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Video-1: youtube.com/watch?v=AWbzemq67bY

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meeting comes to order. We previously opened the meeting upstairs. Mr. Hastings, we need to do a roll call down here. >> Yes. >> Go ahead, please. >> Mr. Brady, Mr. Cover >> here. >> Mrs. Dam >> here.

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>> Mrs. Gilman. >> Uh, Mr. McCarthy >> here. >> Mrs. McGovern >> here. >> Mr. Schneider >> here. Stevens >> here. >> Mr. Do >> here. Did you hear Mr. Brady? >> And Mr. Brady's online. >> Yeah, he is. >> Thank you. >> Yes, I'm here.

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>> And I turn this over with the district enrollment report. >> Okay. Um I actually >> I'm sorry, Dave. >> That's okay. I have a a few just quick announcements and then and then I will turn it over for the report. Um it's

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very nice to see everyone. Happy July. I hope everyone's having a nice summer so far. Uh we are certainly very busy here with many different things getting ready to uh reopen schools in September, but we have uh a few different summer programs happening across our district.

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At our high school, we have our summer bridge program. Also, our students who are working on some of their credit recovery programming and Spartan schools trips. And we also have an ESY, our extended school year program taking

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place over at Wamasta School, but it's for the entire district. We have 79 students in attendance over there from ages 3 to 21. They're having a wonderful summer with their different programming under the direction of Miss McCale and

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Miss Gia Patterson who's serving as the facilitator. I want to thank them for all of their hard work to make that program such a success. and also uh through July 6th where our on our first day we did have uh quite the weather and we had to adjust our schedule and

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delayed dismissal and all of our staff from our bus drivers to our custodians. Faculty really pitched in and helped keep our students safe while we uh navigated some flood waters here in town and and really um you know had had to

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had to had to think quickly and readjust our schedule. So it was it really has been going very well and I just wanted to uh note that for that program also the administrative team has been conducting our annual summer professional development series, our

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Spartan learning leadership series. Uh we started July 16th with a kickoff uh the admin team and then we continued this week with a number of different activities. Today we had a uh district-wide townshipwide

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security training where we partnered with the office of emergency management and OTPD and all of our security personnel and administration working through different scenarios to make sure that we have the most secure and safe

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schools as possible for our students. So that was a very um exciting and interactive informative day for all of us. And just some important dates coming up. We have our new faculty orientation kicking off August 24th. We welcome our

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10-month staff back on September 1st. And the first day of school for students is September 3rd. So I just put those dates on your radar. Also, uh, shortly, probably sometime next week, I'll be sending out a communication to all families reminding them to make sure

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that they're signed up for the Genesis parent portal so that they can complete all of their forms for school. And then once parents complete their forms, as long as their forms are completed, I should say, then when we open up the schedules and the teacher names, they'll

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have access to that information. So, that look for that communication in the coming week or so. Okay, at this time I'd like to introduce Mr. Tim Amnen from Ross and Habber Associates who will present the

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district's demographic summary report. >> Okay. Mike, if you could put that presentation up, that would be great. >> Okay, it's all you. >> Thank you, Mike. >> Uh, thank you to members of the board, administration, members of the public. I appreciate the opportunity to be here

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tonight to take you through um what is a summary of a much larger document uh that addresses multiple scenarios that we went through when looking at the enrollment and demographic piece um rather than force everyone to suffer through on a late Tuesday night in July.

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All all 60 pages of that report, we have uh summarized it here to to ultimately provide what we think are the most relevant conclusions um for for you all to see. Uh but the the full report actually is available as well. Um if we could move on to the to the next slide.

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You know just for for level setting everyone. Um the project itself was focused on looking at at three interrelated components that feed into questions around facility utilization. And those components included a

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demographic assessment of uh of the community enrollment projections and then um facility capacity and ultimately trying to connect the demand that is presented by the number of students who

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are projected to be in the district at different grade levels with the supply of available classrooms and how well those two things meet at each of the individual schools. Right? And so ultimately when we look at facility capacity and and facility utilization that's what we're trying to address is

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this question of how do these two things merge together and and in areas where there might be imbalances or might be some questions what are options available to try to address those concerns. Um and so so what you'll see as we go through and if we move to the next slide one of the things that we'll

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see is ultimately these three things are foundational to to the analysis. the the information that we gathered is a combination of both historical information available, current information from the time that we were doing the study. Um that allows us to do

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the projections on a go forward basis and and again we try to do that and we match those those changes in district characteristics with changes throughout the community. um from a demographic standpoint um in order to try to

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understand and to to see in the longer term where we may have changing demographic profiles what does that actually have the potential to mean um beyond even the projection period that we have as five years um for the schools right so um it it when we look at the

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enrollment projections um one of the things I think to note uh is is enrollment projections are are combination of both historical information right which is what what has happened over the last six years that we were looking at and we use that to calculate a cohort survival value, right? Which is essentially how many

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kids transition from grade to grade. Um looking at the long term um and we use that to project out into the future what we we think the enrollment in the schools might be. Um so if we could um the the the way that these two things interact uh what we see over that

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initial 5-year period um is we see it's relatively steady. we had about an 88 student total change over the 5-year period. Um, but what we what we will use that for um is to understand more importantly, I think the the challenge of what's coming potentially in the

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future as as we move forward. One of the things that leads us to understanding what that challenge is is when we look at at uh on the next slide um when when we look at the history what we see is we

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do see a a a somewhat notable peak to trough change. Um so if we look at peak year from from our perspective um when we're looking at the enrollment history which is the second year of the history there um what we end up seeing is approximately a 7% change in overall

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enrollment. Um that 7% change is is higher when we look at statewide averages. You know statewide au has been about 1% over the same time period. Um but if we look at Monmouth and Ocean County for example, those are both about

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4% over the same time frame. Um so we're we're running slightly higher than that, slightly higher than the overall county averages. Um and so so this is a challenge that again I think as we go forward and start thinking about um how to connect enrollment to the schools

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that that becomes important when when we're looking at the space utilization piece. a key contributor uh as you all know is is the transition from students children who are born in town to become kindergarteners. Right? So

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this kindergarten transition period uh one of the things that we do as part of this process is to track that history to track the five-year kindergarten enrollment um relative to their birth year. So take take the school year and move it back five years and assuming you

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know 5-year-olds are registering for for school. Um what you see in the chart is you see the relationship between those two. You see the relationship between births and and kindergarten enrollment. And and what we end up having is uh you

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know about a 65 70% um registration for all of the births that are occurring in town. Uh and that is tracking again slightly below statewide averages. statewide averages are somewhere between you know 80 and 85% um looking at that

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and so so what that is used contextually for is as we are looking at outyear projections one of the things that we have to be careful about is ensuring that we are not overp projecting the number of kindergarten students um by assuming kind of statewide level

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averages for for births and towns right so we we know we're running underneath that we know we've run underneath it historically so it it becomes an element in the way that we do the projections. Um so in the first cut of the projections and I think it's important to understand from an enrollment

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projections perspective there are a couple of versions of projections that we'll talk about here. Um the this first round is what we refer to as baseline or organic projections. These organic projections are if we just take the number of kids that are enrolled in the schools. We figure out what the cohort

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survival is. So, you know, how many kindergarteners become first graders, how many first graders become second graders, second graders become third graders, all the way out, right? Over that full five-year period. Um, that allows us to anticipate what we think some of the counts are going to be. Um, these numbers do not assume anything

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else in terms of impacts of housing, impacts of home sales, any of that kind of stuff. This is just organic projection as kids are moving through the system. Um and what we see when we do that is we still we do see a decline um over the period of time in enrollment

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and that uh that's a that decline in enrollment it goes from our base year which was the most previous the previous school year of approximately 2700 students down to approximately 2600 students. So, we lose, you know,

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slightly more than 100 116 total, but um slightly more than 100 kids uh over the 5-year projection period, right? And again, that assumes no other interventions of anything else that's going on. So, this becomes essentially the point of departure for all of the other things that we start to think

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about. And those those things that we start to think about are what comes out of the demographic study in terms of what is it telling us about changes in the community? what comes out of housing information, which we'll talk about here in a minute, where when we look at housing, what is the influence of housing on potential enrollment? Um, and

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then any other kind of changes within the community, if we have again big developments that are coming in or or um changes in in either corporate or or commercial real estate that are that are driving potential inbound traffic for

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for people who might live here. um all of those things go into the mix to adjust from whatever this baseline value is. Okay. So, we'll talk about how that goes um in here in in Ocean Township here in a minute. But, but it's

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important to recognize that when when we travel through this process, we travel from organic to adjusted for housing and in order to get to what we think the projected number is when we start to figure out how to load kids into

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schools. Okay. So, if we could um when we think about housing impact, so this is a relatively unique circumstance. Um one of the things when we think about housing impact is housing impact is oftentimes thought of as additive, right? So, when we when we're

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bringing in housing into communities and so forth, a lot of times what you'll see is there's a multiplier um and that that housing assumes a projection out where we're going to get additional kids from housing. What we've seen historically here and in conversations with the

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administration and in the other work that we've done, one of the things that we have seen is as we have had changes in housing, it's actually had a negative effect on enrollment right there. So enrollment has been reduced as a consequence of some of the changes in housing. So when we look at housing

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adjusted enrollment here and we'll go into this in a little bit more. One of the factors that we are trying to account for is based on the kinds of development that are coming in based on the characteristics of what's been happening in the community and the changes in enrollment that we've seen as part of the history. How do we adjust

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for that when we're thinking about the perspective of of what does this mean in the classrooms five years from now? Okay. Uh so when we do that one one of the things that we start with obviously is uh the planning department was very helpful in town in terms of providing us

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with information on development and kinds of units that are coming in. Um you can see a map up there of where the developments are. Uh and and it's a little bit hard to see on the slides but but if you look at the document itself you can see the kinds of development

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that are coming in. each of the each of the developments are coded um by virtue of color based on the number of uh rooms that are being built in the in the homes that are coming in. And so we look for two things around that. We look for

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bedroom counts and and what kind of yield that might mean. And then what we look for is also within which school boundaries are the developments occurring to see if we end up with any disproportionate impact on one school over the other just based on again by virtue of where the where the homes and

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where the developments are being built. So so the mapping of the homes and the mappings of the developments are are targeted at at gaining a better understanding of that. So that again what we're not doing when we are looking at the long-term projections on the schools is assuming an average and

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therefore overloading or underloading a particular school. Okay. Um if we could uh you know again this is just a summary for for purposes of just again level setting everybody on the two kind of options that exists with housing. Um and and the method two uh as we've described

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it here but method two which is just uh from from our perspective one of the things that we're seeing um is the types of development and the growth that's occurring um is not does not have a conccommittent connection to growth in enrollment. So for purposes of what um

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we've done with enrollment projections, we have continued to assume that there will be a decay in enrollment as a consequence of the housing and not an increase. Um so the question becomes how do we how do we figure out what that means? Right?

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So what you'll see here is just a process discussion on how that occurs. Um, what one of the things that we looked at was, you know, essentially the 5-year average of what enrollment changed to was about 2.7%, you know, in the neighborhood. Um, and so carrying that 2.7% decline out over the 5-year

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projection period associated with those organic projections gives us a feel for what um what we think the the way that housing will decay enrollment uh as we go forward. And in doing that, one of the things that we see is we end up with

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a we we move from the 179 odd student decline that we had shown in the organic projection to approximately 350 students overall um based on the the negative impacts of housing as we've calculated it. And and

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that housing has a has a particular impact on Ocean Township Elementary just by virtue of where the buildings are and the way the boundaries are designed. Right? So all of those things again go into the mix when we are looking at at available capacity relative um to what

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the demand is going to be represented by students across and and for purposes of the way that we do this and you'll see this as we start to go through the individual school slides. uh we're projecting out students not only at the school level but at the grade level on

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an annual basis so that we can so that when we're looking at the number of classrooms available we're looking at you know how many how many first grade sections might we have how many second grade sections third grade sections and so forth through the through the um the 13 grades. So we could uh so what you

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see here um again previously we had shown the baseline version the organic projections um what you see here is the same the same first five-year history um that's available and then secondly um what you see is the five-year out period where pardon me um there you see the

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negative impact of of the housing on the overall projections right so um so the the the slope of the line from 2000 from 2025 2026 out to 2031 um is obviously steeper in this version because we have

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again an almost doubling of the number of kids that we think are going to be lost for purposes of the norm. Okay. Uh we will go through each of these um relatively quickly. We'll go through the first one here at a little bit more level of detail just to level set everybody. They're all the same though

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in terms of what they're conveying. Um what you see is a grade by grade uh and year-by-year distribution of of both the history and the projections. Um and and what we do see from from an adjustment perspective when when we are looking at

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um at these at each of the individual schools is you know you do see some stability actually over the period of time in some of the schools and you see more volatility in in one of the elementary schools than you do in in the um in all three. Uh but what we do

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particularly see is peaked trough differences that are pretty substantial. Right? If we look at at Ocean Township for example and we look at sort of peaked trough difference of of roughly 327 um looking back at the 2122 school year

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and the 2031 projection period is 239. Right? That's almost 100k drop um in in the building. And so, uh, it it's important not only to just recognize the year-to-year changes and the grade to grade changes, um, but just seeing what

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that peak to trough difference is because I think what it allows you to start to assess from your perspective is is just ensuring that what we're not doing is anchoring on what a peak value might have been in terms of how we are

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thinking about loading the schools. Okay. So if we can uh when we look at Wanamasa right we see a similar kind of uh particularly outyear stability at Wanamasa um but we do see that again that that net decline um in the school and and that peak decline is slightly

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less in that it's only in the neighborhood of roughly 40 students from from peak to trough. Um but it still does have um it still does have that decline not surprisingly. Um, and just for purposes of when you're looking at the charts and trying to understand how the projections move through the system,

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you know, if you start at the bottom left and you look at the kindergarten, then you look up diagonally to the right, right? You'll see the way that the numbers change year to year. And so that gives you some sense of what the cohort value is for each of those years. A way to interpret that is if you see a

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kindergarten that has 50 students in the first year and a and a first grade. Well, let's do it at 100 just because the math is easier, right? If we have a kindergarten that has 100 students in the first year and in the second year the kindergart of 0.98, that's an indicator of declining enrollment. Right? Anything

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below one is decline. If it has 102, then the survival rate is 102. That's an indicator. Right? So by looking at looking diagonally up from the corners you can start to get a feel for what the compass looks like. Um if if we can when we look at wayside wayside is is really

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interesting in so far as that it does represent some stability but it also represents a fairly uh you know again strong kind of peakto trough change of like 9% overall. um when we're looking at at you know the the peak of around 500 students um and our trough year out

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at 2031 of about 450 students right so roughly 10% there showed the of the total rounding um and again all of these things become sort of elements in the way we want to think about uh when we're matching them against what the next portion of the study focused on which is

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what is the actual facility capacity that we're going to be trying to put these kids into so if we And uh we we actually have carried out uh just for everybody's information actually carried out middle and high school projections as well. So you can see those um not surprisingly right as we have uh

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declines at the elementary school level they do carry their way all the way through the system. Um and so you'll see some changes at the middle school and high school level um again that are in that 10 percentage range. Um you could see it here in the middle school certainly from a peach trough standpoint. And when we look at uh when

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we look at the high school on the next slide, we see a a similar kind of pattern um slightly more exaggerated uh from the early years where where the the peak is slightly higher. Okay. So if we could we'll move on and talk some about

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um what all this means in terms of of facilities and and again the facility analysis. So so when we look at facilities there's a couple of components of it that we have to think about it. Um the first is one of the things that we that we do is and and

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everybody here was super helpful in providing this to us is we gather all information that is floor plan based. So we see what the building was built for. So you see what all the classrooms are doing or what they originally intended for. Um and then we also gather information on Zoom assignments. So, for

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example, if over the years we've had a classroom that was available and we split it and half of it is doing OTPT and the other half is doing speech and so that classroom is not necessarily available right now for general education services, right? We decide how we're going to take that classroom

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offline or make it not available to us when we're thinking about how to fill. Right? And then the second iteration of that is if we are short classrooms somewhere are there rooms like that that might be available where we would be moving programs around in order to try to accommodate you know a demand for

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that classroom within the building. So, so it is a combination of both what does the floor plan look like and how are the facil how are the rooms being used right now that forms the foundation of how we think about this question of of do we have a surplus or deficit of available

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space at any of the schools. Um, and so when we when we look at that, again, the the important thing to recognize is we had a tremendous amount of help from from principal staff, from administration on helping us understand these room assignment questions because

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it can be confusing sometimes where, you know, it looks on the floor plan like this is a full-size classroom and it's just not because it's being used for a program that that's very specifically that needs that room. And so and particularly for things like special needs programs or anything that might be

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self-contained, it's important for us to take that room offline basically so that what we are not trying to do is project into a building that we've assumed has more rooms that are actually available to provide services to kids. So uh when

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we do that, one of the things that we do is we just we come up with a a number of available rooms. Again, I mentioned this is a little bit of a supply and demand kind of question, right? So, and and it works that way with the rooms as well. Um, the number of available rooms is obviously our supply. When we break down

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the the classrooms as they were being used at the time, um, what we see here is is the available room count that we have. Um, and so in in the aggregate, you know, what we're looking at is is the structure over the 5-year period.

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Absent any kind of known construction or changes to renovations or any of those kind of things, those room counts generally stay pretty stable over the five years. If there was something like that that was coming that we needed to factor in, you would see the available change a little bit, but but we don't

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have that. So, so we didn't have to adjust for it. Um, and now this is this is the demand side, right? So, so we had the supply side on the previous slide. We've got the demand side uh on this slide. And and you know this isn't um peroxoreum, right? Like if if demand is

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higher than supply, we have a shortage of rooms. If supply is higher than demand, we've got a circle, right? It's like not that hard to figure out. But but getting to that supply and demand component of it is is tricky in terms of making sure we get all those things right. Um one of the things that you can see is over the course of time they the

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rooms ch the room counts change slightly that we that are required and that is predominantly as a result of like changes in break grades right so if we have let let's say for example for for the sake of argument we have an assumption on a class size target of 25

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students right we want to have no more than 25 students in a classroom the way that we plan for this and is as soon as we get to the 26th kid we add another section Right. So, so from our perspective, we refer to this as a hard ceiling, right? The hard ceiling triggers the need for

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an additional room. What it also triggers is a dramatic reduction in class size, right? Because now all of a sudden, we went to that one kiddo. We're now you would probably never do that in your actual day-to-day kind of way that you're running the building. But from our perspective, what we need to see and

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what we try to present is this is the most conservative way to think about how to assign classrooms. So that hard ceiling component of it becomes an important part of doing the math. So when you see some of the changes in classroom requirements, it's because we've either gone just above or just

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below the ceiling. And so as a result, you know, we we need one additional section or we don't need an additional section. So that's why you see some of those minor changes throughout. Okay. And if you and what that what that leads to, right, is ultimately a calculation of net when we're looking at the number

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of available rooms. Um and and what you can see is through the 5-year period, we we end up um when we're looking at Ocean Township, for example, with one additional available room in that building starting in the second year of the projections. Right? So we we carry

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that room out. However, what we see from the other class from the other buildings from both Monamasa and and when we look at Wayside, we see uh deficits where we have to start thinking about like how are we going to assign kids and and one of the characteristics that emerges

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from something like this is um we can manage in most cases a one room shortage by virtue of just some thinking about class size, right? we may have one class that's got 22 kids instead of the 21 that we've assumed through the process.

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And so as a consequence, because of again our hard ceiling calculation, that takes that that deficit room away, right? So we're so we're okay at that school. When we start to get into two, three, four room deficits, that's when we have to start thinking about like room allocation questions first. So I

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mentioned earlier that OTP room that has OTP and speech but used to be a full-size classroom. you know, then we start to ask ourselves, could we do those programs someone somewhere else, recapture that room and reduce that deficit, right? Or do we have to do something like a targeted redistricting

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where we're moving boundaries around to try to reallocate kids to particular schools. So, so part of the reason for looking at it both on a school by school basis and over the 5-year period is to understand how much of that stuff do we have to do, how quickly do we have to be

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thinking about it and what's the scope of some of the changes that we might have to make, right? And so, so I think you can see as as we've suggested here, um, we we do think about room allocation first because it is the least disruptive element of this whole thing. Um and then if you had to do targeting your district

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that happen. So with that I'm happy to certainly take questions from the ward and then we'll take questions from the public and okay anybody else from the board. Mr. McCarthy. >> Um so first of all thank you very much. It's obvious this is extremely detailed

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data analysis that was conducted uh previously. I have been very disappointed in enrollment studies that we've been provided. I think you went above and beyond in a lot of ways. I think you captured things that the board had specifically asked the administration to instruct you to capture. Um so thank you. I appreciate

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that greatly. Um any of these questions are just I think data is very important to drive decision-making. So they're just to clarify some things that you presented and some questions that I had for uh the public and people following here in the crowd. These questions that I'm referring to, if I indicate a slide,

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I'm referring to the full report and not to what you presented today. that is available on board docs. You can see that. Um, one one just big question I have right up that I think I think is a typo, but I want you to just tell me if it's not and that's fine. In slide 17 in your full

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report, you said that there's an 88 total student increase that we may see and I I just it seems like you're you're >> Yeah, that's probably a typo. Okay. So, because the line is down and to the right, so Okay. show some sort of death

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>> or under Thank Thank you. That's I I think that's all it was. I just wanted to clarify that. So that's not >> and President Daltton, you can stop me whenever you like. Go ahead. >> Okay. Um and not looking to get you there. Just looking to make sure

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>> and we'll clean it up and provide doc just so that everything is, you know, as it's supposed to be. One one thing I'm hoping you can explain to me how you pulled out from a data analysis and to make sure it's not just anecdotal evidence. In slide six in that report, you indicate that our 6 to9

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bedroomedroom house uh increase are generally in houses that will not be sending students to our district. How does data show that to us? Where are we pulling that from that we can indicate that? >> Yeah. So what we were looking at was uh other characteristics of similar types

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of housing. Um and and so anecdotal, not necessarily, but incidental assessments of looking at a house, looking at the address, does that address feed the schools? Right. And and

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now did we do that with every address in town? We did not. So, it's safe to assume from your data that a that a bedroom increase in a home is an inverse correlation to our student body population. >> That's the way we've assumed it. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. >> Okay. That's a huge that's a huge

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indicator. Our under 18 population was flat. And I want you to correct me if I say state any data that is incorrect. I'm reading this to assume that my under 18 population in this district from 2014 to 2024 was essentially flat. 5,183

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students in 2014, 5,237 students in 2024 is what I'm reading. >> But we had a 15% decrease in enrollment. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Do you did you come across any data that would explain why that occurred? >> So,

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not specifically. My suspicion is that it is enrollments in other kinds of schools. >> Do you have any idea what kinds of schools those are? whether they be parochial schools, um, vocational schools, what types of schools they are.

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>> I don't, but I do think that might be something we can look into for you. I I do think some of that data is available that we might be able to get a hold of. So, so we can certainly look into it. >> Okay. >> Yeah, let me make >> I would if the board agreed to that, I

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would welcome that information. um if if it's readily available and at limited cost to the district if if any. >> Um in slide 15 you you note turnover diverting students from the school. Can you just speak to that at all?

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And ultimately that's a similar kind of scenario where we what what where what we have seen and what we expect to is happening is that we've got um students who are again diverting to other to other educational facilities not public.

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Right? So that might be parochial, it might be private, it might be something else but they are not here in district. Do you know if that is restricted to a specific elementary school or if it is >> broader based? Actually, >> it's across the district. >> So, it's not just restricted to

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>> Ocean Township or one of the elementaryaries. >> Correct. >> I'm sorry. And I just need to clarify that because that's an important statement you just made. It is not just restricted to Ocean >> to a single school here. >> It's not restricted to a single school within Ocean Township. >> Yeah. Okay. Ocean Township Elementary. >> Yeah. Or or to the or specifically to

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Ocean Township Elementary School. >> Thank you. Yeah. >> The only thing that I saw in your in your analysis that I'm hoping you would defend here when I make this statement is your analysis of supply verse demand.

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Um, for lack of a better term, right? Student population to student classroom availability. It does, and I want you to tell me if I'm wrong, does not note the 4% increase in our in our multilingual learner population or self-contained

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classrooms. Am I correct in that? >> The So, self-contained classrooms are not included in the inventory. Uh, a multil- language learner classroom, if it's in a regular full-size classroom, that is included in >> and this report does not consider our

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preschool expansion. It does, >> which is a big factor for our district. >> I may have more questions, President Dolan, but that that concludes. And and I want to thank you very much for also flagging that the biggest lever this district has to pull in terms of supply

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of classrooms is our is our studentto classroom ratio. That's a it's a big indicator for us. So, thank you. A and just to that point within the full report you'll see two versions one assuming uh class sizes of 25 and one assuming

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class sizes of 21 and and the differences in the results. >> So that >> yes I want to thank you for the report very complete. I got a I got a few questions around the the baseline. Um why do you believe the baseline projection is is the most reasonable

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estimate to use? because I was looking in the data, I didn't necessarily find a lot of the the variables in there. >> Well, so I think the baseline projection is it's the only projection that you'll get that is not necessarily influenced by assumptions around other things that

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are happening in the community. Is it is built off of what the history of enrollment is in the district and and those enrollment counts by grade. It has it's not influenced it is not influenced in its projection

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around assumptions of what will happen with housing what will happen with any other kind of scenario. It is solely based on what's happened in the enrollment in the district. >> And then if if there was a slight uptick in um you know or a downtick in terms of the amount of births you know versus the

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amount of kindergarten entries if that that variable actually worked in our not in our favor. >> Correct. How much where does that lay into the modeling? >> Yeah, it's it's so so it it I mean it obviously has a direct impact because it is the basel it's the foundational

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component of like this is where kindergarten enrollment is. Um so so it's hard to say if we had a 2 percentage point change what would it necessarily mean because especially at the kindergarten level it

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is affected by 12 other cohort values right as they project through the schools. So it's really hard to say that a 2% change here is going to mean an 8% change out here because if there's something happening in the middle for example you know that can move it in either direction. But but what we do pay

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attention to is to the degree that that the gap between births and enrollments gets larger, it generally means that students are going somewhere and if what we don't see is outflow, massive outflow

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migration as a result of movement. So you see you don't see a lot of movement out of the community, populations are relatively stable, all those kind of things, that means they're going somewhere else, right? Right? Because we there's only so many things that can happen with those. Not all of them are being homeschooled. Not all of them are right. So they're going somewhere. And

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so part of the reason that we pay particular attention to that value is to understand what is what is likely to be a longer term trend. If if what we don't see is and I'm I'm this is a hypothetical. We see a big drop in

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kindergarten and then all of a sudden a big increase back in the third grade, right? And and we have seen that in certain locations because those locations have either private or preparatory schools that finish at third grade and then the kids come back into the come back into the district, right?

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And so it becomes there there is usually some explanatory characteristic of it from a community perspective that feeds that. But it starts with understanding like what do we have what what's happening between that gap of birth to enrollment. >> Yeah. And I thought Mr. McCarthy's

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question. I thought there was more correlation between OTES's drop off and some of this, you know, birth rates and housing activity that's happening. >> Yeah. What we see and if you look at the history, the history is actually, you know, reasonably stable after 2021, I

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think it is, right? Um and so so what what we may not be seeing yet is the kids who have been born but not registered right so two three and four year olds >> and to that point like do you is there

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maybe is there a reason statistically that you saw why we had more stability in Wanamasa versus OTE? >> Yeah. No, not I don't no not not not I I not nothing that I would point to directly other than this

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that then one of the challenges of the cohort survival methodology right one of the things that we talk about is is it is it is based on and dependent on history right so if the history is relatively stable the cohort is going to look stable that's part of the reason

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why we have to make adjustments like we've done here for like what we're seeing at the sort of precipice of this is we're seeing declines and so we have to figure out how do we adjust for that decline that may not be represented in that you know previous

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six or seven year stability because that six or seven years stability isn't what we expect to look at six or seven years out from there. >> Last question is around uh like so related to the baseline is there is there a margin of error that we could assume? So was it like five students,

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10, 15? >> I So yeah, I mean the margin of error. So the the the the counts are all based on the same October count, right? So So to the degree to which the October count, again, I'll make this up. We had a thousand kids on on count day in

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October and 1,040 kids at the end of the school because we had, you know, 40 kids move in during the year. Um that difference would exist because we we measure from the October date. So, so any kind of changes like that would be as a consequence of just the point of

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measurement, not necessarily uh because the count said it was a thousand and we said, "Well, that looks too high. We should go with 990." Right? So, so it's only in so far as there has been change between the count day and some other day in the school year um that you would see.

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>> So, you see something about it. Thank you. >> Other board members, any other questions? >> Mr. McCarthy, back to you. So something that was just stated that I need I need clarification on. So Mr. Dalton said I mean sorry I'm sorry Mr. Schneider said that he sees a bigger drop off in OTE

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than one of massa. You said yes to that but your report doesn't seem to demonstrate that. So is that because I I had asked before that do you do you see an adverse impact in any of the districts? You said no it's districtwide. it. So what we see is that

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the the impact is likely to be disproportionate in Ocean Township Elementary because of where the development is. Not >> okay. So you're specifically referring to the housing development that may potentially happen that is unapproved. >> Correct. And what what it what we don't see is big differences in the history,

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but if you know so the five years of historical, you see stability in in each of those. Um but when we look at it from a projection basis based on where the housing is based on what we've assumed the impact of the housing is going to be there's a greater there's a disproportionate impact that would come

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into Ocean Township just by virtue of the density of the development that's planned in that area >> meaning Oceantown development. When he says ocean he means ocean development. >> Yeah. Yeah. So I'm sorry if I didn't clarify. So, so within that school boundary, there are more developments that are

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there. To the degree that there's more developments, we think that there that has a more negative impact on the number of students and has a consequence. Um, it will have a disproportionate impact on you know the the so so layman the more development that you see in this

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town of and I think I drew this out in my initial question but I'm just clarifying it. The more development you see in this town of homes with more bedrooms in those homes, the more impact you're going to see in that district negatively to their student body population. >> Yeah. Based on what we've seen so far, I

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mean, to the degree to which that housing stock changes, I don't know, but but based on what we've seen so far. >> Any other board member questions at this time? Okay. So, now we'll transition to members of the public who may have

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questions for you. We have any members of the public who may have questions? Come on up. >> Hi, Mr. Haber. Thank you so much. Um, one question I had was the focus on the study solely on enrollment or was there data generated that gives any indication

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about a change in a demographic profile of a school? Um so we there is in the full report um comparisons of demographics. >> Okay. So like English language learners just reduce >> not only community demographics around

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population and age breakdowns and so forth but individual schools. >> Did you find that there were um differences in the school? >> Yeah, there are changes. Uh and one of the things where where that normally factors in for us is as we are starting

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to think about if we were to change boundaries for example would a change in boundaries change uh the demi the demographics of a school in a particular way because we weren't changing boundaries we didn't emphasize that >> thank you so much so I can find that online right >> yes

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>> okay and then also was the upcoming expansion in local private schools also factored in this uh district in the district numbers in the trends. >> So that is part of the assumption around the negative influence of growth right like >> of the housing.

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>> Yeah. Of housing. >> Understood. Thank you. Those are my questions. >> Absolutely. >> Anyone else? Yes, please. Damn it. Do I have to identify myself? >> I should. >> Yes.

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>> Okay. Hi everybody. How are you? And thank you, Mr. Hammond. Um I came in at the end of the discussion but I heard a interesting question having to do with what is the selling point of the school district and you mentioned something

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about class size um 25 as opposed to 21. And then there was a comment just recently before me about private schools. And uh last time I looked, the research about private schools and why people use private schools is because of

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class size. And if you were to look at I think some of the uh private schools that have a direct appeal to folks, class size of 15 or under has been researched to show that's where student achievement comes from. And it's a

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pretty obvious reason because of small class size and there's some reason why 15 is the magic number. But because of small class size, kids get immediate feedback. And so they get immediate feedback. The teachers are on top of what they need. And so that is one of

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the big attractions of private schools. Now, I've always maintained that public schools are the greatest bargain that one could want because the cost of going to private schools now could be in the 10, 20, $30,000.

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There's been recent uh uh information on that online and we know what public school education costs. I guess I come back to the same thing. How does Ocean Township Schools become a destination district? How can you

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create with real gravitas that the school system is a destination school system and that has to do with communication. It has to do with reaching out to the community. I would suggest it has to do with having

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community volunteers in a very um concerted effort to help out in the schools. Um, I personally believe that the school system has not tapped its own community in terms of being cheerleaders

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for the school system rather than the usual ways that this school system acts as cheerleaders. And I would also maintain that one of the ways that this can be done is by actually um improving

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and communicating the efforts on behalf of the professional staff to elevate student achievement. So, um I think this school system and maybe other school systems, but this is

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the one I live in and now know it needs to do, I think, in my opinion, a much better job in terms of communicating and setting up programs and getting the community involved in such a way that they become the real cheerleaders,

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whether it's old people like me at 78 or people who have their kids in the schools right now. Um, and until that gets done, you will continue to have people opt out of the school system because you all know that at the end of

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a real estate uh listing is the uh identification of the school in terms of how the school is rated compared to other schools and other school systems. And so that that all matters and until

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you take that seriously, I think you'll continue to have declining enrollment. Thank you, Dr. Jeff. Anyone else? >> Good evening, Miss Hayes. >> Uh, good evening, Alex Hayes. Okurst. Um, I was under the impression from the Facebook post that we could ask

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questions not only to you and thank you, and I forgot your name. >> Tim. >> Yeah. Um, but we could also ask the board or the superintendent and we would presumably get some answers. Is that correct? We'll do our best. >> Okay. Okay. Um I was a little

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disappointed not to see the hyperlink to these. Um it's basically 80 pages if you combine both, right? Um you know, so if if those who are watching right now, like this is their first, you know, um foray into some of this. So I think you did a great job explaining, but it

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really it's 80 pages of like graphs and numbers. Um it would have been helpful if the district had maybe published at least the summary, the 24page summary. Um, so getting back to some of my questions and comments, um, Ocean

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Township, uh, currently it was said at a council meeting not too long ago that there, um, Ocean Township is 60% rentals, not necessarily like apartments, your traditional rentals, but even home rentals. Um, so I saw that you looked at the availability of onebedrooms, right?

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Um did did did you were you able to look at how rentals and um the trends from years to over year like how you know some years there might be more bedrooms available for rentals versus none. >> Yeah. No, that's not data that we like the quantity of bedrooms available for

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rentals isn't isn't information that's available to us. >> Okay. Um while this report was primarily about the elementary schools um there were like you know a couple of slides about the middle and high school. Um, I'm wondering the predominant reasonings

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why we aren't seeing more information on the middle and high schools in this report. Um, did you all do any sort of findings or data crunching on available square footage um that is perhaps being underutilized or classrooms and what it was intended for? I'm making this up.

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Say the middle school has 100 classrooms, but right now they're only using 67. Like did you look at um square footage, number of classrooms and enrollment a little more in depth about the middle and high schools? >> No, our our focus was elementary school. >> And why why was that? >> Uh it was primarily it is typically

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because the scheduling component at the middle school and high school level is what dictates all of the individual you know classroom usage. Um and that's just that's not that wasn't in our purview. Um, I'm sure you saw by the numbers though, there is a massive drop from 8th

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grade enrollment to high school enrollment. So, wouldn't the district be interested in knowing more information on that? That's not for you, I guess. I guess I guess that's for the board and the superintendent. Like, why aren't we looking at why we lose 300 kids from 8th

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grade to the high school? >> It's not that we're not looking at that and it's not 300 kids from 8th to 9th. Um, but this specific study and the scope of this study that the district entered into, and correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Hastings did not include that

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as part of the scope. >> Okay. >> Really because of >> he wasn't directed really to look at the middle and high school >> that we that was presented to us that we agreed to enter into a contract with really doesn't look at the secondary

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level because as Mr. Mr. Ammy just said because of the scheduling some classes are have eight students in them some classes have 32 students in them the use of the building is very different than the use of an elementary school. So we of course look at enrollment and enrollment trends and enrollment trends

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from grade to grade but that's a separate look than this study that Mr. Ammon is presenting tonight. in tonight's study basically if I read it correct said there are like there's a shortage of three classrooms in Wayside and Wanamasa

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right um wouldn't it be helpful to know because there is an elementary component to to there's a fifth grade wing is the district going to consider possibly moving fourth grade to to because the last demographic when I was on the school board mentioned the middle and

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high school were only at about 80% capacity So is other than redistricting a possibility of moving whole grades elsewhere? >> At this point, this is the information being provided to the board. There is no

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plan to make any changes yet. We are gathering the information. We are reflecting on the information. We will look at other things as you said the trends from grade to grade. We will consider that and we will use this information to move forward. But there

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is no proposal to make any changes of redistricting or drawing. I know Mr. Ammon sent mentioned that a few times that potentially you could draw redraw lines. He was just using that as part of his presentation. Not because that is our intent at this time.

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>> Yeah, that that I if there was any lack of clarity on that that that's an illustrative example provided by me. >> One of the many options could be redistricting. anything that is directional or anything. >> And if redistricting eventually comes into the equation, it would not be a consultant. It would be the board,

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right? An admin. Okay. >> And as you said, a deeper look at other facility utilizations and gathering of more information to make these decisions. This is sort of a big piece of it of the puzzle and then we go

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from here. if it's just a data crunching and I think this is super important to lay so many things on the line. Um just in posting that we're going to be talking about enrollment demographics like rumors are ramping up again that we're closing an elementary school. >> That is not >> so that is can we put that on record

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that there are no plans to close an elementary school? plan to do anything except interpret this information and continue discussions, I would anticipate for multiple years before we make any major changes to the

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setup of our schools. As you can see, um the town is proposing additional developments that may bring more students either to our schools or not. We're unsure of what will even come of that. There are also other housing projects that are happening. There are

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expansions in private schools in town. I think there are many factors that you can make predictions about, but that are truly unknown what the impact will be. And certainly, we wouldn't want to make a rash decision and then find out that we did not consider these other factors

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that were happening around us until we knew exactly what that impact would be. >> Okay. And I guess this is my last question or two more. One question, one comment. Um what is the next steps from this presentation? Are you all forming any

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sort of committee? Um there's no vote like this is not a vote now. It's not a vote at 8:00 p.m. Um so what are the next steps after this presentation? What are you all going to be doing? >> So one of the board goals last year was to conduct this demographic study. Now we have the results and we'll be forming

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new board goals for next year which I believe will have some components to this study this this continued look at our district structure. Um as part of that I also want to just add that these numbers did not include preschool. Um

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and certainly our schools at this point are we do not have the ability to close a school at this point. Our enrollment is strong enough to operate five schools. We have a high school, we have an intermediate school, and we have three elementary schools that are pretty

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full. So although you're seeing these numbers that do not include self-contained classrooms and preschool classrooms, we have to add that in in all decision-m moving forward as well. So we will also do that. But I think it will be you'll see more board discussion

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as we set goals and determine if we want to do other studies or gather other information to to move forward. >> Two other questions. So will parents and non-parent taxpayers be involved in any sort of discussions going forward?

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>> Well, at the board level at a public board meeting, obviously people can always come forward. We have not made a formal plan to create a committee. We have not made a formal plan not to either though. >> Okay. Um so you're b you are basically agreeing though like this data will be

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used to have some sort of an actionable plan on the three elementary schools at a minimum. Correct. >> It will and I don't want to I don't want to highlight the three schools. It will it will have an impact on the whole district on the planning for the district. >> Okay. And my last question is to you.

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Thank you. What other districts in Monmouth County have you done similar studies like this for? Because I'd love to be able to see what other presentations are in the nanosphere. Um, and then I'd love to also look at what other districts have done following some of the reports by >> Sure. Yeah, I I can actually get that

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information to the administration. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. >> Anyone else in the room? >> Hi. Uh Sandy Miller from uh Wayside. I just had a quick question regarding why was preschool not included in your initial study like why did you choose to

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exclude it? >> Uh so part of the reason I think is from from from our perspective that the starting point has always been kindergarten. We'll see preschool preschool works similar to the way that

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the birth calculations work, birth count calculations. we'll see some transition value from preschool to actual registration, but it isn't necessarily uh a a strong indicator of what it's going to have in terms of a long-term

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projection. So, it it is it ends up being a data point. Hey, we have this many kids in preschool, blah blah blah. But but it doesn't it doesn't change the way we interpret kindergarten registration relative to birth or anything like that other than informing

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in some respects if we have if we have 30% of the students in town enrolled in pre prek and 80% of them these are all made up numbers I know but uh 80% of them enroll in kindergarten that's helpful to know but it's not as helpful

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as knowing here's the total population of kids who could have come in and the actual number who did. >> Okay. Because I know like we're part of um part of that the grant program where we've expanded over the five years and I know like many districts throughout the county have come in at different points.

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So I feel like a lot of the districts are trying to accommodate like every year when I go into schools I work in multiple schools. We're always the classrooms are always shifting depending on how many kids are coming in through the preschool grant. Um which is also it's been very helpful. I don't know how you guys have found it, but we found

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like it's been a great for child to find. I feel like we found a lot of our special needs students that were we wouldn't have known about until maybe kindergarten. And so, um, that's opened up different preschool classrooms that we've had to open up based on the ones that we just thought were just coming.

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So, preschool really is, I don't know, for me, I feel like it is a pretty big vibe and it gives you a projection of like where your district is going and what what you have to then handle moving forward. Um, so I didn't know if we could ever find out how many preschoolers, because you're saying it's

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about birth rate and that for kindergarten, 65 to 70% of students that were born during a certain time actually enroll in kindergarten, but I was wondering if actually more of them are enrolling originally in preschool. And

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then how many of the preschoolers that we have in our grant program are we maintaining? And when they age out, when they're when they're turning five, are those same ones who were here during the preschool, are they then becoming our current kindergarters? Because then that's giving you a projection of

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why we're we're lo we're losing them then even before. That's what I'm trying to I'm trying to figure out like everyone else is where are all the students going? So it would be interesting to know if we had, you know, x amount of, you know, four-year-olds, they should be our 5-year-old kindergarteners.

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Did as many that were here. Did they actually end up enrolling in their in the program? That's what I'm just just wondering. You know what I'm saying? Just like we look at the eighth to 9th and the fourth to fifth transitions, we look at all that. Wasn't part of this study. But yes, we do look at all of that and our director of preschool keeps

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very clear trend data on all of that. So, I don't have it with me this evening. I could certainly um answer, you know, give you a call this week or we will, you know, we will continue to look at that enrollment data and >> share that in conversations. >> No, it's great because it's hard to say

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if you have a classroom deficits in different rooms and different schools because every year like it seems like more there's more preschool. If you look at how many preschool rooms you've had over the years, I'm sure they're exploding like in all the schools that I'm at like every year we're like adding constantly bathrooms and somewhere in Alton. So,

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we're doing a bunch of different renovations. So, sometimes like I just it depends on what kind of district you're in or whatever. Like it's like do you have just like one school that's prek that's all set up just like just to accommodate those types of classrooms

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versus other ones where they have preschool in every single like every single class, every type of school that you have. Like I have preschoolers that are in like a four or five building, but I also have preschoolers that are in a 23 building. Like it just depends. So I

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just didn't know if we have extra space, you know, where else would we put more preschoolers if we needed to kind of thing. >> So we have preschool in all three of our elementary schools and we have reached our universe. That was our goal. So we have seats for all of our preschool students who want to register with us. >> Perfect. All right.

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>> So we hope our bathroom construction is at out of >> at its end. At its end. All right. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. Okay. We want to see if we have any virtual commenters. >> No. >> Okay. Um

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>> we want to >> at this point can I move on to my other >> Yeah. >> Thank you so much for your presentation this evening and for >> Mr. Bill I'm I'm so sorry. I just I I have one additional question I have to ask while we have our subject matter expert up here.

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>> Your report also shows income data for our town. 43% increase in mean income in the town. Is that that's accurate? >> Yeah. American Community Survey data. >> Yeah. >> 43% increase. The um

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increase in the population of free and reduced lunch students shows an increase of from 27% to I believe 31. So yeah, something >> 32% roughly around there. However, I just want to note because a question was brought up that was a good question about demographics. There was a change

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in the definition of what a free and reduced lunch student was during that time period that opened the aperture so that more members of our district could fall into that platform. Is that correct? Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. >> Great question, Mr. McCarthy. Thank you. Thank you again.

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>> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Good evening. >> Okay. At this time, I'd like to move to my report in the regular meeting, Mr. Um it's my recognition uh attachment there

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if you don't mind. >> Little quick adjustment. >> Yes. And if we have our administrators here in the back who would like to come forward, we're going to start with our unsung superheroes. >> Brian, do you want to stand with people

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as they give a picture? >> Yeah, that's great. Okay. Yeah. >> Our administration is going to be joined by Mr. Schneider to greet and recognize our student honores and staff honores this evening.

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And we'll do it on this side here. All right. Good evening to everyone who's just joining us. I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer so far. Thank you for coming out on this summer night to be reminded of school in just a little bit, but also to

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be recognized for your outstanding achievement. Gives me great joy to recognize everyone that we invited here this evening. I know some people are joining us online because they could not be here. So I I also want to welcome you to us virtually. All right, we are going

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to start with honoring our New Jersey Schoolboard Association 2026 Unsung Superheroes. The Unsung Superhero Award is something put out by, as I said, the New Jersey School Board Association to identify and recognize

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the outstanding work of staff members who work primarily behind the scenes. They are not our teachers. They are not administrators. They're not usually out in the forefront of our classrooms. However, they are an integral part of

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our schools and without them, our schools would not run as well and be as productive and successful as they are. So, our principles together with committees in their schools have identified one person from each school to be recognized and I'd like to honor

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them here this evening. When you hear your name, please come on up and you can join our administrators over here. First, we have Mrs. Colleen Bewanger from Wamasa Elementary School serves in the front office of our school. Yes, come right over. Okay. Next, we have from Wayside

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Elementary School, Mr. Brendan Bruther, who I do not think is here in the audience, but Mr. Bruther has served as our class three officer for the last five years or so, and he recently retired this year. So, we are sorry to see him go, but he certainly was an

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unsung hero uh at Wayside Elementary School. Congratulations. >> Next up, and he does have to come out from behind the table, Mr. Michael her from Oceantown to Bell School, >> serving on our IT department at OTES.

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from the high school. Mr. Michael Peamilton could not be here this evening, but he serves as our head of security at the high school. Congratulations, Mr. Pleton. And at TOIS from our IT department, Mr. Wayne PR, come on up.

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Let's get together for a photo. actions. >> Feel free to come on up to take your photo. You don't have to do it from back. I couldn't see it. Camera coming out. Got it. All right. Congratulations

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everyone. Thank you so much. I'm going to ask Mr. Todd to stay up here as we move on to some of our athletic recognition, Mr. Schneider as well from the board. Okay. Is coach Riser here. All right. At this time, I'd like to recognize Todd

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Edison from the boys tennis team. Come on up, Todd. Todd is our Mammoth County first singles champion. Congratulations. Karen, could you want to come up and take a photo? You can come up closer if you'd like. Feel free. Come on here with

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Mr. Schneider. Yep. Get this photo. >> Yeah, do that one. Congratulations. Next up, our boys track team coached by James Noddingham. We have John Cliff Hamley, Patrick Knight Howell, Jake

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Pollutus, and Ryan Taylor. Not here. Okay, maybe at home. Congratulations to all of you. They have set the school record for the 4x600 relay. Congratulations. Also from the boys track team, Dylan Marshall.

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Okay, Dylan set the school record for the 4 by 100 hurdle. Congratulations. Next up from boys track, Aiden Winters. Aiden set the record for the disc discus relay. the shop put relay. He scored the

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second all time in school history shop hut and scored first place mammoth count in mammoth county shop. Congratulations Aiden from our girls track team. Leah Starky not believe it's here. Leah Starky from the girls track team. She holds the

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school records in the 1600 3,32 and the one mile. She's number one in the state in the mile. She has the third fastest time in the nation for the 3000 meter. Fastest time ever by a sophomore in national history. Top 10 in the

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nation in the 3200. Sectional and group champion in the 1600 and 3200. And the meet of champions winner in the 3200. I hear >> and coached by coach Alex Lynch. Sorry about that. He wasn't here right. Okay.

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Next, boys lacrosse. Connor Holinski. >> Okay. For boys lacrosse, Connor scored 170 points, 100 goals, and holds the school records in goals in a game with nine and points in a game with 12. Congratulations, Connor. coached by Tom

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Ryan who I did today. We have a few so you can come up and join us up here. Go ahead. You can join us over here. Sorry, I should have started with you. My my apologies. Next up, we have Mickey McGovern for boys lacrosse.

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>> Come on up. He holds the all-time ground balls record with 395 ground balls. He's a twotime divisional defensive player of the year and named first team all state group three. Congratulations.

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Take a picture. Go ahead. You want to get in it? Take a picture. Yeah. Yeah. She wants me to take it. Get the mouth. >> Congratulations. Our next honore is River Schubert Pinsel.

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River, are you here? >> Yeah. Come on. All go for boys lacrosse. River holds the alltime saves record with 619 saves. Congratulations. All right. And our final boys lacrosse

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player, Jack Barley, who holds the uh who we are recognizing tonight for scoring 100 points. Congratulations, Jack. >> Okay, girls lacrosse honore >> who's not here this evening. Brook Tai, we want to congratulate her on 200

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career points and 300 ground balls. Cong congratulations. >> Okay. Also, girls lacrosse. Did I see Coach Tala not here? Right, coach. Okay. Julia Wagner. All right, Julia also scored a 100

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career goals. Congratulations, Julia. Okay, now we have our varsity softball team who won the Constitution Division Tri Champion. They are our tri champions. We're going to call you up. Come on up as I call your name. Giana Cannavan, Riley,

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Satie Conlin, Satie Miller, Anna Panerys, Taylor Scott, Ava Santino, Natalie Staten, Rubio, Nola Vakiano, Joselyn Vargas,

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Naomi Vasquez Rodriguez, and Colleen Zedan. Coach Sprinkle also join Peter again. Good to everybody. Congratulations to you, coach, and to the team.

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Parents, yep, come on up. Get yourself >> to a good spot. >> A good one. Congratulations, ladies. Outstanding. >> I'd like to keep Coach Frankle up here

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with Mr. Todd just for a moment. Coach Mark Franco serves as our varsity softball coach and this season he earned his 500th win. Congratulations, Coach Frankle.

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>> You did that during >> quite a legacy. >> We announced it. >> We announced it for you. >> We're happy you could join us this evening. >> Nice job, Mark. >> And we have one more honore this evening. I'd like to introduce Coach Sip

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Aelli, our varsity baseball coach. Come on up. Coachelli earned his 250th win this season. Congratulations. Outstanding accomplishment. >> Sh. Great smile.

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>> Love the red. >> Okay. Thank you for everyone for being here for the recognition part of our evening. Do have one other report, but if we want to give everyone a chance. >> Yeah. Uh we certainly understand it's a summer evening. if folks want to take

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any time to do something more social at this point or you're more than welcome to stay. Um I know Stroolo's may be calling or something like that at this point but you're more than welcome to stay. We'll pause for a minute. >> Congratulations again.

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agenda discussion during that time. >> Okay, take your time. Take your time. >> I just want to make a following Friday. No. >> Bye, Carney. >> You're welcome. Congratulations. So good to see you.

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>> You're welcome. Congrats again. >> All right. So, are we in >> Okay, we're just going to take a minute because >> we're just going to take another minute. But board members, just so you know, we're waiting for um our tech support to come back. We're going to be following after Miss Weldon's presentation, we're

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going to be following the regular agenda. >> And if we need to discuss anything at that time, you know, questions, we following the regular agenda. >> Sounds good. >> But the presentation from Miss Weldon is on the right, which which Mr. Hater will

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display if you want >> once Mr. Hater gets back. >> Right. Let's take a quick minute. in the middle. >> Oh, I missed records. I think so. Mr. Dolan, is there as a point of

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procedure, is there anything that bars the board from conducting discussion of the items that are on the agenda currently and then motioning to move those agendas those items forward? >> Yeah, we're following we're going to follow the regular meeting agenda. >> Okay. And if we do need to discuss those

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items, we can at that time. >> Very well. >> Correct. >> Yes, sir. >> It looks like we have 50 minutes in, but we'll just double check that up. Did you hear that?

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Moving to the regular session agenda. Yeah. So, we we're going to board member can bring something up for discussion and then would you like to move the business administrator's uh report while we wait for Mr.

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>> That's a good idea. Go ahead. >> Thank you. Um, I just wanted to touch on two items uh this evening. Uh, one, uh, a report out on the water damage uh, from the July 6th storm that we had, the flash

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flooding. Um, as you know, that was quite an event. Uh, significant amount of rainfall over a short period of time. Uh, we had significant impact here at central office. Uh, we had a boiler room uh, here in the building that was flooded. Uh fortunately, it did not get

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up to the burners in the furnace. However, we had significant water in the uh boiler room uh as well as significant leaking in our maintenance shop uh in terms of the ceiling and uh throughout most of the hallway and there to some of the adjacent rooms attached to the

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hallway. Um, we've also, uh, reported those to our insurance carrier for any repairs that are necessary, as well as any other items throughout the district where we had some, uh, water infiltration should we have issues with flooring or or those sorts of things in terms of popping tiles and, you know, at

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a later date we need to to make repairs. So, those have all been reported to the carrier uh to be on record and then if we need to address those at a later date, we'll we'll file a claim. Uh the other issue that uh uh came up was water uh under the football field. Uh so um

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something I did not know but uh the turf only passes water one way. So the rain comes down, hits the turf, goes under it and out through the drainage system. The rain overwhelmed the drainage system for a period of time. So the water then started to accumulate underneath the

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turf field and it started to balloon up a little bit. So, uh we had displacement of uh some small pieces of turf where we had creases once the water did drain out. Uh and we had um uh the infill the pellets, rubberized pellets that are in

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the field displaced as well. Uh we did have a contractor come out, the company that performs our field maintenance for us uh each year and they came out and did an assessment and repaired the field uh fixed any creases that were on the field and then redistributed our pellets

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so they were in the proper space. So our football field is ready to go. Uh along with that, however, I would like to point out that the board should consider the replacement of the field in the near future. Uh the field was installed in uh 2013. The warranty on the field by the company

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is eight years and the general life of the field is anywhere from 8 to 12 depending on the usage of the field and you know how many events take place on the field with obviously fewer events extending the life and more events uh you know increasing wear and tear. Uh

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the district has done a great job uh in terms of maintaining the field and having it groomed and and taken care of. Uh but again that is something that the board should consider this year as a potential capital project uh using funding from our capital reserve to

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replace that turf. Um we did have the company come out take a look at it. They did say it was in good shape. However, we should at this point start to consider replacement. Um the other issue I want to uh bring up uh for our staff that's listening and

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and who they ever whoever they can talk to is um uh two or three months ago the board approved a change in our health care uh provider for our staff. Uh we went from the uh school employees health uh care system

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which is run by the state uh to a joint insurance fund. Uh if you remember the uh impetus for making that move was the considerable increases in the premiums uh that were coming down from the state for that plan. Um the company that makes

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the recommendations to the state in terms of what those increases will be uh AON uh again has come out and suggested another 30 plus% increase uh for the uh participants in the state plan. Uh I

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understand uh the state recently had a meeting and they did not address that issue at that time but that's similar to what they've done in the past and then gone ahead at some point and approved those uh significant increases. So uh again we were able to um take advantage

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of our experience and and approve the joint insurance fund. The plans are the same called the same direct 10 direct 15 educators garden state. Um uh the cards were mailed out about 10 days ago. So our staff should have received cards uh

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through the mail. If they have not, they can reach out to uh my office uh uh and we can track that down for them or they can log on to the Horizon Blue site and download the card electronically as well. So again, I just wanted to remind those listening and our staff members

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that uh that change is effective uh August 1st. That concludes my report. Thank you. >> Sure. >> Um, did we did the repairs in the counselor the high school counselor room get fixed from that flood?

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>> Yes. So, we, as you may recall, we had a hose that led to a sink burst uh overnight that flooded the guidance counseling area. Um, we have uh completed the repairs to the walls and most of the interior. um a walkthrough

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was scheduled for Monday that was cancelled uh with the vendor and our uh director of facilities that's being rescheduled for this week uh to address any issues. And then the final item would be the flooring. Uh however, we have a um several projects uh with this

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flooring company. So, they're going to come out and do the uh OTES cafeteria uh and that site all at the same time. So again, we're getting a date on that, but that should occur shortly as well. So I would expect in the next two weeks that that would be completed.

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>> My last thing, did the um pole come down at the high school yet? The light pole? >> Yes. So our uh our hawks have decided they like the higher pole. Uh so the old light pole that was uh left because the nest was in that pole, right?

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>> Uh has been removed. I think it was removed last week if I'm not mistaken. Uh so that is now gone. Great. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Hast. >> Yes. >> I just wanted to make a comment about the state health insurance plan. There's been quite a bit of email probably that

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you've received from New Jersey school boards, uh, NJA, everybody discussing this 35% increase. And one of the reasons they gave for the increase is that people are pulling out of the New Jersey state health benefit plan. So,

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there's the catch 22. you pull out, the rate goes up, but schools are not going to stay in it because the rate continues to go up. So, we were very wise in following your advice to pull out and get the joint insurance uh fund because it doesn't look like the state is going

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to address that anytime soon. >> Miss Welen, your presentation. >> Yes. Okay. Mr. Hater, if you could please display um the student safety data report. So twice a year I need to report out to the board of education our student safety data report which

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includes incidents of violence, vandalism, weapons and substance offenses if and also incidents of harassment, intimidation and bullying. So what you see before you is the time period of January 2026

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through January 1st through June 30th, the second half of the year. Earlier this year in January, I reported out on September to December. So on the this first page here, you see we conducted at Ocean Township High

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School nine HIP investigations. Two of those were confirmed HIPS. We had four instances of violence, one of vandalism, one weapons offense, and five substance offenses. At tois, we had nine HIB investigations which yielded four

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confirmed HI cases, seven instances of violence, no vandalism, no weapons, and four substance offenses. At Ocean Township Elementary School, we had one HI investigation that was alleged and no

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other instant instances. At Wanamasa Elementary School, we had three HIP investigations that were all HIP alleged and no other offenses. Wayside Elementary School, we had two HIP investigations that were confirmed HIPS, no other

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no other offenses. And so our totals of HIP 24 HIP investigations, eight confirmed cases, 11 violence incidents, one vandalism incident, one weapon offense, and nine substance offenses.

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On the second page, if you scroll up a little bit, you'll see that we had a total of >> There you go. eight confirmed HIP cases, as we just said. And then this page reports out the nature of the HIB. This

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is this page is all about HIB. The nature of the HIB incidence and the mode of the HI incident. So of our of our eight confirmed hibs and again there can be more than one nature towards a uh and and more than

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one mode of a HI. So it's not going to add up to eight because one incident could be motivated by three things. Okay, just for clarity. So we had one one HI case motivated by race, two by religion, one by ancestry, one by gender or gender

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identity and expression, two by mental, physical or sensory disability and two by other distinguishing characteristics and these hibs were carried out one in written form, six in verbal form and one in electronic communication.

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Okay. So those are the nature and the mode of our of our histois. We submit this to the uh department of education twice a year and we will submit it uh probably tomorrow after this after this report out. Okay. Okay. That now

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concludes my report for this evening. >> So we're back on track. >> Back on. >> Okay. So this is our opportunity for public comment. The board of education recognizes the value of public comment and educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on school

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matters of community interest. Public comment is not a question and answer session. Specific questions can be directed to the administration. Superintendent's contact information is on the DES and on the district website. We encourage you to contact her with any questions. Public participation shall be

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governed by the following rules. Each statement made by a participant shall be limited to five minutes duration. No participant may speak more than once on the same topic until all others who wish to speak on that topic have been heard. Presiding officer may request any person

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to leave the meeting when that person does not observe reasonable decorum. Would anyone from the public like to comment on any item at this time? I don't know if that one's still. >> Yeah, this one. >> This one. Uh, Alex Hayes, I stated my um town

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earlier. Um, uh, this boards or whoever planned these meetings. Um, lack of time management um should not result in me or any other member of the public having one fewer

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public comment. There were supposed to be two additional today, one at the work session and one at um at this regular session. Um but because time went over, of course, you nixed that first one and now here we are. Um so I would like to

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on record state my objection to that. Um there are two meetings. There should have been two public comments. Um you know uh okay, I'm going to skip that comment though. Um, I'm wondering, I have a few questions and some comments. Uh, at a minimum, will tonight's

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demographic presentation be posted online on the district's web page for easy parent and taxpayer access? Number two, does the district still employ a PR person, uh, media person, um, whether

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part-time or full-time? I'd like to know if that position still exists. Um, I was not able to fully pull up um the emails to verify back when I filed a government records council uh complaint with the state on the student safety

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data. So, I am hoping that what was presented tonight is kind of a reflection of the newly asked for information. Um, the Wi-Fi is blocked here tonight, so of course I can't look on my emails to see if my correspondence with Mr. Hastings and the government

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workers council is reflected. Um, but I originally did ask for the district to be more transparent in which incidences violence violence incidences happened at what schools so parents could know what was actually happening at their own school buildings. I think this is now

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the new way of reporting. And if so, fabulous. That's awesome. If it's not what the government records council suggested that the public is entitled to um when I go home to normal Wi-Fi, I will check. But I am happy to write another OPRA. But I think this is

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following the new um established procedures that I thought the government records council said you had to comply with. Um uh what is it called? Policy 5561. Physical restraint. I'm wondering if the district is required by law to report

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once, twice, four times a year on the number of times um physical restraint of students is utilized. I don't know what number I'm at. Maybe this is number six. Um I think it's a fouryear deal with um the um camp at the

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middle school. I again would like to have looked it up, but I can't look anything on my phone. So, you're increasing Camp David from 250 to 400,000 a year. That's typically um something that's been asked for nearly like every year for 7 years, and nobody has made any headway. Um I never heard

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of any finance department saying yes, let's try to increase um some of the income coming in. Um so, I'm quite honestly like kind of shocked that this has actually been moved up from 250 a year for that rental to 400,000. Um, I

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think it's about time, but I'm curious what precipitated this. Did you all finally look at all the extraneous other bills that you're having to do um when a king takes over our schools? Did you look at municipal I mean uh landscaping, you know, custodial and realize that it

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wasn't much of a profit win for you guys? I'd love to know some of the background that went to it. Um and simply if you were just realizing we weren't capitalizing on um the usage of our facilities for summer camps.

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I'm almost done. Um the town uh section 714 you're doing a town um joint agreement over clean landscaping and janitorial. Again couldn't look it up right now. Um, and the actual numbers aren't printed, you know, for the

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public. So, I couldn't look it up, but it seems that you're going to contract with the middles, I mean, with the town to for shared services. So, I'm wondering if janitorial um facilities, landscaping crews, cleaning. Um, are those like are we

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getting rid of positions here and we're going to be using township provotion positions? Is that what that means? If somebody could clarify that yet. Um, and I think that's it. >> Thank you, Mr. >> I look forward to responses at some point. Thank you.

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>> Thank you, >> Katie Williams. Katy Williams, you may go ahead, >> Miss Williams. Go ahead, please. >> Hi, Katie Williams from Onassa. >> Go ahead, please. >> Thanks. Uh, I just had a quick question.

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If the best way to reach a board member when there's not a board meeting, is it through email? Because I have tried to reach one board member and I haven't had a response. So, I didn't know if it's best to email more than one or if you

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know I don't want to bother the superintendent when it's not necessarily um something that she needs to discuss for me, but that's the only phone number that I really know to use. So, I just wanted to know the best way to reach you guys when there's not me. >> Well, I guess it would depend on the

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topic because many things would would be filtered through the superintendent. >> If I could just clarify because at the beginning of public comment, we say that you can direct all communication to me. So, I'm I'm not sure if you heard that or not, but I'll just repeat that. And I'm always happy to pass along as we say

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in in our public comment speech that I will provide the question or the inquiry to the right person. So it's really never. Okay. >> No problem. All right. Then I'll reach out to you uh tomorrow. Thank you. >> Thank you.

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We have anyone else? Mr. Hater. No. I saw that there were some questions in there. Did you see those, Miss? I can I will respond as I do to all commenters to anything that's here. >> All right. So, that closes public comment for this time.

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>> Okay. Section five, uh, approval of minutes. Uh, >> yes. >> Um, move to approve. >> Yep. Sorry. >> Sorry. >> Move to approve the meeting minutes for work in executive session for June 16th as well as our regular meeting minutes

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for June 16th. May I have a second? Second. >> This is 51 and 52. Mr. Brady. >> Yes. >> Mr. Cover. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Dam. >> Yes. >> Mr. Skilman. >> Yes. >> Mr. McCarthy. >> Yes. >> Mrs. McGovern. >> Yes. >> Mr. Schneider. >> Yes.

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>> M. Stevens. >> Yes. >> Mr. Dalton. >> Yes. >> Personnel. Mrs. McGovern. >> Move to approve items 6.1 through 6.15. May I have a second? >> Second. And again as a reminder we dis discussed

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a lot of this in executive session follow. >> Yes sir. 61 through 615. Mr. Brady. >> Yes. >> Uh Mr. Cobbert. >> Yes. >> Mr. Stam. >> Yes. >> Miss Gilman. >> Yes. >> Uh Mr. McCarthy.

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>> Yes. >> Mrs. McGovern. >> Yes. >> Mr. Schneider. >> Yes. >> M. Stevens. >> Yes. and Mr. Dolton. >> Yes. >> Motion's carrying. >> Mr. McCarthy, Financial Management and Resource Services. >> Thank you, Mr. Dolton. Uh, just because we're combining agendas, I do have two

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open discussion on these items. Um, I would like to make a comment before I do. Uh, I would like to thank St. George's Church and Cedar Village for their donations of backpacks to the district. I would just like to note that

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for the board. Thank you very much. Um, any discussion on 71 through 7.22? >> Could we have a second first? Second. Well, he didn't motion. >> I've not moved these. >> He has a motion. Yeah. He's just seeing if there questions first.

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>> Do you want it motioned first? >> Well, typically we would make a motion and then have a discussion. >> Very well, sir. >> So, you have a motion. >> Okay. >> All right. Um, second then. And then I have >> you go with your question and then Mrs. Gilman.

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>> Okay. um on 74 the shared services with the town. I know we typically or have in the past done um done leads landscaping and and and um custodial and all that kind of stuff. Is this the same type of agreement where

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we we say we'll we'll do it and kind of if we can we do or is this a different agreement where we're actually having them come do specific things? >> This is the same agreement we've had with the town for the past several years. Okay. >> Uh they provide landscaping services to

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our elementary schools. We provide custodial services to their offices. >> Right. That's okay. Thank you. >> It does not impact staffing or anything like that. >> Thank you, Mrs. Kilman. >> Mr. McCarthy, >> you you had your hand up first. Yeah.

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>> Speak. >> So, I have a question about use of facilities. Ocean Township United Soccer. Um, we recently voted for them to use our facilities at the high school and wayside and now they have requested

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to uh the gym and the athletic fields every day from August through December and each time the fee is $150. Is this a

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for-profit organization and are they charging students for uh playing on our soccer fields? It just seems like a very small amount.

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What happens if our students want to use now the high school wayside and now the middle school from 5:30 to 8:30 Mondays through Friday and Saturday and Sunday 9 to 5? That's a lot of time

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taken away from our own students for Ocean United Soccer. Can you give me a little background about that or >> it's been the same for they've been >> I know but just because it's been >> No, I'm saying I'm saying that like the time that they've had it the fifth grade

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side has been the same for years like so it's not any I'm just telling you it's I don't believe that it's any additional usage from what it's been in the past. I'm not saying that it should or shouldn't be where it is. >> Thank you. >> And I was under the impression they're nonprofit. >> Is it a nonprofit?

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>> I believe they are. I believe they are as well, but I'd have to check their form for you. And our students take precedent. Um, >> okay. >> At least. So, >> our disabilities would say on these dates whenever not in use by our students and our games and our programs.

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>> Okay. I did not know there was that addendum. >> So, our students would take precedent if something were required on any of these evenings. >> Thank you. And one of the other I'm sorry just for one more point of information like Miss

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Gilman you'll see too that um for example Sundays like AYF's asking for Sundays and so they're essentially double booked right because AYF's there and the soccer's there but they work it out within in the organization of like timing that you know AF might need it in

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the morning and then soccer might use it in the afternoon you know so it's kind of a >> Is that spelled out here? >> No it's it's they do it in Mr. child's office. >> Correct. So, we um work with the different organizations. If there is an overlap, we've worked to make an accommodation or tell one or the other

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they're going to have to make an accommodation. Uh and then um I would also say that Mr. Sosa and I have been talking about the use facilities and and applications where they may put in dates that they don't intend to use but just

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sort of rather than putting 20 individual dates they just put you know November through January or and and we going to talk about that and and what we want to recommend to the board in terms of any changes to that practice. >> I just think that the the seasonal fee

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of $150 is very low. >> Mr. McCarthy >> just uh one note I don't Miss GM I believe and I would love if someone corrects me if I'm wrong I don't believe that being a nonprofit and being and what you charge our students are

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exclusive of each other. So just because you are a nonprofit does not mean you are not going to charge all of our students fees. As a board I remember that we have evaluated use of facilities previously. if we want to reinvestigate

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that policy, which I believe is the second time you brought this up, so I think that's what I'm hearing from you. I welcome that investigation. I will say that personally I believe and maybe I'm making a big assumption here that any cost we push to any entity to use our

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fields is going to be passed through to the parents of this district who are already paying a lot of money to upkeep these fields and provide us what is necessary in their in their annual taxes to handle these things. I don't I don't know that it's going to hit the entity

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that is renting the fields personally. That's my personal opinion. Uh, and I respect the the questioning because it allows us to dive deeper on that. But it's just I don't unless we start to charge all nonprofits because it seems to me that maybe this entity has found a

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loophole in that status, >> you know, we we are in a we're in a tougher predicament and I don't want to pass through additional costs to the parents of the district. >> Either do and I would hate to see that happen that they would pass the cost on to the parents in the district, but

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there should be some kind of an equitable way that we could generate a little bit more income for so many dates while still maintaining our fields and all the costs for that too. So I understand that >> and it sounds like from what Mr.

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Hastings shared that we need to probably tighten up the actual what they request versus the actual. >> Absolutely. Can I just >> Yes. Um I would just in one way I would say that I think that when we did when

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we started to look at this the last time one of the suggestions that we came to that we kind of spoke to Mr. Todd about and Mr. um gosh it wasn't Gary but whoever maybe it was Gary know whoever was here after Gary I'm sorry that I can't think of his name right now Mr. Bossman, thank you. My brain wasn't

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working. Um was where you say like, you know, we have it as you state like as nonprofit, right? So, so many different sports organizations are all nonprofit and they're all being charged and as you say, some of them are using it excessive, some of them are not

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using it as much. And one of the thoughts that we had thought about was not by going by a lot per season, but raising it a little bit based on the amount of usage. I'm happy to try and go back to my notes if the board would want me to to try and just kind of get a clarity on it if we want to open the

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discussion. I think if we're going to talk about turf fields at this point and replacing a turf field, if the discussion is going to happen, the discussion should happen now or we should say we're not going to discuss it. Um because if we're gonna, you know, raising it at a time where you're where you're going to put putting in a new

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field that you want to hold on to the life of that field, >> right, >> is the time that you would maybe revisit the fees of use of the field, right? Um, so you know cuz if you say to one one pe you know one person for examp if you say to say football and lacrosse who use it

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for one season right and they may only use it eight days in the season or actually less than that they have nine games let's say they use it four days because they only have four home games. It's a lot less than soccer who's using it for, you know, four days for all of their kids versus soccer that's using it

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seven days for seven hours cuz they have seven age groups, you know. So, it is a little it is different. Um, but and there may be other, you know, teams that do that. So, I I personally wouldn't be against if the board wanted to just kind of looking

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at it again to see that. I also know that the past practice from doing it was that you put the original dates in like this and when you got your schedule in August, you had to email back Mr. Todd and say these are the actual dates we're coming and then it opened up the other dates and it was like please let us know

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by school starting if you can, you know, and there was flexibility if something changed, but that was the old practice of what we did as far as releasing dates back to the district. So I I'm not against having a conversation personally about it. Again,

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I don't know the feeling on the border if you want to even discuss that tonight or another night. >> Well, I would >> I would certainly like to have you not. We don't have to decide that this evening, but you know, maybe for a future discussion because I I think as

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you said, somebody using the field x number of days versus a short amount of time and then Mr. Hastings telling us that our turfield is going to need replacement. We need to think about that monetarily.

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>> So, are we looking for a motion here or >> um I'll make a motion to put it on a future agenda about the use of facilities um the nonprofit section because I believe that we settled the other sections. I believe that we we raised some of the profit. I don't know if you want to open but maybe just to

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talk about the nonprofit um section again >> and in specific what are we looking to discuss >> the fees >> want to be clear that we're if we're doing this that we're on the page >> if we want to look at the fees for the amount of usage per nonprofit

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>> mean even a seasonal fee at 150 bucks at this day and age you might as well not even charge them anything so I think that's that's a pretty small >> which there is to Mr. Mr. McCarthy's point that it is our taxpayers. So that's why we kept the fees low. But when you have

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>> to that point, there's also taxpayers that pay for through taxes that don't have any use of the field. So it's I'm just saying $150 is >> So what what are we I want to bring us together here. What is the motion

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specifically for? Because I'm hearing a couple different things here. I'm hearing that we want to look at the fees for nonprofits, but then I'm also hearing some very philosophical feelings on where we stand on things. And I'm

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hearing divergence here of some people saying we should charge more and some people saying we we need to consider that carefully because then we're we're transferring that on to the parents. So I'm not asking anyone to answer their

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philosophy on that right now. But I think we need to think about if we're going to open this door and go in this path, we do have to be prepared to discuss and come to a consensus on what our group philosophy is given all of our

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individual philosophies. Right? Because I'm hearing a disconnect there already. I'm just going to name it. Right? So, if the motion is is I I want to be clear on what the motion is. The motion is is to look at the nonprofits and what they're being charged versus what they're

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requesting. Is that the motion? >> It sounds >> I would say I would say my motion would be to reopen the use of facilities policy for the nonprofits per season based on their usage. >> That sounds very clear.

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>> Okay. Anyone else? That's a motion. >> Does anyone want to tweak that motion? >> Has to be a very specific motion. >> It doesn't. >> Well, what I'm saying is is I'm hearing a bunch of different things coming out. So, if we're going to come back with something, I don't want anyone to feel

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that their part's not answered. And so, I you know, I I think that and then a part of that is what is our philosophy as a board with this? because it's a philosophical question on what what we're going to charge, how much we're going to charge, if we're raising it, if we're not raising it. It's a very

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philosophical question, >> but I think that the question is, >> but it sounds like we need some data to get >> right. So, like the data that I would like to see is that you have and we have the data of how many people they have in their program, right? So that if you give me a data point that that a a group

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has 1500 people, I'm not going to figure out this math, but has 1500 people and we're charging 150 for the season. What could really be the cost? Our specific cost that's going to each of those 1500 people. >> You want that for every nonprofit? >> No, no, I'm just saying I'm saying for

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fields. I don't know that. Um I mean fields and gyms. What do you I >> see this is why it's once you open this you got to be you know we have to be specific >> can't be specific to one group we have to say we I'm saying are we are we I guess fields and gyms

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>> I don't think specific to one group promotion was >> right >> nonprofits so >> in their usage >> what is the I mean scale how many groups are we talking about >> right so could I suggest that um Miss

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Walden and I as a practice, as the board is aware, have been going through policies, >> right, >> and and presenting policies that need to be updated and making recommendations uh at various meetings. >> Um

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perhaps we could add that policy to that um you know, process uh and and get some information for the board together to look at. And then once the board has a chance to look at that information, then we could move forward with with a recommendation of of

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>> based on that policy review. >> Based on the policy review, >> how do we feel about that since you've made the motion? >> I'm fine with that. I just think that, you know, it's it's something that has been brought up over time and we've had many conversations. I think that like I said with the with the replacement of the turf at this point. Yeah.

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>> That this is kind of the point where you look at it because >> because you're at a point where you're gonna have a a large fee. I'm not I'm not suggesting >> personally that we raise fees to, you know, $10,000 a season. I'm not suggesting, you know, anything high. I'm suggesting just that it's something we

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look at and, you know, based on wear and tear if it's something that makes sense, you know, and I don't know. So I I think it's better for you both to look at it internally. Talk to our people. Talk to you know Mr. Bosman's, Mr. Todd, people that know that like people that are are

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involved. Not Mr. Mr. Sorry. >> So that's two ago. >> Yeah, I couldn't remember and then I'm using it in the wrong text. But you know and and see they might say listen we've looked or you might say we've looked at other towns and it doesn't make sense. Everybody's offering $100 and we don't

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want people to go to other towns that are from this town. If I may, just I'm remembering correctly, that's exactly what we did at a recent revision this policy. So, if we're going to do it again and which is perfectly fine. I think we might need to bring another lens. >> We were in the middle of doing it and it

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got dropped. >> No, we picked it back up. Yeah, we approved it. >> This exact review compared to towns around us. We did. I think we focused on the profit side. >> We got all the comparable data. We

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presented it to you. profit. I saw we did profit. We didn't do nonprofit, >> right? >> I believe I think we looked at it, but I think everyone on the board at the time agreed not to pass that off to our students and their parents. >> And if you want to look at that again, we can definitely do it. But I just

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don't I I'm looking for direction, forgive me, as to what date you're saying. We'll provide data. We'll provide information. I'm not sure what other information. I think we might need different information this time. If we've done this one thing already

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recently also sounds like everybody needs just go back and approved. >> Yeah, we should start there. >> Look that back at that because I thought we only looked at profit last time. I didn't think we looked at nonprofit. I think we made the decision not to look at nonprofit and we took it off the table and we went right to right to

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profit. >> It was like a low hanging. >> But that was a decision. It wasn't a non action. >> Yes. Sorry. >> That's okay. >> I I would think that the best course of action here is to we can put it back on to review and then maybe we can get

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proposals as to what other information the board would need in order to make any revisions. >> We're good on the private side because we just looked at them. >> Correct. >> Right. Just on the private side. I'm not sure. Right. Yes. I agree. But honestly,

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if you're going to replace a turf, you may want to increase >> profit, too. >> That's true. >> So, I think we should put it on >> so you can review it. >> And then we'll go from there with direction from where we want to head. Does that make sense?

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>> It makes sense. Um, and I will go back to my own notes for the stuff you presented so that that doesn't have to be redone. >> We can probably pull that up pretty quickly. I apologize for my

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>> no problem thinking. >> So, so Mr. D just as a point of procedure generally we need a a structal vote that a majority of the board would like the administration to engage in this activity. >> Okay. Do we want so like I say that I Okay.

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>> So struck do we want the administration to come back to us with that policy for review once again? >> Yes. >> I see yes. I see yes. No. No, Mr. Cobbert. >> No. >> No. >> Yes. >> Yes.

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>> Okay. >> So, what is that? 44. >> Mr. President, you go. >> I'll say yes so that it's done. Yes. >> We have Mr. Brady online, please. >> Brady. Yes or no? >> That's right. >> I would say yes. >> Okay. There you go. All right.

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>> The Let's Let's move forward. Um, do we have anything else in in this section, Mr. McCarthy? >> Mr. I just would like to take a minute to I I would assume that the reason for this rate increase to Camp David has to do with the fact that the contract was

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back up for negotiation. So I would like to say to our administration um and I believe um sorry I can't say that I would like to to just say to our administration thank you very much for

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maximizing the revenue generated by the district in an activity that we have conducted for I believe I know at least from my own experience at least 25 years I can't believe that 25 years having uh Camp David here using our facility

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ities. I think that in years past, administrations and boards have been beaten up about the amount that they uh charge for this service that we offer. So, um I think that you have done a great job in being fair to Camp David in

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your negotiations while also being a good steward of the district. Um they say that the best negotiations are ones where everyone leaves somewhat unhappy, right? And I think potentially that is the case here. Uh although I will not assume your opinions. I'm sure there was more that we could have asked for and

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anyone evaluating this could say the same. Um but but great job. Way to go. I think this is a big big ad to a district that needs to find creative ways to generate revenue. I think that's a great job. >> Thank you, Mr. McCarthy. Now, following

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our robust discussion, I know we opened section seven and we had a motion. Did we have a second? >> Yes, we did. >> Okay. So any other discussion in in section seven? Okay, Mr. Hastings. >> Item 71 through 722. Mr. Brady,

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>> yes. >> Mr. Covert, >> yes. >> Mrs. Dam, >> yes to all, but I need to recuse myself from the AYF facilities. >> Thank you, M. Skilman. >> Uh, yes to all. uh 7.5 use of facilities

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no to United Soccer and abstain from 7.22. >> Thank you, Mr. McCarthy. >> Yes. >> Mrs. McGovern, >> yes. >> Mr. Schneider, >> yes. >> Miss Stevens, >> yes. >> Mr. Dolan, >> yes. >> Thank you. Motion's passed. >> Thank you. Uh instruction, education,

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and student activities, Mrs. Dam. um open for discussion 81 to 8:14. >> If I may just add a little bit of context here, we have um a number of agreements with universities. Many of

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these are for our student teaching and clinical practice partnerships where we bring in college level students into our district for them for their learning experience. Also, we are renewing an agreement with Kain University for students of our Holocaust and genocide

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program. Um, and then there are some other uh somewhat customary items on here. Our evaluation instruments that we renew annually every year are on here as well. >> Happy to answer any questions that

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>> any questions from anyone. Section 8. Um, yes. >> 83 the non resident tuition students. Um, I don't I couldn't find it. Is this more or less or about average? >> I think it's about the same. I don't

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know it off the top of my head. I'd have to look it up as well, but I think it's about the same. >> Okay. So, as a point of procedure, we opened it for discussion, but we need a motion and a second. Correct. We have a motion by uh Mrs. Dam. Could I have a second?

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>> Second, Gilman. >> Okay. Mr. Hastings. >> 81 through 814. Mr. Brady. >> Yes. >> Mr. Cobbert. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Dam. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Gilman. >> Uh, yes to all. Abstain from 8.3.

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>> Thank you, Mr. McCarthy. >> Yes. >> Uh, Mrs. McGovern. >> Yes. >> Mr. Schneider, yes. Miss Stevens, >> yes. >> Mr. Yes. Policy, Mrs. Gilman. >> Uh, yes. Hopefully, you've had a chance to look through the many changes,

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revisions, and abolished policies set forth. Uh, this is the second reading. Uh, I just have a a comment. These revisions come from Strauss estimate, correct? And, uh,

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they become our policy. And as I was reviewing them, I found several errors, including the misspelling of the word school under the uh policy for superintendent's duties. Uh misuse of

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words, they crossed out principal and put principal, use of insure and ensure. Uh I just want to be sure that and also the family leave policy 1643 which was changed from 12 months of

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employment to three months of employment. And then later on in the document page 17 it still continued to refer to employees uh as 12 months rather than the new 3 months. So I'm not sure if

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they corrected that throughout the entire policy. I believe that policy refers to two different types of leave. One is the three the new law indicates the three months of work but the other leave is still the 12 months. So it was

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only corrected in that one portion >> it was for the federal leave and the New Jersey leave and the two changes to the New Jersey leave were a,000 hours uh worked versus 250 and then 12 months of previous employment versus three

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>> versus three months >> but those don't line up specifically with with the uh the federal I believe. >> Okay. Um there were quite a few changes and um things that are definitely going to

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affect and I I know we were ahead of the curve when it came to legal notices that no longer have to be put in the newspaper but have to be displayed prominently on the website. So we were uh good with that. And um

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the vendors for the nutrition program, I wasn't quite sure what that meant. going out for vendors for the nutrition. That's not Sedexo, is it? I believe that's

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a second. Who does it? Oh, 6311. Contracts for good or services funded. No, no, no. That's not it. No, six, excuse me, 8561. Procurement procedures for school

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nutrition programs. Does that mean our Sedexo program? >> No. So, we have two options. You have self-run operations where the school itself goes

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out for food and for supplies uh for um for that program. And then we also have uh food service management companies uh and we operate under that model where the food service management company is the one securing uh foods and other

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supplies for the district. >> Okay. So it's not okay. Thank you for clarifying that. So those are our new policies, questions, comments. And I would just note that uh Miss Gilman mentioned uh

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the legal notices and the notice of board meetings and being prominently displayed on the website and under the previous law that was just passed where it now moves us to the electronic advertising. We follow all the rules about having a legal notice section on

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the cover page of our the landing page of our website and those notices listed underneath that um header. So we do follow the prominent display of of notices. >> Thank you.

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We have a second on this section 9. >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Hastings. >> So this is item 9.1. Mr. Brady. >> Yes. Mr. >> Cover. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Dam. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Gilman. >> Yes. >> Mr. McCarthy? >> Yes.

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>> Mrs. McGovern? >> Yes. >> Mr. Schneider? >> Yes. >> Miss Stevens? >> Yes. >> And Mr. Colton? >> Yes. >> Motion carries. >> Do you have any old business? >> Yes. Mrs. Gilman? >> On June 25th, our legislative committee

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met with Senator Gopal and his uh assistant, and we made clear our concerns for a district. Many of you submitted questions to us which we then discussed with Senator Gopal including

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mandated programs like special ed and multil language learners, the formula changes that hopefully will be forthcoming, aging infrastructure, declining enrollment, shocking health benefit costs, uh, and of course

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nutrition. And I thought it was a very fruitful discussion and I'd like to ask a couple of our legislative committee members to uh perhaps comment on what they took from it. of the senator did

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say that the formula change might be forthcoming at the end of the summer or in the early fall hopefully and be more transparent so that anyone could understand how they came about the number for school funding and hopefully

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that would be the number that would be uh involved in our budget so that there would be no surprises later on down the road. Um, Caitlyn, I know that you wanted to say something about the nutrition aspect of our concerns. >> Yeah, I think um, first of all, I think

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the conversation, like you said, was very fruitful. I think um, Mr. Gopal was very open to hearing what we had to say and I did feel heard by him. Um, he definitely made a very clear point of us for us to be talking more

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with him and asking for help. and he mentioned that many schools go to him when they need something and he does his best to try to find money for them. So, he definitely told us that we need to utilize him more, which I found interesting and I just, you know, hope that we're going to do that. Um, with

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our conversation, it led not from the budget to what else could he be doing for us? And I couldn't help myself and I had to bring up the healthier food options for our school. and he did seem I'll use this word Lucy, but he did seem excited about that where he wanted to

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take it and run with it and did say that he wanted to help us out and see what he could do and maybe make it a bigger picture for not just Ocean Township but for Mama County, which is very exciting. So, um I wanted to say that at the board meeting before we went further with that and Mrs. as well. Then we can talk more,

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but I'd like to send an email to him and his team and see where we can go with that because I know I believe the contract is up this coming school year with Sedexo. So, if we have things in the pipeline and in works and maybe more money coming in to do that, that would be great.

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>> Mr. Stevens, I know that you had concerns about um mandated special ed programs. >> I did, and he he shared a lot of Mr. Goal shared a lot of really really good information. um you know about some of our special needs programs that we of course are required to um have for our

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students and their related services. He suggested a more regionalized approach to these things that the state is going to start working on on that type of approach with a lot of the redistricting that's going to be happening. Um increasing placement options just in general will help to of course reduce

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those costs for those students. Um we talked about students that have severe medical needs. um and you know require not only an ad district placement setting but also require maybe a onetoone nurse whereby you know the cost of the student is is um you know is is

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challenging for the district um and what that would look like for getting more um more aid for those particular students. >> Thank you Mr. Brady. I'm not sure if um if you would like to contribute anything to the discussion. >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think that it

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was a great discussion. he was very open to wanting to help us and advocating for us. And I think one of the key takeaways that I took away from it was just his um where he said that he the state does plan to overhaul the school funding

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formula for he said in the fall this year is when they plan to take on that project, but then it would be in effect for the 2728 school year. And one thing I asked was just for a little bit more transparency with how the school funding formula is created and run and how, you

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know, it could be more easily accessible for parents to understand. And he said that that is an emphasis the state is planning to do when they revamp the funding formula. And he says he's he saw the faults with it. He understood where, you know, the the deficits were coming

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and he really does hope to work with the governor to revamp that and make it better for not only Ocean Township but schools across the state. That was one of the key things that I took away from it and just his openness to be an advocate for us and like Mrs. Dam said, you know, he

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really does want us to utilize him. He wants us to let us know any concerns that we have and you know, he talked about some of the grants that are available and that we're becoming available. So, there is help there that we can access when necessary and it's just another resource that we should be

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able to to tap into. >> Thank you, Mr. Brady. You're right. And um I know we discussed perhaps having another meeting uh in the fall, maybe after the this uh S2 formula is revised or beforehand.

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And Senator Gal made clear that he will find grants as he has in the past for Ocean Township, monies to be had whether it's for security or mental health. So we continue to use him as a resource, a resource, and thank him for his help.

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And thank you to the legislative committee. It was a very good productive meeting. >> Thank you for that report. Um I'll share I was wished I could have been there but due to a family obligation I was not able to. Um I would say as we look forward to scheduling uh just keep

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everyone aware and certainly um moving forward also making sure that we do our best if possible to have our administration present uh for those conversations so that they can add um their perspective on the challenges they may be dealing with here in the district

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from managing uh things here in the district or grants that they're already taking advantage of. I know we get legislative updates with grant opportunities, not just for the schools, but for townships and things come through pretty regularly. Some of them apply to our community and some of them

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may not depending on the grant. Um so I I think that that's important that um you know we try to coordinate whatever the future meeting is with the administration. >> Okay. >> And yes, >> was our administration not present for the >> not at this one. It was summer date and

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and it did not work out. No, no, >> I just would like to say that moving forward, I do not want the board to conduct a meeting like that without the administration present. I have a huge issue with that. I think that that presents a very bad image to his office

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and we should not schedule that type of thing without our administration present to the lobby on their behalf with us in the meeting. I do not think that is a good practice personally. Okay. >> We also have to make sure we don't have five. I know you said you wish you have

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been there and that would have made five which would have been a quorum. >> Correct. >> Could not have happened either. >> Right. Um do we have any new business? >> Yes. >> There was a comment made that we had a

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300 student drop off between 8th grade and freshman year in our in our in our student population. I I only have limited data at my fingertips and I could do more research, but I see 200 students total in our eighth grade

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population as of our April enrollment report and 214 students total in our 9th grade population. So, I I just want to be clear that I'm not missing something huge here. Anyone from the board or the administration, please correct me. It it would not even be possible for us to

484
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lose 300 students in it for in a single year without not having a grade. >> That's correct. >> Okay. Thank you. This hand >> um kind of piggybacking off what we were just talking about. Um the complete

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streets had a meeting last Tuesday and uh what's her title? I believe she's a director supervisor for easy ride. Her name is Lisa Lee and she um has reached out to both Wanamasa and um Ocean

486
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Township Elementary School for bike safety and transportation safety to school. And she brought up this grant that would be a school and the town could do together and it's called NJ to safe routes to school program. And it's

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about helpful projects that improve pedestrian bike safety for students. And I think it would be a great opportunity for us, especially with the bike buses going on and lots of people walking to school of getting the town and the school together, you know, for our

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students. And I think it's also something I brought this up in a workshop. I don't know if it was the one or one before about perhaps having a board member and a council member having a liaison of doing stuff together and keeping it informed of how we could be working

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together better. So, I just wanted to bring that up to everybody and I can send you more information on that. This is well done. >> So, I I hear a couple things there and I'm just going to give my two cents on it. I think looking into that as a grant opportunity as an educational

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perspective might be something that I'd want the administration's opinion on looking at that. Um, and you know, I know some of the board members have talked to me and I'm well aware of the bike bus thing and I think that's also one of those things we need to be careful about because it's led by

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community, but it wasn't necessarily a school function and so I'm all about the safety part and so I think we do need to consider maybe consider that. But the the school district and a private entity with the bus with

492
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the with the bike situation is a tricky area legally. Um, and I think we need to be careful about how far we step into something that's run by a private entity where that may increase our liability.

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And so I I think, you know, we we need to consider if we're going to do the bike safety thing. I mean, I've run bike safety things when I was a principal in schools with the police department and things like that, but I I think they need to be separate things and not together things

494
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because bike bus is run by parents, but some people are assuming that it's being run by the schools and so we need to be careful about that. >> I'm not understanding what you're saying. So, if we're sanctioning it as a board of education and as the administration,

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then we have a liability on the safety of all of that, like what happens on the streets, coordinating with the police and all of that. >> That's not what I was saying. That's not what I was >> No, I'm saying though the two things I want to talk about maybe separately. You see what I'm saying? In other words,

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like the bike safety thing sounds interesting and I would ask the administration's input on that. That's over there. in our community, people are doing by bus and all of that and that may enhance it, but they're they I almost feel like they need to be two separate things. I don't know if I'm not saying that well because I'm tired at

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this point. >> I think you should send me the the grant information and I'll I'll take a look at it. >> I mean, Mr. McCarthy, do you have something to say? Because you keep looking at Mr. McCarthy. >> No, he was nodding head talking about something that you guys have talked about out of the window. >> He was nodding his head and so was Mrs.

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Stevens. >> So, me too. and and yet >> okay >> they were all nodding their heads. So um I >> we want to be careful about Let me just add something to this conversation.

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>> I think you just wanted to share with me a grant opportunity and you should do that and I think that's wonderful. It shouldn't be >> because Complete Streets is doing a bike bus. That's that's all and that's how I came off. That's not what I >> and that's what I think you're just clarifying. I think your your intent to

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share a grant is excellent. Share it with me, please. And we'll share it with the administration. And if we pursue it, it will be because the administration thinks it's an appropriate learning experience within the school day because of what we do here at school,

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>> not necessarily in connection with anything any parent group might be doing anywhere in our community, which by the way, we love so much that parents are doing these things with students and creating these experiences. But we we have to figure out where the lines are

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between district involvement and parent run events. And I think I think that was the point if just to to keep those lines somewhat clear but also very positive and very supportive of all of it. Just knowing >> the roles while we're and the reason why

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I brought up complete streets is because that's how the grant came up to be. Like I wouldn't have known about this grant that combines town and school action together if it wasn't for that meeting. That's the only reason why I brought it up, not that because they're doing it. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Perfect.

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>> And the other thing you've brought up about um having a liazison between the board and the and the um towns. We've done that before in meetings. There have been meetings that they have held with um the president and Miss Weldon and

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usually maybe one other board member I guess um but they haven't called one of them in a long time. So I don't know that we don't necessarily I don't I don't know I guess the liaison would >> so I I don't know that we had a liaison just to meet with them. >> That's what I'm saying. We didn't we we met with them on things that we needed

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>> specific purpose >> years ago I wanted like years ago I think we we tried to do the leazison. it didn't go anywhere and then it also became a more people wanted to be involved in the conversation. So it was it we settled on um the meetings when we

507
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needed meetings basically something going >> I think over the last year or so we have made a concerted effort to function as a board of the whole um but and and less committee work and that was a committee that met with the

508
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town right >> um so I think that's discussion for the board to discuss if that's a direction they want to head I think we need enter into it clear, you know, knowing how we are, where we are, and where we want to go next. And all of

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that is open for discussion and possible. Um, just background to understand. >> Anything else for new business? Have a motion. >> Motion second.