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All right. Good evening everyone and welcome to the Tuesday, April 28th, 2026 McGomery Township Board of Education School Board Meeting. Statement of open meeting and public participation pursuant to the open

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public meeting act chapter 31 PL1975. 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

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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

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later than 9:00 p.m. Roll call, please. Mr. Chelan, >> here >> present. >> Frank, >> presenting >> here. >> Harris joined us yet? Mr. Munz here.

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Snoran >> here. >> Mr. T >> here. >> Thank you. Thank you. Please rise as we salute the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation

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under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> We'll now have our MCSA student representative report. >> Thank you. So, I just wanted to begin April recognizing um this is awesome

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acceptance month with the official day on the 2nd where the community shifted focus towards the acceptance and appreciation of neurodyiversity. But before that was spring break 1st to the 6th and on the 1st was Passover

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starting at sundown Jewish festival celebrating freedom and on April 5th another holiday was Easter Sunday. Got to eat lots of chocolate bunnies even though I have a bunny of my own actually. Her name is Lana and it was it's a Christian holiday commemorating

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the resurrection of Jesus. A PTSA meeting took place on April 8th and from 11th through 12th was Cougar Robotics District event and it was a successful weekend of competition and teamwork. Bayaki Day on April 14th is recognition

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of the sick New Year's festival and a think fast assembly took place on April 15th where upper classmen attended an interactive session on the dangers of vaping and substance abuse. The sensation showcase was April 17th, a celebration of culture diversity held in

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the EMPAC with Bollywood dances, bangra, and lots of culture. Um, Earth Day was April 22nd and it was on the 2026 theme, our power, our planet. The Jny event is an Amnesty

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International Club event um hosting their fundraiser in the main foyer and some upcoming events are NJSLA science testing and the only great to do that by the way thankfully um and they will follow a special testing schedule on Wednesday and Thursday.

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the MHS instrumental music concert. Um, the first one will be on the 22nd as well at 700 p.m. And something that's really exciting, actually, I found this up today. Montgomery High School is partnering with Fairone Farm, providing

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families with fresh local produce while giving 10% of every purchase back to district programs. The produce will be rotated weekly and will depend on the season with customizable boxes full of vegetables are also available with hot sauce. Food butters like a peach butter. I tried it

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today. It was amazing. Flowers available as well too. Any anyone farm? Any kids? No. Oh, no kids in audience today. Okay. And students cannot earn volunteer hours by assisting with the weekly distribution and logistics of the farm share program. So any this isn't

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exclusive to kids in environmental club either. could be any kid from the school. And if you're more curious about this, uh, basic training starts next week and we can tell you your kids. And for more information, you can reach out to CSA at fairgroundfarmms.com.

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Just send them an email and it's pretty exciting stuff actually. Like they have some really tasty stuff. You guys should check it out. >> Fairground Farms. That's the name. >> Fairground Farms. Yes. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, sir. >> All right. At this time, I'll entertain

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a motion to open the public hearing on the 2026 2027 budget. >> So move to second. It's >> been properly moved and seconded to open the public hearing. >> Any questions on the motion? >> Hearing none. Roll call, please. Mr. Kelly,

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>> just do we just do all in favor? >> I opposed extensions. Okay. >> Thank you. All right. Now again, the hour public hearing on the budget's open. Excuse me. Okay, good evening everyone. Uh, I'm

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Andrew Taliano. I am your business administrator and to my right is our superintendent of schools, Mayor Mccclaclin. And we'd like to welcome the board and our guest in the audience to our 2026 2027 uh budget hearing. Um, first of all, I'd like to thank the

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board for their continued support through this process. As many people in the public might not know, this takes about half the year. This is a six-month process that begins in the fall, culminates with our public hearing tonight. And uh

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our budget hasn't changed since March, but we really want to kind of dive into everything in a comprehensive uh manner to let the board know what they supported and like how that helps our students and our district. And uh we're going to begin. Miss McLolin is going to

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go over the roster of officials and the goals and then I'm going to take it from there. So going pass to you. >> Thank you. >> Good evening everyone. As Mr. Taliano said, we our budget is directed by our

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goals that we create every year. Our first goal is the student experience. It's also part of our strategic plan. Align with that. We recently, well, a couple months now ago had an update and we'll have an update at the end of the year. So, the student experience, student achievement, teaching and

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learning. Our second goal is communication, community engagement, and outreach. And our third goal is climate and culture, seal, cultural sensitivity, health and wellness, and resilience. So, Mr. Taliano is going to go over the

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tonight's overview of the presentation. Okay, I'm going to go over our agenda and give an introduction to our presentation. After that, I'm going to pass back to Miss McLolin and she's going to highlight on some of the above and beyond activi activities and curricular

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offers that we offer at Montgomery that I think separate us from the rest of the pack. Then after Miss Mclaclin highlights on some of the curricular uh activities that we have at the school, I'll then close out the presentation with a dive into the expenses and revenues of our budget. That being said,

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for the overview of our presentation, uh right here, I'm going to talk about the key drivers of our budget. When I speak to drivers, I'm speaking about the key fixed expenses, salary, healthcare, energy, which all went up over 2%.

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Everybody knows about a 2% cap. Most of our salaries, they're north of 3%. Our healthcare came in at about 17%. Our energy costs for electric and gas or 8 and 15% respectively. That's a challenge. It's a challenge that the

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administration's faced with, but ultimately we need to support our students and avoid cuts to programs so that the students are infected as best as possible. Also, uh we're proud to uh report out that based on the challenges

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and the extreme healthc care increases, there's no new activity fees to any of the parents for any of the programs that we have. We're maintaining our same menu of choice as next year as we have this year. And we shouldered that by basically threading the needle and

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really looking at operational expenses to not affect the classroom activities and put any more expenses out to our parents and community. Next slide that I have is what is a school budget? It's a brief overview. Our school budget's a planning tool

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connects the school budget goals to our resources. Priorities are decided. Student achievement and which programs we could run. Then the budget shows how the money will be used to support them. The budget guides our decisions in advance. This is

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this is our plan going into next school year based on our goals. what are our priorities and what could be delayed. The budget's a working budget. That means it's flexible and can be adjusted because things happen. We have contingencies.

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It's responsible. As I mentioned earlier, it's a reflection of our goals and also it has to be forward thinking and it uh considers regeneration of revenue uh based on our spending history. And we want to try to rebuild our uh reserves year in and year out

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which is called our fund balance which are is our unexpected funds at the end of the school year which would be our balances of June 30th. Next slide is our cost drivers. These are the main key fixed expenses that we're contractually obligated to to

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operate our district. Salaries in our union contracts. We have three unions. We have our teachers union, administrators here association and we have our transportation union and then we have all the other employees of the district that are not affiliated with the union. Those comp comprise the

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salaries of the district that are represented in our position control roster. Our next key drivers are health benefits, energies and utilities and as we all know inflationary increases across the board which I kind of just want to touch base on a moment.

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Inflation has hit all of our wallets at home. Um, the school district's no different, especially with the high health care costs that we're experiencing. Regardless of those challenges, Mr. Block, my goal was to deliver a budget

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that would insulate our students from these key cost drivers without cutting programs and without putting activity fees forward. And, uh, we're proud to report out that we believe that we did that. Expenses change, but taxes don't.

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Expenses can change during the school year. Facility repair grade. More students move to the district. Special ed costs fluctuate. Transportation costs fluctuate. Cost of supplies, materials, energy,

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they all fluctuate. But taxes and state aid, they don't fluctuate. The district faces new expenses and challenges. The district can't go to the school board and say, "Please give us more money if expenses rise." The administration needs to figure that out.

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And in order, you look trying to cut supplies first. Then unfortunately, maybe we have to cut some repairs, cut some projects, cut some upgrades. The last resort would be to cut staff and programs. As I keep mentioning, and I

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kind of want to remind the board, and we're going to get into this a little later, we're very proud of the offerings and the programs that we offer at Montgomery. And I think that's what separates us from a regular district and many of our others. We're going to dive

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into those programs and we're very familiar with the performance. So with the challenges that we have financially, we still kept the programs and we didn't put any extra costs in program fees that you probably seen a lot of other districts put program fees, activity fees, cut their extracurriculars. We

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didn't do any of that. We just kind of took a little bit from everybody as a shared sacrifice that hopefully isn't felt by any program and operational expenses to keep everything moving in the right direction. Budget challenges expenses are going to continue to outrun

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revenues in the future. We have a we have union contracts for the next 3 to 5 years. They're over 2% every year. We have historic healthcare increases. The renewal is around 17% next year. As you'll see in a slide that I have a few

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slides later, the regional average is about 16.5%. So for a district that's in the private plan, we're no district different than anybody else. We just face that challenge and we have to figure it out. How do you figure it out? It'll become necessary to reduce expenses, increase

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revenue or do both in order to balance the budget based on our fixed cost and contractual expenses. That's why I want to highlight it is necessary to increase revenue if the board and community want to desire to maintain the current level

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of programs and activities that we offer here that we're very proud of. And I think that's what separates us from a regular district. The point that I'm trying to drive home is we are paying a little bit more. Some of our fixed costs that are out of control significantly

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increased, but our menu offerings are still strong and the same. So that's that's what we're very proud that we're able to maintain for our students. I'm going to pass back to Mr. McLolin and we're going to kind of go over some of our courses and offerings that we're proud of.

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So, as you all know, Montgomery, depending on where your child goes to school, you might not know about the high school yet, but we have a robust offering for our children throughout the district. Just as an example, we have over 20 advanced placement courses.

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We have six courses right now that are concurrent enrollment with Satan Hall University which means that students are sitting in our courses at Montgomery High School earning college credit if they wish in these six classes. It has always been a goal for us with

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concurrent enrollment to gradually increase so that students are offered more and more opportunities. Um I want to point out like for example our AP economics some schools offer micro or macro or um both separately or

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one and not both. Our students take the robust course of AP economics and are eligible to sit for both tests at the end of the year. So these are just some of the robust course offerings that we have here at Montgomery. So just to highlight a little bit, we

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also have um the New Jersey seal of biiteracy acknowledged by the New Jersey Department of Education when a student achieves mastery of two or more languages. This year we had approximately 100 students participate in that. This is another program that we offer for our students that is not

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common everywhere. As you can see, for next year, we're looking to expand our concurrent enrollment to include Spanish 4, English 11 honors, pre-cal honors, calculus, data science, analytics and visualization, AP environmental science, AP computer science, and chamber choir.

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These are all exciting courses that students love to take and we are happy to offer them the opportunity to also receive college credit. And we're expanding our AP course to include AP research. We wanted to expand a little bit more, but we know our financial

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constraints and we'll try to progressively uh slowly move into increasing those. We also base all of our days on our inclusive practices. We have, as you've

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heard, we had students come and present. We have a unified programming that integrates students with and without disabilities in sports, leadership and school activities to create inclusive school communities, improve student outcomes and foster culture and of belonging. Unified programming aligns

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with the unified champion schools framework. We also have other robust programs to support diverse learners. Right? We have basic skills programs. We have special education services and differentiated instruction throughout the district.

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So, not just yes, we say not just a focus on the high school, our P12 curriculum is progressively challenging and developmentally appropriate at all levels. Some of our highlights, we have the STEM highlights throughout the district. As you can see, we have the

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nationally acclaimed robotics team, top nationally ranked science olympiad, dedicated computer lab for engineering and architecture classes. We have TV production and radio broadcasting studio. Most districts don't have these. We have the science wings maker space

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for our visual and performing arts. We have a photography dark room, digital photography, graphics and design lab. And we have a high percentage of coral and instrumental students accepted to the NJMEA regional and all state ensembles. We have state champion marching bands. State state champion. Um

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the wind ensemble was invited to the NJMEA state conference and we have a top-of-the-line ceramic studio that be that is also being used by um the township to have some class offerings in the evenings. Some of us highlights are architecture, graphic design, industrial

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materials, computer languages, web design, and robotics. Our gifted and talent program has podcasting studio, LMS stop motion filming supplies, STEM engineering kits, and Lego robotics kits. So through our curriculum, we

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provide depth, right, in all of our programs with a broad breath, right? our outstanding STEM, arts, tech, math, language arts, world language programs with strong outcomes, right? High achievement and high college placement.

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So, we have a lot to offer here in Montgomery that we're very proud of and we do our best to contain uh maintain and continue to offer the programming that will challenge not only our students but also meet their needs and

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their interests. >> Thanks. Before I move on, I'd like to add we become accustomed to this robust menu of choices that we have. At other districts, as I mentioned earlier, there's not such a menu. At my hometown

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district, there's three AP courses. My daughter takes all three of the AP courses. It's a great district. These opportunities, not not even close to this menu opportunities. We become used to it. We're maintaining it through these challenges and we're adding to it not only for our students rigor but also

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to maintain our higher ranking as well with the state. >> So it's important on multiaceted approach. A lot of these uh slides are repeats from March but um I'll go through them. I'm going to go through them a little quickly. Budget development process like

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I said it's about a six-month process. It begins in the fall and October. We ask for requests. We review requests when the winter comes. In January and February, we start analyzing the requests, meeting with our budget managers to say what's possible, what's not, and that's when the hard decisions

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begin. Move forward. In March, we have to finalize our budget for our preliminary budget hearing, which we had in March 24th, and then it gets sent to the executive county superintendent for review, which it did. Um, and we pass that process. And then that brings us to

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the culminating event tonight, which is our public hearing on the budget. This is just the timeline of it. And as you see at the end of the timeline, I have two days after uh our public hearing tonight to post our budget to our website, which I will do. Uh these are a

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repeat of some of the numbers from the last presentation. This here is our total spending per pupil. Now, now I do have to go to my glasses. Yeah, I have I thought I was going to be able to get away with it without.

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Okay, so our spending per pupil, as you can see, our spending per pupil is 30,391. We are right in the middle of the pack and we are doing better than some of the other districts that we're often compared to like Princeton, Bernards. So

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total spending per pupil, I'm going to switch to the next slide. Cost per pupil, they're a little bit different. We still rank the same way. We're right in the middle of the pack. Uh this is historical data, so it's it's always running behind. But as you can see, we're in around the $19,000 area, which

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is right in the middle, which is better than the other two districts significantly that we're usually compared against. the difference between the spending per pupil and the cost per pupil. The cost per pupil is a figure

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that includes all of the classroom costs but not the total expenses to the district. Some of the expenses to the district that are in the spending per pupil are like transportation, your legal fees, your debt, your out of district placement students, things of that

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nature. They're taken out of the cost per pupil which is the metric more often used because larger district might have lower lot legal fees. Transportation is different all across the street state but everything in the classroom that's the same regardless of how you get to

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school what your debt challenges are and what your legal challenges are. And as you can see by the cost per pupil which is the one that's most popularly used uh which you can kind of get this data from the taxpayers's guide to spending. performing better than the districts that we're compared to that are

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considered the higher performing districts in the area. Um, so to be able to perform and still have a competitive figure, that's something to not talk too lightly about. As you can see just from the bar graph right here, again, we're right in the middle before they peak to

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the last two districts on the right. And no offense to them, I don't know what their challenges are. It's just nice when your numbers are better than worse. I want to kind of put that out there. Okay. how your tax levy is calculated. You have your starting base. That's our tax levy from this school year. We're

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permitted a 2% base. And then based on certain circumstances, there are different healthcare adjustments that the board can elect to use. As I said, this is the historical healthcare increase that we had this year. So, the board elected to use uh the healthcare

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waiver and the expiring bank cap, which brings us to the figure of $97.4 $.4 million, which is a net impact of a 6.37% local tax increase. And as you've seen some of the other presentations in the area, if you haven't, the number

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around the 6% area, that is the standard in the area if you want to maintain the level of programs that Miss McGlaughlin reflected on before. I'll also note, but I'm not going to name the districts out of respect to my peers. There are many of the districts that have an increase

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like this and still cut their programming, still cut their extracurriculars, and still put uh activity fees out to their parent and community on top of it. So, it was very important to us that we knew that this was a challenging uh financial landscape with the healthcare increases to not put

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any more burden on the community. you have to and for what they're paying to not take away from the robust offerings that uh we mentioned just a few moments earlier. This is just another way to look at the numbers. So this is the total budget from 2526 the current year

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to what's proposed for next year. And the total budget increase is 5% because as time goes by your debt decreases. So even though the tax increase is higher the debt is timing out. So, it's a total budget increase of 5%.

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Our major sources of revenue, their local taxes and their state aid. Um, it's very uh this this wasn't on purpose, but I find it very interesting. Our uh local taxes, they're about 82%

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of um the revenue sources for the budget. It's about 82% of the budget is salaries and benefits. Most school districts are about 80 to 85% is salaries and benefits. A regular business in the private sector is about

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60%. So you might go why is it so much more um for a school district school district's a people business. It's it's human related. There's uh only so many students in a classroom. There's many teachers and staff members. So there's

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more staff to run a public school than there is a private business. So, just keep in mind all of the local taxes go to support all of the salaries and benefits in here. So, the small amount of state and other revenue sources that we have left over that covers everything

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else. There's not that much left over. This is just another way to look at it. The large part of the pie, the 82% that is like the local taxes for the general fund. As you can see, the next slide over there is the state at the 6%

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figure. And then there's a couple other small pieces to the pie. Use some of our maintenance reserve um to fund extra maintenance projects in the budget that would have been cut if we didn't use these reserves, but they're projects that we think are necessary. Our capital

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reserve, we have two regular operating district projects that are part of this budget. They were due to time out if we didn't entertain them. Um they are HVAC projects at our middle school and our high school. In summary, what a regular

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operating district project is is a grant from the state where the school board pays 60% of the project and the state pays 40%. If we let those grants time out and they weren't part of this budget process right here, we would have still had to do the projects and pay 100% for

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them. So that's why you have a working budget as I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation where you work on having a fund balance in June so you could replenish your reserve account offset and put some tax relief to the future. So when opportunities become

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available you need to have the cash to entertain the opportunities appropriations. These are our expenses. Our regular programs are our K to2 programs or basic skills. We have our support services which is our nurse, our

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guidance, our curriculum and instruction special services, our administration which is held to a cap. Folks might not know in order to get our budget passed by the county office. We can't just carry as many administrators as we want.

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There is a regional cap in bas because every socioeconomic area is different. So in our sunset c county area there is a cap. That means we can carry a certain amount of administrators based on the enrollment and the revenue for our district. So we have to meet that

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number. Then there's operations and maintenance transportation benefits. These are the same challenges that every school district has appropriations. So if you take a look our our employee benefits,

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they're 25% of the budget. Take a look at our regular programs about the same. So our healthcare costs the same amount as our entire K to2 general ed operation. So at the end of the day that is what it

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is. Everybody knows that healthcare is a challenge in the United States, not just in the McGomery school district, not just to the school districts in Somerset County and everywhere. So that's just a fact of life. So, Miss McLaughlin and uh my goal is let's not affect those regular programs because that challenge

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on the left as I mentioned earlier those expenses are going to continue to outrun the revenues that you folks provide for us and we're grateful for. So, our job is not to affect that piece of pie on the right. And um it's not easy. We really have to thread a needle to do

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that. And the way that's done is just really analyzing every budget request from every budget manager and having honest conversations about what is necessary to keep the rigor and what's a wish list item.

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And that's why it's a six-month process. This is a new slide from last time. These are healthcare increases by some of the local districts in the area. Healthcare is a hot button right now. So I wanted to give an I two perspectives. First I wanted to show some of the

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neighboring districts. This data source was from their budget presentations that are on their websites that I drew this from. Um as you can see the average of the districts is 16 1.5% healthcare increase. We're at 17%. We're right there with everybody else. So at the end

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of the day some are higher than others. Princeton 15.2, 2, West Windsor 18, everybody's around 17, just like us. So, we all had to face the same challenge of this historic healthcare increase, but at the end of the day, delivered for our

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students. I think we really delivered. I looked at some of the other presentations. They did their best, too. I think we kept our menu of choices status quo with that on the slide right there. Very difficult to do. Now, data that I don't talk about often, but I

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think is important. Below you're going to see the state healthc care plan that had a 32% increase for year 2026. 17% is not too bad when you're comparing it to 32%.

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Their health care plan, the prescription plan that's part of the state health plan, that went up 58%. So sure, is our number desirable? Is it double digits? Is it the highest I've ever seen in my career? Yes. But in perspective, compared to the state

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health plan, it's 50 cents on the dollar. So, here's one thing that's important. You want to be in a private plan in my opinion because in a private plan, just like with your home insurance, your auto insurance at home, you can shop it out

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to try to get the best deal available respective to your collective bargaining agreements. You have to have equal to or better than care. That's in the agreements. So, our broker shops that out every year they shop the risk out. Some people,

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they look at the risk and as time goes by, your staff gets older, the risk gets a little worse. Some of the private plans, they don't put a quote. Some do. We take the best one that's available. when your risk becomes

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I want to use a positive word less than favorable that the private plans do not want to give you a competitive renewal in the future that's how you unfortunately end up in the state plan because a private plan doesn't want to pick up your risk

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fortunately our risk is managed very well so even though it's a very expensive renewal it's still competitive and much better than the state plan. And we're already working on a program to reduce it for

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the 2728 budget cycle. Right now, we're one of two districts that are working with the broker that are actively working on a plan that's going to I really can't get into the details too much, but it's going to need collaboration between the board, the attorney, and different um unions that I

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mentioned before, but there is potential to significantly lower this cost the next year, even if the renewals are high, if we could have a collaborative approach that's not going to affect anybody's level of care. which is going to affect the mechanics and the

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delivery. So my point is I want to offer the board options on healthcare as the costs aren't going down anytime soon. So at the end of the day when things are expensive you want the best price available and I'm working to do that by looking at the numbers. They're not the best but they're better than they could

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be our enrollment trend. So the first nine years of this data comes from our um certified audits. The last number is an estimate that uh the administration came up with. As you can see that the numbers for the upcoming school year, we

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anticipate that they'll be down about 2.9%. Um unfortunately, there's been talk in our study of different housing developments that were going to bring families and students to this school and we hope that they come, but they haven't

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showed up. So that's why unfortunately we continue later in the slides you're going to see that we had to do some targeted salary reductions and different cuts to the budget based on this. So some of our fixed costs are going up but even though that they are here

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enrollment is trending down you have to make adjustments and we believe that we made the adjustments in the right areas but again they didn't affect the menu of choices that Miss Mclofflin focused on earlier and at the end of the day we're here to support those menu choices to

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give the students the best opportunity that they can for the future. Okay, so balancing act. So it's a different slide. If you look at the the like the picture on the left that's like in the silver or the gray, those are all the initial budget requests that we

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received in December along with all of our fixed costs. Millions of dollars higher than we actually can fund. So we have to go through. We cut $2.4 million of wish list items to our facility.

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Cut $1.4 $44 million worth of salaries, $440,000 worth of supplies, and $100,000 worth of professional development. All very difficult choices. But at the end of the day, as I mentioned earlier in my

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slides, you have to make priorities. What do you have to do now? What can you wait till later for the items that we have here? Unless the salary determined, those are things that we could wait for later because we want to be able to affect the students in real time.

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And if we did some of these things, we would have had to cut programs and put activity fees out. Uh we decided to strategically target some of our facility projects. Some of them are going to wait. As I said, the salary reductions, they were targeted based on

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enrollment. And uh these are things that many of the districts in the area had to do. Just a highlight on the numbers for the healthcare. The healthcare adjustment that we took was $3.1 million. The 2% tax levy was $1.8 million. And the

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expiring bank cap was the $875,000 figure. So those are two revenue sources. As I mentioned before, 82.2% 50% of our budget is salaries and benefits. As you can see from my note on the bottom, that's right in the middle of the range

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for the state average. It's just a cost for doing business. Most of our budget goes to our staff. These are the two regular operating district grants that I was uh proud to mention that we're doing for next year that this budget's going to support, which is an HVAC upgrades lower middle

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school and HVAC upgrades at the high school. And these are going to be targeted upgrades at our high school. That's going to be some rooftop units that affect the building. And we're going to try to put some rooftop units that also are in the pool area cuz uh I

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went to the pool for the first time last summer. and uh I left 30 lbs later. So, we need we need we definitely need to like we need to move some air around in the pool. So, that operating grant right there is going to do that. And thanks to the state of New Jersey, we're going to save 40 cents on the dollar. Uh Lower

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Middle School, they want the air conditioning, too. Again, uh the total project uh award is up to $1.9 million and the board is going to support 60% of each of these figures. That's the $2.2 $2 million of capital projects that are in the budget resolution that we're

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going to mention later. That concludes our presentation this evening. As I said, the budget is the same from March. We just wanted to enhance the slides to give the board and the public the best experience we could. Now, since the numbers didn't change

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much and we've had six weeks since our budget meetings from March 11th, I don't think that we're going to have many questions, but if any of the board members have any new questions that Miss Mclofflin and myself didn't answer, we're going to open the floor up. This is a meeting of the board for any

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questions the board might have on anything that we presented. >> Oh, sorry. Um, can you flip back to slide 27? >> Sure. This is the the one with the healthcare imperatives. >> Sure. Give me a minute. >> This one right here.

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>> Yes. Yeah. So, thank you for including this cuz this has been a question. I know it's it's been coming up and it's not a what I took away from this was this is not a Montgomery only problem. This is something we're seeing across the state. We fully verified it. We're actually in the middle of demand. So,

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it's we're in the right place. So it's it's one of those costs I think when we look at the overall operating budget it's an explainable cost increase and it's an unavoidable one. I think you mentioned that we are working towards it. Can you elaborate a little bit on what we're doing to mitigate this longer term

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>> briefly because it hasn't been fully vetted but just give you an idea first of all I just want to touch base on the first part of your point. I completely agree with your analysis Mr. Nunes. It's not exactly where we want the renewals to be but uh we're it's middle of the road. we're right there and it could be

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significantly worse if we weren't able to shop our risk and we were in the state plan. So yes, I agree with you on that. To your second point regarding what we're doing for the future, again, you have challenges. You have to just attack them as best you can. So we're

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working with our broker. Our prescription renewal was more than our medical care renewal because people use prescriptions more than they go to the doctor. And there's uh great medicines out there. they cost they cost more. So what we're doing to answer your question

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is we're working with the broker to try to have the delivery of the medications directly through the prescription provider versus say go to your local pharmacy or to like the national pharmacy like an Amazon pharmacy or CVS. So essentially at the

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end of the day, if staff member takes medicine X and it cost them whatever their co-ay is, we'll just like make one up right here, $30, they're going to get the same medicine for the same cost or possibly less if they get a discount, they're just going

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to instead of say go on one app and order it one way and maybe pick it up locally to go on a different app and maybe say have it a 90day supply delivered to their doorstep. So, at the end of the day, might it be slightly different? Yes. At the end of the day,

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if you were a staff member in this unit and you needed Medicine X and you're used to paying $30 for that, nothing is going to change. However, due to the fact that we're going to ask staff members to slightly consider changing

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their delivery of receiving this and we're a public school in New Jersey, there's layers that we have to go through. We have to go through committees. We have to go through the board. We have to go through our attorney. It's contractual. We have to go through the unions. It makes sense to

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me. It's something that we're working the legality out on. And hopefully if the legal paperwork is exactly like I just explained it when it's delivered to my desk and everybody agrees that all right, this is worth it to do for the better of the district, then that's

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something that we could do for next year. the very raw preliminary numbers just at a glance that could save us a million dollars next year, no matter what the increase is. So, I think everybody at this table in this room would say a billion dollars is a

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significant amount of money to save to be able to get the same exact thing. That's as much as I could expand on that. Now, it's not a guarantee. I'm waiting for legal paperwork and there's a lot of cooperation. That's the best I could give you at the moment. I hope that helps. >> No, no, thank you. And I just want my

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point. It's the right thing to do, right? We want to support our teachers and it's it's not just contractual, but I think it's the right thing to do to make sure that they continue to receive the healthcare that we promised them. Um, >> does anybody I got one more question? >> Anybody else here? >> Uh, we jump to slide 29.

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>> Okay. >> Can you help me understand a little bit on that the the second one, the the salaries, the 1.4 million? Sure. I'm just going to come I'm just going to come up here because I'm not going to even my glasses like I can't see that like from where I am. I think I talk

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loud enough that everybody can hear me. So, we're just going to kind of walk through the ladder like completely. So, like the top cut is the largest one. It's $2.4 million. That is the facility and equipment cuts. I believe that there was a document that you requested that Miss McGlaughlin shared with you to kind

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of outline on that. Miss Warland, I believe you asked for that information. We shared that with you the other day. That wasn't easy to do. like those are those are things that we want to do, but we figured we had to make tough choices. We made those facility cuts at the betterment for our students to keep the menu of choices. Like I said, we're

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threading a needle and there's tough choices. So, we wanted the students and the programs first. So, that's why we kind of took the first step down the ladder. The second step to answer your question, the $1.4 million in salaries. The best way that I could answer this question as the school business

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administrator is I have a position control roster this year for the 2526 budget and the 2627 budget. The position control roster shows every staff member in the Montgomery School District that draws a paycheck, what their building

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is, what their location is, what their position is, and they have a unique position code. And what I could tell you from my desk, this isn't like FTEES or who's being a reduction in force, who's retiring, who's losing jobs. This is

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just showing you based on right now what we know for our staff, there are going to be $1.4 4 million less in salaries. Got 13 individuals that are working right now collecting a paycheck that July and September they will not be

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collecting a paycheck next school year. Now, as far as the logistics of that, if there's a program say being reduced at the elementary school and that person's moved into the middle school and FTE and all that, I don't really get into that. That's something that Miss McLolin and

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human resources does. I did share with you the position control roster for next year's budget ties into all the salary lines and all of the staff members. And basically at the beginning of the budget cycle to where we are now, there's $1.4 million less in salary that's in the

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budget than would have been if we didn't make the changes. I obviously can't mention the names or positions out of respect for the staff members. That's the best way I can answer that question. Maybe a question then to Mary. My my concern with that second column is I think tying it back to one of your

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earlier comments 82 was it 80 82% >> 82% >> 82% of our operating budget is compensation of medicine. >> Mhm. >> Right now to me that number is a black box to know how much is proportionally

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hitting our teaching staff versus administrative and how that impact any cuts that are done there. So, I don't know if you can elaborate on that. How are we making sure how are we making sure we're protecting the classroom? We have the right here. The regular programs, as I mentioned

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earlier, those are our K to2 general education teacher costs. The administrative line, those are the district administrator costs right there. And as I mentioned earlier, administration's held to cap. Miss Mclofflin can't have as many

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administrators as she wants. She can have as many administrators as the regional cap allows us to have. We are under the regional cap. Our regular programs and our staffing were adjusted based on enrollment for that without cutting any

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of those programs that we highlighted on before. I I think that answers your question, but like if you need something else, >> elaborate on the cap. Is the cap a maximum or is the cap a a floor or is it a ceiling? >> Like so the the administrative cap usually >> the way you would look at that it's a

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maximum. Most people have a challenge. I every year doing this this is my 21st budget I've done. Every year it's a challenge. I'm over the cap at the beginning of the budget process to kind of look at that. And that's why like we we had um I don't want to like we did have a cut that was to this kind of

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level to kind of help us get below that. Um, I don't want to kind of mention like the names or the people like here, but yeah, it is a cap. Every one of those districts that I showed before, like with the healthcare, every one of us is right at the ceiling of that. Nobody's

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at the basement of it. Everybody's at the ceiling. So, we are not allowed to have our budget passed by the county superintendent unless we're under it. Yes, we are right at it. And it is a challenge to be right at it cuz some of the things that are in the administrative cap, Mr. is not only is it your administrators, your district

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administrators, your principles, you're also going to have all of your central office staff, you're also going to have all of your IT staff, all of the expenses that go to those departments, all of your legal expenses, all of your IT expenses. So, your administration is not just the key administrators that you

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see, they're all of the administrative team and all of the expenses that go in it. And uh we're below that cap. Um the regular programs like I said it's about a quarter of our budget and we're keeping the staffing levels to keep the level of programs that we have be that

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we mentioned earlier. >> Still to me it still feels a little bit like a black box but there's >> explain to me what you mean by black box. Maybe I can help you. >> What is the administrative versus teacher split and how is it how was it last year? What is it this year after these cuts that we're making? Is are we

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unproportionately affecting our teaching staff? >> Yeah. But where do we see that though? >> So, so I'm going to answer your question to ask me when I'm standing on the floor and everybody what my splits were from last year administrative. I'm I'm pretty good. I' I've done a couple of these

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before. Nobody on the spot is going to know the answer to that. Let me let me finish. >> Nobody's going to answer a question. If you wanted a question with that level of detail, you would have needed to ask us before tonight. that I I respect the question, but to know that like Cole, I

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can't answer that. >> There's a there's I'm still struggling, >> but if you ask me differently or break it down, maybe >> I asked the question on March 20th, and this is where I've been struggling to get an answer to see how it impacts. And I'll just ask for two numbers like in the budget, what is our teaching and

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what's our administrative >> in the categories as defined by the in the annual plan. Like I might want to make up the categories. I guess I was asking like what analysis did you go through to make sure the staff the cuts were in the right place? Could that be shared with the board so we were

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comfortable with it? You need 82% of the budget. >> Good question. >> It's not a material. It is the budget, right? That is the most question you asked exactly the same question. Dr. One second. We're going to do one at a time. So I'm going to answer it's Mr. Nun's

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question with Mr. Mclofflin. Hold your thought and then we'll come to yours. Mlin, let's put you on the spot. Do you want to help us know years and let him know how we work with each of the building principles? Evaluate their schedules, their enrollments, the teacher. This is something like I don't speak for you, but we do do it together

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as an administrative cabinet. Correct. We evaluate >> the enrollment, the sections, all of those things, >> the board regulation on class size, the class offerings, all of that is considered. >> But that's that's where like it sounds

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like you've done a lot of good work there. What I'm asking is show me the summarized output of that work or the board, not just me, but the board. We should be informed on how this is impacting teachers at a at a very summarized level, right? I'm not asking for names, just in total. What does it look like? Can we get two numbers being

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82% of the the budget and it's just I struggle with that to not know what it is and being asked to approve I think it's like 120 $123 million operating budget. And it's a question I've been asking for for the past six weeks on a onepage slide on an explanation. And I'm

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going to give you guys credit on everything else that makes sense. All the pieces are are clicking into place. The healthcare costs totally explainable. Some of the other questions on the budget we've worked on got very good explanations on why that is. But the 82% piece is it's it is the majority of our budget.

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>> Okay. This is this is the best answer I could give you. >> If it doesn't answer your question, we'll come to your question here. precision control roster that I shared with you, there's 65 plus million dollars worth of salaries. You take that in our healthcare and you divide that by

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our total budget, it's 82.8%. So our salaries and our benefits are 82.8% of our budget. The splits and the things that you're looking for. That's not something that I typically answer. I'm worried about how many staff

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members does it take to operate our district. I get that from the superintendent of human resources. They did their deep analysis on what our classroom sizes are. They made cuts. That's something that I I hate to say at

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the board level. You have to trust us that we are staffing the district the right way based on what the student needs are and what the enrollment is. I understand you saying that you've been asking for this for March 20th. I've given you whatever information that I can to the best of my ability. I gave

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you my complete position control roster that has over,000 lines of salary and code on it. That is to the extent deeper than I've ever provided for anybody before. If you cannot if you're not comfortable with that, I I can't help you. You're just going to and if you can't vote for the budget, the budget at

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the end of the day supports the staffing level that the administration think we need for the programs that we're providing for the kids. We hope that the board at the end of the day wants to support those programs for the students and you trust your administration. There

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comes to a certain level that if you don't trust us, then I I don't I don't know what else to give you. You just might have to vote no for the budget if you don't trust. >> That's my best answer. >> Proportions, right? We have approximately 40 admin and we have

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approximately 710 staff members. So proportionately of course more from the one side will be to be the same average right like one administrator is like 2 to 3% of all the administrators

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where that that equals like 15 teaching staff compared to the numbers and we have turned this into a working session it's one of those numbers I didn't just ask for two numbers when we calculated the budget what was the educators and

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what was the support staff which is very simple because it's if if we calculate it that means we have the data and I struggle not knowing what it is knowing it's 82% of the budget and the part of trusting yes I definitely trust you but the board's responsibility

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one of our core responsibilities is governments not spectators show me the work that's been done and I see everything else everything else clicks into place but 82% is just too big of an amount to not have a firm understanding and also not understanding that this is unproportionately affecting our

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teachers. When I see that there's cuts in here, what is it? 1.3 1.4 million. What is the right balance? And if you if you walk us through the logic, >> maybe I said yes, it makes sense. But not knowing a black box, not having any data any data points is very tough to to vote on.

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>> Where was this? Where was this question on March 11th when we had our budget? I I tried working informally through one-on- ones, through emails, and I I can go I mean, I wrote it down because I thought we were going to get questions on this emails on March 20th, on the April 13th offbeating pre-alignment,

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April 14th off meeting, April 20th, asking for two numbers on a budget knowing that 82% of that is this. There's a lot of great backup here on the on the 60% all other but it's very tough to understand how this impacts our teachers and that's I think we got to

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put that first show us the work that's already happened and like I don't know why there's such hesitation to show us what's already been there at a summarized level just two too high level >> because you're asking for this is this is my presentation that I've prepared for the board and you're asking me on

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the spot for something else. I've done plenty of these school budgets. I don't know how many of these public hearings you've sat through for school budgets or your familiarity with this. This is standard. These here appropriations and expenses. I looked at

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Princeton's presentation. I looked at West Windsor's presentation. I looked at many of the others in the area. They presented the data out the same way that I did. I've seen some of their videos. They didn't go to the extent that you're asking us to go to. and they definitely

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didn't get asked on the spot for the information you're asking for. This is the staffing level that the administration is saying to the board that we need to staff the school next year. You're not going to get the answer that you want tonight. I'm not trying to be argumentative with you, but you keep

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asking the same question. I walked up to you and I gave you the best answer I could went to the slide that I thought I had the day to. If you are not comfortable with it or you can't stomach it, I can't for you force you to vote yes, you could vote no or if you really

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just don't support the budget in general, just say that and vote no. But at the end of the day, you said that the board member's job is governance of the budget. It is, but there's a difference between governance and the level that you're taking it. I answered your questions to the best of my ability. I

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want to speak for Miss McBalk, HR. I basically rely on them to tell me what staff members they need to run the school. I plug it in the budget. That's my job as the business administrator. That's my answer to your question. If it doesn't satisfy you, I can't I can't I

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can't hold Let me let me finish. >> I can't help you. I gave you everything I could. The way I'm interpreting this is the key takeaway is 82% of our budget is a black box and we are not allowed to know the split between educators and supports

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that administrative 82%. It's not and again 82% of a $123 million budget is material. That is the majority of the budget. >> I tend to disagree with you for this one reason. This is going to be my last statement on this.

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I provided you our position control roster. I emailed that to you in the middle of April. It has every staff member in every building in every department they work in. If you looked at that, you you would see who works

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here and what they do. I provided you the document that I use as a business administrator. I put that together myself. That took a significant amount of time to do. All you had to do is read it and take a look at it. That would have answered all of your questions. It was there. You asked

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for it. I emailed it to you. I believe in the afternoon of April 13th. I knew you were going to ask this question. I gave it to you. I apologize that maybe I deliver the budget different than maybe the town of Montgomery does cuz guess what? A school district budget is

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different than say like a township budget. I presented it how I've done it my entire career. And I gave you a document that I'd never given to a board member before to analyze. All of the positions, all of the departments were in that position control roster. All you had to do is

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read it and then ask me some questions. >> I never got any questions back when I gave you that document. >> This is do you have anything else? >> I do. And one thing, the board is not intended to be operational. A 15 to 17 page data dump with confidential employee information is not what I

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requested. I requested two numbers in your budget. How much is educators and how much is administrators have? If you don't have that number, what's in the budget then? I I'm asking the sum total of your analysis. All your thought, everything that went into putting the budget together, why can't we have two numbers there? And the data dump is not

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it. I don't want to be operational. I don't want to be in the day-to-day. Give me the output of how many teachers we're impacting here? Cuz to me, that that's what I care. I'm here parent of two a parent of three kids, two in our schools right now, one in daycare. I want to make sure that we're protecting the classroom. We're not disproportionately

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impacting teachers versus administrators. And I have zero facts to to talk about 80% of the budget. >> As a board member, you're here for all the students of the community, not just yours. >> I gave you the best information that I could.

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Okay? And if you're just not satisfied with it, I can't help you. But to ask a question like that this evening and to have me stop and come back, what do you want me to calculate this? I did everything I could. >> Yeah. Thank you, >> Dr. Mr. Taliano. Go.

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>> Oh, it's not a question. I just was wondering if I can speak to the presentation you were able to share with me. >> Is that No, I don't want to be Dr. I think that Let Dr. Wang answer a question and then if you have some feedback that you want to add that could help with that one way or the other.

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>> Sorry. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. So, I have two questions. One is also kind of related to the head coach. Starting in July to April, we have 29 number of resignations and uh 15 uh retirement. That's add up

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to 44 separations. So how that contribute to our head count? We also I also asked the uh email uh our superintendent and also um CC president board president here and ask if we look at the J16 break them down by the

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categories you reported in there how this budget going to impact the I don't need the names again same category here how many people were influ impacted by this budget by the instruction by the supported services I just same question

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I had a similar question is how bad that's my number one question and number two question that I had is uh because we see the significant uh increase on the health care part so when I compare the

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actual budget uh you know from July to March that is 75% progress of the school year right so that is about 15 million uh actual budget of the health care the public share part so when I take a look at the

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bill list that the board has approved from July till March. Uh that has a gap of 5.8 million 5.8 million discrepancy between the actual budget from June July

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last year till March this year and the bill list or the board has have approved 5.8 million. Okay, let me see where the num those numbers come from. October bill list 10 healthc care entries under

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the count 11- triple0-291-270- 02- 0 that is the healthc care account October bill list 10 healthcare interest pages 2 and 36 November 9 healthc care

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interest pages 5 and 44 January one entry page page 9 February 7 entries page 26 March four entries page 29 when this numbers added up I found there's a

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gap roughly 5.8 8 million. I requested multiple times, can we see the purchase orders from the health care providers and identify where the gap is because we are going to approve a next year's

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school budget based on that 20 million health care healthc care cost from the school year for the next right. Yep. Up to date. I still don't have an answer. Maybe you can help me. >> Yeah. Oh, I can definitely help you.

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Three parts to your answer. Number one, I've invited you to my office multiple times to go over the data in person. I offered my clerk's Dr. Wang. I'm speaking. >> Thank you.

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Three-part answer. I'll start again. I've invited you to come to my office multiple times. My door is always open. I offered my clerks to you to pull the data in person. I didn't hear from you. So that's answer one. Swerland last week, she had she

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wanted to come in in person. My door was open. I met with her. We went over there for 30 minutes. We met for 2 hours. I'm here for anybody if they want to come in. You declined my request. Number two, a member of the public reached out to

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the executive county superintendent, Roger James. probably the best executive county superintendent in New Jersey to ask for an additional review of our health care costs. Him and his business administrator Dr. Overar for the county who are extensions

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of the state of New Jersey did a deep analysis of our healthcare said everything was squared away. So that's my answer number two about the healthcare. Number three, if you're going to ask questions the night of a

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meeting about Bill's list and rattle all of those numbers off and think that anybody is going to have a specific answer to you, I don't know what to say to you on that other than I've sent to you many times before.

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If you want a detailed answer, reach out in advance. When an invitation is offered to you to come to my office and go over the data because it is those are extensive questions, extensive numbers. That's not asking what the weather is going to be tomorrow. That's significant

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questions you ask. I said that's better to answer in person and you don't come. That's on you. That's my answer to your question. Miss Warland, would you like to answer to uh >> Um, so I just wanted to first confirm that since there was like personnel

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information provided that I would not be speaking out of turn by sharing. >> As long as you don't mention any of the positions and the names of the people or we just speak like in generalities like just like I have like that would be fine. >> Thank you. So I had come in to meet with Mr. Italiano and M. McLolin to just ask

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some of my questions about the budget. Um and one of the questions was about impact on instruction because there is going to be you know as enrollment is declining a change in staffing. And so they were able to present

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uh some of the current numbers of classroom sizes and show how the budget would change those while keeping everything very manageable. Uh also in line with not just uh required caps for class

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sizes but also what has been expected of this district which is not just pushing against the cap but making sure that we have good uh teaching instruction levels that students can get the individualized attention that they all need and that they've all come to expect in the district. So for from Julius's part as

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uh his inquiries, are we impacting classroom instruction? Uh based on the numbers I saw and the conversations we are able to have, it sounds like it it's a balance to make sure that we are being mindful of the costs, but also recognizing the declining enrollment and

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seeing how we can maintain uh both all the course offerings as well as class sizes to be uh appropriate for the schools. See, one second, Jul. >> I just have a question on this. Montgomery Township um school district

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is a part of the shift, the insurance um insurance fund, right? >> So, the whole purpose of that was to keep the cost at a you know lower level. So, we have a a group of school districts are in that program. So, but

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still our healthcare cost has gone up to 17%. But what is to say that what is the benefit of being in that uh group and still have to face this kind of a increase in health cost? That's the one question.

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>> Well, that's pretty easy. You don't want to have a 32% health care cost as the alternative to be in the state health benefit plan. So, our healthcare is half what our neighbors are that are in the state health plan. So that's that I would say that's a major benefit. >> But was there any guarantee of any

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percent that uh only we could go only to that level and there is no such thing or they can just this year 17 next year 24%. >> So essentially each year our plan is shopped out.

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>> Oh you know you know what I do Mr. Todd if it's okay with you um I asked Mr. Finn from Brown and Brown to come to the meeting tonight because I knew healthcare was a popular topic and uh he could even elaborate on a higher level than I can any of the healthcare

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questions. So Mr. Finn, not to put you on the spot, but uh I don't think this is your first time. I'm going to pass to you. Good evening. >> Good evening. >> Good evening everyone. My name is Jim Finn. I'm a senior vice president with Brown and Brown. It's been our privilege to represent Montgomery School District

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for the past 20 years in what is always a very challenging environment, school district health insurance. There are seven riskbearers that compete for school district business when it comes to health insurance in New Jersey. They are

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the state of New Jersey program known as the school employee health benefits program that acts as an insurer of last resort and for that reason and others is going through what the treasurer of the state of New Jersey calls a death spiral and she also called for the orderly

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windown of the municipal side of the program and said the school side is not that far behind. So that program is the 32% medical, 59% prescription increase for about a third of the districts in New Jersey, about

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200. That's one risk bearer. Another risk bearer is Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, which once upon a time was your insurance carrier, and they've passed along rate increases to over 60 school districts in excess of 24%.

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on their larger group book of business. School districts with more than 150 employees, the rate increases have ranged up to 45%. Ocean County Vote, that's public information. We also have Etna as a risk bearer

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competing for business in New Jersey. I gave a two-hour presentation at Flemington Maritime School District in February to explain why based on their population health and the cost of healthcare in the community and many other factors why their rate increase

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the best we could do for them was 35%. So, state health 32 to 59, Horizon 23 to 45, Etna for some districts up to 35. And we're talking Etna on a direct basis,

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not Etna through the school's health insurance fund. We then have a collection of health insurance funds operated by a company called Perma, one of which is the school's health insurance fund. The average medical increase, not counting prescription, the

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biggest ticket item, the medical increase in that fund this year was 14%. Your increase, because your medical claims are as good as your prescription claims are bad, your medical rate increase in the school's health insurance fund was 12%.

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So, if we're giving out metals, bronze, silver, gold, and platinum, while nobody likes these numbers, shift gets platinum this year, and they have in most years because they can do what the state of New Jersey plant cannot do. They can decline to admit school

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districts whose claims experience they do not like. And I hope I answered the question, Mr. Todd, I'll have a seat unless you invite me back up. uh while he's up there anybody else have any questions on healthare >> I do just have one more question um

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>> healthare or no okay just if anybody has a question of healthare why he's there I >> have questions for >> yes Dr. Uh so what's the percentage management fee? I was asking I asked earlier uh what's the total amount we pay for commission management fee and other non-benefit related fee to

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>> the commission in the school's health insurance fund is $40 per employee per month. It's not a fixed percentage and it only goes up 2% a year. So, while your rates are going up 12% in the school's health insurance fund, the compensation to us is only going up 2%

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next year on the prescription. It's not a per employee per month fee. It's a flat percentage of 2%. So, I don't have the dollar amount with me, but those are the factors that you could apply to the various slices of the budget. >> Gotcha. And another question I do have

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is uh I kind of like did a little bit research about school district health um benefit part increasing start school uh 2020 increases 2.6 2021 1.8 8 2022 3.75%

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and 2023 I believe that's the year our school district uh joined you guys and that year increase that year is also the full day kindergarten um that's the rapid dar we passed that's the 14.5%

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and school year 2025 is 8% 2025 school year is 9.8% and this year we're increasing 17%. So what's the benefit we're promised to join you guys and what's the actual results are? >> Okay, I have to ask you to draw a

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distinction between Brown and Brown which has been your broker for 20 years which is an extension of the school district. Our fiduciary obligation is to you. We are not agents of any risk bearer versus which risk bearer or which funding mechanism you've had over the

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past 20 years and you've had a lot. You were with Horizon and then you were with Oxford which is no longer in the marketplace. Then you were with Etna. Then you were in the state of New Jersey plan. Then you were with Horizon. Then you were with Etna. Then you were in the state of New Jersey plan. And then you

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came out to self-insure for a few years. And at the time you were about to renew your self-insured program for a fourth year. We recommended joining the school's health insurance fund because what was going on with medical technology, the introduction of GLP1s,

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which have exploded the cost of healthcare at almost every district, we made the recommendation to do so. And I have backup information that I can discuss right now that proves that had we remained self-insured going into the 23 24 school district year, we would

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have paid $4 million more than if you had done what you did do, which is follow our recommendation to go to shift for medical and been a card for prescription. So I'm not sure if that answered your question, but that's the story.

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Mr. top. >> Any other questions on healthcare? >> Uh last question is about the rebate. Last uh October at the training you did talk about bringing the rebate back to the school district that can help with that. Yes. >> So

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>> what's the update for that? >> So you're referring to the New Jersey School Boards Association workshop. >> Yes. >> Okay. So, we talked about something there that was not quite returning the rebates, but rather on certain types of drugs, eliminating the rebate equation to bring down the cost to the district.

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Because right now with Benard, because they are your pharmacy benefit manager, insurer, and plan sponsor, they retain the rebates. And on the most highly utilized drug in your population, we are putting together a program which would require legal scrutiny, Mr. Italiano

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referred to it earlier and which would probably require collective bargaining or at least the blessing of your three bargaining units that would deliver about a million dollar turnaround in terms of covering those drugs via Benard versus covering it or administering in a

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different fashion. And I'll pull the cork out of the bottle. It's a GLP1 direct program. And I'm not at liberty to give out the details here because there's certain steps that have to be gone through to honor the collective bargaining process. But we're working on it and I know that's not a popular answer sometimes but we are working on

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it. >> Can I just jump in? So board member when Jim was in our March meeting touching on this specific program and we had asked him to present to us to the off in May after the budget cycle um to explain to

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us what this program could look like and how that could benefit the district. So that is a conversation that we are still going to have the next couple months in Hawaii. >> And we're prepared to do that. >> Last question. >> May I back up a second? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> The reason it's not something being

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factored into the budget this year is you can't do what we're recommending you do just unilaterally. It does require if not consultation with your bargaining unit, it might require collective bargaining because no school district in New Jersey, and we would know we represent 60% of them has done this yet.

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It's called a GLP1 direct program. No one has done this yet, but somebody has to be first. And we are talking to a couple of districts that we think are cut out to do this from a a fiscal acument standpoint and a um governing

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body acument standpoint. >> Mhm. So earlier when I talked about that 5.8 million gap, I request to see the purchase order. Is that something that you guys can provide to the board? No, that that we don't see the purchase orders between you and Benard and you

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and the school's health insurance fund. Um, no, we don't have that information. Sorry. And and even if I could provide it, which I can't, that would have to be channeled through your business office. That's the rules of the road in our business and I think it's the rules of the road in your business as well.

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>> Any other questions, Mr. Todd? >> Seeing none, as always, it's very >> I'll stick around until you guys adopt your budget and good luck with that. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Do you want to go back to the staffing cost? Yes.

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>> So, I needed a calculator. Um about 2 and a half% of admin is being cut and about 2% of uh teaching and support staff. >> Can you again say what the enrollment decline is about? >> 2.9%. So like all of them

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>> and that's a guesstimate. >> They're all going down. >> Everything is in line is what I'm trying to point out. >> Range. >> Yeah. >> It doesn't always line up perfectly like that. This time it does. >> Right. A moment has to go down more significantly

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than um staffing because you know it's almost like flying a plane. Even if there's 10 seats empty, you still have to pay for the gas and pay for the pilot and pay for all the overhead and everything. Even though there's 10 empty seats and you didn't get the money for it. Meaning, if there's five kids missing

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from a class, you still are going to run the course in high school, for example. >> I have a question coming back to that 1.4 million um and the reduction in the positions. Um I'm just curious that some

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district do provide not the names not salary no just provide which areas is being cut like secretarial position or a student assistant program position or

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custodial position they will give some information which amounts to that 1.4 million. So I don't know why Montgomery District uh cannot put that just overall uh picture for a board to see where we

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are coming with this 1.4 million reduction so that we feel like it's not affecting the area. I know you guys would have done all the work but it would be nice for us to see also where actually

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>> so two-part answer to that. That's a fair question. In the budget hearings that we had with you in March 11th, we gave you a flavor for what the positions are. We didn't give you exactly what they are. This is a small, tight-knit community. If we

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gave out the level of the departments, the positions, and things of that nature, we didn't want that information to get leaked out to our staff that has to work for the rest of the year. We didn't find that appropriate. However, when we go into executive session, the staff members did receive a rights

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notice. We want to go into a little bit more detail about that. We can in the public forum. We cannot. >> And and I recall uh we were just talking about it at the March 11 meeting, at least in our session, you showed the schools of where potential cuts would be

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made, but not the decision. So at least we had an idea where if it was MHS, EMS, but >> we g we gave as much as we could to give you an idea. We looked at each program. There's more kids in the high school now than the elementary schools. We analyze this data. We're putting a budget

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together for next year, putting the right pieces in the right places based on where our students are. Showed you a little bit that kind of comes with a little bit. You have to trust us on where we need to put our people to run our school.

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So it really comes down to we gave you what was standard and it comes down to trust a little bit but we could talk about it a little more in executive session not in this forum >> and I don't know how that's just too much of a for me I don't want to know what the positions are that you're

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cutting >> this isn't New York City we don't have teachers that are on the payroll that are just sitting in a room for nine periods a day everybody is here is working and if we don't need somebody here trust me um like I want to be as efficient as possible. They they're not

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going to be here. Let's we've analyzed this inside and out, upside and down. That said, >> any other questions for >> any other questions? >> Question. I guess glad to hear that now some of the information being shared. Why

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why was it so difficult to just share that number like eight weeks ago? >> Like the 2% 2.5% We shared that information. Have let's put it this way. >> I'm sorry.

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>> Julius, I think they asked if you could repeat the question, speak in the microphone, then we'll answer you. >> I guess part of understanding this budget because it is I'll go back to 82% is a material portion of the budget. this operating piece not having the full amount of detail

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what is going into it what's not going into how it's proportionally affecting our teaching staff versus administrative that what that's what I needed to get comfortable with that 2% 2.5% had not been shared and that's that's what I I looking for two numbers total admin and

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total educational I think Mary's book is shared but that's that's the type of level transparency not down to the name not down even to the part to show us a total total and part of it is trusting you, but part of it is also sharing a limited amount of information to do be

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able to say yes, we've done enough due diligence to say that yes, this is in line. It makes sense. We may not like it cuz it's we ideally like to keep every teacher here. We want to make sure we're properly staffed, but not having any information for 8 weeks is is trouble, >> Mr. But thank you for sharing that. Now,

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>> listen, I don't I don't think you like the way that I deliver the information. I'll be honest, I shared it. I just don't think we agree. That's what it comes down to. You don't like my delivery of it. And I've heard that I deliver it different than the town does. And that's fine. And when my employment

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is up for renewal, like uh in the next agenda, you can vote no to that as well. I I deliver it as best I could. I'm sorry it's not to your satisfaction, but if it was that large of an issue, the majority of the board would have been all over me for that information, and they weren't. I gave it to you the best

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I could. You keep saying you wanted, you wanted it, you wanted it a certain way. I'm sorry I couldn't give it to you the exact way you wanted. I gave it to you the best way I could the light way I've done for the last two decades and I've never been taken to the level that you did. Like I said, there's a difference

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between governance and where you took it in my opinion. >> So, hold on. I want you to make sure. Can you clarify asking what our total administrative and educational staff is at a total district level is too much information? Because that's what it sounds like. Asking for two numbers is

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too much information for us to understand. as a board know when it's 82% of the operating budget. Are you saying that's too please can you clarify is that two too much further comments your question address that please

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>> as I said I came prepared I said there are 710 staff members 40 are under the category of admin um we have 56 in transportation and all the rest fall under teaching or support staff which equals 614.

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>> Any other questions from board members? >> I don't think I get my questions. 5.8 million gap answered. As we just heard, Ron Ron cannot offer that purchase order and that need to go through our VA.

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>> So if you come to the board office documented, >> well, it's recording and it's documented. You can't email. >> Now, that information will not be emailed because we've had some issues with >> No, somebody will have to take time to

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go through every file and um take a staple remover and sit and pull the purchase order off the machines and sit with you and they will >> Dr. Wayne could come in. >> We don't have an electronic plastic system to document such large database.

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>> So, so here's what we're going to offer. As I said, the county superintendent reviewed our healthcare and our budget twice. >> QAC and >> past QAC passing auditor. If you would like, you could have a personal meeting with the district auditor to review as many healthc care bills as your heart

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desires to answer your question about 5.8 million this and bills list that you're going to have to accept. You're not getting an answer to that question. If you'd like to come to the office and sit with the auditor and go through the healthcare bills, I'll arrange it. Be my guest. Any other questions from the

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board? >> I just I I just wanted to say something. Yeah, I do understand uh where board member Julius uh is saying that the process of getting information is also

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changed I feel this year uh compared to last year. Um whenever a board member is asking something it has to go through uh certain channel and sometimes we you know we get the answer sometimes we can said that's going too much into the

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weeds of the school operation. So that there ends the uh answer session. So I feel like if we could um have the openness of board members

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asking question without going through and without scrutinizing what is being asked. Uh it could be easier to find um the answers. I feel I feel like the process has changed this year which is not for

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>> right >> not all the time it's working. come. Thank you. >> I was just going to say and I'm not sure if it feels different if it's I think it's more that we've had in the past board members who were seeking information not through the right

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channel. So if it feels different it's just we're trying to do things and making sure we are following as board members what's required of us and there is a certain way we do have to um approach whether it's Mary and her cabinet how we go through um president. So there is a

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way to gather information that's done appropriately. So maybe that's why maybe feeling a little different because like I said in the past I think there have been members who used to just go to whoever they would like to get information and that wasn't always the most appropriate way to do so. And I could be wrong but I I just wanted to

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say the process has never changed. New Jersey school board does um training with the board multiple times during the year. We are a board of committees. So there are committee chairs. So anything finance needs to go through the OFF chair. Anything personnel should go

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through the HRC chair and that uh protocol has never changed. We might not have always enforced it. Um but because it started maybe getting to be a lot of questions, we need to enforce it. And then any general questions need to go through Mr. Todd who then would share them with me. So but but no process has

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changed. I want to go on record saying that no process has changed from the beginning of time with the Montgomery Township School District operating as a board of committees. That's the way that boards operate with committees and New Jersey school boards is clearly delineates that in every single training

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that they do for us over the years. Mr. T, Mr. Finn would like permission to speak again. >> All right. So it's Dr. Wang, correct? All right, Dr. Wang, relative to your question about actual expenditures versus budgeted expenditures, the $5 million

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number. While Brown and Brown is not Benard, we're not shift where you and we're not involved in the invoicing and the premium payment that's from the business office to the different risk bears. I will certify here on whatever book you want me to certify that by the

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end of June of this fiscal year, Montgomery, without taking into account employee contributions, just the topline gross premium will spend $23 million on medical, dental, and prescription.

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Next year, assuming roughly the same enrollment, I know you've had some cuts. They'll spend 27 million. You will spend 27 million. 27 divided by 23, I just checked because I was an English major, is 17%.

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So, what may be influencing how you're looking at your bill list and all that is sometimes the risk bearers are delayed in invoicing based on how many enrollment changes are made. Sometimes they close for the holidays or what have you. And sometimes depending on when

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certain bills come in, they don't make it onto the bills list if it's the day before a board meeting. There's no $5 million missing from what I can see. >> Is that correct? If there was, those risk bears would be reaching out to you

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to reach out to me to find out where their payments are. Isn't that correct? >> Oh, absolutely. The the school's health insurance fund has a 60-day termination policy if you don't pay your bills. Ditto Ben card and they all charge interest if you're past 30 days and my best recollection is you've never been

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beyond like 21 days. >> I'd agree with that. Thank you. >> All right. >> I'm going to open it for now. >> Okay. So now we can open the field. >> Board of Education welcomes and encourages input from the public.

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Members of the public are allotted one opportunity to address the board regarding the 2026 2027 budget only for up to a maximum 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 in

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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

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answer sessions, 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. Any comments from

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the public on the budget and the budget only. Please approach the mic, write your name and information in the envelope, please, and state your name. Good evening. Um, this is Raj Kulur. I'm a resident of Montgomery Township. Uh, if I spell it out, I can spell out my

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last name. Is that correct? Okay. Um I'm here to represent uh u so thank you first of all I would like to thank for everyone to share this one

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and give us an opportunity. Um I'm I'm a parent and a taxpayer of the Mont community. Um again um I'm here respectfully to ask the board to take a hard look at the trajectory of school taxes and Montgomery families. uh

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my goal is uh tonight's constructive to partner on the path of the projects educational quality and teams are uh completely affordable. So I'm also on behalf of a petition that 500 Montgomery residents uh which is signed by more

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than 400 residents. I'd like to give a exclusive summary and also share this with the board members if possible and also give the all the list of all the people residents who signed the petition. Um I would like to uh make a

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dis disclaimer. I mean this is in no way against the school or teachers because I did see a lot of coming in from a lot of people saying as if this is against teachers. I I think the school is great the teachers are great. It's just we wanted to highlight the fact that as as

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a resident there's a burden of tax increase yearover year especially for people who are actually have fixed income then that's much more. We want to make sure that feeling is uh that is part of the dis table making the decision not just only one dimension but

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that can be considered as a residence being as well. So that's the voice that I want to bring nothing against teacher but nothing against the uh nothing against anyone in general from the school district. uh couple of things that we looked at I think I can hand over the executive summary to members

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and also there's there's a petition and uh signaries but few things where we looked at the data across the board we looked at some of the schools compared which are like similar ranking one of them which we have benchmarked in the petition is from uh plains west school

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district some of the things that were stand out I I understand the health insurance costs have gone up um we are looking at non additional staff where per pupil per student ratio and if you were to maintain the same ratio how much

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more we have I don't know if we have to have conser full-time versus having part-time consulting whatever that is but of the non- teaching staff we could potentially see about 10.74 million reduction uh in other support services and instruction uh instructional aid

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positions so that's one one one of the things that we looked at an average about 10.7 million Special education optimization is about 2 million. Uh facilities maintenance and energy is about 1.1. Again, I'm just trying to

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thank you so much. >> Any other comments from the public on the budget? Can he can I hand you? >> Good evening. Vince Berg, 63 Alley, also uh serve as the deputy mayor from McGomery Township. Now, number one, I really want to appreciate everything that everyone here does. Um, being

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elected officials is very tough. I know for a fact that budgets are always a lot of fun. Um, number one, just want to make sure that we do um, as go through this budget, you know, we protect our teachers, protect our kids, continue funding special education. Um, big

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important things to um, want to plug uh, the initiative around uh, figure out our healthcare cost. That was one of the things I had on my list. You know, what are we going to do about that? I'm glad to hear some innovation here. So, I'm also quite uh, keen, you know, see if that's something that we can look at from a municipal side. Third, um I think

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you know there's been a couple of some emails, some discussions, but I think there's a um maybe you know not a huge material, but I think there's an opportunities for the municipality and the school board to partner on some shared services. Um and I think uh

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sometimes we have some silo, you know, uh processes, etc. You know, and I think there's a huge opportunity. So, I welcome any opportunity for the township to partner with the school board to see if there's an opportunity for us to share costs. It could help, you know, close some budget gaps, minimize, you

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know, tax increases, etc. But again, number one, appreciate the, uh, the discussions, the questions, the hard questions, which I think are important. And again, find really appreciate everyone what everyone does here for our residents and for our kids. Thanks, >> sir. If you don't mind emailing me

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sometime, if you want to talk about the shared services, I'm welcome to. There's I don't think this Karen Anderson, Montgomery Township. I just had a comment about the presentation and about, and I say this respectfully,

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about the tone and the bias or the the reactions that the VA has to questions. Could I request that going forward not pose a statement whether something's a good question, a bad question, or a silly question because the question is what it is. Let the listener interpret

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what their opinion is. And I just hear that as a continued not just today, but I hear that there's always a slant added to it. And I present I don't hope we could just present unbiased information and not subject your opinion on to

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what's being said. Thank you. Good evening. Um I just want to be brief and I want to just provide some numbers because we've heard a lot of um general general statements about estimates about what we should expect but I want to

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actually present some of the numbers that come from the board approved um documents. So I took a harder look at four years month by month of monthly of

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uh bill list report that's produced by this administration and presented for approval by the board. In those reports there are specific lines with a specific account numbers that relate to

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healthcare. So they represent or they're supposed to represent how much is actually paid in that particular month for healthcare cost. So

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in 2022 23 year we budgeted just for healthcare 15.3 million but the the amount the total amount of all payments that were was approved by the board

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included in bill's list is only 7.3 million. So there is a discrepancy of 7 million almost $8 million that has not been at least approved by the board. Same thing happened in 2023 24. The

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difference the discrepancy is 5.6 million and in 2025 to 2026 year the discrepancy is 8.8 million. So my question is if the bills list shows the

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payments remitted toward healthcare, how much how come there is such discrepancy between those bills that were actually paid and whatever amount is included in the budget? Good evening. My name is PJ Singh. I

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live in the army and to start with um I want to tell you that all of my three children went through Montgomery school system and I couldn't be proud of what the school had to offer. Uh and I really

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value the quality of education that our children get in this school. Today I'm going to talk about concern that uh you know we have regarding salary and benefits.

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Um I think uh one of the board members spoke about it but this is independent of what he said. I think um the overall the the salary and benefit as everybody knows is over 82%.

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And I think if you look at New Jerseyy's efficiency threshold, probably it's 75% to consider that you are, you know, you're in financial sustainable position. So that's a really

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quite important point, you know, not 80%, not 83% at least based on what I've studied. Um I think the other thing I do want to mention is to achieve this

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efficiency of 75%. Board had to cut about 8.25 million and and that cut doesn't have to happen only this year. you could start with this year and continue forward to work

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towards what potentially could be done to come to a good place and and I think um lastly um when I look at u you know look at the impact of this budget we are looking at

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uh about potential saving well I I'll skip that part in interest of time let Um so I I just want to talk about couple of things in terms of um you know what are the things to consider for board

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members. Uh firstly uh I think we need to review the non-instruction for the sport services headcount and I think if you look at it uh the Montgomery headcount is significantly

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more than West Prince school. Um I think uh one option that uh schools should consider is to go for these other sports uh services selectively

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um from full-time to part-time. It will you know reduce the the base salary. >> Sir, that's time. Thank you. >> Okay, I'll wrap up. >> I think >> No, that that's it. That's time. Thank you. I just want you to say I want

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>> sir please. That's it. Everybody gets the same three minutes. Thank you very much. My name is Halai and I live in Bitra and I've been resident of this town for about close to like 20 years, right? My kids graduated from school. School is like a wonderful place to like you know

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raise the kids here and everything that is offered like we have not only schools offer right I appreciate like you know what is being done but tonight I just want to speak on behalf of the residents. I know that people were talking about the budget and increase

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and the cost going up. The biggest challenge right now I think probably you guys also live in the same town. You also have seen the inflationary pressure that everybody experiences right the town is overall like a rich town. Let's put it that way.

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The income is also high but there is about 50% of the town that lives on fixed income. And these are the people that have been living here for 50, 60 years. They have raised their like children, grandchildren and whatnot, right? They have been living here.

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And with this burden, I think in my view, we are going to like you know take them out. They can't afford it. Right? It's not so much about the numbers and what we need to also look at is like basically the fiscal

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responsibility, right? If you have like a fixed income, you're spending certain amount of money on certain things, what are you going to do? You're going to start cutting down on some of the expenses. And if those people are already struggling to maintain their basic necessities, putting the food on the table, paying the electric bill, paying

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the gas bill, water bill, whatever that has to happen, you know, if they have to take this burden, guess what's going to happen? Either they'll have to start eating like in low quality food. have to start skipping like in healthcare like in the necessities

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right or they'll have to move out of the town right keep that in mind I understand like you know we want to save some jobs but at the same time think about it the impact of like you know what we are trying to save versus what we are going to impact

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when you vote for this budget today I want you to seriously think about it and make sure that you don't price them because those are the long-term residents of this town respect them. Make sure that like you know you keep them in mind. I'm not asking you to cut it. find ways

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to manage this budget properly like everyone else right and and I hope like you know I made my point and I want you to like you know you being the elected official so that we represent like you represent us right if you don't take care of us like

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you know who will okay I want you to keep that in mind and then you vote for this budget and I want you to go back to the white board if it is necessary go figure it out and manage it in a way that it is sustainable Thank you. >> Any other comments from the public?

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Hi. Uh, good evening. My name is Katherine Verau. Uh, Belid. I'm reading this statement on behalf of my friend Jessica Kogan, a Montgomery Township homeowner and the mother of two Montgomery students with active IEPs.

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She could not be here in person and her statement follows. Mr. President, members of the board, you have before you a petition asking you to find $14.6 million in cost containment before adopting the 2026 2027 budget. I

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want to be precise about where that money was supposed to come from. By the petition's own numbers, 12.7 million, 87% of the proposed savings comes out of services for children with disabilities. two million from returning 30 out of district placements. 10.7 million from

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cutting 158 positions in other support services and instructional aids. That is not a cost containment plan. That is a layoff plan aimed at the most legally protected student in this district and I'm asking you to reject it. I want to speak directly to the math because the

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math does not work. Out of district placements are not a procurement category. Each one is federally protected IEP agreed to by a team that includes the parents under NJAC 6A colon 14. After this

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district determined it could not deliver a free and appropriate public education in the least restricted environment. Under IDA stayput protections, you cannot return those students by board vote. You can return them only with parental consent or by losing a due

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process hearing. A single Burlington style unilateral private placement reimbursement runs 80 to 100,000 I'm sorry 80 to $150,000 per student per year retroactive plus attorney's fees. 30 contested placements

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does not save $2 million. It generates a litigation budget that will exceed it. The proposed cut of 158 aids and support service staff makes the arithmetic worse. Under IDA maintenance of effort, this district is required to sustain a

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special education spending at or above the prior year's level. A $ 122.7 million reduction risks a federal funding that must be repaid out of local dollars. It also collapses semmed reimbursement, which depends on the very power professionals and related service

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providers the petition wants to eliminate. The savings are gross, the cost is net, and the net is negative. A benchmark itself was on a the benchmark itself is on sound. A raw FTE comparison to West Windsor Plansboro without controlling for classification rate,

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autism prevalence, behavior plans, and one to one mandates is not an analysis. It's a press release. I would ask the board to consider one more thing. I have 10 seconds left and I'm not going to have time to read it, but I think you know where I'm going. um adopt the

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budget as presented to publicly reject any amendment targeting special education investments for support services. Thank you. >> Any other comments from the public? >> Hearing none.

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>> I'll entertain a motion to close the public hearing on the 2026 2027 budget. >> Second. It's been properly moved and seconded to close the hearing on the 26 27 budget. Any questions on the motion? All

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>> in favor? >> Hearing none. All in favor say I. >> I. >> All those opposed same right. Abstensions. >> Motion carried. Okay. So now that the public hearing is closed and we need a motion and a second

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to vote on the budget resolution. So do I have a motion and a second? >> I'll entertain a motion to approve the 2026 20 2027 budget. >> So move second. >> Been properly moved and seconded to approve uh and adopt the 2026 2027

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budget. Any questions on the motion? Any discussion? I would like I would just like to make a brief statement here. I I I would just like to make a brief statement. I hear people. Everyone is struggling with expenses. It's no It's

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not, you know, the grocery store bills are incredible. The gas prices are incredible. Everyone is feeling it. Everyone sitting at this table is either a direct taxpayer in this town who's voting on this budget or pays their taxes through rent. And so we are

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invested in this budget because we care about schools and because we are also taxpayers. And um but a budget is a statement of priorities. And I support this budget because it's a compromise between the resources we need for our students, for

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our schools, and between taxpayers. Um I'm concerned looking at this budget based on decisions that were made in prior years. this budget. We made this budget very lean and I am concerned about the facilities projects that we are putting off that may end up costing us more money in the future. But for the

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past two years, I stood on the other side of that podium and pointed out that we were like we were hurting the district by not raising the maximum amount we could. We are not raising the maximum amount we could in this budget. We could have asked for more but we did not. We had the bank cap available to us

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and we are doing a compromise every time a position is lost in a school. Yes, we h may have declining enrollment but there's economies of scale. Miss Mclofflin said it. If you have five kids leaving fifth grade and five kids leave leaving sixth grade, that doesn't change the economics of how many classes you

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have to offer. So, as we continue to cut positions, class sizes grow. I was a teacher myself and we all know when you teach that the more kids when you get to a certain number the quality of your instruction suffers and we do not want to have that to happen in this town. So

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it sounds easy from the outside to cut and to find money. It's not so easy on the inside. So I support this budget and I hope the people in town will understand that we are balancing between student needs. That's what we're here

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for. We're here for the children and this budget does its best to work with children. Thank you. >> Thank you. Any other comments? >> So, um, first year on board, I can say I I

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completely agree with Francine. It's a balancing act. And I think that that's where I I try to wear both hats to just make sure that hey, the administration's getting pushed and they I I completely got to say they they are being pushed. At the same time, our first and most important priority is the children and

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protecting the schools, protecting the class sizes, and making sure that that's what people came to Montgomery for. And the efforts there, right? Uh I think the administration's done a great job as far as bridging and explaining what are what are major cost drivers in the healthcare area, what we're putting off and what we'd like to get to in the future as far

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as utilities projects. And if there is money in the budget, definitely we want to make sure we continue to keep an eye on that list. The most important thing is protecting the class size. We we can't let that get out of control. And there are some unavoidable unavoidable cost increases, cost drivers, but

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they're explainable. And I think one thing that that always comes up is, hey, enrollment, enrollment, enrollment. Yes, enrollment is down 2%. But what I saw from Mary and Anthony is staffing is flexing to match that. We don't want to flex too much. You can only cut so much

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without actually impacting the student experience. And that's that we cannot let that happen. So, I totally support this budget. I know it took a little bit to get there. You guys got me across the the finishing line. I appreciate the the work though and like it it really is appreciated from seeing saying that the

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the effort is there. So, thank you >> and thank you to Mr. Taliano and Superintendent Mlan for um meeting with us as necessary and conducting numerous meetings to make sure that we could thoroughly go through everything. >> Any other questions, comments from the

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board? Yeah, I will say and listen, budget season is always a tough season season. Um, thank you to Mr. Taliano for his countless hours and getting us across the finish line or, you know, getting us to the finish line. Um, Mary and her staff and board members, you you

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asked some tough thoughtful questions of Mr. Tyler and hopefully he was able to answer everything and hopefully this comes out how we want to come out. Any other questions, comments? I want to say how we come to today is really tough like

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many of the board members try to ask questions but can't the conversations happen right now tonight shouldn't be in this situation there things could be discussed before

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six weeks ago you know and that's about transparency and accountability and also we've seen the decline in enrollment and family decisions it took a year for this board entire year discussion to receive the

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basic disenrollment data. Now we learned regardless of declining enrollment we have we always have about average 200 students to enroll each year the first primary reason is they move to other public schools in other state.

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Secondary reason is they move to private schools. That tells us families here have choices. They're balancing cost of living and also learning opportunities. Third, I want to talk about assess to

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the academic opportunities. uh as our superintendent presenting slides deck uh 13 we have a lot of stand highlights but it's a little bit hard for me to reconcile to have so many high

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achievements in those awards areas yet we took down some of the learning opportunities yet other school district offer free at cost. Fourth is how we leadership handle and respond to feedback is a little bit

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concerning. Last year when several about 20 distinguished university faculty reached to a board to share the expectation the school leadership contact administrators at their institution and later claimed that university

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>> Dr. when I go to redirect you this is a budget discussion >> budget budget come back to again that's about concern is how they reach to that so unwillingness to engage in meaningful discussion with the community

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and also student outcome and database that's part of the evaluation of the budget because we want to protect class size we evaluate our student achievement families also raised the concerns about foundational skills Look at those state assessment results

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shows the persistent gaps. Grade three reading 42 to 48% student >> Dr. Wayne again this is a motion on the budget >> budget on the budget. Thank you. >> Yeah.

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So the transparency accountability requires sharing information and we heard just from the board multiple meetings multiple emails no respond not yet until today asking two numbers is too much.

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>> We're asking to share information not hind >> Dr. Dr. Wang I need to call you are doing an evaluation of the administration and that is prohibited. >> Oh then talk about the budget. >> Thank you. So, can I close my rationale and

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expressing my appreciation or that not allowed? >> As long as it's about the budget. Absolutely. >> I'll take that. >> Any other questions, comments from the board? Hearing none, I will entertain a motion to adopt the budget. Oh, it's actually

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it's already gone. I'm sorry. Sorry. >> Yep. >> No more questions on the budget. >> Roll call, please. Mr. Caliana. >> Thank you. Dr. What? >> Roll call. Right. >> This is for the budget only. This is a yes or no for the budget. >> Okay. Uh abstain. My rationale is I

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cannot say yes to every single line of 10 pages budget. But I cannot say yes because some of my questions are not answered. The questions we discussed here just >> noted. Thank you. >> Yes. >> Spina. >> Yes. >> Mhm. >> Yes.

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>> Swalling. >> Yes. >> Sarris. >> Yes. >> Thank you. That's five. Budget passes. Mr. Nunes. >> Yes. >> Thank you, Mr. Naran. >> Abstain. >> Noted. Thank you, Mr. Todd. >> Yes. >> Thank you.

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>> Okay. Thank you. Budget adopted. Thank you. We can move on with our agenda. >> All right. We'll now move on to superintendent reports, presentation. Good evening everyone. For the first time in high school

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history, the girls lacrosse team won the conference championship. Congratulations to them. Montgomery High School partnered with the Montgomery Township Police Department and the Montgomery Township Health Department and hosted Think Fast Interactive, an engaging game show style

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assembly designed to empower students with essential facts about the dangers of vaping and substance abuse. Sued its week of inclusion with themes, dress days, and daily announcements designed to build awareness of diverse populations. The week concluded with the

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first ever silent disco hosted by the student council and the unified club. This inclusive, sensory friendly event provided all students with an opportunity to engage socially and enjoy music in a supportive environment. S highlighted the importance of service

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learning for the eighth graders. The service learning projects included visiting the cubs at OGS for day of play, helping the bluebirds at village with classroom lessons, making dog toys for safe, cleaning up the courtyard, and much much more. While you while eighth

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graders completed these projects, the seventh graders spent time with the hope squad, students working on community building activities. Students participated in a special presentation by a historian who shared insights on the Declaration of Independence. Her presentation highlighted how the document was shared across the urban

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nation, the individuals behind its creation, and its lasting impact on the ideals of equality and liberty. This event provided a meaningful connection to the nation's upcoming 250th anniversary. Montgomery Lobo Middle School continues to showcase the incredible talents and

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spirit of its students and community. It proudly presented its spring musical Willy Wonka Jr. featuring two outstanding ensembles. Both groups delivered exceptional performances highlighted not only their talent but also their dedication, teamwork and hard work. The production was a true

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community effort bringing together actors, stage crew, set and costume designers and supportive audience members for a joyful and memorable experience. Looking ahead, LMS is excited to welcome its rising fifth grade students on May 4th for a special visit designed to help

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them become familiar with their new school. That safe evening, school administration will host the informational session for parents strengthening the home school partnership as families prepare for the transition. To help celebrate the month of May, the middle school PTO will host its annual spring fling dance on May

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8th, providing another opportunity for students to connect, celebrate, and build community. In support of the civic unit, all fourth grade classes travel to the New Jersey state house to learn about local government and the roles of elected officials. In addition, our very own

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mayor of Montgomery, Miss Nina Sing, will be visiting the fourth grade team tomorrow, Wednesday, for an assembly to talk about her role as mayor of the town. The Montgomery Shade Tree Committee volunteers helped third graders celebrate Arbor Day on April 24th with the assemblies that focused on

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how important trees are to the environment. Students learned that trees helped clean out the air and water, provide habitats for wildlife, and support the health and wellbeing. Every student went home with a cypress tree sapling to plant and care for at home.

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Somerset County constitutional officers sponsored a poster contest for fourth graders in honor of the county government month. Students were encouraged to use their knowledge of history, current events, or personal experience to show what is great about Somerset County. There were only three winners and all three were Village

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Elementary students. First place winner received a gift card and will have a class party. Second place winner will receive a gift card and the third place will have um honorable mention will have the poster on display at the county administrative administration office.

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They will receive their awards at the commissioner's meeting in Somerville, Indiana. Four village elementary fourth grade coral students have been selected to the member to be members of the 33rd annual New Jersey elementary allstate choir that will perform in Flemington this

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weekend. Membership in the all state choir is a very distinct honor. The village coral director supported students throughout triyouts and the rehearsals. The entire village community is proud of these vocalists and we're excited about their upcoming performance. April has been packed at Orchard Hill

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with all kinds of exciting activities for the Cubs. Last Friday, our high school peer leaders ran their annual career fair day for the first and second graders. Students learned about various careers and their school counselors with their school counselors prior to

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the event and then got to visit with the high school seniors who portrayed various careers like being a chef, a nurse, a musician, even an archaeologist. Orchard also celebrated autism acceptance the week of April 20th through 24th with a schoolwide bubble

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blowing event and a special video Q&A with members of the autism teaching team where students could submit questions to learn more about students and more about autism. That concludes the superintendent report. Thank you. >> Thank you, Superintendent McLaclin.

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We'll now move to representative reports. MTA up first. Good evening. Uh my name is Chris Rash. I am the first vice president of the Mtea. Uh Mike sends his regards for not being able to attend tonight. He

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recently welcomed a new baby into his into his family. Uh and is quickly learning about the concept of a sleep schedule is more of a suggestion than a reality at this point. Um, so within the MTA, we have several

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programs currently underway with more launching soon. One ongoing initiative is our spiritware program. Each building has a donation bin located near the main office. So, if you have any Montgomery spiritware that no longer fits or items

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that your children may have left behind after heading to college, we encourage you to consider donating. It's a great way we could give back to our community. On May 9th, our Music from the Heart production of All Shook Up will take place with two performances scheduled,

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one in the morning and one in the evening. We hope you'll all come out to support our staff and enjoy what promises to be a really fantastic show. Last week, we held our Earth Day readaloud, which had a great turnout. Families who attended received books and

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birdhouse kits. With improving weather, we hope those kits will be put to good use. We also have three more readaloud events planned before the end of the school year. Regarding tonight's budget vote, we appreciate the board's discernments and commitment of

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significant resources to help maintain Montgomery's high level of academic excellence. As we move forward, it will be important to continue prioritizing what matters most for our students and their success. Thank you. >> Thank you. Do we have any board member

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delegate representative reports tonight? >> I don't have a report, but I do have something I'd like to >> um so the 26 um county SBA meeting topic survey. Um so it's called 2627 County SBA meeting

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topic survey. It was an email from Karen Callahan. It was sent on April 24th. It's due by May 15th. This is our opportunity as a board to provide any suggestions for topics that will be afforded airtime in future meetings of

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the county. So um which all members are encouraged to attend if their schedule allows. That being that being the case, there is one that is upcoming. It is the bianual delegates assembly. This meeting is going to be held on May 16th. Uh, I

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will be attending in person as the district's appointed voting member. Six resolutions are on the agenda on the following topics. Rank choice voting, immigration, pilot and tax exemptions, state school funding formulas,

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instructional materials, New Jersey tech school governance. You can find detailed descriptions of those six resolutions as well as much more information about the delegates assembly under the events and training link through your NJSBA portal.

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So if anyone needs help getting onto the NJSBA portal, please email me. I can help you with that as your um liaison. We can try to figure that out with you. Um but I do encourage all of our board members to read through the agenda. It's extensive and the links and please reach

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out to me if you have any thoughts or questions that you would like to share before this meeting since I am your roommate member. >> Thank you. >> Any other reports? >> I think I just want a reminder. I think next Monday, May 4th, Somerset County

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also have a a meeting to celebrate the year of the milestone. If uh members are available, please consider sign up. All right, we'll move to board committee reports, assessment, curriculum and instruction committee. Board member Harris.

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Thank you. All right. So, we met as a committee um feels like a while ago now, April 10th. And during our meeting, we um discussed the entry culture second edition upper

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middle school French levels part one grade seven and part two grade 8 um textbook for the 2026 2027 school year. We also had a discussion a presentation from um Mr. Hardy about a book called

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The Amazing Generation. It's your guide to fun and freedom in the screen world seventh and eighth summer reading. This this summer in they are taking a new approach a one book one school. This

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means the entire school community student and staff members will read the same book. This is a graphicformational text version of middle middle schoolers that aligns with John Hines anxious generation. This book aligns with upper middle school car's seal social

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emotional learning goals and prepares them for independence as they go through high school and postgraduation. Mr. Cardi and the LA supervisor will guide ELA teachers on a project based on the book and Mr. Cardi and the uh SA SACE will guide staff on how to use the

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content from the book throughout our school year programming family engagement through podcasts, newsletters, and digital wellness nights. This does not replace uh current summer reading for incoming seventh and eighth grade students but it will be additional addition excuse me an

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additional requirement also online curriculum resources we had a lengthy discussion with Fiona Portland and Jeffrey Brooks when we select a new textbook for a course you must also see a request for a class set of hard copy

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textbooks followed by the digital book or digital bundle given the current concerns about screen and and effective learning strategies. We discussed the continued practice of purchasing ebooks, digital bundles. Textbook publishers do not provide the option to access a wide

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variety additional student and teacher tools outside of the digital textbook purchasing model. Additionally, digital excuse me, digital textbooks should not be seen as the same thing as an ebook. A digital textbook bundle will include teacher resources to increase students

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engagement, scaffold instruction to meet special specific learning needs, background information on the lesson, and other tools to assist in effective and efficient planning. Additionally, they often include interactive features within the text, student text,

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assessment checkpoints, and options to change reading levels or even to translate text. The only way to get the bundle was to purchase both digital and paper books at the same time. And last, we had a discussion about technology in the classroom. This will be a continued,

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excuse me, this will be a continued discussion, but for today, COVID was a blessing and a curse. We've received state grant money and then we had to change our perspective toward inclassroom learning. Our approach is a balanced approach. Technology was once

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used as a tool and then it became embedded in ideal use. We can't ever go anti-tech. It's about probalance. Elementary use. These grades are not a one are not a onetoone take-home. Students are allocated to device in the

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classroom. This doesn't mean it's used on a daily basis. In grade one and higher technologies used for benchmarking, star freckle, etc. It is not used all day. We have filteration monitoring software which is a default to filter out social media. Um YouTube

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uncharacterized software. YouTube is blocked grade four below. YouTube shorts is blocked for shorts and other rates. We can embed a video within Google for the teachers aspect of teaching without getting full access to YouTube.

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We start our middle schooler one-to-one take-h home Chromebook program in fifth grade because of the alignment of the grades of the lower middle school and we find it academically beneficial for the edte resources such as software and digital textbooks. It is also initially more expensive to buy Chromebook carts

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and devices for every instructional space other excuse me space than a onetoone device model. And Jeffrey Brooks also discussed just tips that parents, you know, should know or could try to um do at home such as finding a

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docking station um downstairs maybe for a child's Chromebook versus allowing the child continuous access um in their bedrooms and things like that. So, we had a really great robust discussion about technologies and the benefits and also how to how we're monitoring it. So, thank you.

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>> Any questions for board member Harris? >> Do you want to have any? No, you got it all covered. >> I have a comment uh on the notes. So, I think I disagree with the idea that we can never move into an anti- tech direction. I think the context is

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important. If a clear majority of our parents, especially those with young children, are asking us to scale back technology. We have a responsibility to listen and respond. This is not about rejecting innovation. is about being

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developmentally appropriate. For our youngest learners, finding evidence points in the same direction. Children learn best through hands-on experience, human interactions, not screens. Other high performing education systems have already active on this. Countries like

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in Europe limit uh or delay technology use in early grades, prioritizing foundational skills first. Their approach shows that setting boundaries on technology is not anti-ike anti technology. It's smart sequencing.

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So balance sounds reasonable but it also can become a default justification for maintaining the status quo. If current practice is out of alignment with parents expectations and ch child development needs then recalibration

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even significantly is not extreme. is responsible governance. So we're not banning technology forever. We're simply saying in early childhood let's see more uh let's build a strong foundation first introduce technology later then it truly

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adds value. So I know our administrator is working um on this topic and trying to get some guidelines and I think later in the policy we'll hear about um we're trying to work on the policy on the technology and AI use right so that's my

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comment may I respond to board member way >> um I just wanted to say that I I completely understand where you're coming from and I don't I wouldn't want you to misinterpret the comments that were made about we can't go anti-tech it's not a suggestion that this is not a continuing conversation. It's not a

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suggestion that there might need to be a re-evaluation of the place of technology. I think the comment and the way it's presented in the notes was coming from a place of technology is a very real part of our world. We need to be responsible in how we include it in our instructional spaces for our

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students, when we include it in our instructional spaces, and recognize that getting rid of it entirely is just not really a very feasible option if we want to prepare our students for a world in which this is the future whether we as people who did everything on paper and

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pencil like it or not. >> So that that's what I said, context is important. >> Yes. Yes. And I just wanted to make sure you had not misinterpreted uh the notes to suggest that the school says nope, everyone must have this and this is the way we have to do it. That it is definitely um as board member Harris

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mentioned a continued conversation. And part of that conversation is actually the book that Mr. Cardi presented is talking about that influence of technology and where students especially as they get older can learn to independently find that balance. >> Higher challenging. It's pretty good. I'm going to read it with my incoming

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seventh grader this summer. So, Any other comments? >> All right. Hearing now, moving to operational facilities and finance committee. Board member Frank. >> Um, OFF met April 14. Um, we discussed

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two things in that meeting. Um, the budget which passed tonight and also discussed the facility use policy. So, this policy was last updated 7 years ago for both the policy side and the regulation. So to initiate the process

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of updating this policy, it was suggested that the off committee draft specific revisions or recommendations to be presented to the policy committee for formal review and board approval. As part of the preparation, Mr. Italiano

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will lead his team in researching local school districts to gather uh comparative data across all facility categories. The goal is to have an updated policy approved and hopefully final before the start of the upcoming

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school year. So, a significant portion of the discussion focused on the current fee structure and how outside vendors are being charged. So, the director of facilities who attended our meeting pointed out that 65% of booked hours currently fall under community-based

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organizations resulting in no revenue for the district. So additionally the existing fee structure of a per student charge is inconsistent with actual facility usage as a group meeting five times the same as a group meeting 40

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times. So to address this Mr. Italiano recommended um transitioning to a space rental model based on time increments rather than seasonal or annual fees. So these are still um in in you know being

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researched and will be further discussed but um we've started that conversation at our last meeting and hopefully we'll have some deployed policy also in the next couple of months. So two things that were left um for next meeting that

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we were not able to discuss was food service update and um the energy efficiency audit that I know um Miss Marvin had you know um forwarded uh materials from the meeting that he attended. So that is still going

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to be discussed in our meeting. Just wanted to announce that we did not forget. Thank you. >> Any questions for OFS? Can I just make a small comment on that? Um I think um I'm I'm very glad that the the facility um

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use uh we are re-evaluating the whole um the rate system and everything. But that kind of uh I'm very happy about that because I do get a lot of uh inquiries about renting the facility here in Montgomery school districts and it's a

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little difficult um system. I think they feel it. it it just goes within like 3 minutes. So I feel like there is a a revenue stream there also. Not only it helps the community uh rent our facilities again it brings in some

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revenue to the district. So it is um um a double win for us. I feel I'm very happy about that. Thank you so much. >> Any other questions, comments? All right. Hearing none moving on to policy and communications committee VPina.

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Hi, policy and communications committee met on April 13th. Um, we discussed the policy 3124 and 4124 on employment contract and teaching staff members and support staff. Both of

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these policies which relate to our um contracts have been updated to reflect the changes since the 25 through 28 uh mtea collective bargaining agreement was signed. Um, additional discussion was uh on a policy

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on AI and how stress estate stress EMA has begun to develop the policy and it is currently under review by both the tech department and the curriculum and instruction department. Once it has been fully vetted by the staff at Montgomery Township Public Schools, it will be

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brought forward to the PCC committee for review and then move on to the full board for eventual reading and vote. Um there was an additional discussion to be had but we did decide to put that off

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until the full committee could meet in its entirety. Um we would like to develop uh norms for use by all board of ed committee policies um or policy by all committees. Um the policy committee

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started to work on that development and um we will revisit that at a time when the full policy committee is present. Any questions? >> All right. Hearing seeing none, human resource committee did meet on April

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13th. However, all uh matters involve personnel and those matters are confidential. Uh the board hereby acknowledges all correspondence to the board. At this time, I entertain a motion to convene in executive session. >> So move second.

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>> They're properly moved and seconded to convene in executive session. Any questions on the motion? >> All those in favor say I. I. >> All those same right abstensions. We're now in executive session. At

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>> this time I entertain a motion to reconvene the open session. >> Move to second been properly move and seconded to reconvene and open session. Any question on the motion? >> Hearing none. Roll call, please. Mr. Taliano. >> Okay. Dr. Way >> here. >> Yes. >> Here.

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>> Herman >> here. >> Warland >> here. Harris >> here. >> Mr. Dunz here. Mr. >> N. >> Yes. >> T >> yes. >> Thank you. At this time, I entertain a motion to approve the March 20 26 executive session minutes and the March

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24, 2026 business meeting minutes. >> So move second. >> Been properly moved and seconded to approve the minutes. Any questions or discussion on the minutes? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. >> All those opposed say right. Extensions.

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Motion carried. Action agenda items. Public comment. The board of education welcomes and encourages input from the public. Members of the public are allowed one opportunity to address the board regarding action agenda items only for up to a maximum of three minutes per

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speaker. All comments must be directed to the board. Before you make your comments, 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 liability on the part of the speaker, the board discourages

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defamatory and discourageous remarks. The public comment portions of the meeting are not structured as question and answer sessions, 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

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chain of command, usually starting at the school level. Responses may be provided at the end of this session. Please state uh make sure you state what agenda item uh number that you were referring to in your comments. >> This is agenda.

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>> No, I will come back. >> This is the action agenda items only. >> That's not how you said it, but I wasn't sure. >> Okay. Any public comments for action agenda items? Seeing none, public comment is now closed. This time I entertain a motion

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to adopt action agenda items 1.1 through 4.2. >> Second. Been >> properly moved and seconded to adopt action agenda items 1.1 through 4.2. >> Roll call please. Oh. Any discussions or

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questions on the action agenda items? >> Uh I have a question for 1.3 the policy one. This is the second reading I understand and the policy napalism and uh the policy committee and chair Maria recommended to take the optional section

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which is the predeem substitute and student employee who are relatives of a board member and all the superintendent shall be excluded from the provision of this policy. That's the optional one. And Maria, could you elaborate the

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rationale of supporting uh this optional section to the whole board? Um yeah, it's has to do with the fact that if we have like substitutes in the district or lifeguards that are students that need to you know be as part of our

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uh payroll because they would get paid as such that we wouldn't want to prohibit people from working for our district on andem or um hourly basis just because of this particular policy.

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So we don't want to uh limit the ability for people in town to be substitutes or lifeguards or anything like that. >> Okay. Thank you for explanation. But I just want to point it out those are specifically to relatives of a board member or the superintendent. So that

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means if they're principles and they're not within this optional thing. That's what I'm hearing. So we don't want a napism but we want a little bit. No, there wouldn't be any nepotism. I believe that there's um plenty of people

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who have substitutes like have done day substitution in the past or again have been a lifeguard at our pool. That's not nepotism. That doesn't mean that they were hired because they were somebody's friend or somebody's relative and they were not

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qualified. That would be what nepotism is. >> But the relatives of a board member or the superintendent shall be excluded from this policy. Thank you. >> Yeah. Shall be decided not to. >> No. Should not be

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>> you decided to take it. That means they can be hired. >> Yes. >> As some as >> as the student employees are >> but again those board members superintendent, not the principles, not the staff. >> Okay. Thanks for the discussion.

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>> I don't understand. I don't understand. Why you're saying that principles and and staff members? >> Oh, that's the optional section. I'm just reading it. Deans and student employees who are relatives of a board member or superintendent shall be

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excluded from the provision of this policy. >> Okay. So, and then you added to it that principles and staff excluded, but that's not >> that's not in the section. Correct. Optional section. Yeah. You're just adding that information in that that is

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not part of this policy. Oh, that's thanks for your rationale. Um, I have a also a comment on 3.7 C auditor. Uh, I think in January when the auditor came to uh do the presentation,

540
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I asked the auditor like what did they do for those schedules in auditor report and the uh auditor's response is none. uh so that does not align with my experience and professionalism when I work with any federal auditor and uh I

541
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my rationale for this I'll vote no on that one I don't have more comments I think we can if other board member don't have questions I'm ready to vote >> I have >> okay I have a question board member >> it was

542
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looking at 2.3 three uh students being uh approved for our district. Uh this is for next school year starting June 22nd, 2026 to June 11, 2027. >> So I'm just wondering there's only one

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student being approved for the entire next year >> at this point in time. >> Yeah, that's the contract we have since so far. >> Oh, okay. So we have this >> cuz I'm sure the list is bigger. >> This is the list is going to grow. This is where we have a day after. Yeah.

544
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>> Yeah. We have this at the moment in time. The list will grow. >> And I have one question on 3.6. >> Correct. >> Uh 3.6. You're uh approving tuition rates >> for a stu for our school district, right?

545
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>> But um this is not the rates if a staff member is enrolling their children, right? That's 50% of this, >> right? This is Well, yeah. Everything has to be based everything has to be based off of the you have to establish these rates to do anything else possible. >> But so you don't have to approve that

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50% rate >> because that's contractual that's under CDA. >> But you have to approve the standard rate first >> to then honor any special arrangements that are in like collective bargaining agreements. >> That's a collective bargaining agreement

547
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condition that's based off of these annual like tuition rates if that if that makes sense. >> Yeah. Because I see in some school district they list the the staff rates also. >> The staff rates we have in the collective bargaining agreement already.

548
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>> That's fair. >> Yeah, I get it. >> If it could I don't know if that could be a >> that could get confusing. >> And that's not for everybody anyway. It's only >> I think it's for the supervisor agreement >> and and also

549
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>> how do we determine these tuition rates? Why? How do you determine? >> It's it's in the it's in the long budget program. Like if you kind of look I can show it to you real time if you want to take a look at it >> cuz some of the rates are competitive. Some of them are very low. Some of them are very high.

550
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>> It's all based It's all based on our budget, our enrollment, how many students we have in the sections, how many teachers we have. So that's why everybody is different. I can show it to you sometime. Pretty comes right from the state budget. >> Perfect. Thank you. >> Sure thing. >> I have two questions. Sure. I thought

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you were next. Go ahead. >> Um 3.17. >> I'm not. >> Take a look at Is that what it's called or >> Yeah. >> 3.1 >> seven. It's page 12,

552
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>> I think. Do you mean three? >> No, it's it's on page Yeah, it's on page 12. Oh, 317. Yeah. >> Is this somewhere else in like is this anywhere else? I I felt like I was a little bit

553
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I didn't know whether this was the Did we discuss this somewhere that I'm unear? >> Oh, okay. Sorry. >> I just when I was reading it going and of course I read it and and wrote my notes down and I'm like >> that's usually one of the four close

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session items. That's why I reminded the superintendent at the end to give the >> Thank you. Okay. >> No problem. And you said you had a second one. >> My mind was also and there was one more. Yes. Um for 3.25. Are these changes just to the pickup

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schedule? >> So no. Um so this is a service that we had in the past before I was here. Um and that was presented to us by the bank again to take care of. So we don't have this currently. I'm suggesting to the board to do this for basically two

556
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basically two reasons. So our staff member isn't away from work. Our staff member isn't responsible for having the money and transport and I'm transferring the responsibility like over to the company and it's for 10 months and there's no cost

557
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>> with the option to renew if at no cost in the future or >> and they present it to us like so. >> Okay. Thank you for your answers. Yeah, no problem. Question. >> But there we are going to follow up with PD to make sure that they don't

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>> the delegated note of what your request is. >> Yeah, no problem. >> I mean the resolution does say associated fees. So that I mean I know your question was but the contract will assist with it. So >> So he had a good question. So we're just going to basically I'm going to just do a blanket email to the bank to say to

559
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them that we're not going to be liable. So we get it back from them because they recommend that that is a good idea. Yeah, I can take care of that before anything gets released. Very easy. >> Any other questions, comments from the board? >> What is the CDWG Google Workplace?

560
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>> What number? >> Um, sorry 3.23. >> That's for technology. >> CDWG is like a um is an improved vendor in technology services. >> Okay. So, >> I think the students will be using that. It's like subscription for students and

561
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staff. >> Yeah, it's good. It's goo. It's a Google Workspace platform like it looks like. So it looks like it's for the district being procured through CDWG. Does that help or No. >> Had to Google it when

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>> Okay. It's pretty straightforward. >> It's part of the company CDW. If you ever heard of CDW? >> Yeah. >> CDWG is just a governmental entity to that works with schools. So we get a discount. Correct. >> Does that help? >> So CDW-G is the actual name. Yes.

563
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>> CDW government. >> Everybody gets from them. >> Everybody does. >> All right. Any other questions from the board? >> Hearing none. Roll call, please. Mr. Taliana. >> Uh, so as I said, what the policy 1.3

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policy 014 2.1 optional section? No. And uh uh 3.7c auditor no. How about all the other resolutions? >> All the others. Yes.

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>> Would you want a repeat on my policy? Could you give a repeat on the policy one, please? >> Yeah. Policy number 0142.1. >> It's the first policy. >> Yeah. >> Never. >> Excellent. Noted. Miss Becker. >> Yes. >> Miss Spina. >> Yes. Frank Herman,

566
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>> yes. >> Swan, >> yes. >> Harris, >> yes. >> Mr. Nunz, >> yes. Contingent on that little check on 3.25. except 3.7 C. >> So 3.7 C to clarify for the record. Is it no? Yes to everything else?

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>> Noted. Thank you, Mr. Todd. >> Yes. >> Thank you. Motion's all car. Thank you. >> 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

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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 inflammatory and

569
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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. 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

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session. Public comment session is now complete. >> Karen Anderson, your executive session ran just about 2 hours and you lost most of your public. There's very few people sitting behind me. So my opinion, my opinion, if you

571
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truly cared about public session and the public's voice, you would would adjust your executive sessions and not plop them in the middle of the board meeting. And consider how if you go back to the way you did it last year when you did executive session first and then people

572
02:41:42.319 --> 02:41:57.760
didn't have this long pause in the middle of the meeting. People left because I think they didn't even know there was public session left. They thought they didn't have an opportunity to speak. So, recommendation number one. Done. Recommendation number two. No, this

573
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isn't a recommendation. The three newly elected board members that who accepted monetary campaign donations from the NGA and were also endorsed by the MTA voted tonight on the school budget. Why

574
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did they not recuse themselves from the budget vote? Further, one of the three board members who works for the MGJA spent time commenting prior to the vote and influencing the vote, which I don't know that that's supposed to happen, but

575
02:42:28.399 --> 02:42:44.800
it seemed sounded out of line. So, I'm not sure this vote was legal. Let me repeat. I don't not sure that vote was legal. I want to make sure that was clear because my voice it's t it's late

576
02:42:44.800 --> 02:43:01.359
and I'm tired. So that was the second topic. A bit more trivial than the vote concern. Um but of interest is pay school account which is used for the student lunches. I'm asking why can't you simply credit

577
02:43:01.359 --> 02:43:18.720
all the accounts the student senior accounts at the end of their year so everyone gets their money back? Because I requested my money back after the tax hike. I think I need my $18.95 and I requested this. We go back and

578
02:43:18.720 --> 02:43:35.120
forth and email for a couple times and then I'm asking am I going to get a check? And you say you're going to cut a check. So after that email, a couple days later, I get a letter and I'm like, "Oh, good check." But what I get here is a voucher. I'm supposed to sign a form

579
02:43:35.120 --> 02:43:50.160
to get my $18 back and mail this voucher back to you. And then you're going to use a third stamp to give me my check for $18.95, which I want interest up now, by the way. And on the back of the voucher, it says, "This voucher is only supposed to

580
02:43:50.160 --> 02:44:07.439
be used for bills over $5,800. So why am I getting the voucher? Can't you just and and the money that's sitting in all these accounts, what are you guys doing with it?" because I have a feeling if everyone had to go through this, they gave up. So, where is all that money?

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Um, okay. That's the third item. >> That's >> perfect. Thank you very much. Hello. Uh, hi. My name is Darra Zimmer. I uh am at I live in Skilman. I am a art

582
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teacher at S. Uh, I teach foundations of art. I teach printmaking. I teach the graphic design class that um that you guys were talking about. And I just wanted to invite everyone to our art extravaganza

583
02:45:04.960 --> 02:45:22.160
uh June 5th at 6:00 to I think 8:00. Um there we have uh it ranges the entire district of art. Um I encourage everyone to come. It is an amazing experience to

584
02:45:22.160 --> 02:45:39.120
see all of our students and their artwork and to see them in a different light rather than just them and their academics and sometimes they don't bring home the artwork that that they make and so you don't get to see it and they might be in

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in the art show. So I encourage everyone to come again June. >> Thank you. The high school >> at the high school. >> Thank you. Anyone else? No. Okay. Karen Anderson. Again, I been to the art extravaganza multiple

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times because my kids artwork was in there. They look awesome. I have to commend I'm blown away when I go to that art extravaganza. You feel like you're at a museum with these kids producer. It's amazing. Um, I left out one comment before. I just want to clarify that one

587
02:46:13.680 --> 02:46:29.200
of the individuals who's on the board recent election works for the NJ and has a direct conflict of interest voting on union affairs. So again, I'm concerned about the vote. Different topic. I'm actually speaking

588
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on behalf of another citizen of Montgomery, um Nancy Castellino. I'm reading what she would have said if she would have been able to stay longer, but she wrote it out, so I'm going to 2 minutes and 14 seconds. Um, her letter

589
02:46:46.880 --> 02:47:02.640
reads as the following. I'd like to begin by referring to the board's stated goal of addressing the potential risks of technology and social media and maintaining a safe and supportive school environment for students. In light of

590
02:47:02.640 --> 02:47:19.359
the recent incident involving AI generated images of students, what specific policies and actions are in place to protect students, especially victims, and to ensure these matters are handled transparently and without any

591
02:47:19.359 --> 02:47:36.720
outside influence. I understand that laws like Furpa protect student identities, but they do not prevent acknowledging that an incident occurred or explaining how it was handled. The law protects the identity of the student, not the

592
02:47:36.720 --> 02:47:54.880
incident itself. There is a difference. Incidents can be communicated in a way that does not disclose identities or sensitive details. Protecting privacy should not come at the expense of accountability. My concern, again, this is Nancy, my

593
02:47:54.880 --> 02:48:11.200
concern here is whether the rights of victims were given the same priority as protecting confidentiality. If there was prior knowledge of similar incidents involving involving the very same student, what processes are in

594
02:48:11.200 --> 02:48:29.040
place to ensure appropriate action is taken when needed? And finally, what is the board's policy regarding involvement of local law enforcement in serious incidents like this? And how do you ensure investigations are handled independently

595
02:48:29.040 --> 02:48:45.040
and appropriately? Why should residents have to rely on outside investigations? Residents would appreciate clarity on these points. Thank you. Any

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02:48:45.040 --> 02:49:12.880
other comments from the public? Superintendent, do anything you'd like to address? >> All right. Any closing comments from the board? >> Uh, I have a closing comment. Um despite all the issues and questions that we

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discussed uh today tonight uh I still want to close my statement by expressing an appreciation for the teachers and staff in this school district. There are many strong aspects of our schools supported by dedicated educators, engaged students and committed families.

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Just for example, February, we heard the high school extended concurrent enrollment opportunities for many courses and Mary presented that. Uh last Friday, elementary international night was truly wonderful showcase. 14 countries were represented. Students

599
02:49:45.760 --> 02:50:01.840
performed 18 different cultural performances including singing, martial art, dance across our schools. Events like this reflect the richness of our community and the meaningful work happening in our classroom every day. So, I respect the outcome of tonight's

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budget vote. However, I want to note several concerns about the process that led us here. The board was asked to make a recommendation on March 10th before the state funding had been finalized. Since that I understand VA have worked

601
02:50:17.439 --> 02:50:32.640
really hard on that, but I don't believe there were any substantive changes to the line items presented at the subsequent budget hearings or after the April um finance uh committee meeting. So board members raised questions

602
02:50:32.640 --> 02:50:49.120
throughout the process. Some of them were answered, some of them were not fully answered. So in addition, when the 2023 full day kindergarten uh referendum was presented to the public, I believe there were errors in how financial

603
02:50:49.120 --> 02:51:06.240
projection were communicated. That experience underscore the importance of accuracy and transparency in long-term planning. At the same time, I want to acknowledge uh something important about our community. In 2024, when the board

604
02:51:06.240 --> 02:51:22.080
seat opened twice, many residents stepped forward to serve. Venita, Julius, Katherine, and I all chose to run because we care deeply about this school district. I also want to encourage more residents to consider running for the board of education this

605
02:51:22.080 --> 02:51:37.760
every year. The district benefits from leaders who bring a clear, measurable vision for student success. This is an unpaid role and it requires a significant commitment of time and energy. But if working parents um like

606
02:51:37.760 --> 02:51:53.120
many of us on this board can make that commitment to serve over 4,000 students, then others in this community can as well. Montgomery deserves strong leadership that is transparent, accountable, and consistently focused on

607
02:51:53.120 --> 02:52:08.479
ensuring every student has the opportunity they need to survive. Thank you. Any other comments? Hearing none. At this time, I entertain a motion to adjourn. So move second. >> Robert moved a second. All those in

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favor say I. I. Cold. Same right. Stand. Thank you all for staying and coming out.