WEBVTT

METADATA
Video-Count: 1
Video-1: youtube.com/watch?v=Vq4GtqeP7OA

NOTE
MEETING SECTIONS:

Part 1 (Video ID: Vq4GtqeP7OA):
- 00:00:04: Board Meeting Call To Order and Roll Call
- 00:02:30: Pledge of Allegiance, Communications, Approve Meeting Minutes
- 00:03:25: Student Representatives Share School Success Reports
- 00:06:37: Superintendent Report Introduction and Student Spotlighting
- 00:07:26: Recognizing Ramona Payne for Academic Excellence
- 00:08:16: Honoring Elanora Chu for Enthusiasm and Inclusivity
- 00:09:36: Final Budget Presentation: Goals and Fiscal Challenges
- 00:14:57: Budget Impact: Increase in Health Benefits Costs
- 00:16:55: Proposed Budget Adjustments and Future Financial Success
- 00:19:38: Maintaining Staff, Resources, and Facility Improvements
- 00:22:14: Proposed Staff Reductions and Transportation Cost Savings
- 00:24:43: Revenue Snapshot: Tax Levy, State Aid, and Reserves
- 00:27:26: Proposed Expenditures and Tax Impact Overview
- 00:29:43: Board Questions and Discussion on Extraordinary Aid
- 00:31:35: Course Offerings, Maker Space, and Future Budget Cushion
- 00:34:04: Banked Capital Clarification and Unpredictable State Aid
- 00:37:00: Instructional Resources and Bilingual Education
- 00:39:13: State Aid Limitations and Anticipated Rough Budget Year
- 00:41:06: Instructional Expenditures Decrease and Understanding
- 00:45:59: Impact of HPA Decision and Edison District Comparison
- 00:47:19: Formal Public Hearing and Budget Adoption Introduction
- 00:47:19: Formal Public Hearing and Budget Adoption Introduction
- 00:49:25: Public Comment 1: Appreciation for Middle Ground Budgeting
- 00:52:31: Public Comment 2: Unanswered Questions and Budget Cuts
- 00:59:16: Public Comment 3: Austerity Budget and Misplaced Priorities
- 01:02:08: Public Comment 4: Loss of Social Studies Teacher
- 01:05:07: Public Comment 5: Theater vs. Maker Space and Mandarin Program
- 01:12:04: Public Comment 6: Class Size and Social Studies Importance
- 01:19:58: Public Comment 7: Security Camera Spending and Maker Space
- 01:22:14: Public Comment 8: Budget Should Have No Cuts
- 01:27:42: Public Comment 9: Academics Focus and Mandarin Cut
- 01:31:59: Public Comment 10: Personal Stories and Board Decisions
- 01:35:51: Public Comment 11: Maker Space Program
- 01:38:12: Public Comment 12: Importance of Education Cuts
- 01:43:17: Public Comment 13: All Public School Student Matters
- 01:46:54: Public Comment 14: Follow To The Students Voices
- 01:50:28: Public Comment 15: Clarify the Misleading Names
- 01:51:36: Public Comment 16: These Hearings Aren't For Show
- 01:54:21: Budget Action Items and Board Discussion - Personnel
- 01:55:13: Clarifying Personnel, Athletics Budget, and Reserve Funds
- 01:58:33: Board Votes on School District Budget
- 01:59:05: Budget Decision Process and Board Vote Explanation
- 02:02:05: Focus on all the Students
- 02:05:56: Board Vote Results: Budget Motion Carries
- 02:08:18: Committee Reports: Curriculum, Finance and Facilities
- 02:17:41: Facilities Action Items and Grant Updates
- 02:21:38: Share PILOT Share Payment
- 02:21:55: Personnel Approvals and Policy Regulations
- 02:23:41: Public Comment 2: School Bathroom Pad and Tampon
- 02:25:25: Closing Public Comment and Approval of Agenda Items
- 02:31:59: Green Team, District Wins Bronze Status
- 02:33:09: President's Report: New Business, Community, and Events
- 02:42:14: Adjournment


Part: 1

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I have a different mic than everybody else. >> We're all good. >> Okay. I would like to call to order this meeting of the Highland Park Board of Education uh voting workshop meeting. Uh, the New Jersey Open Public Meetings

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Act was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of the public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon. In compliance with the open public meetings act, the Highland Park Board of Education Board of Education has caused

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notice of this meeting setting forth the time, date, and location to be submitted for publication to the Home News Tribune and Courier News and posted on the board's website at least 48 hours in advance of this meeting. Members of the public who wish to address the board will be given the opportunity to do so

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before the board adjourns for the evening. >> Dr. Batty, Mel Dunn >> here. >> Dr. Coleman. >> Mr. Maldonado >> here. >> Dr. Pixley

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>> here. >> Miss Cruz >> here. >> Dr. Skullman. Miss Daniel >> here. >> Miss Bardman >> here. >> Okay. I now move that we recess to executive session. Second.

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>> All in favor? >> Now going to reconvene to regular session. I'm sorry, >> Dr. Batty. here, >> Miss Cassaldon. >> Here, Dr. Coleman here, >> Mr. Maldonado,

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>> Dr. Pixley >> here, >> Miss Pruce, >> here, >> Dr. Swman, >> Miss Daniel >> here, >> Miss Vardman, >> here. Uh, okay. Now we will do the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the

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United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, we had a number of communications since our last meeting um all involving

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the budget. Uh, and now we will approve the minutes. Uh, I move we approve the minutes. >> Second. Second. >> Dr. Batty.

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>> Yes. >> Miss Caldan, >> yes. >> Dr. Coleman. >> Yes. >> Mr. Maldonado. >> Dr. Pigsley. >> Yes. >> Miss Cruz. >> Yes. >> Dr. Schoolman. >> Yes. >> Miss Dio. >> Yes. Miss Bartman. >> Yes.

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student report. Oh yeah, student representatives report. Starting off with Irving, they their students celebrated poetry month and hosted their PTO used book sale. And they'd like to thank families for helping prepare the garden beds and planters that students will eventually fill in. They also celebrated Earth Day

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with a bee demonstration, recycle crafts, seed planting, and other activities all sponsored by their green team. And their first graders will visit Turtle Back soon very soon. for Bartle. They said Bartle Elementary is proud to be participating in the American Heart

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Association's Kids Heart Challenge during the month of April. So far, our school community has raised over $1,500 to support heart health and life-saving research. And we're especially um proud of the five students who have completed Finn's mission, where they learn the

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important skill of hands-on only CPR. and it's been great to see our students learning ways that they can make a difference in helping others. The American Heart Association also provides lessons and activities based on health, nutrition, and social emotional learning

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to the Bartle staff and families. middle school. They had their marking period 3 star student breakfast and we're excited to celebrate um Alice Nandanda, Zoe Reading, Javier Belas, Caitlyn Chan, Isla Vanova, Rowan Boyd,

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Hame all Hurab, Toby Guard, Winnie Wang, Rosa Pearson, and Gu Salazar as third period star students. The seventh graders took a trip to Medieval Times and had a great time cheering on their yellow and red knights. They will be recognizing middle school pride this year with core values they

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believe helped their schooling students grow. In April, teachers will nominate teachers and winning teachers will come down on Fridays and pick a student from one of their classes who demonstrates the core value they were nominated for. The teacher winners last week were Miss Carter, Miss Ay, Miss Donatov, and Miss Takis. They in turn nominated Wes Gash,

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Ammani Agnu, Mikey Wild Whiten, Julian Malachi, and Michael Sartani. Congratulations. They also celebrated their spirit week, had Adam Sandler day, anything but a backpack day, pajama day, cowboy/cowgirl day, and color wars. They celebrated spring sports at the pep rally, and had an awesome staff versus

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students basketball game. Though the students won, there will be a rematch. And for the high school, uh, model UI competed in early April in New Brunswick and won best large delegation at Rucker's model congress. Um, and Highland Park DECA traveled to ICDC on

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Friday. About 20 students headed to Atlanta to represent Highland Park in sales project, financial literacy, Thrive, Aspire, school-based enterprise, and roleplay events. In addition to working hard, uh we will be having a little bit of fun at the Georgia

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Aquarium and World of Coke. These opportunities are only possible due to the hard work of our our students and generous donors in the community. This past weekend was also our musical Shrek. Um, it is always incredible to see the talent in our school. We also have a

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super exciting community event as Joel Waldman, HPHS class of 87, returns to Highland Park High School with his mom to discuss his new book and podcast, Surviving the Survivor. Uh, come join us for this free event at 7 p.m. in the

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high school auditorium, April 29th. Uh, thank you. And now we're going to move on to the superintendent's report. Good evening everyone. Thanks for coming out tonight. I'm excited to um start my report by spotlighting two welldeserving

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Bartle students. So, I'd like to invite Miss Jennifer Nat, principal, up to the podium. Good evening. I have the pleasure of honoring two of our Bartble Dolphins tonight, Ramona Payne and Eleanora Chu. I'll start with Ramona.

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I am proud to recognize Ramona for consistently going above and beyond in all areas of learning. Ramona approaches every assignment with focus, determination, and a strong commitment to excellence, often exceeding

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expectations. In addition to her academic success, she serves as a role model by consistently demonstrating kindness, responsibility, and respect. Whether supporting

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classmates, staying organized, or showing a positive attitude each day, Ramona truly embodies our school values. We are fortunate to have her as part of our school community. Congratulations, Ramona.

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Come on up, Ramona. I am also very proud to honor Nora. Nora consistently goes above and beyond, actively seeking out additional challenges and putting forth her best effort on all tasks. She often asks

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thoughtful questions, volunteers to participate, and takes the initiative to extend her learning beyond what is required. Her enthusiasm for learning is evident in her positive attitude and willingness to take on new and challenging tasks

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without hesitation. Additionally, she is kind and inclusive, regularly regularly making an effort to ensure all classmates feel welcomed, valued, and supported within the

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classroom community. Congratulations, Elanora. And please join me one more time for congratulating both students. So, I'm going to move on to the next part of my report, which is the final budget presentation, and then we'll move into the final budget uh hearing. Those

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that are here to to support um our BAL students, you're more than welcome to stay for the rest of the presentation. However, I know Miss Nav and some of our staff have a long day, so if you need to excuse yourself and and families to go out and celebrate, please feel free or take some pictures outside.

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Congratulations again. Thank you. All right. Go. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. So, I'm going to begin. See if we can focus our attent attention here. or maybe here. I'll

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figure out how to set this up. Okay. For our final uh budget presentation. There we go. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. So, I'm going to breeze through the first couple of slides. This is all um a repeat from the tentative

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budget, but just a couple of reminders um if you weren't watching the tenative budget uh back in March. Um but we every year we align our budget process with district goals and objectives. uh the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Every Student Succeeds Act, and the

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New Jersey Student Learning Standards. In addition, this process for budgeting takes quite a long time. Uh so, as we discussed in the tentative budget, um all of our administrators meet with myself and Mr. Rosa. Uh starting in the fall, typically they start building

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their budgets around October, November. By December, they're meeting with us and going through their budget requests. And we do that for about a month or two. Um, and typically during that process, we're able to kind of fine-tune the budget as we go, kind of build it as a

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larger budget, uh, by looking at how we can pay for different things or the different funding options, things like that. Uh, the finance and facilities, which is a subcommittee of the board of education, uh, meets with the department administrators every year, and this year it was February 10th. And then we've had

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subsequent uh many meetings uh with the finance and facilities committee as you can see here to actually talk about it because it was definitely um a more challenging budget season. Um and then we had um board discussions on publicly March 23rd, April 13th, and then tonight

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the 27th. Um and I'm going to reiterate again, I know we've talked about this, but our three levels of budgeting. So we're required to budget things legally. Um so there's legal requirements that happen. that's a level one budgeted item. Those items cannot be cut. Uh that include

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anything around the New Jersey student learning standards um or special education uh are just some examples. Uh level two are required by board policy and then level three are not required but a high investment from our community. So things like our music program, arts, mental

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health, things like that that are high priority we like to include as a level three budgeted item. So a couple of things with our budget in this particular budget um was our fiscal responsibility. Um so some of the issues that we were

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facing this year with our uh budget was uh continued increased costs for students with disabilities. Um that has required additional and shift in our staffing needs. Um so what you'll actually see in the subsequent finance slides is we're bringing some more students back in district. uh which is

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wonderful because we want our our Highland Park students being educated with with their peers in district. Uh but you'll see that there was a shift that number has gone down but um educating students in our district um that have a variety of needs has gone up

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um a little bit for that uh facility maintenance. So that's something that is ongoing. We want to make sure that we're always addressing uh fiscal uh sorry facility needs. Uh that's really important. uh federal and state mandates that come at us. We have to make sure we budget for those. There

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are contract uh obligations that the board of education is responsible for uh for uh those fiscal responsibilities. In addition, we're always looking for ways to save money. So, we have lots of conversations, a lot of data that has been presented to the board of

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education. Um, I do require a lot of my leadership team to bring information to me as well so we can make informed decisions that include staffing, student enrollment, our student needs, um, and anything that could be a least impact on student achievement. So, as we're

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looking through the data, that's the lens that we're looking through. So, in terms of our uh budget impact, one of the key drivers um that I know we've been talking about for at least uh two months now or a month and a half has been um the health benefits. So, you'll

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see in subsequent uh slides, Highland Park, like many other districts, in fact, probably most districts in the state of New Jersey are really being impacted by the increase in health benefits. And when we show you those slides, you'll actually see that is the major driver for um for our budget this

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year. Uh the preliminary budget projection back in March on the 23rd had us at an increase of 32% for our health benefits. Um and as we noted in the April 13th um uh special board meeting,

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uh we were able to the our brokers from Brown and Brown were able to uh get that that number down for us, which was uh a really big deal. Um so that would then give us um a final budget that in includes an increase of 26.1% to health benefits, uh which is a $1.18

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million increase to the overall operating budget. So that is the impact health benefits has on a $44 million budget in Highland Park. Uh and the two factors around that are the medical loss ratio which is at 94% and more significantly the prescription loss

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ratio ratio which is at 211%. So those are pretty significant in particular the prescription loss ratio. Uh the state does allow us to increase the tax levy above 2% for increase in health benefits. So that means according to where we stand in our budget and with

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uh the specific information around Highland Park, that's a little over 1.1 million or 1.6 uh 068 million, which would equate to a 5.1% increase in tax levy. Um our final budget includes approximately $65,000

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uh dollars of that of the 1 million creating bank cap of about 462,000 which can be used over the next three years. So, what I presented tonight for a final budget shows a happy um um medium of the two. So, um instead of cutting all of

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the staff that was proposed in the tentative budget, um my proposed budget tonight is a middle ground where we will save some of the staff. Unfortunately, we will have to cut a couple um and instead of raising the taxes to the full 5.18%

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um we will do 3.8 3.8%. Um so that therefore we're somewhere in between to be fiscally responsible. Part of that allows us to get banked cap to be used for future budgets. So a part of what the planning and my thought process was

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was how do we set ourselves up for future success? A lot of the issues that we're having around health benefits comes with chapter 44 legislation around the health benefits for public school employees. That doesn't sunset until 2028.

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So my concern if I'm thinking about the future, I don't know what the school funding formula is going to hold for the future. We have a new governor who's proposing a new formula, but nobody knows what that is yet. So my concern is in the next couple of years with an unknown amount of state aid that we

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could get, plus this um legislation around chapter 44 does not sunset for another couple of years. How do I set the district up for financial success so that we're not constantly raising taxes a significant amount year after year? Um, so this gave us uh two things

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happened. One was going to a GLP1 direct to take the two expensive drugs that were um part of the prescription loss ratio of 211% out of our overall benefit plan and administer it in a way um that is slightly different but still um access

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is still the same. So part of it was taking those those two prescription highcost prescriptions out and administering them just slightly different. So hopefully next year our loss ratio won't be as bad and so maybe something like 32% won't happen. Um in

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years past we've been up like 14%. So that is that is one hope of that piece and the other is having some bank cap. By not going to the full 5% this year that does give us $462,000 in bank cap to use over the next couple of years as well. So, my hope with in

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proposing this budget is it I'm looking for next year, but I also need to look in a couple of years um to make sure that we are fiscally responsible to the taxpayers in Highland Park uh without compromising student achievement in the district. Um so, like I said in the tentative

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budget, the budget does enable the district to maintain full fully staffed schools with qualified personnel, uh great instructional resources, updated and aligned to standards. Uh in particular, the state is putting out updates for ELA, math, science, and multi- language learners. And in

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addition, it does include currency transportation for students on hazardous routes. In addition, the budget will include some uh facility improvements, uh the repairs to the high school Koopa. For those who don't know, um the high school

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is uh almost 100 years old. In 2026, it will be a hundred years old for the major part of the building. the high school pupil as the uh squire piece uh in the front. When it was built over a hundred years ago or just about 100 years ago, the gutters were built inside

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of the in between the building. Um like the gutters now were on the outside of buildings. Um 100 years ago, that's not how they built the buildings. And that's what we're actually finding. It's not roof leaks that are a problem. It's the Koopa and these like internal gutters

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that are just wreaking havoc. Uh if you've ever been in the main office, you can see the um some of the result of that in on the second floor. So that's an area that definitely needs to be addressed. It's a um uh an area of repair, uh replacement of water service

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line at the high school, replacement of Bartle fire alarms and strobes, uh the barter boilers, uh replacement of exterior lights at all schools, and um an increase of two additional security cameras at each school. In addition, what we didn't put on there for the security is the majority of the money

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being used for the camera upgrade actually comes for a new server. The cameras, the technology can only hold so much of that camera footage. Um the server that we have is outdated and it's becoming problematic. Um so with the change in the technology times for for

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the cameras, uh we do have to upgrade the server. So the majority of that money is actually being used for the server to upgrade the system. We will be increasing preschool enrollment by 15 students, which I want to celebrate um and think that's absolutely amazing, especially since uh

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you know, word on the street is a neighboring district is not even going to be offering it anymore or being able to afford to. So, I'm really proud of the work that that uh my staff at at Irving do to to continue that work. Uh in addition, we will be supporting a new math curriculum uh or resource for

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grades K through five coming soon next month. We're almost about done wrapping that up and making a recommendation to the board. um for a new math curriculum. So, we're really excited about those things, but unfortunately um there are a couple of areas in which we will have to

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cut in order to make all of that happen. So, I'm proposing um the reduction in force. So, they're not um it's not being necessarily fired. It's not non-renewed. It's a reduction in force. So, these staff members that will be cut have right of refusal uh for any jobs that

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are open under their certifications or their um their current job descriptions um at if if and when they become available. So, that's two assistant administrative assistants. Um I am recommending that we close the maker space at the middle school and one secondary socialist teacher which social

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studies teacher will which will result in no diminishment of instruction or services to students. So all of our uh uh programs for social studies will be staffed, electives at the high school will be running. Um and we will see no uh impact on that.

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Uh in addition um we talked about at the April 13th board meeting about the aid in L another area that we found in cost savings um was uh aid in le of transportation. Mr. Rosa. >> Yes. So um hold on. Uh so based on the clarifications and

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the directives provided by the department of education um the district is not does not have the authority to make non-public aid and loo payments. Uh because we don't transport any of our public school students because they live remotely. Uh that does not require or

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give us the the authority to make those payments to those non-public students. Um in the original uh budget update of March of April 13th um we I projected a cost of 225,000.

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I picked up the wrong number. We do have to cover um aid in LO for charter school students. That's mandated transportation. Um, so charter schools are classified as specialized programs and they are transportation is provided

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in accordance with New Jersey administrative code 6A 27-3.1 which states the maximum allowable um expenditure of transportation for those students cannot cost more than at today $1,177

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per student. Um, so we only have about 15 students that um go to charter schools. So that would they qualify for Aiden Loo instead of offering a bus that would cost $30,000. Okay. Oh, do I miss a slide or we Okay. All right. So, we'll go through uh

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again. So, this is going to be the snapshot of our revenues with the 3.8% uh tax increase that I'm proposing tonight. >> Right. So, just go going over the revenue snapshot. The tax levy is increasing the 2% uh plus as Dr. Cisco

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uh mentioned the $65,000 of the healthc care cost adjustment. Our state aid did increase 6%. Um we are estimating a decrease in um extraordinary aid for the 2627 school year. uh we won't know that 2627

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number until July of 2027. Once the application is submitted. Applications are submitted at the end of May. The state calculates them and they determine how much is refunded back. The the amount of that reimbursement by the

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state is not statutory. So that um that derivative is changes. Um, every year we noticed over the past three years the amount that they're funding back in excess has decreased. Um, we also are projecting a little bit of an increase

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for other local sources and interest. This includes our interest income. Uh, tuition. We have some parent paid tuition students. Uh, we have another student from another LEA that attends our specialized program. It also includes the bureau's pilot money share,

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our enterprise activities and refunds of prior year expenditures. A federal aid or semi sorry um is an amount determined by the state. So the state um tells us how much to budget for semi-reimbursement. Um and our subtotal for operating

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revenue only. So just our operating revenue is actually increasing 3.63% over last year. Um and just to highlight our nonrecurring revenue supports that support operating expenses. So we

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utilize some capital reserve to take care of those long range facility projects that Dr. Suska mentioned the copa the fire alarm uh exterior lights bartle boilers and the water service line. So if you know last year our

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utilization was 2.2 million uh that was directly related to our bartal structural repair project. We don't have that next year. We paid for it. So, we're only That's why that number has decreased negative 1.5 million. Uh we're

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utilizing $250,000 of our maintenance reserve and um about 131,000 of emergency reserve. Um and we're projecting some surplus. Our total budget operating budget is 44,604243.

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It represents a decrease from the prior year of about 0.5%. >> Excellent. So what you can see here are uh continue with our proposed expenditures. What we want to do just so that we don't have to um you know kind of go through it all like we did uh for the tenative budget but we just a couple

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of areas to highlight um that that we'll discuss. So, one of um one area will you see where you see a lot of these numbers fluctuated because we added back in um the staff that were originally slated for uh reductions and forced from the

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tenative budget. So, that's why you'll see these numbers are changing because we're at we added those positions back into the budget. So, you can see that for total supplemental atrisisk instruction um that was that was a change. Um that's an increase because of

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we added back in an interventionist. Uh the other highlighted amounts the attendance would represent the central ad registration secretary along with the nurse. Um and the uh improvement of instruction staff media services is the

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media center specialist. Uh the school district central IT is an administrative assistant. Um the transportation student transportation services actually went down. um that reflects that non-public aid in Lou. Um and the capital outlay no

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I'm sorry employee benefits went down as well and that results to the savings that we're achieving by uh our renewal. Um it's just a little bit off because we have uh to account for the positions that we're putting back into the budget, we need to budget the cost of the

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district's portion. So overall the tax impact on a 3.8% school year tax levy uh for the average home assessed value at 482,000 it would be $317.77

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per year or $2687848 per month. I just want to call to attention that a school district's budget runs from July to June. Your property taxes are from January to December. So, and it all fluctuates. So, you might not see a direct 3.8% starting

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in your third quarter taxes. It kind of levels out. So, typically you might see that around uh Q1 of 2027 um and beyond. All right. So, that concludes our formal presentation. What I'm going to do is open it up for questions or comments from the board of education. Uh one is

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once that's done, um I will close my report and we can move on to the um the hearing of the budget. So any questions from from the board of education right now? >> Yes. Uh Denise, you said um the

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extraordinary aid that but it will be July of this year we find out. Correct. >> So we find out what we projected for 2526 in July 2026. Okay. >> And the amount we're projecting for 27 we'll find out in July of 20 2027. So it

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always happens July after the school year ends. The application is due in May, the state reviews it and then we get the money in July. >> All right. Thank you. >> Are you projecting that that aid is going to go down um just because that's been the trend or because we're bringing

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students back into district? >> It's a combination. So I I tend to look at all the factors. Um so I do an analysis of how many in district students we have, how many out of district students we have. Um there is a threshold that the state has on the

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extraordinary aid application. So in district students, if it costs a district over $40,000, then you're eligible to submit them on an application for the amount above $40,000. If for a student that goes out of district, the threshold is $55,000.

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If it costs us over $55,000 to send that student out of district, that portion above $55,000 can be reported on the application. and then the state does a calculation and reimbures a portion of that excess.

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>> Um, regarding one high school teacher moving down to middle school, would this affect any of the course offerings at the high school? >> Nope, it does not affect any course offerings. We're able to offer all the courses and electives and I believe there was a new course added with electives that were able to um fully run

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as well. So, there is no impact on student instruction. Could you explain how that's the case? I'm sorry. Can you say that? >> Could you explain, you know, why you're confident that despite a reduction in force of one social studies teacher,

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>> there won't be a change in the the courses that are being offered essentially. Why is that the case? So, uh, we had, uh, a member of the social studies department that was, um, our as athletic coordinator, um, over the past number of years, uh, who had a reduction

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in teaching load as a result of working in that capacity. So, they were like a shared capacity. So, what we found this year in moving that staff member fully back um as a a full-time secondary social studies teacher that it actually um we had an area where um it was uh

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without impacting uh students still able to run same courses, same course load um no increase on student um uh student to staff ratio um in those classes that we were able to do that successfully because we had that extra uh person back

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in that department. You're welcome. >> Um, since you're also uh talked about removing the maker space from the middle school, would that also affect like the student to teacher ratio or not? >> So, it doesn't this uh instead of running concurrently with art uh maker

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space, it will be theater. So, we have uh last year, if you saw on the board agenda, we approved from a part-time theater to a full-time theater teacher. Um, and so we are going to run theater concurrently with art. So the students will have options for theater which will be fantastic. And if anybody saw the musical this weekend, we're really

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excited to to uh be able to offer that. >> Absolutely. >> Hello. >> So with the um banked capital, does that also give us a better chance of not having to reduce force in the in the

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future years? Does it give us like a little bit of a cushion for that so we can keep people? Yeah. So that that is our hope. So the two things again that I I hope in in in doing this and proposing this budget, well let me say three. So one is yes that banked cap of $462,917

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is available for us over the next three years. So again with unknown of what the state funding formula is going to look like. We are below adequacy. So I want to make sure that we have a cushion for whatever that formula is going to be plus the continued rise in health benefits. But I'm hoping removing the

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two expensive GLP-1 drugs in a more direct route, staff still have access um and their um the the people that use the insurance still have access. It's just in a um a different administration uh way. Um the hope is those two things

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mitigate the issue for next year. Uh but this bank cap will be able to h help us mitigate that. If we go to the full 5.18%, we won't have that bank cap. And so if things get dire as they are projecting then we're still in the position if you remember last year at the tentative

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budget um there were a number of staff that were going to that were in our tentative budget last year to be reduced and forced the same staff uh we raised we did the tax levy incentivated. If you remember from last year we had a special board meeting to approve the tax levy incentive package which was the

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governor's response and legislation to the um to the funding. So they incentivize school districts to do that. We took advantage of it. So we raised taxes last year by 6% to save those positions. Unfortunately, we're in the same position this year. So we're we're I'm trying to set us up for success um

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so or hopefully more success next year with that banked cap and removing the the expensive GLP1s um and just administering them in a different way. So again, access is still there. Our staff and the users of the benefits still have access to those GLP1 drugs for weight loss. it's just administered

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in a different way which will help mitigate our prescription loss ratio to hopefully make us more marketable to a company next year. So all of those pieces um were used to inform the budget that I'm proposing. I will say it was not an easy decision contrary to what

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people might think. It was very very hard a lot of data um and then we went back and forth a lot in trying to figure out how to make this work. Um, these are really unfortunate times. I will say that with over 60% of our

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families on free and reduced lunch and we continue to put the burden on taxpayers, it is very challenging. So, that is why my proposed budget tonight to me meets somewhere in the middle where we're able to save some of the positions and we're still increasing taxes. But again, looking at our overall

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number of the increase, that can still be a considerable amount for some of our families that are trying to s trying to get by uh and an extra $2648 a month, you know, and then not knowing what the future holds for next year. I don't want to see that number again.

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So, my hope is with not going to the full amount will set us up for for better success next year. Just want to clarify with the banked cap. What that means is say next year that's that's taxes that we didn't

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raise, but we have three years where we could Yes. >> raise those taxes over the 2% cap. Correct. >> Um if So there's a 2% cap of how much we can raise property taxes. However, healthc care benefits are not included

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in that. So, you can go over the 2% cap in order to pay for health benefits. Um, that's why we were able to, you know, that's why we're going over the cap this year. Um, but that would leave us three years of no to maybe be able to

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if our health care system if our health care dollars are better next year, right? If we're not getting hit with a 26% increase, we would not have the ability to go over the 2% cap, >> right? So, if if our health insurance costs don't go up next year, but

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something else goes down, we have the flexibility to raise taxes a little bit that we wouldn't have if we taken advantage of the full levy this time. >> That's correct. I understand. >> And if you remember, a couple years ago, we actually received uh a little over a million dollars in state aid. Uh this was a couple of years ago, and it was

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phenomenal. we were able to add some positions in. So again, I don't know what school funding formula has uh to offer us um with with a with new administration uh down in Trenton. My hope is that maybe if it comes and it shows that you know we we're not receiving as much as we should be and

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maybe there's some sort of increase next year, bringing some positions back and maybe mitigating some of the loss ratio around here. Um but I again I don't know what the future holds other than I just want to make sure that we're set up for fiscal success. um knowing the the the

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actual known is chapter 44. I know what chapter 44 says around health benefits for state public uh school employees and I know uh that that sunsets in 2028. Right. So though that's something that's a known everything else seems to be unknown. Um and that's a big concern.

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Well, and that's just something else I'd also like to clarify around the state aid. Um state aid increases were limited to 6% this year. um if we'd gotten the full amount of state aid that the state calculated we should be getting um we

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basically wouldn't be in this situation at all. That would have been an extra $700,000. >> Correct. >> But because they've capped the amount that you could get, you know, it's an increase in aid, but it's less than it should have been. Correct.

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>> Wouldn't expect a windfall from the state next year. My understanding is that next year is going to be a rough year budget-wise at the state level. And to the extent that the that policy makers in Trenton are going to look to recalculate or redesign the

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school funding formula, I would guess that it is not going to be recalculated with an increase to districts of our size in mind. I think there's going to be a movement towards consolidation, regionalization, uh, or at least an attempt to move in that direction. So, I

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think it's prudent to save some spending capacity for a rainy day because next year might be the rainy day. >> Yeah. >> Well, I think it's also important to think about last year where they tried to take away more money but were capped

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at 3%. Um, so we would have seen a huge reduction last year. It's just really hard to predict uh except to know that health care costs will be continue to go up. Um and so you know knowing that planning for that uh but the state aid

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has been really unpredictable from year to year. The fact that we were going to be taking a large chunk of money and they were cap that this year we were on par for getting a lot of money and then that was capp. So it's been really hard. No one really knows the algorithm for

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the state aid. Uh which makes budgeting for for it very difficult impossible. Um so I think it's something to keep in mind. >> Dr. Susp wanted to ask a little bit about uh the I'm sorry I just lost my

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screen. The uh instructional resources and like the expenditures in all those areas I think with the exception of special education are decreasing quite significantly. I'm wondering if you can just sort of >> um talk about the impact, you know, what

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that really means in terms of where we're going to see and feel that the most what you're anticipating there because it's that was what's glaring to me. I know we have to balance the budget, but I I do want us to just recognize that these key areas of instruction, particularly looking at

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bilingual education, um are going to experience a decrease. So I just want to hear a little bit more about administration's thoughts around addressing these changes. So the the regular program instruction is based on um a variety of things. It's uh teacher

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salaries. So uh we had some significant retirements last year. So it could be breakage uh for this year for the for the new teachers that were hired. Um all of our supplies are based on per student enrollment. we give them a number to

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spend per student uh with exception at the high school because they have co a lot of co-curricular activities uh so there's additional supplies needed there and they also have a large graduation um but my just looking at it a negative

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1.78 probably is a combination of um we don't have a lot of curriculum writing included last year we had curriculum uh it could be breakage of teachers It could be a variety of different a variety of different things. Nothing that's standing out to me.

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>> Good. I think it's just important to kind of make that clear too so that we're understanding what that means. >> Right. So it may look different every year when we do the budgeting process what kind of instructional impact really means. But I think understanding the variables is really important. >> Yeah. We discussed how we've been

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investing um in our ELA programs for quite some time. So sometimes you'll see things kind of increase in the budget for a while and then decrease and it's because of that return on investment where you don't need to continue to purchase um new materials or provide um

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you know writing brand new curricula. What we'll see now which we talked about is that increase in the math like the the STEM area um and that's for that K to five and and more I think curriculum writing in some of our science classes and our math classes. So, we'll kind of

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see that shift. Um, and then, you know, hopefully in a few years that will kind of, >> you know, peter off, too. >> Yeah. And Miss Rodriguez and Miss Saka have done a fantastic job of staying ahead of where the DOE has suggested. So, I think in an earlier slide, I said

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maintaining for very particular programs. Uh, so those are when um updates for usually a three to five year um roll out at the state. So every couple of years they revamp their or make changes to the um to the state standards. So Miss Saka and Miss

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Rodriguez have done an exceptional job of staying on top of that which is why over the past couple of years we've approved a lot of curriculum writing. So we're actually ahead of ahead of that. Um so that's why you'll see again some of that number drop. And I when we looked at their budgets we're like we're you don't need any more curriculum writing. What happened to curriculum

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writing? and you know and we're we're in excellent shape in terms of making sure that um our students are are you know are where they need to be at for the New Jersey student learning standards because we kind of get a little heads up. So our our um our contacts from the state let us know that this is coming or

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you have two years and uh we're we try to stay up ahead of that and I'm I'm glad we do because it kind of helps in in a tighter budget season. And then uh did you want to speak to the bilingual education? I don't because I know that was another one. Yes. Yes. that because that one has a change of minus 14%.

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>> I did look at this because this was layering out to me. So, um when the budget was snapshotted last year, um we had two people in the same position. One was retiring and one was coming in and the budget took that snapshot. So, there is no reduction to the number of teachers that's been servicing our

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students. It's it's the same. Um our numbers are just, you know, a $56,000 negative throws off it by 14.73%. Our numbers are small in comparison but but throw it off because of of the total dollar amount and the I think you spoke

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about special ad >> well just that was the category where we saw the increase out of all the instructional categories I believe which no need to get into that I understand but I just wanted to just get some understanding and make sure everyone >> there's layers to understanding talk

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about instruction there are many factors involved so thank you know, difficult to kind of accept the reality of where we are um and the decisions that had to be made. So, thank you. >> And and quite honestly, we're here now because of the change that the HPA

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supported the board to make, which was transitioning out of the state health benefits three years ago. Um many other districts have been here already years ago. Uh it just took us a little longer to get here. Um, and it's something that we could not control, but it was that

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collaboration to move away from the state health benefits that allowed us to to mitigate some of these hard decisions. >> Yeah. Because I believe the state uh benefit plan went up over 50% or thereabout. >> I think it's like 33% uh for and they're projecting another

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30% increase for January 1. So, it's really hard to budget um >> when you're dealing with 30% increases. Yeah. All right. I mean, that's something else where I

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mean, I don't think anyone here is happy about this at all. Um, however, when you look at what's going on in some other districts, Edison is proposing a 6% tax increase, uh, cutting 80 staff members,

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cutting prek entirely, uh, cutting, um, cutting transportation, cutting field trips, um, you know, not doing facility upgrades. I mean, like, it's

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it's bad out there. Okay, there's no other comments or questions from the board. That concludes my report. Thank you. Okay. So, now we will start the formal public hearing and board adoption of the 2026 2027 school district budget. Um,

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if you go through here, um, it's outlined, um, what Dr. Susa just, um, and Mr. Rosa um presented with the um positions that are being added back

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into the budget. Um the money that's coming out that wasn't in the preliminary budget with the aid in LO and the reduction of the health benefits for the uh renewal contracts. Um along with uh taxes to be raised,

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anticipated revenues and um withdrawal from capital reserve for facility projects. Uh and then we're going to move on to the public comment section of the evening. This is a public comment uh dedicated solely to the budget. So any

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comments um please keep them focused on the budget if there are other concerns. Um there will be a second public comment period um after committee reports and we'll prioritize the people here in person. If you'd like to speak um please

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uh sign in and give your name and address >> unless you're unless you're a student. You don't need to give your address. I just want to kind of talk a little bit about how I really do appreciate this kind of in between space, how um trying to make sure that there's actually

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specialists and there's a tax that matches everybody's budget. I really appreciate um the thought process that went into that. But something that I don't think was really touched upon was the elimination of the maker space program. And while I know it's kind of

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controversial to students specifically in middle school, I think it's a program that grants so much learning that doesn't pertain specifically to something that theater or the arts could. I mean, it teaches students how

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to actually learn how to type, something that we're not taught in any other space. It teaches students how to be kind, how to be upstandards. I mean, in the halls, if you walk through this school, this um middle school, you'll see posters all around that talk about

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how you should be an upstander, how you should be a good citizen. And while I understand that it's necessary for cuts to be made because there's things that the school has to live up to and you know standards that our town has, I

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think it's really important that we have either this program implemented into other programs or somehow reworking it so that these specific programs still stay. I know that it's not as popular as I mentioned. I don't necessarily have a

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statistic, but I know not everybody loves the program, but I do know that it's something that's incredibly important to how kids learn and to how they should be outside of the classroom. I think a lot of um classes, the core

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classes focus on creativity and all that stuff inside the classroom, but I think this is one of the main programs that focuses outside of the classroom. So finding a space where this cut program can actually live, a curriculum in which

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it can live inside, I think is incredibly important and is something that should be mentioned. But again, I want to thank you for that middle ground. I think it really does help to see some in between. I know some people really don't want anything cut and some

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people don't want taxes raised. So I think this was a good in between. But again, I think Makerpace is a program that helps kids learn. It helps kids be a productive adult for when they get into high school, when they graduate high school, and onwards.

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>> Thank you so much. Hello, my name is Rob Scott. I'm at 25 South Second Avenue uh here in Highland Park. Uh so the theme of my comments is the unanswered questions. I was here two weeks ago. I asked some questions. Other

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people asked questions. Um many many people spoke. Everyone who spoke said make no cuts. Nobody said they were worried about their taxes. The anti-ax caucus did not show up. But here we have a kind of what feels I

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have to be honest like a bit of a theatrical production. Um so a few key observations. I pointed out last time that the amount in the tenative budget that was to be spent is less than is being spent this

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year. Okay. A sure sign of a kind of austerity. This new budget spends even less. the tax cut proposed is less than the tax proposed is less than the tax that was proposed in um the tenative

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budget. Not by very much. Okay. The kind of dollars we're talking about for the taxpayer remains, as I said before, uh about the cost of one cup of coffee at Dunkin Donuts every month. I was tempted to bring you all a cup of coffee from

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Dunkin Donuts. Okay, that's what we're talking about. And on the other side of it, we're talking a reduction in force. Superintendent Suska, why don't you respect the labor of secretaries? Is it not important? Do they do nothing? What

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will happen? Who will do the tasks that they're doing now? Okay, I think that's a question that has to be answered. Uh we also need to answer the question of how do you cut a social studies teacher and everything is fine. class sizes

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changes change offerings change and that's a person an actual human being I mean reduction in force or riff is a nice thing to say but let's be real sometimes we call those layoffs but what that feels like to the person who gets

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it is they're fired they don't have a job they can't support their family is that social sec social studies teacher doing thing. No, class sizes are going to go up, flexibility will go down, and it will hurt the

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schools. That social studies teacher, if you keep them, is also planning for the future. This whole thing about, oh, we need to bank the tax cut for the future, that's new at this meeting. If you just raised

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it now, that money will exist in next year's budget and the budget after that as well. Right? So there's no need for this theatrical sort of kabuki about, oh, we're so financially responsible.

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Pat ourselves on the back because we're saving the cap. Okay? We're talking about tiny, tiny changes around the edge, but we are going full boore on two secretaries are fired, a social

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studies teacher is fired, right? They're not coming back. It creates holes in the school. You're cutting maker space and glibly we heard, "Oh, it's no problem because art and theater will now be scheduled at the same time." That killed

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me, right? Because my kids weren't maker space kids, but they were art and theater kids. And already it was a problem to do theater and band. Nearly impossible, right? So all of these changes, all these austerity measures actually impact our schools. And what we

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hear here is not about those actual impacts. So I have some questions. How much does maker space cost? We asked that last time. We haven't been told. How much does it cost? Is it $10,000? $100,000. How much does maker space

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cost? What would it take to save maker space? I saw on the agenda how much a secretary costs. 50 grand or 70 grand. I horrifying in and of itself, right? that somebody is trying to make ends meet on

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that particular salary. Okay. There is $113,000 in the savings that was found because we discovered we were breaking the law, right? Um that is not being spent. That 113 certainly would save a social

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studies teacher. Um would likely save two secretaries, right? The idea that they're being restored is kind of absurd because they're here working at the school now. they haven't gone away. This is a bit of a theatrical production. So,

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we can say something like we didn't raise taxes very much. Well, the reality is is if you just go with the original 4.11 or you go to the whole cap, the impact on my taxes and the taxes of folks in this town of that difference of the choice that's actually before us

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will be very very I'll say very again small, right? So, I would ask the board to not vote 9 to0 like you're part of the Borg on Star Trek where resistance is feudal and you

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all have to do the same thing, but to consider the possibility that we need to know how much maker space costs, how much would it cost to save those to to to keep those secretaries to respect the labor they're doing now? Right? And I

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think that's the kind of choice that is before us. And it is really really out of step in this town for a board of our friends and neighbors who in other contexts we get together and we say yeah taxes are a good thing. That's why we have a society, right? That's why the

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schools are good. Yeah. >> How much time are we allow? >> Yeah. Am I going on too long? >> Is there only one? Look, I'll I'll I'll wrap up, okay? But but we need to know the further proposed cuts. How much does each one of them

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cost? What would it take in real terms to not make those cuts and what would that mean? Right? I think we we are owed that. And also um this notion of privileging the people who are in the room first, I think is kind of a little

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bit ridiculous. There are people who are at home on Zoom who are watching this and they're doing that. Like I don't have kids in the school. I'm a taxpayer, right? My kids are gone. But people with kids, it's harder to get here and they're on Zoom and they should be able

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to speak not at the end when everyone's tired, but we should go back and forth. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um, hi. My name is Buffy Wild Greenberg, 6 North 7th Avenue. Um, I just want to ask the board to vote no. We talk a lot

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about accountability. We teach our kids to be accountable. We teach ourselves to be accountable. And what I've heard tonight is that this board and Dr. Isca are taking no accountability for presenting us with an austerity budget that I'm hearing basically these, you know, neoliberal/maga

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talking points about not raising taxes and look what they're doing in Edison. It could be so much worse there. So, is that what we're doing? It's a race to the bottom, right? The fact is this. We don't have a budget crisis. This is always the dangerous thing when people propose cuts, whether it's the federal

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government, the state, or all of you, is people start to believe there's a budget crisis and it's inevitable and we have to make hard decisions. That's actually not what's happening here. What we have is misplaced priorities. We can raise taxes up to the maximum amount, right?

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You're choosing not to because you would rather spend money on surveillance cameras. you would rather hire a sports administrator for $100,000. You would rather extend the superintendent's contract who is earning um let's see,

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I'm really bad at math, about $200,000. And one of the secretaries that we're quote unquote reinstating makes about 55,000. So other people can do the math with that, right? So you're making those choices. you're making the choice to prioritize these high paid

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administrators, buying more surveillance cameras as if anyone wants that um or if that as if that reflects our values, right? You're doing that instead of keeping secretaries who are essential staff. They help make our school run.

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They are the ones that the kids see first thing in the morning. And I really do wish that more people were here tonight and hopefully they're on Zoom to speak up for them. They're not expendable. And so just to close, if you want to make if you want to vote for

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this budget, I hope you will at least take accountability and stop making excuses and stop putting it on the state or Edison or whoever you want to. We don't have a budget crisis. You're choosing to cut secretaries, to cut teachers, so you can spend money on

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other things that I don't think are very valuable. Thank you. >> Uh, good evening. Andy Zappo, 131 Johnson Street. Uh I'm coming here mostly to speak about the sad loss of a social studies teacher in a world where

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we're losing track of our civic responsibility where those are the people who create citizens who create people who are willing to stand up for what is right. ELA math we all need those but social studies is the foundation of what this

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country and how it even came about. So let's not lose that. Second, the makerpace teacher. Um, I might embarrass him a little if he's watching. I know some of his classmates are here, but my youngest son came to this school out of fifth grade with no confidence in his

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ability to do anything in school. That might be an exaggeration on my part, but that's how it felt being his dad. And maker space is where he found confidence. That's where he found confidence that he didn't have. He had to get a leg up on math. He had to get a

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leg up on EOA. But maker space was something he could kind of deal with and I think it really helped him grow his confidence in other courses. We don't all fit in the same mold. I'm not an academic. There's a lot of academics in this room. I'm a technical person. I took my history degree and I used it in

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a technical world. Why did I take history? Because I was good at it. Because I could get good grades in college with it, but I was always dealing with computers. There's not one way to a course in life. And finally, if I heard right during this budget presentation, you were able to retain

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two of the admin assistants, which is great, but it didn't sound to me like they were children facing. It sounded like one was for the business office and one was for the IT department. Those are not going to help the kids in this district at all. They're not going to be

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the ones who meet them at the bus, who get them their lunch when it gets flat by at home and their coats, all that stuff, talking to parents. They're going to help people like me or disorganized IT people. They're going to help disorganized administrators at the top level earn way too much. So, please

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clarify that point because it sounded to me like you saved the wrong people. Thank you. Uh, Dr. Susa, I see you have a the uh Shrek musical uh t-shirt or uh I hope

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you enjoyed it uh because I was there uh in the pit uh playing percussion and uh I helped put that on. Um, and that being said, uh, I find it ridiculous that,

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uh, we are prioritizing theater over maker space. Um, I am very fond of, uh, the arts. Um, my girlfriend, uh, is, uh, very big into

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drama and dance. Um, I love percussion with all my heart. Um, I love languages. Um, but I think we need to check our priorities and see what courses are the most important for students to have

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because in the middle school, I don't see anything else that can come close to replacing the hole that maker space would leave. Um, it is

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a vital class for students to have to be able to know how to navigate the web, to know how to communicate on the web, to know how to be respectful uh citizens on the web. Um, this is something that is

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our future, especially with AI. It is incredibly important that these students have access to a course that is specifically tailored to these 21st century problems.

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Um so I would just like to really emphasize uh the importance that we should be having on the maker space program. Uh, additionally, um, earlier it was mentioned that this

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cut in a social studies teacher would have no impact on students. Um, but with all respect, Dr. Susa, you are not a student and you are not in those classrooms.

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And currently I'm taking AP US history and I have it with Dr. Gold and my class has 30 students. Uh which is not an ideal class size for him, for me or for

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any other student in that classroom. Um and so we are going to see class sizes go up. Um, and we're going to lose a teacher that is vital to us. All my history teachers

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that I've had have been amazing. They have been core pillars in my education and I am enraged that I'm not going to get to see one of them next year. Um,

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because I value all of them. Uh even the ones I haven't had. Uh I haven't had Mr. Gerbin yet, but I've heard nothing but I've heard nothing but uh you know compliments and praise um on his behalf

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and uh even in the hallways he will smile and wave to me and he doesn't know who I am. He is an amazing person, an amazing teacher and all of them are and I think that in itself is already a huge

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loss for students. Losing someone that they have uh you know been with for years that's always going to be a loss aside from all the other technical aspects of it.

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Uh, and the final thing I would like to emphasize is something that I think has been forgotten, or at least it feels like it's been forgotten, and that's the cutting of the Mandarin program. Um, I'm really pissed off about that because I I

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take Spanish. Um, I'm in Spanish 5 honors right now. Um, and the cut hasn't affected me personally at all. Um, my courses have stayed the same. Uh, I am

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with the same group of students. Um, I've been since freshman year. Oh, >> I believe that it is uh important that language is prioritized in our communities, especially when we're spending what looks like to me $850,000

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on sports. That is my main issue because when we see when we talk about sports, they are student athletes and the student comes first. That is everything I was told from my own coaches that you are students before you are athletes and

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that your academics come first. And so I think the fact that we're spending, we're cutting languages to 300K, we're cutting 50K from languages, 350 to 300, and we're bumping we're bumping our

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sports 800 to 850K. That's ridiculous to me. I think aside from the fact that it's just a huge blow to these students who uh were taking Mandarin and all of a sudden they lose access to this course, that's a huge blow to their academics

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and to their school career. And I I get that there was uh something in place to help these students get uh Mandarin instruction outside of, you know, Highland Park High School. That's not the same thing. It never is. Language is

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something that you have to immerse yourself in to effectively learn and they can't immerse themselves in it anymore. Any student who is just as passionate about Mandarin as I am with Spanish, there's a good chance that passion was absolutely cut and

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slaughtered because that program was cut in favor of sports. And so I just I find that absolutely disgusting. Um I think it's uh a betrayal of what Highland Park stands

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for. Um a community that is very strong with our academics, very strong with our humanities. Um and I think that this should be something that should be 100% uh reconsidered and um I press you all

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to bring that program back. you. >> Uh yeah, I want to talk about how ridiculous I think the cutting of a social studies teacher is. Um especially because I have Mr. Gervin as a cla as a teacher. He teaches AP gov with uh AP

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government for me. I'm in a class of eight students. I have never gotten a better social studies education as in that class. It's difficult to emphasize just how amazing of an education you can

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get when it's that personalized. When you have eight people in one class, the amount of dialogue, the amount of conversation, the amount of immersion you can have in any subject is beyond anything that we could have if we cut

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one teacher, right? One teacher, how many classes is that? I'm aware that some of these social study teaches uh teachers teach like five classes, five five different courses throughout a year, maybe some even more because they're semester classes. How are we

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going to make up for that? There's, you know, like like Declan said, there's going to be an increase of students taking all these different classes and especially now in a time where where misinformation is so common where the

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where every every single corner of the political spectrum seems to be aimed at at pushing the the workingclass person down where there is so much hate and where there is so much bigotry that has been so in that has been so ingrained in politics. Why are we cutting social

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studies? I think I think it's I think it's a little ridiculous. And I I just I just wanted to talk about there there was $131,000 appropriated for security cameras and fences from the emergency reserve

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account. Why? Why do we need any of this? I I don't think it's going to do any work at all preventing students from vandalizing the athletic complex. I don't think it's

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going to deter anybody from doing anything. If anything, it's just going to be a bigger challenge for students who want to make a name for themselves and who wants to be annoying to the school, right? And there

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there's no good in doing this. It's ridiculous that you guys are are taking $131,000 out of an emergency reserve account to pay for security cameras that will do virtually nothing for this school. I say

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that as a student, as somebody who knows what students want, as somebody who's who's talked with students who commit vandal crimes like this, it's not going to work. And you know, I'd like to talk about the the classes being cut. First of all, if

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you're cutting maker space, why are you replacing it with theater? Why are you replacing this class at all if you're just going to cut it? You know, I did not like maker space when I was a student in the eighth grade. Maybe that's cuz there I I didn't like the curriculum. Maybe that's cuz I didn't

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like the teacher. I don't think it's a useless class. I think it could be it has high potential to be an extremely useful class. So, if you're cutting it, why are you replacing it with theater at all? Especially theater. I love the

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theater program as much as anyone here. I went to see Shrek on Friday and that play holds a very, very special place in my heart. So, why are we replacing it w with the theater program that I think a majority

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of students won't want to do? You know, as much as I think it's great that we're promoting theater, I think we have to come to terms with the fact that a lot of people don't want to put themselves there out there using theater. I think more or less it's just going to be

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another class where a lot of students sit around while one or two students who would have already joined theater will simply have a lot of fun learning about theater. I don't think it's going to do any good for anybody who genuinely wants to join theater. And I'm hearing so many

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more cut classes. AP chemistry. AP chemistry was one of the most important classes that I took last year and I'm hearing about it being cut. It wasn't in this budget. I'm not sure if it's still happening, but I'd like to act about it's not being cut anymore. Thank God.

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>> It was never >> Thank God. It's ridiculous that we're cutting teachers and that we're cutting the classes at all. These social studies teacher hold such an importance to our school especially now especially now

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where more than ever we need to learn about this the political system that we live in where voting is more important than ever where where civic engagement is more important than ever why are we cutting the social securityities department for what athletics I I I'd

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like to ask what was wrong with Mr. German as the athletics director. What was wrong with that? He was a great teacher and I've never heard a single complaint from any student athlete about him being an athletics director. And now

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we have Mortalara. I don't even know how much money we pay him. $100,000. You know, the the other day I received a text from my friend and I thought it was so absurd. It was a text asking me for money.

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It was a fundraising text asking me for money. I learned that he he he he they had an entire workshop for this, sending me a link asking me for money.

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It's absurd that this is that this is what our sports system has come to and that we're still spending money on. Highland Park ranks amongst some of the lowest places in a lot of sports rankings and throwing money at the sports cor ran is not going to change

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that. Hiring a specialized athletic director is not going to change that. It doesn't matter how much money you throw at this system. The truth is, in many ways, Highland Park is simply too small for us to compete with other schools who

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have a drawing pool, a much, much larger drawing pool of athletes. And you know, we do have some amazing athletes, right? I'm not going to deny that. But it's ridiculous that we are still increasing the money we are spending on the athletics program when we're cutting

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an entire social studies teacher. I I would advise I would I would beg all of you to please do not accept this budget to to to stop having so many cuts. I can guarantee you my parents would be more than happy to see a a

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larger tax increase if it meant I and other students got a better education. I don't understand why we're raising taxes by 2% just to end up cutting an entire social studies teacher. It's absurd. And

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I'm I'm I'm extremely frustrated with the actions and the budget that's being proposed. >> Thank you. >> Hello. So, I I really want to address the uh extra spending on security. Um, I was in the middle school last year and a

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lot of the time when I was walking around, I saw multiple cameras in the same corner just watching the same thing. Uh, you know, I just looked around and it felt like we were wasting so many security cameras in single spots. And I feel like getting more

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security cameras just to place them in badly placed locations is not the way to do it. Especially because I don't think we need extra spending on security cameras in general. I think I don't think we need more security cameras. And one thing I'm really I'm really angry

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about is the cutting of the makerpace program. I I know a lot of people talked about this and I'm sure you guys are tired tired of it already, but it's so important to me because Makerpace was one of the classes that I really loved, which doesn't seem to be a popular idea, but yeah, Makerpace was an amazing class

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for me. Uh you know up there it says um as owls in the school we are known for making wise decisions for being brave upstairs for being inclusive and supportive of everyone and maker space is what helps uh our students know to do that in life and for grown adults who

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have already learned to do that. It might seem like something that's obvious that people should already know how to do but for developing children it's not it's not something that they already know how to do. It's something that they need to learn through a uh through a

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developed class such as maker space. Um when I was in the middle school last year, um I asked I I personally did not like the idea of theater. It seemed like a really boring class. Uh like Joseph performing had mentioned, not necessarily boring, but just a class where some people are going to do nothing and then other people are going

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to do um are going to have a lots of fun. And yeah, I agree with that. Um I know a lot of people who definitely would not like m definitely not like theater and it would just be a class where they go to to do absolutely nothing. Whereas in maker space even if they are um even if they are not putting

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in a lot of effort they're still taking the information that's important for the for the rest of their life. Theater is such a like very not uh what's the opposite of broad uh narrow a very narrow uh focused uh class. It's it's

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not something you're going to apply to every field of your life. Whereas maker space is something that you're going to see in every part of your life for every single year of it. And that is super important to our lives. If you look at what is taught in maker space and look at each day of your life, you're going to see how it is imp how it is applied

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every second of it. Thank you. Hello, I'm Eton Duncan. I'm a Highland Park high schooler. And I'll I'll start and end with the same first sentence, and that is this budget should have no cuts. You know, I'm not a taxpayer. You

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know, that's what my father and mother do. But something that interests me is that the tenative budget had a 5% tax increase, yet this one has a 3%. And you know, I'm no expert when it comes to economics, but you know, as a blue area

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and as a democratic area, I thought that we'd be a lot more, you know, accepting of a tax increase. It seems absurd to me that we're trying to cut or decrease the amount of taxes that we're increasing to get rid of social programs and benefit

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our school. Uh, a second thing I'd like to address is, you know, you guys hid this pretty well. It took me a while to find this, but using the general fund to pay for the security cameras and the increased fencing at the Highland Park High School and Middle School to secure the athletic

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complex. you know, it wasn't exactly on the table, so I had to look down. And I think $131,690 is a bit absurd when it comes to installing more security cameras and fencing. I know we preach about

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increasing education. I don't really see the educational worth to increasing security cameras and securing the athletic complex. I'm an athlete. That complex is barely secured because it's open up to the entire public anyways. the front gate is always open. Why? And

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so all everyone comes in and they, you know, quote unquote ruin the turf. But that's not going to change with increased fencing. I know in last year's budget, the main concern was renovations for Bard. We don't have that anymore. and looking to see that our tenative

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budget has actually been reduced and we have a $113,000 more money that we're getting instead of the tenative budget is actually surprising. You know, we talk about these troubling times. In these troubling times, we should be using all

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the money. And something that, you know, really irritates me when I study economics and how politics influence economics is this idea of preventative budgeting where we prevent or we decrease our budget in likes of

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something in the future happening. These are troubling times. I agree. there's a governor that's being pinned. We have the Trump, you know, as our president and he's definitely cutting a lot of money to the education department and that's why we should be using all the money to our disposal. I think saving

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money for something that has not actually even be been confirmed yet is a little ludicrous when we're talking about cutting valuable programs. And I'll get to that. I think something we haven't considered is maybe there will have the same courses. Heck, maybe there won't be an overflooding of students

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into these courses, even though I 100% think there will be. Something we have to consider is these teachers, they advise clubs. Let's say we get rid of the middle school teacher and we bring down someone from the high school, which correct me if I'm wrong, is what's going

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to happen. We're taking that high school teacher and now they can't run their clubs, or at least it's 10 times harder to when they're down in the middle school. I know Joseph here is the president and actually the founder of a club that one of our uh social studies

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teacher teaches and if he's brought down that is of great concern to him. I think that's a great concern to all the clubs because the impact of a teacher isn't just the class they teach it's how they are in the hallways what they do out of school what they do for clubs. I think that is something that we have to think

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about when it comes to our education. And finally, something I want to address that I actually, you know, I chuckled a little when we were talking about, which is the repairs to the HS or the high school Capola. And you know, I know the hundth year of Highland Park, the high

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school building is coming up, but $214,000 five or 20,000 or $214,500, it's a bit absurd. You know, that thing's been up there for a hundred years. I think it can use a couple more years without having the gutters be on the outside and that money could be

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better well spent into making sure that we're not cutting. So, I'll say it again. This budget should not have any cuts. Thank you. Sorry, a little short. Uh, my name is Lisa Miller, South 8th Avenue. I was not

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going to speak um, but I decided to use lend some support to the kids and the parents. And I have to say that I've been disheartened by seeing the budget and I was pretty disheartened when you

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hired an athletic director for a lot of money. My kids are not athletes. Well, one is she's a swimmer, which I've been fighting to get a swim team. Doesn't happen. Um, and I feel so strongly that we're this small school. Why aren't we

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like putting our focus on academics? When you have a child that's going into college and you're looking at all the other kids that this child is going to be competing against, it becomes alarming that our school doesn't have a

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lot of the same things that the other kids have. So now she's at the bottom trying to fight and show this is why I belong at this school and you're cutting things and you keep cutting things. You say that there's going to be no impact if you take a social studies teacher who

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by the way my son had and Dr. Saska knew my son very well as did a couple other people here. He was not a student. He it was him and school did not get along but Mr. Gerbin really believed in him and to take that away like really really upsets

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me. Even though I'm going to have no skin in this game in a couple years when my kids are out completely. But to take that away, you're saying there's going to be no impact. There was an impact when you did that for Mandarin. And now I have a student that's struggling in Spanish because

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she's been taking Mandarin for so many years. She suddenly had to learn a new language. And when you're dyslexic, it doesn't help. And now she's falling behind because there's no Mandarin, a language that she's been learning for so

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long. Not only that, it impacts my soon to be senior, weird to say, because she only has two years of a language. There was no, "Hey, here you go. We can do we'll give you this like Mandarin class online for free to help you guys out."

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None of that. She wanted to switch to ASL. And you know who's going to have to pay for that? Me. Because you guys only have Spanish. And if I'm I don't know if I'm right or wrong, but you have two Spanish teachers and you have that's it. That's the only language. Three. Three. I don't even know how many you have. But

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it's really really really frustrating again when you're looking to go to a college and you have other kids that have been able to take three, four years of a language, but my kid cannot. And then if I'm wrong, I don't know, but I hear that you're only going to have one

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nurse for both the high school and the middle school. No. Okay, good. Thank God because that would have been crazy. But my point is my point is I am a taxpayer. I don't make a lot of money. That's no secret. But I'm willing, so willing to

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have that that tax go up just so that we could support our kids because I'm thinking about the future. I'm thinking about what happens when my kids are in college. like can they even get into college with the classes that they have? And he's right. 30 kids in an AP class

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is psychotic. That's the other thing that I wanted to say really quick. When you allow just anyone and everyone to take certain classes and you're not understanding that some kids don't belong in AP, some kids don't belong in honors, but you're pushing them into these classes. You're creating these big

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classes and you don't have extra teachers because wait a second, they now have to go to the middle school. And I'm going to close with this. They're absolutely right. There are advisors that are these teachers, a lot of them are are like they do so much for us.

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And it sickens me to see an athletic director make so much money, but these teachers are going to get cut. And nobody wants to get laid off. I can tell you firsthand that being laid off sucks. It means you are fired. And then you

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have to try to find a job. And in this economy, you can't find a job. How are you going to go to Edison if they're cutting everybody? We could keep everyone. I would love to see some of these these salaries cut, but I don't have a say in that. But I just want you to understand that if you take away,

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especially the social studies teacher, you're taking away something else from these kids. That's all I have to say, but thank you. So, I know I kind of came up here earlier and said I appreciate you guys trying to find this middle ground, but I think it's also pretty clear that nobody

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wants this middle ground. And as somebody who every day gets to hike up three um like things of stairs to get to the orchestra room because I'm in the high school and I play a violin. I think it's incredibly important that as I walk

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down those halls and I peer into the different classrooms, I see the personality of the teacher that you're trying to lay off or fire. I mean, this man, you can tell he has a passion for teaching. I walk by his classroom and it's reminiscent of my own eighth grade

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years. And now I know I didn't have this man as my teacher, but I just know from my sister who took him and from the personality that juts out of the classroom, the lifesize cutouts of old presidents that bring um a flare to the

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classroom is something that is so fundamentally important to students. The past few years as I've gone and done social study classes, I've had amazing teachers who have built this foundation

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of public speaking of of activism that couldn't have been acquired in any other way. And I think in a town such as Highland Park, it is incredibly important that we keep these programs. I think everybody here has stated that

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they want these programs to be kept and that it's important that these programs are kept. And as somebody who has taken the Mandarin program and who loses out on these three years I need I mean for one of the clubs I take it is a

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requirement that we have at least three years of a language. And so it's either I start over for a new language that I haven't taken since elementary school or I enroll in an expensive class of a language I somewhat know. And I think

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just firsthand being able to see a teacher that stretched between two schools. It's unfair to the students. It's unfair to the teacher. I think taking teachers and moving them out of classes where it's fundamental for them

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to be is just awful to see. Social studies is important. Maker space is important and language is important too. These are all fundamental things as to what build children as to what make us who we are and who we can be. And I

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think just kind of to close up, we have to vote no on cutting these um on cutting this budget because it's pretty clear that everybody from the community doesn't want to see that happen. And while there was a middle line trying to be built and I understand why it has to be built and I understand why we do have

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to pres um preserve money and why we have to do all this stuff, I think taking money away from things that don't actually impact the students is what matters. like we have this this guy who has paid I think $100,000

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in the athletics department and it just feels as a student level as somebody who's not in these athletics and is in the other academic clubs. It's disheartening to see that we're taking money away from somebody who is doing a fine job before to put into something

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that historically we've been good at but currently we might not be. And I appreciate all the different aspects that we have to this school. And I think taking away anything would hurt us. We don't have a lot. We're a small town.

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We're not Edison. So, we need to keep what we have and we need to make sure things aren't being slashed to to keep an arbitrary number lower. >> Hi. Um Fiona Staniel. Um, I am a student at the middle school and I think it is

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utterly ridiculous that we are cutting maker space. I have a friend who is so into like coding and he's in robotics and when he found out about this whole thing, he was absolutely devastated. He

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was so upset and he really he loves maker space. And me personally, I'll admit, not my favorite class, but it just just replacing it with theater. I'm a theater kid. I love theater so much. But

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I also think maker space is like a big impact to the entire school. Like this is what some students want to do in the future. This is what they want to do as when they're adults. They want to do maker space. They want to do coding. and

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taking this away kind of takes that away that spark in them that makes them want to do this. And I feel like some kids in my school, they don't like theater as much as some people do. They think it's

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boring or they just think that it it's not their cup of tea. They But maker space, some kids love maker space, some kids love art, some kids love theater. But taking one of those things away is just

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not it shouldn't happen cuz like people need this and I feel like people don't get the opportunity sometimes to be able to experience all of this like all of these opportunities to do and they need to figure out what they're going to do

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in life. And so yeah. >> Uh thank you Fiona. And what we're going to do now is we're going to open up Zoom um so that anyone who's on Zoom who'd like to speak can >> how many people are

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uh is there anyone with their hand raised who'd like to speak? going once. >> No. Okay. >> Thank you. Hello. You know, it's me again. Um, you know, I'll talk about why I'm back up

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here. You know, I appreciate Dr. Susa for taking notes, but I will say it doesn't feel like we're being heard right now. You know, a lot of you are at least looking our way. Some of you aren't. Some of you are looking at your computers, and that's somewhat okay. But

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I will say it feels like you guys are judging us. you know, I will try to get into your headsp space a bit here. You're looking at us and you're saying, "Wow, you know, these kids are sure passing it." And they seem to be talking with a lot of knowledge, but they just don't understand budgets. You know, they

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don't understand how hard it is to curate a budget that makes sure that we have everything perfectly aligned. And to some extent, you're right, we don't know how to form a budget. But something we do know is the impact of education because that's what we're currently

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living. We're currently living our education. And it's a bit disheartening to see that there's cuts to these educations. Something that I want to reiterate is that Highland Park has not much resources resources as other

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schools. There are other schools that have five languages. There are other schools that offer all the APs imaginable. There are other schools that offer even up to multivariable calculus that I know we've been trying to push for but we don't have enough students for and it's a bit disheartening to see

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that we want to cut more when we've already have such a small pool of resources to even pull from. And I'll talk from my experience knowing and working with teachers. You know, my mom works at the Graduate School of

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Education, and I know how hard it is to find teachers, and I know how little there are out there. You know, her gra the Graduate School of Education has had less and less teachers year after year after year. They've had to pay less. They've gotten less grants. The

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government is, you know, excuse my languages, they're destroying them. I was going to say something worse. Um, but you get what I mean. the government and what is happening to teachers is disheartening. And so cutting a

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teacher's job, cutting multiple jobs in an economy that has seen some of the lowest unemployment rates in centuries is a little disheartening to hear. I don't know a lot about budgets, but I will say my mom has been working through

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some budget problems of her own at the GSSE. And something that she tries to prioritize is not cutting anything, but trying to take from stuff and take as much as given because what is given to you by the state and what you have at

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your disposal should be used. And I'll bring it back up again. I don't think we should be saving. I don't think this preemptive saving is a good idea. I think we have $113,000 that could be spent to a social studies teacher that could be spent to all the things that

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we're cutting. And I'll say one last thing that was brought to my attention. You know, my brother is a lot older than me. He's in college now, but he took French at the high school. And from what I hear, they promised that the Mandarin program would replace France or French

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and it' bring us money. And now it's a little sad to see that we're cutting the Mandarin program and now instead of having French or Mandarin, we just have Spanish and we have neither. So it seems like something, you know, there's a mism communication from the board and to us

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students because whilst I'm not interested in France or really interested in Mandarin, that's an opportunity that students at this high school deserve to have because we're a small school as it is. If we cut more resources, that already puts us at

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a disadvantage. I'm looking towards colleges. I'll be honest, I'm probably going to Ruckers because that's where my mom works. But I know there's a lot of kids who want to achieve further, who want to go into IVs, and that opportunity is lost when we just cut

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stuff. So, I hope you guys consider all this, and I hope you guys adjust the budget so that there isn't cuts. And if there aren't, you know, I guess we'll just keep coming back up here until you guys do. Oh, I think I'm the last speaker tonight, so I apologize

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for extending your time here. But I just I just like to open um with a a little statement about why public schools exist um is because of socialist ideology. And as the founder of the Highland Park

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Socialist Club, I feel a need to quote marks on this from each according to his ability to each accord to each according to his needs. We're not giving students this by cutting teachers. And I want to talk

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about Mr. Gervin again because he is an extremely important teacher to me. I had him last year in US1 honors. I have him now in AP Gov. And I just want to talk about even now as we're considering colleges, the

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importance of having a lot of teachers that can write recommendation letters for us, right? What happens if a social studies teacher moves to the middle school and maybe resigns because they just don't want to be there because they

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spent their entire life teaching high school or so much of their life teaching high school and they just don't want to work there anymore. This is a real concern that some of the social studies teachers have. And I I think it's really ridiculous that we're even considering cutting this. Uh and I I know that

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point's been stressed a lot, but I just want to stress it again. You know, it's really sad that we're making so many cuts when we don't have to be. And frankly, I don't think these savings are going to do us any any good. Um I want to make it a little bit of an

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extended analogy. In 1997, all of Asian economies collapsed because of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. And a large uh part of this was because their federal reserves, their savings were not strong enough to protect them against the crisis.

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Do we think that this is going to help us when Trump eventually reduces our budget crisis? I don't think so. I don't think this is going to do any any of us any good. I think if these if the sweeping budget cuts that Trump is proposing and that the federal government is going to instate is are

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going to happen that no matter how much we save, it's not going to cushion us from the crash that we are going to experience. We might as well spend it all as as much of it now when we still have the chance and give our students the best education

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that we that that can be given to them. we might as well just take it all now and say, "Let's put it to somewhere useful, something that can help every single student, not just student athletes, but every single student, and let's put it there, and let's make it

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work." So, I I'm asking again, uh, and I'm just going to voice this as many of my peers have voiced, no cuts. I my parents would rather have much have tax raises than they would have a lot of cuts. If if I paid taxes, which I

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unfortunately don't, I think I would too to be able to have a better education for children. I think every single parent would rather have a higher tax, not a tax decrease, if it just meant that their student was

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able to get the education that they deserve and be able to go to the college that they deserve. And frankly, with these cuts, it's just not going to happen. I wasn't going to speak again. Rob Scott, 25 South Second, Highland Park.

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Um, but you've heard from students, right? You've heard from the Highland Park Socialist Club. You've heard Markx quoted, right? You've heard at the last meeting members of the community say no cuts. raise our taxes.

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You've heard more math and better math from students who use that key phrase preventative budgeting. Yeah, he knows what it's about. This theatrical thing about how we have to save it for later, right? This sounds like Ruckers and

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their 5% mandated profit. The next thing we're going to hear in three years after this is over is the board will be talking more and more like they're a hedge fund, like Ruckers does. The thing is in our society, so we can have a society so we can have good things and

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maker space is a good thing and theater is a good thing and arts are a good thing and learning social studies is a good thing. We pay taxes to pay people so they can grow and support our community so they can support the

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students who you've heard speaking here today. You should listen to them and if you don't, you should feel shame. And there's one other little thing that I wanted to mention. I keep forgetting to mention it. It's these quote unquote security cameras, which that's a

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misnomer. They're surveillance cameras, right? And you heard students talking about how, yeah, those cameras make them feel really uncomfortable. I cannot imagine what my high school would have been like if there were surveillance cameras in the halls. And now we learn that the money, we learned this today,

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it's not for new cameras. It's to update the server, it sounds like, so we can store the data longer. That's creepy, right? Do we want that? Is that true? And so finally, I think I know what's going to happen.

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It's going to be a 90 or an 8-1 vote in favor of this because the decision was already made as it always has been. as the decision was made to cut French and bring in Mandarin, which was going to solve all our problems, and we now hear that Mandarin is going away. That's what's going to happen. So, here we are

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inflicting our words on you. At the very least, before that vote happens, we need to know exactly how much money it would take to keep maker space. How much money would it take to keep Secretary 1,

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Secretary 2, and the social studies teacher? Right? We have not heard that not in March, not two weeks ago, and not today. We heard a lot about the process. We heard the word data a lot. We didn't get a lot of data actually presented. We

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heard it was a hard process. We heard about Edison. We heard about how everything's terrible and everything's going to get worse, but we don't know how it's going to get worse. Okay, a lot of that panic, but we didn't hear. How much does maker space cost? What does it

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take to pay for it? What will it take to pay for the social studies um teacher? What will it take to preserve the work that is being done by those two secretaries that the superintendent has decided we don't need or we should cut.

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All right. And I'll stop. I won't go on any longer. If there's anyone on Zoom, um I hope they chime in. Um thank you very much. Hi, Andy Zappo again, Skull on Johnson Street. Uh, I think the board uh should

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very much clarify something that seems to have become present in this meeting. I believe what happened and I hope you guys can clarify this is during the budget presentation the name Mr. Gervin was mentioned and it seems that that now has created a narrative that he's the

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gentleman who's going to be leaving as the secondary social study teacher. I hope that's not the case. If it is, I would find that particularly problematic because that would validate the long-term requirement for an overpaid administrator at the athletic level

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because you'd be removing the one person who could fill that gap for a stipend on their salary and would probably still the job. I can't speak for him, but he was exceptionally good at it. So, I just want to make sure that narrative that got embedded by his name being

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mentioned in the budget is not actually the person that's being let go. So, that's for you guys to clarify when the chance comes for me to sit down and you guys to talk. Thank you. >> Okay. Um, did you say there was someone on Zoom?

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>> Okay, Abby, you can go ahead. Hi, Abby Stern Cardinell. I'm on Harper Street. Um, just wanted to say a couple brief things. Um, I was very impressed with the former speakers and especially the students. I know everyone else um

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must have been. I hope everybody heard what all the students were saying. Um, I agree that we didn't hear anyone at the past meeting or this meeting asking for less taxes. Um, if anything, at least we could have stayed at the 4.14 that was

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in the tentative budget. I heard people even saying that they'd be willing to pay more than that. Um, myself included, despite some, you know, personal, uh, budget challenges. I think a lot of us recognize the importance. Um, I know that we could be told that we

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didn't hear from everyone and we're only hearing from a small subset, but we do have um the emails that were sent to the board published and I don't think that any of those while I can't read the emails from the subject don't seem to be specifically asking for us to have less

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taxes in based on the tentative budget. So, I'm pretty disappointed to see that we're prioritizing lowering that versus at least keeping it to what the tentative budget was even when people were willing to say that they would pay more. Um, the question I have, and I

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would love to hear about this before the vote if possible, um, is about the process of these public hearings. Um, I'm really hoping that these public hearings aren't for show and that changes can still be made. I believe that's the point of a public hearing.

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Um, I I know there may be a state imposed deadline, and I know we've heard about deadlines, especially with the tentative budget. I know there is one. I'm not sure what there is. Um, but I really am hoping that this public hearing can mean something and that there can be some dialogue afterward,

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especially about what the students said and what we're hearing. Um, and that we're not told that there isn't an option to vote no. Um, we I I believe it's just going to be a yes or a no. Um, perhaps you can table it and have more discussion. Again, I I

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recognize there are deadlines, but I hope that we can find a way to not just have the option be vote yes or we don't hit a deadline that the state imposes. Um, I hope that we can find some some way to even if we have to make a

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decision, have a way to further conversation. So, I appreciate you listening. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you, Abby. Um well with that we're going to close public comment uh and move on to the uh budget action

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items which is that I move uh that we the formal adoption of the 2026 2027 uh school district budget. Second,

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>> Dr. Batty, do we uh I'm thinking about Robin rules where uh after a motion's made, usually we can actually open it for discussion, even though I don't think we typically do that. Yeah. And just some clarification I feel

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like um so uh clarifying Mr. Gervin is not um position is not being cut. >> So unfortunately I can't speak to specific personnel. Um but I will say

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that how we how um cuts are determined are nontenured staff um are usually in that type of situation cut first and then um according to the certificate and then tenure it's by seniority. Mr. Gervin does not fall into that category

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but other than that I can't speak to other personnel. >> I was just asking that because something we said was interpreted in a particular way. >> Yes. Correct. >> Correct. Yep. Um I think the other piece too is that a lot was made about the athletics budget. Um and uh really what

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was done was uh athletics was being covered by multiple people. That money is now paid for an athletics director. What which has allowed some of those people to go back to their full teaching. um which has actually changed

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the course load in terms of social studies and and some of those kind of situations. >> Correct. And the money used for we spend money on athletic trainers for events. So the position uh combined that together. So uh for a nominal expense, we were able to combine positions uh for

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that. The increase that you see this year is actually a result of the uniforms because we discovered that for a bunch of different reasons that um our students, student athletes were getting dinged for things. Uh we were getting carded some sort of colored card. I'm not familiar. Um but for um uh

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violations when students are sharing the same number on their uh uniform when they're mismatched, we get violations for that and that has been um impacting the department. Additionally, we have several student athletes that are unable to participate because we don't have sizes for them. Uh, so it's um things

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have been mitched. We also found that some of our student athletes had certain there was a lot that was uncovered. So we have a couple of year phase in plan to be able to provide um new uniforms, but that's over a couple of years to minimize the impact on the budget. So

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the increase that you actually see this year is not a result of um an additional administrator. the increase that you see is actually because uh we're trying to phase in over a couple of years some new uniforms for our student athletes. >> And then the the last couple of points I

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just wanted for clarification is um money that's being used for the fencing, the servers is actually earmarked because it's coming out of the emergency reserve. We can't use that to cover uh

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staff in the district. No emergency reserve all the reserve accounts capital >> same with capital reserve right it looks like we're spending less but actually we're drawing less on reserve which is a very different thing that has to be used for capital emergency it has to be used

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for very specific things so it's not an eitheror we're doing uh cameras uh or or um preserving the secretary >> correct Okay. >> Okay.

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>> Your vote. Your vote, Dr. Baby. >> Um, >> oh, anybody else want a discussion before we can full votes? >> Short I truly get short remarks. Would now be a perfect time or or perform my vote? Which would be the better?

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>> Hello. That's better. Should I have some brief remarks? Would now be a good time or or or perform my vote? Like would you rather >> remarks or questions? It's discussion. I open up for discussion. Would you like to discuss something? >> I would like to discuss something. Okay.

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Uh I'm really always been proud to live in Highland Park. Very proud to live in a community where everyone comes to meetings, speak their minds. I think I'm really blown away by the eloquence and the passion of our students. Um, and it's because I respect so much what

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everyone had to say in this meeting that I want to briefly explain my thinking on this vote. Uh, and what it comes down to is this. As a democratically elected board, we have to think about everyone's concerns. So, you personally may not

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think an athletic director or proper uniforms are the best use of funds. Other people are very glad to have professionally run program and a full-time director. You may think social studies is the most important subject in school. Other people might think it's

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math or ELA or or languages. And these subjects may be more impacted if a teacher were cut. You may think it's ridiculous not to raise taxes as much as we possibly can, but other people are very worried about rising costs and they

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may not be able to attend two board meetings. You may think security cameras or servers are a terrible idea and a wasteful and offensive use of money, but other people are worried about dangers to students in the country we live in today and are glad for the extra

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security. I personally think we should not cut a selfish lady's teacher and for all the reasons have been talked about I would support personally a tax levy more along the lines of the tenative budget we had about 4.1%. But I talk with my colleagues on this

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board a lot in the past two weeks, texts, phone calls, emails, and I talked to people in the community, too. I may not agree with everyone everything said to me, but I think this budget is a fair compromise. In large part, because of the concerns

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that were expressed the last meeting, because of your concerns, what you came to the meeting last time and said, the following changes have been made. Our social studies course teacher course offerings won't change. We will have the same number of nurses tomorrow as we do

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today. We'll have the same number of interventionists. We'll have the same number of media specialists. We're losing two secretaries, which is something that everyone something everyone is very sorry about, but we're not losing four. And we're raising taxes, but not as much as originally

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proposed. So, I'm going to vote for this budget, not as a robot and maybe not enthusiastically, but with a clear conscience. I don't love every part of it, but the process is democratic, fair, and civil. And I truly believe the outcome of that process, this budget, is

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faithful to the board of education's academic goals. >> Any other comments or discussion? Sorry, this discussion from the board. >> Um, am I allowed to speak as well or >> Sure. Go ahead.

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>> Um, I just want to say like with your point, um, who are these other people that you're mentioning? Like I think like all of our other students said, uh, as similar to what the other students said, what matters a lot and should be taken into priority is our

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students. And I know from being very involved in many of the clubs in my school and also student congress that a lot of people have the same opinions as those who spoke today. And um I think that's what we really should be taking into priority. And um even though what

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you mentioned does make sense, I think there's other ways that we could all go about this and it doesn't have to be justice one way. So I just wanted to talk about that. >> Thank you. Okay. So we will move on to the vote. Dr. Batty.

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>> Um, uh, this is a really hard decision. Uh, I am, um, kind of, um, I'm going to go with everyone we've heard in the community. I know there's some people who, uh, probably would

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disagree with raising the taxes the full amount. Um, we haven't heard from them, but I know they're out there. There also a lot of people here uh who would be okay raising taxes and aren't speaking. And so I I'm

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going to vote no. >> Miss Cassell Dunn. >> Yes. >> Dr. Coleman, >> I'm going to vote no on this uh budget. I along the lines of what my colleague Dan Batty has said here. I as a taxpayer

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struggling like many other households um would rather see us do what we need to do to not eliminate positions. Particularly I'm concerned about the secretaries who are front-facing not just bodies doing administrative work but they're literally people have relationships with students and staff

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and buildings and there's a cultural piece there too with the particular staff members that we have. So, in good conscious just as the equity and excellence chair, I can't really vote for that um sort of cut to essential staff in our buildings. I'm also

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thinking about taking into account what we're hearing here um from our students and families and and staff previous uh previous meetings. I had hoped that what we would have received and believe me, I understand and appreciate all of the efforts that Dr. Dr. Cesco, you have put

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in all of our staff, all of our leadership team has put in to really try to balance a budget to find this middle ground. There is no happy middle ground in this. There is no happy middle ground in this process, unfortunately. But I do understand your efforts to find a middle

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ground. Um, I just think, you know, for me, I was already having concerns about not getting questions answered between last meeting and this meeting. Why couldn't we see another scenario um that did not have any cuts at all? Um, I know I personally had asked for that and

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wanted that to you. I think Ann we texted I'm like that's one thing that I wish we would have received as a board and maybe that's just my own lone opinion. Um, but that would have made me um without so I'm sorry if I didn't see that.

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>> Okay, I'm sorry. And it Okay, so scratch that. um it was there and I guess again I'm maybe I'm just maybe not lone but I would be all for going for a scenario that did not have cuts and did uh bring us back to that initial uh uh tax rate. So no

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>> Mr. Maldonado >> I'm not going to pretend that losing some of these positions and programs and people is not going to be a loss. There's no way to sugarcoat that. But I'm also cognizant of the fact that we are talking about a school district where something over 50% of our students

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qualify for free and reduced lunch. So we're raising taxes, but I wanted to keep that within a reasonable range. So I'm going to vote yes. >> Dr. Pixley. >> Yes. Miss Pruce,

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>> I I am voting yes as well. I also have concerns about um raising taxes beyond what we are um for exactly what was just said is that our our our community um many people in our community are living below um below a salary that can support

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them and they're in uh I don't want to increase cost to those people. I think we've come up with a a fair middle ground here. I do thank all the students. I really do appreciate you're you're very articulate and I and we are listening. We are hearing you and we are listening as well as our other speakers

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but to speak directly to the students. Thank you. Yes, >> Dr. Scholman. >> I've been decided to keep a nurse in the middle school. I'm glad we have keeping a bartal interventionist. I'm glad keeping a media specialist. I'm very

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uh confident about a yes vote. I vote yes. >> Miss Daniel. So, um I just want to say I appreciate everybody coming and speaking um and your enthusiasm to raise taxes as high as we can. However, not everybody in

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this community, our neighbors can are not that financially privileged to say that they can easily um be okay with that and still survive dayto-day. Um I don't want to have to cut anybody. It's never fun. Um especially when you you

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know we know some of these people our kids go to these schools. It's a very difficult thing to have to do. Um but there has to be some kind of balance here. We do have to keep our finances safe as well or we're going to fall into this problem every single year. And for

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that I do have to vote yes. >> Miss Bartman. >> Yes. Yes. Motion carries. >> Um, so with that, we're going to move on to uh regular

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>> or committee reports. So, >> and did you say there was going to be a second public comment >> that budgetwise >> like there's a second public comment after >> after committee reports?

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>> I know we have to follow our >> Yeah, that's the that's after committee reports >> for curriculum instruction. Uh we met on April 16th. Um we talked about the math curriculum adoption. Um there were four

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curricula being uh piloted. Uh the implementation of those has now been completed. Um in addition to gathering teacher feedback and student feedback, we are still um gathering uh uh parental and

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guardian feedback. Um so we the um we do not have a final decision. It looks like we have kind of two front runners but to not influence kind of uh that last gathering the data. We're not going to um discuss that at this point. Um but it looks like we have two really promising

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um possibilities. Um and depending on kind of how uh that the final feedback and and analysis on that um uh we will be making a choice moving forward. I believe there will be a presentation in May uh at the board meeting on on that

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sharing some of the data in the decision um to be made. Um so look for that next month. Um but there is a lot of uh uh data to be to be shared um on that and that's being gathered. Um we also have field

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trips. Um there'll be a field trip to the municipal building for fifth grade. Uh cheerleaders are going to borrow for a pep rally for testing. Fifth graders are going to choir uh at the middle school and high school um to connect them with those programs. Um and there

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will be a dress rehearsal for Bartle Spring concert. Um the other item we discussed was technology use particularly Chromebook use um both in school and out of school. Um and we are sort of gathering um what data we can we

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can um look at and what is manageable. Uh there is a lot of data uh and a lot of it is collected through line wise which is um a software that that tracks user data and blocks um and filters websites that are being used. Um so we

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are uh figuring out um what data we can gather and then uh what questions we want answered. Um we know um some parents have expressed um concerns about uh Chromebook use and technology use um in the schools. Um there's a lot of data

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and we're trying to figure out how to look at it in a useful uh meaningful kind of manageable way. Um yeah. Okay. Um items for voting. So we approval of the

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field trips. Um approval of job description for uh maintenance specialist. Um approval of uh the Highland Park uh school profession professional development plan. Approval

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of home instruction for four students. Um approval of the spring school bus emergency evacuation uh report. Um approval of the university um student interns. Um

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uh approval of CPR a uh first aid training for a number of staff. That's it. Any questions? Monique, I do not have an update. We did not meet this month. We will be meeting

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soon. Okay. All right. Uh, finance and facilities met twice over the last few weeks. Uh we met April 14th um in which we debriefed about the um April 13th meeting. Well, it was fresh in our minds um and discussed the feedback from the meeting

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um and discuss some potential changes based on that feedback um and on board feedback as well. Um we discussed um some action items uh for facilities. We're approving the master plan proposal

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um from Spitzel for the and that's um embedded in the 2627 budget. We will begin this master plan assessment as soon as this is approved. This is again like a study of the space that we have and the capacity that we have. Um you know we do have prek class uh not prek

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prek is in the building. We have some uh classes at Irving in those modulars and we can't keep them forever. So we need to do a space assessment um you know to make sure that to see how we can accommodate more students especially as our you know town continues to be

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developed. Um we also have the uh job description for a maintenance specialist. This is for a current job. There was never a job description for this position. So um when we had approved a job a similar job description

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for the role um last month or the month before the union was like hey why don't we get one for this on the books too. So that's where that maintenance specialist position comes from. It's not a job that's open. We have it. It's just describing the duties.

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Um we also discussed the champions program. Um so champions will collapse the middle school program next year. Um right now there's only one student. Um we offered a or the district offered a par professional to walk that student to Bartle for the remainder of this year.

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Um so to be kind of like a counselor in training and do some activities over there. Um we had uh discussed is there a need for a middle school after school program? Um considering you know we had the cave program and the cave program is also closing. Um, however, I did reach

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out to um Nikki Gonzalez over at um who is my neighbor and she said some days there were stu no students there and some days there were maybe five or eight students there. So um between that current enrollment and only one parent interested in enrollment so far for next

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year, uh we support the decision to close the middle school portion of champions. Um some facility projects updates. Um, the base field is waiting on an updated quote from the landscaper and a sign is also on order. The Bartle structural

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repair continues moving along. They're making good progress. Um, they are doing some lastm minute things at the Bartle toilet room. Um, so hopefully those kids will get to use it before they fifth grade will get to use it before they graduate. Um, pre-K classroom

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renovations. um a door will be installed in that cafeteria area so that workers can enter enter directly into the construction zone rather than having to go through the whole school. Um we are still waiting for updated quotes for the

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HPF environmental sustainability project grant. Um there was a discovery of a leak in the geo geothermal field at Irving. This is not as serious as it sounds. It's not it's there's no volcanoes or

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anything. Um so there's a leak in one of the geothermal pipes near the modulars. The pipe is part of the heating and cooling system of Irving. Um this requires the removal of the fence near those modulars and excavation. Um our facilities um director is hopeful that

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the leak can be found easily accessed and repaired. If they cannot find the leak, then they are going to have to cap the pipe. Um, and once the modulars are gone eventually, um, they can go in and repair that pipe. Um, the system that

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they have will be able to manage on the five remaining pipes. So, it's just a matter of does it need to be capped now because we can't really locate it yet or can we locate it and fix it? And we've also submitted a insurance claim for that. Um, and then update on school

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lunch debt. As of April 6th, we are at $52,387.70 uh for our facilities. Oh, hold on. A lot of pages behind for our facilities action items on the agenda. We have the approval of the bill

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list, the approval of the treasurer's report, board secretary report, board of ed certifications, budget transfers, approval of travel and related expense reimbursements. We have approval of some contractors for professional services and related services. To highlight some,

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we have some CPR AED training for 31 staff members, which is awesome. Um, middle school diversity day performance, uh, leaders to leaders mentor for Dr. Donovan. Um, we have Joel Waldman, who was a class member from 1987,

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um, who's a Holocaust survivor, coming to speak. We have mindfulness for middle school diversity and wellness day. Tai Chi, Zumba, more mindfulness, more Taichi. Um, being for wellness day as well. Um,

481
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we have, uh, introducing Chinese calligraphy. That's very cool. jealous. Um some psychotherapy and psychoeducational evaluation um contracts uh professional de development um and coaching on blended and personalized

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learning and um a presentation on unveiling the college admissions process and boot camp and that takes place in the summer. We also have the approval of bedside instruction for four students. We have an approval of outofd district

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placements for one student. We have the approval for McKini Vento tuition contracts with South Planefield School District for students uh for students there. Um we have an approval for the agreement with the Bureau of Highland Park um for that revenue collected from

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31 River Road urban renewal and there's that document attached. um the approval of the ED Highland Park Educational Foundation grants. Thank you so much. There's a grant for reading bench, drum circle equipment, diversity and wellness day. So, we're very excited for that

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those grant funds and the support from the HPEF approval of that master plan assessment I mentioned. Youth based school-based youth contract um that's for our school-based youth services program for the 26 27th year. Renew

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renewal of our food service management contract for next year. All right, there's a lot and the approval of medical prescription and dental plans for next year as well. Are there any questions? >> Um, I thought you said drone circle

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equipment. I was >> drum drum. >> I was alarmed. >> Drum circle. Uh my question was so the the school lunch balance I my impression is it kind of it's kind of leveled off like it it's not rising as fast as it used to. Is that is that the case?

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>> It Yeah, it seems to Oh, go ahead. >> It actually decrease between March. It actually decreased between March and April about $3,000. >> We kind of hit 50 around and then it's >> correct. Should we if we have kind of have a more of a norm of paying it, should we consider at some point trying

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to zero it out or is otherwise going to hover around 50,000 and anyone appears for the first time is going to have it? >> Um so we are monitoring everything closely. Uh the goal is to get everyone that could qualify for free and reduced

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lunch to apply. Um once we get them approved, um that is something that I would bring to financing facilities for consideration. Uh, I have a question about my own agenda item. Um, can you go into the the agreement with the bureau of Highland

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Park? Can you just describe what that is at 31 River Road for the public? >> That's the pilot share. So, payment in lie of taxes. Uh, that is an agreement about three years ago with the help of Miss Puce. Um the the bureau does pay the district a portion of the pilot

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share money that they receive uh for the redevelopment of 31 River Road. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> The only agenda item you missed was a thank you just to say thank you to the Highland Park athletic teams for their

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donation for the sorry number 137 over $7,000 to help us finish up the baseball field. >> Yes. uh acceptance of the donation of Highland Park baseball field. Um, of course, yes, we are really grateful for that as well. I apologize for missing it. It's all the way at the bottom. Did

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not look like its own item. Okay. So, for personnel, um, we have the approvals of the reduction in force as outlined in the budget. Um, we have approvals of non-renewals. We have approvals of reappointments for

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the next school year. Um, approval of payment for um, a medical leave. Um, approval of an updated settlement agreement.

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Um, approval of leaves of absences. um approvals of resignations. Um two of which are for retirements um approval of appointments and that's what we have for personnel

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for policies and regulations. Um we have a number of policies on second reading, uh employment of chief school administrator, resource materials, library materials, um and the regulations for those resource materials and library

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materials. Okay. And now we move on to our second public comment of the night. Hi, uh Fiono again and this is my sister Laya. Um we wanted to address something that's been a problem in the middle

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school and the elementary school is the lack of pads and tampons in the school bathrooms. Um, I've talked to my principal about this multiple times. Um, but she has said, "Well, students can go to the

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nurse." Here's the problem with that. Sometimes students may be on the third floor and may have to go to a bathroom like at that exact moment. They can't go all the way down to the nurse just to get a pad or a tampon. They have to go to the bathrooms. But there are no pad

501
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or tampon dispensers in the bathrooms. And not just the girl bathrooms, the boys bathrooms as well because there are trans students in our schools and also in the elementary school, not just the middle school. There are young girls who

502
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need tampons and pads cuz they might start their period early. Um, and we really need this to be acknowledged because this has been a thing that I need, some my friends need and a bunch

503
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of people need in the school. And I feel like it hasn't been acknowledged. It hasn't been like seen that we need this in our school bathrooms. Um because this is a essential thing that we need because

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we're not going to go from all the way to the third floor all the way from the second floor all the way down to the nurse just go all the way back up again. And so that is something that I was going to say needs to be acknowledged. >> Um do we have anyone on Zoom?

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Well, um, if anyone on Zoom would like to speak, please raise your hand going once. Okay. Well, then we are going to close the second uh public comment section and move on to board action items.

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Uh for curricum instruction, I move items one through seven. >> Dr. B. >> Yes. >> Miss Castell, >> yes. >> Dr. Coleman, >> yes. >> Mr. Maldonado, >> yes. >> Dr. Pixley, >> yes. >> Miss Pruce,

507
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>> yes. >> Dr. Schoolman, >> yes. >> Miss Stanium, >> yes. >> Miss Bardman, >> yes. For finance and facilities, I move numbers 1 through 17. >> Second. >> Dr. Batty,

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>> yes. >> Miss Cassald, >> yes. >> Dr. Coleman, >> yes. >> Mr. Maldonado, >> yes. >> Dr. Pigsley, >> yes. >> Miss Puce, >> yes. >> Dr. Schoolman, >> yes. >> Miss Stano, >> yes. >> Miss Bardman, >> yes.

509
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>> Yes. Okay. for personnel. I move agenda items one through uh 14. >> Second. >> Dr. Batty. >> Yes. >> Miss Cassell Dun. >> Yes.

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>> Dr. Coleman. >> Uh I guess I have a question. Should I be voting if I voted no on the budget, would I be voting no on the reduction in force? >> That's on numbers one through four. That's up to you. >> It doesn't Okay. It's not doesn't

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matter. >> It's up to you. >> Okay. >> I can't tell you what to do. I can't tell you what to do other than it's up to you. >> Okay. >> So, yes, >> Mr. Maldonado.

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>> Uh, yes. >> Dr. Pixley. >> Yes. >> Miss Pruce. >> Yes. >> Dr. Schoolman. >> Yes. >> Miss Stanio. Yes, >> Miss Bardman. >> Yes, >> okay. And on policies and regulations, I

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move uh agenda items one. >> Second. >> Dr. Batty, >> yes. >> Miss Cassell, >> yes. >> Dr. Coleman, >> yes. >> Mr. Dr. Maldonado. >> Yes. >> Dr. Pixley. >> Yes. >> Miss Pruce.

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>> Yes. >> Dr. Schoolman. >> Miss Daniel. >> Yes. >> Miss Bardman. >> Yes. >> Okay. And now we move on to board liaison reports. Okay. Um, CPAC is having a meeting uh

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this Thursday, April 30th. six o'clock. Um it's actually they're bringing in resources from the community. So this is a really good opportunity um to attend and learn about some of the resources that we have here

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in Highland Park. Um there is going to be a presentation from Circle Pair uh which is the um new uh service that opened in town for students that receive ABA therapy. Um and then I believe um Miss Copala was also getting information

517
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from other resources as well that can be disseminated. Um so we really encourage folks to attend. There will be some light refreshments um and child care and translation in Spanish and Arabic.

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And um for um I forget what committee I'm on. >> The human I'm sorry the human relations commission um is having a DEI cookie exchange

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uh to show support for diversity equity and inclusion in a sweet way by bringing and and exchanging cookies from all different cultures. There's going to be a moderator-led conversation about the community's feeling about DEI. Um, and

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there's going to be activities for kids. Um, just go there. Oh, and I just deleted it. Sorry, it's been a long day. Right, I found it again. And that is on

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Sunday, May 17th, um, from 1 to 3 p.m. at the community center, the Highland Park Community Center. So, I hope you all can make it. And it's great. the commission for universal access um is interested in working with the

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district to sponsor a trip to we rock the spectrum. It seems like the uh the age group that's probably going to fit is probably Irving kind of K1. Um so uh the commission is in contact with our

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director of ed services to kind of discuss this possibility and plan for it probably for the fall. I don't think it can happen um this year, but um they are really looking forward to to um playing that and and um providing that for the

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district. >> Uh I have an update on the green team. Um, so, uh, Tracy Maiden, uh, teacher here in second grade and Bartle was excited to share that the district as a

525
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whole has secured 190 points in the sustainabil in the sustainable Jersey for schools program. That means the district now has as a whole bronze level status. So, we did not have a status before and now we have a status which is

526
02:31:56.160 --> 02:32:13.280
bronze. Um, Bartle Bartleman with 165 points. 165 points has silver status. Um, and Irving and the high school are still in the two-digit category and the middle school does not have any points.

527
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So, middle school, you have your work out for you. But I think that's great. And I know that they have more uh work still to do. uh for the high uh for the Highland Park Education Foundation. They had their 80s uh fundraiser at Penos a couple of weeks

528
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ago. I don't have a total of how much that brought in, but it was well attended. Several people on this day who are there and looking ridiculous. Uh myself among them. Um it was fun. I won a I won a very bad bottle of wine.

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I got the cheapest one. Perfect. >> Okay. Okay. If that's all for board lement reports, we'll move on to the president's report, of which I do not have one. And then uh old business, new business.

530
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Oh, I actually was just going to address uh the students second public comment. Um that we were aware through some of the discussion that came out actually at the April 13th uh board meeting. Um, so I took some of that information because as you see, I take copious notes, although contrary to popular belief. Um,

531
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I I actually do go back and take all the information and and try to do some action items. Um, so my apologies if I don't make them all public, but uh, one of the things that we heard was about the, um, use of, uh, feminine hygiene products. And so, um, our director of facilities is going through all the

532
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bathrooms and we're making sure that areas that, um, were not attended to previously will be attended to with dispensaries for, um, feminine hygiene products and making sure that, uh, there are there at the high school. Dr. Donovan said that there were some

533
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students that um, used to frequently replenish it. Um, they may have um, lapsed in doing that per se. Um, it just kind of didn't go on the radar. So, we're picking that back up and making sure because we get a lot of donations around that and I know at the at the high school, thank you to the students

534
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that that continuously make sure that uh there those are um fully available. Uh so, um based out of the previous discussion, so I just wanted to make sure that we addressed it that that any area that is of concern will be uh addressed immediately.

535
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Um I had the pleasure of um participating in a global certificate uh program where Highland Park High School students actually went to the graduate school of education at Ruckers and presented some of their plans for um

536
02:34:46.960 --> 02:35:02.880
uh projects um around the community. Um I didn't exactly know what I was getting myself into. Uh I thought I was just there um to enjoy. But uh I actually had a role and um so I got to see a number of students present and receive

537
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feedback. They had partners who were um students in our social studies teacher education program that helped them um plan their uh projects and presentations. Um and so they got feedback from that and um either got uh

538
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their kind of project approved and move forward or minor revisions or major revisions. Um but it was just really a pleasure to to see them present um uh and and see the kind of thought that they had gone into it. They had done some research and and looked through

539
02:35:34.640 --> 02:35:49.840
different articles and to kind of make their case for what needed to happen. Um but it was a really phenomenal event to to be a part of um and to see our high school students and see the partnership between these future social studies teachers with our high school students

540
02:35:49.840 --> 02:36:07.040
kind of really uh move forward. Uh, I have something as well. This is very um early days, but I I got appointed to the board of the Eldrich Center for Workforce Development at Ruckers. And one of the things we had our annual board meeting for that last week and one of the projects that they

541
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were discussing is they were working on creating some sort of project um linking workforce out of um magnet school out of the the STEM magnet school in Middle Sex County to potential opportunities at the helix that's being built in New

542
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Brunswick. Obviously that's not quite operational yet. Um, but I mentioned the possibility of of trying to incorporate students from the district into that when it gets uh underway and they were receptive to it. So, there's interest.

543
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So, I don't know when that will materialize or what will that look like, but there might be something to be had there. So, >> how many boards and authorities are you on? >> Too many. Um, I'd like to

544
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address the conversations that are being had around athletics in our community. Um, I do think it would be very helpful if in the future we could be updated on how uh the program has grown um and has

545
02:37:12.720 --> 02:37:29.680
leveraged its original strengths and has grown since then. Um, you know, we've we've had wonderful presentations uh where we recognize student athletes and that's been great. I don't think um some members of the public understand

546
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the importance of athlet like student athletics when it comes to connectedness to schools and motivation and learning quite frankly. And I'm I was like I'm not an athlete parent. Like I am like my kids on one team, but like my kids were

547
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not athletic like at all, right? And I would roll my eyes at the parents that like would go go to soccer games every weekend like and text me from the soccer field and it's like I'm so cold and I'm like you signed up for that, right? Um but there is clear evidence behind that

548
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relationship. Um, and it is often a pathway to college for some students that may not get there otherwise. Um, whose talents don't excel in ELA or math or STEM or whatever, right? So, I think

549
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that I think we need to be really careful about villainizing athletics and villainizing the people that support our athletics department. Um, to me it's really offensive and I just want to, you know, maybe encourage some more

550
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information being brought forward to kind of combat some of those myths. >> Uh, Alice, I think that's just spot on. I mean, I was not an athlete. It shouldn't be shocking to people either. Um, and but being in the district and

551
02:38:58.080 --> 02:39:13.439
making friends whose kids are more into sports and hearing from student athletes here and talking to teachers and it's just I just never knew, you know, how much of of a of a happy students

552
02:39:13.439 --> 02:39:30.000
identity and their feeling good about themselves came from participation in sports, not from winning all the games, but from being part of a team and getting better. that translates um and I think that I think it'd be great if we could hear more about well we actually

553
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we do hear a lot about it we hear from student hear from coaches and the director but um I don't want any students listening watching the zoom you know all five people who watched on YouTube but if anyone does I don't want any student who is into football or

554
02:39:45.120 --> 02:40:02.240
basketball or soccer whatever to think that their excellence matters less than a student who is you know, super bookish or something like that. Like, you all matter and everyone's talents matter the same to me and and I'm proud that we

555
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have an athletic director and and a better program than we used to. >> I also want to comment on that um because I'm totally with you. I was a student athlete. Um, and it really does help students with their self-esteem, with their abilities to even concentrate

556
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in school, especially if they have ADHD and can't sit there all day. Um, and it is a it can be a career. There are plenty of students who want to go into um coaching athletics or being a gym teacher or even um working as a trainer um physical therapy. These are all

557
02:40:37.840 --> 02:40:55.280
people who are going most mostly are athletes. Um, and to think that it's not as important as anything else is saying that a whole set of uh people are not important and that's just not right.

558
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>> Could I also make a comment? >> Yeah, I agree with everything that you guys mentioned. Um, >> oh, sorry. I would just also like to add on like with how you said that sports is one way to get into college. So is like having the opportunities to get like

559
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involved and have good highle classes and all the sorts of stuff that school's supposed to offer. I know a lot of um peers who haven't been able to get into their like dream school like top schools and it's really hard this year. Um but I

560
02:41:26.479 --> 02:41:42.399
feel like school athletics whatever it is like as long if we can make it more opportunities for students it'll just make it so much easier for us to get to the schools that we want to get into. Yeah, I forgot to say my actual like whole

561
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point is that the if if you don't have a robust sports or any kind of thing, if you didn't have robust AP classes, if you didn't have robust science, you're not going to it's not going to grow. So, if we invest in with either financially

562
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or with time or just caring about it, those things will grow because they will be nurtured. So that students will have a lot more opportunities and they're all equally as important. >> Okay. Well then um with that I move that we adjourn. >> Second. >> Second.

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>> All in favor? I. >> Good night everyone.