extra time back with Liz. >> It's just a thing. Sorry. Exactly. >> It's not just being safe.
>> Hello everyone. I'd like to call the meeting to order. The requirements of the open public meeting law have been met stating the date, time, place, and agenda and filed with the township clerk, town hall bulletin board, news media, and the Atlanta County Superintendent of Schools. Can I get a roll call, please? Uh, Miss Brownhill
>> here. >> Miss Curts >> here. >> Miss Lynch >> here. >> Miss Mayon >> here. >> Mr. Roner, >> present. >> Mr. Stalenberg, >> present. >> Miss Warner >> here. >> Mr. Winterbottom
absent. Miss Wild >> present. >> Dr. Paul's >> here. >> Miss Elco >> here. >> I am also here. And we have a quorum. >> Thank you. Can we please rise for the flag salute to the flag of the United States of
America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you everyone for coming out tonight. Um before I hand the meeting over to the superintendent and the BA for the presentation, I just want to
explain how the budget portion, the budget workshop portion of this meeting will go. So they will give their presentation. Then I will open the meeting to the board for questions and comments. Then we will open to the public for comments from the public. When we close public comments, then the
board will have a second chance to discuss and finalize which option we are going with. So at this time we'll have our presentation. >> I'm just going to turn the camera. Okay. So, uh this is the 2627 budget workshop
and uh I will um it's going to be presented by myself and Dr. Paul's. Uh we'll get into the agenda right away. Let's see if this works. The All right, there we go. So, the design of this workshop is really to
do kind of a chronological look at uh the the past, the present, and the future for Mullica, excuse me. And you know the design of that is to really fully understand where we've come as a district and a community and what what
forces brought us to this particular point and then what decisions can we make now looking also forward so we're not flatfooted you know when when things come and pressures continue to come toward us. So the agenda is a school funding basic understanding and a
financial history that's going to be our past. Uh Dr. Dr. Paul will step in for some academic priorities that look to what our current priorities are and how do we accomplish those in the 2627 budget and into the future. Then then we we're going to look at some future
financial trends and what the tax impact could be uh and recommendation from uh you know from Dr. Paul's and I. So we're going to start with a bit of fun, right? We're going to go down financial memory lane. Don't get too
excited. I know. I know. It's It's exciting stuff, but we're going to start in 2008. Um, any takers on the top song in 2008? Anyone? No. No. Come on. Flow rider. Love. Right. I'm not going to do a dance.
We're not doing that. But that's what it was. But when you think of 2008, you do not want to think of fluoride. You want to think of the school funding reform act because Yeah, maybe you do, maybe you don't. But that is the current law that we still currently sit under. It's
when the the state developed the funding formula that we're still under to get our state aid. So in 2008 they enacted this law that had a formula. And then interestingly they said wait a minute
this could potentially hurt districts immediately. We're going to come up with something so districts aren't hurt. It's called adjustment aid. And so districts that have declining enrollment and they would get really hurt by this new formula, they're going to be held
harmless with adjustment aid. So it kind of kept things artificially stable. So kind of keep that in the back of your mind and and so but also understand that when we look at some uh some of our charts, Mullica has declining enrollment
or had declining enrollment. And that's important when you look at the funding formula. So, let's forward to 2010. Governor >> Christie >> Christie, right? Governor Christie comes in some We've got some large school aid
reductions, some big reforms in pension and in and in funding. And the big reform was that the property tax cap was lowered from 4% to 2%. So that's very important as we get into these years looking at Mullica and again how that
then informs where we currently stand. Right? So then let's fast forward to 2018. So we're going along we got eight years of peace under this formula. Really it wasn't peace but that's in quotes. So um and in that formula again
many districts are being held artificially stable and in 2018 state of New Jersey is not doing well. We've got financial problems and they say look we can't subsidize this anymore. We need this formula back in 20
2008 to be actually working. We need to have this formula work. So they come up with a five-year plan to get the formula into what they call fully funded
formula. 2025 was the goal and we hit that and you'll see how that, you know, how this all works together to give us where we currently are. So I know it's exciting because that was
we're actually going to go back to 1875. president. Who's with it? Oh my. Come on. Ulissiz Srant. Right. Exactly. I looked it up today. I didn't know it either. So, um, but and he was
also dealing with the great whiskey rig. I'd learned this, too. I'm just giving you some tidbits. And, um, that's when there were congressmen and whiskey distilleries in cahoots and to to evade taxes. So, it was a huge issue back
then. But again, and also the first Kentucky Derby was in 1875, but you're not thinking of that. You're thinking of the New Jersey State Constitution and thorough and efficient education, right? That's what you're going to think about when you think of 1875. This is very big because if you look
back in 2008 when they passed the law, they looked to the Constitution for the definition of thorough and efficient education. So in New Jersey, since everyone here is interested in education, you need to understand what thorough and efficient education means. And it's in
the Constitution of the of of New Jersey, instead of the United States. Um, so it right here, it ensures all children have the opportunity to learn and acquire skills necessary to become informed citizens and participate in the workforce. So everything relates back to
that definition that's in this constitution and it's been borne out in a number of very important legal cases um that you know said hey are these schools actually delivering through an efficient education or are they not and I won't get into them but it it all
comes back to that. So the formula very quickly I run through this the formula talks about an adequacy budget. If you've been in any presentations that I've done, this isn't this is something I've talked about. So the state in this formula, they say,
okay, in your given district with your grade levels, with your lowincome population, with your LEAP population, special ed, there's a geographic cost factor for North, Central, and South Jersey. They developed this formula and they say based on your school Mullica
630 kids approximately um and your demographics we think you should be spending $10 million on your kids. That would be called your adequacy budget. All right. So then
they then further say of that 10 million how much do we believe and again we being the state and we're not going to debate whether this is good or not right that the state is determining what these formulas are that's for a different day
but we live under these rules that's why it's important to understand this that they say then out of that $10 million adequacy budget how much should the taxpayers be paying. And what they do is they look at the value of real estate in
a community. They look at income levels and they determine based on the adequacy budget what percentage of that should be paid by the taxpayers. All right? And that's kind of given to us by the state. So let's go back to what I talked about
with the 2008 formula and what happened with enrollments. remember they they were going to hold everybody harmless and artificially subsidize a state funding formula for districts that had greatly decreasing enrollments because
if the formula was working correctly quote unquote um declining enrollments means declining state aid right so they were worried about that we can debate whether that was political or not but the fact remains uh Mullica loses 117
kids in the last 10 years. Now, I didn't go back into a 20-year history, but the point is this is in this critical time when they're saying, "Hey, let's let this funding formula really roll out. Let's not artificially fund it anymore."
And unfortunately, Mullica is not is is having enrollment uh decrease. So, then state aid, this is what happens. So in that time frame, state aid decreases by $812,000.
So that's the direct financial impact of this funding formula being rolled out in our declining enrollments. So that's a direct revenue decrease of $812,000 in three years. Um I think I hit Well, it's okay. So
what that does then is it decreases your surplus. So, as you get this big revenue decrease, then your surplus, meaning the the amount of money that your budget generates year-over-year, if you've got $10,000 to spend and you only
spend $9,000, you've got a $1,000 surplus, right? That can roll over into the next year. Well, our budgets were built on approximately a million dollars of rollover as a revenue source in in
our revenue lines. Well, what happens is state aid decreases, major budget pressures, our surpluses decline, 351,000 decrease, 285,000 decrease over the last two years. And that revenue
needs to be backfilled somehow. You can do that by going into reserves. We have reser but and and we've been doing that. You can kind of see the trends here. I won't go into detail. About $200,000 of capital reserve in the last number of years. Those are for
capital projects. So, it's not necessarily um a good indication. But for maintenance reserve, again, $356,000 decrease, and that means that you're just not in a good stance to attack capital projects or maintenance projects
in the future when you've drawn down your reserves. So in that time I was saying revenue needs to be backfilled but now remember what happened in 2010 they capped our tax levy. So now you've got tax levy in
the in the same years that we're losing major state aid and our surpluses are declining and we're drawing into our reserves. We can only raise taxes 2%. $84,000 a year
doesn't even cover salaries, health benefits. So you kind of see these pressures are going in opposite directions and we don't have a way to backfill that revenue. So along comes 2425
and we're kind of getting into the present now. 2425, they enacted a law that said districts in the past three years that were really hit by state aid adjustments negatively were able to increase their taxes by 9.9%.
To a maximum, we took advantage of that because of all the pressures that I just discussed. the board was forced to make a decision for the fiscal health of the community I mean of the school and we increased it by that's why you see that
jump two to 9.9 and then last year they enacted a law and we'll tax levy incentive aid which has been large you know a fairly large topic in the in the community because it represented the 20ome percent increase
in taxes and this goes back to what I talked out with the adequacy budget. They had said, "Hey, let's look at all the districts and let's make sure that they're providing a thorough and efficient education. Districts that don't meet that mark,
we're going to give them the ability to increase taxes to come up to that mark." So, they said, "Are you spending at adequacy? And are you spending what will fair share?" Which we talked about those two definitions. Here's our here's this was our numbers.
Not sure how I get out of that, but it's not blocking me, so I'm not going to worry about that at the moment. Um, Mullica was under adequacy and under local fair share. Yep. By $2.3 million.
So, the state actually gave us the authority to bring our budget up to adequacy by increasing taxes by $2.3 million. Obviously, the board, you know, you you know, it was a it was a healthy debate. Uh and their their job is to
balance the fiscal health of the school with the community. And the decision was to raise taxes, $750,000 for the items that were really needed to help us provide that thorough and efficient education. And that's why that
happened last year. Before I turn it over to Dr. pause. I just want to uh highlight the fact that we've really been talking about the revenue side of this and the loss of revenue and our ability or inability um to to do that uh you know to increase
revenues, but we made a lot of changes to try to reduce year-over-year expenses to the tune of 579,000. I listed them here. We had an administrative reduction, certified staff, support staff, consolidated transportation
routes, and that represents annual savings of about almost $600,000. So, we've really been trying to to work on both the revenue and the expense sides to make this budget work. Um, and now we're going to go into
this. So I will start off talking about the programming but the transition to this is really looking at where are we fiscally uh what are our priorities? How do we balance uh where we stand financially? What we need to do programmatically with the kids and then
also consider how do we think about that future and how do we generate surplus um so that that can carry over and protect us in the future. some of our academic priorities. Uh maintaining class size. Uh here we have
a good class size at this point that allows us to handle uh the needs of the students both academically and socially and emotionally. The stu the teachers will tell you that uh from a behavioral standpoint uh the students uh needs have certainly increased. Um social emotional
needs have increased. Uh high levels of anxiety are happening with our students. the students that are represented in our classroom are not the same students that were in our rooms 20 years ago. Um, and so us being able to respond and not add additional staff to support those
classrooms, it's imperative that those sizes stay small on the lower end. Um providing um a reworking of the master schedule. Uh there are things um new eyes look at things differently. Uh coming in here, I did one of the first
things was the master schedule, how staff are assigned, how they're scheduled, um where the um gaps may be, things that we're doing that are nice things that we're doing right now that maybe need to um be scaled back in terms of hitting uh our priorities and our
requirements. So, we did look at that. We will be um and have been reworking lunch schedules to minimize duties for staff so that staff aren't just on duty all the time. They're actually having student contact time with students in classrooms. Uh increasing intervention
services grades five to eight. We do know academically from our workshop all the way back in July that we're also seeing the students are struggling academically. That's not just a Mullica issue. That's across the state, across the county. um providing opportunities for the students among various grade
levels to interact with one another when you are small like we are here in Malikica staying with the same group of students all the time for 10 years uh does um you know become a bit of a challenge. Uh we are looking at how we can provide STEM to all students K to8
next year. Um and then providing uh enrichment to all K to4 students. Other academic priorities uh we uh have been looking at the ASUS grant also where our kids are academically and using those federal funds that are
provided to us as an opportunity to provide our children with the tutoring that they may need. You've heard the governor talk about high impact tutoring and that being a priority. We've already been building that in through ACES. Um you'll see uh we continue to apply for
grants. So high impact tutoring for our second through fourth graders is an option right now through the state and we did apply for that fund. Um and and we'll see how that comes in. Um so maximizing that ACES providing our
students with tutoring identifying students uh for special education um that is a federal requirement that we provide in extended school year program and then also looking at uh what we can do locally. Um you know you can want
everything in the world but your budget gives you a certain amount. So based on that certain amount that we have, how many students we can provide services to over the summer and identifying the criteria how they're specifically identified um and also looking at the
attendance and looking at that data. Uh in previous years about half the students that signed up for these summer programs actually attended. Um so when setting up the criteria for that for families to say if you are going to take a seat, there will be an attendance
requirement to that. um so that we're not um taking monies that we could be using over 180 school days. Um our summer programs are 16 days. So we want to make sure that we're maximizing our contact time with students over the 180
versus the 16 days and then having very limited student. So those are some of the goals there. Uh shared services. Uh you will continue to hear the state um talk about this idea that small districts need and are required to uh participate in shared
services. That is something we've already been doing and continue to do. Uh we are part of the greater egg harbor regional consortium which is your uh high school districts Cedar Creek. um through the leadership of all the superintendent who feed into
that high school, we all continue to meet and um identify areas where we can share people across our districts and not pay full salaries for all of those things, but that somebody can go districtto district. Right now, we have a shared business administrator, shared
occupational therapist, shared speech and language pathologist. We are working on our attendance and residency officer being shared with Greater Egg. makes sense that the students that are going to Cedar Creek that they they know um our attendance needs and truency issues
and that we're working on that together. Um and then also we have the ability to share out some additional child study team services. These are the grants um that we've received that we talk about what the local fair share is and taxes go. But if
you look in all of these numbers, ACES brings in almost $500,000 annually. Um, our Title One another 173,000, IDA over 200,000. The RAPE grant for technology almost 32,000. Uh, we applied for the
Lyft grant another 20,000. And then we continue to apply for even the small grants that are available bringing in another $6,000 plus of revenue. So these things offset the local tax uh levy. We also talk about preschool aid. Uh we
were approved to increase our preschool programs for next year. We will be adding um two additional classrooms and that's coming through the state aid provided for that. Um so now we will be increasing up to 135 general education students that are three and four years
old. And you may say where are these kids coming from? It's actually based on the fact that there are 30 students that were on our waiting list this year. So using that we appealed to the state to add more classes and that was approved as the budget money came out. So we will
be increasing that. Uh these other things come through the grant and also applying to other local grants uh to increase our opportunities there. There is my final um thing that I'll say for right now is there's a combined
responsibility here. Um one thing coming in that was very surprising to me is how little surplus and how cut to the bone the budget is. Um there were points. Um there's a few things I want you to understand. To be able to be eligible to
do some of the capital projects to be open to f um I'm sorry, funding that's available by the state, you do have to prove the ability that you can cover some of this before the state reimbures you. That is tied to our HVAC project that we just did. And I will say us
carrying that HVAC project really made it a challenge that there were some months where payroll to payroll we were actually counting dollars. Could we make the payroll? When you're running a district, you can't really run a district that that quick um or or close
to the quick. Um take our front parking lot. Uh there's a sinkhole forming in that front parking lot and the bus loop where the buses have to go through. um us not having the money in the account, you know, we're gonna we're going to make that work, but you know, sitting
there saying, can we fix that right now? Um it it needs to be a from a safety standpoint, we have to fix that. So, as we look at this budget and we look at how many staff we're carrying and things like that, it's really creating a balance to say, you know what, it's it benefits us to have surplus to be able
to carry that over. You're going to see it in some of Todd's slides. We already know projected out where we'll be in a year from now. So, a fiscal respon approach or fiscally responsible approach is planning for that, planning
for that surplus, carrying that over and knowing that you can cover your bills in a home. You can get a credit card and you can go pay for something that might come up as a surprise. Not in a public entity. There is no credit card. Um so we just have to be really responsible
for that. So you see the list here um of also uh everyone knows gas has gone up. We anticipate transportation costs to go up, utilities uh we uh continue to expect a reduction in state aid moving forward and you'll see later that
forecast. Okay. So just creating that balance. >> All right. So, it's a good transition into looking at the actual numbers for this year's budget. And what you see here is just a year-over-year look of state aid. Now, unfortunately,
the way this works is that we're always hanging on for the governor's address, right? Because the governor puts the address out, the budget address, and then 48 hours later, all the districts get their state aid. And it's always this big question mark. And again, we
can debate the validity of that. I would debate obviously we shouldn't be waiting in anticipation of this black box to wonder if we're going to get a state aid increase, it's going to be flat, or there's going to be a decrease, right? This should be more well thought out.
But fortunately, this year we did get an increase, right? We got 229,000. So, um, we were as as a district and all districts are in these situations, you prepare for the worst. You know, we were preparing. What if we did get a 3%
decrease? Then what do we do? You know, what expenses are we truly cutting? This was fortunate for us, but let's celebrate for about one second because here's the here's the primary instability
that every district is dealing with. you get a state aid increase even at 4.85% this year, 229,000. If we just increase our tax levy by 2%, it's 121,000. So you've got $350,000
in general of revenue increase, right? Let's just look at two lines of the budget. Now, they are your top two lines, but let's look at the two lines. Salaries and health care. Salaries go up by 257,000
by contract. Health care goes up by 273,000. Now, we're in a weird health care environment, right? And that's going to be a part of this discussion. But look at the imbalance right there. You've got only two expenses and that's assuming everything else stays flat,
right? All of our other expenses don't go up, which we know isn't true. So, you've got a major imbalance there and all districts have to solve that. So even though we're like ah we got 4.85% 85% state aid. That's not the answer. Um
unfortunately for us and it's not just us, right? This is statewide. Um so we've been talking about shrinking this. Um you know what we're doing. There are revenue strategies we can do to support this. We can add tuition. We can maximize that's extraordinary aid is
special ed aid. So we can just maximize everything we're doing. Maximizing grant synergy. That just means when we're spending grant funds, let's think about if those funds can support the the the students and people that are in the
grant, but can they actually have some synergistic value to the school in general. So, you really have to think through the the efficiency of that expense strategies. Uh Dr. Paul's talked about maximizing the schedule with efficiency, eliminating one-time expenses. We're out there marketing
healthcare. Uh, I'll talk about that in a second. And just diligence in all purchasing, all contracts from the copier contract to water coolers to just everything trying to look at every single thing and squeeze every dime out of it. Uh, it's very important.
Why is that? Do I just hit escape on that? >> You just test the slide. >> Where? >> Where am I? There we go. There we go. Oh, now I just advanced it. >> So now I will go back
>> which is that go back but did not go back. >> I offered to be as quick. >> I know. And then I I told her I said I can handle this but evidently I can't. >> I guess this makes you question my ability to handle the budget too. Maybe I'm not sure. I'm hoping that that's not
the case. But so so Absolutely. >> Health benefits 32%. You you cannot look at budgets year-over-year and balance a budget when your second highest expense item goes up by 32%. Fortunately, Mullica made a good decision back in 2018 and got out of the state health
benefits plan. We went into an America health plan, but that still went up by 20%. Right? So again, we can celebrate for a second, but we can't celebrate because 20% doesn't get it done either because that 20% equates to $273,000
of expense increase. So this is getting into the weeds a little bit, but this is important because the board will be discussing tonight what we do with what's called the healthc care adjustment. So, remember I talked about the cap that
came into place in 2010. Property taxes were capped at 2% with three exceptions. One was a healthcare adjustment. If health care costs skyrocket, which we're in that environment now, the state says, "We understand you can't just increase your
taxes by 2%. We're going to give you the ability, the local community of course, the ability to pay for that. We're not going to cap you." Now, you would hope that they would be like, "Oh, we'll give you extra state aid." But that's not the case. They're just giving us the ability to tax the community more so that the
school does is is still fiscally solid. The other thing is an enrollment adjustment. They also realize if you have major enrollment increases, you're going to need more money. You can't just do 2%. We're not in that situation this year, so we don't get an enrollment adjustment. And there's also banked cap.
And that just means if you don't use it, you can bank it and then you can use it in future years. We're not doing that this year either. So we're looking at a healthcare adjustment this year. Even though our actual costs went up by 275,000,
they have a formula where they look at budget year-over-year. I won't get into the weeds, but our healthc care adjustment on that is $165,000. So, what that means is that means um the board has the ability to raise taxes by
2% plus up to an additional 165,000 to cover this very large increase in healthcare. So, put that aside for a minute. That's
going to be discussed and debated. Um these are the fiscal headwinds that we've got and I'm going to show you the next slide uh which kind of which kind of speaks to this but if you look at the uh you know we've got these tax levy increases are capped state aid increases
again unknown we'll wait for the black box every year um fund balance reductions these tighter budgets we have a fund balance of 500,000 but next year I predicted going lower and it will continue to go lower because we're not going to be rolling money over each
year. So that revenue gets lower and lower. That's another pressure. Uh and then large expense categories, salaries, healthcare, we talked about it. So take a look at this. This is 2728. Um it's just a very quick look again.
Tax increase at 2% state aid increase even if I assume a 3% increase. Little bit of fund balance reduction which I just talked about. And then just three categories of expenses. look at the initial deficit that you're dealing with in a budget. If you just
look at the core five lines, two revenue lines and three expense lines, that's not all the other lines. So, you can kind of see just in this one snapshot, that's the pressure that districts need to stay ahead of. So, you can't just
look at the current budget year. you really have to look at where are we the next year and the year after that and how do we stay ahead of that curve if we can and that's the pressure we're dealing with. So,
I know this is a little bit complicated, but these are three options that I'm presenting to the board as a business administrator and it has to do with the tax levy increase, right? Because that's the question on the table is what what budget are you going to approve and what
tax levy will support that. So option number one is a 2% only increase and that's exactly 2%. This is our current tax levy 6 million60
144 and a 2% increase is 121,000. And so that's option one. Option two, well I'll jump to option three by the way because we just talked about this number, right? Option three is if we
used all of that healthcare adjustment. So you're able to go 2% plus the 165,000, right? So that's that's that total. And then option two is the compromise in between. So you're at 2%
plus half of the healthcare adjustment. And as as the business administrator, um to be fiscally sound, to stay ahead of that curve that I just showed you, I'm recommending we take advantage of
the healthcare adjustment um in full. And one of the reasons I think is an important consideration, even if we if we did 2%, the district is still $1.2 million below adequacy, which I talked about earlier, right? So, this
all goes back to that funding formula. The state still looks at our numbers. Even with just the 2% levy, we're still $1.2 million below adequacy. So, you know, my recommendation is to stay ahead of the pressures, stay ahead of the curve, and use the healthcare
adjustment. >> Great. So, you can just take a look at the next steps. These are the actual statutory deadlines. We actually have to submit this budget on Friday. So, you know, here we are today. Friday, the budget's due. We submit it to the county. They review it, make any
changes, and when they get it back to us approved, we then have what's called a public budget hearing. And that's the last week of April. Um, and assuming there are no changes, we would basically be approving the same numbers that we end up approving tonight.
With that, I turn it back over to uh Susan. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Um at this time, I'm going to open up the floor to board members. I'd like us to start with questions first and then anyone can make comments or
statements. So, does anyone have any questions for Dr. Paul's or Mr. Deanna? I have one. >> Use your microphone, please. How much was banked from the um $750,000 last year? How much was actually bankers off of that for next for this coming
budget or for future years? >> Yeah. So there is actually zero. So there is no none of that money gets banked. Um yeah, there there's no if you're talking about officially banked cap. Yeah, that
that money uh goes right into the tax levy into the base and none of it gets banked in the budget software. So, it's all utilized in the current year budget, meaning 2526. Um, that answer
on the healthare adjustment, we can >> for the healthare adjustment. It's not even on It's on now. >> For the healthcare adjustment, we can bank that cap if we don't use it. >> Yes, that's correct. And and the same goes for if you used half of it, then
half of it would be banked. >> Yep. >> Other questions? >> I Dr. Paul, can you tell us your recommendation? looking at all things, thinking about what the students need, thinking about things that we can continue to consider.
Um my most fiscally, as your superintendent recommendation would be to go halfway. Um it would be to do the 2% plus half of uh the health care. Um I think that puts us in a position to uh when I talked about us having some level
of surplus in this budget for things that we cannot anticipate. um we're running a large school. We're running a building that the community uses on a regular basis. We need to um be able to handle this the surprises with the hope
that that would then be able to carry over a surplus and make us in a better fiscal responsible place when you look at what that gap is for next year. >> Thank you. Any other board questions? >> I have one. Um, do we have any other like large scale projects on the
horizon? >> I'll I'll also let Todd talk about this, but um given what's going on with the parking lot in the front, um there are parking lot considerations that will come to committee next month. Um there's also issues with the roots to the trees
and how that's affecting our curbing um and our sidewalks where the children walk. Um, so those are some of the the big things in the long term and they're more like immediate needs. Um, for the long term, uh, we continue to patch a
roof that, um, you know, is going to need to be considered for the future. Um, when I say that recommendation of going to half of it, we also need to be thinking about if you don't have any kind of reserve, you it knocks you out
of being able to be competitive when the state says, "Hey, if you can match this and you can do this, we'll pay 75% of a project." Um, I just want us to be thoughtful about that of making ourselves competitive for the opportunities that the state offers when
they're willing to match our own local taxpayer money. And those funds would be coming out of the capital reserves, >> which is down to 150 now. >> Yes. We we really do not have a healthy amount there to make us competitive for
those state funds. >> Did you want to add? >> No, I think that's uh I think you you hit that on the short-term projects. You should also just know, I know we've talked about um we've got a roof project coming up and some other things that are
in in the distance, but uh to kind of piggyback on what Dr. Paul said, you know, I believe that if we're not careful um and we're not looking ahead and ahead of the curve on that, all of a sudden the time for us to plan for a referendum
will come up because what you know, the strategy would be we would let uh the current debt service that we're paying as part of your taxes fall away and then and then hopefully be able to wait that long to do another major project. But if you're not in a good position with your
reserves um then that becomes a little bit more difficult. The other thing that I would just say to the community is there may be people who are here thinking well 0% is not an option that you've presented and why are
you asking us to you know increase at all and I would just say um a 0% increase would be really would hurt us in the long term and is going to hit the taxpayer harder in the long term. term
versus a gradual growth. Um you can it's almost like putting it off um for the next generation to handle it. And it would be if you keep going if you're not growing gradually and in a small way when you go back to the slide and you think about what that would be if you
were to go up you know 2% in a you know what that means to you in a month. um that's a small versus um I would not want to be in the position where I look at taxpayers and say um you know what I I presented to you a zero budget and
that felt good of years but now I'm coming back to you and I need this huge percentage that you really can't match and so I think the approach that I'm recommending is a conservative approach um thinking about how do we make us more
fiscally sound so that we don't have a day where we like LA, you know, last year before I got here, you were asked to be hit with a certain amount because of how just the financial position we were put in by all those things coming
together almost as a perfect storm. So, I just want to re acknowledge why there's not a zero out there. >> I have a question as well that you've talked about >> microphone please. >> Oh, sorry. I didn't think I needed one. You talked about banking the money but
there's no guarantee though correct that that money would be banked. >> No. What happens is when to answer your question is yes there it is a guarantee. So when you get an adjustment like that that's developed in
the software and that's just based on healthcare increases that $165,000 whether we use it or not it sits in the the um the budget software as additional taxing capacity for three years. So if
we didn't use it now it would be there next year to put on top of the 2% and it would be there for three years. after three years it disappears it goes away and then you don't have the ability to to to do it again but
just to expand on what Dr. Paul said if I feel like and this is just you know this is Tatiana speaking as my recommendation as a as a finance person um completely understanding the the the
debate um is that the the longer we wait the more difficult it it will be to stay ahead of those negative deficits and I can't stress enough that the the decline
declining um you know the pressures of the declining surplus and the the uncertainty of state aid. You know we were very fortunate this year but if all of a sudden you know in my numbers up there we were negative 352 352,000
and that was assuming a 3% state aid increase right? So if all of a sudden stadia comes back flat, you're, you know, no pun intended, you're flatfooted and you have less ability to to be, you know, to to react
to that. So I just put that out there. >> Um, I just wanted to add, I don't know if it's a question or just a clarification. Um the last two years in a row, Nancy um the auditor comes and she speaks to us and she spoke to us this year and the previous year and to
me she said everything looked good but we're worried about is worried about our reserves. That is correct. That's correct. I just want to make sure I wasn't remembering incorrectly. Um so Nancy has been worried about the auditor has been worried about the reserves. Um
I just want to make sure that was >> true. Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Any other board questions? Uh before I open a public comment, do any board members want to make any statements? All right. Um then we're going to open
the meeting to the public for comments. If your comments pertain to personnel, litigation, or negotiation, or students, uh we would ask that you see the superintendent after the meeting since the board does not generally discuss such items in public. When you make your comment, please state your first name, last name, and municipality. Comments
must be limited to three minutes per person, and we are limiting the comment time to 30 minutes. There will be additional public comment se sessions later in the meeting, but this one's going to be limited to 30 minutes on the budget only. Sorry. Um, would
anyone like to make a comment? >> Okay. Um, >> I'll I'll be the guinea pig. >> If you could please grab a microphone and >> I believe you'll be able to hear me. >> So, for the people at home, >> Charles Aerrera, Mullica Township for
127 years. Um, >> you're I know that that 2% increase is basically all you're doing is keeping your head above water anticipating the increase in the uh contractual
obligations of the salaries and health benefits. Correct. anticipating that happening in 12 months again. Is are we two are we going to need 2% every year just to the status
quo of what we have without any increases in anything else? I know there's other increases that you didn't go over. You just mentioned the big ones. Is that what's going to happen? >> Uh I'm sorry. Sorry, I should have said this first, but during this public comment session, we're not going to
answer questions until everyone has done their comments because I want to make sure everyone has a chance to comment. So, >> all right. Well, that that's my question. Do we need 2% increase from from now till perpetuity? And um
this is all new to me. I'm very naive with the process. I've lived here a very long time. when the when this I don't know how they they come up with the state aid, but are there people in the state regulating the aid we're getting
looking at Mullik and saying, "Oh my god, you got a thousand acres of undeveloped land. You know what you guys can do here? You could build a hundreds of houses. You could build hundreds of commercial properties on the pike and
that would benefit everyone. When in reality, I'm going to take a a pretty educated guess. I bet you there's not going to be 10 new houses built in this township in the next five years. I bet there's not
going to be two new businesses developed on the pike in the next five years. The Pinelands has has wrapped everybody up so bad that there is no end in sight. And a normal
application that two, three, five years ago would take 60 days to get through is now a two-year process. There's not many people that want to go through two years just to find out if they can uh start a business, make a commercial property, add to the tax base of the township. So,
can we talk to somebody in a position to let them know Mullica is a rural place? It's a lot of swamp ground that's not going to ever get developed. And maybe you need to evaluate the environment here a little more closely rather than looking at the acreage and what you
think can happen. >> Thank you. Uh, who would like to come up? Come on up. Amy Gate, 5135 Venus. Um, first of all, great presentation. Very informative,
very nicely broken down. Uh, really helps people, I think, understand who aren't in this every day. So, just kudos on a nice presentation. Um, just reminder, the 2% cap was put in place because taxes were out of control tax increases. So, there's a reason that
it was put there. And um the thing I think a couple things I I I just wonder if you've explored um number one I didn't see any leap grant funding on there. I think there's a ton of opportunity between Mullica school
district, Greater School District andor the uh municipality uh for LEAP grant funding which is if two entities are doing something that costs money uh that they would have done independently but you can do together, there's funding
available for that. I would imagine that fixing your parking lot could be a leap grant item because the municipality meets at the school. I would imagine potentially the roof could be tooity uses this building.
Get very creative with your grant application language and give it a try, right? Um, so I just put LEAP grant out there. I also think about that for any maintenance activity. Again, the municipality seems like potentially a
ripe source for a shared service on building grounds maintenance, something of that nature. Um, that could maybe help both uh both entities in their budget situations out. Um, so I just put that out there. Number two, I don't know if there's opportunity to partner with
the ACIA for the Atlanta County Improvement Authority for um any of that capital problem for projects. They might be able to be a partner to kind of um subsidize the fund availability. I I
don't know that for sure, but just worth probably a conversation. Um, and then and I'll probably get stabbed by somebody for asking this one, but um, is there a discussion among the superintendent for all the sending
districts to have a conversation about one big greater egg district um, and consolidation of schools? Because this problem's not going anywhere. When you give contractual increases that are more than 2% every year, yes, it's a problem in perpetuity. So, these problems aren't
going anywhere. Um, we are a small district. Small districts, small m municipalities are not going to survive standing alone anymore. It's just not the reality we live in anymore. So, I'm just wondering if that any of those conversations are going on or if they will be initiated at some point. Thank
you. >> Thank you. Who would like to make our next comment? Come on up. I can make some justification here first. Um, comments I'm going to make right now are from >> name first, please. >> Oh, I'm sorry. Charlie Mueller, 4312
Pleasant Mills Road. Um, these comments I'm making are as of uh, business administrator. Not my current position or not my position with the municipality. You mentioned capital projects and roofing and um some road work that needs
to be done the driveway. Would you consider toward the end of the year you're allowed to put money into a reserve? Also at budget time when you have that excess when you have the excess tax levy that you're not going to use,
consider putting that into a capital project. I'm sure you have a long range facility plan that includes these. So, if you need to go to the I don't know what your percentage is from the state of New Jersey um for for projects, but I'm sure it's a minimum of 40% for debt
service aid, you can I'm sure we're a little bit higher than that because it's free and reduced population. But if you can put the money aside there, and it's totally up to you. You put a bank cap for whatever. if you put it into those projects, then
that roof that needs repair now in two years is going to be more expensive than it is to repair now, as you all well know. So, I would ask you can, you know, consider that as the time goes on. And as Miss Gate just said, um, if you would
like, uh, Todd, you call me tomorrow, I will call the county for a leap grant and see if there's money available for some of those projects. All right. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um, who would like to make our next comment? >> Terresa Schlu, Darmson Avenue, Mulligan
Township. Um, I know last month we had talked and I was in here with the $750,000 that was which is now part of our budget which I understand. The 750 that we got last year though um I had asked Dr. Paul's last month and I am part of
hearing so I didn't get it all. Was that all used? Because I know some of it was allocated and if it was not used will it be put towards this year's uh budget? Thank you for your comment. Um, anyone
else? Come on up. How you doing? Giovanni Mayon Pleasant Mills Road, Ma Township. So, I know I have to balance my budget at home. What steps is MA taken to balance
theirs? Every year you're going for 2% 2%. I'm a state employee. Every year the state does something to my medical or my steps and increases it to try to curb the costs. At some point, Mula has to start looking inward to see what they
can do internally to reduce the cost because at some point the taxpayers aren't going to be able to afford the consistent tax increase that they're presenting. >> Thank you. Would anyone else like to make a comment?
Coming up, >> Jean Gallagher, Pleasant Mills Road. Um, mine was really just a question uh for some clarification on Todd's presentation. you had talked about the two million well little shy of $2 million of the preschool and then some of our other salaries that are funded
with different grants. So I was wondering would that cover some of the salary and benefit increases that we were seeing. You know, for instance, if the if preschool teachers are covered, their salary and benefits are covered
under the grant, would then the grant uh take care of any increases that we were seeing in your budget. Thank you. Any other public comments? Okay. Uh then at this time we are closing public comments and we are going
to open comments back up to the board. >> Yeah, we're gonna we're going to discuss some of the questions. Yeah. So you want to start? So, um, one of the questions that Jean just asked, um, was, "Are the teacher salaries for preschool covered in the grant?" And yes, their salaries are
uploaded and then that is covered through that pea grant. Um, so when the money comes in, we then upload the salaries into that. And so the pea grant for our preschool teachers and also for the uh pair of professionals that service those preschool classrooms
that's covered through the pea grant that also covers um we're required by I shouldn't call it a group. They'll correct you if you call it a grant. One day it was a grant now it's funding but um also we have a master teacher. Um
it's a pick pers position. Uh that's Miss Monty. Her salary is also covered through that funding. And then different people who contribute to the program, there's portions of their salaries and everything from our SRO to different secretaries, things like that are
covered through that PA funding as well. >> Okay. >> Can I ask a question? Follow up. That doesn't >> that's already in the equation when you see that the extra 300. It it already has accounted for the fact that those people are paid from that, >> right?
>> Is that what you were asking? >> Yes. >> Yeah. So, I was going to expand on that in that right the numbers that I showed are just what's called the general fund numbers because that's really what we end up voting on is the general fund budget. The the preschool and everything
else that's grant funded is called your fund 20 or special projects budget. And the the health care that's associated with each person in those various grants is handled by uh the grant funds. So that's a benefit to us, right? And
specifically with the preschool uh their 20% of their time or you know their percentage of allocation, we take that as a you know as a an efficiency those grant synergies I talked about and we we apply that to the to the grant fund. So
that helps us out but that's already taken into account when I gave you the numbers in the presentation. Yep. >> Okay. So then another question and I'm paraphrasing was what is Mullica doing to balance their budget and we did have the one slide where we talk about and I
want to be really specifically clear that we did cut an administrator. There continues to be a conversation that comes up of why why are you not reducing an administrator and I want to be clear that last year we did and this year we are functioning with one less administrator to run the building with
an increase in student needs that happen uh and a requirement to fulfill every time you see a grant on that slide you're seeing more work that has to happen to have the money that is on that slide. So, every time you apply for a
grant, you're saying, "Here's something else that an administrator has to do or is required to do to meet the grant requirements to then fulfill getting the money." So, that's one piece to it. The other pieces to it are there have been
staff reductions that um we have reduced, you know, all costs that we possibly can. um the the board and district was very wise in terms of um having that whole discussion of health care benefits really early on and making
sure and positioning ourselves that we were not in the state health benefits. Right now there are districts across the state that are getting hit with over 30% in an increase in benefits and that was not our situation because we had already pulled out of state health benefits. So,
um, every single thing that we do, um, we are thoughtful about making sure that we're doing it in the most coste effective way. Um, I don't I would say I do not think our staff, our administration is tonedeaf to the needs
of our community and the sensitivity and care in which we put into being thoughtful about how we spend the money. Even if that is telling somebody no um because they want us to do something um it may just not be fiscally responsible
for us to something that we can carry on. >> Do you want to add anything? >> No, just to well I say no and then I say yes. Right. Yes. U just to highlight the slide that you were talking about. If you remember, I said it was about
$579,000 of of actual cuts that we did when we were faced with um the the large issue of last year's budget. And so, not only were we in a situation where we made the decision to raise the taxes, but at the
same time, we didn't we wouldn't have felt comfortable going to the community on that without doing our due diligence to balance the budget and really attacking it from the expense side and to the tune of $560,000 or 79. And and that's year-over-year.
Those aren't weren't just onetime expenses. Those were year-over-year expenses. So, we're saving that money every single year. Uh and we continue to look look at those things as well. So >> any board member comments question
>> um with that slide that was just for the 25 26 uh expense reductions. Correct. >> Correct. >> Because I seem to remember quite a number of teacher positions that haven't been filled after retirements over the last few years >> as well when we've been hit with these.
>> Do we have any idea about how many we've had say in like the last four? Um, >> I I hesitate because I question I would rather I would rather be very
>> I'm just teasing. But um you >> It's been several. It's been several. >> And each one of those they they were pretty much retirements so they were near the top of the scale. So it was quite a bit for each one that we did not replace. >> Correct. Yeah. I mean, if someone's at
the top of the scale plus family benefits, that's north of $110,000 or more, 1201 130 potentially. So, that's that's a large expense. >> I do just want to make a comment of the appreciation of uh folks that are kind
of in this world um every day making the suggestions. I I do feel it's an approach um not to be carried and a burden not to be carried just by this board but listening to our community when they say to us you know consider a leap grant for this carry over this all
of that input I just want to say is greatly appreciated um the other uh question will 2% be requested every year um I I mean if you know that answer um of how
that will all be um I probably have a million dollars for you um because we can we can sell you out for some other things. Um but I I think the intention is um you know where do we see this going and I do think you know it will
continue to be addressed byonsible and there was another question of you know if you don't spend things are you carrying that over um and are you saving it and we've had a lot of conversation in committees and I think the board
knows this I am a person who doesn't necessarily take the expressway because I don't want to pay the $5 toll that comes off when you get up at at Route 50 and I'll take the long way home um after a late night like tonight because my son's not home and I won't pay the toll
again. So, you are talking about somebody who was raised in a bluecollar family quite frankly um who was always pinching pennies throughout my entire life. that hasn't lost like that's not I don't think I'll ever lose that gene for
as long as I am alive. Um so the thing is is you know I look at these things we've had lots of conversations about even as you know I continue to work on the efficiencies of the district you know being very thoughtful about every posting that goes up. Do we really need
that? Is there a way to be more efficient? How can we get that done? Um, so I just want to assure and reassure people. Um, I'm not really a spender. Um, I am trying to be as fiscally as responsible.
Mr. Deanna announced his retirement and as we look for his replacement, it's one of the qualities and the characteristics of do you understand where you're coming and do you understand um you know that we're going to need you to get creative and we're going to be talking to you about you know what do you understand
about grants and the application and the management of those things. Um so I just wanted to kind of comment that. I also will say um to that point um I think there's a piece in there that why how do you not um continue to raise taxes from
a school standpoint, from a local standpoint and it would be the continued encouragement of our township to really think about what is our plan for raidables. Um I also understand the Pinelands piece of it, but we do need to
think about that piece of it. Um and and making sure that we're pushing that. And to me, um, when I started in my position, I had reached out to the mayor and had said, "Let's continue to have conversation and work together thinking about the community as a whole." So, I
do think that that is a piece that that does need to be addressed. Many other districts rely on their high ratables to handle their schools and um, we're just not in that position. Um, so I just wanted to make that comment. There was
also the question of consolidation of schools. Uh this is a big conversation that's happening across the state. It's absolutely a conversation happening at our county roundts. Um and there is funding that's available right now. And if you remember, it wasn't too long ago.
I want to say within I'm guessing but within like the last 10 years definitely in my lifetime as an administrator where we did go out and we did look at consolidation reports and where would smaller districts be consolidated to. We continue to have that conversation at
the county level looking at it from all angles. um looking at it as even um in some ways superintendent retire and what do those you know how do you kind of look at those positions you know so it's an on I want to assure you it's an
ongoing conversation because there is the pressure I do want to be responsible and share with you that's not necessarily always the answer though when you get into some of those reports you think you're going to save a lot and you don't because you end up having to
hire more people to oversee things, certain things start costing more money. So, it's it's about being responsible as you look at that. I don't want you to think that just, oh, there's two sides to this. Consolidation's the answer and
it's going to solve all of our problems. And then you're going to have folks that are going to say, I don't want there's a reason why I live here. So, I think that that comes with a balance and that comes with a big community conversation because I do think that the school is a
point of pride. Um, it is a reason why people move here. Um, it's an reason why, you know, people can get a certain amount of money for their homes and and the value. So, to me, that's a balanced conversation. It's not all one way or another.
Any thoughts on any of those topics before I move on? I just want to add a few comments to the consolidation um question. So consolidation was mentioned at our last meeting. So I personally did some research online and you are all welcome
to do the same googling that I did. Um I found a variety of different articles and reports about consolidation. And the the very basics of what I learned is that if your school is under 300 kids, then consolidation is most likely a good thing and you're going to
see some cost savings. if you're over 300 kids, much less likely to see cost savings, especially if you already have an efficient district. Um, so it becomes less and less beneficial the more students you have in your district. Um, it just from a cost-saving perspective.
And then there are also other considerations when you do those consolidations. What are you giving up? Um, so I just wanted to throw that out there. >> Did you? >> Okay. Okay, while you're thinking,
>> okay, >> um I just wanted to also comment on the who can we talk to at the state? >> Everyone and anyone call all of your state representatives, call your federal representatives, call the governor. Uh leave messages on everybody's voicemail.
School funding is a statewide issue. We every school is having issues. They need to fix the funding formula. They need to provide real solutions that actually work. Um, another thing that I've personally been thinking about that I would hope people join in on, you know,
they put a cap on how much schools can raise taxes. Why can't they put a cap how much healthcare can raise their premiums and stuff? Let's get them to put a cap on healthcare increases. That would solve a whole heck of a lot of our budget issues. So, please call everyone, talk to everyone, Department of
Education, everything. um anyone you can reach out to because it does need to get fixed. >> I believe there was one final question and that was um if there is any remaining money to that the $750,000
what happens with that money and so we have been conservative in how we've approached that. Um we have spent it in the ways that we indicated I went through that at the last meeting. Um but there's also a piece to it that if there um is any breakage, if there's anything
that we are planning for and there's the ability to save money, the mindset is that we're going to save the money and think about how we can continue to be futuristically fiscally healthy and not just wasted
away on things that might be tangible things that are going to kind of come and go. >> Yeah. Let me just uh there's two two uh points I wanted to make. Um to what you just said uh yeah I just want to clarify
that any money that is left over it actually does go into surplus and rolls over. So if there was money left over that that in fact the answer is yes that rolls over into a ne another budget year. Um and the other there was a question I don't think that got
answered. Charles uh asked a question, does the state look at possible development in the state aid formula? And they don't. They don't look at and say, hey, you guys could have 50 businesses and we're going to give you state aid as if you should be developing
those. Um so that's good news that they don't look at it that way. Um that they actually look at current values and your current ability to raise taxes. So, I just wanted to clarify that. >> Thank you. Um, board members, anyone
have comments, questions at this point? Bob, >> microphone? >> I just want to say after this discussion and it's reassured me, I'm settling on the the 2% increase only. And what reassured me of that and convinced me of that fact was we can bank the health
care cap, the health cap. So if it does become disastrous, we still have that revenue resource to turn to. And the other thing that also convinced me was I think it was Mr. Mayon that said it. We have to become more introspective on the expense side. I know we've looked at that, but we really need to sharpen our
pencil because that would give us a lot more sustainability. And if we did the 2% this year, it it wouldn't force our hand, but it would make us really make some of the tough decisions that we have to make. And they will be tough decisions. and we might find out that we can't make those decisions, that we we
lose too much to make those decisions, but we still have the health care bank to fall back on if if we need to do that. So, I'm I'm I'm stuck on the 2%. >> Thank you. >> Go ahead, Sarah.
>> I'm a little confused, so I'm going to ask. I want to understand a little better when what he's saying about banking the healthcare, does that mean that you can you could increase it next year by that? Is that what you're saying? >> Yeah. So, what happens is that $165,000
ability to raise taxes because remember, it's not really concrete dollars that the state's giving us. They're just giving us more capacity to tax the community. So next year you would have the ability to raise taxes to the 2% cap plus this rollover and then call that
the banked cap plus if there is a healthcare adjustment next year it could you know that could be added to it >> but then you're looking at like a double whammy on the people >> correct that's the balance that the board needs to come to and that's correct it's the way to
>> in simple terms I sorry for my simple terms um I I was leaning toward the 4.73 because I'm concerned about the future and I've listened to Nancy and she said for year after year since I've been on the board that we were good and then all of a sudden she's putting up the flag as
the auditor who's the person outside of here that's looking at our finances and Nancy bringing that to our attention. I feel like one time I was like okay and then she came back and said it again and that really stuck out to me um as something that we have to be careful of
and and what what if that happens? Um, in addition to what I'm seeing happen in other districts around with their health care and their their flat state aid or the I think it's like 6% that Ocean City got is is concerning to me for the
students and the staff and the quality of education that we're trying to give here and longevity. Um, so I I was pretty firm 4.73 in my opinion. Um, Dr. Paul's recommendation of 3.36 feels like
a compromise to me. Um, and the fact that it's coming from her as our superintendent as a recommendation means that she's taking in all these pieces, some that I can see and some that I can't. Um, so I don't know if you're straw pulling, but I would concede the option to your >> Okay, thank you. Um, personally, I'm
with you at the middle option. the um I think you know my mathematical brain says the mathematically right thing to do is the bigger option but my emotional side um I don't feel comfortable doing that to our taxpayers I do feel like the middle one is a good compromise um and
that's where I'm at >> tough if you did the middle one where it was the 3.36 you would still have that extra if you needed it but you wouldn't be going a full extra extra next That's correct. Whatever whatever you
don't use gets banked. So you use half of it, you're banking half of it. >> So that half would be in our budget that we could save if we didn't need it or if we that we could save and build those things or if we have some sort of emergency sidewalk that we need to repair or whatever. >> Correct.
>> Thank you. Um I have to say that I agree with Bob on this one. Um, when we look at the state of affairs that we're currently in, um, we look at other districts that did get significant funding and yet they're still making cuts. Um, I can't justify anything more
than a 2%. So, I agree with Bob on that. I'm sorry. >> It's okay. You don't have to be sorry. I I I do want to say like we are a nine member board for a reason. We each represent a different part of the community. None of these choices is a slam dunk. No. >> You know, each one has pros and cons.
Each one's going to affect all of our constituents differently. And so I think it's important that each of us express our opinion and our thoughts as what we think is best. And then when we get our majority, whatever that majority is will hopefully be the thing that the majority of our
community also agrees with. So don't be sorry. Like that's why you're here. >> Just like a habit. >> Kathy, you want to say something? >> Yeah. I um feel that we hit the taxpayers hard last year and I'm 2%.
>> Okay. >> Uh jo Yeah, I have four for 2% right now and two for option two. I don't remember what that exact percent was. >> Thank you. >> Um yes. So we're doing a straw poll. So
those of you that are left who would like to speak next I was going to go with option one. >> Option one. >> Okay. >> I am with option one. >> Okay. All right. Then we're a majority.
Okay. We're a majority at 2% then. So that's what we'll be voting on later in the meeting. Thank you everyone. I appreciate everybody sharing both public and board being open and honest. I appreciate that. Um, at this time the board needs
to go into an executive session and then after our executive session, we will come out and continue with the rest of our meeting. So, can I get a motion and a second for the Mullica Township Board of Education to meet in executive session for the purpose of discussing attorney client privilege
>> and HIG motion? >> Second. And we should be about 10 minutes. Oh, we have to vote. I'm sorry. All in favor? >> Any opposed? >> Any abstain? >> All right, we're good. All right, we're going to go in the little room. We'll be
back in a little bit. But they're just voting to introduce. >> It's not really educational standards. It's not really educational. >> I know teacher day. I had a ratio. They don't start
to like >> Sarah Sanders. more complicated requirements get more intense. That's why transportation gets very I like his
assessment. It doesn't >> doesn't matter, right? only I guess I guess my property is my property is assessed is assessed at a
higher rate the same assess too many things. But when we got an acre,000 and That's fine.
>> Okay. What's the What does the formula do? What's the >> He should tell you what the formula is. >> I mean, like things get plugged in. >> They're all But I mean, like, don't you think that should
I think that would be really hard. >> Let's dumb this down. Let's say the town should only >> No, I'm not saying that. But they but they might look at 47 square miles uh this much acreage. Our biggest problem
is that >> you know you'reware >> you know county based tax where So when you say the ass way
>> exactly. So were you thinking high or low? It's way >> there's houses that are assessed,000 that are no doubt 400. They've been 150
or so. But how they balance it out is% >> right. But if everybody but if my if my assessment went up,000 but the guy who's got the $100,000 assessment his goes up too. which would probably be more
realistic. And now he's at three. Mine went up to 100 and his went up to two. >> That and if that happened across the board, my my cost of tax would probably be less. >> But at least it's fairly
But what's $2 million reassessing it >> for us or under the county, >> but it would be all the money would go to the county. >> Has nothing to do with all the money. It
has to do with the act of assessment. Today you bring in >> the job of assessing. >> We bring in companies to go to every property and county based assessment review
real estate sale data tax maps uh construction data from every county and basically a logic problem to say this is what the value >> all right if everybody could uh find
their seats again please because we are going to get started again. >> Uh, can I get a motion and a second to resume the public portion of the agenda? >> Motion. >> Second. >> Thank you. Uh, all in favor?
>> Any opposed? Any abstain? >> Motion carries. Uh, at this time the meeting will now be open to the public for comments on agenda items only. If your comments pertain to students, personnel, litigation, or negotiations, we would ask that you see the superintendent
after the meeting since the board does not generally discuss such items in public. When you make your comment, please state your first name, last name, and municipality. Comments must be limited to three minutes. Do we have anyone who would like to make a comment? Okay.
Uh then can I get a motion and a second for the Mullica Township Board of Education upon recommendation of the superintendent approve items 6B through 6D. >> Motion. >> Second. >> Um discussion.
>> So given the uh budget workshop, I will read into the record um what is what is currently blank under the budget approval. So it says, "Resolve the Mullica Township Board of Education. Approve the
tenative 2627 school district budget for submission to the county superintendent of schools and to authorize the board secretary, business administrator to make necessary changes as requested by the county office to receive approval. Total general fund budget 1266,945.
Total special special revenue fund 2,837,547 total debt service fund 396,181 and that totals a general fund budget of 15 mil I'm sorry totals a total budget of 15,900,673. Moving over to the local tax levy
column. General fund tax levy 2% increase only 6 million 181 347 total debt service tax levy 260,191
total tax levy 6,441,538. Be it resolved to acknowledge that the 2627 schoolyear budget as described results in the tax levy as follows. General fund tax levy 6,181347 debt service municipal levy 260,191.
>> Thank you. Can I get a uh is any other discussion on the other items? >> I have a question on D the maximum contact limits and I know I earlier but I still >> uh microphone please. Sorry. >> Sorry. Yay. I'll learn maybe I had asked
this question earlier and I continue to ask this is the maximum dollar amount that we would be allowed to to spend. Correct. But is that appropriated in the budget already or collected or raised in the budget or is that just our cap? >> No, that's just our cap. And this is a required this is a required resolution
as per the budget submission. and you put in, you know, some of these things we won't touch and many of them we won't like the public relations budget. It's a line that you it's it's actually stated in the statute. You know, you would normally only do that maybe if you're going out for referendum or doing some
other things that would require public relations money to be spent. I would say most likely that's not going to be spent, but it's still required to be in there as just a max, not not actually appropriated in the budget. Good. >> Thank you for answering that question. >> Anyone else?
Okay. Can we get a roll call? >> Miss Curts? >> Yes. >> Miss Lynch? >> Yes. >> Miss Mayon? >> Yes. >> Mr. Roner? >> Yes. >> Mr. Stalin work? >> Yes. >> Miss Warner? >> Yes. >> Mr. Winterbottom? >> Yes. >> Miss Wild? >> Yes. >> And Miss Brown?
>> Yes. >> Motions pass. >> Uh, any old business? >> Uh, the only old business. Uh same same two items. Financial disclosures are due April 30th. So I'm requesting the board get them in by uh April 15th so I have
time to process. And also just uh remember your training. >> Uh any new business? >> What did you have a question Joy? No, >> I said I did with but I don't know if he got it and everything right.
>> Yeah. So, what happens is they they end up being submitted in a queue and then I go in and review them. I try to review them when everybody's submitted. So, >> in the next couple weeks, >> you you won't know until Yeah.
>> All right. Committee reports, curriculum policy. Um, we discussed the budget issues and what led to tonight's presentation. And then we also discussed the calendar with the two additional make that four snow days and where they were going and how we were um handling
those at the end of the year and that's attached. Right. >> Thank you. Uh, finance operations. >> We pretty much just what we just presented to the last hour. That's what our our finance and operations meeting is about.
>> Thank you. uh personnel negotiations. >> We discussed personnel concerns. We received the update on the business administrator posting. We discussed budget shared services and uh we are starting to u prepare for the MTA
negotiations for next year. >> Thank you. Um so we got some adorable correspondence from our multiple disabled class. So I'm going to pass that around so the board can see. So, we got lots of cute little thank you cards from them. Um, so I'm going to pass
these around everybody. They all wrote inside. It's very cute. So, so thank you to them. >> Uh, while that's being passed around, can I get a motion and a second to approve the February 2025 2026 regular
and executive session meeting minutes? >> Motion. >> Second. >> Any discussion? All in favor? >> Any opposed? Any abstain?
Okay, motion carries. Then uh the next item is our monthly reports. So we don't need to vote on that. Oh, you have a question. Go ahead. >> I didn't get a chance to look. You might have already done it at the last meeting. I asked the class size ratio teacher to student. >> They're all in there. >> Okay. I didn't get a chance to look.
Thank you. >> I figured you would. Thank you. >> Uh, can I get a motion and a second for the Mullica Township Board of Education upon recommendation of the superintendent approve items 10B through 10H?
>> Motion. >> Second. >> Any discussion? >> We're good. Okay. Can I get a roll call then? >> Miss Curts? >> Yes. >> Miss Lynch? Yes, >> Miss Mayon. >> Yes, >> Mr. Roner. >> Yes, >> Mr. Stalin work. >> Yes,
>> Miss Warner. >> Yes, >> Mr. Winterbottom. >> Yes, >> Miss Wild. >> Yes. >> And Miss Brown Nelson? >> Yes. >> Motions pass. >> Can I get a motion and a second for the Mulliga Township Board of Education upon recommendation of the superintendent
approve items 11B through 11D? Motion. >> Second. Any discussion? >> All right. Can I get a roll call? >> Miss Curts? >> Yes. >> Miss Lynch? >> Yes. >> Miss Mayon? >> Yes. >> Mr. Roner?
>> Yes. >> Mr. Stalen? >> Yes. >> Miss Warner? >> Yes. >> Mr. Winterbottom? >> Yes. >> Miss Wild? >> Yes. >> Miss Brownill? >> Yes. >> Motions pass. Can I get a motion and a second for the Mullica Township Board of Education upon
recommendation of the superintendent approve item 12B? >> Motion. >> Second. >> Any discussion? >> Can I get a roll call then? >> Miss Curts, >> yes. >> Miss Lynch, >> yes. >> Miss Mayon, >> yes. >> Mr. Roner, >> yes.
>> Mr. Stalen, >> yes. >> Miss Warner, >> yes. >> Mr. Winterbottom. >> Yes. >> Miss Wild, >> yes. >> Miss Brown, >> yes. >> Motion's passed. >> Uh, can I get a motion and a second from the Mulliga Township Board of Education upon recommendation of the business
administrator approve items 13B through 13H. >> Motion. >> Second. >> Any discussion? Can I ask a prek question? Should we had the registration for that, right? Did we get near that nine classes? Like, is
that what we're going to need? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Okay. >> So, um, >> thank you. Um, so we're still in the registration process now, >> but um, and so I would encourage people to continue to register their threes and fours, but they're steadily coming in
and we're working on those numbers now, meeting on Tuesday, and we'll be good to go. >> Great. It's a great program. So, thank you. >> Any other discussion? >> Can I get a roll call then? >> Miss Curts? >> Yes. >> Miss Lynch?
>> Yes. Abstain from 13H. >> Noted. Miss Mayon. >> Yes. >> Mr. Roner. >> Yes. >> Mr. Stalin work. Stain on 13B for one more time and then yes the rest.
>> Miss Warner. >> Yes. >> Mr. Winterbottom. >> Yes. >> Miss Wild. >> Yes. >> Miss Brown Hill. >> Yes. >> Motions pass. >> Uh at this time the meeting will now be open to the public for comments on any items. If your comments pertain to
students, personnel, litigation, or negotiations, we would ask that you see the superintendent after the meeting since the board does not generally discuss such items in public. Again, please state your name and comments are limited to three minutes. Um, I'm just going to make the first comment here. I
went to the PTA bingo and I just want to give them a shout out. It was so much fun. And a shout out to all the people who volunteered. The number of volunteers was amazing. Uh, Beth and I were back when we first started that bingo and uh, we were on the PTA back then and we had like five people and now
they have like 30 and it was amazing. So, great job to them. >> Any other public comments? jump in too. We had microphone microphone. >> We had desserts and dialogue here which is an eighth grade function where the top student at each school is selected
and they come together and they have a question and answer session and some of the answers are really really interesting >> and Mullica hosted it on Monday night. We have 140 people. >> 140 to 150 people were here before >> and it was it was it was a a great turnout. It was a great facility. I have
to thank Dr. Paul and Todd and the staff for putting it all together because this was a whole whole different room and it was a fantastic night and everybody did a great job. >> Thank you. >> Hey, I just have a few comments to make. Um I want to thank the community for
their patience when we had a power power outage just a few weeks ago. But really a special thank you to uh Steve and Todd who started working on it at what 1:30 in the morning. >> Uh no it was 2:10 I think. >> Okay. 210.
Um but you know we continue to have an extraordinary facilities uh manager here um who even on Saturday night uh was here with a false alarm. And so I just want to thank Steve for his commitment to the district. Uh Lewis was in here
early. Mike Irwin was in here early. Uh they did get Chester's donuts for their long night. But other than that, I just wanted to publicly thank them. Uh special thank you to the PTA for the bad bingo. Uh what an incredible night for our community. And then just a few announcements. Uh reminder that our
middle school students will be um putting on my favorite show ever, The Wizard of Oz. They knew I was coming. Um but that will be um uh tomorrow night and Friday night and it starts at 6:30 and we hope that you can come. Um spring
break will begin uh the afternoon of April 2nd. Just as a reminder to everyone, with the change in the calendar, our new eighth grade graduation date will be June 17th. And I encourage all of uh our community members who came out tonight, I want to thank you for coming out tonight. And I
encourage you to join us when we have a community celebration of 100 years of a school on this site. Um, and so we have a celebrate um, centennial committee that has been working to put together what will be a wonderful community day from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on
Saturday, May 16th. So, thank you to everyone for all their hard work. >> Thank you. Uh, any other public comments? Key. >> Yeah. >> Grab a microphone. >> I just want to echo what um, uh, Mr.
scholar. >> For people who don't know you, can you say who you are? >> My name is Kay Sullivan. I'm the president of the Mullik Township Teacher Association. Um, and I can be reached if you have any questions for me as well. Um, but I want to echo all the thank yous that went out tonight. Um, PTA Bag
Bingo, um, Steve, the whole crew, everybody. Um, echo all those thank yous. Um, I just wanted to update you. Uh the MTA is extremely grateful to the members and um the administrative staff uh and the district that contributed to our dress down days and this helps fund
our philanthropic endeavors. Um we raised over a little over $2,000 from dressing down. Um we're grateful to the staff and anybody in the community that purchased um through the G Gertude Hawk fundraiser. Um we were able to raise uh
$3,500 from that. Um, and a special thank you to Brandy Urky for spearheading that and running it. It is a big um it's a big fundraiser. Um, with the money raised, we're able to um donate to a few things. First is the uh
two scholarships and those are awarded to students that graduated from Mullica and they're in high school now. Um, one is for going into public service and one's going into for education. So, $1,000 and a $500 scholarship. I think we're in discussions about upping that because we did raise a little extra
money. Thank you to everybody. So, we're grateful for that. Um, we also donate to some local charities as well. And I just wanted to scroll down. I didn't get to print my paper. Um, some of those charities include, and
these are $300 donations, uh, the Humane Society of Atlantic County, uh, No One Hungry in Eggra City, Kimmy Safe Haven Rescue, the Funny Farm Rescue, Hearts and Harley's, CHOP, uh, the Pinelands United Methodist Church Food Pantry. Um,
we also contribute to the ACCEA um, philanthropic fund as well. Um, and I have two more donations to give today. I'm hoping I can find a recipient for them. the Malikica Township Historical Society. Are you on that, Miss Warner? >> Joy. >> Oh, Joy is perfect. We have a check for
you. We're very happy to give that to you. And the Mullica Township Wreck. Um, so I think that uh Shante or Candace, I didn't know who to give it to. Um, but you know, w with a dark discussion about money. there there are some good things
to you know um um but I mean none of this can happen without the community the staff the administrative staff too helping to contribute to all this stuff and um we're very grateful so and we're looking forward to the centennial as well we'll be there so >> thank you >> thank you
>> thank you any other public comments Okay. >> Char Charles Herrera, could you other than the the the grounds personnel and the janitorial
people, how many paid individuals are in this school supporting education, administration? paperwork, payroll, all of that, >> including teachers. >> Yes.
>> Don't put me on the spot there. I don't I I honestly don't know. I could I I couldn't say that right now, but >> if you wouldn't mind giving an answer next time. And >> No problem. >> This this is this may sound far-fetched. Uh but a friend of mine worked worked
for Chop Hospital and they do a self self uh yeah unemployment that they self-insure for unemployment. I and maybe I'm totally wrong. I feel like there's everybody in the school maybe
stays forever until they retire. In New Jersey, are you allowed to do selfinsured unemployment? Basically, you would collect all of those funds. I know
employees pay into it, the school pays into it, and if that were to be funded and then distributed as necessary, if necessary, is I don't know if that's even an option in New Jersey. This was in Pennsylvania that they were allowed
to do it. Yes, the answer is yes, you can do that. And most schools do do that. Uh I I think most schools do this, but I don't know in particular. In particular, we do. And uh what happens is we we fund an unemployment trust. That's a separate
bank account with a separate bank balance. And then as those bills come in, those quarterly unemployment bills, we're able to um you know, pay those. Now, the the one caveat is once you put money into an unemployment trust, you
cannot take it back out to support a general fund budget. So, let's just say hypothetically we had, and I don't know what our unemployment trust is. I don't have that memorized, but if we had $300,000 in there, you can't just say, "Oh, you know what? We need $200,000. We're going to pull that out." That it's
unfortunate. So if your unemployment trust builds up, it's good for unemployment bills, but it's not great for >> Can you adjust that as the need? >> Well, so so good question. This year I have zero dollars because we do have a
good unemployment trust. There had been a line there's a line item in your budget where you just at the beginning or end of the year, you take money and you transfer it from your general bank account into your unemployment trust. We're not doing that. We're our unemployment trust is healthy.
>> You're letting it roll. >> We we have a zero dollar contribution for this current budget season. >> So So the school in terms of that payroll is saving money on unemployment. Correct. >> As well as the employee fees. >> That's correct.
>> Thank you. >> Hi Nicole Campalone. Um real I want to talk about Summerslam. I talked about it last month. I'm going to have some followup questions after the budget presentation, but real quick with the revised school calendar, so is school being pushed to Monday now because of the juice not days. Okay. I just wanted to confirm because the agenda just had
like the link so I couldn't see that. Um, in regards to SummerSlam, I'm I don't know if the number is on hand, but does anyone know how much it cost to fund that program in the summer last year for the prek to second graders? >> $30,000. >> Okay. So, it was 30,000 to cover that
and then third to eighth grade was covered by the ASES grant. >> Correct. It was $30,000 um for 16 days of instruction and then the ASUS program is covered through the federal grant. >> Okay. So, we talked a little bit about
the prek funding and we're adding two more classes next year and we're very excited that we have a lot of prek and based on 630 kids in the school, it seems like prek is kind of carrying all the grades that that's the biggest grade amongst all the grades. Can any of that
money that's being used in the preschool funding be used to fund the prekers that are being cut from the SummerSlam program? And if so, has anyone looked at how much it costs for prek to benefit in that those 16 days versus K first and
second? >> So, um, prek, please remember that prek is prek 3 and prek 4. So, that number total number represents two grade levels. So, when we talk about 135 children, it's um not necessarily
carrying the rest of the building. It's on par with the grade level sizes of the rest of the building. So kindergarten classes have 65 70 kids in it. Same thing goes up all the way through 8th grade. So can you use the pea funds? Uh
the week after our last budget meeting, there was a um pea grant meeting that indicated for the first time school districts could decide to use that funding for summer school if they chose. So that's a new um consideration. However, in the first year that you're
adding classrooms, the way that the funding goes, you have to fund the furniture and all of the materials and excess costes costs to those rooms. So, at this point, did we receive enough money to say that we can also fund summer school um for those students?
There wasn't I'll I'll be honest with you, there's not enough money in that grant to say, oh, and we're going to cover the cost of preschool. Um so right now uh our work continues to be and I spoke about it earlier that we need to make hard decisions about what we can
sustain. Um we look at data to determine if we're going to carry a program. Uh the board's well aware and it was shared with them that the students that attended our summer slam program while 15 students in a classroom signed up only five to seven students in each room
attended last summer. So when we're talking about the program, when we're talking about the cost of it, we need to make sure that we're making decisions uh that actually will impact students in the greatest impact possible. Um so $30,000 actually could provide a staff
member um you know for uh at least four out of the five days a week to work with students for 180 days. That's the equivalent. So there's things like that that we need to consider. So 30,000 is a part-time aid is I know I'm getting eye
like what is that? That would be a part-time aid um that could work with our students every day increasing things like language arts and math. So um those were the pieces of the decision um that went into how are we funding and what
are what are we doing? >> Okay. Um I have two children in prek. Um, one of them I believe is going to qualify based on my conversations um, for the SummerSlam program that is going to be offered. How
are the teachers picking those students? Has there been any discussion on what that's going to cost for those students versus maybe sending out a survey to all parents and asking, "Hey, are you interested in this? if you are, there's going to be some type of attendance requirement. Um, or we're not going to
be able to fund this because it seems like we're going to offer it for some children and I don't know what the criteria is for those teachers to make those decisions. Um, but if we're going to offer it at some capacity, why not at least send out a survey to see like who
would even be interested, what that would cost would look like versus not offering it at all. >> All those pieces were considered. the the teachers have participated in grade level meetings. Uh all year we have been looking at the progress of our students. In this month's meeting, we talked about
where are the students currently at this time of the year and that's um our current preschoolers who are rising kindergarteners. So keep in mind that the rising kindergarteners, the kids that will be in kindergarten come September 1, actually they become kindergarteners on July 1. So those
students will be considered in that program for this summer. We've identified those students based on how they're um performing based on the teaching strategies gold which is how we evaluate our students uh in K and above. It's based on where are they uh based on
grade level standards. So our emphasis and as we're moving forward towards other grants that are available have to be focused on high impact tutoring which means that we have to meet the threshold of high impact tutoring. High impact tutoring means that there's uh about
five to six students per teacher. So there's different pieces of this that we are trying to also establish and make ourselves available and ready in a ready stance for when the state says you have $45,000 in extra tutoring funds that we
can actually access that those funds. So e every decision that we're making right now is based on the data of student progress and who needs these targeted programs. From there we um tomorrow those families will be getting those letters in the mail um because we've
identified those students. We put the letters together. We've reviewed it all. Um there are a number of families who will be contacted. Those students are going to have the first priority and then we're going to go back and see where do we stand with our sections? How much is it costing us? and how do we balance this in light of the decisions
we've made with budget tonight? >> Okay. And one more thing. So the July 1 date, so when a preker is going into kindergarten, they're considered kindergarten July 1st. >> They are. >> But that doesn't that count for all the grade levels? Because I have someone who's in second going into third.
>> So there's two things that um that are challenging each other right now. In the real world of public education, students roll up on July 1st, just like an eighth grader becomes a Cedar Creek High School student on July 1st when they leave us,
you know, in at the end of their eighth grade year. When it comes to the ASUS grant, that's the exception. Remember, um, how we attend school in New Jersey is different than how other states across the country attend school. Some states do year round, all of those
things. So through the ASUS grant, it is the students that are in third grade now don't roll up and become fourth graders until September 1st. So we're catching those kids back in Summer Slam um that are kind of in that caught between the
federal grant and what we can do locally. So they would still qualify as SummerSlam students. >> Okay. Um because I I mean I filled out the survey and it said rising third grader and then >> and we've made that selfcorrection but those students are going to be
considered in the SLAM program and you'll be contacted from them. >> Okay. Thank you. >> You're welcome. Any other public comments? >> Okay. Thank you everyone. Um I do have a PTA update from the PTA president. So, I'm just going to read that. Uh, the
10th annual Mullica PTA bingo and basket raffle was a great night. Thank you so much to our sponsors, volunteers, and attendees. We greatly appreciate everyone who showed up to support our PTA so that we can continue to help enhance the educational experience at Mullica for all students. I'd also like
to give Mr. Hanel a big shout out. He stepped up at the last minute and did an awesome job as our embassy when our planned embassy had a family emergency last week. The PTA provided an end of trimester treat to all students and provided snacks and drinks for the
middle school movie night. Tomorrow and Friday night, we will be selling roses at the middle school play. Good luck to the Coyote players. Midyear teacher supplies distributions will be will begin tomorrow. Also coming up, when we return from spring break, we will host
the second and final Scholastic Bookf Fair of the year, April 15th through the 21st. Our next PTA meeting is Monday, April 20th at 7 p.m. Uh, is there an MTEF update? >> No.
>> Thank you. Um, our next board meeting is scheduled for April 29th, 2029 at 6:30 p.m. for exe >> Oh, you know what? I just read it without even thinking. For some reason, it says 29 on the computer.
Thank you for the correction, everyone. April 29th, 2026 at 6:30 p.m. for executive session and 7 p.m. for public session. >> Yeah. You know what? That is true. All right. Can I get a motion and a
second to adjourn the meeting? >> Motion. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Any opposed? Any abstain? All right. Motion carries. Thank you everyone. Have a good night. Yeah.
>> Yeah. It is either