e e e e e can everybody please stand for the flag salute I Alle the United States of America rep
stands Nation accordance to the open hosting notice of this meeting in burrow Hall and the superintendent office I hereby call to order the public meeting of the little fairy Board of Education Tuesday March 18th 2025 at 7:01 PM can I have a roll call please
melli here Mr broli here Mr pitro here Mr here Mr mey here Mr lzo is absent Mr borc here Mrs Patel here Mrs Bradley here miss August have you be it resolved that the
Little Ferry Board of Education approves the minutes of the regular public meeting held on February 20th 2025 and the special public meeting on March 4th 2025 do I have a motion motion second second belli yes froli yes Mr fos yes Mr Canan
yes Mr mey yes Mr lzo is AB Mr vac yes Mr yes Mrs Bradley yes now open it up to Mr parado to provide a superintendence
report start with want that for uh sure all right February students of the month we will start with grade five we have
Samuel Sam come on down all right in grade five he is grade five s a vior to the he's extremely conscientious about his school work he is proactive about his learning and seeks clarification he is willing to go
above and beyond he is time to keep all consider all congratulations I told you head up I'm trying but you would be very proud
I you have daughter so that's [Music] our great six February suit of the month is the great to say about you he's very eager to learn and succeed he's very helpful and is taking care of other students taking them under her RNG she
has worked hard in developing her vocabulary and language just a short period of time she's very respectful is okay our February to say about you he's very
hardworking student he's respectful to her pears and her he's willing to help others in our class and in the hallway she always completes her homework on time and puts in effort to every assignment and everything she does conratulations
all right just a quick uh remainder to my update uh hit reports for the uh since our last board meeting uh Washington school had one reported which was founded and Memorial School had zero reported uh tonight's agenda will be the
revised 2425 calendar uh which which adjusts the dates for emergencies closures with the caveat of course as I'm watching channel 12 news that there is snow in the forecast for Friday however um we're hoping that doesn't derail our plans here also the 2526
calendar is on tonight's agenda as well as a 12 month calendar as well uh if approved tonight it'll be sent to staff tomorrow post it on the website and it'll be sent to families on Friday uh April 17th board meeting has been cancelled and moved to May 1st which
will be our budget adoption uh May 1st 7M and May 15th is our regular May meeting which will also be our teacher honoring the teachers of the year uh for Memorial and Washington schools at this point uh Cara we could take it over for
the uh student representative report and tonight after report she will be leaving us not not perfect just leaving us for tonight so Karen take it away [Music] that for
were very determined [Music] work ground okay so is Harding all her subjects is carrying the her she is working
hard Eng she has excellent work has a cheerful disposition congratulations e thank you Mr okay we're now going to go into the um rest of the board meeting uh parents and students congratulations on stud of the
month you're welcome to leave you won't be interrupting us you're also welcome to stay but I just wanted to to give you the out all right we'll now open it up to Mr Gomez for the board secretary report good evening everyone first uh we were able to close the February books um it
was they were closed as of last week uh just so everybody understands we get 60 days to approve these things we've been doing it on the average of 15 days so we're we're good there so let's talk so tonight we're going to be um voting to
submit the initial budget to the county but this is the state has put out that uh they gave an increase in state aid well I'll tell you what happened with to little fa so we were supposed to get due to a large increase in enrollment we
were supposed to get a million 3973 from the state what we got was 3,383 so they capped all the increases and they tapped all the districts that were supposed to
lose money so right now we're only at 88% of what the state is supposed to fund the district at so the taxpayers putting his money in in town but the state took a step a huge step backwards
with this budget so I just want to make sure everybody understands that um so in terms of the budget the last day to submit the initial budget to the county is tomorrow March 19th it should be done by 7:30 a.m. uh the last day to receive
approval from the count is April 21st the first day you can have a public hearing is April 24th the last day you can have the public hearing is May 7th we will do ours on May 1st right in the middle all right so a couple big uh bids
are going out um so we'll be opening up bids for the unit ventilators on March 27th at 11: a.m. it is a public bid opening and then the big one will be opening bids for the new Middle School
on April 8th at 2m in the cafeteria so those are two pretty big events that are coming up uh we're also going to be doing some projects during spring break we're going to be replacing the floor in this room and we're also going to be working on the floor in the teachers
breaket so those are two projects going to do over spring break so food service so for March in Memorial last year we served 3,247 meals this year we served
4,119 so last year the daily average we served 191 meals per day last year this it's up to 242 for Washington last year 4,48 meals this year 4,981 so 238 was daily average last year
this year 293 we received the subsidy from the state in the federal government of $1,026 profit for February we made $2,884 18 year-to dat profit $14
25962 so we're ping for about 200,000 properties so the program is doing real well so just the board knows so there's a the resolutions that are for the budget F4 is for the main part of the
budget we also have D28 which is the maximum d29 is for the paa and D30 which is the preschool program and D30 is for the semi cor action so that's all
I have Madam president thank you Mr and I wonder if you could um at least just explain to the public what we do with the profit from the school lunch program so fun kind can't be done um all that M the money cannot go to the general fund
so it all has to be spent on the cafeteria uh things like we can pay for the lunch AIDS out of there we can also any equipment one of the things we're looking to do is is any refurbishing we have to do to the kitchen will come out of there but it
cannot be transferred to the general fund so it's all self-contained uh one of the things interesting right now is we have too much money so we'll be coming up with the project uh for the summer to reconfigure our our kitchen
and be able to cook here so that's what you can do with the money pretty restricted and the people keep an eye us they use the Federal regul Regulation so that's that's a bit different when you have you go out for bid Food Service
totally different set of rules thank you for that you wel and I also do want to rate that the school lunch has not increased even though there are districts that are increasing the price because our lunch program is doing so well we are not and at least for now do not intend to increase the
the price of school lunch and this all right we'll now open it up to committee reports U Mrs BR for personnel uh we met our March 5th with the administration Association and we were able to finalize your contract and it's on this evening
uh agenda for approval great thank you um Miss deluso is not here today but I do have her education report so it says last week special Area Teachers in music art PE gifted and
talented intervention ES media and Spanish collaborated with their Riveredge counterparts in professional learning the district hosted Tommy Thompson from Corin to continue our year-long PLC on the teacher Clary Playbook focusing on learning intentions
and success criteria our chronic absenteeism is currently at 11% for the year down 15% in two years remember 18 absences for the year is considered chronically absent by the NJ Department of Education
great um all right we now open up to Mr Benelli for finance uh we met last week we discussed the budget and the projects for the summer pretty much everything that great thank you Mr Mee for policy yes the policy committee did not me this
mon okay Mrs Patel for transportation oh we did not have a meet this meeting this month up right and then we didn't have have a meeting for expansion and Mr Gomez provided the um updated uh date for uh the new building for
bid uh Mr vorc for the bur aison report okay Mr fos for the rval park Le aison report um Richville park has a meeting tomorrow to um review the preliminary budget and we've also had a few meetings um with the superintendent
there to um review the budget in advance questions and going process to that that's all I have for today great thank you and Mr Canan for njsba delegate report uh the buron county SBA is going to have a meeting April 4th we'll have
something to update in great thank you we'll now open it up for public comment on agenda items we'll now take a block vote on F10 to F14 do2 24 to D40 p23 to p24 fa2 C4 and
C5 and P3 do I have a motion second second he Mr belli yes Mr RI yes Mr fos yes Mr pan yes Mr mey yes Mr vorac yes T
yes Mrs Bradley yes all motions pass great we'll now open it up to public comment on non-agenda items do I have a motion to adj motion motion second second