e e e e e e sh e e e e can everybody please stand for the flag
slute United States stand in accordance with the open public meetings act adate notification of this meeting has been provided by advertising in the record at posting notice in burrow Hall and the superintendent's office I hereby call to order the public
meeting of the Little Ferry Board of Education Thursday February 20 2025 at 7:02 PM can I have a roll call please M Rell M RI M pitos Mr P
here Mr Ming here lzo here Mr BAC here M Patel here Mrs Bradley here M Austin we have a quum be it resolved that the little faery Board of Education approves the
minutes of the regular public meeting held on January 16th 2025 do I have a motioned Mr belli yesi Mr fos is absent Mr Canan yes Mr mey yes Mr lzo yes Mr bisac
yes Mrs Patel yes Mrs Bradley yes okay the resolved that the little fairy Board of Education approves the minutes of the regular public meeting or the special meeting rather on January 23rd 2025 do I have a motion second
second Rell yes po uh Mr canine yes Mr M yes mzo yes Mr gorac yes Mr Patel yes Mr yes okay I'll now open it up to Mr
parado to provide a superintendence report all right start students the mon our great is Mal work
with so the great six had the following things to say about he every responsible student and the hard worker she's consistently e January the great works hard in all of her classes
she perseveres in face of C she's helpful to all of her teachers y spe all right and our grade eight January two the month is Anna valado
to she hard she is fful and resilient she's caring to her peers and her teachers she has really stepped up this parking period her work ethic is excellent and her work it's top do
congratulations e all right at this time we'll have the order report all right you know what we're gonna I'm G to go out of order if you don't mind okay all right
Cara welcome back I know it's been a long basketball season uh but it is now your you have the floor for your student representative report second Market second Market were wrapped and delived by MERS bring
smile to many faces we like to thank MRIs for donating the flowers this past week students participated in random acts along with theming students were challenged to do a
Rand as thank you to our school counsel for organizing this recently the little fa middle schooled first students to participate activi volleyball basketball watching a
movie thank you to our Administration for organizing this event and to our teachers for volunteering their time to make this event possible we look forward to the next one finally our girls and boys basketball teams are reaching the end of this season very Qui would like to
congratulate Stewart and the girls basketball team program this concludes all up regarding the great job thank you very much right two other things the hip report for since our last board meeting
washingt school has one reported unfounded school has and the preliminary budget meeting is scheduled for Tuesday March 18th at 7 pm that will also be a regular board meeting as well as as the prary
budget and our regular meeting for March and I just wanted to highlight one additional thing that we had uh southb and jointure join our girls and boys basketball program today uh to participate in in their only game of the season for southb joint your but to also
work with our students uh it's always really nice like hour and a half that they go in there um I think both both districts get get a lot out of it and that concludes all right no problem um so on behalf of the board we just want to
congratulate all the students of the month as well as their parents and family um we are going to get into for board related matters so you're welcome to leave if you'd like to you're welcome to stay but we just wanted to let we know first congratulations and you're welcome to leave any time you point Ser
us um great so I'll now open it up to um Mr Gomez for his board secretary's report good evening everyone so fiscally we close January's books so we have those reports done the audit is complete I have uploaded the audit on to the
state's website tonight our audit will joining us make his presentation so in the budget so we're meeting on to submit the budget preliminary to the county the last St for County approvals April 21st uh public the earliest public
hearing would would be uh the 24th of April so there's a window of about a week we haven't decided yet when we're going to do that the last day to have a public hearing on the budget is May 7th and we have to adopt by May 14 so right
now we have a bid out for the unit ventilators in the building so that was advertised in the paper on February 13th we have a pre-bid conf and the bid opening will be on March 20th in the morning the second
good news is we will be okay one out right uh we met with maschio our food service provider um we're thinking about moving the kitchen that's out in the annex into the
lunchroom so we'll be working on that so food service so Memorial School total meals in for January of 2024 we serve 3,604 2025 we serve
4,42 uh Washington School 4271 in 2024 same time January 548 meals this January we received the subsidy from the federal government and state the amount of $ 7,384 for the month of
January January $ 26,2 414 cents year-to date profit 103 37554 last year we we're well on our way to having a
much more successful program so that's all I have Madam president thank you so much Mr oh Andrew can you join us this is Mr Andrew penti he's from Lurch NY and
Bliss okay uh thanks for having me um we have completed your audit for the year end in June 30th 20124 we issued two reports um the larger report is your annual comprehensive financial report and then the smaller report would be
report would be any findings and recommendations if any as far as the annual comprehensive Financial reports concerned um it's primarily made up of four sections the first section would be the introductory section um which is a brief description
of the district prepared by management uh the second section would be the management discussion and Analysis which is your financial statements in a narrative form the third section would be your financial section which would include an Auditor's opinion um various
financial statements and footnotes to the financial statement statements and then the last part of the annual comprehensive financial report would be your statistical section which would include miscellaneous statistics of both the burrow and the school district uh as I indicated there's an
Auditor's opinion attached to your financial statements for the year ended June 30th 2024 that opinion is an unmodified opinion with that means is that your financial statements are fairly stated and free of material misstated okay
that's a clean opinion that's the opinion you want to receive on an annual basis um what I would like to briefly do is discuss the district's fund balance at June 30th 2024 um the district ended the year with
7.9 million in fund balance that fund balance is reserved or restricted for several different purposes I I'll briefly discuss those at this point um the first designation would be for capital reserve uh in the amount of 2.2
million the district has set aside 107,000 for maintenance Reserve which can be used for U maintenance type projects the district has set aside 725,000 for tuition Reserve which would go towards any tuition adjustments uh the district has what's
referred to as excess Surplus designated for subsequent years expenditures that's fund balance in the amount of one 1,77 that was course to fund the 2425 school year that's the school year you're in right
now the district has also set aside um 170,000 to be used as a revenue Source when you prepare your 2526 budget the budget John was discussing you guys are going to start preparing for it um there
is 2.2 million of of incumbrance and then the last piece of your fund balance would be your unassigned fund balance in the amount of 642 th000 and that represents um 2% of the district's expenditures as far as recommendations
are concerned okay we had four recommendations uh the first recommendation was that procedures be reviewed and revised to ensure open purchase orders in a special Revenue
fund are reviewed at year end and overstated or invalid orders be adjusted accordingly the second recommendation was that internal controls be enhanced to ensure reimbursement requests are submitted to the state after each bonly payroll for the employer
share Social Security the third recommendation was that budget amendments for the pre a program be approved by board resolution fourth recommendation was that um amounts paid to vendors through
State contract or cooperative purchasing agreements be verified to the state contract and Cooperative purchasing documentation um if there's any questions i' be glad to address those at this point I don't think we have any questions I'm sure we'll need some time
to review this we okay great thank you thank you very much great we'll now open it up to committee reports Mrs BR thank you Mrs vuso education yes teachers are actively engaging in
the districtwide plc using the teacher Clarity Playbook to enhance instructions winter District assessments are concluding and targeted student support programs including pull out
intervention rise and shine mobble boost L tutoring will begin in March finally despite the wicked flue and norovirus season our district chronic
hous antism is down 7% from last year that concludes my thank you m Mr Benelli for finance we did not meet thank you Mr M for policy yes our
last meeting uh following items we have discussed harassment HIV student smoking um electronic San school buildings and on the grounds and cooperation with
investment and next meeting we'll discuss a including acceptable use of generative artificial intelligence AI uh eligibility of res resident
non-resident students useable electronic communication devices uh academic Integrity student grievances Food Services a spectator code of conduct for dis class that
concludes thank you so much Mr mey Mrs Patel for transportation yes um we met as a transportation committee today right before our Board of bed meeting um we do acknowledge February 3rd there was a delayed opening for the school
districts as well as a high school um we were um communicated from the high school that uh they did not communicate to the high school students of the bus transportation that would be um available at what time uh this you know
obviously has caused a little bit of concern but we we have spoken to the richfood Park High School and we acknowledge and they have uh they're looking they not acknowledged that they did Miss sending out this communication and will'll remediate this going forward
um overall for that day other transportation that provided by theary School District went smoothly that was the only hiccup that we saw Mr Boron nothing new with the burrow as far as our school or anything going on other
than this Sunday is the Muslim welcoming at 3:15 in burrow greated it last year was a great Community event the opening to Ramadan yes so it's it really is beautiful there's home food um
and uh I mean it is a really beautiful event so if you have't time stop by um all right so Mr pitro isn't here today but he did provide a rual parking aison report that I will read on his behalf um so below are the notes from last night's ritual far Board of
Education meeting the Auditors presented the findings from the 2023 2024 audit um reporting that the rual park fund balance increased by 1.2 million from the previous year bringing the total to 13.4 million of
that restricted balances include capital reserve which is approximately 9.5 million goodness maintenance Reserve approximately 1.4 million tuition Reserve $50,000 for the send and receive agreement with littlebury encumbrances
is approximately 400,000 unassigned balance is 1.9 million which is at the maximum 1.5% cap per state guidelines due to the district having an auditor as opposed to the standard 2% cap the a the audit also
resulted in 10 eight were new recommendations two were repeat recommendations and two of the 10 were identified as significant deficiencies a detailed corrective Act developed and will be filed on behalf of the district to address and resolve the
audit findings any questions okay while U the expansion report um the reason why I abruptly stopped John was because I was uh the whole board actually is
beyond Grill to share with the public that we will officially be going out to bid all of our um uh approvals from osc D so on and so forth has finally been approved um some dates to share with the
public is that uh Tuesday February 25th will be our bid advertisement our pre-bid meeting will be Tuesday March 4th at 2 o'clock pm the last day for questions is Tuesday March 11th and the bid will officially open on
Tuesday March 25th just a reminder to the public it was just a year ago that we passed our referendum um so a massive thank you to the entire board the expansion committee Mr perado Mr Gomez RSC Architects um Legacy uh who's our
construction management team um this was a a wonderful team it was a lot of work it was a lot of hard work and the fact that we're now going to bid just one year after the referendum um is very exciting news so I hope everybody's as thrilled as we are okay just to manage everybody's
expectation so we'll be going out to bid um for four weeks but um the or the actually the realistic expectation or um potential that we'll extend that two more weeks so bid could potentially be six to depending on the amount of
questions that come in timeing March 11 there's a lot of questions that come in we we have an understanding with our Architects that we were willing to expand for two weeks if we feel that the questions are are valid and need more time to be answer um but that is the ti
it's four to six weeks we're hoping for four but it is four to six week but I just think that's important when we say March 23d everybody's goingon to be waiting for for that answer and it could be a little bit delayed great thank you um and now Mr Canan uh for the NJ
SBA delegate report uh the SBA has a upcoming meeting in the beginning of April there was no meetings great thank you very much we'll now open it up to public com we'll now take a block vote on F5 to
F10 do4 to d22 P10 to p18 fa2 C3 P2 do I have a motion second second Mr belli
yesi yes Mr pitos Mr pan yes Mr mey yes Mr lzo yes Mr borc yesel yes SC yes but I abstained from P20
okay motion's passed great we'll now open it up for public comment on non-agenda items if anybody has any questions concerns comments no all right then uh have a motion to adjourn thank you
everybody thank you one