Mr. Canelis, can I have roll call, please? Miss Carousella here. Mr. Cohen, here. Mr. Corey, Mr. Hayward, here. Miss Parlamus here. Miss Randelle, Miss
Stevenson here. Miss Calves here. Dr. Robinson here. We have a quorum. Thank you. All right, Mr. Cohen, if you could do the flag salute to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which
it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Adequate notice of meeting in accordance with PL1 1975 chapter 231. Notice of tonight's meeting was mailed to the record and the Ridgewood News on
January 7th, 2025. Notice of this meeting was also mailed to the borrow clerk and was posted on the bulletin board of the board of education office in the administration building on the same date. Miss Parliamentis, if you're able to read our mission statement, please. The Glenrock School District,
founded on principles of education in partnershipship with a supportive community, provides an exceptional education to all students to cultivate resilient, responsible, and engaged global citizens. Thank you. All right. Uh Dr. Charleston, Mr.
Canelis. Yes. So, tonight we're pleased to present the um 202526 budget. I do want to thank Mr. Canelis and his staff also the administrators um teachers everybody who kind of pres
participated in providing us all the information that we requested starting in October to get to this point to present uh the budget for 2526. So I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Canelis. We'll go through the uh presentation and the budget. Mr. Canelis,
I need a motion to open the public hearing. Can I have a motion to open the public hearing? All right. We have Miss Carousella, seconded by Miss Stevenson, Miss Carousella. Yes. Mr. Cohen. Yes. Mr. Hayward. Yes.
Miss Palamus. Yes. Miss Stevenson. Yes. Miss Calves. Yes. Dr. Robinson. Yes. Okay. So for those of you who were here last year, we've tried to keep the uh format very consistent. Um this way
comparability between years uh is uh quite easy. So as Dr. Charleston alluded to, the the budget process is is is truly a fivemonth process. Um it kicks off in October um where we begin to uh
put together um costs that we know. We send out our building based budgets to our principles. We begin to talk to our uh department leaders, our supervisors and starting to getting them ready to prepare their budget. This year
we spent a little bit more time with them because we if you remember we uh instituted a new financial system last year. So this is the first year that we use schoolfi. So we had some training on how they could use schoolfi. Um much of
the uh efficiencies and um I think uh more robust features will be available to them next year and we have some comparable data uh wi within the system itself. So we look forward to that. Um we had a we started at each department
in uh building with a zerobased budget and then built up um which was a little bit different approach than we had taken in the past where um it was kind of like you know your budget was X last year what do you want it to be this year? So we started and we we made them build it
from the bottom up. Um and what we found out was is that our budgets were were fairly close to where the buildings needed to be to operate. Um after all of the budget owners submitted their budgets, we aggregated them. Um and we reviewed them in central office
obviously with the goal of creating a draft budget with no change uh to any of the programs that the district offers. Um we also ensure that the uh budget is in conformance with the district's goals
um and needs. Uh this year we uh Dr. Robinson instituted uh or created an ad hoc budget committee. Uh that budget committee ma met on February 3rd and um I think we literally went line by line through the entire budget um and really
explained all of the nuances and details that go into it. Um so thank you to that committee. The feedback that we received from you was very helpful and and it really allowed for a a smooth process. Um on February 10th uh we provided the
entire budget uh to the board for comment. Um and then on March 17th we uh approved our uh tentative budget which we then sent off to the county and it was approved on March 25th. Um we almost
got two holes in one. A hole in one is at the county level is when there's no comments on your uh on your work. Greg on the curriculum side got a hole in one. I did not get a hole in one. I had one item that I had to fix. Um we'll get better as we move along. Um and then
here we are tonight at our public hearing. Um where uh we will vote on our final budget uh and then we will move forward. So essentially our our goals our district goals this year were based on four pillars. assessment, student
learning, instruction, student support, and financial. The budget supports all of these items in these various different ways. So, under the assessment and student learning, we have the continued roll out of our multi-tered uh system of services or I might have
gotten that one wrong. Uh and we are also able to continue our elementary uh intervention coaches. Um from a instruction point of view, we have new textbooks. Um and textbooks is beginning to become an outdated word because many
of these uh are actually licenses for digital books. But we have new math, psychology, economics, marketing, calculus, and science books. Uh in the budget, we also have money in the budget for both professional and curriculum uh
development. And on the uh professional development, that's both inservice as well as workshop attendance and summer hours for the further development of our curriculum. Under the student support uh pillar, we continue to operate our uh
wellness rooms um as well as fostering the SEAL um curriculum of ruler. Thank you. and uh challenge success up here at the high school and the middle school. Uh financially
um the the goal actually was to use our new financial system uh to create efficiencies and greater effectiveness. I can tell you we certainly did we did that. Uh but from a financial real dollars uh perspective, we have transitioned from our old teacher
evaluation system uh to the one that is built into schoolfi which is um uh approach agnostic. So we could easily uh transfer there and we save $10,000 uh by
doing so. Our second uh financial uh um kudo I guess is uh that by July one we will have all of our EIP projects completed and the hope is is that with
the savings from those projects we will not feel the uh tsunami in distribution electrical costs that are coming starting June 1st which is believed to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 25%
increases. Those that distribution increase is due to a number of different factors that are beyond our control. One is is the increased uh demand for electricity. That's coming from um the proliferation of data warehouses as well
as AI. It's requiring more and more computer pro programming and power which is taking up more electrical power. Second, we haven't gotten the contribution that the they thought we would get from uh renewable sources and
much of our electricity is generated by natural gas and natural gas prices are higher. So we um we we the the the benefit here is that the energy efficiency u uh uh products whether they
be the plugs that we put in that shut off overnight so that the photocopy machines aren't going to the complete retrofit of the district with LEDs. Um that'll help cons contain those costs. We started at at uh creating an
enrollment projection. Um you'll be hearing a lot more about uh enrollment and the uh much more professional job that our demographer has done. Uh ours was a little bit more simplistic. Uh we essentially rolled forward uh all of our
years and we added in students for our early childhood program. So um last year's uh ASSA uh reported 20 uh about 2529 students. We're at
2565 26 student uh increase 15 of which is from the early childhood program our threes and fours and and we're about 27 students uh different than what the demographer had come up with. 15 of which obviously are
those prek students. Um the school distribution of enrollment essentially is flat except for the high school where we see 43 additional students moving from the middle school into the high school. the pie chart that we see every
year. Um the the idea here is that is to show what is discretionary and what is non-discretionary. And when you look at salaries and benefits, special education, transportation, and buildings and grounds makes up about 92% of our
total budget, leaving only 8% for discretionary spending. And that discretionary spending is everything other than those items. Um 8% on a $62 million budget is about $5 million. Um last year our
discretionary spend was 5.8 further illustrating the increasing prices that we are experiencing which is lowering our ability to purchase and to provide um programs and the necessary items to appropriately uh
um address those programs. So, here's a a synopsis uh and summary of our general fund expenditures. Um, and it's very quick to tell the story that I'm about to tell you, and that is
that special education costs and um employee benefits uh really have driven um our uh our increase in costs. In fact, they represent $2.2 million of the $2.6 million increase. So, let's talk a
little bit about employee benefits. So, the district is part of the state uh state benefit plan. The state benefit benefit plan this year experienced a 14.9% aggregate increase um as of
January 1 of 25. Okay. In talking with our benefit consultants, they believe that that percentage will be the same for January 1, 2026. So, this budget kind of encomps both of those periods. So, we
have in in aggregate a 15 a 14.9% increase. Um, there are two plans that basically exist. We have our old chapter 78 plans where people pay a percentage of their premium percentage of the premium based upon how much they make.
That's about 35% of our employees while 65% are on the newer educator health plans where uh the percentage that you contribute toward your benefits is based on your salary. Um so why are the rates up so
high? The rates are up so high because the state plan has become the plan of last resort. And what I mean by that is that any district that has a favorable claims rate, meaning premiums as a
percentage of total payout um have left the state plan. So the only ones left in the state plan are those of us, Glenrock included, that don't have very great claims rate. uh we put out you could only ask for your claim rates I think
for free once every two or three years. We asked for it this year and we found out that our claims rate was well over a hundred um mostly fueled by um prescription drugs. So we are not attractive to a private insurance
company uh to potentially migrate out. So we are where we are um and there's really not a lot that we can do about it. Um just to give you an idea that those legacy 78 plans they were up 22%
this year whereas the uh educator plans were only up 9%. So the state gives you some relief um in terms of a tax levy cap adjustment but our um premiums went
up by $1.1 million. The cap adjustment we got is for just about everything over 2% which added so it gave us about 800. So we still have this $300,000 delta that the district had to eat out of its 2% cap. So
$300,000 over our cap which generates about $1.1 million ate up about 27% of our total 2% that we can go up. So the crunch really is is is is in that healthc care
number. On the special education side, it's uh as you could see up here, it's a combination of transportation as well as out of district um transportation. On on the tuition side, we had seven additional students this year uh that
needed um special services that we could not provide locally. Um and so we have that plus we have the cost of the associated aids for some of those students which have gone up uh considerably. Also on transportation uh
we are going to be transporting uh five additional students plus uh the the way the transportation contracts work uh they can be renewed up to the C transportation CPI transportation CPI
this year uh was um at 3.57%. So that added in. So essentially the contracts will get renewed. They'll be increased by that 3.57% and then they will route out for us in region one. So that's really what
what what what's driving the total budget and the $2.6 million increase. This next slide really just shows that we're spending our money in the same proportion that we always have.
Um the only difference is you can see the increases uh in uh employee benefits. You could see the increases in tuition as well as transportation. Whoops. So how do we pay for those expenditures? Well, that's our revenue
side. So we start off with our tax levy. Our tax levy will increase by $2.1 million or 3.88%. And first question is is well James I thought you said there was a 2% tax cap. Well it's not a hard cap and there are
adjustments that can be made to your cap. We've already talked about one which is our healthc care uh uh health insurance premium cap which was 800,000. So when you add that 800,000 that adds 1.53%.
And then we had some bank cap of $185,000 that we used in order to balance the budget. That was at.35. So.35 for bank cap, 1.53 for the health insurance cap plus the two the 2% that
brings you to the 3.88 uh increase in the tax levy on the bank cap. I would just uh add a caveat. uh we do not have any more bananked cap. Um and we'll see in a future slide where that banked cap was
generated and and why now we do not have any. Um our next line is state aid. Um we were one of the lucky who got the full 6% increase um in state aid uh which was about
$25,000. The reason why it reads 5.51% is that state aid includes our extraordinary aid. We're in the process of still calculating what and submitting extraordinary aid. We won't know that until June. So, we just left it flat to last year. So, that being flat at
305,000 just brings the percentage down. We did get the full 6%. Fund balance has not changed. Um, and I'll explain a little bit about why it's unchanged uh in in another slide. Uh, our other sources are up
$300,000 and and that's really primarily due to two things. And and then and the first one nets to like $30,000 after you include the expense side. Um, and that's we have a shared service for custodial services with North Halen. um the price
that North Halen uh has to pay is is increased, right? We pay the whole bill and then they pay us. We recognize that as revenue to offset the increased expense. So, it really is fictitious in terms at a net, but from a revenue perspective, it did increase. The real
increase to revenues is uh a contribution of $150,000 from the community school. So this is the first time postcoid that we have gone back to that model where the community school is making a
contribution uh to operations and it is it is in an amount that is consistent with what had uh been used in the past. Um their operations can certainly uh cover uh such a contribution to our net
operating budget. And that brings you to the $2.6 million that we need to cover the increased $2.6 million uh in expenditures. Um so probably the this
slide that'll make your stomach turn the most tonight is the one that shows just how much of our budgets are financed locally versus how much is subsidized by the state. So 6% of our budget comes from the state. The rest of it is all
locally generated. Now within that 94% is a 3% contribution from the fund balance or $1.5 million. 1.5 is a little bit of a misnomer. It's a little bit it's more like 1.4. And the reason why it's 1.4
before is that $100,000 of it is is we're using a h 100red grand from the maintenance reserve that the board created last year to cover our painting project this year. Um so that is is also included in fund uh fund balance. The
1.4 is $100,000 less than the fund balance contribution from last year which was 1.5 million. Um Dr. Charleston and myself um feel that that that contribution um is quite high based on our budget and
we made a plan to reduce that uh contribution over the years. Now obviously every h 100,000 uh that we reduce fund balances contribution is $100,000 in cut or savings that we have to find in that next budget. So this
year's budget has a 1.4 2526 has a 1.4 4 and then we will move to a 1.3 to a 1.2 etc. until we get to a point that we think it's um a reasonable uh contribution from fund balance uh on the
62 63 $64 million budget. Our debt service um pretty much looks the same as it did last year. Um actually nothing has has has really changed. We have two series that are out there. There's the 2008 series um that will be paid off in full in September of
2033 um that adds about $3 million both principal and interest. And then we have a 2019 series uh that will be paid off in July of 34 that adds $1.3 million uh in in principle and interest. Uh the one
thing to remember here um in addition to the debt service aid of $1.2 $2 million that we receive. The 2019 referendum came in well under budget. And so at that point, a decision was was made
because by law, that money has to either has to go back um against principal payments. So, $500,000 a year has been taken from that surplus that exists in our project funds and offsets our debt
uh obligation. Um we have enough for another three more years at $500,000. Um at that point then that full $500,000 would hit to the tax levy. Um the only other thing that I'd really like to mention on this slide is
that it doesn't include if you remember this last year towards the end of last year we issued uh refunding bonds for our ESIP project. This does not include those EIP bonds because all EIP financing must take place in our operating budget and and it's it was
it's embedded in those buildings and grounds numbers that we saw earlier. Um, we've always liked to give you a nice 15-year history of of of the increases on the levies. Um, and so you could see us down on the bottom there is
that 3.88 increase uh on the operating or the general fund. Um, and then $546 increase uh on the uh debt service side for a net 3.69%.
I think the takeaway here is that if you look at periods where you were at or below 2%, they're almost always followed by a series of years where you're well over the 2%. And that's exactly uh what what's happening here except for the
fact that when it happened previously uh starting in 2016 2017 is we're dealing with a much higher uh inflationary rate, right? and prices typically don't go down. Um, so we're battling that as we
uh try to maintain all of our programs. So probably the uh the one slide that everybody's interested in is well what does that mean to um my taxes on my home? So, first I want to add the caveat that um the district doesn't
calculate the tax rate that is done by the municipal tax assessor. This is really presented forformational purposes only and it may be slightly different when you get your tax bill. But if you take a look at here, you know, we have a cross year of 24 and 25. That's just the way this the town does their tax years.
When you split it up on our aggregate taxes and you look at the ratables uh of the town which we get from the tax assessor's office uh which went up a little bit uh this year over last we can
see that our overall change to our estimated tax rate is 0065%. The average home in Glenrock per the tax assessor's office is about $591,000 which means their bill will
would go up about $382 a year. Um I always like um to say, you know, if you divide that by 12 um it's really not that big of a number, $31.85. So um but that's me just
spinning. Um, and that's what all I have for you this year. Um, other than to say thank you uh both to the uh budget committee um to Dr. Charleston, to uh Mr. Van Ness, all of the department heads and supervisors who helped us put this
together um this year. Thank you so much, Mr. Canelis. All right. Um, I just want to open it up to any questions from the board. I know that we've um spoken about this a couple times, but do you have questions?
I'm sorry. Um, well, questions. We are We are and then Huh? public comment first. Okay. All right. All right. 7:27 we're going to open up for public comments on the
budget hearing. from members of the public. All right. If you're able to state your name and address and then you have three minutes. Uh Colleen Manley, 70 Ridge Road. Um the one comment I just wanted to make and I know that you've been
having discussions for several months um is that when you do your pie chart about what's sort of discretionary versus what's um sort of not discretionary uh you know the structure salaries and benefits benefits in particular are
based on what your structure is of your staffing. So the number of teachers and then the number of administrators and stuff like that. So that be once you decide that that becomes that that underlying structure of course could be
adjusted um based on discussions that you have. Uh I'm interested in what will be in the next part of the discussion talking about the supervisors. And so my point is simply that uh we you know we have
many supervisors you know it's been 5 years since we put in an assistant superintendent since we put in an entire layer of supervisors and um I don't believe there's been a lot of feedback to the public or presentations to the
public about what value we've seen from them. I'm not saying there's not value. I'm saying that I have made the comment many many times that I believe the public deserves more reporting out from supervisors on on curriculum and what
they do and what we're seeing. Um and it hasn't been done in the last 5 years. I understand they come here and sort of give updates. Um so anyway, I just wanted to make that because that is your underlying assumptions. Other than that,
um, yeah, thanks for the presentation. Thank you, Miss Manley. If you could please state your name. Ma'am, hello. Uh, Sharon Scarpelli, 687 Dumis Avenue. I want to thank you for the presentation. I know the budget is
getting more difficult every year. Um, so I applaud the the board for sticking with an ad hoc finance committee. Um, I'm hoping that that committee will stay intact going forward because given the numbers that we've heard, given the lack
of back bank cap going forward, this board and and administration is going to be making some really difficult decisions in next year's budget. And those discussions should be happening with the board and the administration and this ad hoc committee starting now
and into September so you can plan. Um so I'm I'm interested to hear what's going to be said about the supervisors later in this meeting but those just my comments. So I thank you for the ad hoc committee and hoping that
that continues. Thanks. Thank you. All right. If no other members of the public, then we'll close the public comments on the budget hearing at 7:31. All right. Um, if there's nothing else, then I'll
have a motion to close the public hearing. Miss Calves seconded by Mr. Hayward. Miss Carasola. This is to close the public hearing. Miss Karasola. Yes. Mr. Cohen. Yes. Mr.
Hayward. Yes. Miss Parlamus? Yes. Miss Stevenson? Yes. Miss Calves? Yes. Dr. Robinson? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. All right. Can I have a motion to uh discuss resolutions B1 through
B2? This one is difficult. Miss Parlamus. Seconded by Miss Stevenson. All right. Uh comments or questions on B1 or B2? Mr. Cohen?
The suggested budget is a failure of the board to control cost. The total increase was built based on a maximum allowed tax increase rather than sending a direction from the board. We are not increasing by the highest tax rate allowed because we need to, but because we can. The finance committee only met
once during the whole process. This is definitely not enough. There is no reason for Glenrock to have one of the highest tax incre tax increases in Bergen County in the past few years. While I understand the increase in health care cost and labor, I would point out that other districts are facing similar challenges and are not
increasing taxes at a similar rate. I also want to point out that we're not addressing in the budget things that Glenrock needs in my opinion, including one, after school math support, two, dedicated principal for the middle school, and three, increased support for special education students that stay
inside the school district and for the gifted and talented students. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Cohen. Um, anybody else have any comments or questions? Mr. Famous. Uh, Mr. Canelis, I had two questions. Um, one on state aid. We had 6%. I know coming in at
5.51%. Can you explain the difference again? Uh, the difference is is um part of uh our state aid is something called extraordinary aid. extraordinary aid is calculated within the current year. Um, in fact, we're doing it right now. It's due on the 25th or 27th of this month.
We won't know what our 2425 uh uh allocation will be. So, we just left our 2526 flat to that 305 and that just brings down the percentage. Okay. And then the the data for just the average home value, where is that data
source? that comes from the town. Okay. Thank you. Any additional comments or questions? Did you have anything? Go ahead. Um, thank you for the presentation. Um, you know, I I agree with a member of the public who mentioned that we should be talking about this moving forward. And, you
know, James, you pointed out how the process will start in October. So, I think having the ad health committee, you know, moving forward and asking these questions makes a lot of sense from now until then and beyond. Um since we pointing out some, you know, other towns, I just I do want to share that um
all New Jersey school districts are facing significant increases in employee health benefit costs mandated by legislation. I know we talked about it's like close to 15%. And conversations like this are happening around the state. I've been following a lot of um other districts and the increases are as
high as 33% I believe I saw. Um, and people are trying to avoid things like laying off teachers, uh, in controlling the class sizes, school closures, uh, property sales. People are actually selling pieces of property, um, cutting sports programs, cutting services like counseling, and we're in Glenrock and
people moved here for our great school. So, I think it's important that we continue to invest in the future of our kids, and I'm glad we're having these conversations, and I I think we're doing a good job. Thank you. Any additional
comments before All right. Um and before we get to your comment, I'm just going to make a comment and then I'll I'll call on you. Um so, you know, just like like you stated, you know, when I'm looking at this budget, I'm also looking at the budgets
around the state as well as um within Bergen County and those um towns that are surrounding ours. And you know, we're we're in quite I don't want to say the a pickle, but like the 2% cap um and the way that the school funding formula is makes it very difficult with regards
to your operating budget, your um expenses for your uh salaries and benefits and then what it is that you want to do with the amount um the the difference, you know. And I think that um you know when we're looking at how we ended up here, yes, you know, the
process the the sometimes the physical process starts in October, but some of it is born from the conversations that we have over the summer when we're looking at our um you know, district goals and the goals for the board of education and things like that. And and
that's born from the conversations that we're having all year long with regards to what the community is asking for us to support for the students. So many times people are asking for things like yes, we spoke about like MTSS and and G&T and um you know funding for uh for
uh students with disabilities and special education. Um and finding ways to keep that uh special education in you know in in district where possible. Um, you know, these are all things that we we talk about all all year to get to the
point where we are here, you know, in May looking at, you know, the bulk of the work that occurs over the course of the year. So, I would say, you know, um, uh, Mr. Cohen, I look forward to, you know, your input as well over the summer when we're talking about, um, the the
board goals, the district goals, and the things that the community is asking for us to continue to support for our kids because all of that does cost money. Um I think that it's not uh unreasonable to ask you know for just another update with regards to um the you know things
like the supervisors and what uh financial impact um that has on the community you know I I think that's you know part of our job is to inquire for things like that. Um but you know when we're looking at the 92% of Glenrock is
residential compared to for instance Pamas where that number is 60%. So our tax base is significantly higher than many of the communities that are that surround us. Um so when we're looking at those kinds of costs and what happens when we're saying that we want to support our students, we want to support
our educators, we want to make sure that we we just came through a a renegotiation of the uh the teachers contract. And what we've been asking as a board as well as what the community has been asking for is that we need to find ways to additionally support our teachers, support our administration,
and make sure that we're having less attrition and you know figuring out how many years does it take in order for us to get to a point where the teachers may be a bit more satisfied but without harming the community especially our senior citizens which are you know fixed
income uh individuals and and want to stay here and age in place in Glenrock and we all know because people have grown up here and want to stay here and it's a wonderful town because of that history. So if we aren't cognizant of that then we have a situation where
those individuals can't afford to live here anymore. But at the same time, we have new families that are asking us to increase um student services, increase or consider tutoring, uh you know, provide for other services that aren't, you know, or may have been available in New York City but aren't here, you know,
like so it is a very very complex um situation that is changing year over year over year as we are in a budget crunch and we're trying to be, you know, fiscally responsible and also maintain a district that is solvent. So if fun if if federal funding gets pulled, you
know, we have what $600 700,000 of Title N funding for uh for this district, whereas maybe in Fereralon it's maybe $2 million of IDEIDA funds and things like that that they would have to absorb. So, you know, I appreciate, you know, the importance of this conversation for, you
know, every year and the difficulty of, you know, seeing any kind of changes, but, you know, I'm encouraged by all of the work that we're continuing to do and the support of Dr. Charson and Mr. Canelis on, you know, making sure that, you know, we're using these funds
wisely. Thank you. So, if we could call a roll, please. Miss Carousella? Yes. Mr. Cohen? No. Mr. Hayward? Yes. Miss Parlamus? Yes. Miss
Stevenson? Yes. Miss Calves? Yes. Dr. Robinson? Yes. Motion passes. All right. For our presentation, yes, we have Dr. Grip here. It's good to
see you again. It's been several several years. Um Dr. Grip is from statistical forecasting. He has done our demographic study. As the board may or may not be aware, um districts are required to have a demographic study done every five years. It's part of our midyear budget
review. We submit it and so on. I won't get into the details, but Dr. Grip has been waiting patiently and the floor is yours. We look forward to your presentation. Thank you, Dr. Charleston. Hit the button. Can you hear me now? There we go. Thank
you, Dr. Charleston. So, tonight's presentation probably be about the same um length as maybe the budget presentation. I'm guessing about 15 to 20 minutes. And if we can just hold your questions to the end, I have a feeling I'll be answering them along the way. So, what the the first slide I'm going
to be talking about is our company. Um, I was here six year actually it was five years ago. It was uh you were one of the last districts I presented before the pandemic and then everything. I remember I remember that. Yes, that was a couple of weeks and then all hell broke loose.
Um so yes that's that's uh the claim to fame in my brain of what I remember but um so our company's been doing this kind of work which is called school demographic studies since 1998 um predominantly in the New York, New Jersey metropolitan area but we stretch
as far south as Arlington County, Virginia, right outside of DC, Lowden County, Prince William County, those uh northern Virginia counties all the way up to Vermont. Um, and our study's probably done about our company's probably done about 200 school districts
in the state alone. I think we in Bergen County, we probably done about 20. Um, we're the demographic consultant for the New York City public schools since 2006. We do all their enrollment projections and look at a lot of a litany of issues that are very complex. As you can
imagine, there's about a million students, lots of different issues. Uh, I'm the executive director. I have a doctorate from Ruckers University, the graduate school of ed in educational statistics and measurement. Most of us wind up working for the college board and looking at testing and
reliability issues uh for the SAT or AP testing to make sure that test uh the questions are reliable or valid. But that was not my intention. It was that um I was teaching actually a Bridgewater or Raran uh school district. Dr. Charleston and I did not cross paths
actually at the same time. But I was a physics and statistics teacher there. And uh our superintendent at the time um Dr. McGary said what I had no idea what to do my dissertation on. He said you know this is your background in statistics. Why don't you do some modeling uh in school projection
enrollment forecasting and that's what I did my my dissertation on 27 years ago. And it really uh turned out to be a kind of a blessing in disguise because I never heard of this field. Most people have never heard of it. So I still publish on this. This is my passion. I love this stuff. I still write in
peerreview journals to this day. I testify as an expert witness around the state. Um, when school districts want to divorce from each other. You probably don't even know that can happen. But if there's a sending receiving agreement between school districts, you don't have that issue. Um, you don't just get up
and walk away and take your kids and send them somewhere else. You have to actually go through the court system to to get out of that arrangement, which is kind of interesting. So tonight we'll talk about the the study. Um the biggest thing that you're of course concerned about are the
enrollment projections, but to me as a demographer I have to dig that a little deeper and find out what's going on. So we did project enrollments for a 5-year period from the 2526 year which is coming in September through 2930. Um looked at other things. Uh
before I go to the next bullet most people will ask me next is why can't you go out more than five years? can you go out 10 or 15 or something like that? The problem is the state won't allow us to do that. Um because then you have to start projecting kids who have not been
born yet. And we do do that for the city of New York. Um we can use age specific fertility rates of women at different ages. And we can do that, but this is just too small of a community to do that particular analysis. So, we also look at
the town, who you are as a community, things like uh socioeconomic um data, um racial data, uh birth counts, population, age structure, which is really fun. We'll show we'll show you that in a few minutes. Then we go down to the school district level where we
look at your enrollments over time for the last decade, not just K to 12, but the elementary, middle, and high school grade configuration. We contact the local planning and zoning department to find out what kind of new housing developments are on tap. Um, we then
compare your school buildings capacities to the current enrollment and projected enrollment to see if you have enough space either now and in the future. We did a separate analysis in this particular we were asked to do a separate analysis called a housing
turnover analysis. A completely independent analysis of how to project students. Um we don't recommend using that for facility planning but we do the we show this to the board to say hey is there a possibility that you could grow
just based on houses turning over in the future. That's the point of that um that study. So we'll talk about that as well. So this is showing your historical and popula projected populations of Glen Rock over from 1940 uh to 2050 which is
the far right bar. So everything to the left of that big space on the right side of the screen is from the US census. So every 10 years as you know the census comes up but your population counts and in 2020 um was 12,000 and change 133 to
be exact. Um the far right bar which is from a third party organization called the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority isn't really projecting much growth as you can see in the burrow. not much, maybe about a thousand, maybe 1,400 people. Right now, your population
is lower than what it was at its peak in the 70s. So, you you know, you had this decline um in the 70s and 80s, which was common in most most communities in Bergen County, and you're still not even back to where that peak population
was. So, who are you? That's this is always an interesting thing. I like to look at this. Um it's it's really just descriptive statistic data from the census and something called the American Community Survey which is published in the inner censil years um by the Census
Bureau. So predominantly white as you can see followed by Asians and Hispanics, black African-Americans, Native Americans um and um multi-race people would be um four, five, and six in there but I only listed the top three in 2020. And you what we found out and
this is again common around the state. You have an increasing Asian population and declining white population from 2010 compared to the state your median age is about the same as the state. The median is a 50th percentile which means half the people in the town are above
this that median value and half are below. Um about 15% of the population or is that 16? I can't see it. 16 of the population is foreign born. Um, Korea and Turkey are the two largest sources of where those people are coming from,
but lower than that of the state. Now, here's where it gets fun. Highly educated, wealthy community. Um, that is one of the highest bachelor's degree or higher that I've seen. I think Woodcliffe Lake might be around 80%. Um,
but that 75% roughly of your population has a bachelor's degree or higher. Well above that of the state. Take a look at your median household income. Double that of the state. more than 200,000 uh 4,000 housing units approximately of which
92% are one unit homes. So what is this? This is really a bedroom community. There's really not much than single family homes. It's not like there's lots of apartment buildings because if you look at the next line, the renter occupate the renter occupied units are very very low compared to the state,
only about 8%. And finally, the median value of an owner occupied unit here is 786,000. Um, which means again 50% of the houses are above that and 50% or lower. That's a pretty high
number. This is just showing a map. Our GIS analyst put this together. It's just showing the burrow um where all the schools are located. So when we look at enrollments and this is going to be um now we dive into the district school district
information. We look at enrollment at the same day every year and that's roughly on October the 15th and that's the date that usually your school business administrator in his office sends the uh New Jersey smart data to Trenton with all your enrollments
October the 15th. So back in October your enrollment was 2529. If we look at that from 10 years prior which would be the 1516 year not much of a gain 111 and a half students that half as a shared time student. So
basically what we saw is that um we've had enrollment increasing through the 22 23 year before it reversed trend. So the last couple years last two years you've actually had declining enrollment after this period of increasing enrollments actually declined and use we use
something called the cohort survivor ratio method to project enrollments five years out. That's that's approved by the DOE. That's the common industry standard. Okay. Okay. So, there's just a chart showing your enrollment over time. You can see how it's been going up up up in
the last two years. Just kind of went down. Sorry, skipping that too quick. Um, so now we look at your enrollments by grade configuration. And this is probably one of the more important slides of tonight. So, I always tell people, please stay awake during this slide. Um, the elementary population is
in blue up at the top. And you can see how it was increasing up through the 22 23 year and then it started going the other way going down. And the reason I say look at this slide is because if you think about it, if that's your elementary population starting to decline the last two years, what's going
to happen to middle and high school somewhere over time? Well, they're going to go down as well as those smaller cohorts move through the system. You can see that for the middle school which is on the bottom um enrollments basically increased through 2021 school year before stabilizing and the high school
enrollment actually was going down through the 2122 year before it's going up and again that's catching up to the increasing enrollment at the elementary. It just it's just like a mirror image but they're shifted you know five or seven years apart. So to project enrollments we do
do this method called the cohort survivor ratio method. I do talk about it just so you understand that I'm not just doing some magic eightball behind the screen and figuring out what the numbers are going to be. Um what we look at is the progression of students from
one grade to the next over time. There are 13 possible grade progressions in a school district. That's a K to2. It starts with birth to kindergarten which is a 5-year gap and it ends at 11 through 12th. Right? So I give you a simple example. If you have 100 first
graders in the 23 24 year and it becomes 95 second graders the next year that survival rate or we call it a grade progression rate is 95 over 100 or 0.95. So you lose five students in the net. So if the ratios are above one you have
inward migration below one outward migration. Now I can't tell you exactly why people are moving in or out. We just can see from the data that there's something going on migration in trend-wise. It could be that, you know, things are too expensive here. I'm leaving or I have family here, I'm
moving in. Can't tell you why, but those are some of the reasons why people move in or out. So of your 13 possible average ratios, we take an average over usually a four or five year period to uh reduce the uh impact of any outliers. 10
of the 13 were above one, which means that in the net you have a steady flow of inward migration of people coming in to the community. Why? Great school district. It's simple as that. you know, I see in um districts that are not quite
as favorable, we see these survival ratios well below one almost for every single grade level. For the three ratios that were below one, two of the three were at the high school level. And that is not uncommon again in affluent districts because people have the
ability to send their kids to private high school. Don't take it personally. People just want choice. Um, so you know when we look at some of the ratios from 2020, we talked about COVID a few minutes ago. Three of those ratios were the lowest in the last decade. So we usually exclude those in our
calculations. So we take an average of usually, like I said, the last four or five years worth of ratios and we multiply that times the most current enrollment, which is from this year, and assume those ratios are going to maintain constancy through the five-year period. That's how a projection is
developed. Births are critical to our analysis because they become your kindergarten kids five years later. We looked at it for a 12-year period, but there really hasn't been much of a train a trend in your birth population. 77 to 116 for the
last 12 years. Uh you can see the endpoint data in 2022, you had 111 births. Really not that much difference from 2010. When you look at the from a chart perspective, it's just, you know, up and down. But, you know, some districts I work with, we you see a steady increase or steady decline and
then that really has a very large impact on your kindergarten count five years later. This is a this is a great chart for you guys. You can really pat yourself on the back on after you you get the explanation for this one. So, this is showing the birth year on the left. How many Glenrock births occurred
to a mother who had an address in Glenrock and then how many kindergarten kids come five years later. So if you just look at the top line where there was 104 BERS and you got 173 kids, that's a gain of 69 kids from that 0 to
5year period where people are moving in. The ratio is simply the third column divided by the second column. You see how high those values are above one. The higher they are above one, usually it's the better the district. You know, from a school district educational
standpoint, I had some districts I work with that are over two. So you've got one value over two. I have one value in Westchester, one district in Westchester County with values over three and that's Scarsdale. And you might have heard of them. So there's um this is just showing
now this is another interesting statistic. This is um what's called an age sex pyramid or population pyramid. It's showing the percentage of males and females in 2010. Males on the left, females on the right. And uh the the
yaxis is um age classes like 15 to 19, 20 to 24 all the way up to 85 to 89. What I want to point out and then 20 in 2010 the largest group for males was the 10 to 14 group and the largest group for females was the 45 to 49 group. But do
you see how there's very few people in their 20s and 30s here? At least that's in 2010. Well, I mean you you know the answer to that. We heard some of it in the budget uh meeting high taxes, high property values, hard to buy a house. Well, let's see if anything's changed 10 years later in
2020. Well, some of the the the uh bigger um bars, you can see kind of shrunk. You see that? But still the 20s and 30s are still pretty much a big hole. Um we find this in communities that are um somewhat homogeneous.
They're not heterogeneous. If we go down to Hackinack, um you would see all those parts of the H pyramid filled in. It's almost like someone took a bite out of both sides of the apple here. You would not see that in a place more uh heterogeneous. In 2020, the largest
groups were the 5 to9 population for males and 10 to 14 population for females, which is the lower, you know, children children age. So when we look at uh over the 10-year period, who are the what what age classes are growing
the most and which ones are declining the most? Well, declining the most is the 45 to 49 population, but what's growing the most is the 20 to 24 population. Now, before you get so excited and think to yourselves, boy, these people are moving in, these
younger people with lots of money to buy a house. Guess what? They're probably my kids. They're just coming back from college boomeranging and living in your basement. uh something like that. The 20 to 44 population is is having a difficult time in in making it. So
that's what I believe that is up there. As far as new housing starts, uh we contact planning and zoning. Like I mentioned, this one particular uh development on Rock Road which is under construction. Maybe you pass it and you've seen it. Uh 69 units, a mix of
market rate and affordable units on the bottom there. Um, we use something called the Rucker University multipliers to project how many kids that will come out of a market rate unit, an affordable unit of a different bedroom count, one, two, or three. And it can then from
Rucker's numbers, it comes out to um 27. And we did adjust your projections for that particular development. Now as far as home sales are concerned, you can see that in the mid 2000s you had a lot of home sales and then you see that big
trough in the late 2000s. That's the housing market crash of 20089 took about 3 four years before the market kind of picked up. Then we see this steep increase in sales up to the pandemic year. You can see 2021 way out
there. I think it's uh I can't see how that 232 units maybe. So the last two years you could see the sales have declined and that's because well two things. We got higher mortgage interest rates and who in the world would want to put their house on the market if they
got a 3 and a half% rate and then get one again at 7%. It just doesn't make sense. So there's not much inventory is really what it boils down to. our our GIS analysts mapped all the home sales from the last five or six years to show you where they are. Dark blue being
the most uh sales and you can see mostly in the northern part of the barrels where the greatest activity has been. So getting to where we want to talk about the projections like I said a 5-year period we we looked at further uh for the next five years did two sets of
projections because this is not exa exact science. This is something we're we're modeling different things, trying to give you an idea range of numbers. So, one bases on a four-year average of those ratios, the other a five-year average. We did adjust for the new housing. There's your new projections
five years out at the bottom of the screen. Both are showing, one is showing a bigger decline than the other, 77 students lower as opposed to 19 students lower. And it's hard to gain students in even though you have a lot of inward migration. It's hard to gain when you
have housing as high as you do in terms of price. It's just very difficult. You see the um that that age sex pyramid kind of explains it all. So when we project by we look at and broke it down by grade configuration. You can see up at the top
row is what your enrollments are currently for elementary, middle, and high. And then we show you the enrollment for each of the five years. what the five-year change would be. Um you can see that the high school is still with the positive numbers
projected to gain because those larger um cohorts from the earlier years are finally moving through the system. But at the elementary level and at the middle school level, we're projecting a decline in enrollment. The capacities that we
looked at, we did not look at at the building level. We did not project at the elementary level. We projected uh K to 5 6 to 8 9 to 12. But what you're seeing is the conglome the the aggregate total there for the capacity of the the elementary buildings which is 1125 and
we compared that to your current enrollment. So right now you have a shortage of 42 seats. Uh that's not really anything to worry about. Um and then with declining enrollment in the future um again a very small number of
what we call unhoused students or inadequate seating. You have a big surplus of seating currently at the Glenrock Middle School, high school, the one building. And you can see that even with the increasing enrollment at the high school and a little bit of decline at the um at the middle school, there's
really not going to be that much of a change at that level. So, the last thing we did, and then I'll open it up to questions, we did the housing turnover analysis. And this is really complex. It was developed by two of my colleagues out at Cal Berkeley. And what we're
doing, it's a completely completely independent analysis. You can almost take tonight's presentation and chop it into two. Um, we're actually advancing houses through the years rather than students. And, um, we only do this analysis for single family homes. We
pull out town houses. Of course, apartments wouldn't count because they're just rentals. Um, there are three inputs. We look at the housing turnover rates by length of ownership. What does that mean? Well, it means that certain types of homes sell more if
they're younger in terms of their ownership, maybe one, two, three, or four years owned as opposed to something that's 20 years owned. Number two, the another input is we have is the current distribution of homes at each length of ownership. And finally, the student
yields by length of ownership. What does that mean? That means how many students do you have on average in a home owned one year, two years, three years, four years? You'll see some interesting stats coming up and this shows me how heavy you are concentrated in detached single
family homes for your kids. That's where they are. Um so we we get this data from um your tax assessor's office in the county level and there it's at the parcel level and we track each house through its life cycle. Its life cycle
means once it sells it's returned back to uh zero years of ownership and that's the end of its life. So, the data here contains sale dates, sale prices, uh the year the home was built, and we got data for almost about a 30-year period, 1994
to 2023. So, I have give you a simple example here uh in a moment. Um we have a home, well, first we're going to follow each cohort of homes beginning in 1994 to see when they sell. So, here's the example. Let's say you have a home built in 1980 and has three sale dates,
2002, 8, and 12. So, it's part of three separate cohorts. those 2002, 8 and 12, the first length of ownership is not 22 years because if it was built, if the first year of good sales data we have was 1994, it could have been actually
sold um prior to 1994. So our first length of ownership is between 2002 and 8, which is 6 years, then 8 and 12, which is four years, and the current length of ownership, because we only had data through 2023, is 11 years. So that just gives you an idea of how this
works. And when we looked at the average turnover rates for the last 30 years, you could take a look that the highest percentage of sales happen in the first year of ownership. Why? I'm not so sure. It happens in a lot of communities. I think people either change jobs or
they're trying to move up into, you know, a bigger home or something like that. But take a look what happens when you get out to say almost around 30 years of ownership, which is way down the end. The turnership the the the turnover rates are very very low. for homes that are owned a long time. Seems like that once people are in their
homes, they're not as inclined as you might think to sell them. A recent article by AERP said that as many times you might think um an older person, senior citizen might want to move to Florida, get those great tax rates that
we all hear about, doesn't happen as much as you think because they have either a grandkids nearby or b they're very connected to their community and really are civically engaged. And those are the two big reasons why people stay in place. So, here's what the number of
homes by length of ownership looks like. We we actually divvied up by how many years they've been owned. You can see around uh three years of ownership, I think, is the greatest number. Here's the yields by length of ownership. You could see that there's a
tremendous amount of kids around 8 n 10 years of ownership and then it just drops off very quickly as students then graduate out of the school district. Of course, um you would imagine that if homes own 20 some odd years, there shouldn't be too many kids in those types of units. So, the methodology is
is somewhat simple. I'm going to try to simplify it as best I can. We take the current length of home ownership distribution, which was two charts ago, and the historical turnover rates that you saw in that graph with all the line that was going up and down. and we're
either going to advance a home into one more year of ownership or we're going to sell it and have it go back to zero years of ownership. So for every year for the next five years, we're going to are gen we're going to generate a number of homes at each length of ownership and
then we're going to multiply it by that student yield value that at each length of ownership that you saw in just the prior graph. And that gets us the number of students. And here's what you get. you actually get declining enrollment in this method. And that's assuming that
the turnover rates that you've experienced historically in the last 30 years are what's going to happen in the five next five years. Now, of course, if we have much lower interest rates, all bets are off. So, it's really hard to say in the next five years. I'm really
going on average turnover rates from the last 30 years, which covers great housing markets and terrible housing markets. So, it's an average. Again, um the top line is showing the number of students that we projected using the methodology. The the second and third
rows are pre kindergarten students and kids from town houses and condos and and students who don't live in Glenrock. Maybe it's faculty members that you know are allowed to bring their kids to to come here to school. Very small number of students. So, but any event, taking out all the other variables in the
system, just looking at housing turnover, your district is not projected to increase, is actually projected to decline if the turnover rates continue as they have. So, what's the summary for tonight? Um, we're projecting lower enrollments at the end of the 5-year
period, which continues the most recent trend from the last two years. The decline is not projected to be uniform across the three grade configurations. They're actually projected to occur at the elementary and the middle school level. And gains are projected in the high school grades. The gains are
projected in those high school grades as those larger existing cohorts from the prior years that I was referring to when enrollment was increasing move through the system and up into the upper grades. So, I'm going to turn it back over to our board president to see if you have
any questions. Thank you so much. That was um very thorough and I think that not only will the school community benefit but but um our entire Glenrock community, you know that Thank you so much. Thank you. Um any particular
questions, Miss Parlamis? Uh thank you very much. That was a very I I love that presentation. Um I have a few questions. Uh so I I noticed that you said the median house value that you had noted was 786,000 and right and where did you get
that stat from because that's quite different than that's from the American community survey. So that's uh from the 2019 23 American Community Survey. So yeah I mean so different tax rates.
Ah I see. Okay. That's okay. that would explain it. Actually, if you don't mind, I'm just going to clarify that data point right there. Uh where is it? Uh there. Oops, I had it. Um that's also based on a survey, which is a very very
small survey sample size, 5%. If you ever took statistics, we have something called a confidence interval. So if it it's not exactly 786,000, there's a range uh because the sample size was so small. I don't have the confidence interval here, but it
could be about 75,000 below that as well as 75,000 above it. Like a margin of error. The tax is 550 and the difference was assessed tax. That's how we assess the houses and this is the real value.
Yeah. assessed versus uh real values tax value versus the assessed value unless yeah I don't know when the last time you react but that's always and then my next question we have this no go ahead please continue okay um we
have this estimation that we're going to have 27 new children come out of the new housing that's going to be uh with 69 units I suspect that as soon as those units open up they'll get filled up um and we'll pretty much know pretty quickly it how how accurate that is and
I know small changes up front, you know, down the road can make bigger changes down down the pike. Um, do you think that we, you know, would you see us needing to kind of plug in that that actual value to make uh an impact since
you only do this demographic study every so how how many years? How how every five years? I mean well those those 27 have been embedded into the projections. I have added them in but I really doubt the numbers this is based on the
recorders and one Mr. Cohen if we could just have just one person talk at a time please. Um so those 27 are embedded into the projections. I wouldn't say that you have to do anything differently as this opens up because I made some estimations
that I think that they're going to be occupied within say the next year and a half to two that you know we have to make some guesstimates of when they're going to be occupied and that's when I rolled them folded them into the to the projections. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. All
right. All right, Mr. Cohen. Yeah, as I said, I really doubt those numbers. It's it's based on the New Jersey numbers rather than similar houses in Perken County. I doubt that people move to Glenrock for as an empty neester or young kids, young couples moving in. Uh
this is going to be houses with kids. We had the same problem with Fairlon when the demographer estimated in Rodward crossing numbers based on the Ruters numbers which is totally inaccurate and not representing uh what's happening in
uh our communities. So let me talk about the Rucker numbers since I helped develop them. Um I didn't exactly do the whole full study but I was one of the authors of it. The Rucker multipliers is probably one of the best data sources that we
have and I'll tell you why. Um, we take data from the PUMS data set and we do all these calculations and cross tabs and there are in that analysis it does show confidence intervals that could be either higher or lower. In fact, in the
analysis that you have in this report, I took the average figures for the state. There are multipliers that are used for either higher income housing or lower inome housing. The problem is you might
think that higher income housing or like here would yield more children um than lower income, but according to the state I I just happen to have this data. I'm going to share that with you. So it just helps to to to point out. So a two-bedroom unit apartment in this data
right here the average statewide irrespective of the home value was 339. If it was the house was below the state average it was 477 and if it was above the median it was 096. Okay. So, there's that that and if
it's a three-bedroom unit and the average in the state was821, but if it was a below median household um value, it was 1.018 and if it was above it was604. A big difference, big lower. So
I I'm not sure, you know, I mean, I understand there's there's some points that you're maybe just from, you know, being in the area you see this, but at least from what I'm seeing from a data perspective, I'm not seeing what you're seeing. I think
it's fair and the numbers in the data. Thank you. Thank you. Um, any additional questions at this time? All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. You're quite welcome. Thank you for
having me. Thanks, Dr. G. Good to see you again. Yes, same here. Thank you. Take care. You haven't aged today. Great. See you in five years. Thank you. Take care. Good night. Thank you. Good night. All
right. Uh so we have uh National Teachers Day on May 6th of this year and we would love to honor them. Um so if we could go around in our usual fashion. Whereas teachers make public schools great and
whereas teacher work to open students mind to ideas, knowledge and dreams. And whereas teachers keep American democracy alive by laying the foundation for good citizenship. And whereas teachers fill many roles as listeners, explorers, role models,
motivators, and mentors. And whereas teachers continue to influence us long after our school days are only memories. And whereas teachers mold future citizens through guidance and education. And whereas teachers encounter students of
widely differing backgrounds. And whereas our count our country's future depends on providing quality education to all students. And whereas teachers spend countless hour preparing lessons, evaluating progress, counseling and coaching students, and performing
community service. And whereas our community recognizes and supports its teachers in educating the children of this community. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Glenrock Board of Education recognizes and acknowledges the impact of teachers
on our lives. Thank you. Um, so we'll have uh National School Nurse Day on May 7th and I'll read two lines. Uh, whereas children are the future and by investing in them today, we are ensuring our world for
tomorrow. And whereas all students have a right to have their health needs safely met while in the school setting. And whereas children today face more complex and life-threatening health problems requiring care in school. And whereas school nurses are professional
nurses that advance the well-being, academic success, and long life lifelong achievements of all students by serving on the front lines and providing a critical safety net for our nation's most fragile children. And whereas school nurses act as a liaison to the
school community, parents, and health care providers on behalf of children's health. And whereas school nurses support the health and educational success of children and youth by developing and providing programs and leadership. And whereas school nurses
are members of school-based mental health teams. And whereas school nurses understand the link between health and learning and are in a position to make a positive difference for children every day. Now therefore, be it resolved that the Glenrock Board of Education joins
the National Association of School Nurses, the New Jersey State School Nurses Association, and the Bergen County School Nurses Association in celebrating and acknowledging the accomplishments of school nurses and their efforts of meeting the needs of today's students by improving the
effective delivery of healthcare in our schools and shows gratitude for school nurses, not just on May 7th, 2025, National School Nurse Day, but at every opportunity. throughout the year. So, we thank our school nurses and we thank our
teachers um every day and especially um on the days that we're honoring them. All right. Yes. Um can I have a motion to approve the resolution? Mrs. Carousella, seconded by
Miss Galves. If we could call roll. Miss Carasola. Yes, Mr. Cohen. Yes, Mr. Hayward. Yes, Miss Parlamus. Yes,
Miss Stevenson. Yes, Miss Calvette. Yes, Dr. Robinson. Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Nothing correct. Um at 8:19, I would like to open a public comment section on board action
items only. Um, if you would like to discuss any board action items, um, please state your name and address and you have three minutes. All right, seeing no Oh, okay. Colleen Manley, 70 Ridge Road
question. Uh, Debbie Chella announced her retirement. Is that an action item? I Yes, it is. Okay. Uh, I noticed on the agenda that Debbie Chella has announced her retirement and I had to come up to
say like what an amazing person she is. What an amazing teacher. Um, I think uh, you know, when you have a senior, which I had my first one last year, and you reflect back on your time in the district, what I have learned is
that the brightest stars are the teachers who really made your child's time um, help them through. And Miss Chella did that. Um, all the teachers really did that particularly during COVID. Um, but Miss Chella and my
daughter took a lot of art classes, but she's pursuing a science degree, so this was sort of a side thing for her. But Miss Chella is so incredibly generous, incredibly supportive of her students. She gave my daughter a safe space, uh, whether during class time or other
times. and um she's just an incredibly generous spirit as are all the people in the arts department. I think always to remember how important the arts and the music and these other things are to these kids uh both for those who want to
pursue them or as just being well-rounded individuals and their mental health. So, um I just had to get up and say something because I will miss her dearly. Anytime I see her, I always say hello. Um, and uh, anyway, I will miss her a
lot. It's a big loss for the district, but I wanted to say that thank you. Thank you, Miss Miley. All right, seeing no additional uh, public comments, we'll close at 8:22. All right, for personnel. All right. So, we have uh in backup
board, you have two revised um job descriptions for the assistant uh principal. You'll see under performance standard one, we just added number one there, which serves in the supervisory capacity for assigned uh departments. As
you know, we have discussed assigning a department to um the assistant principles. Um so this just uh moralizes that in their uh job description. That is the only change there. And then for the
director of community relations, we added the first three. Just trying to get my computer to work. Mhm. So for director of community relations, there's three things that we're going to have uh the person focus on. One is the
big one, which is the web website redesign and management. Um we're looking at a year year-long uh process uh that will start this summer and kind of leading the charge to uh revamping um the website. Our hope is that by
September and October, we have an idea, we have some budget numbers. Um she is currently uh starting to do the preliminary work uh in terms of looking at all the different uh websites uh I guess uh sources that
are out there different options for us um and so that's going to be a big task for that um employee and also on B and C to uh work with central office on uh the policies and the state mandated
reporting we had talked a lot um uh about revamping this job description to make it a little bit more comprehensive, right? Makes sense. Okay, so those are the two. Um yeah, please. with the uh director of
community relations uh job description. Are we still looking at um do we have any updates on any potential shared situation or anything like that with Unfortunately, I really don't have an update to share, but I know that it will be a conversation we're continuing with
the town. Awesome. Thank you. So, we have two new um job descriptions we're proposing and then to abolish several. So, um, as I previously shared with the board over my six years here, um, the
elementary principles had been requesting an elementary supervisor and has always been, um, part of the budget cuts. Um, this year we were able to to fit it in through some
creative restructuring of our administrative team is the best way to to describe it. As I've shared with the board, anytime that we've added um administrators, we've always found ways to do it um without adding uh
significant uh costs or even this time with cost savings. So the elementary supervisor uh just to give you a brief overview um will partner with the principles and intervention strategy coaches to lead instructional improvement. We'll establish a collaborative team to implement
initiatives and innovation, maintain a regular classroom presence across all four schools to support alignment and excellence. We also want the uh supervisor to strengthen instructional leadership across K5. So now we'll have a person dedicated to oversee K to5
curriculum and instruction uh to bring some deep expertise and best practices for elementary teaching and curriculum design bring focus and coherence to elementary academic programs and in particular we had spent some time talking about G&T and this person would
be responsible for G&T K28. We really want to do a deep dive into that and try to um not try to but improve that uh program so we can better meet the needs of our uh students there. Um and then design and deliver targeted
researchbased PD along with the elementary leadership team including the principles and intervention strategy coaches align training with district goals and teachers needs and support consistent instructional growth across all elementary schools. This position is going to be a 10-month, 10day position.
Uh we have spoken with the GRAA to add that position into um into the the contract and a sidebar. The 10-month 10day position would be September 1st through June 30th with two weeks over
the summer. um no vacation uh gets one less personal day uh and 10 sick days. So that would be that position. And for the 6 to 12 supervisors, we have been talking about this um for a while. They
will still have elementary responsibilities in terms of of of supporting the elementary supervisor with their uh subject expertise in terms of that curriculum. They will still conduct uh elementary teacher
observations. Uh but in particular uh for the 6 to 12 piece, we really want them to focus more on the middle school and high school goals related to grading and course recommendations. Create more common assessments by course. Create standardsbased rubrics by department.
Creation of standardized requirements for marking period grades by subject and courses and department. creation of a matrix or recommending students for advanced level coursework. And a big piece is to work with AI and develop criteria for acceptable use of AI in courses and develop instructional
materials to aid in the use of AI. Increase collaboration between middle school and high school through more frequent articulation meetings and through development of crosscurricular partnerships. increased opportunities for informal evaluation and feedback through more frequent observation walkthroughs and
co-observations and enhanced connection with students through increased visibility through additional time to facilitate meetings with subject specific honor societies. So the ones that you see there the K to2 to abolish social studies and business
supervisor science English mathematics and K to2 supervisor instructional educational technology media center those would be abolished. Those five would then be absorbed into a single K to2 supervisor job description. Those
five positions would still exist but the title would be 6 to2 supervisor. Um, again, we're not adding a supervisor. Uh, we are, um, restructuring and having our assistant
principles cover some more academic pieces than they have in the past, which allowed us to create this 10-month, 10-day position. Uh based on what we've worked on with the sidebar with the GRAA, we estimate this to be a savings
of anywhere from 10 to 17,000 for the taxpayers in district. Happy to take any questions from the trustees. Thank you. Do you have Yeah, I called on you. Me? Yeah. Okay.
The supervisor role was added a few years ago to the Glenrock school system. not without controversy. I believe it's time to evaluate the roles, the responsibilities of the supervisor and the impact to the school in the budget before we make any major changes to the role and responsibilities. I also have concerns about changing a role from K to
12 into 6 to 12 without evaluating the scope of work and assuming that the new role is also a full-time one. I do support the G&T supervisor responsibility and I'm glad we are doing it. All right. Thank you, Mr. Cohen. Yes, you can go ahead, Steph.
Um, I was just going to say this, these changes are an evolution based on what you've been observing the past six years, correct? Like that we've been it's not a true, I guess, evaluation in some respects, but it kind of is with the changes that you're making here. So, I think that that's actually informing
what's happening right now. And thank you. Yes. Having spent most of my career in K through eight and working with elementary school, I feel like sometimes elementary gets lost sort of in the shuffle that we focus on the middle
school and the high school, but the foundation for a child's education is really K12, you know, and it's really a crucial time for a child and that's where they learn how to read. That's where they learn their basic skills. Um, so I'm glad to see that they're going to
be addressed. Um, and there are special needs. The needs of elementary are very different than the needs of the middle school, very different needs of the high school. So, I do like to see that there will be an elementary supervisor that will be able to focus on the unique needs of that age group. As you know,
K12 is so broad, especially when it comes to reading, you know. So, if it's elementary and they have that experience, I think it will better serve our our students to help develop them and prepare them for their middle school and high school years. I think if I if I may add on to that is
that when the big when we proposed these positions um way back when we did it over the course of two years but the big uh concern in particular among the elementary teachers and principles was it would be hard to
find and you alluded to this someone who's an expert in K to2 right across the board. So what we found over these last several years is that our K to2 supervisors have done an admirable job
in doing the best they can in K to 5, but the focus keeps on bringing them back to 6 to 12. And so the principles has have have um continued to advocate for that expert in elementary whose sole purpose is to
focus on elementary and then collaborate with the 6 to 12 supervisors. So, we have that articulation there. So, I agree with everything you said. I think that this is a long time coming and the fact that we can do it um without adding any expenses to to the budget seemed
like it was the right time to do that. Thank you. All right. On to discussion for uh P1 through P16. Can I have a motion? Miss Parlamis, seconded by Mr. Hayward.
Any questions, comments? There's lots. Oh, go ahead, Karen. I too just want to wish Mrs. Chella a long, happy, healthy, and a retirement filled with her artwork. Um, she really was an asset to our school. Um, I believe that, you
know, my kid, I don't know that much about the art. My kids didn't take a lot of art classes. My niece did, but she really is, I believe, the face of that department and really has dedicated so many of her of of her time for the students and I do appreciate that but I
I wish her well in her retirement. Thank you. Any additional Yes. Um just uh thank you to um Jodie Craft uh leaving uh Bird. I I actually didn't my kids didn't go to bird, but I have so many friends um
whose children do and she is very loved. They're very excited and happy for her, but she um is going to definitely be missed. She made a huge impact on the bird community and just um we wish her well. Yep. We know she'll do great things. Um I've I had other u parents
also come up to me expressing the same for um both Miss Craft and um Miss Chella. So um you know we both wish we wish them all well very much. Do you have anything? Okay. Um if we can call roll please.
Miss Kosola. Yes. Mr. Cohen. Yes. Mr. Hayward. Yes. Miss Parlamus. Yes. Miss Steven. Miss Stevenson. Yes. Except on P16
as it relates to May, Miss Calves. Yes. Dr. Robinson. Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. All right. We'll move on to our policy discussion.
Um, and so in backup you will see um, you know, a draft of what we're going to call policy 7550, the naming of the facilities. Um, hold on, let me just pull it up. All right. So, I tried to take into account all of the um, feedback that I
received. So, if we notice immediately that there's anything that is missing, please do um mention it. Uh and I'll either include it um I'll include it before our next reading. Um go ahead.
Anything I know you had. Um thank you for doing the revision. I had a few points of feedback. Um the under the policy F naming process. Um so we had what they can be
uh I'm just reading my notes. I wanted to to suggest that um any building any naming for a building would be limited to people who have passed that are not alive. And the reason um I suggest that is because
there's situations where a person's reputation can change. Um, I mean, there's a story of a school in Washington last month, um, and they had to change the name of the school because something happened with the person. They found out that the person had a background, a racist background. So, I
just thought it was such a imperative. It's such a big deal that I don't think it I think it should be limited to just people who have deceased as people can you know if you have it a named a school building named after someone who's alive their reputation can change um or something can be uncovered. So
that was um one of my points. Um, I did notice that the eligible submitters was limited to people who are um the building principal, the certified staff member, a student, parent, guardian, or a school a affiliated organization. I do
support adding um any resident of Glenrock in that. And I would I would hope that any resident of Glenrock would be since they pay taxes can be entitled to submit for a name change or name submission for for this. What letter is that again? Cuz I thought that that's
what I wrote. Um that was under initiation. Um eligible submitters. Um the quote is the um the building principles there. Certified staff member, student, parent, guardian or school affiliated affiliated organization. I did not see. Um, yeah,
you're right. It's not there, but it definitely was a mistake because that is on my other draft. Um, and then my last point is um on endorsement. It was who um there was like
the I'm just looking at my notes who there was a reference to the school community um and that the whoever the bu this people who were kind of create the name and go out and get two other names and kind of come up with the
three name suggestions. It said that the school community would send out some information on it, but I didn't know who was defined as the school community. Um it was it was a bit vague and I thought it would be worthwhile to elaborate specifically who that
is and that's under endorsement. Yeah. Uh can you um I couldn't hear you. I I think what you meant in the uh the school community it should be the school committee and it's number five. Okay. That's what I think because there's the
num there's the the the committee the naming committee right and so that should conduct the survey right yeah I think it was I think the intent in in the where I put it earlier
the endorsement was more like okay so we have like this example now of um the request to you know consider the change in in in central school and in that request they brought with them like a a
survey of um a petition or something like that to show that there was support for something of that size. So, I think that was what I was trying to get at that it would be nice if you were going to ask for a change of that magnitude that part of the presentation involved some sort of like factf finding um you
know measure of support with with the community um before you know as opposed to one person you know comes up and says I think this is a good idea and wants us to go through this whole process of finding out if the community wants it. So that that was what I was thinking but I just don't know how to I think it's I
think it's a good idea just instead of saying the the school community shall conduct the the school initi the initiator shall conduct the initiator. Should it be the initiator or or comm the committee and um and have the board be part of it because how can the initiator do the whole surveying of the
community? I think it'll be both. So I think that the person that's initiating like a big thing should have some sort of like measure of support that that the community actually wants this like wants us to do further investigation and then on us we'll we will have to come up with
a process of like you know are we going to put out a survey to you know like all of the schools and the administrators and the the um community or you know like whatever official thing that we have to do we still have to do it regardless. less of whether they've
proven any level of support if that makes sense. Okay. I think both I think we need both I think we need both the initiator to show that there's some sort of measure of um magnitude of the request and then we it is incumbent upon the board to then
take that information and then make sure that we are doing our due diligence with the community um to support that process or that's kind of like what I was getting at um so I'll
reword and five. And then I'll look over um I'll look over this recording and make that change with regards to the community because that was definitely left out accidentally. And anything else? Yes,
Miss Stevenson on F F2 the endorsement where it says at least three name options. Is it three separate name options or is it three options using that one name? I think that was something that I meant
to take out because there was that was in two places in the initial draft that we had right from before and I think we spoke about right the last time I it was just you know yeah so F2 remove three name
options okay all right thank you any additional points. All right. Thank you. It It takes a team. It takes the team. All right. Um seeing no items
for governance. Um INP. Sure. So, we have a couple things here. Um I'm going to work backwards if that's okay. We have a new business regular public meeting item that will be on the agenda for the 19th. Uh we uh reviewed new textbooks and online
resources for calculus. Um just as a reminder, kind of been working our way up from middle school up to this uh culminating course here. So this is obviously the last um math textbook in this sequence. There was a committee of
four teachers. They were pre-calc and calc teachers. They reviewed seven books approved by the college board. It was a unanimous decision of the committee to go with the Sabbath textbook SAVV VAS, the same publisher as the pre-calc that was chosen last year. Um, our goals, our
plan would be to have this on the agenda for approval on May 19th. The other piece is word study. This is for grades four and five. We did a pilot program this year um with two programs, 95% uh group and Sunday. uh
eight teachers participated in the PL in the pilot. There was a unanimous decision of the teachers to go with Sunday. Again, this is grades four and five word study. You may remember that we also have Sunday for K to3 as well. So, it does give us some consistency
there. Um we're still trying to get the final quote. Our goal is to have this on the May 19th agenda as well. Okay. for uh the Helsinki Finland and Savalina Finland Student Exchange. As you know, I
I'm passionate about uh trying to give our students and staff opportunities outside of what I like to say is the proverbial four walls here in Glenrock and get them out and about in the world to find these uh additional learning opportunities. So, I've been trying to
get into Finland for for quite a while. Um and I was able to finally um took me almost four years. Anyway, I was able to finally uh secure uh a relationship with two schools uh one in Finland and one in Savalina uh Finland.
Um in Helseni uh it would be uh with a school of visual arts like a magnet school there in Savalina. There's two schools that the students would be able to to visit for the Helsinki. part of the trip. Our plan is currently to um have them do uh some tours and then to
spend a full day at the school of visual arts with uh those students and then travel to to Savalina uh where they would do a more traditional student exchange with homeays uh with the students there. Uh our plan right now is
to have that occur during the fall break in November. Um and then the Finnish students would come here probably in late January, early February. Um they do not seem to be as concerned about the
winters as as we are, right? Um the uh some of the reasons I wanted to get into into Finland, as you may aware, it's considered the world's top education uh um uh uh for really last several years.
It's also considered to be the happiest place on earth. Um, and I wanted to I would never send students anywhere unless I first uh was able to um experience it as well. So, I've been to these schools. I've done the the traveling that the students and teachers
would do. I think that both schools are very good fits for our students and and teachers. And I think actually I know when those students come here, they'll be very good fits as well. Um, I did hold an interest meeting uh with teachers if they wanted to chaperone the
trip and we have 27 teachers that are interested in wanting to go to to Finland. Um, so we have not held a student interest meeting yet. This is much different than um the Lanzu China or um or Beijing uh China because this
is not government uh funded on the Finnish side. So our students would have to pay uh for airfare, hotels and everything like that. Um, but airfare is significantly cheaper and with the home stays in uh in Savalina, we believe that
we can keep costs around $1,700 for that eight days in in Finland. So, we think it's it's definitely doable. When the Finnish students come here, it would be for a week. Uh, from a Sunday, really a Monday morning through that following
Sunday, they would stay home stays here in Glenrock with the students who go to Finland. Then those students would host the Finnish students when they come here. Um, and then those students would then go off probably for a couple days on their own and do their own touring,
probably Philadelphia and New York City. Um, I'm still working on a couple of other other ones, but for right now, this one is pretty much uh ready to go. We have Handshake agreements, so we're excited about the opportunity uh to do this and happy to take any questions.
Thank you. Um, that's exciting. Yeah. Any questions, comments? Okay. So, we have um we've been we've been trying to get this uh co-op agreement with um Indian Hills for for
boys and girls swimming, and we were able to uh finally get approval from from the Big North. Um and so uh it's for two years. The Big North wouldn't approve it for more than two years. Uh so we are going to move
forward with that. Um if the board is is okay with that, it would be a resolution in the future. Indian Hills would have to pass a resolution to form the co-op, then we would do it after they approve it. Um, it would be right now we have for Glenrock about six girls and and
nine boys. Indian Hills has 11 girls and six boys. It would be a varsity program and we estimate cost to be about $750 a student, probably a little bit less according to the Indian Hills AD. Uh, but we should be um once we got approval
from the Big North, we're ready to go unless the board has concerns about that. We're good. Okay. And are you able to talk a little bit more about like the thoughts with the two years like why? Yeah. So, I mean I I I do think that um
the Big North uh doesn't like Glenrock that much. I don't know how else to say it. Like we keep on getting pushed around by them for various things. I think years ago, um, we had to leave because our ice hockey team was so strong. And so now we can't get back in there unless we go in
as a full member. Uh, so I I I'm not advocating for us to go back into the Big North as a full-fledged member, but I do think it's worth a conversation in the fall at least with the coaches um, and to see if they want to like form a
committee, do a pros and cons and all those things and then maybe make a recommendation to the board and the board can dive into that. I think it's worth the conversation. I do. Um if the board uh again, I'm not advocating for it. I'm very happy to stay where we're at. Uh I don't need emails tomorrow
saying I want that we're like trying to move to the big north, but I I think we should investigate it because this keeps on coming up and I feel like we need to to either need to make a decision. Make sense? Yes. Thank you. Good there. Yes. So, we're
going to move forward with uh um the co-op with swimming. Um there's any changes, please let me know. But uh we're about ready to have parent meetings. Um and again, it'll be on an upcoming agenda uh for resolution for the board. For the co-op for girls ice
hockey with Rididgewood, uh we have Glenrock has um eight interested uh girls and Rididgewood has five. Um we believe that's viable for a JV ice hockey team for for this upcoming
season. Um, Ridgewood is is feels confident with their five and Glenrock we feel confident with our eight. We believe the cost will be about $2,000 a student uh with the uh the students that we have spoken to. That fee seems to be
less than what ice hockey would cost for club anyway. And also some of them had mentioned something about IHA and the tens of thousands of dollars it cost to play ice hockey there. So maybe some students will will stay here if it's an opportunity for them. I don't know the
answer to to that. Um we might get a varsity game in or two maybe with a team that that that might be struggling, but the goal is to have a JV a JV squad um fully funded by the players. Now Rididgewood informed their players that it would be for three
years. I think we should talk later on, but I think for this year it definitely have to be funded by the students because it's not in the budget. All right. and then revisit that going forward. Um that again does not need NJSA approval because a JV uh only does not need big north approval because it's
JV only. So we can move forward with this if the board wants to. Okay, questions, comments, straw poll of support support. I'll just say thank you. I know students came asking for this. So thank you for doing the due diligence,
listening to them and finding a partner. Yeah, you know, I think kudos to the to the ads of both schools to really put um you know, hold the meetings. Uh really who did a lot of leg work too was the our current boys ice hockey coach who
really advocated to try to start the program. Um and so I thought that was uh uh nice on his part uh to do that. Also, on another note, he was he's the most vocal and wanting to go to Finland for some reason to recruit ice hockey student players. to leave. Keeps on
asking me if he can go. Um so, uh but yeah, I I I thank you, Miss Carousel. I I think it's anytime that we can give students opportunities to compete outside of the classroom, I think is beneficial. Here we have two sports we're able to do that. Y is the swimming
also going to be funded by the by the Yeah, it'll be funded by the by the student athletes about $750. We do think it'll be less than that. Um and that'll just be for this year, I believe, after this year. Um, Miss Stevenson, I believe we we can fund that going forward to be
honest with you. Um, and again, it's only for two years as far as so we will have to make a decision. My my gut tells me that uh the Big North will not allow us to stay in this co-op for more than two years. So, actually the letter I dive into it
all the way now. The letter actually says that Indian Hills has to look for a Big North partner in the future. That's where we're at. All right. Thank you very much um for that presentation as well as I know
there were uh community members that um were participating in and trying to find uh co-op with the swimming. So um this is just a great example of partnership between many levels within our community. I see nothing for special services. Um
for management community, not nec like this a quick question. Um so we were many of the members of the board or all of the members of the board were invited to the library for a um uh art an art exhibit with the students.
Is there any way that we would be able to have um those students present the the art or um Yeah. Okay, thank you. On to uh fiscal management. So, at our next meeting on the 19th, uh
we'll be uh spending quite a bit of money. Um we're going to be awarding our uh par profofessional uh contract uh for four years. Um that was a process that's being done by competitive contracting. The committee selection committee is
still working on that. We'll also be awarding a substitute contract which be another four-year contract that was also done through competitive contracting and the committee is still evaluating there. Uh both of those will have recommendations for the 19th. Um we also
have um our summer bid, our summer painting bid uh which uh we will be in a position to award um as we just got uh approval from our attorney that all looks good with the low bid. Uh so we should be moving forward uh with that.
And last but not least, uh we have this uh very last minute uh lawnmowing um bid that we put out for two years. Um, for those that may remember, we had a co-op with Ridgewood. Um, Rididgewood decided
to significantly expand uh their program and while I mean expand, they I believe they were eliminating their in-house grounds people. Um, and the they felt that the uh the bid specs
would be too difficult to break out Ridgewood and Glennrock. And so, um, we agreed that we would no longer be a part of that shared service agreement and we would go out and bid. So, we rushed and put a bid together. Those
bids, I believe, were opening on May 8th. Um, and we should have an answer, uh, on low bid by the 19th. So, a whole lot of contracts to be uh uh approved on the 19th. Um, operations. Um once again
I come to you with an a use of the allowance uh for the lower field. Um in particular uh there is a $3,000 request where we're going to be uh we need a piece of equipment that
will tie the pathway and Ballard lights to the lower field field lights. Uh so the idea is is that those lights would only be on when the field lights are on because it's not going to be like on uh every night till
nine o'clock like the stadium field. So, uh, we 3,000 I think $3,600 gets us that piece of equipment. And then we, um, we needed to, uh, as part of, um, our restoration, uh, the the the proposal
didn't include snow fencing for the rehabilitation of the existing property that was, um, disturbed. Uh, so we need $1,200 for uh, snow fencing. um which sounds really expensive, but I will tell
you the original quote was $7,000 for them to get it and install it. We told them to go pound sand and we said, "Where is it? We'll go get it and we'll install it." Uh so we saved ourselves some money there. Uh the remaining allowance on the lower field uh in
particular to lights is still about $92,000. So we're we're good. Thank you, Mr. Canelis. What is snow fencing? Snow fencing is that orange fence that you see uh when there's construction going on to keep people out of the area. Um
what would happened in when we did the field last year and we uh put down seed and hay, it was just trampled over and really nothing stuck. Uh so we are hoping that by changing the method to hydro seating which we had previously
approved and then putting some snow fencing around that area that we will be able to keep people off and maybe be able to grow some grass. All right. Thank you. And I know I had asked this question um
when I saw the agenda, but with the lawnmowing contract and the summer painting contract um we don't think that that's likely something that we can get another shared service agreement and it's not something that's within our current um staffing capacity to perform. Uh the the the painting was certainly
outside of our capacity. I think it includes somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 some odd classrooms as well as a multi-purpose room and a special and special
educations instruction suite at at at Bird. Um, as far as lawn mowing, we really didn't have time to really do anything uh or even explore any other options because our
contract expires June 30th and they told us this uh very late in April. And so when you do the math of the days where you got to advertise and hold open and what have you, we're just making it. Uh and we didn't want it to push into June.
Uh because July one then the grass would start growing and not getting cut. Uh but certainly that and certainly that was the idea behind only doing a two-year um with no renewal uh so that we could in fact uh maybe explore um
some partnership if not with with the town another district we could say maybe Rididgewoods uh in the future can we can rework that uh relationship. Thank
you. Any other questions or comments? All right. Uh, can I have a motion to discuss uh B1? Miss Parlamis, seconded by Mr. Hayward. Any uh questions regarding V1
or comments? All right. Can I roll? Miss Karasola? Yes. Mr. Cohen? Yes, Mr. Hayward. Yes, Miss Parlamus. Yes, Miss Stevenson. Yes, Miss Calves. Yes, Dr. Robinson. Yes. Motion
passes. Thank you. Can I have a motion to affirm the decision made in HSIB 291167 as reported by the chief school administrator during the April 21st closed work session meeting? All right, Miss Calva, seconded
by Mr. Hayward. May I have roll call, please? Miss Carousella? Yes. Mr. Cohen? Yes. Mr. Hayward? Yes. Miss Prolamus? Yes. Miss Stevenson? Yes. Miss Calves? Yes.
Dr. Robinson? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Any liaison reports? Yes. Um I just want to speak. I'm the liaison for Hamilton Elementary School. They do a fantastic job um on a million
different fronts. They have so much going on there. Um and just highlight a few of those things. They have um their multicultural festival was a great success. They had the week of Tik Tok art week on the last week of April. They
had uh their teacher appreciation week. They had they have a book fair coming up. Um, and they do great things like an all school playdates and um, uh, the teacher appreciation weeks that that that they have. So, they're just they have a they have a great I remember
going there when my kids went there and they just there's so much going on at all times and I give the HSA a lot of credit. Awesome. Thank you. And I guess since we're talking about HSA meetings, I know a lot of times the HSA meetings are even like during the daytime. I know
personally it it's really difficult for me to attend um uh depending on on what day it is. Do you think that there's like maybe um a better way that we can construct um within our board to figure out how we can kind of like
share either share a responsibility to either go to the meetings or u maybe just um each person just directly communicate with the HSA president and just say hey you know we all can't really go during the daytime however you know do you have anything specific that
you want to highlight like I I think maybe that's a good way to just outreach and to say, "Hey, you know what's going on at Central? Do you want to, you know, anything you want me to to, you know, highlight because I'm unable to make the meeting? What do you think?" All right. All right. So, I'll I'll like
reaffirm and connect with um you all offline and find ways that we can um do that just to make sure that we are maintaining a good partnership with our HSAs. Thank you. You have Yes, you can go.
I'll let y'all duke it out. Uh just the Bergen County School Board Association meeting is May 29th. I will be receiving my certificate for becoming board certified. So if anybody wants to join, there's dinner
the holiday and down Route 17. So if you're free, it would be nice if we had some people attending in person. Yeah. Thank you. All right, Mr. Cole. Yes. So as I me as you mentioned uh I was in the photography show in the library and so the high school closed did a great job.
I think the indication was that most of the photos were already sold for non-family members. So I think that's the the best indication and I'm glad that they would be able to come here and show their their work. Uh and I think both of us attended the central school dance recital. Uh it's the early recital
from the central school and the kids there did a great job. So uh great job from the kids and the recital community and uh the committee. So so yeah say it was wonderful seeing so many like happy families, happy kids. Um my daughter
also was like extremely ecstatic uh to be performing. So it was it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. I just I was also at the that the photo show. It it's nice when we get um when the when the teachers do email us to tell us like we get the information about the robotics
because you know I don't have children in the school right now so it's a nice way for for outreach and then you know to go. They really did a fantastic job. It was it was great. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Um any comments from the
public? We'll open our uh comments on agenda items only at 9:05. If there's members of the public, Colleen Manley, 70 Ridge Road. Uh so I just want to reiterate my comments from earlier regarding the fact
that we've had supervisors for five years and there has been very little no communication directly with the public presenting here's what we do as a supervisor. A lot of promises were made.
We can go back to the 10-page handout. I was incredibly supportive of bringing this in. It was discussed for years before Dr. Charleston was even hired. Like there was a long time coming. I know Ed is the only one who's been along
around as long as I have as well as Sharon. Uh in terms of what led to that and so there has actually always been a very strong community interest that led up to that. And though some of us still
pay attention and wonder so how did it work out? I don't expect perfection or anything, but over the years like the curriculum director used to give presentations. Here's what's going on. But of course, she was the curriculum director over the entire district. The
whole point of supervisors was that you could have subject specific experts. You could have a conversation with them. They could say, "Here's how we've laid out K through 12." And um I can see the benefits of having an elementary school.
That's a whole thing. But I really seek I don't think the board has done enough to push for communication directly with the public. It doesn't count that they come here and they present to you and
the public can watch. I think there should be at least one forum during the year where the supervisors pre present on the curriculum from K to 12 or whatever. You know what I mean? like I'm not going to define it, but it's hasn't
happened in five years. And now we're going to reorient. I again I give tremendous deference to the experts who do this every day, but I'm just pointing out and you've heard it before that we don't get
this information directly to the public. And this is something that we did have before. And let's speak to the elephant in the room about the math curriculum. People have been unhappy with the middle school math curriculum for like 15 years. And that was all the discussion
that happened year after year after year. That's what created some of the momentum to get supervisors. And now people have still been unhappy for years. Like I've heard it from the beginning. I sort of was like, wait, we had COVID. I mean, all that. But why
does this continue to go on and there to be no discussion? I know you all hear about it. I know some of you brought it up in your board thing. I know you just brought it up. Why can't we just have a discussion? Like, why can't there be a discussion about here's what's going on
and here's how we're addressing it. And by the way, those mass scores that we saw before, they weren't that great. So, I just feel like the public is being let down to a degree. I know you're very sensitive to it. I know you've been brainstorming how to have
more interaction and I know you're getting your accreditation and I'm hoping that that creates ideas for how to do this. But I for one who have been paying attention for like eight years at this
point I feel let down that I keep asking and asking. Dr. Dr. Charleston knows this because as HSA president I asked directly several times and I just I always come from a place of really being supportive and so
what's been disappointing over the years is that for some reason uh this type of forum doesn't happen to give parents more information even if it's just me and four other people who are listening. So anyway, thank you.
Thank you Miss Milly. Sorry. Uh Sharon Scarpelli, 687 Duramus Avenue. I'm only bringing this up because you were talking about the facilities outside and the lower turf field. I I'm down there a lot. My daughter plays lacrosse. Just wanted to point out a couple things with the
facility. the on the baseball the some of those um what whatever they have up there so to catch the balls that they don't come over there's holes in them. I've been at a game where a ball has actually come onto the lacrosse field during a lacrosse game. So I don't know if it went through the hole in the in
the uh the net or if it went actually went over the net which is not supposed to go that high anymore. Um I wanted to point that out. And then also the um where the pitchers are warming up, the the bullpen is not it's not safe over
there for people to walk. And maybe people aren't supposed to be walking from the upper field to the lower field by the baseball field that way, but there's no way to prevent people from walking that way. So, I don't know if there's something you have in the plan to prevent people from going from that
side to the lower field, but to make them walk all the way around the other way, I it's not really conducive when they're, you know, regarding the the the net, there was a PO that was just cut to address the holes in the net. Okay,
great. Thank you. So, that's just my comments. Thanks. Thank you. All right. Seeing no additional members of the public, we'll close uh public comments at 9:11 p.m. And if there's no
other items, I just need a motion to adjourn. All right. Motion to adjourn made by Miss Calves, seconded by Mr. Hayward. 911. We are adjourned. Thank you.