Here. Here. Here. Here. We have an announcement like the term of school. All of them. If anybody would like to join us, we're
happy to have yelled at. Make motion second four four four four four April 10th, 2025. Make a motion.
Second roll call. Mr. Four. Mr. Four. Mr. Russo. Four. Miss. Four. Mr. Petia. Four. Dr. Four. Miss Stella. Four. And Mr. Four. As always, we're always happy to have
our student representative report uh our good friend Drew Bank. Thank you. Good evening to all and thank you for joining us here tonight. The World Language Honor Society induction took place on April 3rd with 41 new members being inducted, 34 into the National
Spanish Honor Society and seven into the National Italian Honors Society, respectively. The annual Lynhurst High School spring concert took place on April 16th at 7 p.m. on the middle school stage. Snacks and beverages were sold during intermission by members of the Lynhurst Music Association. Congrats to all who performed. The spring poetry
slam took place on April 18th during the first half of the single session day. The slam was led by journalism and English to honors teacher Miss Pastor and English supervisor Miss Klein and included 33 poets and 11 featured photographers. During the second half of the day, a pep rally was held outside commemorating the winter and spring
sports. The event recognized the accomplish the accomplishments of the winter sports teams while encouraging students to support the current spring sports teams. Looking forward next week, the annual academic awards dinner will be held on May 5th at the Fiesta and will include guest speaker Dr. FA O.
This concludes my report. Thank you. uh state auditors report. Yes, I have reviewed the financial reports for the month ending of March 2025 and support tonight's resolution that certifies that there are sufficient funds available based on the March
financials to meet the district's financial obligations for the remainder of the 2024 2025 school year. I have also reviewed and discussed the resolutions on tonight's agenda with Mr. D Corso and support his recommendations to the board that they approve all of
the resolutions on tonight's agenda. That concludes my report for this evening. Thank you. U as far as my report um I don't have one uh specific agenda just to I always want to thank um the public when they come out. We do appreciate you being
here for whatever reason and particularly when we celebrate students. I say this every time we do this. Um um this job comes with challenges, but it also comes with incredible opportunity to hopefully mold and shape our district to to greater heights. And when we honor
students, this is the high. This is this is what it's all about. So, we really appreciate everyone being here. I'll now turn it over to the superintendence report, Mr. Dorso. Thank you, Dr. Scardino. Um I too love honoring um and highlighting our students uh successes
because we have students that excel in so many different areas. So um we have some recognitions to do tonight which I'm going to do um with some of our uh faculty. But before I do I just want to review a couple of items um and just mention um sometimes when we have um our
students recognized um they don't want to stay for the whole meeting. Please know you're more than welcome to stay for the entire meeting and go through board business. But after we give the last student awards, if um you did want to um step away, that would be the time to do it because then we'll get into
official board business. I just like to say that. Um so before we do the awards, I just want to remind everyone that the district will be closed May 22nd, 23rd, and 27th. Um that is because we did not use all of our snow days. We didn't use any snow days actually. And so we have three days to give back. Um, so we
always typically give them back um around the Memorial Day weekend and we're doing that again. So, just wanted to remind everyone of that. And then I also just wanted to mention that um we originally had scheduled uh tonight a budget hearing and so um unfortunately
to no fault of ours um the state recommended that we push our budget hearing to May 6th because we're still waiting on some news um from the state and and and approvals. So without getting those approvals, we can't formally approve our budget. So um if
you came tonight to hear the budget hearing, I did put out an email to the entire district explaining that we are still waiting for that state approval before we can officially um go through our budget. So if you're interested in hearing um our budget or you came tonight and you didn't get the email, I
apologize, but Tuesday, May 6th, next Tuesday, we're going to have our budget hearing at 6 p.m. um myself and Mr. Heyman will go through our entire um 20 2526 um budget. And so um if you came again to speak to that um if you did
want to uh speak to that, you still can. That since it's no longer an agenda item, you would have to sign up for non-aggenda items um in our book if you want to speak tonight. So um barring that, I'm going to step down and um we're going to recognize some of our students. Okay? So give me one second.
Thank you. Okay. Um, I'm going to start by calling two of our high school faculty members up. Uh, Mr. Mark Petraulo and, uh, Miss Maru, who are going to present an award to one of our students.
[Applause] Good evening everyone. Um, thank you so much um for allowing us this opportunity to present this award. Um, I know this has been a collaboration between um, the high school and the Lynhurst Public
Library. I just want to say thank you to Donna Romeo, the Lynhurst Public Library director. Um, we also have one of our board members, Francine Develis here. Um and also up on the stage or right on this uh front here we have Mr. Mark Petraulo. Without his help, we wouldn't have been able to do this logo contest
at all. Um so we are happy to present this award to Aiden Meyer. Um Aiden, we are congratulating you for winning the logo contest with the Lhurst Public Library and we are very proud of all the work you've done. Um you put so much work into that that logo. Uh and we're
very very happy to be presenting this to you tonight. Um, so if you want to come up and grab your award for something and Aiden and I got you a little sketchbook to uh create your your next great design and many more to come.
Thank you. Thank you very much. So that's a tremendous honor because that logo now will be the official um logo of the library and I know there was a lot of submissions. So congratulations Aiden. I would next like to honor some of our our choir students. It always impresses
me how well um our musically inclined students do outside of Lynhurst. Um whether it be um throughout the county or throughout the state. Um our students um particularly um with our with our coral program, but also our instrumental always do well um throughout the state
and county. And so, um, I have some students that I would re to recognize tonight, um, for the region choir, intermediate region choir. So, I'll call each student up if you want. Um, you can come and and line up and then you can come down and take pictures. I'm going to start with
Jade, Maryanne, Giana. Huh? [Applause] Fanta, Maline Morales, [Applause] Maline
Schwarzer. Close. No. And Aubrey. [Applause] So, if you want to come down and take pictures, you're more than welcome. [Applause]
Thank you so much uh for coming out and congratulations again to all of our students. You're welcome. So there's none, right? So I can announce that there's none. Yeah. No one. So our next uh item is uh public to be
heard on on agenda items only. We don't have anybody down for that. So, I'm going to open up to the uh board discussion and formal business agenda. Finance, right? Pursuant to the recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the committee on finance
recommends the following resolutions be moved forward for a roll call vote. I make a motion to move forward finance resolutions 1 through 14 to be adopted. Roll call, Miss uh sorry, roll call. Mr. Mr. Bate four Mr. Andronopoulos four Mr.
Garuso four Miss Pamano four Mr. Petranzio four Dr. Scardino four Miss Stella four and Mr. Valvano. Motion carries. Education and curriculum is pass a matter. Pursuant to the recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the committee on education and
curriculum recommends the following resolutions be moved forward for a roll call vote. I make a motion to move forward. Education and curriculum resolutions 1 through six to be seven to be adopted. Second.
Roll call. Mr. Abate. Second four. Mr. Andronopoulos four. Mr. Garuso four. Miss Pasamano four. Mr. Petranzio four. Dr. Scardino four. Miss Stella four. And Mr. Valano four. Motion carries.
Policies and rules and regulations. Miss Stella. Pursuant to the recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the committee on policies and rules and regulations recommends the following resolutions be moved forward for roll call vote. I make a motion to move forward policies and rules and
regulations one through three to be adopted. Second. Sorry, who was the second? Thank you. Roll call. Mr. Bate, four. Mr. Andronopoulos, four. Mr. Garuso, four.
Miss Pasamano, four. Mr. Petranzio, four. Dr. Scardino, four. Miss Stella, four. And Mr. Valvano, four. Motion carries. Athletics and student activities. Mr. Passimano is not here, so I'll do it. Pursuant of the recommendation of the superintendent of
schools. The committee on athletics and student activities recommends the following resolutions to be moved forward for a roll call vote. I make a motion to move forward athletic and student activity resolution one. Second. Second. Mr. Abate.
Roll call. Mr. Abate. Four. Mr. Andronopoulos. Four. Mr. Garuso. Four. Miss Pasamano four. Mr. Petranzia four. Dr. Scardino four. Miss Stella four. And Mr. Valvano four. Motion carries.
Personnel. Personnel. Mr. Valano. Pursuant to the recommendations of the superintendent of schools. The committee on personnel recommends the following resolutions be made forward. Uh move forward for a roll call vote. I make a motion to move forward personnel
resolutions A through I'm sorry M. Second second Chris Mr. Roll call Mr. Abate four Mr. Andronopoulos four Mr. Garuso four Miss Pasamano four Mr. Petronio four Dr.
Scardino four Miss Stella four and Mr. I vote yes on everything but no on number five. Number five. I don't believe that we should be cutting any staff. Everything but Okay. Uh motion carries.
Uh non-aggenda. Okay. We're going to do non-aggendum items. Daniel Prada. Daniel Prada. pull down button. I don't know. I got it. Um, the question I have is this.
Last meeting you voted on proposing to the state of New Jersey, which you just said you're going to do it on May 6th. Um, you asked for $7 million. Why did you ask for $7 million? Number one. Number two, the township and
the taxpayers built the school you're sitting in right now. Okay, which put a tax burden on every one of the taxpayers in this town. Okay, we all were just reassessed. So, we're going up again. So, if you do your $7 million that you want to get and Phil Murphy decides to
give it to you, it's going to be a $1,500 increase on every house. Okay? There's people in this town that are all elderly and have time making ends meet. It's hard for them. How could the school board, every one of you, vote to ask for
$7 million? Who? That's the audacity of you to even do that. I can't believe that you would actually do that. Stop spending. That's what it comes down to. Stop spending and start if you want to start getting rid of
people. I'm very proud of you, Michael, that you didn't want to lay anybody off. About time somebody stepped up. Stop laying people off. They're teachers. We need them in all that stuff. Number one. And number two, and if you are going to lay off, do we need other assistance in
all this stuff? That's crap. Mr. Demikoff, I'm making an appeal to you because the the board made an appeal to the state for seven million. I, as a taxpayer, am making an appeal to you. I want a full state takeover of the
winners board of education. I want Phil Murphy to come in here and take over the whole board and over the whole school system and get this town ready and moving and in the right position and ways of going. It's disgusting. It's disgusting. your audacity to ask for $7
million on top after you just got a school and and they even gave you $1.2 million for your football field. The taxpayers paid for that. So, um public uh the public portion of the meeting is really a comment and not
meant for dialogue back and forth. But with that, I'll I'll address some of the points that that Mr. uh Prada brought up. So just to explain the tax levy incentive program. Um so the state of New Jersey um we submit our annual budgets to the
state of New Jersey and um with that the state also gives us um state aid money. Okay. So a lot of our budget is contingent upon state aid money. Okay. We we get around a little over $5 million in state aid. After we submitted
um or right before we uh submitted our budget, I should say, we got figures back that the state cut our aid. Okay. Um they cut our aid roughly $180,000. We would have gotten cut over close to a million dollars in state aid.
We did not because the state capped the reductions at 3%. Okay? And so the reason the state capped um or the reason they reduced our aid is because they said that our township tax levy verse assess values
are not at adequacy. And what that means is our tax levy is based on $44 million here in Lynhurst. Like Mr. Parata said over the last several years the property values in Lynhurst have soared which is a good thing for the community. The
properties and values in Lynhurst are almost $60 million. There's a discrepancy of about $12.9 million where our tax levy is $12.9 million off of our assessed values. The state is going to
continue to cut our aid until we fix the problem. Okay? So that means if the state did not put a 3% cap on its cut to us this year, we would have lost almost a million dollars. And I agree with you, Mr. Prada. We do not want to raise taxes in this town.
But please note, and everyone should realize this board could have applied for $12.9 million. We are underfunded by $12.9 million. Okay? We lost aid because of it and we're going to continue to lose aid because of it. So the state
came up with this tax levy incentive program in order to be responsible to the taxpayer in this town. Okay? We only applied for 7.3. One of the reasons we can't have the budget hearing tonight is we submitted a modified application. We have not heard back from the state of
what they're going to finally accept. Okay. Um you mentioned the middle school. The township built us a beautiful building, but unfortunately with operating when they when we when the township handed over the building, no one budgeted for operating costs. So
when this middle school was open, we had to add seven custodians. Okay, seven custodians due to the square footage of this building. That was not part of the plan. We had to add teachers when we opened this middle school. That was not accounted for. Those all those
things hit our budget. Okay. So, it's been difficult to balance the budget. I'll note that the district last year for this current year cut seven faculty. But you're right, Mr. Prada. We can't have it both ways. We can't not cut faculty and not raise costs. Our tax
levies are capped in this state at 2% which really was what led to the widening of this gap. There's a lot of people that are pointing fingers. There's really no fingers to be to be pointed here. If a state caps a budget at a 2% increase and property values are
rating at or raising at 5x or 6x, the the discrepancy just continues to widen and the state will not fund us until we correct that. So that is the reason for that. But this district has been suffering the last several years. The last thing this board and I want to do
is cut faculty for this current year budget. We cut se for seven facult seven faculty which is raising class size numbers in this district. For this next year's budget there's more proposed faculty cuts because we're trying to do the right thing and balance the budget.
And you're right, Mr. Prada, we hadn't had a football field. I was superintendent for a few months and I was presented with a 10-ft gaping hole in our turf that was not prepared for. So, what was I going to do? Have students play on a field with a 10-foot gap and no money in capital reserve to
repair the field? So, you're right. The town did us a tremendous favor and they bonded that money for us because we did not have $1.2 million to fix the field. So, I thank the town for that. But, and we we finance so the town financed that bond and we pay the town back for that bond. we could never have replaced that
field. So the the the this board was faced with bond the money with for the township or close the high school football field. So I understand your frustration and this board is fr frustrated as well. But unfortunately the state has backed us into a corner and we will not get more state aid until
we fix the problem. And this board could have went out for 12.9 million. And there's many districts if you Google it, Google tax levy incentive program. There's districts that are raising their tax levy 30 and 35%. We're looking to be under 10%. And
Mr. Prada, I believe your figures are are very wrong because um we ran our numbers and they're nowhere near a $1,500 increase. So So that's inaccurate as well. And so those are just some of the things that this board has been faced with and we're doing everything in our power to correct them. But the
district is still behind. We've we've replaced boilers in many of the the buildings. We still need to replace the high school boilers. million dollars for high school boilers. The roof at the high school is leaking currently in parts of the building. We don't have the money to fix and repair that. Okay. Over
the auditorium. We're lucky it's in an area where students really don't access and we can close. Okay. Jefferson windows. I can go on and on about upgrades that we have in with this money. So, this money is going to go directly back into our district, directly back into our students, and
directly back into programs. And we're with you, Mr. Prada. do not want to raise taxes in this town. But unfortunately, I believe, and I don't want to talk out of turn, but the state really did this on purpose in a way to try to fix the 2% cap levy that's been around for quite some time. So, think
about it, okay? It's basic math, okay? How can we raise our budget 2% a year when health insurance is going up 18%. Electricity next year estimates 19%. So you tell me how this board and how we
can balance a budget with almost 20% increases at a 2% increase. The math doesn't work. And so this is the opportunity. And this this is not a back and forth. Okay. But I answered your question. And so well, why don't you regionalize then? But the problem is is
North Arlington and Rutherford have blue ribbons. Public comments. It's not a back and forth. This is just a ability to express comments. I Okay. Well, then I suggested Liners possibly regionalize the North, but guess what? They don't want us because we got a stigma against
us. That's that's that's a suggestion and we'll take that into account. Thank you for your comment. I don't believe we have any other public comment. Thank you. Uh, can you first please come down to the mic just we need your name on the record for the comments please and to
sign in. Thank you. We know who you are. So we could put um Tracy Corin down. I heard your question officially so I could respond. You don't have to repeat it. Um, so, um, the answer to that is yes. Um, I don't want to speak for the town, but we did have conversations with
the town, and I I'll just I'll leave it at that. We have had conversations with the town um on two different occasions. Um, so Tracy, as you know, right? So, things get out and and then they they continue
to move. It's hard to comment on things that we're not really sure what's going to happen. And just for clarity and I want to for the board and and it's not I'm not trying to make excuses but all this sort of was pushed upon us in a very short window as you know at that first meeting that we had and so I think
the diligence is there. I think the compromises are there as far as I see. So uh the hope is that when we talk about the budget next week and whatever number because we don't know we we have an idea. We we hope and I will just tell you that the team in the district has done a great job breaking down at each
point what each tax ramification would be and how much it is and it's and it and I will say a lot of people on the board have you're torn with this right we're taxpayers too but our charge not is not that it's not to the taxpayer but
our primary charge is to the children and the school district and anything we could do to make it better is our charge and that's the hope that we can That's let's hope that conversation next week goes in that direction. Thank you.
Motion to adjurnn. Oh, new business. New business. That's right. I'm sorry. New business.