right-sizing. I think we're getting back to the basics and I'm very proud to have voted yes um with this budget and I'm proud that

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as a board that we got it done tonight. All right, thank you. >> [sighs] >> All right, the time is now 8:14. Can I please have a motion to adjourn the meeting? So moved. Can I have a second? Second. All in favor. Yes. All right,

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thank you everybody for coming tonight. Uh have a good night.