WEBVTT

METADATA
Video-Count: 1
Video-1: youtube.com/watch?v=zwHE2LeFnKU

NOTE
MEETING SECTIONS:

Part 1 (Video ID: zwHE2LeFnKU):
- 00:00:08: Meeting Opening: Pledge, Roll Call, Budget Hearing Introduction
- 00:02:21: Budget Basics: Definition, Challenges, and Revenue Constraints
- 00:06:58: Budgeting Strategy: Cost Containment and Zero-Based Budgeting
- 00:09:12: Staffing and Facility Reductions: Balancing Budget and Improvements
- 00:11:07: Instructional Spending Trends, Revenue and Expenditure Overview
- 00:16:40: Expense Categories Breakdown: Debt Service and Federal Grants
- 00:18:58: Program Spending, Key Budget Changes, and Capital Outlays
- 00:23:42: Construction Updates, Academic Support, and Tax Levy
- 00:29:22: Estimated Tax Rates, Budget Availability, and Public Comment Introduction
- 00:32:35: Public Comment 1: Clarification of Seven FTE Positions
- 00:34:11: Public Comment 2: Harrison School Layoffs and Special Education Impact
- 00:35:03: Public Comment 3: Capital Reserve Balance and Roofing Projects
- 00:40:57: Public Comment 3 Continued: Fieldhouse Size and Energy Costs
- 00:42:48: Public Comment 4: Fieldhouse Opposition and Enrollment Projections
- 00:47:18: Public Comment 4 Continued: State Funding Increase Discrepancies
- 00:50:54: Public Comment 5: Budget Priorities, Fieldhouse vs. SRO
- 00:54:55: Public Comment 6: Strong Support for Fieldhouse Project
- 00:58:06: Board Comments, Budget Resolution, and Public Budget Hearing Adjournment
- 01:03:56: Public Conference Meeting Opening and President's Report
- 01:09:57: Public Comment 7: Safety Concerns, Locked Doors, and Armed Officers
- 01:13:52: Public Comment 8: Champions Aftercare Program and System Issues
- 01:17:16: Meeting Adjournment: Mother's Day Wishes and Closing Remarks


Part: 1

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Good evening everyone. Thank you so much for coming and welcome to the Caldwell West Caldwell Board of Education public budget hearing tonight, Monday, May 4th. The board met in executive session tonight at 6 PM here at James Caldwell High School in room 105. The purpose of

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that meeting was to discuss personnel litigation, miscellaneous, and old business matters. That meeting has been advertised and is in compliance with the Open Public Meeting Act and NJSA104-6, also known as the Sunshine Law. The matters discussed will be made public when confidentiality is no longer

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required, and formal action pursuant to said discussion shall take place only at a meeting to which the public has been invited. Tonight, the public conference meeting is taking place at 7:01 p.m. here in the James Caldwell High School cafeteria. The board of education meeting will be streamed live, but all community questions and comments will be

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welcomed here in person only. The Caldwell West Caldwell Board of Education public conference meeting is also in compliance with the open public meetings act and NJSA10 colon board-6 also known as the sunshine law. Notices have been sent to the progress call New Jersey the star ledger Newark New Jersey

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and tap into West Essex. Notices have also been posted at the board of education business office located in the Harrison School Building, Grey Street, West Caldwell, and have been delivered to the clerks of the Burrow of Caldwell and the Township of West Caldwell for posting. Brian, can you please take the role?

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>> Yes. Mr. [cough] >> Miss D. Martini >> here. >> Miss Lindy Jefferson >> here. >> Miss Mac >> here. >> Miss Groso >> here. >> So, we have four voting members present. We have a quorum. Can everyone please rise for the pledge of allegiance?

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I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Okay. Uh Dr. Fenari, any reports this

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evening? Um, well, the purpose of our meeting is for the public hearing of our budget for the 2627 school year. So, I'm going to turn the microphone over to Mr. McCarthy and uh Oh, you're going to go that way.

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Okay, great. And he will present the budget to the board. Take this All right. Hi. Uh again, my name is Brian McCarthy. I'm the school business administrator for the Quala West Coalwa district. And um I'm going to take about

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10 minutes and you can't hear. Is that better? And take about 10 minutes to talk to you about the budget. Okay. And I have it up here and I'm going to be looking here. I'll be looking to you as well. It's kind of weird. Um but this is I guess how you you see me on the on

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camera. So, uh, the the budget, uh, you're going to see this slides and you're going to see some things that we've seen in the past. So, um, here we go. >> Which one here? >> [cough]

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>> All right. So, um, every every budget presentation that I've ever made, I start with the slide and it's really the basics. Um, you know, what is a budget? And we tell I I say this because our budget is a a plan um financial

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presentation of our future uh revenue and expenses uh stated in monetary terms. Uh it's not a narrative of some of our academic goals. We'll talk about that, but it's really about the numbers. Um, and we're looking at how we can support the district's educational needs

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um, through our expression of the revenue and expenses. And I also say it's a living document, which means that things can change over time. This is what we planned as we started our our process. But again, things as as as

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things change, they say a living document, we can we can modify or change as a board. This is small and uh I'm going to say that this may sound like what I I I spoke about last year, but unfortunately the world has not changed. Uh we're in

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the same uh predicament. Uh like many other school districts, here are some of the financial challenges that are facing uh not only call West Cwell but many other New Jersey districts. So, we have a 2% statutory cap on revenue and that

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has not gone away. That's, you know, that's what the state has um uh has allowed us to do uh as far as how much we can raise local taxes uh year-over-year. And the only caveat to how that can change is that the state

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will give you sometimes what they call healthc care adjustments um or enrollment adjustments. And what they are are adjustments uh in the tax levy. So if you have a large health care expense uh you may get part of that uh

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taxing authority back in order to meet your rising expenses. So you know that hasn't changed. So what's happened this year and and like many other districts and you've seen this actually in the papers health care costs I'm going to say we'll use the

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word they're out of control. Um here we had uh a 24% rise in our budgeted health care expenses year-over-year. Now um I'll say the good news and the bad news. It's about 2.1 million higher than last

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year's budget. Uh we were in a state education health benefit plan. They were up 33%. We shopped last summer and our broker said great news. Um we got you're saving a million dollars from the worst case scenario. We're still up $2.1

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million. So, we we had that large expense built into our budget. We have three and a half% average teacher salaries and we have other rising costs. And most people can do the math. You say, "How can you sustain 2% revenue

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with all these costs?" And again, it's not sustainable. Um, we're in pretty good shape, but we've had to make some uh we some cuts to expenses in order to balance the budget. And the other things again that we're looking at, you know, recent inflation

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is is kicking up right now. So, this is a challenge. You know, what's going on with gas prices, we know what's going on, you know, either with tariffs or the oil shock. I mean, I wrote this last month and obviously the oil shock's not going away. So, this is going to filter into some of our uh our costs. The other

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thing that is still on the table is we're, you know, we're not sure about uh state aid or federal aid that is um funneled to the state. Uh right now some of the IDEIDA and um some of our title one is called ESCA or or No Child Left

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Behind. That's they've renamed it a couple times. Uh we've not we're not sure we're going to get that. The other large revenue driver is extraordinary aid from the state and I don't budget for that. That's something that helps us balance and and pay for things that come up during the year. And that's how we

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we've been able to have surplus the last couple years has been through not budgeting and retaining some of our externary aid. So again, uh I use this term last year streamlining. How do we deal with something like this? Well, we're looking at cost containment. Uh we

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really made some changes without uh impacting instruction. So the the last thing we've been trying to do is affect the resources that go into the teachers and in the kids in the classroom and and to that extent um we've made you know we've made some some cuts.

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So again this is last year. How do we how do we build a budget? Uh we are zerobased budgeting. So we don't roll up a budget from the prior year and say here let's spend 2% more. everyone gets additional money. The budget is formed

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by needs. Um sometimes there's wants. A lot of wants aren't aren't being uh fulfilled this year, but uh every year uh our administrators and our supervisors will submit budgets and they'll say here's what I need to run our district. Um so that's what

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zerobased budgeting and sometimes the needs change and this is why we can have account lines that some years seem higher than others. It really depends of how our programs are changing. In in addition to things that we've done this year, we are reducing um a total of

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seven full-time equivalent positions. FTE is, you know, the acronym and uh and it's in instruction and central office staffing and um so we are going to have seven fewer positions that you know full-time that we're going to pay for.

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what happened uh since we did the budget, we have had some resignations, some retirements. So, I'm going to say fortunately, this doesn't mean that seven people are losing their positions. We're going to be able to move some of the staff within the district. So that

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we, you know, the net net is we we have we don't have that many as many employees that actually be losing their jobs are either going to be offered positions that um where uh there's been a vacancy that we still had budgeted um or they were move or transfer within the

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district. We also continue to look at reducing supply budgets um required maintenance budgets. Those are things that we are doing for our facilities. As you can tell, uh, I've been here, this is my fifth year here, and we are doing a lot

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with the schools. Um, we've done a referendum. Um, you can look at the you can look at various parts of every school here, including the wall over there last summer, and we're making the improvements. Um, we're just, you know, we just can't continue to grow that budget. So, those those numbers have

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been reduced. uh technology slight reductions and you know we were able to u buy a lot of our one to one devices last year so I didn't have to put them back in this year's budget so it's a reduction in technology spending for computers and our data center is really the behind the scenes networking

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type of resources and they're in pretty good shape right now so we're we're not um we've reduced some of that spending um slightly uh we're also I guess the technology and consulting expanding. So, uh that's more on the personnel side here, but those are some of the things that we've

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targeted. Some of these things happened last year, so we're, you know, we're continuing the same same type of items. I don't know if you can see this slide here. It's it's small but uh this is I I had a slide last year and I want you to know that we still are spending uh I'd

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say healthy and if you look at the trend line for this is really for instruction regular instruction curriculum and training uh there's small I apologize for that but we're still this year for regular programs for we're we're at

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17279 that's the last last um number on the top line here we're 196 last year we were only 14 million in five years ago. So you can see we've really upped the spending on instruction supplies. You can see textbooks um uh improving

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instruction is really um you know part of our curriculum um our curriculum department um as far as introducing and and monitoring our uh you know how we write and um

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I guess teach curriculum and then and then staff training. So this is really if you look at the total numbers they are at least as equal um if not greater than last year and clearly you see the trend line is it's it's much greater than it was you know five years ago. So

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we continue to spend on this you know what I said when I started we haven't eliminated spending for um you know for for the kids and staff. Okay, numbers. That was that we go back to the numbers. Now, here you saw this

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slide last year. I like this slide because it easily shows you um where the money comes from and where we're spending. This is just a like I call it a summary sheet. If you look at the left side, I have revenue in green. That

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makes sense and I to me anyway. And I had the expenses in red. So on on the top line here, you can see that we have a total tax levy up there that's increased by $2 million. All right. So we have our tax levy of 2%. That's only

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a million dollars on a a roughly $67 million budget. We have um some bank cap that we had last year that we used, which is, you know, equates to, you know, 81 basis points or 081 of our tax increase. And then we have some of that

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healthcare adjustment I talked about 1.09% we took. So it the year-over-year we have a 2 million67 954 increase in tax levy. I'll give you more detail before that comes to 3.9%. We could have gone more. We could have

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taken another million dollars but we didn't. We decided to to try to cut on the expense side here. So we we're you know if you look at our neighbors we are we're much less than what a lot of our surrounding towns are doing. They're going five six% and we tried to say

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we're going to take some of that. We don't want to raise taxes um but we we we need to take some of it to cover some of the large expenses. The other um so those are our big uh revenue items. You can see the other revenue items we have are state aid. It's only about you know it's

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3,858. I have a couple things here. Tuition, transportation fees, uh rental facilities. That's really the income we get from our um uh our before uh before and afterare program. And that just goes

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on outside on the expense to pay the um overtime for the custodians who help manage you know the program so we can have our before and afterare programs. In the yellow are these one-time expenses. Excuse me. Uh it's one-time revenue sources that we can put in the

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budget. Uh excess surplus is what's left when we have a um a um the end of a fiscal year. I'm able to take some of that from the two years before and add this as a revenue item to the budget. The other ones that are one time, they just sort of gross out the budget in

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here. Uh we're we're drawing money for some projects. So, we have two projects I outlined here. One for the fieldhouse, one for the elevator to Washington school. We're going to take from our capita reserve account. Um, and they only can spend on projects. So, there I

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have them and they're they're they're nonrecurring revenue. So, grosses up our total budget on the operating budget is 67,161. On the right side here are expenses and these are our large expense items. We have salaries. Um we have employee

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benefits. I have other type insurance. Uh and then I say all all else but you can look just in to in total employee benefits. Our new number is 13 million222 and we are up 2.2 million and that's

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largely the health benefits I talked to you about before being up 24%. So just think about this. If you look at our revenue on our state aid, excuse me, on our tax levy 3.9 I I'm raising $2 million 267,000

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2 million67 954 on the on the on the state aid that is only covering just the increase of the health benefits. I mean so you can say just math doesn't add up. You're correct. It doesn't. So we had to make some adjustments. Our salaries are only.3 yearover-year budget-wise.

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Although we're paying three and a half% for the teachers, which means that we had to make some cuts. This is the increase over last year's budget figures. We have a 10% rise in our prop or other type of insurance if it which is our

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property casualty um liability insurance. It's a small item. We have tuition uh which is our out of district tuition uh for our our our children with special needs. And then we have all else. So if you look at the numbers

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here, you can say we have many salary uh excuse me expense uh categories where we have very little ability to um to change the outcome because some of these things uh we have to pay regardless of um of what our our

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revenue is. So So those are the numbers. Um and then it balances on the other side here. We're going to spend that $7 million on a two capital projects which are budgeted. This slide here, this is the rest of our budget. We have some uh we have some federal grants. They're small. So, we

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have I told you the IDA and the um the ESSER, excuse me, the uh ESA grants or we call it title one, title two, and it's about 647,000. The largest uh grant we get here is ID8 basic. It's uh stands for individual uh

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disabilities education act. You may have heard of that. That goes largely directly to offset our out of district um tuition. So our tuition is about $3 million and we we we go right to that line to offset that cost. Finally, the

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other part of our budget is our debt service. And our debt service is broken down how much by Cwell, how much uh by West Callwell and then how much we get from aid from the state. So we have debt service aid. It's large this year uh because of the um it's a carryover from

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last year. So our total budget that you're going to see here is 72,592. This slide here is the same information stated in a different way. So in our budget on the expense side, these are all the programs that we uh we spend on

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and the top is, you know, regular instruction, special education all the way down to um employee health benefits and insurance. Now the ones that I have in red um red means that we are spending

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um uh more excuse me spending less and in this case here uh no just we're spending less okay and what I highlighted up here in the next slide here you'll be able to see the programs where we had the large changes I sort of gave I I outlined those ones

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and and we're explaining um you know what the changes were The bottom part of here is if you look at the categories, if you take all these programs that we're spending on and you look on the bottom, if you look at the right side, what you what I like you to notice is

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that if you look at salaries, salaries without this one-time facilities um in our budget is 57% of our budget. Employee benefits are 22% of our budget and property casual is is 2% of our budget. So we're talking about 80 over

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85% of our budget are things that we have little control over. So the 15% of the other expenses where we can actually effectuate any change because these things were obligated to pay. In this slide here, I just outlined some

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of the changes where we had um like over $100,000. So, I said that's a big thing. It's actually on, you know, $67 million budget. It doesn't seem like much, but here's the changes. So, regular program instruction, I said that we are spending less. And this one, green means we're

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spending less. Red means we're spending more. So, regular program instructions are the reduction in the FTEES, as I which I talked to before. So, we're down about $400,000. Um, next one I had was special education instruction. We're spending 174,000

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uh more this year and this is largely just the increase of salaries for our staff. Community service programs, we are spending $138,000 less uh excuse me um less. And what I did was I moved

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So what I did was this is in our operating budget. What I did was we moved many of our salaries that were some of our community programs from our operating budget to our what's called fund 61. So we have something it's an enterprise fund where we can we can we

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can put some of the costs over there. So that's what we did to help take some of that money out of this budget. And the community service programs are some of the things you see at school here, the night school you see here. You see some of the summer programs we have. They're all part of what we call our our fund 61. But they're community service

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programs. The other change we had here, tuition. You can see uh it doesn't stop. Another big item I told you before, we can get 10 15% uh increases in tuition and we don't really have a choice of whether we

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can uh we could say we're not going to pay. If we have a child placed here, they have the ability to go up 10%. And they can actually come back to us um several years later and said we got audited and our expenses are actually higher and we're going to we're going to rebuild

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you. by the way, and we call them rebuilds. It's the only place I've ever heard of that, but this is what's allowed in our business. Extraordinary services. This is increase in uh pair professionals uh expenses in our district. Child study team, we have

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uh we're down 182,000. That's largely from a one reduction in uh position and some other expenses. transportation. I'm I'm paying we're up 124,000 and this is increase in payroll costs largely for our drivers and our aids. Employee

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benefit health insurance right there it's small it's a third from second from the bottom 298 $2.2 $2 million. Again, it's 22 to 20 22% increase this year um over our our

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benefits. It's actually it's 22% for health benefits. It was 24% that other line which are all employee benefits which include other um employee benefits, not just our health costs. Finally, I have down here with the other line that said we have $7 million. It's

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a one-time expense for a capital outlay, but that's in our budget. some of the things that we've done this year. Uh we're, if you come, if you've been around the district, again, I said we're not a construction site. We certainly will be this summer. So, if you come around here, you're going to see every school except for Harrison,

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which we just finished, is going to have some construction. High school here, we're going to do the skylights. We're doing the vestibules. We're doing the steam lab. Uh we're doing the the HVAC in the gyms. So, you come into school here, wear a hard hat. Okay? Maybe. No,

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actually don't come here, please. All right. [laughter] No, you are welcome. Um, so we've placed this year we placed a boiler uh at Washington School. Um, we are uh we up upgraded the stairs and repair the stairs at Bonell Field. Um,

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that's one one staircase, the left one we're probably going to take out because it goes to nowhere, but we fixed that. We are um again, we're doing the skylights in the media center uh this summer. Um, no one notices that the skylights don't work until it rains and then you know it's it's it's pretty wet

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in there. Uh, and then we're again we're going to upgrade we also upgraded um we're going to upgrade the lights at the main gym and those those all came out of this year's budget. Some of them are in in in process and you say they haven't been done but they are they're being funded out of this year's money not next

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year's. uh in the technology uh we also bought a lot of equipment and uh furniture and technology for our steam endeavor. What I think we probably uh articulate this to you but when we

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passed the referendum a lot of what is included is things that are attached to the wall. So a lot of the movements uh excuse me the change in the floor plans and all the other types of ventilation systems for the shops that is part of the referendum but the equipment movable

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furniture is not. So we have to uh we have to pay for that but we're able to buy that all in this year's budget plans for the budget here. So, as I told you, we are uh we went out to bid. Actually, we opened a bid for the

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Washington elevator last year. We have a million bucks in the budget for that. Um it's either going to be 750,800 depending on if we can accept uh one of the bids. One of them may we'll see, but it's going to be either be [snorts] 750,000 or 800. So, we're going to have

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we're only going to use uh 800 of the cap reserve. Although we budgeted a million, it's coming under. We also have um as we told you before, we we're planning to uh demolish the fieldhouse at at the high school here um

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on Bonel Field and uh construct a new fieldhouse and we put $6 million in the budget. We're probably going to spend less than that. We don't want to um once we started this plan, we realized we'd have to do some of the roofs at Wilson and uh and Jefferson. So, realistically,

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we're thinking that it's probably going to be somewhere around $4.5 millionish for for that. We've we have a couple plans. We're pretty confident that uh we can do something uh you know, very nicely for that kind of money. So, it's going to come in there. That was a plan. Again, the plans are uh it's a living

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document we're able to submit and change. um we or we could do nothing but that's what the plan is for now. These are some of the things we did. Uh you know as far as academics in the budget not as I had mentioned we

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continue to support uh academics the arts um nothing's changed the budget. still have a very healthy budget for our our our arts, uh the musicals, uh as far as other type of uh resources.

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We're in very good shape right now with our onetoone device um initiative at the school. Um and then as far as athletics, we we added a couple programs. These are small, but you know, we're growing. We're we have a decent sports culture

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here. Good thing I like sports. Uh they we have an addition of a flag football program and we also have addition of a freshman girls soccer team. So those are new teams. Um and again we're going to have some coaches for that in the budget as well, but they're they're new uh and

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they're reflected in the budget. Tax levy. These are numbers. They come out of the software. Uh this is what we spent last year and FY26 fiscal year 26. FY27 is a 2026 2027. I say FY just so

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you know because otherwise it gets too confusing. Let's let's talk about the end of the year. So we're going to raise the total tax levy as I had alluded before. It's 2,67954. So that comes up to a 3.9% change dollar

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over last year's budget compared to $53 million. the debt service tax levy. This is the money that the district has um we're obligated to pay through some of our referendums. All right. Things that the the town has voted on and we have

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actually between the town with it's a it's a slight decrease because of the way the allocation is. So it's a total of million 920 from 255 from a million 92427 last year. So that's pretty much flat. So the weighted average for the two

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towns for the money is a 3.76% tax levy increase. Now again, this is for the public school. This is not your the total tax bill because the taxes are based on the municipal taxes um as well as county taxes. Then you're going to come up with a a weighted average. These

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are estimates that we have that's calculated through our budget software. estimated school tax rates. So, this is coming again. This is in our user friendly budget. I'm not sure if anyone looked and tried to it's in there. It's out there. Um, we also have a we have a

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more we'll have a the full budget should be posted there as well. But our tax rate from last year to this year is u for Cwell is actually down slightly. And again, this has to do with ratables and the tax base in each town. Uh Cwell's

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taxes are going to go down slightly. Uh you know, it's 0.0157. Uh this is per 100,000. Um West Cwells are going to go up 0.555.

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Okay. And if you look at the next slide, this is what it means. uh roughly going down $15 per 100,000 assessed value in Cwell, going up roughly $55 and change

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for $100,000 assessed value in West Cwell as I mentioned our budget our user friendly budget for some people it's not that userfriendly But uh you can always call the office if you have any questions about the budget. Um

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with that I say thank you very much. Okay. >> All right. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you Brian. >> Okay. So that being said we will now take public comments on the budget only. So just how everyone who's maybe not familiar understands tonight we have a

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public conference meeting that will immediately follow this budget hearing. So if anyone came to address the board on anything outside of the budget, you will have a chance to do that when we close this hearing. We adopt the budget, close the hearing, and then open the next meeting. Okay? But right now, we'll accept public comments on the budget

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only. Please be advised that public participation shall be governed by the following. Participant must be recognized by the presiding officer and must preface comments by an announcement of their name and address. Statements are to be limited to three ministeration and may only address items on the agenda, which right now is the budget

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only. All statements are to be directed to the presiding officer. Boards use the public comment period of a meeting as an opportunity to listen to citizen concerns, but not to debate issues or enter into a question and answer session or a cross-examination between the public and individual members. Please be

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aware that not all issues brought before the board will be resolved this evening. Boards may respond to public comment by seeking additional information or by delegating the authority to investigate the issue to the superintendent or her designate. The presiding officer may interrupt, warn, or terminate a participant's comments if they exceed

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the allotted time or are objectively obscene. Participants may be civily liable for any obscene, defamatory, or slanderous statements during during the public comment portion of the meeting. So, that being said, would anyone like to address the board, Mr. McCarthy, Dr.

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Fernari, about the budget? Good evening. Uh Andy Brown, 13 Burkundine CDwell. Uh just hoping you can uh clarify a little bit where those seven positions are coming from. I know you said you're shifting people around a little bit, but I'm I'm wondering, you know, ultimately where those seven FTEEs

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are coming from. >> So, they're coming from a number of different areas in the district. We have uh four teaching positions. We have one um support staff position as as a certified support staff position. We also have

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several part-time positions that are non-certified staff members and um we have some of those coming from the central office. >> Okay. And the uh the four teaching positions, uh do we know which schools those are coming from or or >> uh no staff have been notified about any

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of that yet. So I really can't divulge any of those transfers until they um the programs are not being eliminated as such. We're working on staffing efficiencies to reduce number of staff. >> Okay. So ultimately there's going to be

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four or less teachers >> uh and then the other three are from support and child study team etc. Is that right? >> Yes. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. >> You're welcome. Anyone else? Samantha O'Neal. I live at 14 Johnson Avenue.

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Following his comment and regarding the layoffs that are happening with these teachers, I'm wondering why it's coming down to Harrison School and two of the preschool teachers are being laid off for the 2026 2027 school year.

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I cannot speak to um staffing matters at all. Just know that that is a misnomer. >> It's not correct. >> Okay. That being said, your budget presentation regarding the special

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education program, I'm just I hope that the special ed program is not the one being affected by budget cuts. I think I said before there are no programs that are being eliminated. We're working on staffing efficiencies

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but we are not eliminating program. >> Okay. Thank you Brian. Okay. Liz Hart 149 Ravine. Um okay. So I did look at the user friendly budget. it was very friendly. Uh and the estimated balance it showed um for June

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30th, 2026 is about 8.9 million for capital reserve. Right? So the last meeting we spoke about Wilson and Jefferson 2.6 million the board voted on it right to take that from capital reserve.

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But is that coming out of the current year's budget or next year's budget? It has to be next year, right? >> Next 2.6. >> Yes. >> The roofs. >> Yes. >> Coming out of this year. >> Oh, it's coming out of this year. So the

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the 8.986 >> reflects the 2.6 reduction that's being taken as part of the roofs. >> No. >> Okay. So then in theory then that should

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really say 6.3. So that was um that was not uh uh let's see that was not part of our budget. >> Okay. I don't understand. So that wasn't part of your budget.

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But you're saying as of June 30th, 2026, the projected balance for the cap reserve would be 8.9 million. But that is taking into account the 2.6 6 million for the two roof roof projects.

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>> True or false? >> I'm not following your question. >> Okay. My question is does the 8.9 million balance in capital reserve is that that balance is that before the roof costs or after the roof costs?

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>> That should be before the roof cost. >> Okay. So, if it's before the roof cost, then you have 8.9, right? And then you're subtracting 2.6. six. >> This was something that was actually came to our attention after um the budget was submitted.

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>> Okay. So, I guess that's actually my other question too. So, this budget that was submitted I think at the footer it said like 4:30 or maybe whatever the date was, right? That you when you submitted it to the state, right? So then in theory, and I know you keep saying that the field has up to 6

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million, you say that there's probably you're going to spend 4.5, but really when it states 6 million for next year's budget, it is it fair to assume that that's fieldhouse plus the two roofing projects that the 6 million is

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reflective of. >> So our our capital reserve I'll just >> Yes. So, our capital reserve right now I think with interest is about 9.2 million.

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>> Okay. >> 9.2 million. Uh I think we're going to have say we were uh 7 million less for uh the fieldhouse and the elevator, >> right? >> So that's 2.2 million,

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>> right? And and if we were going to then go um >> 2.6 now we're negative 400 again. That that's what just what I'm trying to understand. >> I think we've said it a couple times. Like >> I know >> Groundhog Day. >> I know. I know it is groundhog day. >> We're going to go four and a half million not six.

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>> 100%. That's why that's why I don't understand why it's keep it continues to be reflected on here that it's the 6 million. That's what I just don't understand. So if it's truly like four and a half or it's fieldhouse plus the two roofing projects, you know.

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>> So, I it's a plan and as I I think we talked before is we can't spend more than what we have. We're aware of that, >> right? >> And we want to keep some of >> uh we don't want to completely deplete the cap reserve account, right?

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>> Because board president had alluded to last last week, >> right? >> So, we're going to spend less on the fieldhouse. So when we have the cap reserve account whatever the total is

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less the project for the elevator which is coming in already under budget so there's a couple hundred thousand there >> um then we have um the field again the fieldhouse project the elevator the

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roofs um and then if we have a slight contribution to at the end of this year which I think we might have some >> right >> then we're hoping to have a couple, you know, some some something between a million and two million left in the capital reserve >> when we finish all these projects.

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>> Okay. So, that's the goal is to leave the balance roughly 1 to2 million taking into account two roofing projects, elevator plus fieldhouse. >> That's correct. >> Okay. Awesome. I mean, not awesome, but like thank you for clarifying that because yeah, the way that it's being presented, it looks like it's six

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million for the fieldhouse even though you just said up to six million, right? There's not even a mention of the two roof projects in this latest uh budget at all. >> Well, because they really could have come out of this year and and it was after we submitted um that we really said we going to go go forward with the the roofs.

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>> Okay. Okay. I mean, I feel like it's fine. I I I hear what everyone's saying. May I ask one more question? So in your budget you also mentioned that there was a 10% increase right in the energy and electric and gas utilities

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that general cost has gone up plus 10%. Right? And so again just want to reiterate right when you are looking through plans and the board is reviewing that for the fieldhouse which will presumably be larger than the current footprint. Right? Gas and electricity

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bills will go up which will increase our operating cost towards [clears throat] the general budget not capital reserve that us as taxpayers will be responsible to have to pay whenever this fieldhouse is completed which will contribute to

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additional expenses. So I just ask that the board take that into account when thinking about the size of the fieldhouse and how that will increase our costs. Thank you. So, I think that just to add on to that, um it's a great point. Um

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we're we're we're cognizant of that and uh the fieldhouse is not going to be as big as the first um iteration, you know, when we had the first referendum. I will say that we're going to be building a brand new fieldhouse that's going to

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probably have LED lights, will probably have better energy systems. So, uh, if you were going to compare costs could be higher because of the commodities and we don't have a whole lot of control over that, but we are going to be putting up something

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theoretically that's more energy efficient. So, we could see some savings, but we're aware that we could see a slight increase just because the commodities right now are are are heading higher. But you know, we're gonna have a 50 or actually 50 1948.

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We're gonna have a 75 year old building 77 that's going to be ripped down and we're going to put up something in 2026 which much better mechanicals and energy efficiencies than what was there. So, we're going to have some savings there. >> Okay, great. Thank you. >> I'm I'm hoping.

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>> Okay, awesome. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Any other questions on the budget? My name is Tom Ferrell. I live at 18 Kramer Avenue, West Cwell, just a block beyond the Washington School. I know none of you, so there's nothing

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personal here, but the um fieldhouse has been directed twice by the Burke voters. 3,14 voters voted against it and I

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believe that at town the uh fieldhouse is not subject to any uh state funding that it comes up from the local taxpayers. Is that correct? It comes from the local tax that

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fieldhouse comes from the taxpayers not from the state funding. You can't apply funding for that. Right. We don't get any death service aid for that this crisis. >> Okay. No, we have some things happening in town. We have 96 units built at the

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Welch form farm area. Mostly, I believe they'll be age related. The Durkin building is going to be demolished and 130 to 180 residential units will be built there. Newtonberg Way, which is the block, which is the block after the

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Honda dealer, will have 50 residential units. Shopright has 10 acres, what they have now, plus more, which will allow a builder to put 290 residential units there. The buildings on Lane Avenue, I

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don't know how many residents are there, but what we have is a influx of school enrollment and uh that is not I don't see that in the budget. you're you're spending the

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money on a fieldhouse and here we have close to 200 to maybe 600 new students might be coming in in the next period of time and you're not making any preparation for it. >> Oh, sure. >> Is any disagreement with these numbers

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because they're pretty solid. >> So, if I can address that. >> Um, I'd like to address that if I may. So the district has a uh demographer who we are working with that's going to give us some some of those numbers um and

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projections over time for what our enrollment may be in the future. And that's so that's we're trying to be fiscally responsible in planning for those students. The other thing to know is that when our school buildings were built, they were built for a larger

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enrollment capacity than we currently serve. So all of our schools while it is um you know people may think we don't have space we have space in those buildings to accommodate more children. What we may need to do is to take a look

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down the road in the future what it means for the um the lines of you know where our uh lines for different schools are the neighborhoods that report to each school. So, as those new facilities come on board, and I I'll talk about,

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you know, the just the logistics of the Shopright property, for example, >> right, >> there are two schools, two elementary schools that are very close to that property, Wilson School and Jefferson School. So, our demographer is going to

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help us try to predict with whatever number of units that that that developer does end up putting in there and how many have two or more bedrooms because, you know, if each of those units has two or more bedrooms, it's likely that a family will move in. So, um all of the

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demographers information is going to help us in the future to determine which school may accommodate that facility. So every time there is a new construction in the district, it's important for us to work closely with the housing

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development association uh with the comm with the township so that we understand in advance where the um the students may need to be accommodated. So yes, I appreciate the numbers that you shared with us and we are definitely planning for that in the future. >> One thing that wasn't mentioned in the

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budget was that we got 1.82% 82% increase in the state funding. North Cwell got 6%. West Essex Regional got 6% and we get 1.82. How How did that happen?

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>> It's in the It's published information. >> We got 1.82% increase in school funding, right? >> State aid. >> State aid. Yes. Okay. So why >> but North Pole got six. >> Okay.

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>> And West Essex got six. >> So um the state uh it's the funding formula. So we this year we received >> it's a published information. I didn't create these numbers. Okay. I I can answer your question if you'd like.

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So our aid um from the state is dependent on um largely on enrollment. So our our aid that we receive from the state is dependent largely on our enrollment. So every year in October we

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fill out what's called the ASSA. The acronym stands for application for school state aid. It's a long long long application and they look at all our numbers and then the state awards us aid

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largely based on our enrollment for regulate uh for regular ed education students as well as special education students. So we'll get aid based on those numbers. So what we apply for we we we have to do a snapshot on October 15th. They want to know exactly who's on

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our roles, where we're sending kids, and then based on that information, the state will will award us aid. That's how it works. I don't really have a choice. We're hoping if we know our enrollment is roughly flat, we were hoping to get roughly flat aid today. So, what

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happened in North Cwell? >> I I that's that's you have to talk to North Cwell, >> right? I didn't create these, Mark. These are published information, >> right? So I I I can't answer to why North Call got more, but it's that that's how the a the application is is um >> is that you you you make you apply for

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start site funding, >> correct? >> So you prepare a a grant request. >> Well, it's not a it's an application. So we >> application. >> Yes. >> And then they will award based on our application. Our application has to be true. We have to put down our enrollment by school, by type of students, whether

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it's, you know, we get a lot of detail and based on that they're going to come back and award us aid. I will tell you if we had a large increase in enrollment, we would expect some uh, you know, extra uh, aid based on our enrollment. Our our numbers were flat.

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So, our our application last year, we had 2535 on our role. This year, it was 255. So we're actually down 30 kids from last year. So I was hoping to get about the same and we did. So had we been up 200 kids, I would have expected

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additional aid. So we we were flat and I expected to be flat based on our our enrollment numbers. >> Okay. Just for information, my five children graduated from this school. Mhm. >> And uh I speak on the benefits of education since I hold three degrees in

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the business field and I have a career that spans uh many different characteristics and in six years and 10 months I'll be 100 years old. >> Oh, God bless you. Oh my god. >> Wow. [applause]

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Anyone else want to speak or ask questions about the budget? >> Hi, my name is Kimberly Lie. I live at one Nutenberg Way, the new apartments that were built on um Bloomfield. Um, I'm speaking tonight as a taxpayer, a

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um, healthcare professional, and the mother of two children in the Calwell West Caldwell School System. I'm looking at the proposed $72.5 million budget. And the budget is more than a spreadsheet. Is a declaration of what this district values, and right now, the values on these pages are contradictory.

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I fully support investing in our physical facilities, including the fieldhouse. But the math behind it exposes a very clear choice. Last year, the voters of this town rejected the fieldhouse funding twice. Yet in this document, they show a $7 million withdrawal directly from the capital

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reserve. And then we show a $7 million a lot allocated for facilities acquisition. When this board decides a building is a priority, it possesses the immense financial resourcefulness to bypass the voters and drain $7 million from savings to get it done. If we have the capacity

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to fund the structures our children play in, we have absolutely zero excuse not to fund the trained professionals who protect them while they are inside. For 15 years, I have worked as a registered nurse and I currently oversee clinical operations. In medicine, we deal in empirical reality. And the

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reality of school safety today is not just about locked doors and fire drills. The threats our children face are acute, real-time emergencies. From the thousands of federal reports of digital extortion targeting minors to severe mental health crisises to harassment that crosses into criminal behavior

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in a hospital setting. We would never ask an administrator to do the job of a nurse or a surgeon. We apply that exact same logic to our schools. We do not ask our teachers to act as medical staff. We put a dedicated trained nurse in every single building. So why are we asking

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those same educators to handle acute security and behavioral crisises? a capacity they are completely untrained for. Expecting a teacher to act as a first responder without the lawful authority or tactical training to safely intervene is not a safety strategy. It's a

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catastrophic liability. My husband Jonathan has spent 21 years in law enforcement. We know the difference between managing a hallway and securing a community. A modern SRO is a trained deescalator who stops a crisis before response is ever needed.

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Furthermore, I see an account 103177 in this exact budget. It shows that this district is receiving over $45,000 and categorical security aid from the state. Where exactly is half a million dollars of security funding going, if not to a dedicated professional inside

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the building. We know the district is currently operating under an interim superintendent, but student safety is not a capital project. It cannot be deferred until a permanent leader is hired. You've proven that when you want a building, you can find $7 million to pay for it. In healthcare, when you know

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a severe risk exists and you have the resources to mitigate it, but choose not to, that is not an oversight. That is negligence. Tonight, this board board is voting to go on the official public record. This budget will be the documented proof of whether you choose to prioritize an aesthetic building over

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the essential empirical safety of our children. you are aware of the risks and you have the capacity to mitigate them. We expect a line item for a school resource officer in this budget. Thank you. Anyone else? My name is Linda German. I live at 43

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Memorial Road in West Caldwell. Um, in regard to the budget, um, I just want to say I have voted in favor of the fieldhouse. I want to say publicly that, you know, if anyone has ever been in that fieldhouse, this is a building that

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has not been touched in 80 years. It has been a priority because it has not been touched, repaired, or maintained for 80 years. Any mo almost every kid in the district ends up on Bono Field for an event or something at some point. Even if your kid doesn't do a sport, if they

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have a friend who plays at the football field or as a cheerleader, they want to go to the pep rally. Chances are you're going to be there, they have bathrooms that are not working. Those are the only running working bathrooms attached to that field other than whatever is in this high school as far as I know. And why this continues to be such a point of

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contention with this community is something that's really beyond me at this point. Our kids deserve a working building with working water when they're on a field playing their sport. And that this hasn't been updated in 80 years is absolutely outrageous. It's an embarrassment to the community. This is

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a community that is athletic heavy, but that doesn't mean the other things are not important. This is something that's been neglected for far too long and it's been on the docket for two years. There's been so much back and forth. The board has heard commentary. The architect has rewritten the plans many

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times. We need this fieldhouse. I strongly support the fieldhouse. I hope that does work out. I know the district is working very hard to keep that cost as minimal as possible, which I think everyone in the community also supports. So, you can support the fieldhouse and also want to keep the cost low because

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it's something that's needed with, you know, rusting walls and and non- workinging bathrooms. It's it's it's really not of service to our community at this point. It hasn't been touched in 80 years. It's the same as being in one of the school buildings and saying, "Hey, there's a leak in the skylight,

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but let's ignore that and start spending money on some new stuff instead." So, I think that this is absolutely necessary and where the money needs to go right now. And as much as I know security continues to be a major concern at every school across America because it's

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everyone wants to keep their kids safe, I I would like to see the new safety procedures that the board passed last year and are working to construct this summer go into place before anyone's coming up here asking for more money for more security. I would like to see what

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the board has already worked to do in place before we start asking for more. And that is what I'm asking for as a member of this community. Burning asking for anything else is burning through the board's time. I really don't want to talk about the fieldhouse anymore. I want to move on to other things. So, thank you to the board for your service

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on this. I, you know, I hope this gets done without any more unexpected costs because the thing is too, construction and tariffs and everything is going up. The longer it takes for us to start this and get it done, chances are the more it's going to cost the whole district in the long run. and things that are not

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repaired then become dilapitated and cost more money. I I've witnessed it in other places in Caldwell. I just I want to see this get taken care of. So anyway, sorry to go on a little tirade there, but I you know very much support the fieldhouse and I know that the

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district voted against it twice, but I think we're at a point where the like the building is like borderline going to be condemned if we don't take care of it at this point. So, I want people to understand that if you have not been inside the fieldhouse, I encourage you to go over there, take a walk, go to an event, look at it. It's

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not in good shape. That's all. Thank you. >> Do you want to talk about the presentation we're doing? Okay. Anyone else? And like I said, we're going to enter into public conference meeting where you can address the board and continue to address the board. We

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appreciate all the comments. Just want to stick to really just the budget issues. I understand all of these things are part of line items of the budget. So appreciate all of it. Um but right now any other comments or questions really so you can understand the budget. Otherwise I'm going to move to vote the budget in and then we'll open the public

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conference meeting and you can continue to address the board about your concerns. So anyone else have any questions about the budget at this time for Mr. McCarthy? >> No. Okay. Okay. So we're going to move forward with the budget resolution. Before we actually do that, I just want

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to make a comment. Two things on behalf of the board. Really just thanking um Mr. McCarthy and Dr. Fernari for all the hard work. What people don't realiz is they start really working on the budget in the summer. The board really gets engaged with the budget around like

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December and it can be ugly being very transparent. Um it can be very ugly in some of those closed discussions. Um there's a lot of yelling, crying, yelling, screaming and then you know we come to where we are presenting today. All of it is really though to put the

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safety equality academics of the children first. Right? The the goal of this board is always kids first and um we really feel like this budget very responsibly takes that into consideration and also takes into consideration the burden on the taxpayer. Okay, we all pay taxes in this

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town and we want to be able to stay here. We don't want to increase our so much that people can't afford to raise their children here. It's a great town. We're very blessed to live where we live and at the community that we have, right? So, we're it's a delicate balance being on the school board, right? It's

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very delicate trying to manage taxes and trying to manage academics and kids' futures. It's tough. So, we appreciate all the input. I appreciate most importantly, and I do speak on behalf of the board, when people come here and direct us in person and look us in our

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eyes, it's easy to be a board warrior, but when you come here and you have conversations with us and air it in a respectful manner, we appreciate that more than anything. It's really easy to get on and call people names and say a lot of horrible things that a lot of the time isn't really rooted in any fact. It's a lot of fiction going on. So, I

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really just encourage anyone everyone here and anybody watching, this is why these meetings are here for us to have have intelligent respectful conversations and I encourage you to do that and stay off of the Facebook social media. Um that being said, we're going to move to adopt the budget. Upon the

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recommendation of the interim superintendent of schools, the call west coal board of education adopts the following resolution. Resolve that the Caldwell West Cwell board of education in the county of Essex approves the submission of the tentative 2026 2027 school district budget to the Essex

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County Superintendent of Schools. This budget meets the requirements for providing the New Jersey student learning standards and consists of the appropriations as follows. Brian, do you want me to read those all those lines? >> We have to read all theations. Okay, I've just skipped to the be resolved. Yeah.

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>> Be it resolved that the call west call board of education includes in the proposed budget the adjustment for the banked cap in accordance with the NJAC 6A23-10.1B. The district has fully exhausted all eligible statutory spending authority and must increase the base budget in the

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amount of $428,289 for the purpose of balancing budgeted spending which is 81% rise over uh oh looks like it was caught off cut off >> last year. last year. Okay. Therefore,

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be it resolved that the call west call board of education proposed the 2026 2027 tax levy is 55,000 55,92,411 which is 3.9% rise and 2,67,954 amount over the prior year. Whereas the call the school district

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policy 6471 school district travel and NJAC6A23A-7.3 provides that the board of education shall establish in the annual school budget a maximum expenditure amount that may be allotted for such travel and expense reimbursement for the 2627

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school year. And now therefore, be it resolved that the call west call board of education hereby establishes the school district travel maximum for the 2627 school year not to exceed 40,000. And be it further resolved that the public hearing and the proposed budget

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be held on May 4th, 2026 at 7 p.m. in the James Cwell High School cafeteria, Westville Avenue. >> Great job. Thanks. [laughter] >> Okay. Can I have a second? >> I'll second. >> And then Brian, whenever you're ready. >> Mini. Yes,

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>> Miss Liby. [snorts] >> Yes, >> Miss Mac. >> Yes, >> Miss Gome. >> Yes. >> 40. Motion carried. >> Now, can I have a motion to adjourn the public budget hearing at 8:04 p.m.? >> I'll make the motion. >> And a second, please. >> I'll second.

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>> And Brian, can you take the role? >> All in favor? I >> All against nay. Any abstensions? Motion car. >> Okay. And now let's move to open up the Quo Westwell Board of Education public

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conference meeting now at 8:04 p.m. Can I have a motion to open that meeting? >> I'll make a motion >> and a second. >> A second. >> Great. Um Dr. Fenari, do you have anything for superintendence report for the public conference meeting? Uh, I just wanted to make one

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announcement and that is for those of you who have been asking us about some security questions, we will be having a presentation at our May 11th meeting concerning school safety and security procedures that are in place in our district and plans for the future.

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>> Um, and then for the president's report, I just want to remind everyone that Spongebob the musical at GCMS is happening this weekend. one show on Friday, two on Saturday. So excited. Looks absolutely adorable. Um, please come out and support our very talented middle school students. They are the

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future of the James Cowell High School. Um, and they do a wonderful job at the middle school. It's so entertaining. So, please come. It's going to be adorable. And the other thing I want to um address as well is that um I'm going to make a joke at it. I told Dr. Fenari, but I'll be very polite. There is such a rivalry

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with West Essex and it seems like they might have gotten us. I received in my mailbox a postcard for a referendum and Dr. Fenari called me and she said, "Oh my goodness, we got a phone call from the West Essex superintendent. They

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pulled all the 07006 homes for their referendum announcement and it went to Caldwell and West Caldwell. So be prepared. People might come to the meeting yelling that you're doing another referendum." We are not officially not doing any more

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referendums. If you got a postcard, it is from West Essex. So, yes. Thank you, Dr. Mr. Machochi. The joke is on us. Yes. Okay. So, the Knights might have gotten the best of the Chiefs this time, but please be reassured that we are not going for another referendum. If you got a postcard in your mail, it was by

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accident. West Essex is going to be going for a referendum. And so, the North Cotal residents are part of 07006, which is why they pulled that. So, just to clarify that and put it on the record. Um so next week I'm going to peruse the agenda and then we'll move to

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public comment. Um you'll notice um I just want to say Mr. Frell you addressed about a demog demographic study. Um you addressed the buildings that are going on. So quite a few years back when Caldwell was doing a bunch of building they were doing the Lane Avenue

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apartments. Remember when Caldwell was putting all that up the district did do a demographic study. That was part of the reason why we went through and renovated the Harrison school building in anticipation from that. Honestly, at that time, the demographer told us there wasn't going to be a drastic change to

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the enrollment of the district, and we've seen that his numbers held true. We haven't seen a drastic rise of enrollment, but West Caldwell is now building. So, you'll see on the agenda, we are going to be um seeking the services of another demograph demographer to do another demographic

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study that really targets West Caldwell. Okay. So, I just wanted to address that. I know you said that at the podium, but it is part of this agenda, which is why I'm bringing it up. Okay. Um, >> one question I did ask for foot of the new townhouse,

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>> we don't have anything right now in stone, but I encourage you to come back once we settle on a a plan and architect. We will be very transparent. We will put the plans up. will put all the costs the line by line up so you can follow that for sure. Okay. So, just know we will be very transparent with

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that. We can't really speak to it because we don't have our plans yet. So, like I said, this budget for the fieldhouse has been revised since we made the plans to move forward with replacing the roofs in Wilson and Jefferson, which is also on the agenda tonight. There are two re resolutions to

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move forward with those roofs. So, those schools will be getting the roofs that they so desperately need. Um some other previews on the agenda. There's some staffing. Um there is I I said about the

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the resolutions about the roofs champions. We're going to be renewing a lot of contracts. So you'll see it's our champions. Um it's frontline. It's Genesis Strauss SMA which we use to update board policies. Um

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just seeing what else we have here. the Essex Regional Educational Services Commissions. Um some of our like our our doctors um the doctor's office. We have our architect's own record that we're putting in. Um and then just some usage

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of school facilities, the little league, um Bonell Field for the Cwell Athletic Club for some camps this summer for the kids, baseball camp, football camp, um some endofear picnics for Wilson school. Um so there's a lot going on. It's a

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busy time of year. Um, so now I'm going to open up public comment for anything on or off the agenda. I know we all spoke a lot, but I'm going to open it up again just to remind everyone. Public participation shall be governed by the following. Participant must be recognized by the presiding officer and

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must preface their an their comments by an announcement of their name and address. Statements are to be limited to three minutes duration. Participant may speak no more than once on the same topic until all others who wish to speak on that topic have been heard. All statements shall be directed to the presiding officer. Boards use the public comment period of the meeting as an

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opportunity to listen to citizen concerns, not to debate issues or enter into question and answer session or a cross-examination between the public and individual members. Please be aware that not all issues brought before the board will be resolved this evening. Boards may respond to public comment by seeking additional information or by delegating

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the authority to investigate the issue to the superintendent or her designate. The presiding officer may interrupt, warrant, and or terminate a participant's comments if they exceed the allotted time or are objectively obscene. Participants may be civily liable for any obscene, defamatory, or slanderous statements made during public

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comment. Would anyone like to address the board on anything at this point in time? [snorts] I'm so short. Sorry. Samantha O'Neal, 14 Johnson Avenue. Christina Press, 22 Eastern Parkway. >> As you guys are well aware, we are two

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mothers from Wilson School. We are here tonight to speak directly to the safety and security plan that is published on the district's website. At the top of this document, it reads, "While the Caldwell West Caldwell schools are located in an area of relative safety, it remains essential that we plan

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preventative measures." We absolutely agree with that. But when you read the plan closely, what's described is not prevention, it's response. The plan emphasizes locked doors throughout the day. A simple question, who is actively checking those doors continuously

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throughout the day? Not periodically, not once in the morning and once in the afternoon, but continuously. Because if no one is assigned to enforce it, it isn't a control. It's a policy without execution. As we stated last month, our principles should not be responsible for

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being our first line of security as well as their regular duties as an administrator. The plan also outlines visitor access through doorbells and cameras routed to the main offices of the schools. Another simple question, who is monitoring those cameras at all times? Office staff already have primary

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responsibilities. What if they are absent that day? What if we have other activities happening in the building, which at Wilson School, we have a lot of stuff going on all the time. Security cannot be something handled in between other tasks. That isn't a system. It's a vulnerability. Who is accountable for

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real-time enforcement inside the building? Because if responsibility is not clearly assigned, then it doesn't exist in practice. The plan references a crisis response if something occurs and uses the language that it attempts to prevent safety violations. That word

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matters. Attempts is not enforcement. It acknowledges limitations. Superintendent, you and I both discussed last month when we were here that we rely on the excellent response times of our police departments, but inside a school, one or two minutes could be

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absolutely devastating. As parents, our priority is ensuring that our schools are not only safe in theory, but that clear, proactive systems and personnel are in place to protect our children at all times. We are here looking for answers, not reassurances that you think

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things will be taken care of. The phrase never thought it would happen here, comes to mind regularly when we stand up here and ask for answers. As we sit here tonight and discuss budgets for the coming school year, an armed officer assigned to every one of our schools would add 0.7%

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to our daily operating budget. We as a community deserve this topic to be a high priority. >> I just want to add one thing is that I know that some people think that we're looking at security as a way to like take money away from another project.

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That is not the case at all. Obviously, security is an ongoing investment. So, nothing we're not trying to take any money away from any field houses or any project that's already being discussed. Um, that's something obviously our kids are athletes as well. So, we want to make sure that they have a safe

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environment. This is an annual cost and we know that it's an annual cost to the board of education, but it's also a priority to our children. >> Thank you. >> Thank you both. Yeah. And Christina, we don't think that, just so you know. So, I I know you I know you're clarifying. Yeah. And just to clarify again on

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record, I know we do it all the time. What you're discussing is operating budget expenses. The fieldhouse is a capital expense, right? That's a one time. It has to come out of the capital reserve. The capital reserve cannot be used to plug holes in the operating budget. It can't be used for things like

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SRO's. The capital reserve is for capital projects. So, thank you for clarifying that. We totally understand where you're coming from. Um, but I just wanted to just reiterate that as well. Anybody else want to come up and address the board?

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>> Uh, good evening. Brad Dgnen, 12 Crossbrook. Um, you'd mentioned that you're renewing Champions before and afterare. I know there was a gentleman in here a few meetings ago talking about [clears throat] their lackluster roll out of the new system starting the new year. Has the board looked into working

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with champions at all um to make sure that they're improving? I I haven't seen any improvement in my weekly and monthly updates when I'm enrolling my kids every week. But um I we we did get a message from some of their leadership that they are working on it. I didn't know if the board has had

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>> any discussion with champions that they're hopefully improving their systems. >> Yes. >> Brian, is is there is there a timeline before my kids graduate? So, so we did, you know, we we heard a couple of comments at the at the meetings and and as we had had told you, it was our first

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uh really negative comments. We had heard it all from champions. So, I did reach out to the champions uh both their uh local and regional uh administration and they were um uh they came in and they're very apologetic about what

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happened. They realized that their large software roll out had many more bugs than they had anticipated and they promised that they would fix things for for parents. [snorts] So I did re reiterate exactly what the

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concerns were as far as um you know how to access the software and they they promised that it was going to be fixed. So, I haven't had any anyone else come to me recently saying it continues, but um you know, we've been pretty happy with them so far as a partner,

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especially um you know, how they're servicing the community. So, I'm pretty confident that they're going to get that's going to happen. Okay. >> And of course, if it continues and we hear, you know, additional feedback that is not working, we would bring it back to Champions and say, you know, what has

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to be improved? Did the board go out and look at any other options besides champions? I mean, I know obviously you're happy with them and the kids seem to be doing well. Um, was there like going back to YMCA or any other either for-profit or nonprofit? >> So, for this year, we we did not. Okay. You know, because I mean

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on this side, the money thing is is is secondary. I mean, it's usually to me it's it's well, the kids are always first, but the point is that um we're I'm I'm confident that they're going to fix this. And if it it continued, um of course we would go out there and say we

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we'd have to, you know, um find alternatives. Um but I don't think we were there at that point. So, of course, if it continues, we we do want to hear. I I do want to hear. So, we >> It's not unbearable. It's it's something we can work through. >> Yeah. We want we want to we want to fix it. It should be user friendly. Okay. It

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shouldn't be where you can't you can't get things done. >> It's good to know you guys are reaching out to them. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thanks. >> Anyone else? >> Okay. So, just reminder that our next meeting is on Monday, May 11th, which is

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this coming Monday. Um, and before I make a moment to take a uh a motion to adjurnn, I just want to wish all the mothers in our district a very happy Mother's Day. We all know moms, it takes a village. So, happy Mother's Day to all

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of you. Um, may I have a motion to adjourn the public conference meeting at 8:18 p.m.? >> I'll make a motion >> and a second, please. >> I'll second. >> And Brian, if you take the role. All >> in favor? I. All against. Uh, no. >> Any abstensions?

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Motion carried. >> Thank you so much everyone for coming out tonight. Thank you. >> [snorts]