public notice this is a regular meeting of the board of education of Burners Township notice of the time and place of this meeting were provided and copies of the resolution were forwarded to the official newspapers as designated designated by the board of education and to the township clerk and a copy of the
notice was on the bulletin board of the board of education offices uh for those members of public who cannot attend our meeting in person a liveream link to the meeting is posted on the district website www.burnersbo.com we very much welcome input from the public there are two
times during regular meetings that the public is invited to speak one time is early in the meeting before the board votes when you may speak about any item that's listed on tonight's agenda towards the end of the meeting there's another public forum to address any matter of public concern related to the schools when you approach the microphone
please state your name and address each statement by an participant shall be limited to three minutes duration no participant may speak more than once during a given public comment session the first public comment session will be limited to 30 minutes and the second will be unlimited in order to run
efficient meetings and to allow maximum opportunity for members of the public to speak the board reserves the right to set a different time limit for individual comments and the overall time limit for the public comment portions of the agenda all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer no
participant may address or question board members individually please understand that public comment portions of our agendas are not structured as question and answer sessions but are offered as opportunities to share your thoughts with the board the board administration will respond to public comments to the extent possible any
board responses to public comments will generally be addressed during board forum or committee reports however all comments are considered and will be investigated and addressed as appropriate please be courteous and mindful of the rights of others when speaking comments may not be abusive obscene threatening or irrelevant please
understand that students and employees have specific legal and privacy protections the board is not permitted to respond in public to comments about students and employees please also understand that the board will not be responsible for the content of comments made by members of the public members of
the public are cautioned that they are speaking at their own risk and any personally directed statements they make may subject them to legal liability to the affected individual if it's necessary for the board to go into exact session at the end of the meeting we will provide an estimated length of time
for the session and with any action is anticipated to be taken upon return to public session uh and with that can we have a roll call miss White yes dr mchune yes mr molinari yes mr am yes miss
Chipach Miss Curado yes mr shaw yes mr talbot yes and Mr malanic yes uh we're now up to the student representative which is always a big highlight of our evening joseph what do you have for us thank you Miss White
good evening everyone i hope you're all doing well we are now a full week into our off and away phone free pilot but before I jump into that I'd like to give just some positive extracurricular updates to start us off our boys basketball team wrapped up an impressive
22 and seven season with two thrilling home playoff wins against Union and Irvington they did end up falling in the North Two Group Four State semi-finals to Elizabeth who's ranked 14th in the state but the end of the season was packed with a lot of energy and I can
say from personal experience they provided some amazing moments for our student body and that's the loudest I've heard our main gym in my four years at Ridge so it was pretty neat keeping up with the success is our unified basketball for the first time in program history the team is heading to the NJ
state championship game this upcoming Saturday at 10:30 in the morning at Ruckers University additionally the boys hockey team finished the season with a positive 1410-2 record winning their first round sectional tournament game against Wall 8 to3 before falling the
second round of states moving on to fencing the boys team defied expectations to win the entire state team title taking down top ranked Don Bosow Montgomery and Milbourne they ended the season with a nearly perfect 16-1 record and the girls team also had
a stellar 14-2 season missing the championship bid by just one point in the final game on the track the boys 4x8 relay team won the state championship last Sunday running the third ever fastest time in meet of champions history they along with four other Ridge
relay teams are now headed to New Balance Indoor Nationals in Boston this upcoming weekend and the girls fullright team also meddled placing fifth in the statement of champions our swimming teams also competed in the statement of champions over that same weekend outside
of sports our forensic team continues the trend of winning they won first place at the Newark Tech Invitational and they're now competing in the NJSDL state tournament this upcoming weekend aiming for their 23rd consecutive championship for the event as for some
inschool updates we are currently in our first ever unified spirit week where our school is working to celebrate more inclusion and community with themed days all throughout the week so today we began with Neon Day and we're going to end on Friday by wearing orange and
being a part of making everyone feel welcome along with the new spirit week we also began the Hello Project today an initiative that's been done successfully at other schools that encourages students to put their phones away look up and just connect face to face with
each other dr lazik held meetings with the Project Adventure peer leaders team today to discuss the importance of small interactions like just saying hello or inviting someone into a conversation and how they can build confidence and remind students that they do indeed belong here
uh teachers around the school have been given laminated cards of wellthoughtout conversation starters and the students have also been given their own separate set of conversation questions labeled 1 through 10 that they can ask their teachers and their friends the cards are
also pasted on our cafeteria tables for ease of access and hopefully this can spur some new conversations around the school and I'm personally excited to see how far this goes and just to try to branch out more myself and as I mentioned in our last meeting our May and June senior internships continue to
have their applications open until April 21st for students to participate in month-long real world experience at places like dental offices libraries and athletic studios looking ahead to the end of this week Amnesty Club's PIA
teacher fundraiser is this Friday on Pi Day and also our freshman and sophomores have their spring dance on the same day so that's all for now and thank you everyone and I look forward to next time thank you Joseph as always you are welcome to stay um if you'd work we
totally understand and the rest of us we are going to be going down um for the the presentation for the budget okay okay well good evening everyone thanks for joining us tonight uh my name is Nick Marary and I'm the superintendent
uh with me is Jim R our business administrator and we're here this evening to uh review the preliminary school budget that needs to be submitted to the state uh for review and approval uh so goals for our budget uh
obviously uh we have a lot of great programs uh services for the students uh and many wonderful staff to deliver those programs and services uh so thanks to all of uh the staff members that joined us this evening um we certainly
hope to accomplish our mission our our philosophy our goals and sustain the things that we've been doing in the district for quite some time and this will be a challenge this year uh however um we are going to be taking advantage of all of our possible resources to make
uh for another excellent school year in 202526 um in terms of our budgeting you may be aware that uh we lost some state aid this year this is uh a common thing that happened to many districts we lost
uh 3% of our state aid uh and uh many districts have been advised to expect a little less money from uh federal resources as well so um those will be factors as we work through our budget uh presentation this evening
the process just to give you a little bit of an idea um budget is a tool uh those of you that use a budget at home I'm sure you know that it's not perfect you use it to guide your expenditure from time period to time period in our
case uh we go from July 1st to June 30th as our fiscal year uh but even over the summer we start making preparations for the next budget because uh in the case of project work in particular uh that type of thing can take quite some time
to plan and implement so uh on any given summer or even really before we're talking about what's going on uh in the next summer for any major projects that we have to undertake that involve a lot of planning and procurement uh usually around December we start getting all of
our school budgets uh and supply accounts curriculum accounts things of that nature they're generally submitted to the business office around December so that by the time we get to January we can start to see where we are uh with an expectation on flat funding typically uh
and looking at those budgets that folks proposed uh this January um when we compared the proposed expenditures to where we were on the revenue side we had about a $6 million gap now that's a big number however um that is the first pass
of the budget so um going forward obviously we have to make adjustments we can't sustain a $6 million budget deficit so we have to make adjustments that process usually involves looking at all the accounts and thinking about well what was spent in this account in the prior year when we look at the audit and
how's that account going in the current year looking at that trend we try to make adjustments on what was requested for those accounts going forward into the next budget obviously taking into consideration any new needs uh that may come along and deciding whether or not
we can afford them so going through that process this uh winter on the first pass through we got down to about a $5 million gap um and like I said it's ongoing so you're constantly working on it throughout the winter come February as you may be well aware the governor
announces what's going on with state aid uh and as I mentioned in our case uh we did have a reduction in state aid we anticipate that will translate to approximately $364,000 in lost state aid um if you
factor that in with a 2% increase on the tax levy and all of the accounts that we were able to trim we went to a $4.4 million deficit in our in our budget
between revenue and expense now again not a particularly exciting situation to be in um but not unique last year we were in a very similar situation when I came to you in March and I explained the same thing we've got about a $4 million
budget gap last year we took the approach of saying can we kind of split this and try to come up with enough savings and enough additional revenue to close this gap in uh the March March of
2024 we did that by adjusting the school start times you might be familiar with that and changing our busing and that saved us probably a little over a million dollars we also had staff reductions that was about another
million dollars so we reduced expenses by about $2 million the board approved the use of some banked cap which Jim will expla explain a little bit later and so we raised the levy above 2% to
3.92% for the current year budget and that's how we created the additional revenue we needed paired that with the staff reductions and the transportation savings and we closed the $4 million gap so what are we doing this year we don't have the transportation rabbit in the
hat anymore we used that last year we don't have the ability to save another million dollars on transportation so there's less opportunities for savings this year what we're proposing to close that gap is an expense reduction this year
that was greater than last year's expense reduction so we're looking at reducing about $2.51 million in expense and going to the board and asking them to go above the 2% cap with
an additional 1.97% increase on the levy so that the levy increase would go to 3.97% higher so up in revenue an additional $1.87 87 million over 2% cap down in
expense another $2.51 million so that you know we have already cut a lot to get from $6 million down to $4.4 million and
you'll notice that I was talking about non salary accounts so we've scrubbed the budget health benefits transportation utilities supply accounts professional development staff college summer curriculum writing
textbooks to get down to that $4.4 million what we haven't done is close the rest of the gap with the other 60% of our budget which which is staff salaries okay
we're not going to be able to get to $2.51 million by going back to that little part of our budget that's only 25% of our overall budget that is discretionary or somewhat discretionary you still have to have heat you still
have to have gas electricity we've cut that as much as we can so unfortunately we're going to be in a position where we're looking at staffing with $2.51 million okay
Mr right so um every budget tells a story uh every budget is different last year uh the story of last year's budget is some of the biggest drivers was transportation um which we saw our costs going up and up and up uh we had out of
district placements driving that budget and this year's different transportation has actually gone down overall as a result of to successfully triple tiering reducing the number of routes um we aged out some out of district placements so it's a
different budget different story um this year the story is um salaries and benefits which most of the uh most of the budget but really more than anything it's benefits so um at the risk of being a little bit simplistic if you look at uh the current budget as three big
buckets um this is the breakdown of the current budget salaries 59.7% benefits 16.1% and as Mr mercarian said everything else everything from Chromebook to electricity to a copier um fits in the other orange wedge and that
is fairly standard across all New Jersey school districts it's about 75% of salaries and benefits um so where we knew we were going to have some serious challenges is if we took the salary
portion and um decided to index that by the county average um and we in prior years we had the ESSER funds which we were able to charge off the extended school year program too um and
we just bring that back to the general uh general fund operating budget where had been prior to COVID so with just the county average salary adjustments and ESY coming back with the current um group of bodies that we had we would
expect that to go up three million we looked at the health benefits cost center this the other big piece of the pie wedge um after consultations with our insurance broker and looking at contributions via chapter 44 that's
going to result in a budgetary increase of that cost center by almost 4 million so right there and um we turn into the non salary and benefits portion of the budget well if we look at uh CPI and inflation we know the cost of
everything is going up um and if we would have just taken what we spent in this current year or what we budgeted to spend and moved that forward by CPI 3.57 um that would have brought another almost million dollar increase um all in all that would have
resulted in a 7% operating increase which would have required a tax levy increase of 9.22% to fund so obviously um this was not something you know we we we could do this would not be tolerable um but but
these are big picture this this was the challenge we were up against so um what did we do um well we'll start we'll jump to the third row in the table uh as Mr marcarian said we went line by line and and reduced and eliminated and
scrubbed um discretionary spending where we could so instead of the non-s salary and benefit lines going up adjusted for inflation by almost a million actually we cut them back 1.3 you could look at that as a swing of you know almost 2.1
million in reductions so um we've kind of cut to the bone there um health benefits is is something that we don't really have the flexibility we we have looked under every rock and have pitched just about every con conceptual way to
try and reduce this cost center with it with our broker um but it looks like this is the number that we have to go with we're we're tracking our our claims monthtomonth um and and this this uh budget driver is not something we're going to be able to to work around so
what that what that means is that we had to look at the salary section to get the rest of the way to to a manageable budget um and uh we we came up with a number that you we think we may be able
to achieve 2.51 uh 2.51 million uh reduction in in staffing um and and that would reduce the increase in in overall salaries by uh to only
568,000 so changing the mix to these uh numbers in these buckets that would require a tax levy of 3.97% um and an a resulting operating budget increase of a 2.83% increase
what does it look like um another pie chart with a few more categories um you'll notice the real difference between this pie chart and the the current year pie chart is salaries shrunk a little bit and benefits uh ate a little bit so benefits grew uh at the
expense of some of the other categories okay so the $4 million elephant in the room that needs an explanation is the the 3.9 million increase in health benefits why where did it come from well uh in in many respects um that number is driven by
events put into motion quite a few years ago um so for a full understanding you have to understand that there's two uh two statutes that govern employee contributions to health benefits for boards of education the old one which
was chapter 78 passed in 2011 and the current one which is chapter 44 the big difference um is that in chapter 78 the required contributions uh towards health expenditures was tied to the cost of the health expenditures
so as the health expenditure cost went up the board and the employees shared uh that increase in cost all right in in March of 20 I think it was signed into law maybe in the summer of 20 and effective for July of um 2021 chapter 44
replaced chapter 78 the most important feature of chapter 44 as far as far as boards of education are concerned is that the contrib contribution towards health benefits is now tied to the employee salary no longer the increase
of cost in healthcare and that had serious serious implications in terms of school budgets however they weren't really realized at that time because as soon as the law went into place we're in the middle of the pandemic and so people
weren't going to the doctors so claims across most districts were pretty flat maybe even dipped a little bit elective procedures diagnostic testings and things like that people just weren't getting done for a couple years so the law got passed rates and contribution
schedules changed and then no we didn't see the impact of of what would happen now we're out of the pandemic now we're starting to see the impact and the impact looks a little something like this um I don't know how visible it is for um folks in the
audience but when we talk about uh this slide that we've always had in the budget is a history of 2% levy increases well that only tells part of the story boards were able to do a 2% levy increase because there was a significant contribution from the employees to help
offset the cost of health benefits so going back to 1415 which was the year that uh most districts had the fully phased in chapter 78 contribution um the employees were contributing 1.5
million and and so you add that revenue coming in and then you can get by doing building your budget with only 2% um at that time the the board share the health benefits cost was 86% but as you can see the contributions from
employees gra not not so gradually actually pretty significantly early on jumped from 1.5 million to 2.2 million to 3 million these are $800,000 increases give or take year-over-year so that the board's share of health
benefits costs went down throughout all these years making 2% levies 2% levies a lot more realistic um we start to come to a peak right here in 1920 this is the last year of chapter 78 you've got a
almost a $4 million contribution towards offsetting the cost of healthcare the board chair is down to its lowest point uh in the past you know 20 years where they're only paying for just under 75% of the cost of health benefits and then
chapter 44 comes into comes into play and so what happens while we had increases in employee contribution we start to see some decreases you'll notice in this column over here um where the health benefits costs are
there's not that much cost uh caused by the increase in claims and actually there's a dip in claims from 2021 and 2022 and 2122 to 22 23 and and this kind of tracks with with what we know anecdotally in that you know you just
couldn't get in to see a lot of doctors and and you were really deferring things that that you could afford to during the the pandemic times um but now that we're out of that people are going back and getting and getting treated and getting healthy again thankfully um but we're
seeing the claims go back up you saw from 22 to 23 to 23 24 almost over a $3 million increase in cost to the board for health benefits um and then again from 2425 our current year to next year
we're projecting again another increase uh significant increase um to go up to 18.2 million now while this section from yellow yellow to green you're going up almost 50% this cost center over the
course of three budget cycles it's almost a $6 million increase yet you'll notice here in white the contributions are no longer increasing now we're starting to see what chapter 44 how how it how this
thing changed right so the board's costs go up and the employee contribution goes up a little bit but it's it's a lot it's a lot smaller amount it's a lot more gradual so um that story told u without the numbers but with more of the graph what we have
to budget is the space between the red line and the blue line that's what goes into the budget um so in 2223 that number was about 12 million 12 million in change uh what we're looking
at for 2526 is about 18.2 million so we've gone from having to budget 12 million for 2223 to 18.2 million um and and we expect the
blue line to trend upward um there there are some cost drivers that we are keeping our eye on that that we're concerned about um GLP1's among other them but we we expect the blue line to continue to go up uh unfortunately we
expect the red line to more or less have the same slope we don't expect we only expect uh incremental increases um and that that is really the story of this budget is is we're forced to absorb
this and um there's not there's not much wiggle room around it so to look at um what drove those changing amounts and contributions this is the the breakdown of our our employees in terms of what
plan they were contributing under and uh requirement of this chapter 44 is that after uh 2021 when an employee was hired by the district they had to go into chapter 44 so there wasn't an option so basically over time everyone knew that
you add to the organization is on chapter 44 um so as you can see you would expect more and more to people to join chapter 44 plans fewer and fewer um to remain in chapter 78 plans where we are at
2425 um you have the lower contributions because remember in the chapter 44 plan regardless of what happens to the cost of health insurance their contribution is is only going to increase very very modestly
and in 2122 you had a larger share of employees who as health care costs increased their contribution also increased so so you had a little bit of an offset so and the other thing with chapter 44
that that's frustrating to manage from a from a budget perspective is chapter 44 essentially um removed the ability of the the board boards across the state to work with um bargaining units and change
the structure of health benefits plans under chapter chap under chapter 78 whenever costs rose quickly and and everyone felt the pain um management and labor could kind of come together and look at different options and come up
with a solution and change plan designs and things like that um chapter 44 tabled that ability for all boards until 2027 so you just have to stick to the plan designs that chapter 44 created the EHP and the GSP and we have to wait to
um for that to end and then see what our options are ma made it a lot more difficult to try and address um runaway increases runaway increases in healthcare costs than boards had under the chapter 78 law um this is just our annual en enrollment
slide it it looks to be we're a little bit higher than our demographers uh projection from last year um I think we when he came to was it finance or facilities and operations and gave us an update on his projections
noted that we had uh he had had more moveins than he had anticipated but um all in all we we seem to be tracking pretty close to his his predictions okay so uh we talked about the cost drivers and we talked about the
revenue side a little bit um there are a couple of ways that a board of education can raise a tax levy above the 2% um bank cap is is the one that that we've taken here in Bernard's most frequently another one is a healthc care cost
adjustment um which we are proposing to take this year as well um th it kind of functions like bank cap districts can raise the levy over the cap when it's necessary for health care costs that are up uh 2% over the increase in the state
health benefits plan which as we just talked about in four slides that's really what's what's straining this budget so it allows us if there is a silver lining it's not much of one but it allows you to take a a health care adjustment because the biggest cost
driver is is the cost of health benefits um so once we've used the health care cost adjustment of 1.7 million roughly um we can use a little bit of bank cap this is unused uh taxing authority that the board has from not going to the full
2% in two of the last three years so uh there is the ability to use 153,000 um in bank cap for this year there is still some bank cap remaining after that there is a million dollars of bank cap that would be available for the board to
use when they um when we have to build the 26 27 budget um but those are the uh two buckets um that we would recommend going above the 2% to balance this budget okay this slide is just an overall of of
where we're at operating wise um you know operating our recurring expenses um that is going up an increase of you know 3.2 million yearover-year uh fund 12 which is uh where we do a lot of our equipment
expenditures we have some increased equipment acquisitions this year um fund 12 the non-equipment portion is going down a little bit we're just tackling uh fewer capital projects or less expensive ones those kind of vary significantly yeartoear depending on
which projects you take on um the capital reserve increase and interfund uh this is really the the board here in Bernards has always um kept the debt service schedule um even
by funding the increase above 5115 thou 5,115,000 the the dollar amount above that the board has always held flat at that 5.1 million number with um transfers from capital reserve so the
the debt schedule varies significantly yeartoear some years as in last year you only needed to bring 64,799 over to keep that debt service payment smooth this year for whatever reason when the bonds were sold they had they had a larger amount of payments due
and so there's a transfer of $479,312 to keep that debt uh service um debt service levy payment flat um that that is a bit of tax relief that is using uh some capital reserve to keep the tax levy down otherwise that would
increase the taxes uh overall as well um we've got reduced federal grant expenses recommendation we've received from the Department of Education is to is to budget less than your current year's allocation of federal grants which we won't know the actual number until the May June time
frame um debt expenses as you can see this is why we need the 479 up above is because year-over-year the 2425 we had 5.9 million of uh debt service payments and and next year we have 6.3 million so
the overall total budget is 128 million um if you were to look at the budget look at uh all the different lines um and look for things that would jump out that are a little bit of unusual that that bear some explanation these are probably the four biggest ones
that that jump out benefits uh we've talked quite a bit about there's the 3.9 million that's really um kind of stressed and strained all other parts of the budget um the other um you know budget challenge that we've had is
electricity um the uh PJM the wholesale electricity auction um went out to bid i don't fully understand all the details but their wholesale costs went up over 100 times and we've been advised that uh school districts electricity expenses
are going to go up by about 25% starting June 1 um also all of your home electricity expenses will also be going up so everyone is going to share in this suffering um so we are hoping that our improvements to the building HVAC system
in which we can turn uh turn classrooms off in the summer and not cool them will allow us to not absorb the full brunt of the 25% increase so that's why we only have a 16.72% increase on electricity but either way
$147,000 is is a big number um on electricity uh 15% increase in custodial services this was somewhat anticipated we had been advised um last year that
the uh our Aramar custodial service agreement they had a they had recently settled with their um custodial workers union and that they had a phase in of increased health benefits contributions that wouldn't take effect for this
current year 2425 but was going to take effect for the following year they said um it was a 16% uh increase and the likely result was that would be passed on to us so um we kind of got that heads
up last year so we did go out to bid we we had a very good bid for custodial services we had five um biders submit bids there was a very tight grouping which is um very reassuring it it lets you know that you had a pretty tight bid
spec there was good competition for the business um our mark uh won i think we awarded at the at the last meeting but lo and behold it was 16% higher than um you know the year-over-year and and it does increase a little bit uh each
year as well as it you know if we choose to renew so um so that one would jump out salaries although after the the you know required staffing reductions that Mr mark Karen talked about um the percentage increase is is quite small
084% the dollar increase is still you know a big number um that would jump out um this is almost more of a a slide from from last year this year's story isn't really about out of district
tuition um but it's uh it's kind of good and encouraging to see that uh we do a really nice job with um for a district our size that we don't have to send as many as many students out that we have really really good uh programs for our
special needs students in district so we can keep a lot of them in every time I look at this slide certain numbers that jump out at me like Ridgewood about the same size operating but double the amount of out of district placements and three times the cost so um it's you know
stinks to have our health benefits numbers but you know it's nice to have our out of district budget numbers so um take the good with the bad the other um year-over-year changes and the categories aren't really remarkable um the the student
transportation is we're eight down 851,000 year-over-year um this is uh largely due to uh triple taring as we said we reduced the number of of bus routes that we needed we also had significant uh savings in um out of
district transportation we we graduated a few kids and we got a lot better perdm rates on all of the kids who were still in the program um facilities and grounds uh are are increases a lot of those are are due to
maintenance projects which are they're not quite capital projects in an accounting sense but they feel like a capital project one is a a $400,000 district flooring um it goes into your maintenance budget but it's really a one-time you know hopefully we'll get 30
plus years out of the flooring um and then others you know not not really significant when you look at dollar amounts in a positive or a negative direction the budget is really being driven uh salaries benefits a
little bit on the electricity and the increase in the custodial but that's um those are just the the uh underlying factors not not the headline um with all that being said we do have capital reserve money and some
maintenance reserve money that that we're using to you know keep the facilities up to date we have awarded the Mount Prospect roof replacement for this summer uh I think we had a budget of 2 million for that the bids came in significantly underneath um so even with
the design and construction administration that budget um you know we have 1.5 million for that of which we will get uh 40% back uh from the rod regular operating uh district grant that
we uh were awarded for that um Cedar Hill and Oak Street we have two direct installs install projects this will be a blend of lighting HVAC and boilers at both Cedar Hill and Oak Street the uh state and the utilities are revamping
this program kind of as we speak we're supposed to have the details of the new program we're now hearing April 1 we've allocated the money there it these two projects are really really good deals um these dollar amounts on this screen is
the out-ofpocket expense to the board so to speak the total cost is in the millions for both of these um one of them represents 50% of the cost and the other is 60% that the utilities will pick up the other portion of the cost
unlike the ROD grant uh these projects the board only has to lay out the board share the rod grant the board must pay the full 1.5 and get reimbursed with the direct install the utility company actually pays the balance of the project to the contractor who completes the work
so um they're very attractive uh programs to complete if you can do um in order to qualify for them your building has to be below a certain overall kilowatt hour consumption which Oak Street and Cedar Hill do qualify for and
you have to have enough measure enough uh equipment in those buildings that you can generate enough savings by upgrading to a more modern piece of equipment that makes the project worthwhile for the utility company so um we're fortunate
that that um we should be able to get Oak Street and Cedar Hill to qualify get new boilers and HVAC there district-wide flooring we we mentioned briefly uh floors in multiple classrooms and and um larger spaces across the district we
want to take another chunk of that and get those done our phone system which is over 25 years maybe old um and is definitely uh long in the tooth and due for a replacement um we have in the budget a
54 passenger school bus uh we will try and get that for for cheaper if we can but we've had uh great success uh this year by by leasing a bus from a provider and having one of our own staff members um make make trips on that bus for
athletics and we're you know in the in the prior years where we'd pay anywhere from $450 to $500 $550 a day just to drive kids you know in town from school to a practice site um we can do that a lot cheaper if it's our driver and we
have a bus so we we had talked about that in facilities and operations and and put that in there um and a couple other uh much smaller projects the Mount Prospect um playground wall which is in you know sore need of of repair and some
some case work on Liberty Corner or Art Room um debt service as I mentioned on on the uh other slide we are doing a transfer from capital reserve to smooth out the debt service payment to keep it at that 5.1 million um that's you know
tantamount to a $45 in tax savings on the average home um and we have about 1.9 million in debt service payments remaining uh through the year uh 2031 um assuming debt debt service aid uh
remains flat that should be the number this is the revenue side of the budget we talked about the expense side um the mix of how how we're going to pay for it we talked about the 3.97% that's the topline number that's
the levy increase uh we have modest increases elsewhere um the about halfway down on the middle we have a state aid decrease of 3% um this looks like the biggest percentage decrease but it's really a
nothing burger uh this is a a semi Medicaid reimbursement program the state tells us what number to put in here we don't have the discretion to do that um and they just lowered that number from 20,000 to 1500 but really the effects next to nothing budget a little bit less
on the federal side per department of ed's recommendation and we're using a little bit more in reserves and fund balance uh to tackle more projects than we did last year maintenance reserve um capital reserve and emergency reserve uh
a little bit for the health benefits um so that brings the operating budget um including the fund 11 operating stuff and equipment and and some of the capital projects to 120 million we've
got 1.4 in special revenue 6.3 in debt service a total revenue of 128 just an overview of our reserve accounts that we have capital reserve um we have 11 million or so uh currently um
and but we have 31 million or so worth of projects uh slated to to work on in the next 5 years we are have 7.6 million due to us in rod grants that as we take on a portion of those we'll get that money back from the state the long-term
um debt is not really a capital reserve project but you're allowed to for tax relief use some of your capital reserve money to to uh keep that debt level uh flatter we have a maintenance reserve which we'll be drawing on in this budget to to help fund some of the projects
flooring some um curb work and and parking lot patching playground maintenance some HVAC controls um and we have an emergency reserve um that you have as a prerequisite for being self-insured as as we
are uh the tax impact these numbers are preliminary they don't have the final uh assessed values but it's going to be close to what we expect um you know if you wanted to again look through rose tinted glasses you would say oh it's a
decrease in the school tax rate but doesn't mean your taxes are going down um it it means your assessed values went up so the assessed values went up about 11% so um when the values go up you know the rate that you need for the school tax goes down but we're we're
preliminarily projecting a tax increase in the average residential property of $45.92 all right okay so thank you Mr row um just to highlight a couple things that Mr rao went over the the issue of um the tax
levy is that there is a cap it's a 2% cap and what Mr rolo talked about were the allowable adjustments to that levy even if we took every single allowable adjustment available including the bank
cap that is is still available but in theory uh for the 26 27 budget you're still looking at um cutting over a million and a half dollars from from the budget so um there are limits it's there's there's no option to sit there
and say "Well just just raise taxes." Um we have to cut about $2.5 million um we are certainly hopeful that uh we may yet find some other options especially with respect to the health
benefits um great explanation of the impact of chapter 44 versus chapter 78 that's completely out of our control it's out of the hands of anybody in this room um nobody here it's nobody's fault um we're we're taking care of our health
and that's great but it comes at a cost and um the way the formula is set up um legislatively right now it is what it is we have to manage that cost um we are hopeful that uh when we meet with our brokers one more time next month maybe
there's some solutions um realistically I'm not sure where that's going to come from because your trend is your trend is your trend you know you have uh medical claims trending in a certain direction if you don't budget for them uh it's a recipe for disaster so uh we need to do
that um and we're going to have to transfer essentially some of our resources from uh the staffing wedge to the health benefit wedge of our of our distribution of expenses um so we will do that um as painlessly as possible uh
which is quite the challenge is it's it's never painless to to have to make those kinds of reductions um we'll be looking across the board to try to keep things evenhanded to have the least impact on our students and and the programs um everything from teachers to
aids to support staff to administrators we have to go through it all and and come back uh in May on the 5th uh with with where we stand and how we achieve that uh $2.5 million cut um we certainly
will start with the lowhanging fruit um folks sometimes leave the district they take a job somewhere else they get married and go to Hawaii and live happily ever after uh they retire goodbye tension hello pension um but that is not something that we can
count on for a lot right a handful of folks move on to better pastures and maybe you don't need to replace them um and so that helps but it's not going to get you $2.5 million um so we're going to have to go through
it all um class size um we we've been in a in a pretty good place um especially uh at the middle school and the high school right now so we have the ability uh to absorb some of our uh need to reduce staff there uh and I I think that
will be the area of focus because we don't want to eliminate program uh and that's one way you can do that your your service is different but programs are not being eliminated i don't expect that um we'll be coming back in May without
any pinch there will be I'm sure some uh where we're we're sharing some news about what we finally had to do to get here uh but I don't think it will be um substantial in terms of any kind of real program cuts um some pinch some um
contraction if you will is necessary as we work through the class size um but we've we've done enough preliminary work to know um that we can get there and if you read our class size report that we did earlier uh this school year I think you can see that for yourself not easy
not desirable but uh doable so I'm I'm hopeful that we're going to be able to get there um we have to submit our budget this month the board's voting on it tonight so we can get it to the state for review uh and then we will back we'll we will be back
here on May 5th for the final hearing the public hearing uh on our budget so with that we can go up and there's any board questions we'll follow up thanks for your attention okay I know that was a lot for everybody
to take in some of us have heard bits and pieces in our committee meetings but now would be the time for us to discuss what was just presented uh with us and would anybody like to start the discussion dave
yeah so I'll start and obviously all of that was painful not just because it's a lot of numbers but the numbers weren't good um so obviously we're sharing the pain in this um there are going to be cuts to staff but there's also going to
be increases to taxes so any way you cut it is just not great to present this so I'm happy I didn't have to be the one to do it um but just looking at the increases benefits going up over 21% electric
going up small numbers but 16% custodial and grounds 13% losing state aid all those combined just recipe just for a tough year for us so we're making tough decisions thank you for the administration they're going through a lot of tough meetings to figure this out
but um on top of that I want to thank them for finding some cuts along the ways that don't hurt as much um they found some of the utilities that are down we brought it inhouse um some of the maintenance uh definitely on the transportation side there was a lot of
push to get those costs down even more so I know we're pushing them to do as much as possible we we really did do that and this is where we're at robin yeah I agree with everything that you just said Dave and I do want to thank you guys because I know you've
been working really hard with everybody um to try to come up with creative ideas to find some um savings um I did just want to ask um Jim can you just articulate a little bit more about the ROD grants and our capital reserves because people always ask about that because they see oh we have all these capital reserves doesn't look like we're
short on money can you explain how it's already committed for the Rod grants yeah so the capital reserve account you're allowed to have up to you're allowed to keep a capital reserve for capital projects up to the amount of projects on your long range facility plan so on the one hand it's great that
we have about $11 million in capital reserve um but there's $31 million of projects and we do use the capital reserve for for two purposes one to take on the projects that we need like this summer the Mount Prospect roof but also
again to keep um to keep taxes low that we're making that $400,000 payment to keep the debt service low so um when you're self-insured and and you have a good year as you saw on the chart there was some years where the the health claims were flat or went down well that
generates surplus and then the board via their June resolution will take the goody year into capital reserve and then you're able to do a a roof like at Mount Prospect this summer without without doing a bond issue and going to the public for a tax increase you can take
the savings that you realized on a good year by being self-insured and get those capital projects done um so that's that's the purpose of it then um 11 million is good but 400,000 for the debt service 1.5 million for the roof and if
you're not generating more you know it it dwindles quickly so it's a it's a number that you definitely want to contribute to when you can because we have um just under a million square feet of buildings to maintain and um there's always projects and and maintenance that
needs to happen and renovation yeah um well I've always said uh I'm not opposed to raising taxes or spending money i've said for three years it's I always want to make sure that the money we spend is money well spent and I know that's why a lot of people they might disagree with me when I look at certain
programs or certain expenditures however small because say it again as we've seen tonight small numbers add up to big numbers so that's why I've always taken a real close at every single expenditure um some things this year from last year we brought in a house with significant savings to the district there was people
who thought that was going to have negative consequences for certain students it didn't it actually wound up being better so sometimes I think people are inherently resistant to change i do feel that long-term budgetary management it comes down to personnel benefits as
you've seen on the pie charts so in all those years when the district contracts I feel through attrition through breakage it's proper to to the greatest extent possible contract with it I realize it's not a one to one number special needs students for instance take more than
it's not a one to one equation but when a district goes down in population by 20% I think you to be responsible you have to look at contracting along with it and not constantly expanding that's the only way to bend a long-term cost curve so I mean we are where we are
right now um a little something for everybody to dislike uh pretty uh large tax increase and pretty significant cuts so um I do want to thank uh the administration Nick and Jim for trying to make those cuts as least impactful as possible on our
students and uh you know we'll see what the final budget brings in here in a in a couple weeks j I I want to thank the administration as well i think it's a very difficult challenge i think that it's been done
the cuts are being looked at thoughtfully and I particularly am am grateful for the fact that all of the administrator supervisors and staff um are going to be involved in the process it's not the board recommending anything
specific but that the people who will be um living it daytoday are the ones who are going to be having input into the process so I think that's important brett I'm going to add on to say thank you i know how hard how hard it's been to go
over the budget and there's a lot of moving pieces but really thank you for taking such a small sliver of the budget that you're able to work on i know we're contractually obligated to so much of it between salaries and and health benefits and finding a way to to cut in that
small section of it first before having to move on to to staff reductions and and um programs so thank you for looking at that that way i know that's not easy to find as many cuts as you did in such a small sliver of the budget and again thank you for making sure it's not going to impact the students and programs you
know the way it could so thanks for the hard work anyone else um okay speak our district is as wonderful as it is because of the people who are here who work here and teach our kids every
single day and I think it's painful to all of us to think that we have to make any changes um but that's just the hard reality where we are and so I really appreciate the time and the effort that is being placed into trying to do what
will keep our school as excellent as they are and keep our kids as well educated um through the staff that they see every single day um I know that there will be changes
between now and May as we get more information and I can only hope that by the time we get to the final budget that um it's not quite as dim as it is today for all of us i think it it just it
leaves a very heavy heart for all of us because we believe so much in the district and the people who work here um I do just want to point out um we will when we get to the finance section and we vote on items we will be voting
including this that doesn't mean we're voting on the budget we're voting to submit the budget um for review so I just want to clarify it so people aren't walking out tonight "Oh my gosh I thought this was a preliminary." It it's just it's just the
process that we have to submit the budget and we all have to vote to agree to submit the pro the budget anybody else before we move on to the next okay so we're up then to um superintendent report and there are two
items on it can I have a motion keith and Mike is there anything that you want to talk about before we vote no um standard HIP report for every board meeting and
uh we have to authorize our needs assessment for the comprehensive equity plan we have to do that every few years it's been deferred actually for a couple years now uh but the state is saying this is the year so we're getting caught up on that we have to get the ball rolling
can we have a roll call miss White yes dr mchune yes mr molinari yes mr mean yes miss Curado yes mr shaw yes mr talbot yes and Mr oalanic yes uh
and with that we are up to public comment um if you'd like to speak about anything on the agenda please come down sign in on the clipboard and state your name and address before speaking hello my name is Frank Claus i'm at uh 180 Owens Court here in Basking Ridge um
I'd like to commend the board on how things are being done um in preparation for today's meeting I got to go online and look at the priorities for the next strategic plan it really had a nice view on what the different stakeholders think is important for our school and that
that is leading uh the way that we are going i really like the fact that there are small group meetings being called to help make this to bring in people from the community who really understand how to do things to form focus groups and to work on it i really like this presentation with the transparency that
it provided um I would like the board to consider adding a strand which what are these focus groups being called at a strand on the budget because there's a lot of people in this community who have spent many years having to make very hard decisions for their companies to
make the same kind of cuts they might have some ideas uh to help here it would really align their interest as many of them are parents and taxpayers and it would really increase a further level of trust beyond just this presentation uh because you'd let some of these people
in to kind of look at the the details and and help make some things so please consider adding a strand on the budget and I'd like to ask if you can confirm a few things so looking at the priorities for the strategic plan uh the number one priority I read was the
development of student competencies i read that as teachers um can you confirm that and can you confirm that we are cutting teachers as the last possible measure that we're looking at everything else because our top priority would be the student competencies i also look
through the strategic uh plan and the priorities number eight of nine uh the LA like almost the bottom was DEI i know in the past uh there's been some spending on that and if we had the money of course we would do that i loved hearing the student representative
talking about the the spirit week and and inclusion but given that we don't have the money can we confirm there's no external consulting on on inclusion and there's no staff uh being spent on on this at this time given the really hard position that we're in and finally so I'm I'm so interested the state is
forcing us but how much does it cost to develop a comprehensive uh equity plan just so that we know thank you thank you Mr class anyone else debbie Marcus 16 Lafayette Lane thank you for that very thorough and well um
explained presentation one thing I didn't really hear in the discussion about the budget is the bigger picture of how much we need to spend per student and accounting for special needs and all the other factors that were mentioned we have a
thousand fewer students than we did a decade ago and our staffing level especially at the higher admin level remains at what it was back then now I agree we have more issues nowadays we probably do need more people than we had
in the past um and in terms of the per student thing I'm not talking about teachers at all in fact I would love to increase their salaries um and I appreciate the top level administrators but we do have more vice superintendent than most other districts and again if
it's proven to be necessary that's fine i just think there needs to be more questioning and um reassessing what levels of administration we need because even if we could take one administrator who's here pay them more and do some of
the um work of another administrator we would save on not having two sets of benefits to pay so it doesn't sound to me that we've looked at the bigger picture of restructuring some of our top level salary and benefit expenses and I would um if we do do another comb
through the budget suggest looking there um in the past I will note when there were more conservatively financial people on the board we did have even with the switch from chapter 78 to
chapter 44 health care payments the 0.73 and 0% increases in our tax levy so it is possible um so you know you make it sound like it's impossible to do this it's not impossible uh it just makes it
a priority in terms of how we can keep our main programs and see where we can cut the other item that jumped out of me that I wasn't aware of was the $6 million debt payment um given that we already have the debt obviously we have to pay and deal with it but perhaps I
mean that if we didn't have that $6 million that would also fix this budget problem so going forward if we can try to minimize uh getting into more debt um this that that could help future budgets the conservative uh fiscally people in
the past have all pleaded for debt for years about at least working with staff attrition to not always re backfill as an easy way to reduce some of our salary benefit costs and it's great to hear that you're doing it you're considering it now but of course if we had taken a
$100,000 position 10 years ago and done that you know that would have been a million dollars and and benefits in saving our rate so mainly I I guess when you look at it again I'm requesting that you think about what is our per student cost that's necessary that is the ideal
of providing as the best education we can for the amount of money we have we can't just say we're going to spend as much as we can we can always spend more pick it decide what would be the best balance and stick to it thank you
thank you Miss Marcus are there any other comments okay we will close public comment okay so u thanks for the public comments uh as far as the strategic plan goes Thank you for uh noticing the efforts to
try to um bring some folks together in in small group discussion i know that invitation went out on Friday so we'll leave that up for a couple more weeks and try to get those groups set so we can have those conversations uh I'm sure there'll be some opportunities to talk
about um finance especially within the group that uh Mr alo is is heading up with facilities and ops uh we're going to have those discussion groups led by uh different folks uh Miss Fox is going to handle the academic programs and uh
Mr s the staff wellness i'm going to take the student wellness so um we've we've kind of uh divided up some duties here to run those conversation groups so I think it'll be uh a great opportunity to uh get together and talk and uh even though remote uh for everyone's
convenience we've got a couple different opportunities to speak on each topic so it'll be great opportunity to uh weigh in the uh the questions about uh the comprehensive equity plan um there's no additional budget for the comprehensive
equity plan um we're not looking to spend any money on getting that accomplished um unless we want to add up hours and allocate an expense for that but um it's there's not an additional expense uh as far as any kind of
consulting or uh anything like that that is going to contribute to getting that plan done it's it's the time of the people that are already here um I don't I don't know of anything that you would consider a DEI expense in the
um 202526 budget uh and I you know uh I think we'd actually have to have a deeper conversation about what each of those letters is and what would fall into any of those particular buckets to understand whether or not there's
expenditure um as far as how much we spend per pupil there are calculations the state generates uh report after report in um school performance reports and other documents that um identify how much
school districts are spending per pupil um those uh are are widely uh varied when it comes to districtto district because districts have different needs different populations different enrollments uh and the staffing models
to meet those needs can vary quite a bit so you do see a wide range uh in what districts spend per pupil at various grade levels um so it is certainly a tool but it's not an end- all beall uh debt payment uh the district
does have debt uh as part of its levy from uh prior years issuance of uh debt for referendums and construction projects uh that debt is set to end around 2030 if I'm not mistaken so um
you know when that happens what happens to taxes well we don't need to collect for debt anymore um but as Mr ala mentioned we have $31 million of projects and about $9 million available to fund it uh and in the next
five years who else know you know who knows what else needs to get added to the long range facility plan so um and we I guess we'll see how that plays out thanks okay we're up to approval of minutes may
I have a motion Dave keith a roll call miss White yes dr mchune yes mr molinari yes mr mean yes miss Curado yes mr shaw
yes mr talbot yes and Mr omalik yes okay what brings us to finance there are eight items on finance uh may I have a motion brett and
Janice and Dave do you have anything add to add with your report yeah so I had two reports since the last one but everything was budget related or things we've discussed so nothing else in there as far as the items again they're all pretty much budget related or talked
about them already anybody any questions okay we have a roll call m white yes dr mchune yes mr molinari yes mr amin yes miss Curado yes mr shaw
yes mr talbot yes and Mr omalik yes okay we're up to personnel there are 13 items may I have a motion janice and Mike is there uh report um the personnel
committee met on February 21st um we had a discussion to review the contract um proposal for the BTEA negotiations and we talked about the budget and what has already been described tonight um in terms of the
shortfall we've reviewed um you know different um class sizes and um demographics in the upper grades and the administration described the process that they're um analyzing you know where there might be able to make some
reductions or with people who are leaving or retiring um and that's all I can report out oh and Mr siet advertised his um career fair you want to say about it now too i don't know if it's good timing to talk about it now but there is a career fair
May 1st uh we we we were very successful actually last year we had a number of vacancies we filled it's the only uh in-person uh career fair in the state of New Jersey not hosted by a college it's a mouthful uh but it's in person at Rich High School May 1st 4:30 6:30 open to uh
any New Jersey certified educator in the state okay we have a roll call miss White yes dr mun yes mr molinari yes mr am yes miss Curado yes mr shaw
yes mr talbot yes mr alanic yes okay we're up to policy uh we'll be meeting this Thursday so no report okay curriculum we just met next time uh that brings us to wellness believe there is a report i do
have a report um the wellness committee met on February 27th uh we decided on meeting dates uh the March 27th meeting will be held at Cedar Hill School where we will meet with student government representatives liberty Corner Oak
Street and Mount Prospect schools will be visited in the fall on February 27th we met with this William and Student Government uh they shared their thoughts on a variety of topics the majority of students were positive about the new new
start time one benefit being more time for extracurricular activities students are enjoying the cafeteria and lunch options they like the flexibility during learning lab to meet with peer groups for project work
with teachers for extra help or to make up a test and the opportunity to sign up for various other activities that are offered by staff sixth grade students shared that the May tours of WHAMS provided by eighth graders and the platooning of fifth
grade teachers in content areas helped to make the transition from elementary school a smooth one for them there were a few suggestions for improvement teachers should consider the timing of tests and projects so students
aren't overly burdened the week before a break they would like the Viking Voices meetings to be more interactive and less contentheavy they would like to have two separate study hall spaces one for quiet work and another where students can work
together or converse they suggested allocating outdoor space for different sports or activities and providing more recess equipment students also suggested using the proceeds from the Wham Slams event to
return the turtles to the courtyard pond and to clean up the other courtyard for student use and Mrs udok is looking into all of these suggestions we had an update on counseling programming uh the January 29th academic course fair for the first
time featured student feedback about course workload and expectations both students and parents felt that this additional information helped in differentiating among college prep and reged honors and AP offerings in course
selection uh on January 29th students also attended a career panel um it included parent representatives from a wide variety of professions tap into Basking Ridge featured an article and a photo highlighting the event and it was
very well received by students the career panel will again be included as part of next year's January wellness day one board member suggested inviting a panel of Ridge alumni to speak about their experiences as young professionals
just starting their careers the counseling department is considering this on February 26th there was a district inservice winter wonderland was an afternoon of professional learning for district staff developed by Miss Fox
Dr lazik and Miss Smith it included a keynote panel presentation and 31 breakout sessions on a wide variety of topics based on staff requests many teachers commented that the panel presentation was the highlight of the
day for them each participant shared a personal story about the lasting impact a teacher in the audience has had on their life some specific comments included the stories of wonder reminded me of why I chose teaching in the first
place it was well timed as the winter months can sometimes feel long and slow they were all very touching and reignited my passion another comment was "What a beautiful presentation i left feeling appreciated reinvigorated and
remembering my why beautiful heartwarming and uplifting i was choking back tears the whole time." The last comment I'll share is you had hundreds of teachers not a computer or cell phone in sight paying wrapped
attention tears in our eyes thinking to ourselves that is our why so it was a very um successful afternoon uh as Joseph mentioned the next chapter in the district's restoring focus initiative began this morning at
Ridge studies show that even brief social interactions can help students develop stronger friendships improve their mental well-being and feel more connected to their community resources about the Hello Project will be shared on the Restoring Focus website dr lzik
is seeking input from peer leaders and student government representatives in implementing the Hello Project the Ridge PTO has donated games and conversation starters and will provide prizes for students who meet the HO project
challenge that's it thank you uh we're up to facilities and ops we'll have a read out next meeting okay uh that brings us to leison on do we have any leazison reports
mike I was just going to I met with the municipal alliance last week and um you know it's a very successful program and one of the things that they will have um on June 1st uh the 35th annual Pleasant Valley Twilight Challenge 5K and uh you
know it's going to be a fun activity there's going to be uh 5K and uh there's going to be a onem health walk and the children's lollipop loop is free so come out i think it'll be fun and uh they also did a survey uh that they are
willing to present to the board uh pride survey it's the parent resource institute for drug education and um they have some data from 2019 2024 it's very interesting thank you are there any other lean
reports okay uh that brings us to public comment on non-aggenda items if you have any comments please come down hello again i'm Debbie Marcus 16 Lafayette Lane haven't moved since five minutes ago um technically this is an
agenda item but just wasn't time earlier i just wanted to compliment the um the wellness committee had the uh the winter wonderland um you you mentioned the the student sessions but also I looked at the classes that were offered and I was very impressed that using our own staff
and teachers we could have such a variety of items of topics such as you know building blocks offormational literacy behavioral principles for special ed um best practices for supporting students with ADHD uh creativity unleashed with AIA tools
uh evidence-based comprehension strategies for special ed how to respond to comments in the classroom uh let's talk about educational leadership by people up here it's good and so it's just to emphasize
that using our own staff is is can be very effective and in the past we've often used outside consultants i did note that we did still apparently hire the Joy Roots uh group that there's been or I've commented on in the past with
which focuses on restorative practices uh which is not necessarily something that's evidence-based to be proved to be relevant to our district so since we have all these other teachers and such who can run these kind of programs that have some proven evidence-based methods
I again encourage you to stop spending any money on joy roots or at least insist on getting um some kind of contract that if you don't see results or what exalt what results you expect to get for the amount that we're paying them regardless if it's a small or large
number thank you thank you title starting Riverside Drive i think there's way there's spots in the budget that you could cut stuff you need to have somebody stand by the buses that come to Ridge High School in the morning and count how many kids come
off these buses i'm not going to say every bus but I'm going to say a high percentage of these buses are half full the mini buses and the full buses i see it every day there's got to be a way you could combine the buses these
routes or maybe pick them up and and high school but there's ways of filling those buses up there's no reason to have a bus go by with only three kids in the bus that's a waste of money that could be cut
the clubs clubs and sports i don't think we need to have I can't even count how I I have to take my shoes off to count how many clubs and um sports you have but there needs to be a cap on the number of clubs and the number of um
sports i'm sorry they're going to have to cry a little bit also but we need to have a cap we can't like last club was u the yaching club i'm sure there must have about 50 kids in that club i could you know we
need to look at that now I don't understand why we have the you're saying 3.97 or close to that i know it's because you didn't raise the you didn't um do the 2% the one year and it was
only 73 the other year and the town does that the same way and you know the town was is capable of doing that and they also pay off the debt too and I think we need to start paying down our debt being just well we're maintaining a
debt is not good enough it's crazy stuff you know the funniest thing is when you said a budget is just a guide when I have a budget I don't follow it i don't go on vacation i don't buy a new vehicle the roof doesn't get
fixed if you don't follow that budget you just ask more money from the taxpayers and I think we need to um look at that a little bit i appreciate that budget was done it was transparent and
it's going to be what it is i think there are spots you could look for cutting thank you thank you john Ko 22 Benedict Crescent so three points on the budget i think uh very tough bill to swallow um you know thank
you Mr roller for presenting it was very well well documented i think it again reminds us of the need for a long range plan with resources related to facilities planning related to the
contraction we've seen over the past years in the enrollment and increase in administration so carefully look at the whole plan end to end because where are you going to cut is it among the teachers or the administrators i think
you that is an area you have to look at very carefully the second point was brought up by one of the other persons who gave public comment again we have consultants who are coming in and offering comment when we probably have a lot of experts within
the staff or around town who could who could do the same service so why are we spending time on consultants who are essentially taking off your watch and telling you the time and I I think the third area you
know just like to applaud you all spend a lot of time on on this service but think carefully about the impact you're having over the next three to four years at a state government level there is no money if you look at the recent
governor's presentation that is going forward in May there's a two two and a half billion spend gap so you're not going to get more money from the state now and going forward so I think you have to plan for that thank you thank
you Mr quum can you please just sign in at the clipboard thank you are there any other comments okay and close public comment that brings us to board forum does anybody have anything that they'd
like to discuss for board forum go ahead Dave uh the only thing I wanted to bring up again was on the wellness so I want to end it on try to end it on something good um one of the best things that I heard about since I've been on this board even before that is instead
of doing a keynote speaker for the last PD day for the teachers they brought up the students and they brought them all up on stage to thank all the teachers and to hear the stories and wellness about that was just amazing it was
moving to all of us in the room when we heard this so I think that was so motivational to the teachers i thought it was such a great idea um whoever came up with that and I just wanted to say thank you for coming up with that i'm I'm sure from everything we heard the teachers loved it as well so thank you
thank you Keith yeah uh we we didn't comment after wellness report but I wanted to uh just say I was you know really encouraged by um what was reported out on the on the uh Winter Wonderland day i think uh it sounds like the staff really got a lot out of it i think it does as as as has
been said it does reinforce the talent that we have within our district which does to a large extent really kind of negate the need to go outside of district and additional cost now I mean the fact of the matter is you know consultant here consultant there a bus here bus there you know it's small
potatoes we saw the pie chart um but again you know in good conscience I I I need to call this out because if I'm going to vote for a tax increase on the community I feel like once again the money that we were spending should be maximally maximally utilized money well
spent and I always think you know I'm glad I'm glad Mr edson came up because I always think back to uh when uh way back when we almost cut full day kindergarten if everybody remembers that and uh you know everybody's out there in the audience i was out there audience I had kindergarten at the time i wanted full day kindergarten i'm glad we saved it but you know I always remember there
were seniors that came up too and they said I can't stay in this town anymore so you know you saw the on this chart it's a $400 average tax increase and you know probably most of us in this room are think all right you know I can take that it's not a big deal it's very subjective very subjective you have seen
a lot of senior citizens down in social security who $400 is a big deal or $200 is a big deal it's a difference between making their mortgage payment or you know skipping a couple meals during the week so you know I want to be mindful i want us to be mindful yes we're here for the children we're here for our students
we're here to provide them the best education that the community can afford and what the community can afford we have to take take in mind the entire community so that being said I'm glad to see um residents of the community who maybe don't have the children's school come up they have every right to be here they have every right to speak and
frankly if they want to be up here on the board they have every right to run for it too because this is the entire town schools and we all have a stake in it so just want us to be mindful of that as we're raising taxes what are we spending it on even if it's you know right down to the little expenses we have we have a
fiduciary duty to make sure it's stuff that actually benefits students janice yeah I um I appreciate the wonderful job that the teachers did on our uh February um inservice and you know the
suggestions as to limiting the number of consultants that are used um the joy roots consultant was already part of the contract that we had for this year so that wasn't an additional expense that
was part of what he was contracted to do and our teachers are able to do the kinds of uh professional development that they are after they have received um similar professional development so
um you know next year there may be a whole different situation and it may the picture may look very different but um that's why it was important for us to have teachers trained this year so that they can in fact next year if there's an
opportunity to provide professional development to their peers they have been trained to do so i couldn't agree more i'm just saying we have a responsibility to make sure when a consultant does come forward that they present the proper data that we're satisfied that's worthwhile to proceed
with the expense mr stein I think you wanted to speak yeah no I just wanted to mention because it's come up multiple times miss Carado brought it up the winter wonderland program that was really born out of professional development surveys that we've done over the years and one of the things the staff said is all the staff
teachers specialists they wanted to be able to take the professional development and not necessarily have to facilitate it because they are experts and they've done it so much so that day actually was made up primarily of administrators teaching those classes there were a few consultants but the vast majority were administrators and I
do I want to give credit to Dr lazik and Kristen Fox and Stephanie Smith who put together that program and that amazing and I've I've seen so many professional development programs over the years that amazing uh day which really was just a testament to all of the amazing work the
teachers and the staff put in that was incredible and that was really the the idea born out of um the the work of Dr lazbe Stephanie Smith and Christopher Fox thank you Brad i think you want to speak yeah just to add on to that I have heard
such great things about the winter wonderland program so thank you everyone for doing that together putting that together um but what really not to take away from that because I think it was very moving and like Mr shaw said we were kind of moved by just hearing about it and we weren't part of that program
but I just want to add that you know during that wellness committee when the students came up and the government body came up they were comprised mostly sixth and seventh graders or a couple eighth graders in there just how poised they were they were so excited to share their their thoughts on on school and gave really great insight to what their day
looks like and how things that we do impact them so I was really appreciated those the students that came up to to share that with us thank you well I just wanted to say one thing as I sit up here and I look at the stage and I see how it was painted I have to
comment on the fabulous production of Cinderella that took place here um the arts are so important and I think that our students from elementary straight through high school are truly truly
blessed to have such strong arts programs here from the you musical groups the choirs the newspaper at the high school um the literary books the yearbook and the productions that we do such as Cinderella in addition to having
fabulous staff that work with our kids we have amazingly talented kids in our district and I just want to give a shout out because we hear so much about you know the the academic accolades but I think it's really just as important when something has happened whether it's a
sporting event or a production to take a moment and just say how impressed we are how spectacular it was how wonderful it is that we have children afforded these opportunities to be on a stage and perform the way they love to and you
know if there anybody out here who helped our children with this I just want to say thank you with that does anybody else have anything else can I get a motion to adjourn keith and
Dave thank you everybody