Good evening everyone and welcome to the Tuesday March 24th 2026 McGomery Township Board of Education meeting statement of open meeting and public participation. Pursuant to the Open Public Meeting Act, chapter 231 PL1
1975, adequate notice as defined by section 3D of chapter 231 PL1975 has been made by regular mail or email on the 11th day of January 2026 from the board of education offices maintained at 1014 Route 601 Skilman, New Jersey to
the following. The Courier News, McGomery News, McGomery Township Clerk, and the Rocky Hill Burough Clerk. The board reserves the right to enter into executive session during all meetings of the board of education. It is the school board's intention to conclude this meeting no later than 9:00 p.m. Roll
call, please. Mr. Taliano. >> Dr. Wang >> here. >> Present. Misspina >> present. >> Frank Herman >> present. >> Warland >> here. >> Sarris >> here. >> Present. >> Snor here. >> Mr. T >> here. Thank you. Thank you. Please rise
as we sw the flag. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> We'll now have the superintendent report
and presentation. >> Good evening everyone. Our Montgomery High School Science Olympiad team won their third consecutive state championship and has earned and has earned a place in the competition this May in Los Angeles.
This marks our fourth state championship in 5 years and our program's 13th state championship. Congratulations. Excellence takes many forms and this past weekend it took the stage. We could not be prouder of our incredible MHS
cast, dedicated crew, talented pit orchestra, and outstanding staff who brought Mean Girls to life in such a powerful and joyful way. Upper Middle School is officially in mission transition mode. Last week, sixth grade students towards met with
Mr. Cardi and Miss Moore and were able to ask questions to the student council officers. The transition continued to parent information night. We hope that all families and students feel supported and excited to join the community. Spring sports are here. Students are have completed their tryyouts, filled
out their teams, and they're ready for a great season. Thank you to the grounds crew for ensuring our fields are ready for student athletes. During ReadAcross America, Village Elementary School had the biggest collection of cereal box dominoes yet. Thanks to the incredible generosity of
the school community, they collected 677 boxes of cereal for the food bank network of Somerset County, making a difference in the lives of others. They also enjoyed hosting a number of very special guest readers from throughout the community and thanks thanks to the coordination of the MTA. In early March,
the young musicians in the Village Bands and Orchestra took the stage at the Empact for the first time this year and did an amazing job. Village is proud of the impressive music in our schools month concerts and under the direction of the instrumental music teachers and their rehearsal assistants. We
appreciate their guidance, leadership, and dedication. We have a lot of presentations tonight. We're going to start with a second. Mr. Delgado is here. He has a bunch of presentations. We're going to start with
the National Merit Scholar Finalist Student Recognition. >> Okay. I didn't know that was the order we're going in. Oh. >> Uh Adele, do you have the portrait of a graduate slide deck? >> Do you want to start there?
>> If I could Well, uh I can start here is fine only because I have my National Merit Scholars on the last slide of this deck. So, we can we can do this. >> Nope. We're going to start with the fortune of a graduate. Listen, this is how we we pivot. We adapt.
>> We go. Okay. Um Okay. So, portrait of a graduate merit scholars. You're going to want to hear this anyway. You're part of of contributing to this. You'll you'll I think you'll enjoy it. So, it's worth you sticking around for the extra 10 minutes and then we'll get to them
because they are clearly the stars of the show. So, we are going to take a look um at this is our annual portrait of a graduate presentation. It's a little bit of a lagging uh the data is a little lagging because this is the class
of 2025 that we're looking at. Okay. The data that we collect comes from college board. It comes from um Naviance and it comes from Genesis and basically we're going to just take a look at the academic performances the academic
performance as per standardized tests and uh college metriculation. We'll also take a little bit look at some college trends and if we could advance to the next slide. Here we go. So this is a little snapshot of the
class of 2025. There were 420 graduates. 92% of the graduates went on to continue their education. 86 of the 92% 86% of the 92% went on to four-year colleges.
and we went to many different colleges. Do you want to play a game? Let's see. Let's start with a game. How many different colleges is the Montgomery High School class of 2025 currently sitting in? So, I have a prize
for it if either the closest or if you get it. Okay. How many different colleges did the class of 2025 go to? >> Andrew, you're a numbers guy. Let's see where you come up with. Let's start over here. Dr. When you want to start, >> how many? >> 150. >> 150.
>> Half of that number. >> 75. >> 122. >> 122. Interesting. It's like the price is right. Okay. Cookie, what do you think? >> 55. >> 55. >> $1. No, it's
>> 68. >> 68. Okay. Remember, um, so we have about 400 students on these colleges. So 122 58. Go ahead. Andrew, you want to play? I know you want to play. >> 68. >> 68. Okay, Adele, you in? >> Patrick and Andrew stole my number. So
let's just say 7. >> That was one >> 71. Okay. >> 67. That mean >> 67. >> Wow. >> And that would have been 67. That would have had the whole thing. >> Let's keep going. Christina got it.
>> 72. We're all in that area. >> Uh 125. >> One. She gets the She gets the exactly 125 Exactly. That's crazy. Exactly 125 different
colleges and universities. Our class of 2020 25. So, and it's really impressive. We're that this class is a little bit more spread out than typical. I have to move this. This is really interesting. Okay. >> Gorgeous. Am I going to mess you up?
Just real quick that is >> you said that's atypical like around how many? >> That's a bigger spread than than typical. Yeah, we've been like under 100. So 125, you know, and we're always studying the trends. We're always interested in like the where and the why. So that was something that was uh
was of interest and we we'll keep an eye on that. Um okay, so let's keep it moving. This is an interesting slide. I'm going to let that sit there for a minute. I'm not going to read to you each of those rows and columns, but take a look. That gives you uh just an overall snapshot of
what we're going to unpack over the next seven or eight minutes. >> I will bring your attention to where I have highlighted there. So, you know, the top half of the table is really about our academic achievement. The bottom half gets a little bit more into
the college game. But take a look at the number of college applications submitted by the class of 2025. Over 5,000 applications submitted. We've had a an application explosion going on, not just at Montgomery High School, but across the country. >> Just a quick question. So students that
use the Common App, are the colleges are those considered separate applications within the Common App? >> Yes. >> Yes. >> One more question. >> Yep. >> Pre2020, what what did those numbers look like? Were they still are sitting around 10 to 12.
>> You mean per student? >> Our students, you know, this a good I don't know, but it has gradually increased. I could go back and take a look before. Um, but we can explain the why and I'll get to that in a little bit, right? We we can talk about the why. So, um,
I'm going to keep it moving. Again, we'll we'll come all these things we'll unpack starting here. So, many of our students look to challenge themselves in AP courses. We offer 22 AP courses at Montgomery High School. Uh here's a list of the 22 courses that
we offer. Most of the students who enroll in the AP courses will sit for the AP exam in the in the spring. We actually gave almost 1,600 exams last year to over 600
students. 231 seniors took EP exams last year. That's a tremendous amount of exams administered. And we only administer exams to Montgomery High School students who are enrolled in the course at Montgomery High School. You can imagine if we open the doors beyond
that, right? We'd be a full-time testing center. So, we're really proud, not just that they're challenging themselves, but we're proud at how well they're doing. So here's a a look at um uh if you see the green bar is Montgomery High School, yellow is how we is the state and then
the AP tests are global. These are international exams. Uh so you can see how Montgomery High School does compared to the state and beyond. Most colleges are looking for students to score a five or a four in order to
give them uh college credit. Some will accept threes. That's why you see the top of the bar graph here as a five. That's a perfect score. Our most popular exams given are calc BC
micro and macro. Uh biology too is a very popular exam. So really proud of how well we're doing. Uh, keeping it with testing, let's go to the more uh, popular of the college readiness tests. Many of our students will take
the SAT. I'm looking at my numbers here. I think we had 361 seniors take the SAT. So, out of 420. Again, that's an interesting number that has changed a little bit probably because of the test optional
schools that are out there. So many of them are remaining test optional, but for those of you not familiar, uh, perfect score is 1,600. Here's how Montgomery High School seniors, class of 2025, did compared to the state in the world. Uh, you can see it's impressive.
We are about 300 points better than uh, New Jersey and New Jersey students do extremely well. So, they rank among the top in our country and we rank among the top in our state. So that's awesome.
Here's a a five-year look back just to show you a little trend. So we we've stayed consistently high. We have a slight increase from last year. It's always wonderful. Moving over to the less popular ACT, we had about 50 students take the ACT
uh compared to 360 taking the SAT. But both both uh both tests are readily accepted by all colleges and universities. Few different reasons why students might choose one over the other. Many of our students will sample both in the
practice versions and then land on the one that they are more comfortable taking. Here's how we did. Again, impressive. I was not able to make this bar graph go up to um 36, which is so this is deceiving. It looks like we're
topping out there. It actually should go as high as 36, but um I just couldn't make it look nice. So again, you'll see the green bar is Montgomery High School. Really proud of how well the kids did on uh the standardized tests.
Here's a 5-year look back. Okay, let's get back into the college game a little bit. So, college applications, uh, it has exploded. We still recommend that our students apply to 7 7 to 10 as a sweet spot. They
pretty much ignore us. Um, and that's okay. Like, we don't blame anybody. You want to do more applications, that's fine. It has be the truth is it it the acceptance just has become unpredictable, you know, so to apply to more is is absolutely fine. But we we
give a recipe of around 7 to 10 is what we recommend. You can see most of our students will do 11 to 15. And so what's the why for that? Um I mentioned test optional. So colleges were gradually moving towards being test
optional prior to 2021. In 2021, we were forced to be test optional because students could not physically sit for the exam because of the pandemic. Coming out of the pandemic, schools really liked that holistic mindset of let's not
put constraints on potential uh students by um requiring test scores as entrance criteria. So, we have seen more and more schools, especially the selective schools, go back to test required, but there's still a tremendous amount of
schools out there that we believe are going to stay test optional. They now have, you know, they've been watching now for four years. They see the students who they've accepted without test scores and they know they have other predictors of success for for for schools. So, we're happy that many of
them are staying test optional. But that's one of the reasons why students are feeling more comfortable applying to more schools, right? They have confidence because they're not limited by an SAT that they might get in. And then as Patrick said, the common app almost all the colleges now have adopted
common app. So for those two reasons, we just we've seen an application explosion and that but that you know there's a inverse effect, right? So you see an application increase, you see an acceptance decrease, right? So it has become more competitive for those reasons. So where are those applications
going? Here's the top 15 schools that Montgomery High School class of 2025 applied to. Um we are seeing more New Jersey schools getting Last year I showed you a top 20 list. This year's top 20 list didn't look so good. The the
16 through 20 was like two kids. So, it just was I limited it to 15 here. Um, Penn State is highlighted for a couple of reasons. One, we that we are seeing kids apply to Penn State more than we ever have. So, there's something there. They're not necessarily attending.
They're getting accepted. If you follow across Penn State, right, 167 applied, 97 accepted. That's a 58% acceptance rate. That's amazing. Penn State has something like a 50% acceptance rate. So for us to be uh as an outofstate school
at 58% accepted is really awesome. So they love the Montgomery High School kid. We love applying. We just don't necessarily go. Only nine of us went. So um and colleges care about yield, right? We care about where they're applying and where they're going. Schools care about
you. They look at that. They don't want to give out acceptances and not have you enroll. So they watch those things. But uh just an interesting trend. Um, you'll see NJIT made the list this year and the College of New Jersey keeps climbing.
So, we think geography matters more than ever for students. Return on investment, cost of tuition, those things are mattering more than they did maybe 5 or 10 years ago. Uh, and of course, Ruckers is Ruckers. So, you see we had almost 300 kids apply to Ruckers. And our acceptance rate is pretty good there.
Just a couple years ago, we were having 70s something% of our kids accepted to Ruckers. Again, they went common app in test optional, so the acceptance rate dropped a little bit, but we're par with the Ruckers acceptance rate at 54%. So, that's where we're applying. Here's
where we're going. This is the top 15 schools out of the 125 that were actually attending. Those that are highlighted did not make this list. Same with Penn State. Penn State is
highlighted because it's not it's one of the top it's the top it's the number two school we're applying to but it doesn't even make the top 15 for schools we're actually attending. So, uh from a percentage standpoint. So, um
I'm sorry it does make the top 15. I think it Yes, I had that wrong scratch. It does make the top 15. it was highlighted for a different reason, but Rarity Valley, Indiana, Rowan, um not in the top 15 applied to, but in the
top 15 that we're going to. A little bit about Ruckers cuz Ruckers is kind of our home away from home. It's been really interesting to watch what happens there. Um we are seeing students who we thought would have been home run candidates a couple of years ago get weightlisted. And again, that that becomes part of the
yield, right? like they're being a little bit more strategic in who they're accepting sometimes. They had over 70,000 applicants uh just New Brunswick and their freshman class will be about 10,000. They might say yes to 25,000
hoping that they enroll 10,000. So that is an ex that's that's a boom. Ruckers across their three campuses across the state almost a quarter of a million applicants. Incredible. um
remains test optional average SAT score at Ruckers now is approaching 1500. It's interesting what's going on. Here's some other trends that we're seeing. I'm going to bring your attention. Start from the bottom. Increases in cost of attendance. We are
seeing private schools now upwards of $90,000. We're seeing an increase in interest for top state schools outside of New Jersey, specifically in the South and Southwest. They are still costefficient and I think
they get a lot of airplay. Um, so there's a, you know, there's a a decent price tag for a shiny brand when you go south southwest. Again, we talk about what the application competition and the test
option. We are hoping to see more and more schools decide firmly that they are going to stay test optional. All the IVs have gone back except Colombia. Colombia remains test optional. And I don't list it here, but we had six students out of
the class of 2025 attending schools. Uh some couple interesting things happening at Montgomery High School related. So we are continuing to scale up our concurrent enrollment program. So we had a very soft start two years ago. We partnered with Satan Hall. We found
them to be of the most credible transcripts out there. So we wanted to make sure that our kids had a good chance of their um concurrent enrollment credit being accepted at whatever college they land on in. And so Satan Hall seemed to be a really good bang for
the buck for a lot of reasons. We're excited to be partnering with them. Currently running six courses. In year one, we had less than 10. I think we had exactly 10 students that uh decided to um enroll for concurrent enrollment credit.
50 students this year. And so now we're going full steam ahead. We wanted to really feel like what does this mean for a teacher? Is there an extra, you know, what does this mean for the school? Are the costs re is there hidden costs? Like what's happening? This is at no cost to the district. students pay about $110 a
credit. Most of the their courses are three credit courses as far as Satan Hall's concerned. And concurrent enrollment means they're sitting in their Montgomery High School class getting college credit. They don't have to sit in on the college campus to earn the dual credit. So, we talk about dual
enrollment and concurrent enrollment. Dual enrollment usually refers to I'm at Raridan Valley taking the class or I'm on the Rucker campus taking the class earning high school credit at the same time. We are going with concurrent enrollment which means they sit in their
English 11 and have an opportunity to um uh earn college credit. They have to get a B or an A and it's only juniors and seniors are eligible and it's advanced level courses only. So at the end of
this at the end of this if after they're so let's say you're a junior and you're taking English 11 honors and then you go into 12 honors and let's say you also took Cal honors at the end of this you graduate and you
write to Satan Hall and ask for your transcript and you will have a nine credit transcript from Satan Hall that might be transferable likely >> right because of the fact that it is such a >> over 250 universities accepted. Y >> so that is amazing and I think it's
great that it's taking off >> and it's a fraction of the cost. Right. So to make this program worthwhile, we want to have a robust enough list of offerings so that you can earn 12 credits before you go. You can get some of those electives out of the way. You can concentrate on your major
faster. There's a whole there's many benefits to it. Um so we'll we'll we'll see. We're going to the list continues to grow. There's there's requirements. there's curricular requirements and the instructors have to meet certain requirements in order for us to um be
able to um promote the class for concurrent enrollment. So I'm very grateful for the for the teachers who were the early adopters and were our pilot teachers and they're spread. >> Sure. >> So is that more like a virtual learning or the lectures come here on Saturday?
No, it's the Montgomery High School teacher >> who Satan Hall certifies as a concurrent enrollment instructor. We teach our English 11 honors curriculum to the students. Any student in that course has the opportunity to enroll for concurrent
enrollment directly with Satan Hall. So they would pay about $330 and then they could earn the college credit along the way. Our teacher teaches our curriculum. They have deemed our curriculum worthy of college credit. and our instructor worthy of whatever
credentials they're looking for. The career exploration piece is important too because not all of our students are going off to four-year colleges and even those that are going off to colleges need to go with career goals like they just do. So the career goal can change but they're more likely to have success
in college with a career goal and we know many of our students are going right into career and finding success. So this year we started a sophomore seminar where we talk a lot about um uh they do different uh personality surveys
and we try to get them thinking about what they're interested in. We talk to them about uh different um paths that can be taken. We talk to them about the the careers that are trending and uh then we offer these lunch and learn series which you've heard about a couple
times here too. So, we've had, I think, about 20 different guest professionals come in this year. Uh, during the unit lunch, kids can sign up if it's a um profession that they're interested in learning more about and we have some pizza and they get to hear from a real live person in the field about the path
they took to get there, a day in the life, all those things. This week, we are dedicated to the trades. So, we have two different trades coming in to talk to the students who are interested in that. Okay. Now, let's get to our friends, our National Merit Scholars, because they
are so impressive. Um, for those of you not familiar with the National Merit Scholarship Program, it is an annual. It is highly prestigious. Um, and it is very competitive. So, uh, it starts with 1.3 million students from over 22,000
schools. Um, and and the contest kicks off with that PSAT in their junior year. That's the initial screening. 50,000 of the 1.3 million are um receive commenation. So just to
receive commenation means you are one of the top scorers of the 1.3 million. So you made it to the 50,000 mark. Of those that are commended, 16,000 become semi- finalists. So now you're starting to talk about like 2% 3%
are your semi- finalists. And it's amazing that a school can have a few students be commended and reach the semi-finalist uh level. However, we were fortunate. We're talking about the class of 2026. You know, I should have shifted the channel in your head. We did not invite
last year's merit scholars to come back. They're already in one of those 125 colleges right now studying, I'm sure. Um this is now the class of 2026 that we're talking about. So, in our class of 2026, we uh we're fortunate, we're
blessed, we have eight finals. So, these are of the top 1%. This is they got down to the top 7,000. And it isn't just about scores. There's a lot of other things that they need to do in order to be eligible, in order to apply. And I'm going to spare you all the details, but
it it's a pretty rigorous process. And we actually have eight, and some of them are here with us. This is just a quick list to show you. We had 11 semi- finalists, 71 commended, which is fantastic. And here's our eight finalists. So maybe what I'll do, yeah,
LET'S um I'm not sure cuz I did not take attendance. But first, let me say parents who are sitting here, good for you. Like congratulations. You don't get to do that. We we're very proud of what we do academically in this district. We're
very proud of our programs, all the things I shared with you, but they don't get to be merit scholar fin merit scholar finalists without awesome families supporting them. So, like we know that the parents play a big role in that. We always appreciate partnering with you. Congratulations. So, these are
our um Do we want to take a picture? Maybe I'll call them up one at a time, but we can do like a group picture. So, if you're here, come on up. Priu, Isa, August, Daniel, Angela, Honor, Truthy, and Viv. Come on. Let's give them.
Um, so you're going to receive a certificate here. I'm going to ask you to hand these out. And I'm wondering if maybe we want to stage a picture. Do we want the whole board behind them? Like, how would you want to do that? What do you think, Jeff? >> We want the whole board in it. >> Yeah, let's do the whole board. How
about it? Why don't the whole board stand in like in this little area here and we'll have the the their names behind us? Yeah. Are you okay with that taking a picture with us? This is like you're going to be super famous running the world one day and we want to be able to like have evidence that we knew you.
>> So, come on. Let's come over here. >> Congratulations. So you you guys are going to stand in the middle and we're going to surround you facing this way. >> Congratulations young people. >> She had two. >> Come on. You made it this far and you
came. >> Okay. If we can't see, if you can't see us, we can't see you. So, people in the back, make sure we can see you. Uh, Cory, you gonna get in there? >> No, I'm good. >> Okay.
>> All right. Look at me. One, two, three. >> Great. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you, merit scholars. We are We are grateful and proud of you. >> And we're looking forward to hearing
what you do next. >> Am I staying or are we doing where are we at? Cory, I have one small >> Okay. Yeah, let's do questions. Sure. Sorry. We're going to pivot real quick. >> Ask your question. >> After questions. Go for it. >> Um, Montgomery has such a robust
athletic department. So, I was just wondering how are the colleges with, uh, sports scholarships nowadays. Do they give any? >> Yeah. So, sports scholarships are hard to come by. They are hard to come by. Our students do much better in the merit world for for scholarship, but I couldn't tell you. I don't have any
numbers on that like how many of our kids go on scholarship to play sports but I can tell you the numbers are humongous for how many are receiving merit money at the next level which is great beast. >> Do you guys keep the record of the scholarship >> I I wonder if I wonder if coach Brundy
does keep that. I I that's not something we keep but that would be really that is interesting to me. >> Yeah, that would be hard. Chris Grundy does a whole ceremony for the kids when we expected when they're going to play in a school signing ceremony. >> The signing days. Yeah, there you go.
>> Yeah. All right. >> Thank you. >> I have two questions for one. The first one is for you the scholarship. I I thought about the honor program. So out of our student, how many how many of them received like honor program scholarship something like that?
>> I don't have that. I would I don't know. That's um so how many of our graduates went on to honors college or scholarships was that information I don't have. We could collect that. So we collect a lot of a lot of our data comes directly from the students in novel. So
sometimes our data is as good as they give it to us and we have some strategies every year to get it better. You guys make sure you fill out your surveys for us so we have we know where they're going. >> Um I wonder if I could add that to the NIO survey. That'd be interesting.
>> I don't think they know. Some of them might note that they're going to honors college. I'll take a look. I'll let you know. >> Wouldn't that depend on the college offering like an honors college program? >> Um I can always >> Well, yeah, cuz I was just thinking not
every school would offer an honors program. >> Well, some similar, you know, scholarship life. They still have like certain program like specific ones too. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Under some physics engineering honors or something like
that. >> Yeah. >> So, we do know what they intend on studying. >> Yeah. >> I didn't add that to this, but that could be interesting. >> In fact, I hope kids apply too for the scholarship. I like, you know, I encourage my kid to like apply to all of it because you
don't know how many are actually applying and the percentage of you, you know, getting a scholarship. So, >> yeah, it's there. Especially, we tell the students the, you know, the the the sticker price is usually not the price. There is there's always packages out
there. So, if you seek it, it's there. Right in Montgomery High School, we're giving out $80,000 this spring to seniors who we had, I think, 120 students apply for our for our local scholarships, which is so we have a lot of work to do to sort through that, but
we'll award close to $80,000 this spring, and we made our application real easy. So like if they put a little bit of effort in it's a laptop that they walk out with 2500 something. >> Uh I have a second question is about uh the early decision. So what are the
common practices school use to protect students from applying to colleges that have informally blacklist the school situations where students may still pay application fee but have little realistic chance of admission. in cases where students withdraw from an early
decision commitment and the college temporarily lose lost trust in those high schools. So how do schools typically managing that impact and what solutions or safeguards can help rebuild that relationship and prevent the future issues?
>> Yeah, it's it is a worry because of how competitive everything is now. So the best we can do is encourage kids to be ethical. If you're applying early decision and you're accepted, go. It's it's an it's we tell them it's like a binding contract,
>> you know. So, it's the best we can do. We we have not experienced uh at least in my time any communication from any college saying this happened and uh we two of your students were accepted early decision and decided not to enroll. So,
now we're going to blacklist the rest of your students. Like that's a nightmare we have, but it has not happened. I don't know that we have safeguards in place other than our college advising includes like be true to it, you know, be true to it. So if it is a school
you're it really truly interested in going to then maybe ED is an option for you. But if it's not and please don't do that. You could definitely harm the rest of your classmates in behind. I have not heard of any cases out there where there this blacklist has really come up to
play. Not that I know what's going on everywhere, but as kids are applying more and more places and the early decision, they do have a better chance of getting accepted. I just do. I just do. So, it's hard to >> Okay. Oh, sorry.
>> I don't have a question, just a comment. That's why I'm happy that our community college enrollment and application has gone up last year. I think it's getting to be a top 15. That's great for, you know, kids who are unsure of where they
want to go and community college is the perfect pathway. >> Yeah. >> Um to jump start, you know, that what is it that I want to do? >> Agreed. Yeah. We we've done we've tried to partner with Radon Valley um for more things just so they can be a name in the
atmosphere of Montgomery High School. Like that's a real viable option. And we happen I happen to know three kids that are going next year. It's not because they don't have other opportunities. They have plenty of opportunities. They just don't know what they want to do yet. So, they're going to go spend a fraction of the money, stay in the
routine of school, and probably end up at some amazing university only paying for two years worth of of college and getting a four-year graduated sophomore now. Truckers like money.
>> Two nephews did the same thing. >> Okay. Thank you. Yeah, Cory, you get a you get a we're going to pivot from you for a quick second and do our student representative report. So before I begin, I would like to reflect on Women's History Month, which
is all of March, celebrating the contributions of women and reflecting on this year's theme, leading the change, women shaping a sustainable future. On March 2nd to March 7th was a senior trip to Disney. Hopefully, I'm awaiting
my senior year to go to Florida. But anyways, March 6th was also the M the PTA 80s dance fundraiser where the community came together for a themed fundraiser supporting special education programs. March 8th was daylight saving time where
clocks moved forward one hour as the spring season began with the winter/spring pep rally on March 10th in a school day pep rally celebrating winter achievements and welcoming the spring season with spring sports. The
MHS PTSA meeting was on March 11th with St. Patrick's Day on March 17th, celebrating St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland who brought Christianity to the country in the fifth century. The NJ GPA testing with 11th
grade students um followed a modified schedule from March 18th to 23rd with the Mean Girls in school preview on March 19th building excitement for upcoming performances that took place later on the 20th to 21st at the Empact
showcasing talent and theater. World Down Syndrome Day um was on March 21st where students and staff were encouraged to participate in Rock Your Socks, raising awareness and showing support. The following events are now
for the rest of the month with rising 9th grade parent night on the 25th, welcoming a transition to high school. Any siblings with any freshman, be on the lookout. But anyways, the international night and seal of biiteracy was is going to take
place on the 26th celebrating diversity and recognition of students achieving biiteracy. Spring break will be on March 31st to April 4th. Fortunately, we do have school on March 30th, but hopefully everyone can catch up on some sleep.
And all of March will be the spring athletic season with spring sports beginning. And events such as the pep rally, the senior trip, and upcoming musical have contributed to strong student participation and school spirit. Lately with the engine GPA testing with
that whole schedule adjustment change, students have noted that importance of clear communication around testing, logistics and expectations have been quite helpful and students have been appreciating international night for celebrating all their hard work in
classes like AP Spanish, AP French. All those classes are really hard. I don't want to take them but yeah to March. >> Thank you. Thank you. Superintendent McLeack to you. >> Patrick, can I make a comments for
actually when Corey talked about past optional, I just want to make comments there. So um so some research really shows for students come from the less advantage group such as first generation or their household income is below the national 50th percentile they really
strongly recommend those student take the test and submit the test scores because it does boost their uh admission opportunity probability. So I just want to share that message out based on not just my research work but also um you know a lot of Ivy League's work why some
of them switch back to uh test uh required policy um because it does benefit the student from less advantage group >> I didn't say that I just So that is fun. But the next report is required. It is the student safety data
system report for the period 1 which is September through December 31st of for the 2526 school year. As part of the New Jersey Department of Education requirement to submit this student safety data system report information, which we call SSDs, I will be reporting
out tonight on report period 1 for the 2526 school year. At Montgomery High School, there were 13 total incidents reported within the categories of physical altercations, theft, and substances. At upper middle school, there were 22 total incidents reported
with most incidents falling under the category of both hib alleged and physical altercation. At lower middle school, there were 21 total incidents reported with the majority reported under the category of HIV alleged. At Village Elementary School, there were 20
total incidents reported, most reported under the category of HIV alleged. And at Orchard Hill Elementary School, there were no incidents reported for period one. This SSDs report kind of goes aligned with Mr. Delgado's next presentation.
>> This one's not going to be very h >> Yep. We're going to keep this one pretty black and white. >> So, uh, I am going to spare this group because I I feel like it was just last month that you had a full board training on this. So, we're going to we're going to skip through all the statutory
definition and get to the things that we need to report out on, which basically is numbers. Before we get to that, these folks are like my heroes. So, our counselors have the some might say unfortunate task of also serving as our
anti-bullying specialists and they are amazing. uh they are able to approach these really complicated situations with empathy and intelligence and they um put a lot of time into getting it right. So
that's their names. Again, I am always super grateful uh for the counselors in this district for a lot of reasons, but the fact that they play um that they serve as the anti-bullying specialists in their respective schools is is a is a big job. So thank you to them. Um period
one was September to December. You can see here we had 49 total incidents investigated with six founded the breakdown in the different schools. Not a big surprise but you know we had
some we had some feisty kids down at village in the beginning of the year. and Miss Lacy and Miss Glover have done a great job of kind of tempering that uh in the second half of the year, but it was it was busy down there for sure.
Um here are the trainings from period 1. Trainings are stafffacing, programs are studentf facing. So trainings, this is typical for us, you know, somewhere between four and eight trainings per school. Uh most of those
trainings will always happen in the first half of the year. So you won't see these numbers for the second half. One of the trainings that I think was especially important for us this year was that group of anti-bullying specialists with Stacy Cherry and Vic La. And uh they did a great job helping
us to refine our practice and interpret things uh with a different lens that we weren't using before. And I think we'll see a difference in the number of investigations in the second half of the year. We probably will not see a big difference
in the number of founded cases, but the number of unfounded investigations we are hoping will decrease. It does not mean we are not addressing conflict. We are absolutely addressing it, but we're getting it in the code of
conduct where it belongs. where we were maybe inappropriately investigating some things as HIV along the way. So, I would imagine our our our founded numbers will stay about the same if we're doing things right, but our number of investigations will probably decrease.
Um, here, so here's some examples of the trainings that happened across the district. Again, these are for staff and administration. Our staff is amazing. They want to get this right. They they ask really good
questions. They error on the side of caution because we all want to protect our most vulnerable kids. I mean, that's just what we want to do. So, I haven't met a teacher who swept one thing under the rug or looked the other way. If it's going to take me an extra 10 minutes cuz I got to write a report, I'll do it.
Let's just make sure the kids are okay. So, you know, big shout out to the staff that usually are the the first ones to know. Um programs. Again, these are for students. So you see we're very busy with our anti-bullying programs in the schools.
Here's an example of some of them. Peer leader outreaches are one worth mentioning. So we have a really vibrant peer leader program at the high school. And what we have learned is that students will, believe it or not, tune out adults every now and then,
especially when we're talking about their social life. and uh but when you put a high school student in front of them, like they're listening. So, our high school peer leaders have done a great job with outreaches in all of our buildings this year.
Um just ending with making sure everyone on this board knows that we train anyone who works in our schools. and make sure they know how to report and where to report a potential incident of harassment, intimidation, and bullying.
I should say when and how. And we have all of this information on our website. We will refer parents there if they want some more information. I'm happy to talk with anybody who has questions beyond that. And thank you for listening. Any questions? >> Yeah. Uh more uh I guess two quick
statements. Um first of all, thank you and your staff for keeping us out of the news. um I don't think you can log on to any uh media site and you don't see something about an HIV or HIV lawsuit. So again, thank you and and Mary and and all the administrators and your staff
for keeping us out of the news. And secondly, I'm glad you kind of touched on that while something may not be an HIV, it can still be a code of conduct with consequences. So I'm glad you did touch. >> Absolutely. >> Okay. Thank you. The next presentation, Mr. Taliano will
join me, is our 2627 proposed tentative budget presentation. Tonight we are presenting the tentative proposed budget for the 2627 school year. Thank you to the board of education.
So we have three district goals that are aligned with our strategic plan. Our first goal is the student experience, student achievement, teaching and learning. As we reported out last month, um we have been working very hard at achieving the goals for this year through our strategic plan update last
month. Our second goal is on communication, community engagement, and outreach. And our third goal is on climate and culture, social emotional learning, cultural sensitivity, health and wellness, and resilience. So now I'll have Mr. Taliana go through
the budget developmental uh development process. I was going to say I'm going to height adjust this for myself. Well, thank you. >> Okay. Good evening everyone. Okay. I'm going to pick up with our budget development process. It's actually, believe it or not, this takes place
right after the school starts. The school year begins in September. Right in October, I send a budget memo out to our budget managers to say start thinking about the next school year. So, the next two slides are just a really a timeline of everything that's involved to get to this point in time tonight.
So, after we send that memo out in December, we get the request back from building principles, directors, supervisors, uh anybody that's responsible for a budget. We evaluate those and in January and February uh we
put together our budget based on all the requests and then we call the budget managers back and we have a further discussion based on the requests to think okay how much of this do we really need? How much of it is new initiatives? How much of it maybe we could kind of
table for another year. we have a little bit more of a serious conversation about the requests because after they come in versus the revenues you have, they never line up. Then hard decisions have to start begin to be discussed and thought about. Fast forward March 10th, we had
our finance committee meeting where our finance facilities committee, they had the first preview of the budget. Little later um in a normal uh school year, March 12th, we received our state aid amounts. That's because we had a new
governor. The new governors usually get an extension to release their budget or state aid as part of the budget. That typically the beginning of the month, but this year it was March 12th. That's why our meeting tonight was pushed back a week to give us time to evaluate the numbers and the final decisions based on
them. Um, fortunately, we received a 3% cut, which was $248,000 at the 11th hour. So that was we're grateful for what we had, but that was quarter of a million dollars worth more hard decisions that we had to figure out without hurting our students. But I
think we did it. That brings us to tonight. That's March 24th. This is our tenative budget adoption. By statute, we need to do this because by Friday the 27th, we have to submit a budget to the executive county superintendent. They review our budget to be sure. They look
for trends, consistencies, be sure all the basics are covered for our students. They do they're basically representative of the Department of Education. They do their due diligence to be sure that we have a responsible budget that we put forward between that time, March 27th and April
28th. That's when our public hearing is for our budget where it'll get finally final adopted. Changes can be made to the budget during this period if something comes up, fines are changed. It can happen. It's not typical. It did
last year, but it's not typical. This is just another timeline of how this kind of went through from March to April. Right here, this here is our total spending per pupil. You probably hear a term all the time called total
cost per pupil. Total cost per pupil is everything that includes instruction, support services, administration, general operating expenses. Total spending per pupil is everything I just mentioned plus transportation costs out of district placement costs, pension
liabilities, and debts. So, it's a broader measure of cost per pupil. As you can see by this slide, um we if you want to kind of compare us to some of the local neighbors like in the area, kind of want to compare, if you want to compare us to Bernards or Princeton, uh
there are other high performing schools similar to us. I think we're better, but we could say that they're high performing too. We're a little more efficient than they are. We'll go to the next slide. This is the cost per pupil. This is the smaller measure that most districts use to kind of compare their
per pupil spending because if you think about it, out of district costs, they vary greatly from school to school. Transportation costs, they vary greatly from school to school. Capital projects and things of that nature, they vary from school to school. So, this really
is just your apples to apples of like your instruction, your administration, and your regular operating expenses. And still if you look at both measures um and if you all look at the number on the right we we stack up against like the
top competitors in the area. So that's something to be proud of. This is just another look at it like in a bar graph and we're third from the right. So to have a top performing district it is going to be a little more expensive than
average. If you look at say the district all the way to the left, they might not support the budget as much as some of the districts to the middle and to the right. At the end of the day, you get what you pay for. This is a top performing district. You heard the
presentation that Mr. Delgado just gave. to get results like that, to have high performing teachers, all the extracurriculars that are a little better than average, there's a little bit of better average cost, but we're still performing better than uh some of the others all the way to the right.
All right, let's get into some of the numbers. So, the number that you see on the top, the 91,62,000, that's um that's the current uh tax levy starting point. So, that's this year's tax levy. The 2% increase on the base, that's worth $1.8 $8 million.
We had budget meetings um with the board members and small breakout groups to kind of present what our challenges are, our big challenges, healthc care this year and how to be have a huge healthcare liability and still retain our key staff members and all our
programs and our excellence. So, if you notice, the budget is built off asking for a healthcare waiver plus the expiring bank cap to come to that total bottom line number. Let me just speak to uh what the healthcare waiver is just a little bit cuz I take for granted that I
know these things for the board and our audience here. The state of New Jersey assumes that whatever was in the budget for the current year, a 2% increase, just like a 2% tax base is permitted, is assumed to be budgeted for. Anything above 2% of the current year's health
care costs, you can ask the taxpayers for an adjustment to cover an exorbitant health care cost for the simple reason you give your board of education the option. Do you want to pay additional funds to cover this contractual
obligation to staff members or the other the other choice is you still have to pay for the cost but if you don't utilize something like a healthcare waiver then the money would have to come from programs instruction and staffing costs. So you still have to pay the bill. So if you consider the healthcare
waiver you pay the obligation and you try to have minimal to no impact to your students and programs. If you don't, you still have to pay the bill, but you're going to have to really, it's a large number, $4 million. There's only so many supplies that if you cut from the
budget, and we'll show that in a slide later. You have to think about staffing decisions if you don't go for the extra money. So, that's a little bit of an explanation of what these numbers mean and what goes into them. This is just another way to look at the revenue sources. Your general fund revenue,
which is your tax levy, and other anticipated revenue sources such as like your miscellaneous revenue, interest, things of that nature. Special revenue are your state and federal grants. Debt service is your loan. Your loans typically go down. Fortunately, the
taxpayers are getting a break. The loan's going down a million dollars, which is good. Um, so you can see the total recommended budget is actually going up 5%. If you look around this county right here, Somerset County, is probably one of the top two performing
counties in New Jersey. New Jersey is probably one of the top two performing states like in the nation. Um, most of the districts you'll see, I don't want to speak for all of them, they're going up in this neighborhood because they got delivered the same healthcare increase that we did, but they also value their
programs and their performance as much as we do. So, this isn't something that is unique to us. This is a county, state, and nationwide challenge that we're faced with. Another way to look at the numbers based on the healthcare waiver and the
expiring bank cap at a 2% tax increase that would be a total tax increase of 6.37%. As you can see the loan went down so that's at minus 17% which is good mentioned earlier the state aid unfortunately went down 3% and the other accounts are reserve accounts which
don't affect the tax levy. These are just other options that we had available to fund capital project maintenance improvements and regenerating fund balance that was saved from prior year budgets to support this budget. One
comment that I'm going to make is a responsible budget does three things. It funds the next year's standards for your students, whatever standards your district has. has small money reserved for contingencies because things happen. Out of district placement, something
breaks, need another staff member, need a specialized staff member, etc. Also, the history of the audits here at McGomery, since I've come aboard and done research with the auditor, you've got used to using what's called fund
balance, which is money saved from prior year budgets that gets rolled to future years budgets. It's about4 to5 million a year on average. It's not advisable, but it's a pattern here. And once you have it, unless you
can cut that many expenses from your budget, you have to build your budgets to plan to hopefully regenerate those monies for the future. So, you either have to regenerate the money or cut all those expenses to not regenerate the money for the future. And to be able to
cut that many millions of dollars worth of expenses, that would be hard. It's so everybody looks at their expenses every year. But that's what I walked into and that's what I have to deal with to kind of keep the standings here. If you look at this slide right here, somebody they
they must have thought I had a lot better eyesight than I really do. But um your taxes pay for 82% of your budget. That's like the large green slice of the pie that I can't eat anymore cuz I have a sugar problem. But you're going to see the taxes are the big part of your
budget. And as you can see after that, your state and uh federal aid, it's about 6%. That's your next biggest contributor. So you folks pay for most of the budget where in like a metropolitan or urban school, it would be split. It would be about half the tax
levy, half state aid. It's fortunate you don't have some of the challenges that other districts do, but that means you don't get the additional funding. It's just how it works. These here are what are the core expenses that every district in the state of New Jersey is going to have. Your regular program
instruction, that's your K to2 instruction for general ed, your basic skills, your support services. Support services are things like attendance health, your nurse, your media center, uh curriculum development, things of that nature, your
co-curricular, your special services, your administration, transportation. These costs are in every budget that's being presented this week across the state. You can see some numbers go up, some go down. Bottom line number on the right, 5%
increase year-over-year. Now, this one here, unfortunately, numbers don't lie. If you look at the regular program instruction on the yellow slice in the top right, it's about 26%. So all of your K to2 program, that's all of your teacher salaries, all
of their supplies is about a quarter of the budget. Let's just say for our conversation here, if you look at the number on the top left, the same amount of money, 25 26% is your employee healthcare. So a quarter of your bill is to pay contractual health care obligations.
I've been in conversation with their healthcare broker to improve upon this. Believe it or not, there's many steps to work with to consider changing this for next year. So, there's a plan in place to work on improving this rate for next
year. There's many things that are out of our control. Shopping for your healthcare is kind of like shopping for your health insurance, like your car insurance. Get in a lot of accidents. No matter who you call up on the phone, the renewal is going to be higher. Your healthcare is based on your experience.
So, as your staff ages, as they take advantage of like benefits and more technology that's out there, like the like prescriptions that are out there, you're utilizing the plan more, the plan's going to go up. Your experience rating goes on a color chart from green to red. Over time, you usually move from
the green to the red. Everybody that's in the state healthcare plan, they're in the red. So, they're like the hardest bunch to shop. They're the folks that if they go out on the private marketplace, they're not going to get a better deal. That's your estate plan. We're lucky. We're in a invite only private plan and
we are shopped out against the other private plans. Fortunately, our renewal came back higher for the other private plans. So, we have the best deal that we could have for the next school year, but there are ways to improve on that in the future that they're not ready to discuss right now, but the plans are in place.
So, we're taking actions to it's the hand we're dealt, but we're going to try to make the best of it for the future. But these are the numbers for right now. Okay, let's talk about enrollment. So, there's a demographic study done in June of 2024. It was very optimistic with some new housing developments and things
of that nature that we would have an influx of students to the school. They haven't showed. I'm not sure exactly where they are. I'll give you an idea. If you look at the current year's uh number, which is 4,394,
that's based on our October 15th, 2025 count. For perspective, the demographic study with including the new housing developments said that that figure would be about a 100 students higher. So again, I hope those students come at
some point, but if you kind of look at the trend of the students, we're kind of in the bottom of the trough right now waiting for the uptrend. So I don't like to use the word realistic too much, but if I use it, it's just dealing fact. have to anticipate for next year
probably about a 2% decrease which is 4,310 students. If you anticipate a large increase and a large increase in aid and you don't get it, then you're going to build a budget off of false money that you're not going to receive and that's not responsible.
That leads me to my next slide. This is this is the part of the business that I don't like, but we have to do things that we don't like sometimes. So, if you look at position reductions, the $1.4 $4 million of position reductions that re represents about 2% of the staff. That's
in line with the 2% like projected like enrollment to uh projection. It doesn't always work out like that. But Superintendent Mccclaclin, myself, administrative team, building principles, we really looked at the sections, the class schedules, the enrollment,
every way we could think of. And we made targeted cuts based on the enrollment for the most part that are in line with our enrollment trend. If our enrollment turns around and goes in the other direction, then we'll need position increases. Right now, we really have to deal things on a year-to-year
basis, and that's where we are for the upcoming school year. Unfortunately, we had to again cut from the facilities equipment line. There are many uh projects that are presented to me from our uh director of facilities, but based on budget
constraints, you have to evaluate all areas of your budget. So we chose to elect facility projects that are essential for the school to keep the school looking nice but maybe some of the more some of the projects are the wish list
projects they had to get put on hold due to the fact that we have to put money towards the teachers the programs and the activities that enrich our students first. So that's a tough decision that had to be made that unfortunately some of these projects might cost more in the future, but we're doing the core
projects to take care of our investment. So that's an area where some of those projects are going to have to wait for the future. Services and supplies, we evaluated over 500 different supply lines from every one of the budget managers from December to the current
amount of time. looked at five years worth of data over those 500 lines to see, okay, how much money you're asking for? How much money does it look like you're spending over the five years? Is there anything new that you're asking for? We cut about 20% across the board
for most of the programs except special services. So, cutting all of the instructional supplies, I don't want to say only, but that's 400,000 on over $und00 million. The supplies are a very small driver of the budget. You don't want to cut too
much of that because then the teachers aren't going to have the resources they need to work with to have a successful school year. So that's why we analyze the data and supported them with what we think they have that they've spent in the years past to be successful but tried to be as efficient as possible.
Professional development $110,000 that we cut in this day and age. There's a lot of online local regional professional development that we could take advantage of in the local New Jersey area through workshops, Atlanta City, Ruckers
partnerships, things online and through different associations that all the administrators belong to that we can bring back and share out to the team versus getting on planes and flying to different places. We're not in the getting a going to the airport um and
flying for professional development. And maybe some people thank me because if you saw like the airport stuff recently, maybe you don't want to go to the airport. But um we cut from everywhere that we could think of. Everything was on the table that would have the least impact on kids. Going right here,
dollars to know the healthcare adjustment, that's $3.1 million. The 2% tax levy increase, that's $1.8 million. and the bank cap that's due to expire. These were funds that were able to be used in past years that weren't that
were eligible to be used. That's $875,000. Major driver of our budget as well as all of our friends and neighbors budget are salaries and benefits. It's 82.2% of this budget, as you can see from my note on the bottom, 80 to 85% of every
standard budget in the state of New Jersey is salary and benefits. We fall right in the middle of that number. So, we're no different than anybody else. These here are two capital projects that we have next year. They're called ROD grants. Those are regular operating district grants. These are excellent
opportunities. These are opportunities that the school board uses 60% of saved money in their capital reserve accounts pay for that. The state of New Jersey pays 40 cents on the dollar for. These two numbers right here that are $3.7 million total, that's the total amount
of the two grant awards. Our responsibility for them is 60% which is $2.267 million and the state of New Jersey will contribute 40% which is $1.51 million. This concludes our presentation. I have
one other item that I'd like to share with the board. The tax impact of what this budget is to the local residents. I'm going to do that from my laptop because that's not a slide. Okay. So, this is really what everybody comes
out for tonight. So, I know most places I work, this was the most important number. I'm pretty loud. I think I think they could hear me. So 2% tax increase, that's like the blue right here. Okay. Average assessed home in Montgomery is
$57,000. If we were to raise the school taxes from what they currently are 2% next year, that would be $13068 um on $57,000 assessment. you move over to using the healthcare
waiver and the expiring bank cap, the $130 will go to $620. So essentially that's $490 a year. Okay, to get $4 million worth of funding. So that's literally what's on
the table right here. $490 for $4 million worth of funding. So sure that's so that's going above the 2%. But that is what's on the line for that for Rocky Hill.
Like last year they went down because Rocky Hill um there's some debt that Montgomery like still has on the books that they inherited before like the Rocky Hill Montgomery merger. So that they are not responsible for. So at 2%
their taxes would go down $313 and at asking for the funding that we're asking for, they would still go down $43.98. So essentially what this is all about is $490 for $4 million worth of funding. So
we're the administration, M. McLolin and myself were asking for this to support the budget to support our students at the current staffing and instructional levels and the performance that we're able to provide. Without the $490,
without the $4 million, Montgomery would look very different next year because on top of the $1.4 $4 million worth of staff cuts that are already assumed receiving this money. There would be another $4 million worth
of staff cuts that would happen. As you saw, 20% of the supplies was less than $500,000. So to cut $4 million, probably about 40 teachers. So guess what? Your classroom sizes would go up, your instruction would go down, and
everything else would be on the table from your music to your sports and everything else. So, I I think Mr. McLolin thinks that's worth $490. That concludes our presentation. Thank you.
>> Uh any questions from the board? >> Can I ask a question about the uh what's the amount of the employee healthc care contribution that flow back into the general fund? The amount of the employer healthcare contribution, I'm going to go off the top of my head because that wasn't in my
slides. It's $3.312 million. We get about right now currently we've got about $163,000 per pay period over 20 pay periods when the entire staff is here. I hope that helps. >> Okay. Uh in your slides, are we going
back? Can we go back to the slides? >> Give Adele a second. Go ahead with your question. >> Yeah. So one of the slides you mentioned about the employee benefits 4 million uh increase I think so what you we talked about the amount of the employee healthc
care contribution has been counted towards that number or not. >> Sure I'll explain to you how it works. It's actually very simple. We get a letter from our healthcare broker. He tells us what the healthcare increase is going to be for the next
year. For example, our medical benefits are going up 12%. Our prescription benefits are going up 35%. To come up with the healthcare number, you take the current health care obligation, like essentially the bills from this year, multiply the medical bills by 12%. It's pretty easy stuff.
Take the prescription bill, you increase it by 35%. You increase the dental bill by whatever that percentage was, the vision bill by whatever that percentage was. Then if you back out the employee contributions,
which is that $3.3 million figure I said, then all the staff members that are losing their jobs, their healthcare came out of that, and then you come up with a figure that's about $24 million. So you take last year's healthcare number, you multiply that by 2%. And you
get a number. It's about $21 million. I'm off the top of my head. So you take the difference between the 24 million that's next year's obligation after employee contributions and then the difference from last year's healthcare plus 2%. The difference of those two numbers is what you're allowed
to ask for a healthcare adjustment. That's the best explanation that I could give. That's the same explanation that I gave all the board members at the private board meetings, the budget meetings. >> So that explained to the slides I think 24 the slideshow 12. So again, my slides
were telling a certain story. Your questions might be asking a different question than the story my slides were telling. You asked a question, were there contributions? I answered it with the number off the top of my head. I told you what goes into the healthcare bill. The broker increases and how it's
calculated and I gave you an educated explanation on how um the healthcare adjustment works. That's a complete answer to your question. >> Yeah. I just want to confirm that. >> Well, we do like to confirm. you can confirm it with me. Did not again like
like I said the slides that I presented and the questions you're answering might not line up on >> I'm I'm going to take this over now. >> So what slide are you referring to Dr. >> um you have the allocation breakdown by
each of the category. >> There's a lot of slides like that. The one contain the employee benefit with 4 million up. >> Yeah. So, >> let's take a look. >> So, this one?
>> No, >> this one. >> Yes, this one. >> Okay, go ahead. >> And >> what's your question? >> Employee benefits there and the plus and minus difference 4 million. So I
>> is there. So what you're saying is >> we different items comparing different things. We went over this in the budget meetings. I'm going to try my best. This and this is my final answer on this one. Employee benefits and health benefits
are two different things. Health benefits is just one part of employee benefits. Employee benefits are social security the public employer's contribution that's required for the board to match everybody that's in Pers. These are
>> no healthcare contribution flow back to the general fund. >> I'm not asking >> I I apologize. I really don't follow you. >> Could you rephrase your question differently? >> So >> because you're you're going in a couple
different directions. the the house uh you know for full-time employee each paycheck they have to pay approximately some money >> to their uh health care contribution to that and that money uh will flow back
into the general fund accounting >> no no I as I said before I when I calculate the healthc care obligation for the board for next year I back out the employee contribution to come up with our total obligation Amen. >> I've said that a couple of times. Like I
said, this is not easy stuff. It's okay if it's tricky, but I I've explained this as many ways as I can. That's why I am my my third decade doing this. >> The employee benefits. Here's the key takeaway from
this question. Employee benefits and healthc care benefits, two different things. Healthcare is one component of everything that's under the uh the category of employee benefits. I went into depth with this in the budget meetings. I given you the best answer
that I can. That's going to end this question. I'm going to go to the next one. Go ahead. >> No, I I was actually talking to uh Dr. B. Um I had the similar confusion before but then when you just explained >> I understood we I was thinking that the
number uh that whatever $24 million stuff I was thinking that's exactly what we are getting the from the broker that's not the number that $24 million has a lot of calculation and employee contribution is already in there and
then a dental and then the vision and everything is in there that's the net >> and then the and then you >> you deduct this year's the whole calculation and then that's the difference 33 3,500
whatever that mean that's so that employee contribution is already in that $24 million even I had the same confusion but just now when he explained I understood that so I was also >> trying to find out where is the employee
contribution if our total is 24 million. >> Yeah. >> Where is the employee contribution? But that is already included in that. >> Okay. >> That Miss Noran, that was an excellent explanation. So, thank you for that. Sometimes people hearing things differently. My wife gets very mad when
somebody else says something to me. She's like, I've said that. I've said that. So, I'm saying it at the public meeting on the recording. Sometimes we understand things differently when different people say them. >> And sometimes you can read and read and read. you don't understand but somebody explains you like verbally
>> that oh yes that way I was I had the exact same question as you did but now I >> I will go home and I will just analyze the whole thing and then now I'll be completely satisfied >> if there was any more money that we could get to the healthcare contribution
trust me I'd love to get it if you want to come to my office and look at this >> we talked about that I know you're working >> you can you can look at it like there there I don't know there's there's nothing to hide >> yeah Um do I mean you are you have got we I I know we had a question about the hatc
count question. I think we got that question answered. >> Yeah I did have um um superintendent responded to me. I had the same question about uh headc counts then he did she did say that but I do
know that when we when they say they're going to be um there will be staff cuts. Right. >> Yeah. I understood something that that's exact number will be taught but then there could be some additions also because there are some programs we need
teachers. >> Yeah. >> So just because we say this number is that so we have we have to give some room for addition also. So that was my confusion. So and then she explained yeah thank you. I actually had that
question too is because last year we heard the union uh president here come and talk about the 15 FTE reduction from last year's budget you know so when I look at the auditor report it just show 10 employee uh decrease from 2024 to
2025 and additionally last summer we had 42 retirements in the June so that's why I just uh want to be a little bit transparent to the community is really um last year is how many about the job
redu reduction and how many rehires you know because people when people hear about 15 FTE reduction they feel like it's all just not filled in but it looks like some positions got filled in right >> no Miss Madison
take this one she's in HR position >> okay so the information that I was asked to take a look at I was able to respond to also and share with the board. Um the uh charts and the schedules that you're looking at are from different times of
the year and collecting different information about staff. So uh for example it we one person may say give me a count of teaching staff and we take it from the uh everyone who falls under the salary guide of the teachers which would
include the school counselors which would include child study which would include a lot of different titles besides teacher. Um another report might ask for the same information and and define it by saying we want strictly
teachers. we don't want um uh school counselors and child study and the school nurses and so forth. So when you see a difference in those numbers um they can be caused by um a lot of different data analysis points and again
I was able to share that with all of you. In addition to that, when we pull reports from our data banks, some reports um are have uh data collected from an October 15th deadline, which is a state deadline. Some reports um that
we might pull are from June 30th. Some are from September 1st um and some are from today. So unless they're um the qualifications are strictly defined um and uh talked about in in the apples
to apples rather than apples to oranges, it's going to appear that that um we're not getting clear transparent information. So again, I hope what I provided to all of you was transparent and was able to clear up some of the questions.
get Julie from Mary and Andrew and just let me tell you I believe like a lot of these healthcare increases are statewide right this is not something localized in Montgomery everybody all schools >> absolutely cannot >> not from talking to my all of my peers have very similar unfortunate increases
>> and you did mention like understanding where enrollment's at our staffing is also having it's similar as far as um the reduction But we want to maintain the same level. Believe you guys are doing the right balance there. If we if we cut too much, we're going to sacrifice the standard of education that
we have here at Montgomery, which is something we don't want to do. So, but thank you for at least balancing that out. That part's clear. And I think you did mention too, you are looking at alternatives in future years, things we could possibly do to to control some of these costs, but it's it's a long road, things we have to explore, and I think it's something you guys can probably
come back to in a couple of months. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. the OAF committee uh should have a presentation by the May meeting from our health insurance broker on some of those uh initiatives that I'm working on with him. So hopefully um it's something that we can explore and take
advantage of in the future. >> Thank you. And again, what you mentioned there's like three was it two $2.4 million of of uh facilities related projects that have to be cut. >> Sure. >> Because we have to prioritize, right? This this comes first. The the this level of education comes first. But can
you elaborate a little bit on like what facilities projects we would like to get to but we just can't because we have to broadcast some things over others. Like what? >> Sure. Like I'll give you an idea. Like one of the projects that we wanted to do was replace the bleachers in the lower middle school. The bleachers in lower middle school. This is a big basketball
area out here in Montgomery. Um they're older, more traditional wooden bleachers. Whereas if you look at a high school, they have like the hard resin plastic bleachers that are electric go up and down. That was in the budget. we had to remove that. It's about $400,000. Like they they add up quickly. So that's
like that's a fraction of the $2.4 million. So little projects like that throughout the building. Um paving and sidewalk improvements. If you ever been to LMS, like the parking lot sidewalk, we wanted to kind of chip away and do something like that. We couldn't do it. So Mike O'Neal meets with all the
different building principles and he puts together what is a priority, what's a wish list, and basically the priority items are in the budget, but some of the wish list items like bleachers, upgrades to like LED lights and gyms, like different like pads with designs around
the gyms to kind of upgrade them, which would be nice, things like that. 50,000 here, 150,000 there. Those were all cut out of the budget because as much as we want those things and we want this place to look great. We can't kind of entertain things like that at the
expense of like instruction and just running those programs to begin with. So that's kind of an idea of the items that are >> to upgrade some equipment and trucks, >> right? The the Yep. Those are those are things too. But more I just want to kind of speak of the facility projects. These
are projects that we can live without, but unfortunately they'll probably cost us a little bit more in the future. So, it's it's hard to strike the balance to do the ones that are necessary and take care of your investment and push the ones to the future that you know that you could kind
of want to do but live without. That's the best way I can explain that. >> Any other questions from the board? >> I have two comments. Another one first one is about student uh teacher student ratio. So I know I mentioned about the
auditor report in J7 before I I asked about the difference um 68 difference between the teaching staff certified staff versus the instruction which add up through 383. So if we just look at that ratio here for middle school and
high school is one versus nine. Why I'm asking about that is because I don't think certified staff such as a nurse should be counted towards in that teacher and stu teacher and student ratio because they're not really teaching staff even though they're certified staff. That's why I keep
>> Yeah. Oh, I'm going to mention about that is because it's more uh it would be more accurately reflect the teacher and student ratio if we use the number 383 uh instead of 448 that number and that's the number actually across all the
school district what they use because when you talk about uh budget have implica implications on the staff reduction and people going to look at that say right now we have a ratio of one versus nine and it's close to private school ratio actually does not
benefit your claims you know so that's the reason why I'm asking about the clarification for that one and second is about the enrollment trend if you can see that enrollment trend uh in the past 10 years we did increase so as a as an educator my first question is always and
you heard from me from last year multiple discussions about the disenrollment how many of our students could we have retained so caring for student I mentioned before is supporting them while they're here and understanding why they leave. So when
the past year when I asked about these questions couple of uh board members questioned why this enrollment should be even exempt which is difficult make it very difficult for others and ask follow-up questions. So after extensive discussion and uh board member Vanila's
research the district share that we have on average about 200 dis enrolled students per year over the past three years. So let's just make some assumptions here. If we had retained even 5% of those students over the past
few years, we could have increased our state aid or potentially preserve some several full-time positions. This echoes what I said before is decreasing, you know, retain our students means have
implications on our full-time staff and also have implications of uh programs too. So this challenges exist. I want to acknowledge that the house health house health house health house health house health house health house health house health house health house health house healthc care did increase enrollment went down state aid went down. So it's
very hard um I just want to that's why I'm asking is when we when board member ask questions I hope we can be more supportive to seek for the answers then we can make more informative decision and maintain our community's trust. So
thank you. That's just my comments. >> Thank you. Any other questions from the board? >> I would just like to make a brief comment. Um I was I am fully in support of raising taxes. I know it's a hard decision to make, but I was talking to a friend of mine who lives in Robinsville.
Their board meeting is tonight also, and she told me that they are only raising their taxes 2% she believes and they will be eliminating all extracurricular activities to make their budget. So, I'm just saying that so that people understand the importance of really
keeping the quality of our schools, the extracurriculars as part of it. And I would also like to point out because I think there's some confusion when you say a house is assessed at $59,000. My next door neighbor's house was assessed at $56,000 but just sold a year under a year ago for a million. So, I
want people to assess value is not your selling value and it's really important that people understand that. So that was a I believe it was $59 million assessment and it sold for $999 almost a million dollars. I just want to point that out. >> The assessment cards just went out
recently. >> So can we I I remember >> one second that question. >> That's an excellent point actually. You know a lot of people do get confused and you see your assessed value in your tax papers. Right. So u my question is about
uh I see 16.1% for special services. uh the percentage choice. So has our uh special ed student populations gone up >> this year or is it the same? >> So are you referring to the pie chart? >> Yeah. >> That includes all teachers related
service everybody special education transportation everything for the special education students is in that piece of the pie. Our out of district placements, I'll piggyback off that are actually anticipated based on like enrollments actually go down for the first time in years next year by a
slight amount. >> See, is that because we have uh initiated some more programs in our district? >> Okay. Yes. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions? >> Oh, can I um can I clarify? So this year's what you presented for impact for
average assessed value it's kind of similar in 2023 when we voted to convert it into a full day kindergarten app right >> I didn't work here in 2023 I can't speak to that we had the auditor do the assessment um
so he gets all that data from the township for the average assessed value of the homes and just from a quick look that I did it looks like the homes haven't been be assessed in like 20 years probably. >> But not
>> so it probably is the same. >> It was the same assessment uh back in 2022. >> Thank you. Any other questions? >> All right. Thank you, Mr. Teliano and Superintendent Mlottman for that report.
We'll now move to committee representative reports, MTA report. Mr. Brazil. >> Ah, good evening everybody. Let's start off on a positive note. Read Across America was really fantastic this year. All right. Thank you for all of those who you attended. It was much
appreciated. Um, we had 57 different guest readers in 48 of our different classrooms. Uh, we had a whole variety. A lot of you joined in. our staff from superintendent McGlaclin down to all of our some of our teachers and staff were getting around to classrooms, community members. It was just awesome. And for anyone who doesn't work elementary, they
always come up with interesting questions like, you know, they ask, "How old are you? You're like 55, right?" Like, you know, you know, they really they really dive in there. I'm like, "Oh, you might not be my favorite right now. I'm not sure how I feel about that." So, uh, but you're appreciated much so by participating and joining in. The kids love having different visitors
and everyone coming in. Uh we piggybacked that with a uh special visit from the author. We had a virtual readaloud by Gita Bajan. Hopefully I'm not butchering their name too bad. Um so they came and read their book. It was fantastic. The kids really loved it. And then I heard we had an amazing reader
for Holly last month. All the kids stopped me in the hallway and told me how good that person was. It may have been me and the data may be skewed, but that's what happened. They told me, "Wow, fantastic." So good luck to whoever's up next. You know, you probably can uh keep up. And then next month we're going to start with our
spirit wear for recycling program. So if you have spirit wear was a huge hit last year and people brought in just different shirts, sweatshirts, jackets, all those things. So if you have gear that you know your kids are grown out of, you just have people going to college, they don't want the high school gear anymore, they're like, I'm over that. Um please feel free to drop them
off in the buildings. Um we'll be happy to take it. Stacy Anderson does a good job of getting it all kind of organized so people can come and pick stuff up. So please do so. And as for our budget, I just want to say thank you for all the work you're going to put in and you're going to be looking at all this stuff. We know we had tough decisions last year
that impacted us greatly and we got to keep the level of education here in Montgomery as tough as it can be. So I appreciate all the time and effort that went into presenting this and we know you're going to do the best you can. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Mr. Next up, board member delegate and
representative reports. Do we have any this evening? um Montgomery Rocky Hill Municipal Alliance and Municipal Youth Service Commission. The meeting was held on Monday, March 9th. Um Secret Solace, health educator will be stepping down
from her role with Montgomery Township as of April 2nd. Uh we will surely miss her and we wish her the best. and board member Katherine Warland and I attended meeting. I would like to thank Township and the board of education for giving me
this opportunity to collaborate with such a committed group of uh individuals. Uh only one thing I I thought I just wanted to mention here is upcoming events are the beyond the screen presenting in the digital world and
conversation continues. Sounds like a very very interesting uh event. It's happening um in conjunction with uh Montgomery uh high school uh in partnering with Township Alliance on Wednesday, April 22nd from 6:30 to 8:30
p.m. at Upper Middle School. District personnelled workshop will focus on important topics of AI, tech, free play, digital citizenship, etc. Please register in advance. Child care will be provided for ages five and up. The flyer
is posted on our school website. The next meeting is scheduled on May 11th at 700 p.m. Thank you. >> Any questions for board member Nerd? >> Hearing none, we'll now move into board committee reports. First up is assessment, curriculum, and instruction committee.
>> Um, excuse me. Can I just do a quick highlight of the PTA? >> I'm so sorry. >> No, that's I'll make it very quick because there's a lot of repeat between our student rep and all the um our different speakers. Uh PTA just some of the highlights is international money will be approaching. Uh so look out for
the event and signing up and you can volunteer and attend. Um their uh yearbook sales are occurring right now. So there's a price decrease if you buy ahead. That was one. Uh PTO for the middle schools. Um
spring socials coming up in May. uh for the lower middle. Upper middle has a color me mind painting social. Um duct tape the principles appreciation week with faculty. Um and really all the schools are getting ready to hold their
new um the next incoming grades. So you know the lower middle yes lower middle school sixth graders are getting ready and they just visited the upper middle school. Um we have our village students who are visiting the lower middle school and our upper middle school students visit the high school etc. And then
really for the high school um yeah this was already shared and Jed GPA exams occurred mean girls musical was fantastic and what else um oh there was some feedback on machios which we are going to uh learn more about uh just
about healthier options um looking into more vegetarian options things of that nature Christo that'll be a discussion to have as well. Thank you. Well, member Harris, a quick question. I know you mentioned a couple meetings ago about the lack of volunteerism with some of the PTO's. Has that decreased?
>> Um, that's a good question. I can't answer that. Um, I know that um at our last night actually there's a parent night for the upper middle school and a really great point that was made. There's different ways to volunteer. So a lot of times if families can't commit
just the actual becoming a member that funding is a big part of a lot of these organ organizations. So um just to think about that as well just to join each um organization whether it's PTA, PTO or PTSA. So but I can look into that and
find out for you. Thank you. >> Can I ask a question like um Miss Harris you mentioned about Machio so there's feedback again about the food service. So my question and Mr. Dalian, you don't have to answer this right now because that's putting in the spot, but this
probably forf given that you attend um the quarterly sitdowns with the committee of students in andio. So curious about feedback that you've been hearing or what we are looking to do to
I guess improve um offerings. LA last month I was at the meeting at LMS and the students they they're great because at that age they are going to tell you everything and um there was there was a lot of positive feedback um and there were things that
the students said that hey like uh there's a lot of things for children at that age like text or quality issues things that they like they didn't like. So it didn't necessarily mean the food was bad or not healthy, but they were kind of sharing their opinion on what they enjoyed and what they did and the
purpose that you do that is cuz the food service management representative is there with like the building principal, the vice principal and we take that feedback in. So we kind of try to adjust the menu going forward with respect to the guidelines from the federal
government to try to say okay like how can we take this feedback and adjust. So the feedback was good, but there's kind of things that the students prefer and don't, but we take that into consideration and try to adjust accordingly. And Miss Harris reached out to me recently um to say when the
upcoming meetings were and I shared them with her um and I'll be in attendance with those and I will continue to take the feedback and adjust accordingly. >> Thank you. Great question. Are those um panels for every building or just do they do it for the high school as well? So they they to my knowledge they do
them like at every building like twice a year like at a minimum. So I know some of the ones that you missed they already had their two meetings but I asked them I asked them to do another one anyway so that we could attend them together and I think that was part of the emails that I shared with you within the website.
>> Thank you for your response and all. >> You're welcome. We'll we'll get to them together and then uh we'll see what they have to say and then we'll hold them accountable to the changes. Perfect. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. Thank you. Now we're moving to board committee reports assessment curriculum activity uh construction committee for
member Harrison. So ACI met uh what was it two weeks ago now and the during our meeting we discussed textbook uh recommendations for seventh and eighth grade three French um the writing revolution
professional development was also discussed which is um broken down to TWWR. It's a training that will be for all LMS ELA teachers and seventh and eighth grade interventionists. The training is built around the science of writing with explicit instruction
techniques. This is based on scaffolding um ethology, excuse me, text of building a curriculum ladder for students who are not where they need to be. The training will cost approximately 12,000 be funded through ESA title 2 funds. the third and
fourth grade supervisor reviewing a complimentary program to implement at BES. Um, also we discussed math placement in the 2425 school year. We provided an option that allowed identified students in math 6 integrated and math 7 who did not meet the initial
criteria for algebra to sit for an algebra readiness exam. This was a very successful experience last year and we will continue moving forward with it. This year we will identify eligible students before June so they know their placement before the school year ends. Eligibility criteria for all math
courses can easily be found on the middle school math web page under course options and elast will go out to families in the upcoming weeks uh directed to the website. The NJSL update. Uh, five content areas are up
for revision. Proposed for the spring are BPA, college and career readiness, world language, science, and computer design. When the state reaches the adoption phase, we will be told when to implement the revisions. We also spent a big chunk of the meeting discussing
important graduate, which Corey um presented and did a wonderful job. So, thank you. Um, what else? uh preschool self-contained classrooms are doing a trial of teach for preschool. We have six total preschool classrooms to a self-contained through integrated
nonarcode talk and these classrooms are looking for more curricular support to enhance the general education curriculum. Uh some of our primary self-contained classes are already using teach. So for the feedback so far the feedback from the staff has been really positive.
>> Any questions for board member Harris? Um I don't have a question but I do have a comment. Um it's really I want to take a moment to support the use of the uh explicit instruction the science of writing as you just heard from the report and also want to make a comment
on the school district reading curriculum. So I want to urge the board to evaluate the TC unit of study and consider phasing them out. The NJTSS ER project developed a rigorous curriculum scoring rubric that many New Jersey school district have used to assess
reading program and in many cases move away from the unit of study. While our school district patched in blast and HD curriculum, the TC unit of study have been used at our Monty school district since 2011 and it's time to exam whether
they truly meet our student needs. I also want to thank you uh Monty for providing the blue atlas curriculum website which offers detailed week-toeek study plan. This level of transparency and planning is rare in many New Jersey school district some school district in
other states such as Minnesota where some of my colleagues work do not provide this much level of detail. It is clear requires extensive work and planning. It's a resource that should inform our curriculum conversations. So tomorrow NJTSS will present their result
um online session hosted by NJDOE. I encourage board members at the A ACI committee to sign up and learn about the project and its measurable outcomes which have impacted more than 80 school district in New Jersey over the past 10 years. District like ours should rely on
evidence-based research and outcomes. I have also referenced Mississippi Miracles multiple times with school admin administrators and board members. As elected unpaid officials, I believe we're here because we're passionate about what we're do what we're doing and
committed to benefit Monty students. Taking the time to understanding curriculum and crosscutting research is an investment in our students learning. Um this year I was not appointed to serve on the ACI committee but I will continue presenting at uh many national
educated conference to continue sharing my volunteer work and research. NJTSS er like Mississippi miracles has made long-term commitment that yielding strong results. I hope school district in New Jersey including those in greater
Princeton area take advantage of this lessons. Our students deserve dancing less regardless of family income. Thank you. >> I just wanted a clarifying point for when you talk about the TC, you mean the teachers college reading curriculum.
>> Yeah. Okay. I just I just wanted to clear that up. Um uh and then I had u one item to note about your discussion of the Mississippi Miracle. That's so that's something that I'd been doing a lot of reading about. It's been covered a couple times and I think it is worth looking into understanding what they had
done. Um but I think it's also understanding important to see the drawbacks in some of that. It was a specific school that had extensive funding poured in for um having designated people to work on reading uh literacy and those students did make
significant gains in literacy but then in like a longitudinal look their comprehension wasn't necessarily hitting having improvements. So I think it is very good to look at both the literacy piece but also the long term. Do those students then go on to maintain
high scores across comprehension and I think there was still a little bit of a gap there that there's some things to learn as benefits. Um but one of the pieces was pouring a lot of money into the school to have a lot of designated people helping. So just kind of
understanding what does that mean from a budgetary perspective. If we say, okay, our goal is a certain literacy benchmark, how much would that potentially how much would that cost to have a lot of people there to have specialized resources? And perhaps as you're suggesting that maybe
a a re-evaluation of the curriculum might be able to do it without putting more people in. But in that case, that specific in uh instance, both from what I've been reading and I have a personal connection there as well, a sister-in-law who worked in Mississippi,
she said, "Yeah, they just poured a ton of money into the school district." So just trying to understand exactly what we're able to do within budgetary constraints and how we can also support our students both at literacy and comprehension. >> Yeah. But it's good to have the conversation started right and that's
kind of reflected on the longitudinal data. It takes them 10 years even for NJTSS er project they worked on 80 school district in New Jersey and it's a lot of work. Absolutely. And then I think it's time to revisit this questions since right now we're talking
about the budget huge increase here. Uh and then one item I wanted to add uh from the ACI meeting is that the mention of the textbook that was going to be again a digital textbook and so we have discussed you know uh uh Miss Borland said she would come back to us with more information about what is offered by a
digital textbook versus a physical textbook because we've been having those conversations about the uses of the screens for the students versus a physical resource and trying to understand what are the pros and cons of each rather than so that's why it was tabled so that we more time to evaluate
it. >> Let's go to Thank you. >> One more. >> I would just like to make an additional comment that New Jersey just passed a law a year or two ago and now all elementary school students are being screened more often and so that's a brand new thing. There's a lot of new a
lot of new resources coming from the Department of Education and the new commissioner of education is really very focused on early literacy and seeing the results of that. But this is the first year I believe my microphone just went out. This is the first year I believe that we'll be doing those screenings all
the time. And so that should also change the system. >> Thank you. Any more questions? Hearing none. Moving on to operations, facilities and finance committee board member Franco. >> So I'm going to be quick because Mr.
Daliano covered the majority of the conversation that we had at OFF on March 10, which was a high level discussion on um the budget, but also wanted to uh highlight that we had at the top of the hour representatives from Brown and
Brown who are health insurance uh broker and uh Mr. Jim Finn came to talk about the projected increases in health benefit costs and the committee was asking questions about strategies to mitigate the rising rates and as Mr.
Italy noted that we are having um Mr. feed back to OFF in the spring. Um like we you said May, right? We asked for May to give us options about what um STR, you know, what mitigations we can expect
or options that we can take a look at for the next uh year on in terms of the healthc care costs. >> All right, any questions? Hearing none, we'll move on to policy and communications committee VP Spino.
>> Good evening. Um the policy committee met virtually on Monday, March 9th to discuss policies and regulations that are up for first reading tonight as well as abolishment. Um the first um is up for adoption is
policy 0142.1 on nepotism which per state statute requires every board of ed to implement a neptism policy that must include the provisions of NJAC 6A col23A-6.2.
So it is uh backed by law as a condition of receiving state aid uh making this a mandated policy for all school district all school districts. Um the updates also included policy 0174 for legal
services and that is an update to the current policy implementing a strategy to minimize the costs of professional services including legal services. Policy 1220 is employment of the chief school
administrator has been updated to incorporate some revisions to the legal citations. QAC governance 3 requires that a board to adopt this policy and it has to address the review and approval of the superintendent's employment contract by the executive county
superintendent. And the last one that is up for first reading tonight is policy and regulation 1552 which is uh sexual harassment policy and regulation. So both are new. Um they
will now address the topic of sexual harassment in the school district and incorporate two separate federal regulations requiring actions by a school district in response to a complaint of sexual harassment. Federal law requires written policies and procedures. And these documents address
all of the requirements of the law in a single source. Which then brings me to the abolishment policies. Because what we are doing with policy and regulation 1552 is replacing two different policies
which used to be the um uh sexual harassment policies which were 3362 and 4352. So tonight we will vote to abolish those two and accept as first reading the new law and policy. And then also
under abolishment of policy is 1648.15 which is no longer needed anymore thankfully because it is the recordkeeping for healthcare settings and school buildings for COVID 19 under the state of New Jersey which is no longer uh in enforcement. The records
keeping is not yes this is right. Um so there was uh quite a robust discussion of these policies and um there was additional discussion afterwards about um some of the meeting
dates. So we are currently looking to see um if we can have availability for all members. There was some some um miscommunication and scheduling. So, please be on the lookout committee members for um further
instruction and updates to our calendar up uh invites. Uh also, we had a brief update on the K through 4 feasibility study which we will continue at some point in a later time. Um
and that we also discussed how our budget meeting was going to be pushed back to tonight from the 17th. Um, one additional conversation that happened was uh Dr. Ting had Dr. Rehada um
brought up a few uh questions a member of the committee inquired about discussing policies related to contract thresholds, curriculum approval and our GMT gifts and talented at future meetings which is under consideration. Um, I would also like to point out that
in policy 0142.1, the nepotism policy, please take a look at the third page and in during your first reading of this and if you have any discussion questions tonight on the optional line for that. Um
there is an option which states in accordance with NJC 6A col23A-62B predium substitutes and student employees who are relatives of a board member or
the superintendent shall be excluded from provision of this policy and that uh legal statute. Um it is under the recommendation of the superintendent that we do include that optional
language in um it is uh the opinion of Dr. Wang that we do not um myself and the other two board members on the committee are in support of leaving that optional language in the policy.
>> Any more questions? >> Yeah, I want to make a comment on that. Why I'm a um uh do not pro pro for that section is because I remember for the board uh member policy training the legal recommendation was if
there is a hesitation better not adopt the provision while the predeem component does not involve a large amount of money. It does introduce a potential sensitivity topic for elected officials and we are all elected officials so we have to be aware of
that. That's the rationale why I recommend not to adopt that optional section. >> Any other questions? >> All right, hearing none. Um, human resources committee met virtually on Thursday, March 19th. Most of the items
that we discussed were confidential in nature. However, there were two items that I can't discuss. We had a discussion about the collective bargaining agreement for the transportation department that supports and encourages employees to enroll in continuing education classes. And this falls in alignment with other collective
bargaining agreements and the committee uh continues to support this initiative. And we also talked about the 20 26 2027 uh personnel uh roster which will be uh discussed and voted upon on the April 28th board agenda.
Any questions? Hearing none. At this time, the board acknowledges all correspondents to the board. At this time, I'll entertain a motion to enter into executive sessions. So move second. >> It's been properly moved and seconded to enter into executive sessions. Any
questions on the motion? >> All those in favor say I. >> All those oppos same right. And we will try to be brief. At this time, I'll entertain a motion to reconvene and open session. >> So move second. Been properly moved and seconded to reconvene in open session.
Any questions on the motion? Roll call, please. Mr. Taliano. >> Dr. Wayne, >> here. >> Feffer, >> yes. >> Spina, >> yes. >> Frank Herman, >> yes. >> Warland, >> yes. >> Sus, >> yes. >> S here. >> Snorgon,
>> yes. >> Mr. Todd, >> yes. >> Thank you. >> Yes, please. >> Okay. Approval of minutes is recommended that the board of education approve the minutes of the following board meeting meetings. February 24th, 2026 executive
session. February 24th, 2026 business meeting. Is there a motion to accept the minutes? >> So moved. >> Seconded. It's >> been properly moved and second. Any questions on the minutes? >> All those in favor say I. I.
>> All those opposed say excuse me. All those opposed. Any abstensions? Motion carried. Mr. >> Okay. No worries. >> Action agenda items. Public comments.
The board of education welcomes and encourages input from the public. Members of the public are allotted one opportunity to address the board regarding the action agenda items only for up to a maximum of three minutes per speaker. All comments must be directed to the board. Before you make your
comment, please state your full name and address and enter vote on the Chromebook provided. Being mindful of privacy rights regarding students, board employees, and board members. And to avoid any liability on the part of the speaker, the board discourages defamatory and discourteous remarks. The
public comment portions of the meeting are not structured as question and answer sessions, but rather but rather are offered as opportunities for the public to share their thoughts with the board. The board may need to refer an issue to the superintendent if the issue has not been handled through the appropriate chain of command, usually
starting at the school level. Responses may be provided at the end of this session. Mike speaking as MTA president on the budget. There was some commentary that's concerning about the positions that were lost last year and I think it needs to be addressed because in one breath we
talk transparency and in another we use numbers to kind of skew the facts. Right? We did lose 16 positions last year. How do I know that? I can go back to May's board meeting last year in the minutes which all of these board members, all but three of these board members were part of where those
positions were abolished. Not retirements, not any of those things. They were abolished. So, it is concerning that all but three board members were in on all of those meetings, sat through all that information, received all the same things, and then could come back almost a year later and say that didn't happen.
It's quite concerning. beyond the numbers because some of us are stuck on numbers. I can tell you we have extra classrooms here at Orchard that are open. We have four color teams at S. We're down to three because we lost positions. And I find it
disrespectful to my staff who picked up that extra work to say that that didn't happen. And for those people who may not have a position here anymore, who I sat through those meetings with and had to deal with that emotional impact of something that's different, I just find
that extremely upsetting and extremely concerning, especially because I know everyone is part of this board all that information in those meetings. It's not like anyone hides info or we alter info. That is the info. So to say that that didn't happen or to skew that something
else happened is just not true and is unacceptable. Thank you. Uh good evening. Um I just also wanted to to make a comment about uh the healthcare increases and potential solutions that I'm hoping the board will
look into. Um, I appreciate the comment that um, board member Franco Harmon made about making taking initiative to to talk to Jim Finn from Brown and Brown and really investigate what options are truly
available for us and what we can do next year to maybe mitigate the increases that are presented to us. Um, I took a look at the historical uh cost uh of the healthcare
um benefits in this district and I just wanted to share some reflections because something has changed and I think maybe there was an opportunity to to have a deeper review and just address some of those issues. So before June 2023,
uh Montgomery was a self-insured uh district. The district had at that time had full visibility to its healthcare cost. It had visibility to control uh and full control over the plan design.
They had a stop loss protection to cut unexpected losses. Then uh the decision was made um in I guess working with Brown and Brown and move Montgomery into SHIP which is kind of like a collective fund of the
healthcare insurance um uh benefits. Uh the the promise that was made to us was to make uh the the coverage better or the same. And also I remember at the meeting where Brown was presenting that
they promised us a million dollar in savings. Well, that never really materialized. Um before we we we changed uh to shift the three years that three immediate years
before we change into shift we had a healthcare increase the annual healthcare increase of 2.62%. 62% 1.8% 3.75%. The very first year when we changed for
ship the increase went up to 14.5%. That should be already a red light that this is not for us and something is wrong. Why is this uh I guess solution too expensive? It's because they have so
many layers of man management fees commission uh based um I guess compensation that really doesn't really go and provide benefit to our district does not really help us save positions of our teachers. It really is money
spent on some administrator and and ship. So I'm hoping that you guys will look into it. Thank you. Any other comments from the public on action agenda items? Hearing or seeing none, public comments
on action agenda items is now closed. >> Mr. Tell, you had a walk on. >> Yes. Uh I have an amendment to the agenda. I have a walk-on resolution. We're going to call it A1. Uh I'm happy to announce that there's been an agreement uh that's finalized between
the MTA and the Board of Education. So, I wanted to give it special attention and read it on, have conversation, and then a vote. Uh, so I'm going to read the resolution as follows. Whereas the Montgomery Township Board of Education and the Montgomery Township Educational
Association have negotiated a successor collective negotiated agreement for the 2025 2026, 2026, 2027, and 2027 28 school years. And whereas the association has by majority vote membership ratified the CNA. Now
therefore being resolved that the board hereby ratify and approve the terms of the CNA for the 2526 26 27 and 2728 school years which is attached to this resolution and made part here of and be it further resolved that the board
hereby authorize the board president and the business administrator to execute on behalf of the board the CNA by and between the board and the association. So that is the resolution to finalize uh this agreement. Thank Mr. Rosolei and
his team. Um through that process uh we're happy that it's done. Look forward to working with you for the rest of the year and the rest of the agreement. Uh and I'm going to open the floor to the board. Any comments or questions? If not, then I'll take the roll call vote. Dr. Wag
>> yes. Merain. Misspina. >> Yes. >> Franco Herman. >> Yes. Noted. Miss Warland. >> Yes. >> M. Harris. >> Mr. Nunes. >> Yes. Morgana. >> Yes. >> Mr. T.
>> Enthusiastically. Yes. >> Thank you. The motion carries. CONGRATULATIONS. >> Well done, Mr. Roselli. To you and your team. Um, thank you for the process. It was a little little longer than we anticipated, but we got through it. So, thank you again. >> Thank you.
All right. At this time, I will entertain a motion to adopt action agenda items 1.1 through 4.1. >> We got three moves. >> Yes. Second. >> Thank you. >> It's been properly moved and seconded to
uh to adopt action agendums 1.1 through 4 1.1 through 4.1. Any questions on the motion? 3.7 I have just a question. >> Okay. >> Um we are approving um 112,115.
My question is is this a timeline that uh it's a one-year uh renewal or why are we doing now not in the beginning of the school year? >> I don't have that in front of me. I'm sure there's probably an overlap with the agreement, but to be honest with you, I don't have the contract in front
of me. Uh this was presented to me by my purchasing agent. So I could follow up with you tomorrow morning to ask you why but um to answer why >> because these are all the services we use you know all through the year but starting from uh new school year >> not every agreement always begins July
1st so I don't want to say that's what the purpose is for here but I was asked to do this this evening maybe there's terms in the agreement there could be various reasons next time for such a question it would be better to ask the question before we're at the board table because then I'd have my resources to
answer it, but as a courtesy, I'll answer it tomorrow. Um, but this is our frontline education services for next school year. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions, honorable? >> I have a question for the board lawyer.
We're going to pay 184k. Where is he? >> That is the estimated amount that we will spend um with them next year. It's a requirement to list the professional services as part of the budget resolution. In a perfect world, we would hope that we wouldn't need any of it,
but um this is active district. Didn't spend a lot of money in legal fees. So, that's the estimate for next school year. We tried to get along, maybe we would spend a little bit less next year. That's my advice. >> Do you have to remember time? Every time there's a question, every time there's
an email, that's those are billable hours. >> They usually get builds starting in 15minute increments. In the past, I've asked one whether or not we could see like a a trend report on that, how that looked over the last
few years compared to maybe 5 10 years ago. >> That's easy enough. I could do that. >> Thanks. >> Yeah, no problem. >> Any other questions on the motions? >> Hearing none. Roll call, please. >> Dr. White.
>> So, for 1.2 2 that policy regulation first reading policy 0142 I as just mentioned about that controversial thing can bring to the elected officials. Uh I want to take out
the optional section. So >> one second please. >> Okay. So are you voting yes to everything except policy 0142 that you stated? >> Yeah. this optional section only. >> Okay. And so that's noted and yes to all the other resolutions.
>> Correct. Yes. >> Okay. Noted. Thank you. We just wanted to make the correct notation. >> Miss Spina. >> Yes. >> Mr. Franco Herman. >> Yes. >> Warren. >> Yes. >> M. Harris. >> Yes. >> Mr. Nunes. >> Yes. >> Mr. Noran. >> Yes.
>> Mr. T. >> Yes. >> Thank you. Motion's carry. >> Thank you. New business from the public. The board of education welcomes and encourages input from the public. Members of the public are allotted one opportunity to bring any new business to the board for up to a maximum of three
minutes per speaker. All comments must be directed to the board. Before you make your comment, please state your full name and address and enter both on the Chromebook provided. Being mindful of privacy rights regarding students, board employees, and board members. And to avoid any potential liability on the
part of the speaker, the board discourages defamatory and discourageous remarks. The public comment portions of the meeting are not structured as question and answer sessions. The board may need to refer an issue to the superintendent if the issue has not been handled through the appropriate chain of command, usually starting at the school
level. Responses may be provided at the end of this session. Any comments from the public hearing and seeing none, public comment portion is closed. Any closing discussion for the board?
Hearing and seeing none, I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn. >> So move second. >> It's been properly moved and second to adjurnn. Any questions on the motion? >> All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Those opposed extensions same right. Yes. Any closed.
Thank you all for coming out. We appreciate it.