e e e e e e e e e e
e e e e e e e e good evening everybody Welcome to a regularly scheduled board meeting of the East Windsor Regional School District um
our meeting is now in session written advance notice of this meeting was provided at least 48 hours ago such notice provided the time date and location of this meeting and included the agenda to the extent it was known at the time notice of this meeting
has been given in accordance with law minutes of this meeting are being kept by the board secretary and will be made available promptly to any member of the public requesting them from the board secretary at 25A lashen Lane heightstown New Jersey minutes will be provided at cost and accordance with board policy
are there any board members present who believe this meeting to be in violation of the open public meeting act there are being none we may proceed in compliance with the fire code of the state of New Jersey I call your attention to the emergency exits for this room which are located in the back
leading to the parking lot and to each side of us please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the for which it stands one nation under God
indivisible liy and justice for all item C having read the materials received I move the agenda to be approved as submitted second please pull the board Miss concepion
yes M Drake yes yes yes yes yes before we move to item D I did just want to note that one of our board
members Bob lvery is attending virtually which was approved at our last meeting item D I didn't get to give my vote Yes item D be it resolved that the East Windsor Regional School District May hold two
closed sessions at this meeting these closed sessions concern person Personnel Hib report of March 10th 2025 and administrative introduction minutes of these closed sessions will be made available to the public when the need for confidentiality no longer exists second pull the board
please miss concepion yes Miss Drake yes Miss laruso yes Mr lvy yes Miss Mahi yes Miss Patel yes Mr weeks yes
Miss Lans yes uh we will now move on to item two which is a preliminary budget adoption presentation refresh my apologies my board Doc's agenda needed to refresh um
we will now move on to our student representative report good evening everyone as always it is a pleasure to provide Stu updates on the student body uh just an update on SL G he is currently competing at the FBA States competition so today it'll just be me but I have lots of updates to
share first I would like to discuss the incredible performance of our HHS Deca students last week we have a total of 22 students competing at the international level at Orlando Florida and this is the highest number of students winning in the history of our program and as the
current president this has been an incredible achievement for us all next for the musical another student area to highlight is how proud We Are of our students who are preparing for the musical this year they will be acting in Chicago with the show times of March
20th 21st and 22nd at 700 p.m. and then on March 23rd at 2 p.m. for students tickets are $10 and for general admission it is $12 all on the tickets spet link make sure to come and support the HHS Arts next this Friday the stem Club will
be hosting their annual 3v3 basketball tournament on Friday March 14th from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. it is their biggest fundraiser of the year and it is a great opportunity for students to play basketball with their friends with a chance of winning some fun prizes so make sure to
participate now a brief update on Athletics spring Sports is officially started as of today we had our baseball team our golf team for both boys and girls are lacrosse team um for both boys and girls and softball tennis for boys track and field for boys and girls and
we had boys volleyball all play um and try out today so good luck to all of our teams additionally we would like to congratulate senior Michael Fowler who was a recipient of the NSF scholar athlete um leader award accompanied by coach Fen to receive this award Michael
is also invited to attend the 63rd annual George was scholar leader athlete award dinner in March where he and 19 other recipient will be considered for the delal nfhf top scholarships we are very proud of him and all of his athletic contributions finally just a quick note
on testing from today March um 10th through Thursday March 13th students will be testing and following unique schedules based on their academic needs so 11th grade students will be taking the New Jersey graduation proficiency assessment for the NJ GPA multilingual
or ESL students will be participating in Access testing and then Stu 12th grade students students in need will be working on their graduation portfolios so for the students not testing they'll be following a modified schedule up until Thursday this concludes the end of the report thank you everyone for
listening to the report and we we look forward to seeing you again at the next meeting thank you thanks so much for that report does anyone have any questions there being none we will now move on to our budget preliminary budget adoption
presentation e okay good evening everyone so it is that time of the year where we um begin I shouldn't even say begin but formally begin to kind of communicate preliminarily where we are in terms of preparing a budget uh for the upcoming
school year so I'm going to start things tonight really just kind of laying the foundation in terms of uh what we believe the budget represents uh some areas that we've addressed for the current school year and then talk a little bit about some proposed areas
that we're looking to focus on for the 2526 school year then I'll turn things over to our business administrator Paul Todd who will kind of get into some of the details regarding the numbers and um some of the approaches
we're looking to take as it relates to kind of crafting uh a budget so I'll just uh talk a little bit about a budget this is typically what we try to focus on as it relates to um what we believe the budget represents obiously there are seever several areas that we want to
consider uh for us obviously it's a significant planning tool it enables the school district district to operate uh and have programs to support the needs of of our students uh obviously it reflects our values as a community uh we definitely have to prioritize our
resources we also have to contingency plan just for just in case uh certain things may surface certain emergencies and things we need uh financially we obviously have to be good stewards of the tax pay at Dollar so we definitely need to be fiscally responsible uh we
also just need to make sure that we have some buffers and potential safeguards so for us uh as an educational institution we are uh underg guarded by a mission statement the mission
statement is here um just in terms of addressing areas that we believe kind of Drive where we're going obviously we need to be a safe environment inclusive um focused on best practices with uh obviously the intention of ensuring that our students uh are building and growing
academically but also social emotionally so they can be successful and productive citizens that kind of serves as the the Cornerstone of of what we believe the uh resources are that we will allocate and dedicate uh to supporting that
mission so just to refresh uh everyone's memories uh last year during this time throughout this time but uh especially during this time we engaged in the strategic planning process uh with our community we had several meetings to
shape and create the road map um for the course of about five years regarding what would steer and enable us to kind of have a sense of a pathway uh towards supporting the needs of our students within the within the school district so the the first goal area I'll just
highlight was student centered learning and for each of these goal areas we have have uh established objectives as well as action plans to support those we provided an update uh probably about a month and a half ago excuse me regarding the progress in in in all of the all of
the goal areas so first goal area seems to be understandable the fact that we are focused on learning and student centered learning is is goal one just talks about you know having rigorous instruction focused on collaboration real world application engagement and
active inquiry uh and just talks a little bit about how we'll measure um the growth of our students throughout that process second and third goal areas well the second one focuses on people right the human resource component of the
school district and that'll be Staffing obviously we maintain a focus on wanting to recruit retain uh staff who reflect the rich background of our student population third goal area is connected to community engagement um um our
strategic planning process really served as an example of that Community engagement but wanted to make sure that we um kind of foster those lasting districtwide relationships Connecting People of diverse backgrounds um throughout that Continuum of learning
within the school district fourth goal area was related to facilities and finance I guess tonight is a finance discussion so ensuring that we are uh sustaining safe and secure learning
environments uh while remaining fiscally responsible um you know one of the areas that we're looking at is continuing to kind of upgrade our facilities but we're also seeking some space related to facilities as we're looking at um launching our Universal
preschool fifth goal area is related to culture climate this kind of just reiterating the importance of inclusive and respectful climate for all stakeholders uh the values the diversity of thought and opinion so a couple of highlights or
several highlights from the current school year so these were some areas under the Personnel umbrella that we uh asked the board to support as we were transitioning or preparing for the 2425 school year um we had some addition of a
counsel at the K2 level just to kind of support the social emotional development of our students there was a need for an an elementary special educator we did add a couple of counselors to the middle school for a similar reason in terms of supporting proactively looking to support where students were
developmentally uh there was a need for a 68 language arts teacher we had some um we had some felt need for some educational assistance mainly in our special education environments at the elementary level and
we we we did have a need for an additional Transportation dispatcher primarily based on the volume we're fortunate to have our own Fleet in the district and a dispatcher who also can drive when necessary uh serve to kind of
support that operation uh within our district from a facility standpoint uh these were some of the areas that we allocated funds for for the 2425 school year um HVAC upgrades in the High School
auditorium also uh the replacement of the scoreboard uh out of the football stadium that really kind of just is aging and was kind of inconsistently operational we also uh allocated dollars
for Transformers we needed to replace some Transformers here at the high school as well as preparing for um our EB buses we needed to have some U some upgrades at the transportation yard uh in preparation for those four buses as
well as the charging stations that come along with those the um e mcnight school we needed to replace the black top uh at the uh on the playground which was just just worn and aged um in addition to at
G&R the we had to kind of modify upgrade and make uh more inclusive our prek playground environment so um kind of have to change the location of that but also needed to uh invest in some new
equipment we also needed to identify a new uh home for our Central registration team and buildings and grounds Department leadership who who currently reside in the white
house um which is very old building so if you recall the board recall that we have identified uh a property uh that were in process of finalizing the purchase uh in heightstown which we're excited about which will enable us to kind of shift uh those folks into a more
upto-date uh structure that I think will be a better work environment uh in terms of I guess I'll just talk about where we are so typically when we have when we talk about the budget so right now you're looking at highlights from the 2425
budget which is typically uh it's this school year those projects typically will be slate needed to begin either towards the end of the school year or the summer so when you think about so as we're going to talk tonight about you know the 25 26 budget typically those
facilities projects will not begin until 26 so these projects here uh will be summer 2025 uh projects obviously we're in this the process of planning those uh obviously I reference the the property connected to Central registration but in
terms of projects uh those will be summer uh summer projects so um as we look ahead in terms of the budget that we're in the process of preparing now for the 2025 2026 school year not too much in the name of
personnel and I will preface this by saying that we're still in the process of uh reviewing and determining where we can have cost savings but also you know assessing needs so um we have gone through the process of um looking at
some positions that we we supported or initiated in the past and determined whether or not we at these some positions that we have not filled in some cases and we went through the process or in the process of determining whether or not there is a need to
actually replace those so the positions you have in front of you on the screen are um we have a bilingual position a G&R um we have a request for a special education teacher at creps that's
related to uh new program that we're establishing a self-contained program so it appears that we will need uh to hire a teacher uh and also an educational assistant to support the launching of that program I have educational
assistance there listed uh just as a really just as a safeguard um in addition to the soft contained setting in mhk we anticipate that uh during the year there may be the need for us to um to recruit
some educational assistance to support the needs of students but also programs uh and primarily at the elementary level I have extracurriculars listed here these are also tentative um if you recall the board was supportive in US establishing a middle school football
program uh that launched this current school year as we were in the process of identifying interest uh for football and other things we discovered last year the potential need um to establish lacrosse
program at the middle school this has not yet been solidified but we're in a process of just kind of confirming the the level of interest and obviously if we're looking to pursue that uh we would want that to be a boys and girls program so if that's the case we would need to
support the stiens associated with the head coach assistant coach um then some supplies that come along with that not not a huge financial lift but wanted to be planned for nonetheless uh as it relates to the high school program um based on numbers uh it
appears that we would need uh an additional winter track coach and um we're looking to establish an intramural soccer program uh we have a significant amount of Interest at htown high school
um for the sport of soccer so what we're discovering is that each fall season there's a significant number of students who obviously just are unable to make it onto a team just based on this year volume we have over 150 students that try out for soccer so we are looking to
say okay if um recognizing that level of interest can we create something that is um fun competitive uh house here at the high school uh obviously we're looking to to plan uh to to have someone or a team advise that
inor program as it relates to facilities for the 2526 budget so if you recall for the past I'd say four years um we've uh
engaged in renovating G&R uh and a very I call it a seasoned facility so it has great character but but an old building so from an infrastructure standpoint but also an aesthetic standpoint uh We've needed to invest in
making that a welcoming but also reliable um facility for for for students and our staff and um you know I'm pleased with the work that's happened there because I would say that this Final
Phase will really in from an internal standpoint we would would have accomplished kind of an interior upgrade across the entire building so excited about that next phase for G&R um with WCB we we've mapped out for
all of our schools from an HVAC standpoint we've mapped out phases for upgrades because obviously it's it's not realistic to do all that we need to do uh in one year so uh we actually were scheduled to to engage in this next part of the renovation of WCB
I want to say this past summer but uh we were unable to identify someone that wanted to take on the work so we're in we have a next phase lined up at WCB uh for HVAC and other upgrades as we've talked about before we typically have been
doing them in combination where we upgrade the HVAC while doing that we upgrade the classroom space related to it with new lighting um and some other are within the classroom to kind of just bring it up to date once again wcp is
another one of our older facilities in terms of um parking lot a couple years ago uh the budget supported us expanding and resurfacing the parking lot at creps that enable us to uh gain
about 100 additional parking spaces uh emk in addition to if you recall we talked about we'll be doing the black top for the playground this summer next summer summer 26 we're looking to resurface the um parking lot but also expand the parking lot um for those of
you familiar emk is a relatively small parking lot that requires cars staff members who routinely uh are at the building to park almost on the grass because we don't always have adequate um spaces so we're looking to invest in a resurface but also an
expansion in terms of renovation of the high school we have a practice field a practice football field that is um I'll just say rough the surface not our turf field but a grass field uh the grass field is
um it needs some care so right now it's it's um it's one thing to kind of you know lack grass growth but this also has just some areas within there that are that are not what we would expect in terms of uh safety in terms of just some some
rock presence and some other areas so we're looking to kind of have that redone in a way that can bring that back and have it operational where we feel comfortable uh with with the level of where the soil and the grass would be the last item uh that we're lining up is
the rod Grant HVAC work at the high school uh if you recall we received a grant to support this work to offset the cost associated with this work uh so we're in the process of um launching launching that HVAC project uh during
the summer of 2026 any questions on those areas before I move forward okay so I'll transition over to to Mr Paul to all right thank you Mr Daniels little click happy here okay so what
does our budget process look like so every year we gra we like to say that we have a data driven budget process school and departments build budgets zerob based budgeting from the ground up we don't just take last year's budget throw 2% on it move forward so we ask everyone
to go Back review your budgets and let's start over also really as you know schools are labor intensive so a big part of our budget is what we call the PCR the position control report where we list out every single position and the
salaries that are in the negotiated contracts okay so as you heard from Mr Daniel's update and read in the newspaper we lost about 700 $80,000 in state aid that's on top of the $2 million that we lost last year
now just to remind everyone that 2 million wasn't something that we already had but we were promised that as part of the governor's budget address and that changed last minute uh we were surprised as many districts in New Jersey were surprised just because of the way the funding formula works and people really
don't understand it and can't explain it but I will do my best to tell you the where but in the numbers and how they use some of their formulas it's a little convoluted no one really understands how they get to their numbers sometimes so anyway one our biggest source of Aid is
called Equalization Aid Equalization Aid is Aid that's intended to equalize funding or basically your ability to pay from some of the districts who are more affluent and have the ability to pay and some of the districts which do not and
Equalization Aid tries to balance that that playing field between all those different school districts so there's two components of this the first part is what they call the adequacy budget and our adequacy budget is really just a funding formula where the state takes our number of kids and then based on
certain allowances they work up to a number where they say this is the budget we think you should have and those are the numbers going past three years so going back to the 24 budget year we are 99 million and as we move forward this year the calculation by the state was
114 million and then you can see the growth of that adequacy budget every year 8% 7% 7% so that growth has been very steady what has really been changed for us is our local fair sharees we talked about last year and I'm going to dive in the next slide what that means
because there's a couple components to that and you can see the extraordinary growth that that has really taken off three years ago that was 58 million now we're up to 76 million and if you look at the percent increas is 10 144 14
those are very large increases but really what you want to look at is the growth in the adequacy budget compared to the local fair share so if you look at FY 24 we saw the adequacy budget went up 88.6% and our local fair share went up a
little more than 10% so pretty close a couple percentage points no big deal it's why we didn't really notice anything however last year when we got our big shock look at the percent change in the adequacy compar to our local fair share it almost doubled so while our
adequacy budget grew 7% our local fair share grew 14% it doubled it that's why we lost $2 million last year same thing happened this year grew another 14% compared to a 7% change in adequacy which is why we lost another
$800,000 so what's amazing when you look at what the government says our fair share FY 24 flashing forward to FY 26 you're talking close to 20 million more which is really a something we know that it's really good to leave in East wins
or in heightstown it's a really nice place to live so let's let's dive into what that local fair share calculation looks like there's two components first component is called your equalized evaluation so this is basically what the
state says our market value is not the assessed value your assessed value could be based on a number when maybe your house was built 1986 so what the state does is they take a sample of real estate transactions and they look at what the property is listed
at and then what it's sold for the current market and what they try to do is they try to bring that old value up to current market standards and that number for us as everyone I'm sure type types into Zillow every once in a while and we watch our
housing prices grow just like everyone across the across the state and you can see the growth in the equalized valuation so going into fy2 property grew 15% and then another 15% for this
calculation also what they do is they tap into uh the New Jersey IRS and they look at everyone's tax returns and they accumulate that information by ZIP code and you can see the growth in the district income once again um you can
see a large grow 16% last year 13 % this year so that is how our fair share is growing so much before I move on any questions on that because that's a pretty important on why we lost essentially $3
million over the past two years okay so I tried to mix our presentation up a little bit this year gets a little stale so you'll see some old slides and some new ones in place of other ones so this is an old slide and you can see
from year to year our revenues have been going up 1.6 this is our general fund Levy 1.6 1.2 2% and then finally this year 2.6 this is my 11th budget presentation this is the first budget we'll be
presenting where we will actually be over 2% we've actually had historically low tax levy increases compared to our noisy neighbors in the county and I'll kind of get into that so you can see see exactly where our Levy increases have been compared to everyone else so how
are we getting that extra 6% because everyone says oh your increase can only be 2% which is not necessarily true it's 2% plus spending growth limitation adjustments or sgas and basically in your budget there's two ways you can
grow your budget for enrollment which we haven't really seen here we have had very steady flat enrollment give or take we're at 5,000 give or take you know 50 kids we've hovered around 5,000 for quite a while now um the the other
enrollment the other sgla is for health benefits and as you know we've talked we've been very proud we have our own self-insured health benefits and this will be the fourth year in a row that we will have no increases because of health benefits that's once again very historic
and I'll be talking about that but we do get a little adjustment now in the past we have not used use them so when you don't use them it falls into what's called Bank cap and as I'm going to show you districts in Mercer County have traditionally tapped into the bank cap
where we have not so this year between the sgla and Bank cap we're going to go a little above the 2% and I when I start showing you some numbers it's going to be very impressive even after losing $3 million that we're only at 2.6% so this is just from an informal
survey me calling uh my comrade Bas throughout the county this is preliminary tax information this is not approved Levy information this is not uh has not been reviewed by the county yet so I just want to put that out there this is preliminary information so you
can see where we are at 2.6 and then how it quickly escalates from there that there is no one at or under 2% that has been the trend for quite a while and I think sometimes when you look at get percents and you compare them sometimes
small numbers it doesn't look big but when you look as a percentage I think it really becomes quite shocking that our next closest Hamilton their Levy increases 15% larger than us that's the next closest and then it just escalates
and then when you go to Ying their tax increase is doubling what ours is it's pretty shocking so there's something called the userfriendly budget which you can get on the state you can go in the past five years for every District in in the state
so I pulled Mercer counties and I looked at the levy from 2022 and tracked it through 2023 25 excuse me that's three fiscal years that's three years of growth we are the only District in the
county who has an under 2% Levy growth over that period of time we're at 1.6% % once again our closest is Hamilton and their Levy increase is 50% greater than what we've looked at and then the numbers quickly just escalate from there there's no one even close and when you
look at Port Robinsville I mean I'm sure everyone's familiar with the problems we're having next door their increase is 200% larger than ours so I think when you look at the value proposition of what we have to offer compared to what we asked for taxpayers over the recent
past we have been to say reasonable is very an understatement so just some Revenue points of interest so we are at our 2% Levy and on top of that I talked about the bank cap and the sgla we're asking for an additional 427,000 that's your
point 6 this is not new it started last year but everyone I guess have seen that interest rates in the bank accounts has has increased last year we budget at least a million dollars we're going to continue
that when you look at the year-over-year document that I handed out to you you can look at the history of our interest look what we earned three years ago $41,000 on a $20 million Bank float it's almost embarrassing what we got and now we're earning close to a million dollars
so that's definitely helped out our budget that we're actually able to put in that kind of additional money support operations one of the things that we get is called extraordinary Aid that's something that is uh monitored by David row every year we get to submit to the
state extraordinary cost for special education it's usually out of District placements and then we get money back for that historically once again you can look in the revenue section of the document we've handed out when you can
districts do not budget the full amount of that extraordinary Aid because you never know what's going to come through the door so we've always been very uh very conservative with that number we've probably received $800 to a million dollars we start off with a budget of around
$200,000 but as things have changed as we start to normalize as we come off those big state aid increases we now have to kind of do things that other districts have been doing for years and one of those is recognizing a larger piece of the extraordinary Aid so moving
forward we're going to treat extraordinary Aid just like we do our Ida funding where we budget 85% of the amount we received the year before so we're still trying to be conservative and not recognizing the whole amount so this year to help us out we picked up
another 675,000 in Revenue to help offset the expenses and then finally as we know we lost 782,000 and state so those are the major changes with our Revenue here's our total budget
breakdown once again you know when you take a look at 23 24 with an 8% growth mostly that was because of capital projects but when you look outside of that you know our overall growth in the budget is not you know extraordinary we're usually talking somewhere around
2% overall spending so it's very reasonable when you consider inflation and what everything's costing these days I don't know where else you're going to get a 2.5 inflation uh Factor so once again I
think that's a feather to our in our c all right so one of the things I said I'd like to do a little differently this year every year around December Mark and I get Summon down to the county office and we have a budget walk through just to talk about Current financial
conditions what if scenarios and they look at some factors and there's a guide out there you can find it on the department of Ed website it's called the taxpayer guide to educational spending or the tges
and it lists about 20 different factors for every single District in the state what's great is they have this in Excel so I can burrow down into that so what we want to do is we want to compare us to like structures so I can tell you
there are 92 school districts who fit the same operating structure that we have the first one is are you a k through 12 are you a k through six are you a regional High School District and you're able to group everyone that way
so we are in a grouping of K through 12 and they then they go by your enrollment first enrollment level cuts off around 800 then it goes from 800 to about 3500 and then everyone else over 3500 so just to let you know in Mercer
County enrollment wise you have the big three West Windsor Trenton Hamilton all 10,000 not in our kind of area then comes us we're about 5,000 kids so we're kind of unique merer County and then after us everyone else in the county is
3,000 something I'll say on average 3500 so the average Mercer County District taking out the big three we're 50% larger than them so we we do not necessarily line up with them so I can tell you there's 92 school districts that are K through 12 over 3500 kids so
that's who we're going to be comparing ourselves to I think what the amazing thing when you look at this first number statistically speaking it's a zero the the difference is way out in the decimal so it doesn't even round when you look at what we're spending budgetarily per
pupil I would say statistically we're spending what everyone else is the average of those 92 District which makes the rest of this comparison real easy because there really isn't anything we have to adjust for so the first thing that it takes a look at one of the
indicators is total classroom instruction how much are we spending on classroom instruction and you can see compared to the state average we're putting more into the classroom than the average school district almost 6% more than the average schools
district the next one is total classroom salaries and benefits so that would be the instructional staff we put in the classroom and you can see while statistically very small just 1% we are basically at and just slightly above the state average of what you know we're
paying our classroom Talent one of the number numbers that jumped off to me very surprisingly however what we're spending the supplies that we're giving to our teachers and our kids on average we're giving 83% more in classroom supplies than than the
state average and then another almost 40% in classroom purchase services so I think those two numbers you know once again I'm going be talking a lot about you know feathers and our cap these are definitely feathers in our c what we're providing our staff and our kids so then
people say okay well the money's got to come from somewhere so if that's what we're spending where is that coming from we have to be spending somewhere under the state average somewhere because got to make it because if you're spending the total amount the same per
kid if some areas are over where is it where are you under so I can tell you and talked to a lot of my colleagues they would say yes this is true total cost of spending on Administration we are almost 10% less that we spend on Administration here in
East Windsor Regional School District than the average 92 School District I think that's a big difference when you look at administrative salaries and benefits once again 10% less than the state average I shouldn't be saying that to my some of my administrative colleagues out
there when you you know we talk a lot about as Mr Daniels talked about we do a lot with our facilities and we're really about upgrading things even after all of that what we're spending on operations and maintenance so this is our custodians our maintenance staff our regular maintenance of the facilities
we're still down uh almost 10% from what the rest of the state is spending and we're doing a lot finally I think once again feathers in our cap these are negatives but I think it's just the wonderful environment that we provide here when you look at the ratio of students to classroom teachers we are below meaning
there are fewer students per staff member which is huge you know almost 7% and also the ratio of students to administrative Personnel right our administrators are doing more with less and they're also below the state average by 3% so I think that's another
impressive number okay so expense points of interest so Mr Daniel talked about right now this year our staffing is net zero FTE while we've added some we've made some reductions and some vacancy positions that we've carried for a while so when you look at the total head count
on that position control report report it's going to balance out out of District tuition we took a little hit this year usually this is not something I've really talked about in the past 11 years but this is one year where the special ed tuition has
increased also we've had an increase in our ESS substitute service by a million dollars the next one is a good increase our technology budget is going to be up close to a million dollars we'll be kicking off the first leg installation
of an emergency notification system the high school is going to you probably seen some of the examples in the hallways when you first come in with the the digital sign boards that are up in the hallways that'll be eventually in every single classroom here at the high school and as we roll that will be the
model that we roll through our other five schools once again another F in our cap because of our health benefit um self-insured we've just been very lucky our health benefit rates will not increase this will be the fourth year that we have not increased our health benefit rates
which is important because those rates tie into employee contributions um I can tell you with our current spend a 10% increase in health benefits which is not uncommon the state health system is increasing somewhere around 20% a year there's a
big Health Insurance Pool of self-insured called the shiff they're about 18% and this year we're at zero so that would if we were pull at 10% that would be $1.5 million additional that we would have to cover that would be 1.5 million
in reductions that we would have to make if you take a typical 10% being on the low end that we are avoiding because of our self-insurance so that has been running very well for us thing of note and this is just a cautionary tale two years ago we had
about $6 million in our budget of recurring Revenue that's Levy money and state aid that was directed towards our facility projects that's money we could count count on every year but as we've lost month that $3 million that is no longer the case so right now our
facility projects and this will be the case moving forward anything that we do comes from non-recurring revenue that's at the end of the year we have a few dollars we take that we transfer it in the capital reserve you'll see that as a line item in our revenues that we're taking money out of capital reserve to
fund our process and also we take some additional fund balances at the end of the year move that forward but the important note is those are nonrecurring those funds dry up as our budgets become tighter as years go on and we move further away from these years of the
very big state aid increases we have I'm sure that that money will dissipate as well and you'll probably see fewer and fewer projects not sure when that'll happen but somewhere down the line I can assure you that will happen Okay so how are taxes shared so
we're Regional District so our taxes are shared a little different way so first thing is there there has to be a split between East wsor and heightstown and how that works and we talked about equalized valuation this is another where it comes up they look at the
equalized valuation and we get a report from the state and they tell us based on that how we need to break our taxes up between the two municipalities and there you can see the history of where we've been you can see going back to 23 the
trend in heightstown has been slow has been going down and the ssor burden has been going up and we can see this past year that changed a little year for the first time in about three years so I would say it's about an 87 you know give
or take 87 133% split between the two municipalities so what does that mean for your tax impact so you can see the two indicated tax rates for 24 25 next two numbers are your the last two numbers I should say are the
averaged assess house evaluations now these are not equalized numbers these are the numbers that are on the tax collector's books whenever your house was built 1985 whenever the last time if the house was older we went through an
an evaluation that's what's on their books so that's the average house so basically what you do is you take that take your assessed valuation divide it by 100 multiply it by the rate and that is basically how much you pay in
taxes so here is your estimated tax rates for the two years more importantly and once again I think this is an incredible uh proposition value proposition for what we offer so the
average home in East Windsor will be paying 3 8 more on next year's tax bill Heights toown will be paying 198 more now just a word of
caution when you see these rates and the average assessed valuation everyone probably wants to know hey what am I going to pay please do not go home pull up Zillow and whatever number is there multiply by those tax rates because you're going to give yourself quite a shock that's not what you want to do so you almost need to if you don't have
your last tax bill call your tax tax collector and ask them what your assessed valuation is not your current property value and with that said what are our next steps so we'll have a vote tonight on our preliminary budget if that passes we
will send it to the county we have to the 19th to do that so the business office has quite a bit of work to get still our supporting documentation in shape so by the 19th we need to have that down in the county office for review they'll go through they might make some changes we're going to come
back on April 28th and that is when we will have our public budget adoption so between now and then you know we will continue to review the data spending Trends uh same with the board I know you'll be taking a look at the year-over-year if you have
questions on numbers what happened to this by all means reach out to Mark and I and we'll be happy to answer your questions so with that we'll take whatever questions you have I have a
question pa um can you just clarify what is this out of District placement expense we had additional 1.3 million can you just tell me what that is so you
so if you remember I went back to expense points of interest oh there it is the second bullet out of District tuition went up $1.3 million so that's the increase that we saw on you know all our students who go
out a district special education students who who we have we cannot service their needs within the district we send them to an ad of District private school okay and those rates generally are that's different from the Mera County and well
they do the same thing however the other districts that we send to are from some of the more needier students and those rates tend to be extremely higher than Mercer County I wish everyone could go to Mercer County Special Services because their rates are very reasonable and that is our
preferred destination so yeah it usually comes from the but it does include those schools as well the Mera County Schools we prefer prer to to to send students to merca County Special Services for obvious reasons it's within the county tends to be more reasonable but as Paul
said some of our students have uh more unique needs and they need a more specialized program so it's a combination of students who are who are going who are attending those schools and the tuition increases that those schools are charging us okay thank
you um Mar can you speak to uh the million doll increase for the substitute Services what what has impacted that increase you know we're in the process of of kind of analyzing that what we've seen initially is that um you know we'll
kind of use CO as the the Baseline to some degree when we came out of Co we we really didn't have a lot of substitute availability um and that was difficult obviously in increasing years years we have had substitute availability and
actually during the coming out of covid phase we engaged in a process of establishing building based Subs so we wanted to in to kind of incentivize uh substitutes to commit uh to the school district so there a few things that that we engaged in and a number of school
districts also did this one we um we increased our pay rate and we partner with with uh you know a substitute service so there is a a fee I guess you can call it that we're we're paying them to kind of manage the substitute uh pool
uh but we did increase our our subay to be competitive we also um placed a slight premium on substitutes that would agree to being available at least three days a week within a particular school we tag those substitutes uh to be
considered building base Subs um in addition the high school um uses something that you may all know as the puddle which is not one of my favorite U things but typically or
historically um at the high school if a teacher were to be out for one day then just based on you know sub availability we would indicate to teachers that they would not need to request a sub because they would only be out for a
day uh after Co we we kind of began to adjust that starting with our special Educators if they were out we indicated they should be requesting a substitute and then as Pro time progressed we've advised all teachers to
to indicate that they they need a substitute at the high school it has not um uh resulted in the puddle immediately drying up but it's definitely reduced the uh the amount of students who are occupying it so I think what we've
noticed is that definitely at the high school um increased substitute availability is a is a variable that I think has uh increased the the pricing here the cost Factor associated with it I will also say our building based subs
and we're taking a look at that right now as much as we appreciate that we're watching that and also what we're watching is just ATT tendance overall right because you know we can only use um we only need to use a substitute service if substitutes are needed so we're in
the process of assessing that but I do think um you know the building based sub need that we had and also the increased um I'll call it access or requests for substitutes at the high school I think are contributing factors to that but
I'll get back to the board a little bit more of a specific uh cause and how we're looking to remedy that moving forward okay I appreciate that have we seen an increase I know you were looking into it but an increase in attend in in
attendance going you know attendance not people not being an attendant absenteeism absenteeism thank you very much no you know what I'm I'll back B on the change in the state law um I'll get back to you back to you we're kind of like we're doing some some
comparison data right now uh three to five year look back okay thanks but overall thank you this is very informative and there's lots of great points on here where we are still saving money despite losing money from the state aid thank you um slide 18 right
tges so it mentions classroom purchase services and other costs I just want to understand what what are those purchase services and those costs TG is the last
one right so we have um you know a good example um right now we work [Music] um the pur service yeah the uh what's the writing the so like we we have like written out loud so sometimes we bring
in um companies to work with our students to provide Educational Service so we have a a program called written out loud this is a great example and they come in and they work work with our young readers and they actually make them published authors so they work with students and they publish books we just
had an event probably what a few weeks ago we had a presentation in this room it was standing room only um so stuff like that that we bring in that supplement the you know the services or like authors those kind purchase Services could also be um
um whether it's supports or yeah it it could be leader in me you're right so for example K2 leader and me um Franklin cubby we partner with them this year for our K2 schools we've adopted a whole schoolwide approach which comes with a
professional development component uh as well as a student learning component so that that's another example of the purchase services and then some of our depending on how folks categorized um some of professional development that we may have for staff could be tagged under purchase services
so um kind of just things that we are using to enhance um the educational program that we have not I don't want I don't really want to say one time speakers it could fit but that that's it doesn't happen that often for it to be a noticeable budgetary need but it's
thinking about those things like written out loud and leader and me that are more ongoing supports throughout the year godam so comparatively uh where the state average right uh we at ewsd it's like high right so is there any uniform
thing that they circulate those speakers around and we aail their services or like you know we uh kind of have separate services like you know we reach out to them and bring them in you know what i' would say I
mean it depends I mean in in the educational space there are um um there are certain I'll call them vendors or service providers that have that we we become aware of either
through participation at a conference uh through participation at a round table superintendent's Round Table meeting where there could be a group presenting or schools that have used something that we think is valuable and you kind of share that information uh sometimes we you know and often times if we're going
to explore something like for example I was at a conference uh at the end of the year came across an approach to support the teaching of math so we engaged in some meetings with this particular company uh obviously we weren't looking
to partner with them to replace what we do but to supplement what we do we didn't we ended up pausing because we typically would like to sample them before we commit but but that's kind of an example of you know how things surface often times it can happen through a conference often times it's
the best practice and we're like out there exploring what we think we can do based on a felt need uh within a school or department or a classroom and um and then we do our research we try to vet to ensure that we've got something that we're going to commit to financially
that we think has some um academic benefit uh to students and is sorry uh is there a cap on that Max budget where we spend on that for the purchase service or cost yeah we we allocate lines we have line
items for for how we um um whether it's purchase Services we also have we didn't get into that tonight but part of our um budget entails title monies so uh federal funds connected to supporting
various students but really the at its core uh supporting students that have Financial need um so Title One enables us to engage in some supports to offset the cost of of educational materials and supplies as well and purchase Services
also falls within that so um title money's serve as a a supplemental arm for us that I have to say that we appreciate having access to obviously there's some um there's a criteria for for how those funds can be used but we
look at those as being funds in addition to what we're talking about tonight thank you thank you so much I actually my question kind of picks up right where that kind of was headed um on the budget I see that there's a
significant reduction from last year in our revenue from federal sources for semi um can you speak that yeah semi so semi is a uh process where we have students who are Medicare Medicaid
eligible and basically they receive service from us and we can get reimbursement through the Medicare medic process for that this we just got noticed once again this was another surprise which took everyone in the state by surprise everyone's semi has been
drastically reduced now what they're saying is they're coming to a new formula which ultimately should give us more money that is yet to be seen like I we believe it when we say it but that's what we're being
told um so I had asked very pointedly at one of our County Round Table meetings so that mean next year that once this is established when you give us our new Revenue numbers this will go up and they have not committed to that so this is going to probably be something like the
extraordinary Aid that I talked about where we budget a low number and a large number shows up and it's basically we'll be treated like found money and'll go as excess Surplus and you know fall to other other projects so but you're basically
figuring in that we're only receiving an eighth of it so whatever we need to support those students so yeah they give us the number we don't so like we're extraordinary Aid I guesstimate here they actually give you a report and there's an edit in the software if you
don't use their number you have to explain why so we just use their number because it makes things a lot easier any other questions if you have them obviously you know who to reach out to all right could you just turn your mic on for the audience please I'm saying
whoever made this presentation it's awesome like you know deserves appreciation for the PowerPoint and the content in it thank you thank you very much okay if no one has any more
questions we'll move on to item four superintendence report all right so good evening again just a few um updates this evening I will begin just by thanking uh sanjan this evening for her informative always informative
student representative report definitely appreciate um that student voice uh throughout the school year so thank you also do want to just uh thank our business uh office and business administrator Paul Todd really just for for the budget preparation and
management throughout the year um you know it's a it's a collective effort to develop and also um kind of just process the budget throughout the year and and there are multiple hands that play a role in that but I do believe that the
business department the business office kind of serves as the um kind of The Gatekeepers and the Shepherds of that led by led by Paul so definitely appreciate his leadership um kind of keeping us all in line there with the
budget um just want to talk a little bit about the Middle School principal position so on tonight's agenda there's a recommendation uh for the principal of me Melvin H KPS Middle School I'm excited uh to share uh the pending board approval Dr Alba Lugo will be appointed as the next
principal of Melvin H creps middle school Dr Lugo currently serves as the principal of Lynden wal Middle School in Camden County uh Dr Lugo is also served as an assistant principal in New Brunswick Public Schools and a World Language teacher uh in the East
Brunswick Public Schools so after participating in a rigorous and thorough selection process with a pool of quality candidates Alba has emerged with the appropriate disposition experience skill set Vision uh needed to nurture and navigate the continued educational
Journey growth of of uh Melvin H Crips Middle School just want to give a little plug plug here to uh this is connected to our strategic plan uh goal five culture climate we uh shared this before but we
recently and we're in the process actually of engaging our students in grades 3 through 12 in the New Jersey school climate survey uh that's a tool that's been um developed with Ruckers with in partnership with the New Jersey Department of Education uh obviously the
the main goal of that survey is to gain multiple perspectives uh on school climate um so in addition to our students completing that and providing us with some feedback you know which will enable us to identify some areas of strength but obviously areas for growth
um we're excited about just getting a sense of what that data will will yield uh in addition to student feedback the survey process will also entail uh feedback from our staff so we're in the process of uh completing that some
schools have completed it some schools have yet to complete it but we should be done our goal is to complete that by the end of this month the third are is related to um families or I'll call them parents or right um so we want
some parent feedback so I'm putting out a little U ad here um so we have sent the information home to families asking them to complete the survey I realized people are busy so it's probably not
always something that's uh top of mind but we would appreciate um getting some parental feedback the survey is anonymous uh it shouldn't take more than about 20 minutes to complete it uh it's voluntary but once again we will take
this feedback uh from families and I think you know It ultimately focuses on you know viewpoints on school safety teaching and learning relationships um but I think it's important to get a parental voice as it relates to completing that and once
again it will it will enable us to assess where we are to continue to build on areas that we think are strong but also will'll provide some feedback for us in terms of ways in which we can uh enhance our school uh environments okay so I would urge folks to complete that
um you can do one survey if you got students in multiple buildings if you believe that your feedback kind of reflect likes that or you can do more than one you know you can do it per building uh where your child is a student uh it's up to you but I would
definitely uh ask you to to find some time to complete that and uh with that said that concludes my report thank youy Mark can you tell us when that came out because I don't remember seeing that you know what it's going to come out in Cas so here's what I'm going to tell you
I'll tell you this this week so so don't worry this week on Friday the amazing Elise maroli who was here tonight she's going to make sure it is included in the weekly update all right so I this is a this is another reason
for every member of the community to take a look at the weekly update so principles this week though starting today you're you know I don't want to put Mr Vincent under any pressure but principles starting
today will be resending the survey to families some some principles have already done it but we we asked them to do a a reminder today all right um but but if if when in doubt
Friday check the weekly update we'll probably put it in there for two weeks we'll do this Friday and also next Friday so when inow that's where you'll find it okay thank you thank you for reminding me to to to clarify that there is a chance based on this conversation tonight
that the high school may be sending theirs out as soon as possible all right as soon as soon as possible so there you go very sensitive but yes but but on in all honesty schools will be principles will
be resending the survey like I looked at G&R Mrs Emerson sent hers out this afternoon again you'll be getting them from the principles this week in addition we'll make sure it's in the weekly upate on Friday it was sent on Wednesday and I
mean at least for craps okay I got it I I did it took like less than 10 minutes but the only um my only opinion is that on the S server once you finished if you have multiple kids in different school you should be able to pick your school
instead uh have to wait for the high school one to be sent in the high school which I think is the only down part in there so if I'm done with the middle school I should be able to finish that go back pick the high school and then do
the one for the high school and get it done instead of waiting for the high school but I was told it's coming on soon it is but so so what I'll say to you is that's that's good feedback because this is the first time that we've done this and we don't create it
um you know we don't have the ability to manipulate like that so knowing that I think we do what in I think we'll make sure that we just coordinate when we send it out at the same time and it just but I don't think we we're in a position
to alter the structure of the of the survey and how it's delivered we can't manipulate that so I can't create a drop that menu but we can explore that if we created the survey we could do that we're just disseminating all right but but I appreciate that
feedback Mark I had a couple questions um this survey they for the younger kids I'm hoping it's not 20 minutes for the little ones um I'm hoping this is done online survey for the kids to take and when do they take it and uh what's the
timeline like for a third grader versus the middle schooler are the all the issues that's addressed in the Middle School also addressed in a Layman turn for let's say third grader are the questions the same or they're different you give me a lot of questions in one
day I did let me see if I can process that so when I say 20 minutes 20 minutes is Max right so it's it shouldn't take very long some students may take 20 minutes right um you know obviously de developmentally things are modified
depending on if you're a third grade student versus a junior we have allocated and schools are kind of handling this in their own way where they're determining the pocket of time that they're going to dedicate to that it is online it's an online assessment um what was what was the last thing you
asked me is this is this addressing your questions anything else I want to make sure I have it covered um like I said the goal is to get this completed by the end of this month so we can get the turnaround so when we gather
the the feedback from the state we can begin to process it look for Trends and then uh I know for us our goal the next well I think I'll have it before that but part of the next Wellness commit will be for us to share with the
board um what we've noticed kind of from a macro level uh but also from a school standpoint regarding some Trends all right in the survey in other districts or this is a Statewide survey Statewide once again it's not it's not a it's not
a mandatory survey so school districts have Choice over whether or not they they're opting to do it I attended a conference last year uh regarding School climate uh there was a presentation uh that was uh facilitated
by a representative from Ruckers in the Department of Education and there were several school districts that that were attending that had engaged it and they thought that the feedback was useful in terms of them just having a sense of uh how they can enhance their school climate and and also just some
affirmation regarding some of the things that they thought were working well so not not a have to but it is done across the state so part of the data will also enable us to kind of see where we fa I believe with comparable districts across the state as well in
terms of feedback any cost to us no no cost thank you thank you that should have been your first question I'm sorry no no no no cost it came no cost no cost any other questions okay so now we'll move on to
our first opportunity for board member comments there being none we will move on to our first opportunity for public comment um there being none we will move on to Executive session and we will be away
20 uh we'll be away for about 30 minutes thank you very much we'll be back e e e e e e
e e e e e e e e e e
e e e e e e e e e e okay we are back in
session and we will move on to Old business our 2025 committee [Music] meetings yeah I can uh so um the curriculum committee met uh
last it feels like it was Tuesday um we reviewed the policies that are up for first reading this week and we also discussed um resuming the policy audit that was begun last
year and we'll continue with the review um with our next meeting coming up in yeah the 24 Wellness got moved it didn't meet today and Item B so Item B is about Oprah you know we've
talked a little bit about the uptick and the Oprah that we've seen um the district is always supported um and believes strongly that the public has a right to you know be in tune with what we're doing and have access to public records and we have always recorded that
um but there has been an an uptick in requests especially around emails which are fine um but but the the manner in which they're being asked is the the requests are coming up with thousands of emails and what has to happen to make sure that
number one sensitive information because sometimes students names are in those emails staff names are in the emails is that I have to review each one to make sure there's nothing in those emails that needs to be redacted so sometimes
that could take days just on one request so we still believe even though that's very timec consuming the public still has a right for it but we we believe that according to the Oprah handbook in the Oprah laws there we
go is that better thank you um um that these requests you know thousands of of emails so um by the Oprah regulations we are allowed to to charge what they call special service charge which we've been reluctant to do
but seeing that they coming so frequently now uh it seems that I think we need to kind of put this in place so it's pretty much self-explanatory and I I put it on Old business really just because we haven't done it before and I just want to make it like kind of a public notice so everyone's aware that
it's in place so so it doesn't look like it's arbitrary and we're just starting something and just charging certain people so this would be you know across the board so this doesn't you know really relate to if someone wants a document that's no problem I answered a oer the other day there was four pieces
of uh documents that I gave them like that would not be subject to this this would be only the request when there's you know hundreds upon hundreds and thousands of uh documents that have to be reviewed thank you for that explanation Paul so
now move on to Second opportunity for comments for board member comments any board members have any questions or comments okay um I did have one Mark can you give us a quick update on the man trap at the heist toown High School where we're at it looks like we're going
to be hopefully finishing up soon certainly um I actually meant to include this my report I I I I decided to hold on it because it's not 100% completed but I will say the the uh the
converted office space that uh one portion will become the security check-in Booth uh with the exterior uh waiting area as well as an opportunity to to to if needed provide access to the security
area internally that's a sec ured space uh the other side of that uh converted office space will be uh space for uh an assistant principal and the assistant principal secretary I am pleased to share that the assistant principal and her secretary are scheduled to to move
in to their office space tomorrow so uh the space looks great I'll share some pictures with the board um the security side uh is still in the process of being finalized I anticipate that to two weeks I actually stopped by it today I think
they're in about two weeks from now that area should be completed obviously there's a few things that need to occur as it relates to inspections um but I anticipate early part of April we should be uh up and running as it relates to utilizing that
as our um visitor uh access process for the high school thank you Mark can I ask a question on that so students will still go in the main doors if students come in late would they will there still be the buzz buzzer that
works at the main doors or will you only go in through the special you I think it the goal will be that once we secure the doors you'll everyone will enter through the the the security the new security area we're going to migrate from the
current security booth over to to the area connected to the office if if you're a late student you should be entering through the the new security vestibule so if you're if you're a parent and you're dropping off go through there a Chromebook everyone will go there through there and then will
there be a new table to put your stuff on yeah so the way it's the way that it's um designed currently is that you know and this we'll kind of try this on for size so there may be something in the we've got the glass ex that's called
the greenhouse right there may be something there obvious ly we're looking to limit access to the building there's also a an access window uh a service window of sorts we may device something where folks are actually providing that Chromebook to someone in security
through the window so that's something along those lines but there will not be a need to come into the foyer to do any business so are you going to then is there plans to do something then in the the lobby now with the security will you still have security people sitting in
that Booth right now we don't really need to um but we've got some technology and some other apparatus in there we're determining how we're looking to transition so we need to repurpose that security booth all right just don't know exactly
what we're doing with it at this point it's not the biggest space in the world but there's some like I said there's some equipment in there that we may at least temporarily leave there to utilize when when needed but but ultimately we're going to repurpose that room I think it would be such a great opportunity to
redecorate that Lobby oh I think we will yes we will the floor and just make it look nice yes we certainly will take the winter paintings off I think it could look so nice yeah we uh we have great potential thank you um uh so in terms of
safety right the security check it's going to be like proof of ID they're going to present and after that they are let in well it depends um depends what your purpose is in the buiness building but obviously there'll be a um the right now we are the the issue that we
currently have at the high school is that if you're a visitor to the high school based on the current design you are actually entering the high school to State your business and really you should be outside or at least in an area
that is not directly accessible uh to the school Foy year to to to to indicate uh what you're looking to do so yeah we'll follow same protocol in terms of you know identifying who you are and what what your what your business is the current structure though
for example enables us if you're there for an appointment there's a there's an ability to wait in a secure space until someone comes down to to meet you and walk you to where you need to go within the building versus potentially being in the foyer of the high school which
really provides you access uh to hallway so it just kind of restricts uh a visitor's um movement um based on what we think it should be um safety being first priority right so uh any steps or
any ideas around like you know um where anybody if somebody brings weapons how to how how is it like you know being handled or till now no no clue yeah so if you're asking me about like detection uh apparatus yeah we we we've we've
explored options for that um you know we can have some further conversation as a boort I I I I'm not recommending that at this point um I'll be frank I don't want to treat our children like they're in the jail and um I think we have
expectations that students should not be bringing those items to school um I don't I don't want to be in an I don't think it's healthy to be in an environment where students are walking through metal detectors each day as they come to school that does not
convey and my opinion a sense of welcome and Trust however um I I'm also a realist and I know that it can only take one unfortunate circumstance uh for us to potentially rethink that so right now we do not have
definitive plans to have detection equipment um but but I would not completely rule that out as as we as we move further down the road fortunately in our community uh that has not been something that we've had to deal with firsthand but I but I realize we're in
America and we're not immune to some of those those potential ills that that can occur but um no so to answer your question we have not had had definitive plans to put that in place at this time I think that's a point for
discussion for future right certainly certainly thank you any other board member comments there being none will open up a second opportunity for public comments any members of the public wish to
comment there being no members of the public we will now move to our um to number nine policies to be abolished uh a policy 01646 remote public board meetings
during a declared emergency second pull the board please miss concepion yes Miss drink yes Miss laruso yes Mr lavy Mr
lty we're working it out Miss Mahi yes Miss Patel yes Miss weeks Mr weeks sorry sir yes Miss Lance
yes so what are you asking me to do Bob you can hear me now got it okay item 10 mandated policies for first reading item a policy 2200 curriculum
content Item B policy 3160 physical examination item C policy 4160 physical examination item D policy 5350 student suicide prevention item e policy 8420 emergency and crisis
situations item F policy 8467 firearms and weapons second any questions yes I have a question um policy 2020 uh 2220 uh I'm going through all this cross
out things um I need a clarification for the paragraph very say the curriculum will be reviewed by the soup and then it's crossed off by approved annually by the board reason why we're doing that second uh the
second line says the superintendent is responsible for implementing the curriculum approved by the board so I was just trying to find out why what's the discrepancy there and the third thing I have is lot of stuff is crossed off is this implemented in another
policy number or why are these C off no oh it's okay so so the um the reason is the first part curriculum will be reviewed by the superintendent
um in the approved annually is because the curriculum does not need to be approved annually if it's already approved all right so that's the first part um The Crossing outs are just updating of
language so the crossing out excuse me was was actually done by Strauss Esme um related to just some of the modifications for example curriculum content standards has been crossed out which is an outdated which is outdated language and that's been replaced with
student learning standards um I'm not sure if what else you were questioning um like spe if you going to tell me something specific everything is crossed out so I'm just trying to understand I understand it's
outdated so when will you be put in the new updated language and will it be addressed in this policy or it be another one yeah no it'll be in this this policy what they what this policy is doing is just um condensing what was
already there and it's just kind of making a little bit more um concise I I'll say that for lack of a better word but it really doesn't change the essence of you know obviously curriculum needs to be approved um adoption of courses need to be
approved um that that does not change and also High School graduation requirements need to be approved so your 14 bullet points that are addressed separately here are in on the previous paragraph yes thank
you any other questions pull the board please miss conceptum yes M Drake did did we second oh I'm sorry I didn't hear M Dr yes Miss
laruso yes Mr laby yes Miss mahiri yes Miss Patel yes Mr weeks yes Miss Lans yes item 11 recommended policies for first
reading item a policy 5337 service animals Item B policy 9181 volunteer athletic coaches and co-curricular activity advisers and assistants second any questions
pull the board please miss concepion yes Miss Drake yes Miss laruso yes Mr lvy yes yes
okay Miss mahui yes Miss Patel yes Mr weeks yes Miss Lans yes item 12 mandated regulations for first reading item a regulation 4160 physical
examination Item B regulation 5200 attendance item C regulation 8467 firearms and weapons item D regulation 3160 physical examination second any
questions pull the board please miss concepion yes Miss Drake yes Miss laruso yes yes Mr ly
yes Miss mahiri yes Miss Patel yes Mr weeks yes Miss Lans yes item 13 motion to approve routine items by exception having read the materials
received I move that the board approv the routine agenda items as submitted item a Staffing of March 10th 2025 B ewea sidebar yoga Club item C approved new field trip site for
upcoming trip item D approved travel and related expenses virtual and in person item e out of District placement item F approval of tenative 2025 to 2026 budget item G bid approval Auditorium
Renovations Phase 2 item H board meeting minutes for February 24th 2025 item I executive session board minutes February 24th 2025 item J report of the board secretary and financials report January 2025 item K expense and
transfer reports of school monies report for January 2025 item L Bill list of March 10th 2025 second any [Music] questions pull the board please
Miss concepion yes Miss Drake yes Miss laruso yes Mr lvy yes and thank you for the accommodations tonight thank you for
participating Miss mahui yes Miss Patel yes Mr weeks yes Miss Lance um yes however on item D I will abstain from any of the lighting line items related to myself yes to all
others and item H um I just wanted to place a reminder in the record that the board minutes should reflect a change showing that Michael weeks was present and kava Mur was absent thank you um we have no need for a second
executive session this evening so thank you for all being here and we will conclude our meeting