good evening welcome to the meeting of the hund Central Regional High School Board of Education please be advised that this and all meetings of the board are open to the public and media consistent with the open public meetings act and that advanced notice required therein has been provided meeting notice was also posted in the boardroom of the
upper school campus sent to The Courier News Star lger Express Times and the H 100 County Democrat and sent to the clerks of Delaware Township East Amwell Flemington burough ran Township and rington the public will have an opportunity to be heard as shown on the
agenda roll call please Mrs dougen here miss gong here miss gray here Dr Halper here Mrs Kellogg here miss losta here Mrs Peterson Mrs rool here and Mrs S Angelo here all right we'll stand for
the flag salute please to the flag of the United States of America and to the rep for it stands one nation God indivisible liy and justice for all okay Claudia you ready to read the
mission statement h H Central is an Innovative educational Community dedicated to the intellectual social and emotional safety and growth of all students while fostering curiosity and promoting Wellness we aspire to create powerful learning experiences establish
strong Partnerships and serve as contributing members of society all right thank you at this time we would have we will have our first residence Forum our point of order I'd like to add board comments to the agenda because it's missing again
so a point of order if it's out of sequence we're following the agenda so the chair rejects that request order um I would like to add the board comments before executive session and after the second residence
Forum so point of order is rejected because we have an agenda that we're following the order of I would like I would like to appeal the chair's decision okay okay so we take a vote all right so
we'll take a vote chair you should have a discussion about [Music] this all right so yep M Mrs dougen this is to add the to board
comments open board comments to the agenda do you need a first and second I'll second okay okay so Mrs uh Miss gong moved to add board comments to the agenda Miss Kellogg seconded it and
now for discussion okay all right no we're voting on the motion okay so it's open for discussion now okay all right so miss gong would you like to start yes I think uh board comments which have been a part of this
particular district for several years should be added back we've not changed policy 0164 0164 states that we can have board comments thank you okay Jessica would you like to say anything I think for
this particular meeting um which is really strictly to budget I'm not sure that we need to have any discussion about anything okay [Music] I think having it in the meeting regularly even though this is focused on
the budget is pretty important it gives us an opportunity to address what we think might be relevant okay D um I think it is important to have on the agenda I will say in the five years I've been on the board it's been on the agenda every year but this year and I
would say maybe a dozen times in those five years board members have actually taken advantage of it um I think particularly today it would be a great day to give the board members opportunity to appreciate all the work that's gone into the budget um and have a chance to to share those thoughts at
the end of the meeting okay thanks Claudia so I just feel like I just need a little more time to think about how you know how this would affect our time you know if it's going to extend the time of the meeting that would be my concern with that um as far as today again I think it's a budget meeting I don't know if it needs to be discussed
today but we can be discussing further okay Sue so my honest opinion is that board comments could be good but I think in the past they've been abused um with people kind of doing and saying more than they legally or probably should say at the board table
so if we were going to have anything like this we'd probably have to talk about it as a board to to really consider like what's appropriate to be you know talked about at the table as part of board comments okay thank you Becky everyone opportun to
speaka most boards don't use don't have them um I could find very few boards that actually do that because it is it's completely off the topic we're here to serve the students and to serve the district and it has nothing to do with our own personal uh feelings so um I'm
opposed Lesley in the interest of time I agree with everything Becky said I won't need to repeat it okay all right and I'll just say um we were preparing a a statement for next week um we did seek advice from our board attorney who
advised us not to do that and there will be details provided at the next meeting so with that I will take a roll call Mrs dougen no Miss
gong yes Miss gray no Mrs or Dr Halper yes Mrs kogg yes Miss losta no Mrs Peterson no Miss rool no Mrs Angelo no motion
fails okay thank you um so at this time we are moving into the residents Forum this is for items on the agenda action items on the agenda if anybody would like to speak we will have another Forum at the end of the meeting speak here yes you would just
sign in and state your name and your Township oh it's not up there it's not up there hi good evening my name is Adam Panka I'm a ren Township resident so have a few comments I'd like to make to the board I'd like to share my concerns regarding the committee that hunting
Central's board president appointed to select a new board attorney is my understanding that Rebecca Peterson has been named to this committe I'm sorry I hate to interrupt you but the first session is regarding action items on the agenda so where will I be able to speak about this at the end of the meeting we
have an open session yes okay thank you I'm sorry about that is there anyone that wants to speak on the action items okay so we'll close that session and we will move on to the budget presentation so you're connected I am I'm oops that's
s oh do I need start you want me to start here yeah do you want to go back I'm back she's back it's good this is okay all right good evening thank you for allowing this opportunity for Heather and I to present to you tonight on our 2025 2026 budget this is the
tentative budget presentation so first we wanted to start off with our mission statement which Claudia just read to us a few minutes ago um this is important you know we really utilize our mission statement here at 100 Central it guides everything
we do this really encapsulates our beliefs our community's beliefs our schools belief so I want you to think about this as we go through the budget because this is what we use to guide our decisions um last month we adopted our
board budget objectives I'm not going to reread them to you but I'll highlight them so our of course our main goal is about student learning so making sure we have an Innovative program that fulfills our New Jersey Student Learning Center uh standards excuse me as well as other mandates and requirements from the
Department of Education or any other entity that that oversees education we also want to ensure that our students can access the full range of our program so that's that's looking at everything not just academics and then of course we want to make sure that we are attracting and
retaining and nurturing our staff our amazing staff um and continuing to grow them through our professional learning and lastly we could not do that without having wonderful facilities here at 100 Central so we need to make sure that we have a plan and a continually
revise and updated plan to make sure that our facilities are secure and up to date as well um and of this is last but not least on the list to make sure we're fiscally responsible so we want to be have a responsible budget as well a
respectful budget to our our taxpayers um and to our our community so this budget um has allowed us to really make sure that we are continuing to focus on our academic priorities we have been successful in maintaining our programs and in fact
even enhancing our programs and so we're just highlighting a few here they relate to our um our district goals that we approved in September as well as the the district mission statement which we just read so first expansion of work-based learning coupled with dual enrollment so
um you all know that we've been working on expanding both of those for opportunities for students so work-based learning again is um akin to an internship program it includes other components like job shadowing there's many different facets under work-based learning but this allows our students to
do school sponsored internships and job shadowing experiences under direction of someone here at school who has a certification to do that um we also have been working for many years now at expanding dual enrollment uh when I first got to Central about six years ago
we had 15 dual enrollment classes we're now at over 50 and we're going to continue to expand that and this is opportunities I like to point out not just for our honors and AP as sometimes that's what people think this is for all students and that's really important to us as well we have continue to add
magnet programs as you know um so this year we're adding for next year a media and Communications Academy as well as an engineering Academy we are also looking at expanding our computer science um we're looking more into cyber security
as well as um integrating some artificial intelligence and I do need to let you know that we are continuing our programs that were once supported through our Esser Grant funds so things like linkit orl or PSAT all of these helped us in
terms of data and making sure we're able to to fully Implement our multi-tiered system of supports these programs allowed us to make sure that this is part of that program so that we have Rich data to evaluate students by so we were successful last year actually in
putting them into our budget um when we knew our grant funds would expire and so they are continuing in our our budget for the 25 26 school year we also just I think two months ago in January had a presentation on artificial intelligence as you know this has become huge
everywhere but um we are embracing it here at 100 Central as you saw but we want to do so responsibly um and ethically so we are going to be integrating that more into into our um our classes for and opportunities for our students and lastly we have a
wellness initiative which I believe you're all aware of it's linked into our first district goal which links our health and PE teachers with our counseling staff to make sure um they're they're working together and not duplicating topics that will be covered otherwise in our health and PE
curriculum so it's allowing our counseling folks who are experts pair up with our health and PE teachers so that they're talking about common topics together it could be um it could be as simple as grieving is one of the topics that's actually required by the
Department of Education so how would a counseling staff member advise that a PE a health and PE teacher approach it so this is a continuing initiative that we have going on I'm going to pass it over to Heather now to really get into the nitty greedy details of the budget
quickly quickly yes quickly thank you so um staying in just a little in line with um what Miss C celos hay just discussed is the good news is we're we've been successful in keeping things and being able to expand things in our
budget um going into the 25 26 school year but that hasn't been without challenges we have similar challenges that every school district in the state of New Jersey has um what we do here is a little bit different I think than in some cases is we're always a couple years ahead we try really hard to plan
in advance so we have the state same state aid issues that every other district has um at the same time we're um experiencing declining enrollment we also have um a situation that's kind of unique to a lot of uh uh uh high schools in Hunton County and that has to do with
The Hunton County Vocational School District um we send students enroll and apply and enroll into their Academy programs and because it is located in hunon County we don't get to count those students in our um enrollment count so it costs us money from increased tuition
um we have to transport them there and we lose state aid because it looks like we've lost that number of students and I'll talk about that a little bit later as well um our outa district tuition is uh projected to be a little bit higher this year this is a cyclical thing last year we were able to experience uh you
know more more of the students um uh graduating out of the program and less students moving in this year we have a little bit of a a switch so we have to absorb that into the budget so that was one of the things and of course loss of state aid is always always a challenge um this year we did get a little bit
more um we're happy for that um anything's better than a cut um the next uh issue that we have is is in line with uh health benefits it's called chapter 44 which is a new law that went into effect January 1st of
2021 retroactive to July 1 of 2020 I'll talk about that a little bit later and our health benefits is a plus and a minus um obviously it goes up more than our 2% cap on our tax levy however um it's not going up at the rate that the state health benefits plan is going up or a lot of other districts are
experiencing and there's a lot of reasons for that um one of the challenges we have this year we have um an SRO officer in our our buildings as well as three class three officers that is a contract that we have with the raron Township Police Department it both of them expired this year and the
increase for our class three officers year-over-year is a 22% increase is what they're asking for utility costs over the last two years have gone up 49.7 one% this year I budgeted an additional increase of 20% so I think we're all feeling it even in
my home in New Jersey I think we're all uh having similar experiences the schools are no different they're just bigger numbers um Property and Casualty Insurance actually wasn't so bad this year projecting about a 15% increase cyber insurance is continuing to go up at a faster Pace um and of course enroll
um other employee benefits unemployment cost workers comp disability insurance all of those types of things go up as well year-over-year so just to go a little bit and and I'll try to go through these quickly um in the last eight years we have lost $927,000 in state
aid um this year was the first year that we've had an increase in state aid over the at least the last 10 years and it's less than 3/10 of a percent of our entire budget so yeah 350,000 or here $26,000 sounds like a lot of money it's
a drop in the bucket but I was anticipating a cut so I was happy um state aid in 2017 was 5,000 or 5,719 th000 and in 2526 it's 4.94 one so
we've we've seen state aid decrease 13.61% % in the last 10 years asssa enrollment what this is is this is our student count for the last 10 years um we have seen a substantial decrease in student enrollment it's not just because the students aren't coming
here as I talked to you briefly um we have 171 students that we can't count that are going to the academy programs next year and that's a March estimate they have until I think August uh to finalize their enrollment so that can still change as well so through the last
10 years we've um um we've gone down 785 students or 26.25 per. and our staffing has gone down 5.6 staff members or 1.5% that's not going to always be equal for a lot of reasons especially as a high school because we teach in sections
so just because you have certain situations where you may not have students in that section doesn't mean it doesn't have to run um but what we try to do here is we align Staffing um yearly based on the tallies that are coming in now now and we we really try
to do it more through attration on retirements or resignations and and evaluating whether or not those positions need to be replaced versus having to cut somebody so we've been very very successful in doing that and that also obviously helps to keep our budget in line I talked a bit about the
H uh hun County vocational school districtm um for those of you I don't know um they've opened a new facility at North hunon and what that facility is doing is it's giving some of those shared time programs that used to be
right over here full-time status the shared time students were allowed to count so if our student was here for Reading Writing and arithmetic and went across the street for wood shop right we got 50% of the student better than nothing now if they're going to wood shop and it's not wood shop I think it's
welding or there's new services that used to be here that are now full daymy because they're full days we don't get to count the student so not only are we paying tuition for them to go there we have to add buses to get them there
and the reduction in the student count affects our Equalization values and our ad adequacy calculation which affects our state aid so approximately every student that goes there is about $100,000 and what we lose in state aid or cost to take them there um we uh are
projecting for next year and again this was a March projection 171 students um that's a 51% increase over the last eight years we started in 1819 with 28 students and we're now up to 171 so these are things as as the group in the
state of New Jersey really need to talk about how these kids are treated um from the calculation in terms of um you know who gets to count them uh the votch right now is not only counting them but they're also getting their state a associated with them so this is a challenge that's going to continue to
grow until somebody brings it raises it in try honestly um we have increased out of District tuition um our state our our our uh special ed population is is is pretty flat um we have three state
facility students this year for an increase of $171,000 year-over-year but the big number is that 35 students go into the academy it's an increase of $ 356,550 for just tuition um that doesn't count with 35 students is another us so
these are the things that we're constantly working through trying to project who's going to go where and and what we can do and how we can absorb it so these are some of the harder things that we've had to face chapter 44 is a law that went into effect in um it was effective 1121 but it was uh retro to
July 1st of 2020 and what this was is this was an agreement between the teachers union and the government to be able to control what their contribution is towards their health benefits we used to have what was called chapter 78 we still do have chapter 78 although it did Sunset a lot of schools have been able
to keep that in in their contracts what chapter 44 was supposed to do in theory was offer a less robust plan and it calculated their percentage of compet of uh contribution on their salary versus the cost of the premium
that sounds great right we're going to have you're going to have a a a less robust plan to choose from that's going to cost the district less money therefore you're going to contribute less sounds great except the cost of the of the the not's robust plan was more
than the robust plan so at the end of the day we ended up over the this went into effect in uh 2021 like I said January 1st of 2021 our district is down 77,78 since that went into effect and
what happens is any new employee that comes into the district doesn't get a choice they have to enroll What's called the eh ehp plan which is an employer health benefit plan or the Garden State plan which is the difference between the two is the ehp
plan you can go out of state so if you have a doctor in Pennsylvania or somewhere local you can still use those doctors the Garden State plan if you're traveling and have an emergency and need to go to the doctor that's the only thing that'll be covered so that's even costing the district more money um so
this is one of the things again that we have to keep keep looking at because every new employee that comes in has to select one of these plants they don't get to select the old Plan before where we were able to collect chapter 78 so again something else we have to continue to look at health benefits and I always love to
do this uh analysis because they continue to try to uh get us into the state health benefits plan um it's not as it's it's it's way more expensive we are in what's called a shift which is the school health insurance fund it's a a pulled uh resources if you will and
over the last four years or three years we've been successful with only a 12.4% increase um state plan has gone up uh 35% over the last several years so when you hear we're in a private plan and that's a plan that's marketed um every
three years um we do constantly look at this we do constantly look at the offerings because that's what we're required to do um but we are doing really well by staying in a private plan it sounds like private is more expensive sometimes it is but in our particular situation um because of the pool that
we're in and because we have a great experience rating we're able to really take benefit uh take advantage of some of the lower lower costs and that of course helps to offset some of the decrease in state aid or increases in expenditures that we don't have Revenue to produce so the question always is wow
that was a lot of bad news but you know how did we get in under TW at under 2% um I I love to say this um we have inflation helped us um in a lot of ways because we have a robust capital reserve and maintenance Reserve fund which means
we have cash balances that can be invested and we right now are living off our investments so these are things that we've planned over several years in terms of when certain Investments come come to fruition um and the interest has really been successful in in feeding our
budget um every year we we we look at um all of the department budgets the supervisors look at them and they determine how many students they're going to have we take a look at what we need not only from a person perspective but also from A Material supplies uh perspective we look at tallies to see
what students are enrolled in what programs so that we can really um focus on the needs that we need at that time and if we don't need it it doesn't go in the budget um declining and and because of the declining enrollment as we do have some staff retirements we don't fill
those positions um like I said health benefits was a plus and a minus right um it does help us on the other side to stay under cap administrative reorganization I'll talk about that in a second and as well as um some Transportation savings we're
experiencing this year so our administrative cost this year um it's been really interesting um there's been a lot of changes in roles uh there's been a lot of changes in in Staffing um and with this reorganization we um eliminated one administrative
position uh due on retirement so it's not a position that we got rid of or anything like that but determined that we weren't going to fill after retirement then we've um not filled the assistant superintendent position if you remember Miss kelos hay was that position um when
she was moved to the superintendent position we replaced the director of curriculum uh instead of the assistant superintendent position which gave us a little bit of breakage um and then by moving around some of these positions so for example When Miss celosi hate became
superintendant her position became open well the director of curriculum instruction came open so that person that filled the position was less experienced in the position so we had a little breakage in salary there and the same thing happened backfilling his position and backfilling one other position that we had available so there
was was breakage there and what what this um reorganization has allowed us to do is it it's reduced expenses and we've still been able to enhance the cap the capacity um with realignment of our administrative positions so we're still
in a really good position if we need to add or do anything in the future um overall the changes um have saved the district $180,000 year-over-year Transportation um we've worked really hard this year in taking a look at where
what our routes are doing um we tier routes we what I mean by that is we have routes that'll start at six o'clock in the morning doing a high school run they'll do an elementary run they'll do a middle school run then they'll come back and and and do a late bus run or a vote you know they they're always going and that's efficiencies that's what the
state of New Jersey wants us to do but as some of those Dynamics change in the middle if you will some of those tiers in the middle it kind of scrunches for example the high school routes so what that means is is as as the middle routes become longer because student enrollment is going up our routes have
to become shorter because I don't have enough time to get to the next location so what we did is we really took a look at what our routes were doing and we found that a lot of our high school routes okay all of them were inefficient because I was running 54 passenger buses with 15 kids on them and I get a high
school students drive and they not as many of them in a short area to pick up but um because of the time restriction we had to get to the next location um we were we were being remiss in adjusting some routes for for the high school so
that's the first thing we did we took a a look at all of the you know we moved up the eighth graders and we moved out the 12th graders and we took a look at everything to kind of see where we were going to going to be and what we've been able to do is um eliminate quite a few
I'm going to call them routes buses okay so a bus usually does it two to three routes depending on how long they are so we've been able to eliminate several buses which means that a lot of the buses we were Contracting out at a higher rate were able to bring in and do
with District drivers okay so basically what we did is we kind of relooked at everything again and what what that does is we continue to um go through our shared Serv Services discussions um you know we're expecting to keep the tiered approach we're waiting for everybody to
um you know all the routes to kind of come together so we can kind of plan where they're going to be um but we need to maximize efficiency not only forun Central but from all of those elementaries and the sending districts that were moving their students as well so we kind of I I don't want to say started over but as things have been
changing for so long you know doing the same same things the the same way is it necessarily always the most efficient so this gave us an opportunity to really take a look at that um so with the reconfiguration in that I have in the budget now and and there's
some safeguards um we've the hund central budget has been reduced about $475,000 um and again that's because the outed District the the contracted routes are so expensive there's no competition so they can pretty much charge whatever
they want and then we're just going to kind of rebuild and and kind of see where that where that takes us so I'll go over these um real quick I'm sorry I I don't mean to talk so much um we're a fund accounting um I know in
business you have revenue and expenses and you have a net profit at the end of the day it's a miracle in schools we have revenue and expenses and they match um so what this is is this is telling you basically what our revenue streams are a budgeted funds balance is
um our legal reserves that are are determined at budget time I'm sorry at audit time um that is a budget is a Revenue stream into the following Year's budget so this year it's up about $76,000 year overy year local tax levy we know what that is right um it's up
our tax levy is up 2% year-over-year other are things like interest income we rent a rack uh for technology we we Contract Services with the Polytech for nursing so things like that they're called it's other Revenue that kind of
flows through there so our total local funds next year are up about 1 .3 million um the biggest piece has to do with the tax levy which is 1.1 which is our 2% our state aid is up 206 net and our federal aid is down $33,000 I know
this looks dramatic um we have something called semi aid for some reason this year they they did the calculation and the formula differently so we went from 38,000 to 5500 that states that information is provided to us by the by the state special Revenue funds is what I
call fund 20 those are our grants so we are obligated to budget um a percentage of the prior year's award um in the current year what that means is fund 20s are easy only in the sense that if they only give us $100,000 that's all
we can spend you know it's not like I can move money from somewhere else in there to cover something I don't have that as an opportunity so this year we were actually advised to budget um 75% of the prior Year award usually I budget at 85% and I still have to add more
we're not sure with with how our federal grants are going to fall out this year so it's we're being a little bit more on the conservative side but again that doesn't affect operating you know those are those are Grant funds specifically for certain things
um the capital reserve oh sorry I didn't didn't mean to clip the capital reserve withdrawal these are projects and there's a uh more detailed slide on that these are projects that we have planned to do um for next summer so we budgeted in the 25 26 uh uh budget and we try to
get them done in in the 25 summer most of our projects this year are um roof projects because we have leaks and the roofs have come to um they're ex out of warranty and in addition to that we have grant funding of about 40% that funds
those so we're kind of taking advantage of some of those things um maintenance Reserve we have to renew uh replace our our um some switches so that is an action ual number and um it's actually also has e- rate the project is over 500,000 but we do get a uh e- rate
reimbursement on that as well so you will see that our budget year-over-year is down $1.8 million almost $1.9 million but that's a little tricky because um when you go down $2 million in your Capital reserves
again that's one of those things if you don't do the project you're not really saving any money um so that's a little a little misleading so this this is basically where our Revenue sources come from we have um most of it as you can see the big red
pie that's that's your tax money uh 78 yeah 78% of our budget is funded by taxpayer dollars so that's the biggest reason we're really mindful in the way that we we create a budget we look at a budget um because we know um where the
money actually at the end of the day has to come from um we do have the maintenance Reserve that's what we were just talking about that comes right out of a reserve account we have capital reserve those comes right at that comes right out of a reserve account that's not hitting anything else special Revenue that's my fund 20 that I was
talking about which is the grants fund balance that's the money the legal reserves that we required to give back in the future year um federal aid that was that little tiny bit of semi money um and then um local sources are those things that
we talked about that's interest income things like that okay so expenses on the expense side um these are the things that are in the general fund budget we have regular and instruction programs special education programs instructional Support
Services which is our library Counseling Services Health office curriculum supervisor and staff training administrative expenses which is the superintendent principal Human Resources business office and in Information Technology office operations is maintenance custodial grounds and
security transportation is transportation then we have employee benefits equipment something that I call fund 12 those are capital assets capital projects and maintenance projects these are what our expenses look like and this is The Miracle part of what we do notice how the revenues are the same as the expenditures it's
it's amazing um so basically what you see here um very quickly you know we have a regular you know a reasonable increase in instructional lines you'll see as I discussed on the out of District tuitions that special ed in tuition is going up over a million dollars year-over-year um instructional
support is down a little bit um because of some of the the this the training that's supported by the grants administrative expenses that's the number I talked to you about um earlier uh the 180 savings that we have year-over-year uh facility maintenance custodial is up 315 a lot of that is
electricity um employee benefits you know we look really good seven less than $800,000 capital projects that's the same thing as you saw on the other side as is the grant so again this this is the same number the 1. 1892 year-over-year and this is basically where where the
pie comes out of right so you want to see the money you see most of it in in a big piece in gen Ed special special ed again this fluctuates year-over-year but overall you know that's where you want to see most of your money benefits obviously you know we talk about this
all the time you know we say we're in the education business but we're really in the people business and I'll show you what that looks like 73.6% of our our budget goes towards Staffing whether it 49.6% is salaries and
23.9% um is health benefits and all benefits actually so the reever Reserve funds that I spoke about briefly um we talked about um the capital reserve the maintenance reserves those are tied to specific plans in the district Capital reserves are tied to a long-range
facilities plan you'll hear us talking about that soon because we're right now working on a major Amendment and the maintenance projects are tied to square footage and the amount of money were allowed to use for repairs for square footage of our faciliity so again that's tied to to a a comprehensive maintenance
plan these are the capital reserve projects that we talked about it's $5.5 million year-over-year the ones that are Aster and labeled as Rod 40% of the eligible costs are being re reimbursed To Us by um the state it's called a rod Grant which is a rural operating
District Grant um we were successful in getting a lot of roofs uh replaced there was I think we had 12 or 15 projects that were approved um the next piece is going to be HVAC we don't have them on this agenda yet because um there's a slower time in getting the equipment so
we wanted to get the things on that we could get done as quickly as possible our tax levy year-over-year is up 2% or 60 the total Levy is 61191 and um we do have what's called banked cap uh in the last two years we did not
budget to the 2% cap what we're allowed to do is keep the money and res reserves if you will in banked cap so that if we get into a problem next year we're able to to take that money and actually go over cap we don't like to do that here and we haven't since since as long as I
can remember this is this is the um the most difficult thing to explain so the tax rate calculation because we're a Regional High School District there's an allocation of the tax rate um
the total tax at $61 million that allocation is done based on your Equalization for the town you live in which is determined by the state it's supposedly based on wealth and values of home and and uh population and then also the number of students you send to the high school once we get the allocation
of which district or which sending is responsible for what part of the $61 million then we go through a um a calculation to determine what this tax rate is and that's based on the ratables that actually come from the tax office sorry I went the wrong
way I know I know um so this is what it is actually for next year the equalization value by municipality comes from the municipality we then determine what is the enrollment for the high school that comes right off the Assa numbers that we talked about but this is broken up by by
uh town we determine the equalized valuation for the regional um student which is just a percentage of the 1.2 and then we divide to determine what percentage is the share of the total tax Levy that is um allocated to each
sending district and this is what it comes down to so Delaware Township is up uh $46.98 per $100,000 of value in the current year the reason for that is their Equalization really really increased year-over-year
East amvel is down $517 flemington's down $750 Ron's down 510 and Readington Up $373 3 this is on per 100 ,000 of value what's important here and it's because of the um instability of that
Equalization number that it's important that you look at this is a fiveyear the last column is a fiveyear change um overall Delaware Township over the last five years has gone up $88.99 per 100,000 Vol volumes so they might have gone up one year and down another East
amal's down 192 now also keep in mind this also has to do with their enrollment so if their enrollment is going down as well um that that has something to do with it but the biggest piece on deep analysis is the equalization value flemington's down $88 almost $89 riton up $694 and Readington
up $38.70 but that again per $100,000 uh value in your home and that's it um we hope to approve the tenative budget tonight um it will be delivered to the uh Department of
Education on either tomorrow or Wednesday it will be advertised 4 days before the the public hearing which is on April 28th and the budget presentation will then we have two days to put the userfriendly budget in the budget presentation on the website and then I certify it with each of your tax
offices any questions so you know what I think we might take the questions from the board after so we have a scheduling issue with our executive session because of our attorney's availability he literally only has 15 minutes um so we are going
to need to convene into executive session for 15 minutes we can come back out take questions from the board on the budget I'm just going to close it we can pass the budget um and then we can take comments from the public we need to move in a second yep
disconnect so I would like to move that we convene into executive session for 15 minutes can I get a second second roll call please whenever Heather's ready Mrs yes Miss gong yes Miss gray
yes Dr Halper yes Mrs Kellogg yes Miss losta yes Mrs Peterson yes Miss roel yes and Mrs S Angelo yes and apologies to the public thank [Music] you e
e e e e e e e e e e
e e e e yes sorry I'm sorry no you're fine okay thank you again for your patience so can I get a motion in a second to reconvene it's a public session motion second
thank you roll call guess we're doing a roll call right Miss dougen yes Miss gong yes Miss Greg yes Dr Halper yes Mrs Kellog yes Miss lacasta Mrs Peterson yes Mrs roal
yes and Mrs santangela yes thank you okay so let's open it up to the board for any questions on the budget to Mrs Spitzer do I have to go back up there any questions but thank you again for um managing this in a way that we are staying below the cap I know the
taxpayers appreciate that we are still managing to do a lot um is this working yeah we are still managing to um you know provide an excellent education and I'm it just it's a good time to not be above cap for the taxpayers especially
so thank you for that I would uh say ditto thank you very much uh to our business administrator Mrs Spitzer for doing this and just so the community knows that uh while the board doesn't sound like it has questions trust me at our meetings our committee
meeting reviewing this budget we had lots of questions for Mrs Spitzer so while we may agree on a lot of things here it's not like we saw this for the first time so I just want to reassure the public that we did ask you a lot of questions didn't we Mrs Spitzer but
thank you um I do have one question about the um the the Academy's enrollment um it seems like given the calculation of about $100,000 per student that that comes out to about 20% of our budget
that we're spending on those 171 students is that accurate so um some of those numbers are you know an overall impact of those students going not necessarily dollars we write a check for right so the
tuition and actually I'm looking for it I think it's $1,163 per student this year um so if you multiply that by 171 students um that's the amount of cost directly for those students to go then in addition to
that another 35 students is going to add an additional bus um so you know a bus a route is anywhere from $60 to $70,000 a year okay so we're not writing a check for that we have a bus and we have a driver and we're going to take those kids to school
but that's a um an overall cost that will will impact the district and the other piece that's harder to put your finger on is um is the impact that it has on our
state aid so because those students 171 students even though they're ours and we take full respons responsibility for them we don't get to count them in our enrollment count so some of those numbers as you see go down
year-over-year are students actually that are still enrolled here they just go there so there's a cost to that because they're not included in our state aid calculation so instead of us getting the state aid for those students the votech gets the the state aid for
those students so it's not a do I can't say to you yes I can show you where the POS are we're writing the check um I think overall it's very difficult to put your finger on that but as Bas in the county especially as they continue to expand um we've really taken a look at
what impact this has on our state aid and that's going to be a much larger conversation um going into it especially now with the new program at the high school does that make sense it it does make sense thank you and is there a a disproportionate um impact across the
sending districts like do some does that impact the allocation or the the calculation of the number of students coming from well potentially it could because say for example five of those students were Delaware Township kids right we're not counting them right so your allocations are going
to be different thank you and I I would like to Echo everyone's thanks and and I'm always impressed by you and your team so thank you very very
much any other questions no all right thank you very much Mrs Spitzer all right so Jessica will you address the operations and transportation portion this time it's going to be nice and quick uh the operations and
transportation committee met on Tuesday March 13th the attendees were Sandra gong Lisa santangelo Jessica celosi ha Heather Spitzer and myself it was Thursday I'm sorry it was Thursday items
one two are just annual motions related to maximum travel allowance and reimbursement on travel that are required to um be approved as part of the budget approval items three in floor include capital reserve projects for completion
in 2025 and 2026 school year which Mrs bitzer's already addressed and withdrawal from maintenance reserves for projects also to be completed in that school year item five is for us to approve the proposed 2025 202 6 budget as so well
presented by Mrs spiter which will be submitted to the executive county superintendent of schools for approval by March 19th I'd like to move these yes second second all right roll call Miss Spitzer Miss
gong yes Miss Miss gray yes Dr Halper yes Mrs Kellog yes Miss lacasta yes Mrs Peterson yes Mrs roell yes Mrs dougen yes and Mrs santangelo yes all yes motion
carries all right thank you all right at this time we will move into the final residence Forum this is for General comments so I just ask that you come up sign in and state your name in your Township you have five minutes okay
I already signed in before my name is Adam Panka I live in Ran Township uh a few comments I'd like to make tonight uh concerns regarding the committee that hun and Central's board president appointed to select a new board attorney is my understanding that Rebecca Peterson has been named to this
committee despite the fact that this would give her influence to choose the attorney representing the school board this attorney would would in turn oversee petitions she herself brought against the board I question how this is not a clear conflict of interest I know
that you can't comment on that but it's still a question that I have uh she would clearly in my opinion have a personal interest in settling this allegation to her to her benefit which is in direct conflict with the interests of the district and the
taxpayers uh be less of a concern if the committee was balanced with experienced board members uh to my knowledge Mrs Dugan and Mrs Kellogg have both served in board leadership roles have experience working with board attorneys uh instead president St Angelo has appointed two
board members that have no experience with the role of a board attorney this creates the appearance that Miss s Angelo is attempting to create a committee that does not have the experience to do anything other than rubber stamp the attorney that she and Mrs Peterson
prefer the fact that she's spoken uh in favor of M Peterson before the she was a board member uh and the fact that uh she removed the long-standing board attorney leads the public to believe that Mrs S Angelo is attempting to compromise the interests of the district to give Mrs
Peterson an unfair advantage in her litigation with the board thanks for hearing my comments thank you anyone else it's okay take your time Francis gavagan East Amwell first time here and I would like to congratulate
you on a very impressive PowerPoint and presentation on the budget and for the lowering it would be useful if there was a breakout of your 171 students going
for that by in District you know I mean ours is a farming committee with a hand well more than a handful of Rich lawyers but I'm not one of them yeah good one at the bottom of the ocean is a good start
um anyway nice job on on the budget I like I'm am somewhat concerned with the way things are going that you're going to need to squirrel money away because Lord
only knows where anywhere if money's going to come from but it would be very useful to get someone out of Trenton or some information do I have to follow an Oprah request to get the name address and contact numbers for who do
we go to to get money that supports you know the the schools locally you take our money why don't you give it back um and it would be nice to have them show up and face the public on
where the you know they got Fuzzy Math down there and I think you've been very successful in employing in employing Reverse Fuzzy Math to get us to where it's going to be good but I suspect Readington is going
to come back with being unhappy and I imagine raran is as well and longterm as curriculum and students adjust as the county grows incredibly if
you look at all the condos that would be worth doing but uh I appreciate your public service and what you do I don't know anything about your other stuff but uh you know good
job and add a girls I hope that's not a A diversity equity and inclusion FAA but things work better when people work together and you seem to be doing that at least for the most part good job thank
you thank you if the next person's coming I'm still writing my name I'll waddle back all right is there anyone else yes there is you're a civilian now I
am Sandra gong rared in Township I'm speaking as a member of the public in my personal capacity and not as a member of I think that's unbelievably inappropriate so I'm going toj the meeting the following statements
my capacity as a private citizen and not in my capacity as a board member these statements are also not represented of the board or its individual members and solely represent my personal opinions I think you'd like to hear what I have to say what I have to say is my husband and
I saw Hello Dolly it was an amazing performance it was great it shows how talented our students are thank you very [Applause] much e can I get a motion to adjourn the meeting I'm sorry who was the first and
second all in favor opposed still pictures no thank you meeting adjourned