[Music] hello everyone I'm Dr kwami Morton superintendent here in Cherry Hill public schools and is my pleasure today to be joined by Mrs ly sugar business administrator extraordinaire and
assistant superintendent sugars thank you for joining me today absolutely Dr Marton so we wanted to spend some time today just speaking about budget so you had an opportunity to present your initial budget presentation at the March 11th Board of Education meeting can you just
talk about for a moment uh the process and the timeline that goes into the development of the district's budget yes we actually start that at the end of October usually so we're just getting the new school year underway and we have to start thinking about the next school
year the reason we do that is because we take input from all of the schools all of the department and they need time to put their budgets together get quotes or look into different things um you know that they might want to include in their budget so we like to give them plenty of
time to do that so they have until the end of December to put their budgets together and then starting in January uh we do a review at the superintendent Council level so that we can start looking at you know the requests that have been made the Personnel needs that
there are and then uh we continue that process through February our initial submission budget is typically due by March 20th so we have to approve an initial submission Budget prior to that after that approval process we are kind of in a holding
pattern and once we receive approval on our budget from the county office we can have our public hearing at the end of April so literally this process is the end of October to the end of April every year so it takes up a good bit of our school year absolutely very lengthy process and I'm not sure if everyone is
aware of that or or recognizes that so I'm happy you were able to to highlight that MH so miss sugars I'll never forget last year when you walked into my office uh with uh the state aid figures and information that the district had incurred quite a significant loss can
you talk about the past two years state aid funding that we received and the losses that that have been incurred I I actually want to go back one more year and talk about the year before when we received additional state aid and we were very encouraged by that right and then as we went into the 2425 school
year to put that budget together we literally lost the aid that we had received the year before and that was very difficult and problematic for us so we we lost $7 million worth of state aid for the 2425 school year we needed different ways to address that loss we
um had to make some Cuts we had to adjust some of our other Revenue sources in order to accommodate that a lot of the cuts we were very fortunate last year we were able to not actually cut people we were able to cut positions and so by you know
rearranging and reconfiguring and relying on attrition which we have each year in terms of uh retirements and people who move on to other districts we were able to make those cuts without affecting people coming into this year as we've lost
another $4 million in Aid that's becoming more difficult to do we know that when 75% of our budget is Personnel costs it's going to be difficult to make those kind of cuts and make up that those differences without looking at Personnel so we have taken a look again
this year at Personnel we have been able to accommodate some of the cuts Again by looking at vacancies that we have um we know that um in the coming months we'll have additional retirements right and we're hoping that um some of the cuts
that we have to make this year can be more reassignments rather than again cutting people maybe just positions instead unfortunately at some point I think that's going to become difficult to do if we continue to have the kind of uh Cuts in our Aid that we have right
but we don't start with Personnel right we start with other things because you know we are a personal driven entity absolutely and you know our our goal is to meet the needs of our students so we try to maintain as many personnel
positions as we can so our review starts with projects supplies Services all of those kinds of things first and we take a look at them first but that's 25% of our budget right and some of those things are very fixed cost utilities
Insurance you know those kinds of things are fixed costs that we don't have a lot of wiggle room with so um you know we do our best to make non-personnel C Cuts but we have found in the past couple years we've had to make Personnel Cuts as well always challenging very
challenging so at the March 11th uh Board of Education meeting you you uncovered what I consider to be a pretty significant discrepancy as it relates to the loss of our Equalization Aid you you did some calculations and ran some figures um that were extremely
interesting why did we lose Equalization Aid this year that's a really good question and when I went back and took a look at it I wanted to do a deeper dive because I wanted to see what has changed in the past couple years that has affected our receipt of the equalization
Aid when you're calculating Equalization Aid there's two parts to that and the first part is the adequacy budget calculation and that's based on our enrollment and then the second part is local fair share so local fair share is affected by equalized valuations in
Cherry Hill as well as District income in Cherry Hill so basically the state is looking at what it costs to educate children versus what the local ability to educate children is and then the difference is what they call Equalization Aid as I went back and I
looked at previous year calculations the the formula has not changed what has changed are multipliers right so um at the end of the formula there are these multipliers and they have they have varied slightly over the past couple years but this year there was
significant changes in those multipliers and ultimately what that means is that they're starting with a pot of money at the end and they're working backwards and that unfortunately was very detrimental to Cherry Hill we saw a 17 and 18% increase in those multipliers
and that affected our ability to receive Equalization Aid we lost all of our Equalization Aid has that ever happened not in my time here it has not our local fair share is now greater than the adequacy budget and therefore we did not
receive Equalization a now in 24 25 we received $15 million in Equalization Aid so to lose all of that Aid this year was shocking but we did later find out that there are a significant number of
districts across the state that have lost that Aid so we went um you know there there was about 398 districts I believe that were getting it and I believe that number now is down around 250 wow so we weren't the only ones that lost it right um more concern conc
erning for me is not just getting through this budget year right it's what does that mean for the future for the Cherry Hill School District districts across the state were held harmless to a 3% loss in aid for us that was about $884,000 however we also lost as you know the
stabilized Aid that we received last year last year yeah so last year after we went through our budget process there was a opportunity for us to get additional Aid and we did in about $3.1 million and we were able actually to restore some of the things that we had
initially cut absolutely this year we were held harmless to the 3% but we also lost that 3.1 million in stabilized Aid so our total loss was about $4 million according to the documents that we got it should have been around $1 million
wow and so you and I have been having conversations about what does that mean for Cherry Hill longterm absolutely long term and we need to start having conversations about the budget in non-budget time right as we move forward about what kind of fundamental changes
are we going to have to make if that is in fact Cherry Hills New Reality absolutely absolutely so can you get can you give like an overview of some of the key components of uh the March 11th presentation that you gave including including any reductions additions to
Staffing and things along those lines yes on the 11th uh our budget wasn't finalized at that point we are now pretty much finalized at this point as we get prepared to approve it on Tuesday night um so it was a draft budget that we presented and again we will be making
Cuts we made cuts to non-personnel areas first we also took a look at some of the positions now we have some support positions that were going to cut those are not classroom teacher positions there are support positions throughout the district that we're taking a look at we were fortunate that a significant
number of those were able to be accommodated through vacancies that we had so they're just positions that we won't fill probably the biggest factor that we're looking at is a reconfiguration of our middle schools right to go from a teaming Middle School
model to a junior high school model right and we're hoping even though that is a significant number of positions that some of those positions can be reallocated or or placed in other areas but we feel that not only is that um a a
good budget move because it has lasting savings but that also um it's a good move in terms of educating our children absolutely so uh that is one of the biggest factors that we're going to see in this budget this year moving from that model yeah so if I can elaborate on
that model just a bit as well uh it's been probably two decades slightly more than two decades that Cherry Hill has utilized the Middle School model uh Once Upon a Time Cherry Hill did have a junior high school model uh my understanding is that when sixth grade
transitioned to to the middle level and uh the NY pyp program NPP pyp International Balor program was introduced that um that the advisory and teaming were added thus making up the the Middle School model um some could
argue that you know the use of a junior high school model provides uh an academically focused program uh I think it's unquestionable just as as you have articulated from a matter of fiscal responsibility in a matter of U
maximizing uh Resources Staffing allocations and making sure people are assigned to critical Deeds areas you know it definitely makes sense um it's a former High School principal and uh one who who's been around the district for a while I can tell you that uh junior high school model helps children to
transition to the high school level uh probably a bit better because the models match uh that what happens in high school as well so uh doesn't affect what students experience student you know still have all the Arts and they have core academic classes and you know the
same environment uh it just allows us to run leaner and more efficient so I think it's a sound move I think it's definitely a sound move and and as you mentioned uh if we are going to be faced with possible losses in future future years it makes sense to have you know
things that are sustainable year over year over year what is the actual tax increase this year uh dollar amount percentage amount I know you mentioned the use of uh 2% uh cap as well as Bank cap uh can you just talk about that sure
we are held to a 2% cap 2% increase on our tax levy each year that is the max that the district can increase taxes each year now there are some exceptions to that there are what they call spending spending growth limitation adjustments and these are for things like increases in cost of health
benefits if you opened a new school if you had a large increase in enrollment they ow you to expand that cap a little bit um we actually were able to expand our cap a little bit this year for health benefits so we have a a small
increase um due to health benefit uh costs so that'll be a small piece of it and then we also have banked cap and banked cap means that in previous budget years we didn't go to that full 2% right or we had one of those spending growth limitation adjustments and we didn't
utilize all of it so we have about $1.3 million in banked cap right now we originally thought we might use it all in the last couple days as we have been working with the state software program that we have to work with to put our budget in we have discovered that we do have a small adjustment because of the
health benefits so we won't use all of the 1.3 Banks cap the end result is the same it's it's a expansion of your cap we'll have a small piece of the increase because of the the adjustment we'll have a small uh increase because of the banked cap that we will will use we also
will have a small increase in our taxes due to Debt Service now Debt Service and payment of uh principle and interest on the bonds is not part of our general fund budgeting process that we are talking about right now that is because we approved the bond referendum a couple
years ago right now we have to pay that back but we always talk about that because it has an effect on the taxes as well right so the overall increase in the taxes the average assessed home in Cherry Hill is 2 $27,000 so for the average assessed home
the increase with the general fund and The Debt Service fund is about $180 it's just under $180 okay so this is about and that's for the full year and not that is for the full year yes so that is a a that is the tax impact for the full year so I
think that equates to about 2.63% overall okay um in terms of you know when we compare last year to this year you also had some staffing additions built into this year's budget as well we did fortunately um we were able to look
at where our needs were we added a math coach in at the elementary level and we added in five interventionists which is huge two and a half will be dedicated to the elementary school 2 and a half will be dedicated to the middle school and again as we are making Cuts in some
areas we're hoping that um we can reassign some people to some of those new positions as well we have to make sure certifications are correct and all those kinds of things but um you know the hope is that maybe we can kind of reassign and reposition absolutely so if
we did not go to the full 2% or use the uh full amount of Bank cap um what does that mean what what additional Cuts would we need to make nothing on that list was anything that was particularly appealing but we would look at class sizes at the elementary school which is
difficult that's a very tough decision we would look at Courtesy busing again another tough decision because um just the nature of Cherry Hill and how large it is and where our children are attending and also what that means in the mornings in terms of parent drops off and offs and those kinds of things
right uh so those would be two areas that we would look at we would also probably have to look at some of the new positions that we've been able to incorporate in the past couple years right math coaches some of those kinds of things um literacy support literally sport exactly so we would have to look
at some of those kinds of things and and pull some of those kinds of things back well thank you very much M suar I really appreciate the information appreciate you taking an opportunity to share this information with uh with the community more information about budget items and understanding how you might be an
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