Ready? All right. Due notice of this meeting has been provided to the retrospect as legal ad on April 25th, 2025. Do the flag. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the
republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with justice for all. Welcome. Missley is absent. Here
Mr. L here is absent. Here Williams here. All right. Moving into section two. Can I get a motion to open the meeting for the public hearing on the 202526 budget? Move. Second. All in
favor? All right. Moving into section three, our budget presentation. I'll turn it over to Dr. care. All right, folks. Thanks for coming out tonight. Um, behalf of the board of education, tonight is our public hearing
on the 2526 budget. I I do want to begin uh by just acknowledging uh the efforts of this board of education and also uh members of our administrative team. Um this has been a very unique year because
unlike in past years when we like to have a thing a singular focus to the school year, this year has been very interesting because we are managing a school year with less resources unexpectedly less resources
than we had the year before. We are planning for next school year uh also with the deficit and also at the same time managing the very exciting work of the $30 million bond referendum
and all the construction that you see beginning around campus. So it's certainly taken a team effort. Could not have done it uh with the two individuals in the back, Jen Gold and Shantel Sharter, but also the entire administrative team. I'm the spokesperson for the district. Um but it
has been a herculean collective effort uh to uh put this budget together in addition to accomplish many of the other things that we have during the course of this school year. One of the things that I'm
certainly tired of talking about is the state of New Jersey. Okay. Um, so the focal point of the beginning part of this presentation is not going to uh reference uh the current crunch, but instead it's going to uh highlight a lot
of the great work that we've managed to uh accomplish this year um by the leadership of, you know, everyone that works in the district. Here's the budget calendar. Tonight's budget did not um happen in a vacuum. it uh has evolved since the
beginning of January. I'm not going to rehash all the steps that we've taken. Board's well aware of the community forum that we had uh just a few weeks ago now and the submission to the county office which
was board approved. There's an asterk next to April 21st when the county office received our uh our budget. Um but we have not received final confirmation of our full participation
in the tax levy incentive aid. Um we were informed just this afternoon to ask the board to approve this budget um pending the uh acceptance of our application opting into the tax levy
instead of a so I' I'd like to talk about the current school year in five particular areas where I think that we've made serious gains and we should be very proud um academically business
efficiency improvements program enhancements, awards and recognition, and certainly opportunities that exist for some exciting growth. Just a few things and just one slide on each for the sake of time here,
but our AP scores at the high school have increased to among some of the highest in school history. and the number of students that are taking AP classes is also increasing. So, this is
demonstrating the commitment that we have to increasing the rigor um not only in terms of what's taught to students, but this is evidence of them of our students being able to step up and demonstrate strong evidence of learning.
our SAT average scores um are second or third in in highest in the county. Okay. Um that's c certainly something to very uh have a lot of pride in and be proud of and we have several national merit
semi- finalists and finalists uh in national high school. At the middle school, we've decreased disciplinary incidents, total disciplinary incidents by 41% over a one-year period from 524 to 308. And that's looking at
September 1st to May 1st this school year compared to September 1st to May 1st the previous year. 95% of our students in middle school that take algebra um are meeting or exceeding expectations on the NJSLA
test. And our seventh grade cohort this particular year, as you recall from the fall, has made huge improvements both in math and in language arts. And they're certainly going to be poised for an excellent eighth grade year with a strong foundation entering high school.
So academically I think the future is is pretty bright. The elementary schools we've been able to decrease our basic skills population and our entire fourth grade across the district because of some of the interventions
um that we put in place uh particularly in small group instruction in lingu English language arts were able to achieve a 20% improvement in just a one-year period. So these are some pretty remarkable results.
academically. On the business side, we implemented a new program called Operation Hero, which helps our helps our business and grounds department um act faster on some of the service tickets so we can solve some of these
problems uh maintenance problems uh faster. It also has a dual function that makes the facility use uh easier and more efficient for our community to reserve space and time at our schools.
And it's helped us to be able to achieve increased amounts of rental income from outside groups who also have access to Operation Hero that rent our facilities. Uh our child care program is now equipped with online
registration and uh there has been some business efficiency improvements not only in summer wreck um but also the pairing for the summer wreck program and the summer enrichment programs for students that are going to participate
in both. Our community, our communications consortium is being recognized by the New Jersey school boards association as an exemplary model. You'll hear more about this uh in the coming months. Um but it's nice to
be acknowledged uh from the governing body in New Jersey of school boards association. It's not a formal award, but we uh will take the compliment. We've updated our curriculum in all areas. We implemented something called challenge day this year. As you're
aware, our school nursing standards, our school nursing services are more robust than ever. This is the one position that we did hold over from the SR funding. Uh you may recall and I'm certainly glad
that we made this commitment because students uh there seems to be more breath and more depth the amount of medical services that students and families are requiring. and I commend the board and our nurse our nurse team uh for the services that are provided at
Vance Skyver School. We have a self-contained class of students that has taken more of a leadership role in uh preparing snacks and uh participating in more life skills hands-on experience. Like to commend uh Mrs. Connor for for
that program and we have implemented a new security protocol in consultation with the Hank Township Police Department. These protocols were discussed just last week at our school safety forum. But for those of you that were there, um I I think everyone is is
is proud of the steps we made uh took forward in the area of school security, which includes a new camera system. Um, at this complex we uh implement choose love day as an extension of our choose love social emotional character
education program at elementary schools. We continue to have no place for hate distinction at the middle school high school complex. implemented a student voices club at the middle school and we have managed to go through
the full process of QAC which is the state monitoring uh of school districts and to date we have no uh uh formative feedback whatsoever which is generally a great sign. Uh we're heading into the end of May and you know we receive some
nice words of encouragement from the county office that they've enjoyed their visit. Um but it doesn't appear that there are any any concerns for um the full QAC monitoring. We've had a sign significant amount of awards and recognition and on
the visual performing arts slot uh um on the left of that we raised uh $6,000 for our spring pops and interstellar series which is a was a new event. We have numerous amounts of students that make all South Jersey and all state
recognition uh for visual performing arts. Many of our students are in the top 10 of their instrument. And we were recently recognized, you may recall, at the end of last year, from the NAM Foundations for one of the best communities in the country for music
education. I probably could have three or more four or more sites just on our music uh and visual performing arts department. Uh it's certainly I think one of the leaders in the state of New Jersey and in education if you're at the top of the state of New Jersey it
usually means you're at the top of the country. So congratulations to them. On the athletic side we received recognition from the South Jersey Coaches Association. We have 15 student athletes who have made college commitments. We probably could have had a lot more. Okay, but many of our
student athletes are opting just to be students in college. Uh but we're proud of of those individuals. Many of these are athletes received outstanding academic achievement distinction. Uh we have two teams that
have been formally recognized with NJSIAA sportsmanship awards for the current year that demonstrates the class and professionalism of our coaches and many of our students um have achieved Colonial Conference Scholar Athlete Awards.
there are still some opportunities and aims that we've discussed that uh are are in front of us that will roll over into next year. Um, last year these meetings were dominated by a grading
scale. And my sentiments on that were that the actual measure in how a grade occurs really has little to do with the quality of teaching and learning. Um, so now that
we've established a grading scale at the end of last year, we're eyeing a process to uh ensure that there's more consistency by department or more consistency by level. So how a teacher actually gets to the final grade um is
in consultation with their colleagues because after all we are a school system, not a system of schools. This also applies to the the process of reassessment. Um, you know, if a student fails an assessment, you know, what is
the actual process for just not discarding that material, but for reteaching and for reassessment. Um, this is a life process. You know, if if a student fails their driver's test, they have an opportunity to practice more and and take the test again. if you
fail the bar exam, if you fail the MCAT, um in life, you know, we want to communicate to students that, you know, that tests are not uh final, right? There's continuous learning is the name of the game. We
have some exciting uh things that have started. Our TV studio continues to get better month by month. Um we've the board's aware of the robotics clubs that still exist as an afterchool program. We started an esports club uh this year which is pretty exciting because this
was student uh student le from the the very ground. Um Mr. Tarot is here. He's actually leading that uh that program which is exciting. We're going to have decisions to make on cell phones. We have a no cell phone use in schools.
Students at the high school are allowed permit to use them during lunch. Um, but it's enforcing that policy that has at times or not at times that is frequently uh problematic and difficult. So, we're
going to have to have a discussion about cell phones next year. We're going to have to have continued discussions about artificial intelligence. Um, and we are looking forward to implementing a new self-contained class at our middle school. We'll have an extra classroom and uh we're going to bring three
students back from out of district. We're going to hold on to a few students that in former years we would have sent out. This is going to be good for students. This is going to be good for the district. We've also had some folks really stepping forward and stepping up
in a variety of roles. Our Mandarin Chinese teacher has assumed responsibilities as the ESL, that's English as second language teaching services. Our school media specialist has absorbed gifted and talented. We've
implemented a new website, tripled the internet bandwidth, implemented encourse which is a software platform, the multiple measures implementation, so principles and teacher leaders can examine data that's linked. And uh we've
continued our staff wellness programming and commitment to our staff uh throughout the year, not only on our wellness inser inservice day, but a real commitment that uh to ensuring that our our staff is supported here at work. Um providing them with opportunities uh to
make sure they take care of themselves because it's through individual wellness that we're able to serve the students to the best of our ability. That's a pretty great year, right? considering we started the year with a significant amount of reduced staff um
to accomplish some of those things. To refresh your memory, when we lost that $800,000 in in funding, then we had some dollars restored, 40% restored. At the end of all that, we did reduced full-time
equivalent positions. a social studies teacher, a music teacher, counselor, basic skills, gifted and talented English, physical education was a part-time role, and high school science was not replaced. On the support staff
side, we um reduced a secretary, a bus mechanic, and a buildings and grounds employee. So going into this year, we were an already lean uh uh school system, but I think that we proved that,
you know, we we've had a pretty successful year despite it. Factors that are driving the current budget deficit. Um going all the way back to when the pandemic was finally over, we began seeing some increasing
costs that surprised us. These incre increasing costs began to decrease our fund balance. You'll remember those conversations from a few years ago when I was repeatedly talking about a problem of us using fund balance to plug the
holes in our budget. Um and then in 2425 that $86,000 um was removed. The state returned 40% of that. There was hope there. Then this year we uh lost
$637,000 which included the 40% that was returned less than a year ago. So it's been a real roller coaster of uh of school financing uh with the state of New Jersey which has led to a two-year
reduction of over a million dollars. One of the things that's not driving this reduction in state aid is decreased enrollment. Here's our enrollment from 2020 to 2024. You'll start to hear about school districts that start to fall off the
fiscal cliff. You'll see videos on YouTube. Um you'll read in newspaper about this fiscal cliff. And when you see those things, the fiscal cliff generally applies to two things. S2, which is school districts that are
losing enrollment or school districts that hired staff, a large amount of staff with the ESRE funds that have still employed those staff members. That though both of those uh
components are nonfactors in Had Township. We're in a more unique situation than 95% of other districts that you hear about on this fiscal clip. We don't have declining enrollment and we only have one position that's still
left over for from the ESR funding and that's a school nurse. Okay, you'll see all those other positions were already eliminated. We have six more reductions this year. Um, we also have increasing costs in pretty much every line item when you
look at our budget and the isolating variable is according to Trenton is that our aggregate income has increased um substantially which is causing uh the department of ed and the governor's
office to award us less state aid. complicating this tax increase is uh a few other factors. One, the bond referendum. We've already asked our community to vote and approve uh an increase last year. the tax neutral
reassessment or re-evaluation that the township uh completed last year and this forecast for future state aid reductions which are not protected by will not be protected by Governor
Murphy's 3% cap that he had uh for this year. So what is our future financial forecast? Well, these two boxes, we received this in a letter from the state of New Jersey when we appealed
the state aid. We basically uh received information that said, you know, dear superintendent, this is your adjusted state aid and because of the caps that are in place, you only lost $274,000 plus the 40% from last year.
Your potential loss in state aid should have been $1.3 million or 14.6%. I never received a letter like that. You know, in 10 years as superintendent, this is what you're getting. This is what you should be
getting. This is a forecast in my opinion. Things could change. Politics change. Politicians change. We have to act on the information that we have. This is the information that we have. So, what is the actual tax impact on
this year's budget? And that is going to come out to about $58.56 per month. That brings the local tax levy to $30 million. 430,489,288 for a 15% increase. We could have gone higher. Okay, as you may
recall the numbers from the community forum, we could have gone lower. We didn't have to um we didn't have to opt into this tax levy incentive program, but we would not have the school district that we have now. Um, and we would not, in some cases, if if we went
to 2%, I think we'd have a hard time opening the school doors in each building um, in in a school district that's recognizable to to you and to the community. That's going to total to a yearly increase to $72
uh, and 97. Okay, you can see the funding sources detail. The last thing that I want to bring your attention to is that number at the bottom for the federal funds that say we're due to receive $1.2 million.
As of now, we still expect to receive those funds, but we don't know what tomorrow's newspaper is going to say. So, we need to prepare for changes on that lifeline item um either in the short term or the long term. We're hoping for the best, but many of us are
expecting the worst. So, that's something that we are uh paying very close attention to. And those funds include, you know, our title funds, our extraordinary aid uh funding.
So for you know how are we going to um become again as lean as we possibly can? Uh we're asking the community to pay more in taxes to the tune of 15% with New Jersey Department of Ed
approval, but we have to make every faith effort to um unfortunately reduce staff and programs out of respect for the taxpayer um while also providing a thorough and efficient uh education for our students.
This year we are going to reduce the district by one administrator, a business education high school teacher, a student assistance counselor, uh a physics teacher, a math position, and an elementary teacher.
this tax levy incentive program um that we're hoping to that we receive final approval in does provide us with a little bit of help and we have some creative ideas on how to maximize those funds. The tax levy incentive program
essentially is promising $189,000. It's a one-time incentive. It should not be utilized to fund staff because that money is only for one year. We have um made contact with a group called the New Jersey Tutoring Corpse
and uh it's a it's an organization statewide organization that will be able to provide us with you know inschool tutors or after school tutors. Um and uh in the process of doing this, we've been able to also identify a
philanthropic donor who is willing to match whatever the district puts forth over a three-year period. So, this is a unique way to provide our students with supplemental services from one from um one-time incentive funding and then have a
matching donor kind of double the funds, which I think over a three-year difference, three-ear period, I think that could make a significant difference. We're looking at a math program uh called Magma Math, which is a Swedish program um which I think really
has the power to address the lack of direction for our gifted and talented students in math and also address some of the gaps for our basic skills students. This is a program that leverages artificial intelligence that
demands that students show their work, that helps teachers um uh that helps teachers analyze the the work that the student is showing to provide feedback in in a differentiated way. because everyone knows if you have
an elementary class uh you know of 25 kids or a middle school class of 28 kids there's usually about 25 or 28 different levels uh of of of performance. So using artificial intelligence using a program like this I think is going to help us
meet the needs of the individual learner um in a in a in a in a u higher quality way than we're doing now. We're also going to uh continue our CLA mental health program. This is something that's
currently budgeted out of child care because we do now have a duty of care for students after school. Um this has been a very successful implementation at the middle school level and a real answer to um helping students with some
mental health uh concerns and um uh again in a confidential way. It's been a nice bridge between the student, the family and the school district. And uh lastly, we're going to continue to explore shared resources uh for some of
the services that we are losing. Tenant additional goals. I'll put before the board. These usually come at the beginning of this presentation uh but saved it to the end. Now we have to consider our school configurations at
the elementary level for 26 27. This was a very unpopular uh process a few years ago. I wasn't very comfortable in it. I had just arrived. I didn't think that the predictions from the demographer were uh
quite accurate. Uh but I am more comfortable in this role now and because of the forecast of what it is from Trenton, I think this deserves another look. Um it reconfiguring schools is an opportunity to again to not only become
more efficient uh but it it also has an opportunity to improve the quality of education if it's done thoughtfully um with our community instead to our community. And I think that this is certainly worth uh a design multiple
designs. Uh we cannot continue to be caught off guard by the state each year. This is the second year in a row. It's likely that we're going to be in a similar situation next year. We have to look at reconfiguration. Um we want to continue
to sustain student, parent, and community engagement. You know, student engagement in the classroom um is the king of instruction. We've also made significant strides with uh communic uh engaging with our community not only at board meetings but outside of board
meetings, community forums, school safety forums, budget forums. Um we have a we have a very dedicated uh parent base and they will support our district and it's we really need to continue to engage with them in a positive way. And
then the future of education considering the you know the looming teacher shortage we have to look to resources like clayful like magma math like shared services to um develop partnerships with artificial intelligence resources that
can enrich the quality uh of the educational experience without always hitching our wagon to just salaries and benefits because salaries and benefits are currently 80% of our budget. and we're just not sure that that's going to be able to sustain be sustained. So, we
must continue to be as creative as possible while delivering on um our commitment to students. That's all I have for the presentation. Um I'd like to thank you for listening. If the board has any
questions, if the public has any questions, it's my pleasure to feel that. Dr. Yeah. What do you uh attribute the reduction in um disciplinary at the middle school to? I think our administrative team has
done a remarkable job um emphasizing uh character development, taking the time to implement what they call family meetings once a month. the schedule has been revised and there's been a real commitment to talking to the students uh
about the importance of uh kindness, you know, and when it comes to middle school students, most of the disciplinary incidents are students using humor that
cuts deep to other students. So when you when I sometimes I'm involved in appeals, I've talked to middle school students and and I'll ask why did you do that? And it the answer is generally I I thought it was funny or it was just a joke, right? So we always say the floor
for interacting with your peers is universal respect. That's the floor. Anything below that, even if it's humorous, is out of bounds. The imaginary ceiling is complete kindness. And there's no finish line. You can go
as high as you want. It's high into the the atmosphere as you want. You can be as kind as you as you possibly um want to be. So I I think it's been something that the administrative the administrators at the uh uh middle school have emphasized
that's trickled down to the teachers and the teachers have really I think prioritized it in in the classrooms. Um the school is organized. It's it's we've had a good year. We've implemented some components of responsive classroom which we talked
about last year. Uh but Mr. Sweisiki is going to be here in June to present to this board. He's the last administrator that's going to present for the year and uh I'm sure he'll share a lot more about some of the programs that he thinks were the most beneficial.
Can I ask a uncomfortable question? Sure. In a day when science seems to be like leading the forefront, we're cutting a physics teacher and a math teacher. Yeah. Um just I mean not naming names. Yeah. But seems kind of a
counterintuitive move based on where we're going. Yeah. So the ma we're kind of in the math position. The teacher uh is moving across the country. Okay. and we're going to we're going to have to have a little higher uh math uh numbers in in the middle school. Uh luckily we
we're seeing strong improvement in uh those seventh graders that are going to be eighth graders. We think these resources some magma math can be useful. Uh we're going to try to supplement that, see how it goes. On the physics side, that's really an enrollment issue.
Uh we just don't have the enrollment to support that position. We didn't necessarily have that enrollment in a strong way. We thought it was coming. Um, and that individual was hired, I don't want to say as an extra, but in a creative way, anticipating the need in
in in future years. That need never complained. We're certainly regretful to see that individual go, but before we went any other direction, we just we couldn't fill that individual's class of students. Thank you.
Any other questions from the board? Thank you. One of the things I should say while I'm still on video here is cuz I'm going to get emails on this in the morning. Um we are proceeding with another year
of full day kindergarten. Um, kindergarten is unaffected by this budget. We are going to have full day kindergarten. That's commitment we made years ago that we're going to continue to follow through with. And um, every vendor that I've reached out to asked them to reduce their services by 10%. U,
um, has complied. So, that's been a very refreshing uh, response. Wow, that's great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we're going to move into section four, discussion and questions
from the public for the board on the budget. Uh, so if you have a comment to share with the board about the budget, please state your name, your neighborhood, and limit your remarks to a few minutes. All right, see none, we'll move into section five, finance and
facilities. Uh, can I get a motion to approve item 5.1, the final 202526 budget? Second. Uh, roll call. Mr. Cook, yes. Mr. Desi, yes. Mr.
Kendall, yes. Yes. Matter. Yes. Williams. Yes. Yes. Who seconded that? I'm sorry. Me. Thank you. All right. Moving into section six. This is our final public comment section of the evening. This is for any topic,
not just the budget. Uh same rules of engagement. Please state your name and your neighborhood and limit your remarks to three minutes if you have a time. All right. Seeing none, are there any final questions or comments from the board or the administrative team? I just
want to commend the team. This was such a challenging year and there was a lot of consideration put into the budget, a lot of consideration put in the engagement and this commanding voucher went through all that was going to second that. I mean, I
think this was a really tough year and the administration and team and everyone involved definitely worked hard to come up with good ideas and things that would have such a detrimental impact on the district and going and asking all those
vendors that took a lot and was a great reward to hear that. Thank you. Great. finding a way to cut costs and increase efficiency um while also increasing our taxes and finding that
right balance between the two. It's definitely not an easy task. So, appreciate all the effort that went into that from everyone around this table. I I presume the state comes back and says,
"No, then all of our jobs get really really hard." I I don't I don't So, we have we have some things that were still on the sidelines that we didn't tap into. We still have that that money in unemployment benefits. We have money in debt services uh from the bottom. Uh we
have money in, you know, to sell the board office, so to speak. So, I I don't think there's any I mean, knock on wood. I you know, I'm hoping this county on the state for support. Uh but listen, I
want to be very clear. The state initiated this tax levying incentive program. They wrote to us. They acknowledged that we were short between $2 and4 million. They provided us with the pathway for the solution which was to get the money from our community.
They invited us to go much higher than we'd want. They invited us for at one point, you know, you remember the numbers in the community forum. We settled in the middle. if for whatever reason that they don't support us, you
know, in full, it it's it's another uh it's just another huge disappointment because this was not our initiative. This was the state's initiative. Can I ask another uncomfortable question? Sure. When she puts in there putting a 15% increase, I forget my math
right now. On Thursday's retrospect, were you going to, you know, pitch works in nice because it's it's a random Wednesday, right? So people show today's Tuesday. people showing up. It's not I mean it's it's too late now, right? So So at the end of the day, it
was already on the front page of the last ret. I know, but I it's people no offense to retrospect, but it it just becomes a headline, right? So um Yeah. Yeah. Um there's a story here, right? The
story is that the state is uh has asked us to do this for a reason because the aggregate income has been increased. I'm not going to dispute the the the Treasury Department's data, but you you've heard me talk about the bell curve before. Onethird of our community
now, you know, I'm assuming income has increased some individuals dramatically, maybe oneird's probably stayed the same. One/3 probably clumped down, right? So, I expect to hear from that one third. I think we need to be compassionate and empathetic towards those individuals.
state is not allowing us to tax on income. We have to tax on property. We can only play by the rules that are put before us. And if we're going to continue to lead schools on this side of the table or serve on school boards on that side of the table in the state of
New Jersey, these are the rules that we're forced to kind of govern and play by. Any other comments from board? All right. Can I get a motion to adjurnn?
Move. Second. All in favor? Thank you all.