Do notice that this meeting has been provided to the retrospectives as legal acts on February 8th, 2026. 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. >> Mr. here >> Mr. Kendall >> Mr. here. >> Mr. Richie >> here >> Williams >> here
>> here. Moving into section three, our minutes. Make a motion to approve item 3.1. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> All right. Moving into section four, correspondence. Do you have any correspondence? >> All right. Moving into section five.
This is our first public comment section of the evening. This is for comments from members of the public for the board of education on items included on tonight's agenda. If you have a comment, please state your name and the street that you live on and limit your remarks to 3 minutes. Any comments?
All right, seeing none, I'm going to move us into section six, the superintendent report. >> Okay. Thank you for everyone uh for joining us tonight. Uh the first uh topic I'm going to present on is just a handout that we're actually going to dig into at the next meeting which is we
have completed our school climate and culture surveys um for all students in grades 3 to 12. We have some really great feedback from um our student body in addition to our staff. Uh I'm going to pass a handout tonight for um the
public who has came out tonight uh to see the meeting and at the next meeting um we will have a little bit of a presentation and to discuss the results. But there's there's a lot of data that was gathered as part of this. So the purpose of tonight is really just to
hand out the handout and and let you know the questions that were asked and where the data is falling so to speak. So Mr. Sure. Would you mind just kind of passing them to the public? Thank you. >> All right.
>> No, thank you. Okay, probably the most exciting part of tonight is that you will notice that our student board representatives are not Luke, Lily, and Ariana. Okay, they're they're smaller bodies. And this is
always an exciting night because um you know we the student reps at high school have added great value over the course of years here, right? But you know they're in Florida on busy trip. So, we had uh them spend some time with our two middle school representatives and
they're going to talk to you tonight about um themselves, their experiences at the middle school, but they also have a report on behalf of uh the the the student reps at the high school that are in business. So, it's my pleasure to present uh Declan and Nanny who spent a
significant amount of time with Shantel uh this week preparing for uh their presentations and uh it's my pleasure to present them tonight. So, I don't know who's going to go first, but uh feel free to introduce yourselves. And this is the board of education. They make all
the policies uh to help you have a really good education. >> And shocker to everybody here who if you know me, you already know this. I'm fully transparent. So, I did tell Dean and Maddie, don't be nervous. Just act like you're sitting around your dinner table and your aunt is busy. She just
wants to know how's school going. So, that's how we've kind of prepared this. So, um, enjoy it and, you know, just give us your update. >> Um, so, hi, I'm Maddie. Um, I've been kind of involved, I guess,
with like performing outs and things like that. That's the main area that I'm in. Um, as well as that. Um, yeah, I wanted to be a musical um this year in high school as well. Um, I do dance
outside of school, but of doing dance team in the future. Um, yeah. >> Uh, my name is Harris. I also do the performance and I managed to get into the high school shop. Uh, I do the
rowing crew for tell us about what you'd like to talk to the board. How your year's going? Are there areas that you'd like to discuss about the middle school or would you like to talk about the high school report that day as you provide tonight? >> We can do the high school first.
>> Um, so for Ariana, she wanted to talk about the start of spring sports and how nice it's been. Well, she's making this report. Yeah, it's really great to get outside and start seeing people on the tennis
courts and things like that. Um, also college acceptances, people getting into the colleges that they want and kind of making decisions and people getting into the Navy and deciding to do trade. A
couple of people I >> uh Luke wanted to mention the musical newsies. It'll be the first musical in the new auditorium since the renovations. I managed to look back there when we did his rehearsal and it was pretty good. Um the shows will be on
the 26th, 27th and 28th of March. Uh the Disney trip is another point of interest is many say many students are excited um and to plan for their plans Disney. Uh yeah.
>> Um they mentioned how the high school bathrooms are open during all periods. advocacy >> and they've been open for about I guess whenever she made this report and it's
cutting back on the same last time Judy's taking long trips so that's also great um wanted to talk about the end of winter sports um swimming track and basketball and two high schoolers Ryan and Shelby apparently broke state
records um at multiple events and Sean Looney won in his race and broke a school record. So, that's really cool. Um, the girls and boys basketball teams had a really great season, too. Um, major success along the way and
unfortunately they had a loss, but it was they went strong, I guess. Um, so some things that I've noticed around school is not a lot of people use the phone caddyies anymore and I see some people taking them to the bathrooms
or having them in their pocket. Um, also bigger lunches. I heard sometimes I don't order lunch but I heard sometimes they run out of food and the portions are too small. Um, so yeah, that's just at the middle school. Yeah.
>> Um I also noticed some of the things I never mentioned. Um people just taking really long bathroom breaks. You know, medical needs like out of the equation, but um people who like have a few just
laps and things and some teachers are kind of cracking down on it and only allowing a certain amount of people to have however many like bathroom breaks or just passes filled out. Um, it kind of affects other people that just
weren't doing everything correctly before. Um, so something that we can kind of do to improve is like maybe just the teachers just noticing a pattern and maybe not just giving the majority kind
of like punishment. Um, yeah. So everybody can, you know, still be doing what they've been doing, but the people who have kind of routinely like wandering halls um could kind of cut down or Yeah.
Um and oh this was very recent actually. I found it out this morning. Um our iPads just bought kind of some of the websites like YouTube and some like games in the past also have been blocked
completely. Um, I've only noticed a small group of people who are kind of rushing through their work to try and play them, but again, it's kind of everybody is like facing questions. Um, a lot of people like myself included use
it for music and things like that. And I recently learned that also like our math program, Khan Academy, um, they have demonstration videos and people aren't able to access them anymore because YouTube is cut off and they're not able
to access it anymore. Um, yeah. So, if there's like kind of a way that we can get around that to like just have some people monitor and things like that so everybody can uh we were recently discussing the rise
in math scores in the district. Over the last few years, we've made a lot of improvements in math. One of the programs that we utilized at the middle school level, I didn't ask you about this when we met uh was Magna Math. Are you one of you guys using Magnath? >> What are your thoughts on that? Uh it's
a brand new program, you know, you feel like it's help. >> Uh yeah, I actually really helps uh explain things a lot cuz when you get an answer, you can ask her to explain how to do it. rather think, "Oh, I actually understand that a lot
better." >> Yeah. Um, me personally, I really like how it gives you feedback right away and kind of a little like impossible for you to ask for a hint and it gives you like a deeper explanation of like what you're missing or how you can show your work
more. It has like a whole entire space where you can draw out your work and it'll give you like positive feedback if you like show your work and like do the correct calculations. Um it's really great if like you're doing homework because your teacher won't be there to
help you. So sometimes getting that feedback to like you're doing it kind of helps go through the process. >> I'm glad you had I got to hand it to the middle school administration and the staff. That was a late implementation and uh we have high hopes for that program. I'm glad you hit that phone
call. Sorry if you're on the spot for that. And just to kind of put a bow on some of these reports, I just want to mention I I think um the Naval Academy student that Ariana may have been referencing. That's Casey Birdwell who
was able to give an addition to the Naval Academy. We're going to have two Haden County graduates naval academy. Lily Santa a couple years ago. You remember her? She's there. Casey will be second. The two swimmers that she mentioned that Maddie mentioned, Ryan Quinn and Shelby Hudson, they're going
to be all American. You know, they're going to be ranked as all-American by major by every major sport is recognition in the sport of high school swimming from New Jersey to California, all groups, all all all teams. Um so
these these are servers that come along once in a you know 20 years of the school district. The fact that they're both here at the same time um is is pretty amazing. The school calendar has been impacted.
We are going to have school April 10th. There was some, you know, some questions about whether we're going to have enough staff uh and students here on April 10th, but I'm pretty confident that we will have a school April 10th as the school calendar uh dictates in the case
of two extra snow days. That's all points that I have as part of my report and the student representatives report. If you could if you have anything else, you're welcome to stay uh for the rest of our meeting where the super we're
going to talk now about um a few retirements that we have and Mrs. Gold is our business administrator. She's going to do a presentation on the budget. If you if you'd like to say we're willing to have you, but if you have other things that you want to do tonight, now would be your time. Thank
you for your contribution and look forward to enjoy being here. Um, I just have one more question for you. That jacket didn't make a 44. >> I'm so excited that he wore the jacket because I we had a long
jacket. >> Oh, we should do a photo. We should photog with the >> students. This is short. One, two, three. Thank you tonight. Thanks for coming out tonight.
We're your >> Thank you so much for coming out. >> Thank you. Okay. >> Okay. Turn it over to Mrs. Calling two significant departments tonight. our transportation director uh April came on
retirement to thank her for her years of service. She extended her time here because we had such a a difficult time filling that position. >> Can I just say something about April? So, April jumped in when we needed her and she was just an excellent excellent
transportation coordinator. We needed to extend it. She said she how long? What do you need me for? What do you need me to do? She just jumped in. So she was a fabulous fabulous uh had intentional complete for many many years and I owe her a great deal that she did.
>> And the next employee is uh our veteran math teacher Mara Mcder who's the high school facilitator for our math department. She also happens to be the head swim coach uh for our swim team. So Mari is literally going out on top. Our math scores are the highest they've ever
been. She's got two all-American swimmers and she's calling it a career, right? Should be a great retirement party tomorrow for tomorrow. So, congratulations to her. And you may have heard something about the school budget being due tenatively
um March 27th for the county office of education. Miss RPA is going to make a presentation to the board and the community regarding an update on the budget, some of the challenges that we're currently facing. Okay. So, as Dr. Fara said, we have a
budget due to the county office on next Thursday, uh, the 27th. So, how are we going to navigate that and what's going on with that? So, the reality of this budget is we only lost $48,000 in our state aid, which is about
0.54% reduction. It It's a lot better than it could have been. It's a lot better than it was last year. It's manageable if we can address it the right way. Our goal is always to stabilize student programs and keep
everything that we have. So what does that do? Um that gives us a $13 million budget gap. Um, so it's a deficit that the 2% which is our normal tax levy, we raised the taxes by 2%,
we're at a 1.3 million budget gap. So this state aid has put us in this gap. Why? Uh, let's go on to that. Contractual salaries are still increasing. rising utility rates as
everyone's seen around and insurance premiums continue to climb for state aid was reduced by 48%. And to maintain ex educational excellence, we must secure funding that is not subject
to external external policy changes. So how are we going to do that? How can we do that? What are our options? So one of our options is this recovery scenario. We have what's called a health benefits adjustment in our budget and that allow that allows us to raise our taxes
greater than the 2%. So we have a tax levy 2% annual increase. However, because the rate of our taxes is going up by so much, we are allowed to take a tax it's called tax levy adjustment. So we can increase our taxes instead of 2%
we can increase them by 6%. Our adjustment is about 1.2 $2.2 million in our in our health benefit. So what does that equate to? So at the average assessed home of $459,000,
a 3% increase would be $27 annually, 4% 261, 5% 315, and 6% 369. So what does this do to the budget? If we go up 2%, our revenue from the
district is $65,000. And then you can see the 3% is another additional 302,000. 4% another 300, 5% and so on and so forth. So at the 6% tax levy, our deficit is only $94,000.
So what does that equal to a month per household? If the board decides to raise the taxes by the 3%, it'll be a $17 per month increase. And if it's 6%, it's a $31 per month increase. So by moving to the 6% tax levy, we buy
back the $48,000 and we have a manageable deficit of $94,000. So the gap can be closed. the district doesn't lose any programs, staff, anything like that. You can do it internally because we have a retirement
consultant agenda this evening. Does anybody have any questions for me? >> If you're allowed to say, I think it might be helpful to clarify further about the insurance cost increases. >> Oh, so the reason for the I Yeah, I
apologize. So, our insurance cost increase is a budgeted increase of about 25%. Cost of our insurance for the district is $8 million on a $40 million budget. So, that's about 20% of our budget is
just for health insurance. That 25%, as most people have stated, is not just us. It's not just district insurance. It's health insurance everywhere that's going up so high. So that's the reason why we have this this deficit. Thanks.
Anyone else? Okay. Thank you. >> And I just want to clarify, we're not um taking any steps on the budget tonight. We're not approving a budget. We're not We're going to do that next week. the tentative budget we sent to the county
but tonight we don't have anything just the budget process from from here is next Thursday night next Thursday night we call a special meeting I'm going to ask we are going to ask the board to approve the budget to be sent to the county the next night
March 27th that budget can be changed between March 27th and the public meeting and the public hearing May the 7th after May the 7th, um the public hearing the budget at that point is adopted and can no longer be changed.
Unfortunately for school districts, things change after May 2nd. Uh enrollment changes. Um shifts during the summertime. Students populations can sometimes change. Um this is not good,
you know. Um there's not a high volume amount of changes for our existing students, but the one thing that has been uncertain is the amount of kindergarten students that can receive. We typically receive students in waves. Roundup starts in
March. It's very very heavy uh till about July 4th and then we staff the district. Then the last week of August, we get another 25 kids and we typically added a teacher. Okay. which you know is not budgeted for right so we've been behind
the behind the eightball so we need to really encourage all of our prek students who are in our prek program all our kindergarten students anyone's watching and neighbors do you know start kindergarten we really need those students register as soon as possible so
we should be as precise as possible with our projected needs for staff can I just add that the reason why none of us had questions we just spent the last 45 minutes in that room So it's not that I know someone watch this on YouTube think
we we don't we literally have just went through a process. So we'll do move from other process and kindergarten is still very active. preschool ended. Um but there's a waiting list but you know please if
anyone is watching is just so I have the superintendent. Thank you. Uh moving to section seven presentations. We do not have any tonight since we rolled the budget presentation into the superintendent report. So move to section 8 finance and
facilities. Can I get a motion to approve items 8.1 and 8.11? >> Second. >> Any questions? >> Roll call. >> Mr. Chavez. >> Yes. >> Mr. Cook, >> yes. >> Miss Desi, >> yes.
>> Mr. Kendall, >> yes. >> Mr. Lex, >> yes. >> Mr. Richie, >> yes. >> Miss, >> yes. >> Miss Williams, Miss Single, >> yes. >> Moving to section 9, instruction program. We have no items on for approval. So we'll move to section 10. Personnel. Can I get a motion to approve
items 10.1 through 10.17? 10.17. Looks like it's just >> it literally just says >> Oh yeah, you're right. We do not need to approve that. Thank you. So >> I mean we could typing. >> Sorry. A motion to approve items 10.1
through 10.6. six move now. Any questions? >> I'm sorry. Who was the second? >> Thank you. >> We'll do roll call and then we have some resolutions. >> Mr. Chavez, >> yes. >> Mr. Cook, >> yes.
>> Miss Desi, >> yes. >> Mr. Kendall, yes. >> Mr. Lex, yes. >> Mr. Richie, >> yes. Miss, >> yes. >> Miss Williams, >> yes. Uh Mr. I wanted to ask a question but other than that it seems like the beginning of the year we had an influx of teachers
going on to leave other a number of reasons it seems like it started to stabilize. >> Yes. >> All right. So we had that whatever that curve was is not continuing or not. Mr. >> Sure. Uh resolution whereas Mrs. April
Tomasi for the past 18 years dedicated her career to the students of Hen Township and served as a loyal coworker and whereas the said Mrs. Tamaski has ablely represented the Haden Township Board of Education and her role as teachers aid and bus aid in 2008, bus
driver since 2009 and transportation coordinator since 2023. Therefore, be it resolved for the patent township board of education recognize the excellent service that Mrs. has rendered the said patent township or township of patent and the said board of education as well as the services
rendered in her many to her many co-workers over the past 18 years and that the said board of education does sincerely appreciate her efforts on their behalf and also in behalf of all students of township and therefore be it further resolved that a copy of this
resolution be spread on this meeting the copy presented March 16th, 2026 resolution. Whereas Miss Mara McDermott for the past 22 years dedicated her career to the students of Haden Township and has served as a dedicated professional
educator endeavoring to provide the best possible education for our students. And whereas the said, Miss McDermott has a represented the Haden Township Board of Education in her role as high school math teacher since 2004 and acting mathematics department
facilitator since 2023. Therefore, be it further resolved that the Haden Township Board of Education recognize the excellent service that Miss McDermott has rendered the said Township of Haden and said Board of Education as well as the service rendered to the many
students over the past 22 years in the field of education and that the board of education does sincerely appreciate her efforts in their behalf and also on behalf of all the students in Hatton Township and therefore be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution be spread upon the minutes of this
meeting and thought be presented to Mr. >> All right, moving to section 11, student services and activities. Can I get a motion to approve items 11.1 through 110? >> Sorry. >> Any questions? Roll up, Mr.
Yes. >> Mr. Cup, >> yes. >> Miss Desi, >> yes. >> Mr. Kendall, >> yes. >> Mr. >> Yes. >> Mr. Richie, >> yes. Miss, >> yes. >> Miss Williams, yes. >> Yes. Moving to section 12 policy. Just noting that uh in 12.1, we do have some new policies for first reading. Uh can I
get a motion to approve item 12.2? >> Second. >> Any questions? Mr. Kellz, >> yes. >> Mr. Co, >> yes. >> Mr. >> Yes. >> Mr. Fendle, >> yes. >> Mr. Alex, >> yes. >> Mr. Richie, >> yes. >> Mer, >> yes. >> Miss Williams, >> yes. M.
>> Yes. Moving to section 13. This is our final public comment section of the evening. This is for comments from members of the public for the board on any topic, whether or not it's on tonight's agenda. If you have a comment, please state your name, the street you live on, and limit your remarks to three minutes. >> A comment. Do you mind if I go offer
something here? Okay. Want to wait till the end for this. Uh but next Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we're going to have High School Musical Newsies. Okay. This has been delayed by 30 days. This has been an amazing
resilient group of students and staff that have worked together to pull this show off. We have a lot of points of pride in the Had School District. you're going to be hardressed to find a group of individuals that work with more
passion and more energy and more quality than our performing arts department. So, I'm encouraging everyone to come out and uh see the high school musical musicies. I'll be there opening night. I hope you can join me and we're looking forward to a great event and a grand opening of u
the new auditorium which is about 90 90% complete. We're going to anticipate uh having it. There's still going to be more to do even after the play is we have the play, but I really think that the community uh employers are going to be pleased with what we experience next
Friday night in terms of not only the new additions to the auditorium, but the quality as always of our performances. Unbelievable. >> I picture wow it is it is amazing what it
was. 7. >> Yes, >> we have that special meeting next week. >> That's why we start at 5. >> That's okay. >> Sure. We're not in enough time. Yeah, >> that's Thursday. >> Yes, >> Thursday.
>> And if I show my senior bad >> for free >> and they have a special section for the first any open sction. >> I know the tickets have been selling. They they only have some seats left that are not on that they keep open for
lockups. So >> for the seniors, >> but I think you could go online and still put it. >> Some seniors still buy the ticket because the ticket gives the senior this guaranteed seat with their relives,
>> right? >> All right. Any public comment? All right, seeing none, any comments from the board? Um, just saying I haven't accessed the buildings recently. I was really impressed by the security system and the it was very impressive. Very
impressive. >> These tables that we're sitting at are modular. They're on wheels. Okay, we can turn this U in every direction. Eventually, these televisions will also have a copy of the presentation if you have one. So, if you're not comfortable or you'd like to try some type of
different formation, uh I'm happy to arrange the the tables any way you direct me to. So, um keep it in mind. We could try all different we just our default from the last way we had to set up.
Uh and I just want to say before we uh adjourn, I know we had uh a interesting somewhat challenging budget conversation. We're trying to figure out what's the right path forward for our community and for the district and to protect the student learning experience
and to balance the burden on our local taxpayers. And I know we're not all in alignment yet on where we want to land. And I just want to say I actually think that that's good for us. research says that groups who do not start in the same exact place when they're trying to make a decision make better, more thoughtful
decisions. And so I think that's going to lead us to a really strong outcome, even though we're in a very challenging situation of what we're trying to balance jointly. So I just appreciate everyone being part of that, really actively contributing to that and like wrestling with what is going to be the
best choice for us as a district. So just appreciate you all. action work that he did to help boost our legislative forum here which I think was an important event to build awareness for surrounding districts and departments
that are in similar positions. >> Uh can you just reiterate about how many people and what districts in the state of New Jersey? >> Sure. There's 600 school districts in the state of New Jersey. Only 28 districts have had their state eight cut
three years in a row and we're one of 28. So the last two years we have done a significant amount of work to reduce expenditures. Last year the state will say that they only cut us by 3% in addition to this
year. But there's a big asterk next to last year's 2% cut because in addition to last year's 2% cut, they took back almost $450,000 in aid that was restored to us from the year before. So that reduction
compounded um our problems. I think we have reduced about 12 to 15 staff members uh full-time services over the past several years, including significant reductions such as a full-time middle school
counselor, uh a school district administrator, a gifted and talented teacher, uh a business education position, uh and more. Uh you know, the list goes on. All of our public uh budget hearings are on our YouTube
channel. uh the presentation still exists. I would encourage you if you have questions about the institutional memory of our budget uh and total spending and areas that we have looked to become more efficient. Those presentations are they still live on our
YouTube channel and uh if you have any questions beyond that, reach out to us and I'm happy to to discuss the challenges that we faced and been resilient enough to and so far been resilient enough to overcome. Any
other questions or comments? Can we get a motion to adjurnn? >> All in favor? >> Thanks. All