Good evening everyone. Adequate notice. Are we okay, Mike? Sorry about that. Adequate notice of the meeting to be held at the Township of Ocean uh Board of Education on Tuesday, March 10th, 2026 uh at 6:30 p.m. has been provided in
accordance with the requirements of chapter 231, public laws 1975. Notice of the meeting was posted on the bulletin board in the lobby of the administration building at 163 Mammoth Road, Oakhurst, New Jersey. the all Ocean Township Schools and Transportation and the
school district website. On January 7th, notice of the meeting was transmitted to the Osprey Park Press and the Coaster newspapers on January 7th, 2026. Notice of the meeting was filed with the municipal clerk, Township of Ocean, January 7th, 2026.
Mr. Hastings, uh, do we have to do >> we can do roll call. We have someone virtually maybe. >> Yes. >> Mr. Brady >> here. >> Mr. Cover >> here. Mrs. Dam >> here. >> Mr. >> Skilman >> here. >> Uh Mr. McCarthy,
>> here. >> Mr. Schneider >> here, >> Miss Stevens and Mr. Dolan >> here. Okay. Uh President's report. Um it's been a while, and we had um snowageddon,
I guess we would call it. Um as we did last time, I would like to offer our gratitude to all of those who work to clear us out. uh both on the school staff, the township staff. Um it was uh a major undertaking and we know how hard it is to be away from their families
during that time. Um it is my hope during that time that all of our families were safe and that our young friends and their families got to enjoy some fun times if we all reminisce about those snow days from when we were younger. Um I know it is an imposition on families during that time, but um
those are also those special moments that many children remember. I know in my neighborhood they were going down the front lawns and the cheers. It was fun. Um, so let's hope everyone remains safe and thank you to everyone that helped during that time. It was one of the most
unique Februaries I think we've had in a while with freezing. Um, I know for those of us that have got our gas bills, I was wondering why mine was the way it was. And now I understand it was an average of 5 to 7 degrees colder for the entire month than it had been the prior year. So that explains a
lot of frozen pipes. And that's it. Superintendent's report. >> Yes. Thank you. Good evening everyone. Um I echo your thoughts about the weather. It was beautiful to a point but also came with some headaches. Uh but we
we did we did see our way through and again I just again appreciate I think I said this at the last meeting. I greatly appreciate the flexibility and the understanding that the community has given me as we move through these winter months and these school closings and the
different building issues that we face. Uh these decisions are not easy and I do not enter into them lightly and the the needs of our families for uh school to be open and for wraparound services to be available is is very important to me.
So, uh, I just also again want to appre give my appreciation to the community for your understanding and flexibility throughout this winter and I truly truly hope this is the end of our winter weather and that is all behind us. Um, we we do have a revised calendar on the
agenda this evening to uh make up the days that we we lost due to emergency closings. Um, but I hope that's the end of it. We also are very excited to launch our youth art
month. March is youth art month and we have our district art show gallery opening this Thursday night um at the Ocean Township Library over there on Deal Road. Um, the opening is from 6:30
to 8:00 pm. However, you can go to the Ocean Township Library any day in March to see the wonderful artwork of our students in our district from K to 12. Students K to 12 have their artwork displayed over at the library. It's a wonderful event every year. Um, and I
look forward to it this week on Thursday night. And later in the agenda, I'm asking the board to approve a resolution designating March as Youth Arc Month here in the Ocean Township School District as well. Some other upcoming events that we have going on this this
month. We have our PTA meeting to PTA meeting is March 11th. Our spring musical, Once Upon a One More Time at the High School, is uh debuting March 12th
through the 14th at 700 p.m. and March 15th at 2:00 p.m. to is having their book fair next week. The Wayside Lipsync is March 18th. The OTES follies are March 19th. The WAMASA talent shows are
both March 20th. different times. The K to2 show is at 5:30. The grades 3 to 4 show is at 7:30 and the TOIS student verse staff basketball game is March 23rd at 7 p.m. So, some
great events happening in our district. I encourage everyone to come on out and see what our students are up to. >> Thank you, Miss Melvin. >> You're welcome. >> Mr. Hastings, school business administrators report. >> Uh, thank you, Mr. President. I'd just like to note two items on the agenda. Uh
we have a donation of chairs from the Jersey Shore uh art center. So we'd like to thank them for that. And also wanted to note we have a correction to a resolution adopted uh last month on two vehicles that we purchased. Um so we're just making a correction to that for our
asset management uh reports. So that's on record. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. One second, please. Public comment. The board of education recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance
of allowing members of the public to express themselves on school matters of community interest. Public comment is not a question and answer session. Specific questions can be directed to the administration. The superintendent's contact information is on the deis and on the district website. We encourage
you to contact her with any questions. Public public participation shall be governed by the following rules. Each statement uh each statement may be uh by a participant shall be limited to five minutes duration. No participant may
speak more than one on the same topic unless all others who have wished to speak on that topic have been given that opportunity to do so. The presiding officer may request any person to leave the meeting when that person does not observe reasonable
decorum. Would anyone from the public like to speak to comment on any items at this time? >> Please. >> Hi, how are you? >> Um, well, first question, can we ask questions during the budget presentation
or no? Because it's about the budget mine. >> This is not the presentation. This is a discussion. But when we have the budget presentation, we do take questions. When is that? >> March 24th. >> Oh, so it's not this week.
>> So the adoption of the tenant budget is March 24th. The presentation for the adoption of the final budget uh has to be the week of April 24th to May 7th and we have a board meeting scheduled for April 28th. >> Okay. So Grace Alan, Terica, Wayside,
I'll just ask my two questions. They're about the budget. I thought I'm sorry. I thought we were going over some of that today. So, uh, one question I have is with so many other districts um, selling buildings, consolidating to help keep costs and taxes down, what considerations has the Ocean School
District made in relationship to this? That's one. And then the second question is, please explain how shared services are helping our taxpayers and what shared services that we have and how much the taxpayers are saving with that over the years. Thank you.
>> Thank you. We have anyone else? Yes sir. >> Uh hello Jim Bay David Street. Will the interim budget be available online for review or is it at what period would a
>> we be able to observe something? >> I'm sorry. >> I don't know. I think you'll follow up with Can you take my card there and and >> Well, no. When is it routinely something we can look at? Would you like us to answer or do you want take questions?
>> We we're not we don't take questions this evening. We just hear comments >> calendar. When would it be live? >> Explain the calendar. The calendar was just explained, but it will be available later on the district website, just not tonight.
>> No guess when I should log on to look. >> If you could send us an email, we'll get back to you with the exact date. >> That works, I guess. Hey, just a little old me, John Shutman. Uh
to Shan Drive, Ocean, New Jersey. Um I aware I'm aware first of all that uh there seems to be a financial problem in the district where the taxes will have to be raised and uh respectfully I wrote about this recently um that this is a
problem that is becoming endemic in New Jersey. And so, for instance, uh in in Neptune Township, they had to raise taxes very greatly because of the same kind of problems that I assume this district is
starting to uh experience. And so, there are a lot of ways that one can uh approach this problem. And so, I'm suggesting I've suggested in the past that you may want to look for partnerships with other districts. So a partnership could be and in the
children's best interest a partnership of staff development. So it's not just Ocean Township staff development, but it might be Neptune staff development in Asbury. And in particular, if you really want to see your kids raise their scores, every teacher should be a
teacher of reading. >> Every teacher should be a teacher of reading. There is evidence-based practice out there how to do this. I don't care if the kid's in kindergarten or is in 12th grade. I don't care if they're in AP or they're special education. There's a lot of evidence out
there how to teach reading. I don't care if it's a calculus class or a fifth grade class. Everybody in this school system for that matter. Everybody in New Jersey should now be teaching teachers well-developed and evidence-based practice how to teach
reading. So that's my comments for tonight. >> Thank you, Mr. Dr. Shaman. Alex Hayes Oakst. Um, I too thought there might be some uh budget discussions because at the last meeting you had a solid month ago on February 10th. Um, it was not open to the public
and you did say, "Does anybody have any questions to the public?" Like as if you thought people were going to ask questions like you normally do when you have massive presentations. And nobody online clicked yes because it was not an online meeting. And I question
how you did not address it. Nobody could get on and this board knew that. And it is embarrassing that nobody checked to make sure that not a single person could log on. It was brought to the attention of this board during the meeting. Nobody
can get on. Nobody can get on. So there's that. So we've already missed one opportunity to make some public comments. In addition, tonight there was no post online about tonight's meeting. I guess we're stopping to do that too, right? Like we don't want people to know
when these meetings are. You used to post the links. Now you're not. I'm wondering if you're going to get extra time. You mentioned that at the meeting, Mr. um Hastings, that you are waiting because the uh governor was getting an extra two weeks for her
budget. Um are you still planning on doing the tenative budget on 324 and are you getting any other extensions? I have a couple questions mixed. That was a question mixed in with some comments. When I was on the school board, um you all did entertain the idea
of early retirement packages. I'd like to know if that has been considered um for this coming budget. On the February budget, you mentioned four math teachers. Now we're calling them four content area teachers. And
that leaves some ambiguity. And I I have to believe there's something behind that. Why is it not math teachers as it was a month ago? Um, let's get to the elephant in the room. 8.17% new raise taxes. Are you all out of your
minds that you think the taxpayers in Ocean Township are okay with that? You probably do think it's okay because nobody has, you know, talked to you about it because you don't promote it and don't ask for public comment. Um, we've never really done above 3% and now
you guys are looking at Okay, so this one has a six and a seven. You probably just to appease some people. Um, I'd like to know from Mr. Hastings, if we sold this building for, I'm going to guess $8 million last year, what kind of
a situation would we be in? And if we sold it for 8 million this year, maybe even up to 12 million, what kind of situation would we be next year? Nobody has really asked the taxpayers, which you are legally required to do, what their opinions are. You say the town is
an average of a million-doll home. Many of you in this room who don't have children in this district, you also like live in million-dollar homes, but not everybody in this district does. So, a $500 increase means a lot to most people in this town.
I think you should entertain trimming administrative salaries and extra salaries of personnel that I'm not so sure we need him to sell this building and looking to look at consolidating districts. That's my budget comment. Um but I still have some other comments. Um
I'm wondering how much legal considerations the legal fund you have in the budget because I didn't see that on the presentation from February 10th. I'm wondering if that will be in the budget friendly that the public is entitled to. Y'all are facing a lot of lawsuits right now. Two ethics
complaints. A lawsuit involving a former superintendent of your school room numbers. I'd like to know how much you're planning on fees. The presentation for Mr. Amato was actually fabulous last week. Too bad nobody got to see it because it was not
a live meeting and several parents can tell you that they complained. It's on YouTube, but who has the chance to do that? It was a great meeting. Um, since Mr. O was talking about um you know they worked for months on this new culture at OT at
TOIS which is fantastic. Uh sadly he didn't mention um how we're going to ditch work to ditch the block system. So I'd like to know um if the block system was part of that plan um and if not then why? If they were working on something
for several months why isn't the block system getting mixed part of it? And my last question is um not question comment. Um Mr. Dr. Covert, it's nice to meet you. I thought we would see you while the um school board, you know, the elections were were underway, but I
didn't see you attend any um you were an assistant superintendent for special education. We did ask for you to give a report three times and never saw you. So, it's nice to actually see you in person again. Thank you. >> Thank you.
Any other commenters in the room? No. uh in the queue. >> There's welcome. >> Thank you, >> Miss Duffy. >> Miss Duffy. >> Hi. Good evening. Can you guys hear me? Okay. >> Yes, we can. Thank you. >> Great. Uh my name is Liz Duffy. I live
in Wayside. Thank you all for the opportunity to speak this evening. Um I do understand that the district is facing serious budget challenge, particularly due to the rising health care costs, expenses largely outside your control. But the choices we make in
response matter and they should prioritize both long-term sustainability while protecting the program students rely on most. According to the New Jersey school performance report, the intermediate school already receives the lowest per pupil funding in the
district, about 12,000 per student, compared with our district average close to 20 and about 28,000 at Wan Masa Elementary. Despite that disparity, the proposed budget in this evening's agenda includes
nearly $93,000 in cuts to the intermediate school clubs, over $30,000 in sixth and seventh grade athletics, and $50,000 in summer school for the intermediate students. This age group is among those particularly affected by
learning loss and social emotional challenges from the COVID years. Research consistently shows that these extracurricular activities and athletics improve attendance, academic engagement, and student well-being. For many students, these programs are where they
build friendships, confidence, and a sense of belonging. It's also difficult to understand these cuts when in the broader context of this budget, it's a pretty minimal cut. The district spends more on football coaches alone than on all sixth and seventh
grade coaches combined. I hope this board will explore other options that don't minimize the student experience, particularly for this critical age. For example, could we evaluate transportation savings for students who live within safe walking
distances or consider adjustments to administrative costs as enrollment declines? How else might the district balance the budget without cutting the programs that help students thrive? Budgets are not just financial documents. They're statements of our
priorities. When resources are limited, those priorities matter even more. I urge the board to reconsider these proposed cuts to the intermediate school clubs and to ensure that the students who already receive the least funding are not asked to sacrifice the
opportunities that keep them connected to their school. Thank you for your time this evening. Thank you for the work you do. I recognize this is a very challenging time for the district and I hope that we can work together as a community to find ways to better support
this budget. Thank you. >> Thank you. Do we have any other commenters? >> Yes. >> Go ahead. >> Miss Torella, is that you? >> Yes. Hi everybody. Good evening. Um, thank you for the um the opportunity to
speak this evening. Um, I wanted to echo what um, both Miss Hayes and Mrs. Duffy shared uh, particularly about the TOIS concern. Um, we're losing more and more students to private schools and parochial schools. Um, I don't know
exact numbers. I'm sitting in my car at the moment, but um we are losing more and more students and a as a parent at the middle school um you know there are sixth graders already talking about not going to Ocean because of different
perceptions that people have. Um, and I think taking away money and taking away opportunity and extracurriculars and things like that, all of what Miss Dussy said, um, is going to exacerbate that. You You can't
expect that students who lose out in middle school in a district will then stay in that district to go to high school. And then where does that position us with even more money going out the door with less students enrolling in our high school and in our
Spartan programs? Um I've sat at the table. I understand the challenges. Um but I don't think leaving us with an ex we need an explanation as to why the tois per pupil spending is almost is
actually it's more than um more than half of what Wanamasa is and it's almost half of what the district average is and as a middle school parent I just I do not find that acceptable. So thank you for your time. >> Thank you. You have any others? No.
Okay. That concludes public comments. Uh, approval of minutes. Mrs. McGovern. >> Sorry, moved over for a minute. Um, I would like to move to approve the minutes from our February 10th meeting. May I have a second? >> Second.
>> Hastings. >> This is item 6.1. Mr. Brady. >> Yes. >> M. >> Yes. >> Mrs. >> Yes. >> M. >> Yes. >> Mr. Yes, >> M. >> McGovern. >> Yes, >> Mr. Schneider. >> Yes, >> Mr. D.
>> Yes. >> Motion carries. >> Personnel. Mrs. McGovern. >> Move to approve items 81 through 811. I have a second one. Sorry. 71 to 78. >> Got ahead of myself. >> Second. Item 71378.
>> Mr. Brady. >> Yes. >> Mr. Cover. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Dam. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Gilman. >> Yes. >> Mr. McCarthy. >> Yes. >> Mrs. McGovern. >> Yes. >> Mr. Schneider. >> Yes. >> Mr. Dalton. >> Yes. >> Items carry. >> Financial management and resource
services. Mr. McCarthy. We have a big section here. Move to approve items 81 through 89. Discussions on 810 and 811. >> Second. >> Uh, this is for the vote on 81 through 89. Mr. Brady,
>> yes. >> Mr. Covert, >> yes. >> Mrs. Dam, >> yes. >> Mr. Skilman, >> yes. Mr. McCarthy, >> yes. >> Uh, Miss McGovern, >> yes. >> Mr. Schneider, >> yes. >> And Mr. D, >> yes. >> Motions carry. >> Do we have any questions on 810 or 811
comments, discussion? >> Yeah, absolutely. >> 8 810 from what I understand there, Mr. Hastings, that's a requirement of the new uh guidelines in contributions to retire uh retirement accounts. Correct.
>> Yes. And we've had several staff members uh through the union ask that we uh explore and approve Roth options. So, this would simply have that as an option for investment for uh staff. >> Yeah, that was a change in the code of this group. Any questions on that?
Okay. 811. Yeah, >> Mr. Mr. D. Yes, >> that the Roth is a good it's a good thing. It's gives another options for folks to invest, but it doesn't require there's not a a matching principle like you would see in others, right?
>> No, it's it's a new thing with the government this year that um those that were doing the max contribution to the catchup provision no longer do have to go to. So, that had to be offered as an option because that's everywhere. That's not just in our
school district, that's even in the business world. No. >> Gotcha. >> Hey, budget discuss. >> And there is no matching. >> And there's no matching. No. >> Now, not like in >> Right. Right.
All right. Do we have this projected? >> Yep. >> Ask our administration to maybe guide us through the discussion on these. >> Certainly. Thank you. Um, so, uh, over the past several months, we've been discussing
the 2027 budget. um as a as a review I guess uh for some of that and and to put us where we are right now. Uh we've talked about in the past uh the challenges facing the district and the challenges that have been there over several years. We've
talked about the um the formula and the the fallacies of the formula and the promise by the state to to try and make some changes to that formula that that haven't um come to fruition yet. uh we've been told by the state uh uh not
to expect other avenues to be made available to to raise funds or or for uh contributions from the state towards local uh school budgets. Um so um we listen to the governor today. The
governor today um indicated that she's recommending one of the largest, if not the largest, increase in education spending. Uh she talked about um mental health money, the loss of COVID funds, and perhaps uh now supplementing uh those programs that
were put in place uh during COVID to um uh replace those funds with with state funds uh in the budget. Uh but again, not a lot of specifics just yet in terms of of what those funds will be allocated to and and who they'll be allocated to.
So in the past, we've we've heard about um increases in funding for uh K to2 education, uh but it doesn't always uh impact every district the same way. and we certainly did not um benefit from some of those programs that were offered
uh in the last year or two from the state in terms of of adjustments to aid. Um as a reminder, our budget is comprised of really three buckets. Uh we have local taxes or local contribution or some people call local fair share. All the same
thing basically property taxes. um we have state aid and then we have whatever funds are being carried over from the previous budget that go in um uh into our uh next year's budget. Uh we've
talked about uh major drivers uh in our costs um in the past two or three years. Healthc care has come to the four as one of the major drivers. Uh the district is in the uh school employees health benefits program. That's a state
program. Um over the past three years, we've seen increases of 15 and 30% on premiums. Um and we've been told by our broker uh to expect another increase um
of about 30% uh come January of uh 27. So again, uh we're looking at significant increases uh over the course of the past several years uh to the point where we've almost seen a doubling of premiums uh for particular plans.
Um the uh district as I said has been working on the budget for some time now. Uh we started with administration developing the budgets and going through their uh expenses uh examining programs uh seeing what's working and what's not working and reallocating funds based on
the success uh or lack thereof of particular programs. uh we asked them to put all their requests um down into our system so we could build that budget based on all requests uh that included um just supplies and basic building expenses but
then also capital expenses uh technology expenses and uh personnel expenses. uh when we put those numbers together uh and then uh estimated those against our expected revenue for 27, we wound up
with a significant uh deficiency. So the revenues you see there of of about $89.8 million represents a 2% increase in taxes plus um flat state aid as we received this year. Uh so there's no
additional funds uh represented in that $89 million. Um the budget requests of about $95.6 million uh are composed of the requests that have been made by our staff, by our administrators, our
principles, supervisors, uh etc. Um we've looked at the capital requests. There are no capital uh improvements within the budget itself. uh we will look to our capital reserve accounts uh to prioritize projects uh and use those
funds uh moving forward to fund capital improvements. Uh we've looked at our technology requests. Those have been um paired down. Uh as you can see on the screen under technology requests, we did have
requests for drop down projectors uh for for two of our buildings. Uh and those have been eliminated. Um you can see we had additional security cameras, additional radios also as part of that request. Those are always in the budget. So we did not increase the budget. We'll
just continue to uh add those as needed uh with the existing funds. Uh we talked about personnel requests. Again, you can see what's been requested by the buildings and you can see uh what we've struck uh from the budget in terms
of uh multilingual before school tutoring uh summer interventionists and two instructional aids uh that we were anticipating we were going to need. Uh but upon further um examination of needs, I think uh we can cover those
openings uh by repurposing existing staff. So, with a 2% budget uh tax levy increase uh and flat aid, uh we're looking at about a $7.8 million shortfall. Uh we also have a healthc care waiver.
So, we talked about the significant increases in healthcare cost to the district. The state allows you to recover uh any increases above 2% of the prior year's amount. So, the district is eligible through a healthcare waiver to
raise an additional approximately $4.7 million. Uh that is a one-time uh solution. If we don't use that money uh or if we don't use all that money and we leave a portion on the table, that does not fall back to bank cap. Uh so, >> next year or something,
>> right? It cannot be used next year. Uh next year will stand alone. Um, so we looked at one using the entirety of that medical waiver, uh, plus the 2% and that put us at 8.17% in terms of the increase, uh, and put us
at about a $1 million shortfall. Uh, we looked at uh, using um, a little bit less of the healthcare waiver uh, to bring us to seven and less again at six. And you can see the impact of those
decreases on the shortfall for the district. So at eight, you're looking about a $1 million shortfall. At seven, a 1.8. And at six, about 2.5 $2.6 million in terms of a shortfall. Um, and
in looking at those um increases by 1%, you're looking at approximately $765,000 uh difference within those 1% changes. Uh, as was mentioned earlier, we looked at those increases uh based on the average home value of Ocean Township,
which again is uh just over a million dollars. I believe it's about a million8,000. Um, that was provided by the township uh for us uh to use. uh looking at an 8% increase. You're looking at an increase on that average home value of about $418
uh a year or $35 a month or about a $116 per day. Again, at 7 and at 6, you can see the changes. you're looking at going from 417 as the increase to about 380 or 343 and again going from about uh $116
to a$16 to 95. Um we also wanted to list out for you uh what that means in terms of of adjustments to the system. So what does a million dollar shortfall look like? Um, as was mentioned by some of the callers, uh, we've looked at different
programs that could be, uh, cut or reduced, uh, and the costs associated with those programs. Uh, we haven't decided those are the exact programs that we will be cutting, but those are, uh, certainly on the table. Uh, and we also looked at it just strictly from a
personnel standpoint. Uh so if you look at the cost of an employee um and again this is an estimate or an average uh because obviously we have uh salaries u at different levels based on positions but if you're looking at salary and
benefits of about $100,000 for a staff member uh at an 8% increase you're looking at losing about 11 positions at 7 uh1719 positions to make up that difference and at 6% losing about 26 six positions uh
to make up that shortfall. Um again, as was mentioned, um the governor pushed her address back by two weeks. Uh that pushed our tenative budget adoption back, but did not push our final adoption back in terms of
dates. >> Could you review the whole date thing again? >> Sure. Um, so I'll just review it based on the governor's request. Uh, as a first year governor, typically they allow a a two-eek push on their um presentation of
the state budget. So, our tenative budget has to be adopted on the 27th of March or by the 27th of March. We have a board meeting scheduled for the 24th. Once the board adopts that budget, we send it out to the county in draft form.
So, it goes out to the county in a draft format. They review it. They look at it. They ask questions. They make corrections or offer suggestions. Uh, and then ultimately send it back to us as an approved budget. We have to adopt and present to the
public the approved budget uh between April 24th and May 7th. So, that's the window we have to uh adopt uh the final budget. Uh we have a board meeting scheduled for April 28th. Uh so that's
within that period. Uh if I'm not mistaken, we have to present and make the budget public uh five days, four or five days, I think it's 5 days prior to the uh the meeting. So >> prior to the April meeting, >> prior to the April 28th meeting. So that
would be posted up on the website. It's published in the newspaper. Uh we'll probably publish in the newspaper. However, there was a change in the law on advertising for meetings and legal publications where you can now go straight to our website uh and it's
published electronically there. Um so that's a change the state has made and it just went into effect actually March 1st. So legal notices are required to be on our website but not necessarily published in in local newspapers anymore because a lot of that is now digital
circulation. Did the time frame I'm sorry, is the time frame still the same? Like a certain amount of days you still have to publish it? >> Yes. Yep. Um so again, the next meeting in March, we'll adopt our tenative and then on April 28th, we'll adopt the final budget
um uh for uh 2027 school year. I think what we're looking to the board for is guidance uh in terms of moving us forward uh getting that tenant of budget together and ready for preparation presentation uh to the board for adoption. >> Miss Welen, did you want to
>> if I could just add on to that just a few a few points. Um first of all, thank you very much Mr. Hastings for all your work in preparing this. Um some of those personnel cuts, the multilingual tutoring, we were able to move that into a grant. So the program itself is not
being cut but the expense was being cut from the budget. So I did just want to clarify um that there and um you know the the other programs that we have below the yellow line additional
potential cuts are there for discussion as they are not necessarily our proposal at this time. Um, I mean this board knows and and maybe the public is aware as well. For the last number of years, we
have had to make severe personnel cuts in all areas of our operation and we have done that sizable number of cuts year after year after year. I was hopeful that the cuts,
the hard decisions that we made in previous years would put us in a position now where we could start to grow in ways that our students need us to grow. Um, in ways that I thought we could improve our facilities, offer new
programming, uh, and we we do still do that. I don't want to say that we don't, but I was hopeful that we would be able to grow. It is absolutely not our desire at all to take away clubs or athletics from our students. The concern is is
that we have cut all capital requests. We are coming off of three years, three plus years of severe personnel cuts. It would be difficult to do another round of 25 35 45 personnel cuts. At some
point we won't be able to go that deep into our rosters. We will have to look at other programs and some of these are are the potential programs we would look at. Um I just want everyone to know that it
certainly is not the administration's position to take programming away from our students. We want to make it better. We want to make it stronger. We want to attract more students to our district. But we are faced with these numbers and we are trying to make the best decisions
that we can with the funding that is available. So >> members of the board, we're open for discussion now. Yes, Mrs. Dan. >> Um I'm sure I'll have more, but real quick just to make sure I understand the $47,000
of request, is that baked into the $95 million or is that in addition to that? The 407,000 is baked into the 95. >> It is. Okay. Thank you. And I just want to reiterate, I know, Miss Walden, you have been really
innovative and creative on budget cuts and this is very hard and we're going to have larger discussions, but I have faith in you and Mr. Hastings to not take programs away that our kids need and to still do the best that we can with what we're working with. Um, my
second question now that I was talking, Mr. Hastings, how confident or not your the estimated revenue could there possibly be a bigger light at the end of this tunnel than we think or are we pretty sure that this is going
to be close to our number? >> I would um being conservative say this will be close to our number. The state is often well the state regularly tells us that they've given us meaning local school districts the tools
to raise uh the funds that districts need. Plainly said they mean raise taxes raise taxes locally because the state is not going to give us more funding. >> Um so uh we're anticipating that flat funding. They've again said to us uh to
anticipate um funding to be driven uh by enrollment. So um again uh we did receive a minor increase last year, a small amount uh in terms of some of our special education funding. We also lost a little bit in a different category. So
again, it sorry that's a long way around the block to say we're expecting it to be close to this number. >> Thank you. >> Yes. Go ahead, Mrs. Thank you for putting this together. Uh, as somebody on a fixed income, this is
frightening for me to look at these numbers, but I also have been in this district long enough to know that Miss Weldon and and you, Mr. Hastings, will be able to find ways to move people into positions either through attrition or
through uh your creative means, and I really appreciate that. uh the health care program seems to be the biggest burden of all and I know we discussed shopping it out. Is that still a possibility? >> Yes. So, uh, about a year and a half
ago, we asked for our experience, which basically means, um, the insurance broker talks to Horizon in our case and says, uh, give us a ratio of what the district has paid in in terms of premiums and what costs have gone out in
terms of their services. Uh, anything below 100% is favorable. Typically, they want you to be around 90 to 95% to be attractive to other um providers. Uh at that time our experience was about 104%.
So that meant that uh they were paying out a little bit more than we were paying in. Uh we've asked for that experience again now about a year and a half later. Uh and they have 60 days to provide that. So we expect that any day now. Uh, and we'll talk to the broker
and again try to market our our um our district to other providers to see if if they can um again while providing uh the same coverage uh provided at a a lesser cost. >> Absolutely. >> Anything else, Mr.
>> Um I I did have one other thing. Thank you. Of course. >> And I would I'm sorry. I would also just for clarification and expectations um that would impact us probably in the following year's budget, >> not this budget. So they run typically January through December. We run July to
June. Uh we're approving a budget now for 27. So uh maybe the last half of 27 and to 28 we'd start to realize savings >> if we're going to be up another 30% next January, >> right? And where this helps us uh is
frustrating, but it helps us in terms of other districts we've talked to in that they haven't reduced the costs. What they've done is really reduce the increases. So where we're seeing 30%, some other districts are looking at 20 uh you know 22%.
>> Savings. I know that the governor gave uh her address and you're not very hopeful with uh extra funding, but the mental health aspect of it might be uh beneficial to us if we can restore some
of those programs that through grants or through money that disappeared after COVID. So, that might be a help to us as well. Um, again, anything you can do to keep the programs in the intermediate school, the
elementary school, uh, the personnel. I know they're just potential cuts, but looking at these numbers kind of frightening. That's all. >> Thank you, >> Mr. Schneider. I see you have your hand up in the waiting room. Trying to pay
attention to that as well. Mr. Schneider, I >> I appreciate that. And, uh, Mr. Mr. Hastings and Miss Weldon, I do want to thank you guys for the work you put in. I know it's never easy when we're talking about budgets and some of the restrictions at the state level is not a surprise, but it's kind of lending to the majority of the gap that we're
facing. And some of these my next two questions uh Mr. Hastings aren't meant to catch you off guard, but I it was meant to structure um and kind of couch some of the some of the issues we're facing because it's not a one-time uh one and done. So when you think about
the if we didn't and there's two ways to ask this question. So if we did nothing, what would our deficit look like in years two and three or if given the cuts and the tax increases that we made if how would the deficit look in year two
and three after that? because I the structural systematic problem that we have is not going away and that's an important uh distinction to make to the I guess to the public as well because um these cuts and and the tax discussions were having are very very uh impactful
to everybody and if we fix it this year like Kelly had said a couple years back excuse me Miss Weldon said a couple years back doesn't mean that we're not going to be in that same situation tomorrow. So I don't know if you have the answer to that deficit and how that would look in years two and three or if
we had done nothing and versus the tax cuts and then uh the tax I mean the tax increases and the and the proposed cuts that we have to make. >> So I would say uh in terms of deficits um
again the state is talking about changing the funding uh act in terms of how they fund schools. They've talked about um different approaches to special education and and how that's being funded and how the state is is um
reimbursing districts for special education special education costs. Um so uh we don't know what the state is going to do going forward in terms of trying to uh fix this funding problem. They've acknowledged the problem exists. Now the
next step is what do we do about that problem? Um at the same time costs are continuing to increase. So uh salary and benefits are third to 3/4 of the budget's cost. So uh you're looking at
obviously increases in salary from year to year uh for staff uh in accordance with the the CBAs and and various agreements. Uh we're looking as we've discussed here at significant increases in the health care costs. Um and those
again are are driving the the the expenditure side of our budget, you know, higher and higher. Um, so I don't see that, you know, we make um, you know, an 8% increase this year and
that's done and now going forward our problems are solved and and we're not going to be facing some sort of shortfall next year because uh, again uh, the medical and and health care system uh, costs are increasing. You know, we've talked about uh power and
utility costs and um the shortfall of of uh electric in particular based on the you know, creation of of the data farms and AI and things that are are competing for energy and uh the lack of some supply uh that's now being built out
hasn't caught up to demand yet. So, uh again, there's significant increases on the horizon uh that we don't have control over. Um and um you know we're waiting for for answers from the state in terms of making systemic changes uh
that'll help districts moving forward. Uh they just haven't been able to articulate in any sort of certainty what those are. >> I appreciate that. And then uh another question again to kind of couch some of the you know the issues that we face as a board but might be helpful for the public too is that in your estimate what
what percentage of our budget that we have uh that you would consider discretionary that we have abilities to make changes to versus what's fixed and kind of mandated from the state and it's and if you don't know the answer to that I don't mean to catch you off guard it just uh everything's kind
of moving quick u so we're we're trying to discuss that >> I could direct you back to present presentation maybe a year or two ago where we had a pie chart uh that that had our various expenditure categories in terms of um salaries, healthcare, um
out of district placement costs, um utilities, uh those sorts of things, um supplies and and and those uh other issues. and and you're you know getting to 90% or so being um fixed and and um
you know the remainder being discretionary. So it actually becomes a very small number that you're playing with in terms of trying to make up u cuts um in terms of of not impacting staff and and u you know important areas
like that or programs. >> Yeah. If you're thinking about the 6% tax and the $2.6 $6 million cut. You know, that would be roughly 25% of that that budget that's discretionary. So, 90%'s fixed, which is the the problem at hand. And I and I do I don't want to take everybody's time. I got other
questions, but I could always come back. But I did want to kind of ask a question to you related to the sale. that always comes up and I I have my own understanding of it. But if we did sell the land, there's restrictions on what we'd be able to do with those proceeds and if we have a structural
problem with our with our district, it's not necessarily going to fix any of the issues that we have. And and I didn't know if you were able to kind of speak in terms of how that a land sale in Ocean Township, you know, would be considered in terms of uh you know,
budget discussions. Um we've spoken to the county uh in terms of of how that impacts us and what that looks like. Uh and the short answer is it goes into the budget um as a one-time revenue uh and then flows through. So um
you know each year you're you're balancing your budget with revenues and expenditures and as I mentioned earlier any unspent funds from from this year's budget goes into next year's budget. So, you know, that money could flow forward. Um, but again, we haven't gotten to that
point yet. So, we haven't um, you know, gotten a hard and fast answer in terms of it. We could defer any of that revenue or set it aside in any particular kind of account. U, you know, obviously we could put it into our reserve accounts. Uh, but again, um,
once you start putting it into reserve accounts, it's now linked to what, you know, capital would be. Obviously, you're only taking things out from capital maintenance. you know, they all have different requirements. So, >> yeah. And in my opinion, it doesn't solve the problems uh for ocean. It just
there's other restrictions and different things in terms of whether you have to use it for capital versus, you know, operating expenses, but it's it's not uh it's an option, but it's not it's not the fail safe to kind of fix everything that we have. That's that would be my interpretation of it. Just to add to
that, some of that money would would be needed to relocate our maintenance and facilities department. Um, offices would be much easier, I think, to to manage. Not not free, but easier than than maintenance and grounds and an appropriate facility for that department
to function well for our district. So, that would have to come off of some of the proceeds from the sale first. >> Absolutely. >> To reserves as well. Are you finished at this point? >> I am. Thank you guys.
>> Yeah. Um, I just want to say, you know, this is for as long as I've been sitting here, which is a while. Every year we say I I I feel like I'm going to say that I I'm going to sound a little bit like Mr. McCarthy here, but every year we say that the state is looking to fix
the problem. They've been looking to fix the problem for the 12 years I've been here plus the years of the people before me. And um you know I I feel as though the 2% cap to raise the bud budget to that was the intention of what it was
put in place years ago for has always been a workaround that gets put on the back of of the school boards and the taxpayers. So last year I I might be getting my years wrong. One year it was for um special education. One year it was mental health, one year it was, you
know, for, you know, it's it's been many many things throughout the years. It seems to be whatever the rising cost is of the year for the majority of the state seems to be where they say, "Oh, you can you can magically raise your budget another 6% without any problem and without, you know, anything." And I
I know from the years we've done it, it's not been something that's been an easy decision to make. And it gets harder and harder and the percentage that they say we can use gets higher and higher. So when you're saying I think last year and again my numbers won't be right cuz I'm not looking at them but last year I think we were able to raise
it like 4% or whatever it was and and it was a very long like hard discussion to sit here and have right and now we're talking about a 6% that we can go up and it's a healthcare waiver and and so it's like you know everybody's healthc care's you know healthc care around all of us is going up. My one question about that
healthcare waiver is whether we take it or we don't take it, does it raise our staff's health care costs? Like if like if we don't take any part of this waiver, is our staff's healthare I know we're I mean we're bud we're in a
contract so I don't know if that happens but it's just a sidebar kind of question. Um but it's it it it falls on us. It's awful. None of us want to raise
anybody's taxes. Um, to say any of this has been done behind closed doors if there was a problem with the meeting last week. I was never made aware of it. Um, and I'm not sure who here knew or didn't know. And I can't imagine that if we did know that nobody worked to try and fix it during a meeting or not last
week, whenever our meeting was on the budget. Um, it's a the reality is sitting here in front of us. It's again not something any of us want to do. It's hard to even say to you whether I want you to go six, seven or
eight. Um when you look at it in terms of of dollar amount versus in terms of positions and in terms of cuts of what are going to come if I say to you I want you only to go to 6%. Which is even high. Um, but then looking at 29, 29
staff over 11. And I know we say positions and I know we say 29 and 11 is not people necessarily. It may not be 11 people. It will probably still be six or seven where years before it's been one or two. If we get to 29, there's no way we're not going to be in double digit staff
members that are being cut throughout the district. And when you start cutting staff and you start cutting programs, you start cutting problem. you start creating problems in in our schools. Um, you know, I'm interested to see some of
the points that were brought up tonight about to funding. Um, I do think that to you know, while while Mr. Motto did an an amazing and I don't know, you know, things get put down and thing and you got different kinds of of staff at different buildings and and different
things, but um, you know, Mr. motto made a great presentation that we all walked out of here feeling very good about the future of of that school. And to Mr. Shutman's point, a lot of that was about having every single teacher, you know,
teach reading or teach, you know, different subjects that they maybe don't teach. You know, maybe a art teacher is teaching a reading lesson. you know, we we did all of that and and we all felt really good about that and the cohesiveness that's been happening over there to try and change different things
that we're seeing shortcomings on to say now, okay, now we have to cut everything and start Mr. You did an awesome job, but next year you're not going to be able to do it because we can't do that. And the that you talk about mental health and we've gone so far into mental
health and to say we're going to save I don't know what the number would be. Let's say we're going to save, you know, 10 cents a day. And I don't take this lightly, or 20 cents, 21 cents a day. We're going to save if we go from 8% to 6%. 21 cents in in a day or 100, not
even $100 in a year. To say, let's not have any athletics or cut some of them for sixth and seventh graders. It already stinks being over at the middle school when you're a fifth grader because it's a tease, right? like sixth and seventh gets to start sports but fifth grade doesn't because you're kind
of in you're still an elementary student so you don't really get it. You know to say to cut those things that really do affect many kids mental health that all in that age all you can wait to do is get outside at the end of the day with your friends to do things you love or get inside. And I will say I I attended
the play this year and I I last week and I said I left saying to my son I feel like that was one of the best middle school plays I've seen. You know, they they're all great, but this one was the talent at this play was incred. I just got the chills thinking about it. Was
incredible. And that's a testament to our staff and to our students over there. And, you know, again, I'm not one that that loves an 8%. I've never been that high in anything, you know, in in this. That doesn't sound right, but I've never been high in a budget of 8% and
even been contemplating it. You know, we've talked about this building and as Miss Weldon said, let's say we make $8 million, we're going to have to do two or three million to put our maintenance staff somewhere and then we have to put other people somewhere and it'll last what six How fast does $6 million go? I
mean, just in our capital improvements of what we saw last week, $6 million would be done in a year and an asset's gone that maybe we could do something else here with, which hopefully is being, you know, and we've talked about and hopefully things will will move a little bit, but you know,
it's it's not a place I know anyone here wants to be. And, you know, we can say we fault the state. We can say we fault everything that they do. They're going to keep doing it. Next year is going to be something different. You know, I would love to say things where we could,
you know, find revenue, but revenue has costs, too. You know, we we've, you know, did bus did buses get cut, >> by the way? I don't see buses on here. >> No, >> they're not cut. >> They were cut from where we started, though, correct? Didn't we start asking for more buses and then we cut them
down? >> No, we need the buses. >> Yeah, but are they buses are going to >> Are they on this page or no? >> No. No. >> Okay. >> No. >> All right. So, you know, sorry, Mr. McCarthy, but um you're done. >> No, I am pretty much done. But, you know, there's there's places where you almost think and yes, we do share
services, but on a day that, you know, there's things that sometimes we used to share, like we used to have some people from town be able to come help with our, you know, snow removal. Well, we know last this last month nobody could help with anybody cuz we could nobody could bet get their you know, there's things
that that look, you know, we always say we got to try and do more shared services. But I think that the the thought of going in as a state and I think there was an article this week about how they're trying to even say let every district in the state get together and try and get healthcare you know might be you know the way which I know you're looking at and I trust that
you're looking at and I trust that neither one of you would come here with these kind of cut asking this board to make these kind of cuts I mean these or raise it this high if it wasn't something that you truly thought we needed and that's the only thing that
that stops Perhaps my major pause on an 8% race is that I know that it's carefully looked at and that, you know, 11 11 positions may end up being more than two people like we're used to.
That's all I have. Mr. McCarthy, >> very well said, MCGover. Appreciate that greatly. Um, I think it's insane to to look at a number an 8.17% increase and still have to cut 11 positions in a district. I think that's
crazy. I think that Mrs. Welden said to us tonight um you know that she was hopeful we wouldn't be in this position. But this board has been saying for years now that that it's going to get worse, right? At least I know I have. I've been saying it for years now. And I've I've also been
saying no help is coming. Right? That's the other thing I've been saying. We are the captain of this plane. Right? We can't blame the co-pilot. We can't blame the stewardist. We need to land the plane safely. Right? That's our job. Every year we have to figure that out. It falls on us. Um and so it's extremely difficult thing to to to deal with. And
and it's very easy, in my opinion, extremely easy to show up at this time of year, uh, chastise us, tell us what we should be doing differently, point poke holes in in what the solutions are that we're trying to come to. And that's okay. It's a burden of of the leadership
positions that we've all fallen into. I understand it. It's going to happen every year. Uh, I I welcome it. And because sometimes some good ideas do come out. Uh, and I appreciate that. Um, I will say and I think I'm if you're
going to vote for a person on this board most likely to cry government overreach, it's probably going to be me, right? I'd like to not see the government do too much. Like to not see them be crazy uh and overstep their power and things like that. I'm I'm a firm believer in that as a as a phil philosopher. Uh but that
said, as a student of history and I've had this discussion with Mr. Dolan, some of the greatest things in history that have ever happened, right? The adoption of our Constitution, um the the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, all of these things have been massive federal
overreach, right? They were at the time, arguably the public did not agree with those ideas and the federal government made a massive overreach and did it anyway because it was what the people needed. So, I'm I'm getting on my soap box a little bit here to say that we need the state, right? If you can poke
holes in our budget, you can poke holes in what we do. Um, and and it's very easy to do. I guarantee that if you looked with a with a a a magnifying glass or even not even a magnifying glass, if you just looked with plain eyes, you could find a lot more orders
of magnitude improvements at the state level, the budget. Right? And so, what am I getting at? What I'm getting at is we need the state to make a decision here, right? We need them greatly to do so and not hide behind we're putting a bill forward, but it's got to be
approved by home rule. And for the for the layman who doesn't understand, because I didn't understand what this meant, home rule means that the town has to actually approve consolidation, right? And I say all this knowing that at some point we may get told to consolidate with districts and I may not like that solution. But the unfortunate
problem is is what's going on right now in this state. The salaries that are going out in certain areas, the size of districts is not working. Am I saying that we need to be like a state like Virginia where they have massive regional districts? No. But I'm saying that there's room for improvement.
I could go on forever about that. and this board and previous boards have done as much as they could to try to urge Trenton to do more to no success. So, it's it's failed on us. So, the the question that I ask after I've made all these comments and I would love to
propose more solutions, but the question I ask is Mr. Dolan, what do you need from this board to the to help the administration move forward? I think our administration needs direction from the board on for their preparation and moving forward, right? Where when you
see all of this, do you see it? And I'm going to tag on to what you just talked about. Um because I think things become forgotten sometimes. Um we've had great presentations, most recently by Mr. Amato, but by other departments and other schools this year.
Those presentations helped to communicate the vision that our superintendent and her team are trying to move forward for our district um despite constraints. So I think we need to celebrate those right because despite all the
constraints we still have visions moving forward that are cohesive that maybe not everyone sees in the public and they miss some of them but a lot of good information is coming out and a lot of progress. Um, governor said today, one of the
lines that was brought up was she's hoping to work with the legislature on solutions for some of these things. Um, Mrs. Gilman gave a report at our last board meeting as and I also tag teamamed it. I attended the New Jersey
School Boards Association meeting with our legislators and the idea of regionalization came up and it was put out there as you know it would be mandatory but you know it was said very clearly that was to get the discussion going but it would only be >> it would only be by vote. The state
would not mandate that. >> So that was just to get the discussion going. Special education costs were brought up because historically we're not being funded at the rates that it was intended many years ago or those extra extraordinary costs for special
education. Shared services again was also brought up and we do have some shared services. Um so all of that was brought up. I think you know we've done our this board members of this board have met with the legislators to try to push the issues and hold their feet to
the to the fire and get answers. I reflected on that this week and also remembered that those are two legislators and there's the whole state and everyone is, you know, competing against those interests. So that's that's very limiting and and it's frustrating. It's very frustrating. I
think the one-time hits we need to be careful about, right? Like if we had an infusion of cash that does not go to the base of our budget, it's cash that you would use for other things, but it does not raise the base of our budget. And then in another year, if your base is not raised, right, if your base is not
raised, then the next year your increase is going to be even bigger. Um, so those are, you know, they're challenging things. They're very challenging things. Um, and you know, and I I heard the comments about middle school. Most many of you know, the longest time in my
career was as a middle school administrator. my my master's degree research was actually on co-curricular activities and the positive impact it has on student learning. Um so I am a firm believer that um uh you know middle school education is where children um
delve into things and try to find their passions. And so the idea of removing those would you know pulls at my heartstrings and again it goes against everything that I know I worked for years to do. Um, but there's been long conversations with
Miss Weldon, with Mr. Hastings. They need to know the appetite of this board so that they can continue to prepare. They can't leave here with uncertainty today as to what the board will or will not support because then they're going to be under the gun to have to figure
out 50 different solutions instead of maybe targeted solutions or vice versa. So, we need to be clear with them on on, you know, where we are, um, what our thoughts are, recognizing that we will get information from the
state this week that we know that they'll communicate. They they're very good at that. Um, and if there's, listen, if there's a a Hail Mary >> Yeah. >> You know, but we've had that before, right? We prepared a whole budget a few
years ago and what happened after we prepared the budget? they came back and said, "Go back and adjust everything you did." Right? So, um I I think that um we need to give them some level of certainty
so that we can move forward so that they can continue to drive the vision. And the conflict I hear in our community is we want this, we want to see this grow, we want to see the continued growth in this area and all of this, but there's a cost and that's really hard
and that's very difficult for our community um and all the communities dealing with it because this this medical insurance issue is hitting not just public schools but municipalities. It's it's hitting everyone that's in the state health benefits program. It's
hitting even those I happen to have worked in situations where districts left and went to a private self-insured program and after about six or seven years of being in the self-insured program the experience rate guess what it was cheaper to go back into state
health benefits despite the inc increases of state health benefits so I myself have been under both sets of insurance and you got the benefit in the beginning but it only lasted a short time. Um, I know retirement was mentioned. You
have to be very careful with offering those retirement packages because those are actually financed. They are financed through the pension system if I'm recalling correctly. Right, Mr. Hastings? >> You need approval from the state >> and you need approval from the state and there's a cost to it because you have to finance the buyouts to people. So, there
is a cost to that. It's not just that people retire and now you have le lower paid employees, you know. So, I know I worked in a district years ago that did that and then made realized the recurring costs annually for the money that they borrowed from the state
pension system to pay those people to retire. Okay. So, lots of great ideas and yes, we're looking at but the numbers have to work and right now this is where we are. So, we need to know from the board what
your feelings are on on what you're seeing here tonight. >> Like how? Yes, Mr. McCarthy. >> I mean, my my I asked this I understand I don't win a lot of friends this way, but I need to ask this question because I think that the board needs to answer
it, you know, for ourselves, which is, you know, our largest cost bucket as a district, right? And this is this is the coldest comment to make and it's separate of all the people that we need to potentially put their salaries in in harm's way. And I hate to even think
that way, but the the the largest cost bucket that we have is the salaries of our staff, right? And if we I do not agree with a one-time sale. You don't sell your car just to pay your mortgage payment for one month, right? You need to find a way to reduce your costs on a
monthly to annual basis so that you can write the ship and and standardize things. And the question I ask and I don't know if there's going to be a straightforward answer to this, right? And that the board has been doing the administration has been doing everything they can to try to figure this out, but the question is why
why don't we try to cut positions in the hopes of writing the ship, right? And take the massive cut so that we can we can get back to a level basis. And I asked that in the hopes that the that the the board is potentially the board, I'm sorry, I keep using the wrong term,
that the administration is going to potentially tell me that that is going to look like a district that is almost unrunnable or that, you know, that's going to mean that that our that our that we really can't make that choice is is kind of what I'm under the impression otherwise the district would have
proposed that to us, I guess, is what I'm teeing this up for. >> You want to answer that? I I'll just you know I will comment on it. I think that we get to a number of positions that we may not be able to cut. Our class sizes
will go up. We'll we'll we'll get to the first few positions. We have retirements and you know we always try and prioritize saving people while cutting positions and we will do that. We will do what we always do, but I believe we will get to a number that is not high
enough and we will have no more seats in a classroom, no more room and programs will then start to be cut. Services um some of the things listed here, some other things may be uh you know
counseling supports at every level that may have to be decreased. um you know other things like that that we would have to scale back and and we the point being is there may not be we may not be able to meet the gap with
positions alone the higher the number we go dam you had your hand up did you >> not ready yet okay >> yeah um Brady so I was just thinking
I grew up in Massachusetts and I did most of my education in New York. New Jersey is where I done most of my teaching, but I got started teaching in New York. I have a lot of friends and family member who are still teachers in Massachusetts. And most of my good teacher friends that I learned how to
become a teacher with are in New York. This is not uncommon to all of those places. And it's really unfortunate and education is underfunded. kind of like what you're saying, we need help from the state. But I also noticed that out of Massachusetts, New York, and New
Jersey, the three places where I got my education and where I learned to be an educator, are some of the three best states for education. And it's a really hard position to be in because we have high expectations
and myself was raised with high expectations and I have high expectations for my students. And in order to do that, you need to make tough decisions. And I think that, you know, we think that this, and I know that, you know, there's the whole thing, you know, we think local, but we have to think
this is not a an only an ocean township problem. This is New Jersey. This is systemic. It's not just what we are facing. And I think kind of looking at these positions and 11 positions, 19 positions, 26 positions with sizable tax
increases is scary. But kind of going off of what Miss Weldon was saying, 26 positions to 11 positions, we're going to be looking at things like mental health and extracurriculars and all of the stuff that's comes outside of
our classroom, outside of just the teaching dayto-day. And that stuff is often times just as or if not more important to some of our students. And I think we just have to really think what's going to affect us the most in the future. and what's we don't want to
cut off our nose to spite our face type of thing. And I think if we do look at what other states are doing or going through and I talked to friends who teach in Massachusetts and in New York and it's expensive, it's expensive and but if you look at the quality that we
can provide, I think we have to also take that into consideration with all of these decisions that we make. We are a great school district. We're a great state and we consistently rank pretty well and I think that we have to do what
we have to do for our students and for the community as well. But just I had one question about the potential cuts that you have up there. Could you just explain what a 10% supply cut is? Is that just cutting? What is that? >> God,
>> it's looking at all the supply accounts. >> Just exactly what it sounds like. >> Yes. >> Yeah. Okay. That's what I thought. I just wanted to make sure I understood. >> Keeping in mind that in an earlier evening in this season, we talked about that we asked all administrators to present a zero budget, no increases to
what they have been doing. So, and and and really asked them to make cuts where they could and and many of them did. Uh so, this would be an even deeper cut. >> And then when you say summer school for elementary and intermediate, would that be for our special education students? Because a lot of those summer schools
were IEP mandated. These are things that we think benefit our students. We're not mandated to provide. >> Okay, great. >> But we do feel it's helpful. Um, and if you see there that we've added, we I wouldn't I wouldn't want to cut that completely. I would want to reserve some
for after school tutoring. Um, you know, the bud the governor did mention high impact tutoring funding. We have not been eligible for it in the there have been other cohorts. Uh we were eligible for it the first time, but there have been more iterations of that and we have
not been eligible for that funding since. Um my hope is that with more funding going to it, we could be eligible for that. So we could cut certain things from our budget and pay for them with grant funding, but we don't know that yet. We don't know if we're going to be eligible for that
funding. And for I believe two cohorts after ours, we have not been el I do know we have not been eligible. So, um, that's why that's there as a potential grant-f funded program instead of we could move some things to afterchool
tutoring instead of summer support and maybe we'll have grant funds at that point to offset some of this >> and and and this takes away too I mean we are hoping to grow we are hoping you know the intermediate school was at a
place over the last four or five years where they were overstaffed and we did when we had to make these tough decisions. We did take staff from the secondary level, high school and middle school. 5 years before that, we were reducing some positions at the
elementary. As the students elevated through the grades, the cuts did come from the intermediate school. We do want to in implement a new schedule. We do want to infuse all of the things that the intermediate school needs. You saw Mr. Amato's presentation where we are very
focused on job embedded professional development and crosscurricular connections where all inclusion the entire school is working collaboratively to lift all students. Um that is our primary focus in that school and that
you see additional positions here. This was an opportunity for us to grow as a district, right? That was the the request to bring in more content, teachers, math, science, social studies, English to support what our students need at that level. So obviously cuts
were, you know, those were asks, those would obviously be cut. But that's an example of an opportunity that we are I had hoped we would have to grow. And now, not only are we not growing, we are. we're going deeper. Um, and I
realize we have to do that. I I it is not lost on us that these increases are numbers that towns have have until recently never discussed. Never discussed. There has always been a 2% cap and more or less that was it. But
the state knows that a 2% cap for a school district that is faced with 30% increases in utilities and health care and the cost of salaries to pay quality educators to do wonderful work for our
students is more than 2%. So the state has created these avenues to go beyond the 2% cap without having to lift the 2% cap. That is the situation that we're in. And and we know we know that these
raises, these tax increases are are numbers that we've never spoken about. I think someone said it to begin with. You know, it's it's are you out of your minds? We are trying to grow this district. We are trying to sustain the excellence
that is Ocean Township School District while faced with these numbers. And have will we continue to make tough cuts? Do we continue to make fiscally responsible decisions every chance we get? Every time someone leaves midy year and we
decide, can we function without that role? Can we make that cut so that we won't have to cut something else later? We go through that every single time. These difficult discussions and these numbers, these raises are not lost on
us. this is presented here so everyone has a full picture of what this means. Um, and I think it's important to know that if what as we've talked about year after year, the base is important and what you don't do to the base, you will be in a
even tougher spot in future years. And it gets to a point where you've cut everything you can cut, everything that is beneficial but not required for student development, for child development, and
you still don't have enough money to to fund the exactly what you must. And that's when you see districts go into deficits and they can't balance their budgets. That is what comes. Um and we work very very hard to keep Ocean
Township fiscally responsible and in a good financial position with the help of the board over the last few years in in making those decisions to fund you know what's necessary. We understand that this is a very difficult
decision. We do >> Mrs. Dan. >> Um thank you Mrs. Welen for all that and just for everyone for their discussions. Um, I think the main question is is what is our temperature right on where we're feeling on this? And um, I've had this conversation with Mr. Dalton earlier and
not to quote an old board member, but on my first year on the board, we had that turnaround where we got to change the budget and all of that. And at first, I was against it cuz it kind of felt like why are you just giving us this now? And it just didn't feel right at first. And
uh, Mr. Weinstein, you know, he was talking and he said, "It's my fiduciary duty to do what's right for the kids at this school." And even though that tax rate increase is insane and does not feel right, I'm going to speak for myself, but it is my fiduciary duty to
look out what's best for our students here. And right now, and trusting Mrs. Welden and Mr. Hastings knowing that they are being responsible. I'm going to just say that I would be for going as high as we needed to go as
what Mrs. Welen has suggested so our cuts can be as little as possible. >> Mr. McCarthy, >> how high could we could we go? Like is 80.17 as absolute high as we could go as a district? That's it. It's the top.
>> So I want to be clear, Mr. Hastings. That's the 2% and the healthcare waiver. >> Correct. >> Okay. So, no, there's no other >> there's no other pools. >> There's no other pools. It's the 2% and the healthcare waiver. >> Okay. Mr. Brady, >> I was just thinking kind of going off of
what Mrs. Dan was saying that, you know, I mean, my son is in first grade. I'm here in this district. I'm here for the long haul. And I'm not in a million-doll house. I mean, we're two teachers in our house who live there. And I feel I would
rather my child, the children of this town, to not be in classrooms with 25, 26, 27 kids without a counselor or without after school activities simply because I didn't want to add to
my mortgage. And that's a privileged statement to make. I understand that. And but I think we have to also think how this is going to affect ourselves for the future for I mean I I of course it comes back to your own kids. We're here for our own kids. Not even just the
kids that live in our house, but the kids in our community. And I mean these tax increases are going to affect each and every one of us sitting at the table as well. So we're not blind to that either. But I think I don't want to see our students have 30
kids in a class. And I've taught classes with 30 kids in it. And it's it's difficult. And I think if we have to do what we have to do in order to really try to avoid that, we have to do everything we can. >> Mr. Schneider, I want to be clear, your hand is still showing up. I wasn't sure
if that was from before or if that's new. >> It was a new virtual hand. Um, first I just want to kind of mention the fact that we're all we all are all in this together, whether on the board or, you know, work for the district and
doing great things with the with all the kids that are in in uh in schools uh as well as our administration, but we need help with the community. I mean, there's a town up north, I'm not going to mention its name, but they get 35,000 per kid in school funding. There's plenty of money to go around. We're we're getting a what's equates to about
a,000 bucks per kid. um whether that's right, wrong, or indifferent. And you heard Mr. Hastings earlier, 90% of our school need is fixed. So what I'd like to propose, and I and I'm only one of nine, so I'm not trying to create extra work, but I I can't think in a vacuum.
Um I I would prefer to have a a two to threeyear really ideally a fiveyear look to see how these how we could create a core structure that makes sense for our district. understanding where the enrollment is, understanding what we, you know, make estimates around the funding, um, looking at estimates around
the healthcare and benefit increases that we think and trying to manage that against classroom sizes so we could try to make an informed structural decision. I think Mr. McCarthy mentioned that earlier, understanding what what's at risk when if we decided to do that today. So, um, time's not on our side,
but looking at this and thinking, you know, it's great to put this put a tax increase out there, but we'll be right back at the at the public next year with the same problems and and same issues. So, I'd like to think about looking at a model that includes the idea of what
what we could do with the property or not just just to kind of put it in, put it out to kind of put put forth the best effort and kind of create a a more fiduciary, you know, response to the to our our uh our needs here as a board member to make to make a decision. So,
that's that's where I stand. >> Thank you. Any other board members? Yes, ma'am. >> If you're taking our temperature, I'm going to concur with Stan and Mr. Brady in their desire for this district to
remain strong and as excellent as it has been for all the years that I have been here on the board and in the classroom. Uh I I've seen many changes over the years, but the one thing that remains is
the desire for the best possible school system for people who live in this town. And as Mr. Brady knows and and anybody else who's been in the classroom, yourself included, Mr. Dalton, it comes at a cost. Uh, I taught for one year in
South Carolina in a middle school and they uh had very little money and my class size was 30 and uh it was chaotic. Uh students had no accountability. If they came to school, they came to
school. if they didn't, they were perhaps working on the farm with their uh with their family and trying to teach them to read. Uh many of them reading on a third grade level was the most
challenging year in in my life. So I see what money can buy in a classroom, in a school district and uh right now we have an excellent system because of the hard work of
boards and administrators and uh I think that Miss Weldon's vision for the future, the vision that you spoke about is going to require us to do some hard things and if that includes taking the waiver
and going with the 2% increase. I know that that number 11 is not a fix. And I know that uh grant money could possibly be coming. I know we could get a pleasant surprise on Thursday afternoon and find out we're getting a little bit
more than uh we bargained for. I I just I'm trying to be hopeful. I didn't come away from that legislative meeting too hopeful, but I did feel that they heard everybody that was funneling into them.
And that's one little area, one little legislative district. So, as Mr. Brady said, it's it's not even that. It's New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, uh, with all great school systems, Massachusetts
included. You pay for what you get. Mr. McCarthy, your hand up. >> Yeah, I'm always going to bet on our Spartans. I'm always going to give them the most that I can. I just want to say that if on Thursday or or whenever the governor comes to terms with what
they're going to do at the state level, if we do get another situation that we had in the past where there's a goaround and and we get told that we can go well, let me let me say both sides of this. We get told that there's a lot more coming.
I will not support additional tax increase if it's given to us. Right? So, I just want to be clear on that with the board. I'm not going back on this again. Right? So, it's a year it passed. We were given the opportunity to increase our position from the governor
and I agreed to it. I will not do that again. I don't agree with it. So, I'm going to say that now. It's on the record. I will not do it. If it does, I ask that as much of it that can be given back to the taxpayer is um as possible
because I think this is crazy. But I'm going to support a full eight I can't believe I'm saying I'm going to support a full 8.17% increase for this district because I think this district needs it. The state is giving me the power to do so. the the
people of this town have every right to the people of this town have every right to answer me at election time if they would like to. Just so we're clear, they can do that. Um, but I I would encourage you all to go back to your state
legislatures and to tell them that what they are doing with our schools in this state is completely unacceptable. And I hope you got that all on camera. Every single word of it. every single word. I don't know if we have a policy about that, but
>> that said, I hope you got it all on camera. So, I will support that. >> Thank you. >> Mr. Schneider, is your hand up again? >> It is. I just wanted to mention that um cuz I I understand we're talking with K about kids and and we talk about the the
the best school districts, but like if we get the Are we saying that if we have an 8% increase, we're going to have the best school district in the state or is there still more work to do and what is that what does that core structure look like for us in terms of investments that we would make in in
order to make sure that we have a thriving school district that that kind of meets those standards? So, I don't know the answer to that, but what was, you know, some of the comments earlier was like, hey, you know, I want to make sure we have the best and the best and that's what we want to continue to do. But if if the measures are there to kind
of support that and we're saying at 8% we're going to take that and, you know, put that towards the taxpayers, we're going to come out of that with the best school district. That would be a strong statement. Um for me again I just want to you know my point is I can't make a decision in like this without looking at
how that how the impact is of these dis discussions are going to have on our on our next you know two to three years. So for instance if we had an 8% with a million dollar cuts and we're making 11 position changes you know we're going to be right back at the you know next year knocking on the door to taxpayers for
additional funding that you know we're just ill illf funded and and ill equipped to kind of handle. So, I'd rather prepare for the discussions and the narratives in a in a in a full, you know, multi-year view versus just trying
to look at it as like feels good. Let's try to do the right thing, but it's really is it really the right thing to do? >> Thank you. >> Yes. >> Um, I was just going to say that and and everyone in knows that I I bleed Ocean
and I think Ocean is the greatest place in the world. I will say that we don't have the best schools and we know that and we've seen that. We've seen that when we've we we've been we've had um presentations but I will also say that in the last year especially I have seen
such a tide and such a turn in what we have been going to to get to where we think we should be. Right? We there has never been a moment in this room or that I can remember where Miss Weldon when she was in her prior position or when
Dr. Morgan is in her position now that they have come in here and said our test scores are amazing. We're awesome and we don't have to do any we have nothing to improve on. We have always found places to improve. I think there's a big tide that's that's turning at this point. There are things that need to be
implemented that yes, as Miss Walden said, there are positions that may not get filled because we're going to have to cut them anyway, even at the 8.17 that we are saying they will not necessarily be implemented. It's not that they're not going to be implemented. They're not going to be implemented maybe to the
level that we wish we could implement them, right? We're going to still the the world like as as Miss Weldon said, the the commonality of the staff all working together in it for a common goal to get all of our Spartans to get to a a
better place is going to happen. It may look different, but is going to happen. I will support the crazy number because I think that to get to the get keep elevating us and maybe try and get a better schedule at the middle school as we've talked about
and try and get things done that we've identified as problems that we're trying to get to a better spot are not going to happen if we go to 2% 6% 7% even 8% to some degree. So, as we said, as I said,
I love this district. I love so much about this district and I know, but I I will I will stop at saying that we're perfect and that we're, you know, we're the greatest place in the world. There are there are things to happen, but we have we have very strong leadership, not
just and we have a very strong mentor that is her expectations are higher than any of us could ever imagine in this room. Like I I can't even imagine some of her expectations. There's many things that happen that we don't even know about because it's not our day-to-day responsibility to know, but we hear
about outside in the world of awesome things happening here. And I, you know, as as hurtful as 8% is, it's something that is going to try and write things to a point
that we feel like your children that are all very young are going to have a very different feel. You look at something on here like a a the I can't remember the Spartan Miss Weldon, please tell me the name. >> Legacy. >> Thank you. The Spartan legacy
coordinator. and you look at something and I can tell you as a as a a parent of a graduated but in our in our um extended Spartans program and a senior in high school that the difference in the school spirit and everything this
year at the high school and and a little bit towards the end of last year versus when he came in as a freshman is very different. And I can tell you again as someone whose child plays three sports and one of them was very successful over
the winter had a gym packed that has not been packed in many years. And yes, you get packed gyms when you have good teams and you get packed gyms whenever. But you have kids that bought in. And you have a staff member, just for an example, who happens to be filling that role that took time after school to to
get students together to work on chance during a basketball game to make the feeling in a gym be amazing. And those are the kinds of things that would not have happened if Miss Weldon weren't here and could possibly be cut. But it's also in a in a situation where you may
say, "Who needs a Spartan legacy coordinator?" Well, being in the high school in in the situation where I've seen it and all of those videos that have gone out to say, "Are you ready to be a Spartan has put a life in this district that has is different than it's been in in in years in previous years."
So that was a very roundabout way of saying I support what our administration that is really trying to s sustain a district also retain students to get them excited about where they go to school and what they do and what is
available to them you know in a in a really crappy system that the state has given us. >> Sorry >> that's okay. >> Get passionate about my bread students. So, I appreciate the thought and
reflection that everyone has put into this and I want to be clear and and I have to keep providing the reminders because sometimes as board members we forget all the presentations we've had this year. We talked about the growth of Ocean Township Elementary School because
of very specific professional development and instructional strategies put in place. We've talked about our high school and the sense of belonging that has been created. We had Mr. Rao present. We had our special services folks present. We've heard the vision.
And I don't want us to ever forget that that vision continues to be communicated to us. And those are all those are all dollars and hours and professionals working on that day in day out. It is not just that presentation. It's
happening day in and day out. So it's not a static thing. They're all reflective practitioners. And the challenge and I hear Mr. Schneider talking about the multi-year thing and the challenge we've had is our state and some things they've had there. It came up and and I appreciate uh Mr. Brady
bringing up I read an article actually early this uh late last week. Um all of the school districts in Connecticut that gathered together and it actually wasn't the school districts. It was the mayors of the towns gathering together to say something else needs to be done about school funding all around the New Haven
area and all the suburban districts because they can't sustain it. And I it attached to me because I have relatives in that area. Um so this is happening in a variety of places. And for me I I have to look at this and say I need to
support it for for two experience issues. I was a middle school principal in a district that decided to go multiple years with a 0% increase. In October when I went to New Jersey school boards, I met with four of the
board members and their superintendent as they did an amazing presentation on how it's now taken them five years to build any sense of cohesiveness and how 20 years after going with multiple years at a 0% increase, they
are still behind the eightball because of that cumulative effect of multiple years of zero. When I left there as principal, middle school parents had to write a check for every after school activity.
Now for the kids on free and reduced lunch. How does that happen? It was heartbreaking. Shouldn't have happened. Fast forward. Some of you know I was superintendent in in an S2 district.
When I left that district, first grade classrooms had 33 kids in some of those classrooms. First grade teachers teaching early literacy with 33 children in a classroom. It was not a desire of the district. It was not a desire of the board. It was not a desire of the
administration. It was circumstances with the state funding formula. I don't want to see that for Ocean. I trust the judgment and the expertise that continues to be brought forward to
us, presented to us, and when we ask the questions, if we call the superintendent, if we inquire, we get the responses, we get the answer. But we have to remember all of those presentations we keep seeing are the answers to a lot of what we're asking.
We want to see these programs, but if the money is not there, then we have to be careful what we ask for. What's the old saying? You can't ask for blood from a stone, right? We can't ask for everything. I'm not saying people won't still work hard. I'm not saying
that people won't still bring their their agame, but when I now have to in a writing conference confer with six more kids or eight more kids, when I need to provide support in a math classroom and it's six more kids, eight
more kids, 10 more kids, the face-to-face contact, we do this as teachers. I was just guest reader in three classrooms in my former job. The face-to-face contact with children is one of the most important things we can offer them as a teacher, as a coach, as
a principal. And when we don't have that, then asking us to get greater, asking us to do more, when that kid doesn't feel they have a connection with the educator sitting in front of them, because we
know in order for them to learn, they have to have the connection. So, I I I this is pulling at my heartstrings and I know people comment about other people's lives and things like that, but I'm now a retiree and so I'm thinking about the
next few years and I have family members that I have to attend to and actually support financially right now. So, I understand the limits despite maybe, you know, it may appear differently. You know, it's hard,
but we need to see this district continue with the greatness that we are continuing that we've been seeing. And when I looked at kids playing on my street today, as I pulled out, when I look at over 150 trick-or-treaters on my street, I have to face them.
So, that's where I am. Anyone else from board? >> Okay, administration, we're good. Thank you. >> Okay. Instruction, education, and student activities. Mrs. Dam. >> Sorry, I'm just
>> I know we're loading. >> Move to approve items 91 through 910. >> Thank you. >> Second, please. >> Just multiple seconds. >> I have a comment if I can. Um, I just wanted to comment on how awesome it is
that we are training so many of our staff members in CPR. Um, it's really been something that I think we've thought about and haven't done. And I just think that it's a really great thing that we're doing, >> not just for in the classroom, but for in life in general. It's a great thing to be trained in. And I just want to
draw attention. We Oh, sorry. There's a I'm sorry. >> I think you're about to say exactly what I wanted to. Um, we at the the last time we met, I had on for discussion next year's school calendar. So, that's on here. But also, uh, since we last met with all of the different emergency
closings, we did run out of days and we do have to adjust this year's calendar. Um, there are that is also on here this evening for a vote. The major changes are that one amassa school has to make up two days because they were closed an
extra day for the power outage. So one amassa school will be in session on April 6th and the entire district has to add one additional day at the end of the year. So the new last day of school tentatively
is June 24th and that would push back early dismissal days, graduations and and such. So that's also here um for a vote tonight. >> Thanks for the clarification. Hastings >> 91 through 910. Mr. Brady,
>> yes. >> Mr. Cover. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Dam. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Gilman. >> Abstain from 93 PD Wrestling. Abstain from 94 school field trips.
>> Thank you, Mr. McCarthy. >> Yes. Mrs. McGovern, >> yes. >> Mr. Schneider, >> yes. >> Yes. Motions carry. >> Mrs. Gilman, policy. >> Yes. We have our second reading of
policies that are changed, mandated by uh the state. Resolve to approve the second reading of revised new or abolished policies as listed for 10.1. Do I have a second? >> Second.
Hastings. >> This is 10.1. Mr. Brady, >> yes. >> Mr. Cobbert, >> yes. >> Mrs. Stam, >> yes. >> Mr. Gilman, >> yes. >> Mr. McCart, >> yes. >> McGovern, >> yes. >> Snider, >> yes. >> And Mr. Bolton, >> yes. >> Motion carries.
>> Do we have any old business? >> Do we have any new business? >> Yes, Mrs. Gilman. Well, tonight is the eighth grade discussion that the New Jersey school board sponsors and of course it's the night of a a meeting, but I just wanted to congratulate our
eighth grade student that was uh attending. And also, if you received this brochure from Mammoth Mammoth County, uh there was an article about an Arbor Day celebration to honor
the county's 250th birthday. and um they are asking well they're going to plant trees at area schools and any school that requests it can reach out to Terry O' Connor and they will
plant trees and it's always good to plant trees so that was a nice initiative >> thanks Dan >> well just so I believe we have a green team I think it's called we should connect that right is it called the green team >> so we have a few different things. But
we've Are you talking about the shade tree commission and the group that works with them in? >> Yes. But I think that I know has a I think it's called a green team. I could >> sustainability. We've applied for that through NJ school boards and >> and done environmental type things and
to as well >> that um I do want to say just um I don't know if we can look into it. I feel very uncomfortable. I know that this is being taped and going on YouTube, but that someone was videotaping us and when Mr. McCarthy was talking like I'm shaking
right now because that's obviously done for not a positive reason. It doesn't feel positive. It feels like that's going to be used probably against you. I don't know if there is something we can do about that, but I I feel very uncomfortable that that happened and shouldn't be happening. We shouldn't
feel uncomfortable in these meetings. We're here for our kids. We're here to be positive, not to bring negative attitudes into this place. So, if we can look into that, I'd really appreciate it. >> Thank you, Mrs. >> Anyone else? New business. Can I have a motion to adjurnn?
>> Motion. Second. >> Second. Thank you. >> Be safe, everyone.