I do think all we're starting this public meeting welcome to this public meeting of the Princeton Board of Education the board is an elected unpaid group of 10 citizens who set policy and make decisions on educational financial and Personnel matters for the principal public schools on behalf of all residents we're always pleased when members of the community attend our meetings the board and the school district operate under applicable New Jersey laws and under regulations of the New Jersey State Board of Education each meeting includes an opportunity for those attending to comment on items on the published agenda or other matters of interest to them the board reserves the right to limit the time allotted to public participation law limits discussion of individual personnel and confidential matters we hope our meetings provide useful opportunities for communication between the board and the community thank you for attending as required under the open public meeting act and JSA 1046 at sequentia adequate notice was given for calling this meeting it was authorized by the Board of Education and forwarded to the Trenton Times and uh municipal clerk and the Princeton packet on January 6 2024 it was also distributed to the schools and others on the standard distribution list the board reserves the right to enter into executive session during all meetings of the Board of Education board policy 168 recording devices requires that we inform those attending this in-person meeting that this meeting um is being recorded and also uh live streamed the representative of the descending district is authorized to vote on such matters that affect sending District students or affect the governance of the Princeton Public Schools as more specifically designated in njsa 188 38.1 sending District votes pertaining to Personnel actions refer to high school Central administrative and districtwide staff only votes otherwise are considered abstentions in the event that njsa 1883 8.1 is amended the law shall take presidents over this bylaw thank you Mr Bal would you please call the world sure DF Kendall here Betsy bagale here Beth Baron here Adam Beerman here Debbie bronfeld here Martin franceski here Elanor Hub here Susan caner here Brian McDonald pres Robert Christopher here we have a quorum thank you Mr Balden can I get a motion for adoption of the minutes for March 18th 2024 Mara second Debbie dine Kendall yes Betsy Bagel yes Beth Baron yes Adam Beerman yes Debbie bronfeld yes Mara francesi yes Elanor hubard yes Susan canther yes Brian McDonald yes Rob Christopher yes motion passes thank you Mr Balden can I get a motion for adoption of the minutes for April 17th Brian second Susan daon Kendall yes Betsy Bago yes Beth Baron yes Adam Beerman yes Debbie bronfeld yes Mar franceski yes Elanor hubard yes Susan caner yes Brian McDonald yes Bob Christopher obain motion passes that's right thank you Mr Balden um so good evening everyone welcome to this meeting we have um a very busy meeting tonight and I just wanted one note of housekeeping um there'll be we have a couple of um things to approve the superintendent um has some comments and then we'll have our long-term planning discussion uh following that um there will be a budget presentation um and bu and public comment on the budget only and that's required by law after uh that we'll adopt we'll vote to adopt the budget and then we're going to have our first public forum on any agenda item I know some of you are here tonight to speak about uh things that are of importance to you I don't want you to have to wait um any longer uh than is necessary so with that we'll move on uh to the ratification of the paa contract which is the contract that the board has with our administrative uh Union we um approve the mo MOA at our um March meeting can I get a motion please Brian second Rob [Music] D Kendall yes Betsy Bagel yes Beth Baron yes Adam Beerman uh yes Debbie bronfeld yes Mar franceski yes Elanor hubard yes Susan canther yes Brian McDonald yes Rob Christopher yes motion passes thank you Mr Balden um our next item is um the abolishment of job descriptions and Dr Foster I didn't know if you were going to speak about it now or if you wanted to speak about it later um well I was gonna touch Bas about oh yeah I should put it on um so one of uh we're excited because um some of the abolishment of the job descriptions make uh it um a pleasure to then recommend uh to new positions uh to supervisors um so if you know and love Valerie olrick like we do uh currently Valerie uh serves in the role of supervisor of preschool and special projects and truly she is so hard to replace that we are leveraging State preschool Aid um to make two new positions uh at Cost neutral so you will see her job um description abolished to create these new job descriptions so the first job description is supervisor of um mtss uh and special projects uh and the second is supervisor of Early Childhood uh and uh both jobs uh were charging some salary to um the uh preschool education uh Aid uh that we are using and as we grow our program we will continue to receive additional assistance from the state and are expected to have oversight so I know that the yes so um so first we have to do this we have to vote on this so I'll let I'll stop there and then okay yeah okay um so that's an action item can I get um a motion please Susan second Brian for the abolishment of the job descriptions and those hold on just for the audience those job descriptions are uh uh the supervisor of technology and and these are effec of July 1 supervisor of technology and Innovation systems engineer and Web Master supervisor of preschool and special projects um and does anyone have any comment no okay Mr Gold I'll just note that our preschool has Dr Zer to nine sections how many children have so during Val's 10 expans oh and we're expanding it by three more this summer as well yes so it's economy of scale as we grow so does our Aid and that's why we're able to make it as cost neutral as possible uh just a general observation I think this preschool I think it's in a great Direction and I think hopefully with continuity and Leadership this will pay divid dividends in the long run especially with disparity in scores okay thank you m Mr Balden D Kendall yes Betsy bag wheel yes Beth Baron yes Adam Beerman yes Debbie bronfeld yes Mara franceski yes Elanor Hub yes Susan caner yes Brian McDonald yes Rob Christopher yes motion passes okay so uh now um Dr Foster gave a preview we're gonna move on to the the first appointment which is uh Amy nashco who is on the agenda for board approval for supervisor of Early Childhood uh beginning July 1 did you want us what would you like us to do could I just say a few words of course just a few um so we're thrilled um we know Amy uh Amy uh currently um and she's been selected from a competitive field of candidates for the Early Childhood supervisor she's a longtime advocate for Young Learners and by the way she has her doctorate so Dr Nasco has extensive experience working with prechool students and pre-service early childhood teachers at the University level she served in a variety of roles including preschool and kindergarten teacher in lawren Township director of training and staff development with tools of the Mind curriculum assistant professor at wils uh University and adject professor at William Patterson she's also served as the Early Childhood Program Coordinator at Rowan University where she provided leadership in the creation of the Early Childhood Program with the Department of interdisciplinary and inclusion uh education and collaborated with grow New Jersey kids uh which is a New Jersey preschool quality rating agency to design online in and in-person preschool training uh most recently she was invited uh to participate in the department of Ed to serve on a five-person committee to evaluate preschool curriculums for inclusion uh she's won numerous Awards um however she is best known as our preschool instructional coach and Interventional uh specialist um and we are thrilled um to recommend her for appointment tonight thank you um so Mr bden we're going to split these up so can I get a uh do we need a motion for 4 A should we make it 4 a sure so Dr Foster I did not have a chance to speak no it's all good we're we're speaking now abely and it's not that we don't speak all the time but just about this okay can I get a motion for 4 A please uh Debbie second Eleanor daon Kendall yes Betsy Bagel yes Beth Baron yeah Adam Beerman yes Debbie bronfeld yes Mara franceski yes Elanor hubard yes Susan caner yes Brian McDonald yes Rob Christopher yes motion passes so um Dr n is it's here tonight and Dr nashow if you would like to come and say something welcome to the district here welcome to being a supervisor and and you have a contract through 20 um 28 yeah thank you drer thank you everybody thank you for the support of the pre prek program and as you said it has grown substantially I came on in 2020 as the pre instructional coach and because of the size that it was only a part-time job and it was what I was looking for at the time back then um and it has just blossomed so um next year it'll be 12 classrooms and we had we are having our Lottery this Friday and we had the most that we have ever gotten to register for the lottery so there's obvious need out there and we are servicing um a population that that really is um providing a great Foundation for the Princeton Public Schools can I put you on the spot how many um if how many um openings are there openings for PK for the lottery I'm not gonna don't don't hold me to numbers but I can kind of give ballpark um we have because everybody that gets a lottery spot as a three-year-old rolls in and has it as a four-year-old so we have spots there'll be 180 spots open but that's not all lottery spots because the three-year-olds would roll to the four-year-old program I believe we have somewhere around 40 some slots for foury olds and 50 some slots 55 or so slot approximate for threey old do you know how many um how many people registered for the lottery it's I think it was over 200 registration um so we're gonna have a few that we're going to not be making yeah not be making this L they get on the weight list we run everybody through the lottery and um there'll be a wait list if there's changes over the summer movement during the school years okay well thank you okay thank you so much I appreciate it then uh could I get a motion uh for 4B um Mara second Beth and that is the appointment of Lauren Samara and I know she's in the district um to be the supervisor of mtss and special projects yes please good so I have to talk about Lauren as well um she's beloved as well uh Lauren has served in various roles throughout her 18-year tenure in Princeton public school starting with our prek disabilities class then acting as an elementary special education teacher learning disabled teacher consultant interventionist Elementary instu instructional coach and back to interventionist again she has been a consistent advocate for improving student learning decreasing disproportionality and collaborating with staff to innovate instruction she will be taking on the supervisor of mtss and special projects which means that she will be shifting to a prek to2 role and leveraging data to make informed decisions about curriculum instruction and tiered programs that support all Learners a selfs subscribed data nerd she has already been involved with some of this work at the elementary level and has shown great progress with student growth we are truly excited to bring her passion and expertise to the secondary level as well thank you Lauren Dr Foster for um us late people Mt I know I know my colleague Betsy thought there should be a different name for the job just so the rest of us could understand it and it has something to do with data analysis right so that's a big part of this job is that right that is a big part of this job I mean honestly it's sort of like yes so I think um this role is also the district testing coordinator so it's looking at assessment and not just our standardized testing data but internal benchmarks and growth as well um this Ro will be sitting at every um irrs table across the district so when we have monthly meetings about students who might be struggling and need support with behavior or academics or social emotional support actually utilizing data to make informed decisions and then advocate for programming so whether it be academic support or reading intervention or um things that supported the counselor um and really creating systems um and so that we're not um provide we're providing kids with services but we're not overidentifying students for special education who don't need to be there um and also making sure that we're not disproportionate and right now um that is the role that Lauren is currently in she's interventionist because we are disproportionate in our special ed uh population um and she has made she got us out of disproportionality a few years ago and then the role went away with grant money and guess what we're back so this role is obviously needed and this role will help provide um oversight um of this work and I think um when people think about tiered supports they only think about students who might uh need a little bit more but it also is about enrichment and growth so when we think about our gifted Learners our special education Learners our multilingual Learners it's it's systems and supports for everyone um and so it's just having that reminder across and sometimes it's harder at the secondary level as you guys know um because you have nine different teachers and you know things like that um and so helping teachers say how can we help you how can we help you work with this data to inform instruction yeah okay thank you because sometimes we have a lot of initials and acronyms and it doesn't really give Justice to what the job how important this job is yes my husband says we speak a different language in education there's a lot of acronyms yes yes yes it is true okay so with that Mr Balden uh DNE Kendall yes Betsy Bagel yes Beth Baron yes Adam Beerman uh yes Debbie bronfeld yes Mar franceski yes em hub yes Susan caner yes Ryan McDonald yes Rob Christopher yes motion passes and I understand that um Lauren is here today nice to see you I do want to share a few words thank you all so much for having me um thank you to our board thank you Dr to Dr Foster um everyone who is involved on the interview committee for your confidence in me this truly means everything to me um PPS is home for me I I started here 19 years ago as a student teacher uh with the amazing Jasmine saris and I cannot forget to thank um with deepest gratitude the one and only Dr Ginsburg who offered me my very first teaching job in um special education in his building and that just changed everything for me so um as Dr Foster shared since then I've been so fortunate to have served in a variety of roles um from Riverside child study team thank you Mickey chrisly to I know all my shout outs I just love everyone here so much like I have Roots here um to instructional coach and interventionist um so each experience bring helping to build my professional capacity helping me to grow my relationships across the district um so I'm I'm truly grateful for all of those opportunities as they've allowed me to fully realize and act on my passion supporting our incredible students and staff um so I do believe we are at a very critical point in time in education both in our district and Beyond um where needs are more diverse than ever so ensuring that Equitable intervention systems are in place for all of our Learners to make sure that all of our Learners are thriving is just of the utmost importance so my goal in this role is to make sure that our intervention um in our district is accessible cohesive and sustainable across all grade levels and I'm looking forward to partnering with our teachers and our administrators districtwide to make sure I bring this goal to fruition so thank you again everyone for this opportunity I could not be more proud or excited to join our phenomenal leadership team and this just truly means the world to me thank you so so Lauren just two things um I also told myself not to cry before the meetings and um and it's um we're we're lucky to have you in this position um so Dr Foster so and uh at the last meeting we did um say some very nice words about b or who as Beth mentioned like grew this uh preschool program from zero to 180 plus um and so I'm just trying to understand that we know Val was great and so it's going to take two people to do her job yes um and um what is the uh effect on the budget so it is cost neutral um because again we are uh receiving uh money from the Pea which is the preschool uh education um Aid and um so I think this is really good news that we are leveraging a current position changing it um and uh addressing some of the needs of uh our our youngest Learners uh as they grow through the system and uh we're so excited too I think for that mtss to go all the way up through the high school because right now um we don't have that support but it is um budget neutral um as we get um uh support uh funds from the Pea okay well thank you just say one thing um congrat ulations to our newest supervisors and I just want to Echo their thanks Dr Foster and Dr two you've articulated by by creating these two positions this our focus on data is something the board's been really interested in for many years um and also in our strategic plan the prek to third grade we know it's a critical time for students so by creating these positions you're really committing to this for our students and I just want to thank you for that so thank you all for doing the work and I'm thrilled that they're um people within our district who are now these supervisors thank you um and one final thing the president's report tonight we have a uh PMS Pal's presentation uh so if you would all please come up um that is the princeon Middle School school peer assisted uh living uh social social inclusion for All Is there going to be a PowerPoint yes there is okay um yeah so and if you could all so so this is um this is something that we've implemented this year um we wanted to return the focus to students this year and so every board meeting we have something that highlights um great things that our students are doing if you could please um I'll turn it over to you please let us know uh your name you don't have to give us your last name and also what grade you're in and um we look forward to hearing what you have to say all right excellent we can start with introductions hello my name is Ren Morgan byon and I am in the seventh grade hi my name is Emily and I'm in seventh grade uh my name is Ana shager and I'm in seventh grade my name is Anna Jameson and I'm in eighth grade and I'm Beth meren I'm the supervisor of special education for grades six through eight I'm gonna allow my colleague here to introduce himself and I am Greg Kohler I'm a special education teacher at the middle school um so we are so excited to be here tonight to share with you a little bit of work that we've been doing at PMS this year um it started in the fall with an idea um and like all great things you need many people to bring an idea to life um and so when I spoke with Mr Kohler who is our autism teacher as well as Miss P Joe Cassis who is our multiple disabilities teacher at the middle school and Miss Jennifer notto who is one of our speech therapists at the middle school um we were discussing a need um for how do we support our students who are in some some of our highly specialized programs to engage um more deeply and meaningfully in our community um and establish connections outside of their specialized classrooms um and so you know we all kind of put our heads together we thought of some activities that already occur and how could we bring this to life um so truly you know the purpose behind Pals which is peer assisted learning actually is to be buddies and mentors with one another and to create meaningful friendships um for students that are in both our multiple disabilities program as well as our autism program these phenomenal students here um were students that were given an opportunity school counselors sent out our mission and what we envisioned for our club um and we sought students who wanted to be part of that um and these are are four of those students who were who have been phenomenal in our work this year um and so we started with a disability awareness day um where those staff members and I planned um a way to talk to them about developmental disabilities and what that might mean for their peer how they could support their peer and develop friendship um with them um and so you know students attended um we talked a lot about that and then we just jumped right into the fun which is truly what the club has been all about um I don't know Matt if you want to roll I'm I'm probably on the next slide now yeah one more actually um so we started in December and we did a kickoff event in the evening um and our staff was really supportive we also had a number of instructional AIDS who were willing to stay and support this because they also see see the value and have been really meaningful in our work together um that night we did a lot of Getting to Know You activities we did make your own dinner decorating cookies playing games and then because everyone was so exhausted we let them vote on a movie to finish out the night um so it was a long school day but a lot of fun um from there we've had activities each month um they have students have been able to sign up for what works for them because we know some students need our pause time for other reasons but other students were able to join U Miss cassus and Mr Ker's class they did a lot of gameplay um and just again getting to know each other engaging with each other under teacher Direction um the second place that we've really been able to ask um these guys to go into and to be part of is our after school program which has traditionally been a club-based program um for our students with multiple disabilities and autism to have teacher and Aid support to go into PMS clubs and activities what we were finding is students are there but it's still hard to really engage and create friendship so um what we were able to do is pair um some of our peer buddies and they go to clubs with them or they may do activities back if there's not a PMS Club running that day um but they've been able to attend I know they've gone to Art Club game club um they've gone to watch after school sporting events of you know their peers and around the community um they've done some crafts they've played games explored interests that students have um and so that you know really has been a really successful start we're excited about how we can grow this and you know look forward to you know what more we can do with it um but I can't say enough about the students that have been part of the club they are phenomenal people um and they are showing kindness compassion um and just this great friendship um to students that they may not ever otherwise been able to spend time with and get to know in our school Community um and truly their their impact on the school Community has been phenomenal and we hope we can keep growing that you know inclusive mindset and culture at PMS yeah and and these are just a few pictures I know a little bit may be hard to see from far back but of some of the activities that students have engaged in um at some of our our events so far this year so yeah so thank you so much for having us so thank you um it's really important what you're doing um and not only do the the children that you're working with benefit but you also benefit because you're learning you know as Miss muren said compassion and empathy and you know there's no test for that um but it's really really important and um you know sometimes adults should look to the kids to the students to see what we should be doing and I hope you know we can all emulate you more so thank you for coming I don't know if there's anything that you wanted to say but just keep up the good [Music] work we didn't prep any remarks no can iot here can I can I ask the students a question do you have any ideas for another activity you might um do in the future with this club Ice Cream yeah did you do ice cream already that's a good Springtime activity yeah yeah they're telling me they like the way it is I will say the staff has thought a little bit about are there ways that we can incorporate this into some classes like exploratory programs or p classes that students are taking alongside of their peers um and so that's that's in our minds of how can we work that into scheduling next year so so we we definitely have some some plans and I know that these guys will be on board for and just so you know when you get to the high school um Dr 2 is gonna share with you we have an integrated uh program which um pairs students with children same kind of program just like you're talking about the EPS but we call it integrated dance or integrated theater there's a couple of different classes so you kind of apply uh to be a part of it because it is a leadership program just like what you're doing and I think you guys have already the requisite skills uh that you would need to join so I hope when um you think about high school electives um it's starting next year when you get up to the high school I'm talking to your counselor about that okay yeah right thank you thank you thank you so much and Dr two is signing homework passes just see her on the way out please okay um and with that uh we're going to move on to the superintendent's report thank you good evening again um many of you are in this room or watching the live stream may be familiar with this phrase every student will be known connected engaged and supported and will encounter Fair affirming schooling experience at every stage this is one of our most important goals of our district and it is part of our strategic plan it is a general all-encompassing statement but it applies to each and every one of our students I love this goal I support it by guiding our administrators and teachers by listening to our students staff parents community members and by the way in which we all lead by example we work every day to make sure that every student experiences Fair affirming schooling experiences but tonight I want to specifically address the issue of anti-Semitism for the past several months we've had ongoing discussions about anti-Semitism in public and private meetings with our district leadership we've acknowledged the need to reinforce the tenant that anti-Semitism will not be tolerated in our district in the most General sense respect for one group translates into respect for all groups when we exercise our compassion and sense of justice we can acknowledge that bias Prejudice and hate against any one group fails all of us both as individuals and as a part of a larger Community let me start by thanking all the people who have reached out to the board of education and District to ask us to consider adopting the IH a definition of anti-semitism for our community in the past few months we've spent a great deal of time listening to many parents families meeting with local rabbis local and state organizations legal counsel internal staff and others we've received many outstanding resources to guide us it's not easy work but we have an ethical legal and moral obligation to protect all of our students from anti-Semitism harassment and hateful conduct and I appreciate the patience and Grace you've given us as we work to articulate a definition as we were asked to Define anti-Semitism we became increasingly aware of the intricacy and nuances of this Mission I personally worried that in the arena of subtle complexities we would become paralyzed in some communities this discussion has crossed the boundary from a straightforward definition into a contentious political discussion we worry too that if we recognize one group others will feel left out or slighted yet we have singled out this issue tonight because of our current conversations and the alarming statistics that show the rapid rise of anti-Semitism in our country and across the world this past year the Anti-Defamation League recorded the highest number of anti-Semitic incidents across the United States since it began tracking in 1979 with the most dramatic increase happening after the October 7th terrorist attack on Israel according to a Pew Research Center study three quarters of American Jews think there is more anti-Semitism in the United States today than there was five years ago moreover just over half say that as a Jewish person in the United States they personally feel less safe than they did five years ago I can say without hesitation that Princeton Public Schools rejects anti-Semitism if we are to advocate for the safety of our students families and communities we cannot be silent therefore tonight we are publicly publicly committing to taking a stand against anti-Semitism this commitment can be our first step and serve as the tangible reminder that we need in these difficult times what other things might make a difference we will utilize the resources we've received from the ADL and American Jewish committee to proactively educate our students staff and administrators about anti-Semitism this includes reviewing our care curriculum and professional development opportunities make sure we're Vigilant and actively address issues that arise as we prioritize student safety use our prohibitions against harassment in IM intimidation and bullying HIV to protect the rights of our students expand and supplement our vigilance which when incidents occur and are not reported as HIV continue to review our policies around students and social media to create clear boundaries most importantly uphold the values of our community and make our schools safe for our students our goal is to call attention to this issue and Foster awareness and conversation among our student staff and our community therefore we chosen to work within the context of a wealth of resources to develop guidelines that will help us in our efforts to combat anti-Semitism as we cultivate awareness around anti-semitism we will be alert uh to anti-Semitism in all of its forms including a certain perception expressed as hatred towards Jews Prejudice or stereotypical views about Jews rhetoric and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism directed towards Jewish individuals and or their property spoken or physical manifestations of hatred directed at Jewish Community institutions and religious facilities words gestures or actions depicting hatred or contempt for Jews the Jewish Community or Jewish institutions in the book Soul Force the authors talk about understanding the importance of living intention and we always think about living with intention a notion that acknowledg is that must must of much of our life we are in the present moment but the the authors also say we must live in tension purposeful living recognizes that we need to commit to sit in tension as the difficult conversations begin we need to practice listening to various stakeholders the ultimate goal is to hear each other with an open and Compassionate Heart it is important to stay at the table even when things are difficult and challenging I'd like to close with deep gratitude to all who contributed to our conversations on anti-Semitism we are unable to solve geopolitical issues but we will commit to ensuring all students feel safe and welcome in our schools again our strategic goal in our district we will continue to strive to meet our goal that each and every student will be known connected engaged and supported and will encounter Fair affirming schooling experience at every stage this is ongoing work and we are in it for the long haul thank you uh thank you Dr Foster um I know that you have put I I'm grateful for the time and um thought that you've put into this I know um reading that statement and and and weighing all the issues wasn't easy um but I'm grateful and um again we're very lucky to have you as the leader of our district thank you um I do want to thank you also for spending the time and listening to everybody um I'm very excited about the education of the student staff and administrators and I'm wondering if maybe in you know a couple months we can kind of look back and you know see what the climate is of all this and where we are um the other thing is I was curious where this will all sit um does it fall under the policy you know like if you were looking for it and especially you know because it's covering so much and so that it gets the attention it needs um yeah I don't if you have an answer on that yet no and and I'm I'm so glad you asked that question I don't have a solid answer but one of the things I know that um we've uh jumpstarted the equity uh committee as well and certainly then we can address all forms of um you know uh standing against all forms of hate hate speech and certainly that could sit there and that's where the education and uh professional development discussions can be and then we also do need to look at our policies so we're looking at you know our social media uh policies how we interact with each other um you know uh also uh some of the uh curricular pieces when we adopt adopt curriculum we want to make sure um that those pieces um represent who we are thank you um Adam oh um I have a different take on this so I think it's important to consider anti-Semitism and uh I understand that there's a certain perception of Jews and it's some things can be expressed as a hatred towards Jews but it's pretty hard to um it's a lot a lot of nuance here and I I'll vote for this but this is my main issue with this I think not voting we're not voting oh we're not voting no but go ahead oh Excuse me while addressing anti-Semitism is important I think the focus on adopting this definition appears to be part of a broader trend of emphasizing what I see is identity politic Equity initiatives that take away a lot of time from I think concrete issues that directly affect students uh like Martin Luther King was a great man I even wrote an editorial praising him it got published in some local newspapers but naming streets after MLK or discussing all this it doesn't change test scores it didn't change them in Trenton I don't want to go down this Rabbit Hole I just think it takes too much time away for more important substantial substantial um educational initiatives directly affect students and let's think about this God forbid and this might come up because you say we're not solving Geo you know G um geopolitical problems what of China invades Taiwan are we going to be discussing that are we gonna make it in foreign policy we're going to go into anti-chinese I mean again I think it's a rabbit hole thank you Susan um I have a very different take on what the work you're doing one I want to thank you because I know it's been a very difficult few months talking to people it's a very emotional issue for many in our community um and I've already seen and heard from parents that the work is hitting the classrooms and that was like very impressive to hear so this is something that people in our community have talked about well before October 7th for years looking at the curriculum you've named five places where I think we can do better so to in our plans as we go forward to each of those five areas to really hear what the work is what the deliverables are um to hear that commitment because I think that's important for our students to know that that this work is ongoing not just the words that we are against anti-Semitism but each of those five areas that you named where I think we can do better that we actually do the work but I know in talking to you you've been starting that process and I thank you for that and I'll just say I I I do appre appreciate the thought and time that has gone into this from your the administration and my colleagues and I realize there are many people in the community with very strong views on this and that's our role is to hear that and listen and try to come up with something that actually impacts our children and how we're teaching and and teaching learning and so as chair of the policy committee we welcome we welcome any work or anything that comes to brought to us that is a followup and helps implement this in a way better way thank you and I'll just say thanks for keeping at the Forefront of your work we really appreciate all that you're doing for that thank you um thank you Dr Foster and then do have one piece okay we you two things oh yeah kind of important things exactly I appreciate your efforts moving along yeah I am I'm kind of moving on uh so uh I I do want to make another statement then we have a five presentation um that uh you know and really excited about our path forward um for the district um but first I know um I want to thank all of the parents we've received approximately 20 emails I think from parents of community park who were concerned about uh the current art teacher and um the her the role there uh and we appreciate hearing first how um valued uh our staff members are and what a a a positive impact they make on the community so I want um to make sure that everyone understands that we are not reducing any Services uh that includes art for students at Community Park based upon the current enrollment and number of class sections next year Community Park will need a a0 six art position uh the current teacher will have a full-time 10e track job and will teach art at the high school uh and CP students will continue Contin to have the same amount of art instruction as every other um Elementary student we will be posting for a new point6 uh tenure track benefits eligible art teacher um and as we serve as stewards of the community we continue to maximize our Personnel Resources in a variety of areas across the district including art PE uh special ad and other content areas um these changes uh will allow us to apply savings to um other areas of need so I just want to say that so thank you so thank you Dr Foster I appreciate it because there's been some misinformation um I just want to so with the other areas that you mentioned PE special education there's no um there's no reduction in services to Children is that right no no reduction to Services really just you know maximizing Personnel capitalizing on the the members that we have the staff members that we have thank you Dr Foster and then your now this is the big drum roll um so I do want to um thank everyone I know we uh put the long-term planning uh presentation on hold for a month as we uh continue to do our research uh uh we uh I I'm really excited and proud um I want to again thank uh the long-term planning committee uh and certainly Matt uh George and Dan you know were phenomenal and then you'll see uh Mike zuba and Pat his his partner uh who did the demographic um Kim uh serving kind of as the instructional leader and guide in all of this and also all of the building principles and staff members because they were intimately involved uh in not only contributing to what building me oh that is really great okay yeah exactly front and center um but um I want to say also um you know George and his team listened as building leaders shared some recommendations for changes because based on you know where they live they live these buildings and they know them so well and we went back to the drawing board or I should say George went back to the drawing board uh and uh you know did some redesign uh for some of the schematics based on the recommendations so it was truly a collaborative effort uh across the board and I think um this is always the challenge you know are we we are we getting it right you know that is always the big question it reminds me of sort of the the Goldilocks you know is it too big too small we think that this plan is just right uh and you will see uh with the uh current uh enrollment uh and projections uh we we feel that um each space is providing optimal learning environment for all of our students with some room to grow so um with that I will um move and turn it over to Mike thank you so much yeah can you guys hear me oh I'll talk softer no no I'm still here yes um good thank you good evening everybody um it's exciting to be here I'm just presenting tonight just an executive summary of our enrollment projection update as part of the longterm facility plan um whenever we get into an enrollment projection I've been doing projections with Princeton since 2019 we always evaluate our last projection to see how the model did make some adjustments to it um overall our Elementary enrollment the K5 was tracking pretty well um we did see overall Less in migration especially in the first grade um we did have a disconnect in the high school and one of the changes we made to our modeling was that we went back and gathered cranberry and rment all the way back into Elementary School and we able to do an a bridge cohort survival so now we're projecting enrollment into of cranberry students as they matriculate through all the grade levels um and feeding into a high school at ninth grade that was really one of the drivers for our disconnect at the ninth grade level um but overall we feel good about where the enrollment projections are especially as part of this latest update um just to touch on kind of the methodology that we use um it's similar to New Jersey doe we use a cohort survival methodology um with that we also make some modifications to it so embedded into cohort survival are things like Housing Development demographics economic changes um housing starts and housing turnover um where we have areas where the projections aren't capturing what's likely to occur in the future is where we begin making adjustments so part of this update um which was a little bit different we went ahead and developed a Princeton specific housing multiplier in the past we've used various multipliers from Ruckers um and others as well in Bob Powell um through NASA Capital Partners um and compare those to what was actually occurring and as we really got into the work we decided really the best approach for Princeton and the best approach going forward was to have a Princeton specific multiplier um so we sampled students um based on the October 15th enrollment from Avalon Princeton mck stanworth as well as Copperwood and developed not only a per unit but also a per bedroom um for students that are occurring in those newly developed units and then we're able to apply that um to the new units that are coming online in the foreseeable future um one of the changes that we've made to this projection update was really kind of limiting our um new development to those that are imminent so you know we hear a lot about this is proposed this is talked about um so these are really projects that are approved or are currently under construction that we're adding and we're also deducting and accounting for the existing Housing Development and the housing Baseline um over the last five years there's been about 67 units annually um with a split of about 44 multif family and 22 um town home and single family um so those get captured within the Baseline so what we're doing now is we're only doing student generation from units that are above and beyond that historic Baseline growth so as we look ahead similar to what we've been doing for a number of years we're projecting three different models are high medium and low um as with the enrollment projections you could see in that high medium and low model we have really tight banding within the first five years um these are driven by students that are in the seats known BS and um housing that's relying less upon assumptions and really capturing what's in that third round of fair share um housing settlement um what we're picking up then in the last five years is some of that future housing that we don't really know about yet but we know is likely going to occur but it does not capture things like the fourth round of the fair share housing um So within that first five years we range from 3,930 students to 4,120 students with the med a model right at 4,030 students um as we project out the high model assumes a little higher level of immigration um so we're seeing that grow to 4,286 whereas the media model grows a little bit more modestly to 4,090 um and then the low model itself is a little bit more pessimistic we don't see that as a likely model going forward um and that shows just some slight growth there down to just under 3,900 students but all three models are above the total enrollments of where they're at today and where they've been at over the last several years so projecting going forward and I know I'll kind of focus on the elementary so in our stack bar chart we have it disaggregated by your grade groupings um so as we sort of track the enrollment across the next decade we could see that the elementary schools in the first five years are projected to grow about 7 and a half% um Middle School almost 12% and the high school at just over 11% um we do see that Peak for the elementary school shown in teal here at about, 1430 students 1420 students and that's pretty well sustained over that last half of our projection Horizon and you know I'll just say again that that does not include any housing that we don't know about as well as any housing that could come from the uh fourth round um shown in the green color is the Middle School enrollment um that enrollment is projected to grow to just under 8 90 students um with really the last five years of enrollment really between 870 and 880 students um and then at the high school we're projecting some more rapid growth there overall but really kind of reaching that Peak as we'll call it in 20293 um at 1740 students and I'm really sustaining that level of enrollment for the last five years of our projection Horizon really around 1740 or 1720 students I know one of the questions we had throughout and this is just a snippet from the larger report is really kind of understanding the difference between what students coming from the Baseline growth and students coming from the uh from the student multipliers um so this is just a little chart that we used to be able to disaggregate those two with the Baseline growth shown in green and then the students generated from the Princeton specific multipliers that were adding shown in the rose color up top what I will say that within this Baseline growth remember that there's about 70 units um being added annually so only where we're adding units that are being developed and being occupied that are above and beyond that 70 annually is where we're seeing them being added in that rose color that red color up top um but by and large it's really two parts of that equation it's that Baseline as well as the new housing is causing that growth where we're seeing that peak of about 4,090 um students for the latter half of our projection Horizon and last but not least I kind of leave off on here is just is where we're into that grade level um specific District wide projections and this is the kind of information that we've been working with George and Dan especially at the elementary level and the Middle School level of feeding that information into those plans and those Concepts that they're using to be able to generate the uh generate the space planning as part of the long-term plan and with that I'll turn it back over to Matt if there's any questions or any comments from the board M can you hear us when we talk I could hear you loud and clear Matt great have any questions coms I thought the prek was bigger and especially later on no 61 the static okay all right was asking sorry that in District buildings as opposed to the outsourced paa CL that we were talking about earlier okay okay that makes perfect sense now thank you I don't if it can be answered um my comments um demographics and then student teacher ratio and what are we looking at I mean what's acceptable what do we want what is the community looking at are we going to build new buildings that maybe we do need would they be empty in 25 years no one can predict I guess but but going back what's the student ratio we want um so tonight the um presentation is focused with our professionals on um the plant buildings and um we can discuss that at a later date but um it's been determined in the planning that this is the building that's necessary for us um it's not even um like uh preferred uh um ratios it's what's required um we're required to have a certain amount of um square footage per student so tonight we're just going to focus on um what the proposal is and uh we will have those discussions later oh thank you um um I have a quick question on like the growth rate um I think I saw a graph previously on the slideshow that showed um PPS is like student population um increasing pretty dramatically over the past few years um for your projections in the future did you foresee that growth rate slowing down and the overall population of students decreasing did you catch that Mike I caught some of it um some of it was a little bit choppy I think the question was around the overall growth rate and if it's going to increase or decrease for the student enrollment um it's part of our projections yes correct is that correct yeah so um what we look at and in the last year we saw less immigration so that's kind of like my term for growth rate um and it's really kind of tied to what we call the housing turn um so when we look at growth rate we take more than one year sample because we're trying to project for more than one year so we've actually been using um several years of historic enrollment in those growth rates um with being careful on how we handle that first year of the pandemic um and we want to be able to capture some of the historic growth pre pandemic as well as what's been occurring after blend those together um and project that out forward as that growth rate because we know just following demographics my whole career there's es and flows um so one year may grow at our growth rate that we're projecting and another year may be slightly below that another one year may be slightly above that but at the end of a five-year window you're going to be at that enrollment but you may have different cohorts and different um years where you there's localized factors that will cause the projection to be a little bit higher a little bit low okay thank you so so much for the clarification you you're welcome I'll ask a question I kind of know the answer but just to clarify for the public um the Princeton multiplier can you speak to that like because I think that's you know in this presentation as opposed to past presentations what's different which is you really looked at the data within Princeton and within the new developments that have come in the last few years to use it for our projections forward so just speak a little about the work you did around that because I think that was concerning for the public in the past that some of the models seem very high and some of the models seem very low and and the work around this what we call the Princeton multiplier yeah I'm happy to to to comment on that um just something that we've been doing in other client communities for a number of years um you know there's different sources of multiplier and they're always at a scale that's much larger than your any given community that we work in so when we have good representative projects and we have um good data behind it so when you have a history of projects that are recently built and there's going to be projects coming online um development projects that are very similar um in scope and scale it's always great to be able to look at your own enrollment within those um see what the student generation is and we've been looking at it from both a unit basis as well as a per bedroom basis um and what we found when we made those comparisons just looking at Ruckers which is typically a developers multiplier um and Bob Powells was that the actual enrollment came in somewhere in between right when we took those multipliers and we looked at Avalon Princeton as well as murck stanworth and Copperwood so when we started looking into that we started then this comping process and I think you know over time and and as you get more enrollment developments begin to mature and you have other samples there that Princeton specific multiplier is going to be much tighter and it's going to become a much more valuable tool um right now we're just looking doing a per bedroom basis but when you have a larger number of n or a larger sample you could then be able to look at the individual units themselves and be able to have a little bit more specific of a multiplier but I think it's definitely going to really kind of tighten up the number and give a more realistic view of the students that are likely going to be coming out of an individual development all right thank you I think that was good for the public to understand I appreciate it and can we just speak again Mike uh so the public understands and I think the committee has learned this over over the time working with you that um your numbers are going to have to be submitted to the Department of Education so we submit plans and we submit de demographics and we are required to submit projects that are again as you mentioned approved and known so there's lots of projects and different projects that get brought up in the town that kind of come and say they're going to start the planning process but you're actually only able to include in these numbers the pro uh the projects that are actually formally have gone through the process and are approved um and that ties into the way that we present data to the Department of Education so it's not that we have the option of necessarily throwing in things that we think will be happening or you know kind of making our own judgment on that could you speak to that a little bit sure I'm happy to yeah so with the Department of Education process um they use the term um developments that are eminent so things that aren't aren't just conversations or speculative in nature um these are projects that are approved are you know construction will be eminent um or are under construction um and it it kind of ties that window back together so when we when we think about it as planners and we think about it as demographers um we're trying to capture sort of that long range vision and the kind of space we're going to need but I understand the doe standpoint and saying that well you know if a speculative development doesn't come through fruition why are we going to provide and build space for that if it's not definitely going to happen um so what what we did is we tailored our projections to match up with that Doe process of what they're expecting and that then feeds in data that aligns with um the types of spaces that are being used the space needs and really aligns the Princeton process with the doe process from a projection standpoint as well as the lrfp capacity standpoint that that Dan and George will talk about but I think to keep in the back of our minds is very important it may not be in the projections but we want to be cognizant of where other development is occurring and what's happening um because you know with this plan we're projecting out students that um are with greater certainty going to arrive as part of development and we're having projections that are a little bit tighter um but also you live in your local community you know what's going on around I think it becomes the point of saying that you know in a number of years from now we're going to reassess where other development is occurring um is it above that five to 10 year Baseline that we're projecting now um do some adjustments need to be made or is our plan sufficient um that gets back to sort of this philosophy of planning being in a continuous process um so you know Beth is right you know we're only projecting what is likely an eminent going to occur but you know we know that there could also be some changes so we just want to be cognizant of that and we want to look at several Windows as we're talking about space planning going forward thank you Mike that that's helpful and I again will bring back to Dr Foster's point that we are proposing some plans that are just right in the sense that they actually do allow for a little extra um because we all have we live in this community we see we see what's happening so we're trying to strike the right balance um thank you for that I don't know if there's any more questions or perhaps we do have the projects yet to get through so thank you all right thank you I'm gonna try to keep you on the line and have George start his presentation we'll see how that works if not I'm gonna disconnect you from the zoom and I know you can catch the live stream at home let's see how this works real quick um nothing like uh you know working on the Fly here we go all right introducing um again not George duthy from Freight Tac V Hopkins in duthy thank you so much for coming tonight thanks for having me again can everyone here okay great okay so tonight we're just going to recap and talk a little bit about some updates tweaks to the plans I've been made since the last time we were together uh some of you may have seen much of this information before but let me just tell you what we're going to talk about this evening quickly in our agenda here and Matt thank you um potential projects process and overview and we're going to talk about uh what are those projects entail we're going to talk about the high school projects which we've spoken about before all of these Princeton Middle School Community Park Littlebrook as well as updates on some of the estimated project costs the uh estimated estimated preliminary tax impact and then we're going to talk about next steps and schedule so just moving on a little bit about the process and you've heard a lot about collaboration and you've heard a lot about due diligence and and that's truly what it was uh the capacity study and the demographics that uh Mike just referred to been completed been tweaked over time program need needs throughout the district discussion with staff looking at infrastructure input from numerous stakeholders School visits and refinements based upon again input from building staff and other folks multiple meetings with District administration Board of Education feedback from interested entities and refinements as we went along okay multiple public presentations at Board of Education meetings and other venues as well refinements completed also based upon feedback from members of the public of course additional meetings that were needed to further refine and incorporate the plans and of course we've also met with the folks from the town of Princeton all right so a long uh due diligence and collaborative process has gotten us to where we are today so where are we additions and renovations to Princeton Middle School Community Park Elementary School Littlebrook Elementary School Princeton High School renovations to the technology space and then classroom H HVAC improvements at Princeton High School all of these projects the growth projects to enable us the school district to build just right looking ahead for the next five to seven years difficult to project much beyond that so Princeton High School and again I some of you have seen these projects this is the basement uh numia Gallery is down there now the district's it department is in this space and so the plan here is you just if I can do this I'm really not good with these pointers so uh let's see here I'm really not good no anyway so the yellow wraparound new shape is a corridor that's also going to serve as some Gallery space an open gallery space kind of wrapping around there in the green there uh you're going to those are going to be two classrooms that can be opened up and create flexible space for Gatherings and also additional gather Gallery space and then in blue there's one two three General full-size general education classrooms and then we have a uh a small group room adjacent to the one classroom so this space is going to greatly increase uh the flexibility at the high school for some much needed programs so what will happen to the district's it Department that will go to the middle school and we'll talk about that and some of you may have seen that already okay so that's the high school renovation project the Middle School some of you may remember here's a site plan I want to say that some of the site aspects of all of the projects including the Middle School Littlebrook Community Park are still being worked on there's a separate effort going on to study outdoor space and playground space and so there's going to be some additional refinements of all the site plans as we go along but at the middle school two additions one on top of your screen in blue there that is going to become a multi-purpose space and cafeteria expansion with a separate night entrance and some other support functions and then at the bottom uh you'll see alone welln not that's the uh two-story classroom Edition which I'm going to tell you more about okay so at the top of the screen we blow that up a little bit you're going to see if you put to the cafeteria map please uh you're going to see an expansion of the cafeteria and the things that are cross-hatched are all of the new construction okay so we're going to expand the cafeteria we're going to create a wraparound Corridor in yellow yellow circulation okay uh we're going to create a multi-purpose space that's in the aqua green color there to the right of that there's a variety of support spaces including toilet rooms okay we're going to uh do some Renovations as well in the music area we're going to take the smaller compartmentalized spaces and make them into larger more flexible music rooms to fit more kids at one time okay and so that's what we're doing in the back of the building along with some Associated site work along the front of the building this is a two-story addition so a couple of things going on here again in the in the cross-hatched area to your left we're going to make a a wraparound addition that's going to connect the Pod to the new main entrance to the existing main entrance and create a new main entrance along with an expansion of the office a security vestibule you know a nice Lobby space and then inside the addition we're going to put classrooms two science labs and a variety of flexible instructional spaces small group rooms SL classrooms so we can put smaller groups of kids in those rooms or large full-size classrooms in those rooms as well in the two stories and you can see to the right there the pink on top there those are the two science labs with a prep room in between some additional classrooms and you can see a connection to the existing pod uh C I think um that will complete the connection on the second floor so there's going to be a lot of improvements there's a connecting walkway between the uh between the I think that's e-wing and c and that was an area of heavy traffic we wanted to cover that we can't enclose it completely but we can make that connection and then in the brown in the renovated area of the Sea on the first floor that's where we're putting our district it Department it will have its own independent entrance okay so there's quite a bit going on there at the middle school as you can see we're going to make two covered walkways that are going to uh provide access to the new entrance to the middle school as well as an entry Plaza okay to make something uh you know that kind of pops out a little bit more all right so that's that's the middle school project and kind of a big nutshell so moving on next to Community Park here again site plan and we've identified some elements here on the site plan you can see but again same note applies here as I said earlier regarding refinement of that plan two additions going on here at community park and so on to the end of the existing two-story Wing we're going to put a two-story expansion with classrooms and attached to attached to the existing gymnasium area okay we're going to do it once story Edition we're going to do a new gymnasium there and I'm going to show you what that's going to look like on the plan that's to follow okay so here at Community Park we have a two-story Edition on the left six classrooms there on two floors we're going to make making a connection directly to the existing two-story wing of the building and then to the right of the plan there again the cross-hatched area the large uh blue green space that's your new uh multi-purpose room room sorry new gymnasium with a stage it's a multi-purpose room SL gymnasium SL stage okay so for an elementary school we are also going to have some support spaces there important in this plan on the bottom is again in the yellow that is a connecting Corridor that Corridor will connect the far end right side of the building all the way across to the two-story Wing to create a wraparound circulation pattern in this building some renovations are planned as well one of the big Renovations is the cafeteria cafeteria will be uh expanded by removal of the stage because that stage is going to be over in that multi new multi-purpose room now we're going to do some improvements to the kitchen we're going to relocate the library okay and that's the area that's in uh kind of in lavender there uh in part of the what is now the existing gym and Community Park as well as as well as a small expansion in the new addition of the library as well and then we're going to provide music space in the red area that is on the top of the renovations area that is basically the other half of the gym the top half of the gym between that there's going to be uh some storage rooms offices and things like that to create that acoustical isolation between the library and the music rooms and then to the bottom left you'll see that there's going to be some an additional classroom and some small group instruction small group instruction rooms are very important in schools now because of the level of services that schools provide and you need to do what we call pullouts to take the children from the classes and give them that specialized instruction so we need more and more of those spaces because there are more and more of those programs now in the school districts this is not something that was really contemplated when schools were designed way back when so we've increased that and you'll see the same is true at Littlebrook as well okay so that's the community park project and then Littlebrook and Littlebrook again two additions on the left side of the screen in blue that is a new music room okay which we'll show you more of and then on the right side you're going to see again a wraparound this theme of wrapping around and connecting things and not having dead ends anymore but having so kids can you know and staff members can get around the building lots of good reasons for that improves efficiencies you know improves security proves supervision improves a lot of things so let's move on then same note about the site work here and so here left side I'll start there in the red that's that's the new music Edition with a small again connecting quor and yellow and then to the to the right of that you're going to see those six new classrooms and again you're going to see the circulation pattern with the with the corridor which will connect the two ends of the building and then in orang those are all support spaces toilet rooms and things like that below that we're going to do some reconfigurations of the existing child study team and kind of carved up offices we're going to straighten those out adjacent to the existing Library leave the existing library at Little Brook as is and then we're going to add two small group rooms again we need those small group rooms in two very large oversized kindergarten rooms in the bottom right corner which will make those resulting rooms the same size as the rooms you have now okay so that's the Little Brook plan so what about project costs so right now we're still in a Range until we ref find the estimates we are in range total project costs between 85 million and 89 .5 million I'm hoping it's closer to the $85 million number and you can see the range of costs associated with each of those individual projects in the chart there I won't read them to you but you can see that one of the projects added to the chart is the high school HVAC project which is going to make uh the HVAC improvements replace obsolete equipment at the high school it's going to improve environmental conditions for for the kids so the costs are preliminary they're estimated on what we know today but we're finding out more and more every single day cost is subject to refinement as we complete the process of submission to the Department of Education okay and we'll give more details about the costs after we complete those doe estimates so how much is it going to cost so here's the estimated tax impact and I want to say that this was prepared by The District's Financial Consultant Phoenix advisors so the term of the bond we're assuming an $85 million issue term of 25 years interest rate around 3.5% you know interest rates are subject to Market variations average home assessed value in Princeton $848,000 thereabouts the annual tax impact for that home valued at $848,000 will be $551 70 and again these numbers might vary a little bit okay the tax impact for every $100,000 of a say value of your home 656 Okay so if you look at your tax bill you see your assess value uh it's not an exact calculation but it's close all right so again cost are subject to refinement the source for the average home assess value is from the New Jersey Department of Taxation they keep a role of house values throughout the state it's subject again to cost refinements changes and assess values interest rate fluctuations and so forth okay so what's the anticipated project schedule not going to spend a whole lot time on this other than to say that you know our critical time right now to get submitted to the Department of Education we want to be ready and complete with that process by June we're planning to conduct a referendum in December of 2024 or January 2025 we are allowed to do referendums five times a year the state mandates what those dates are we really don't have a choice we have to pick one of them so we are aiming for December or January okay along with that there are some there's some work to do uh as far as completion of applications actually a fair amount of work to do with that and we wait for our state approvals which we're hoping to have by August or September we have to have those notifications and approvals from the state in time to prepare the referendum questions and get those to the clerk of Elections okay so that uh that that vote can be scheduled okay and then I think we have one more slide talking about oh overall here's an overall schedule and there again you can see that referendum date everything just kind of works from there there will be a period of time for design regulatory approvals and so forth we have a construction period for new construction and then right now we're looking at potentially two phases of Renovations and those Renovations will be contingent on completion of some of the new construction so we can use that space for swing space with construction especially nowadays unforeseen conditions long leate times for materials agency review time agency requirements have gotten more stringent less people to do the work so we we do see lead time issues with Agency Reviews sometimes and other factors known and unknown at this time okay so I have to always throw that in anyway that's it I think yes thank you thank you questions George um thank you so much um it's delightful to have you working with us and I appreciate um all the information that you provided um I'm just going back on the tax impact I did the math like in my head but if it goes to if the referendum depending on what gets approved by the the Department of Education um if it goes to 90 million that's that would mean the referendum the range is between $500 and $51 uh for the average assessed home up to $800 roughly and $50 is that Matha right um about I have to ask Phoenix yeah $5 million wouldn't wouldn't add that much definitely sub I mean interest rates just spiked again recently we don't you know it seems to be so is it $80 I'm doing the math wrong it depends how long we Finance the bonds over with5 per 100 and Matt does do those that's based on those assumptions that we had we'd have to get that new multiplier that $56 we'd have to get a new number for that order to do that do th do those assumptions include Aid that we might get yes yes they do yes they do assuming 12% which could be a touch high at the time we were look working with 12% we may be closer to 10 we're still you know so the state I say you know the state does not fund new additions and um you know with they use very cookie cutter capacity models so they're not you know they're going to say well you don't need any more space you can cram more kids in those classrooms right they you know yeah the state funding formula is not uh advantageous so on the renovations we'll get 34% which is PR rated 40% um hopefully the state could always change that pration it probably wouldn't go um higher yes Adam um just my own edification are there is there an intense lobbying effort to change the state funding formula especially for when it comes to building exemptions and all that kind of stuff it was close a couple times it didn't didn't make it through the legislature it still hasn't it still has okay the most recent effort to raise the $143 a square foot they allow for school construction which is about 20% of what it really is uh was last year and that failed it did fail okay exemptions can happen in tax levy exemptions can happen though correct well that formula is set by the legislature yeah um so if we could just stay focus on this referendum in Princeton so um you were saying we think the total state aid state aid will be around 12% 10 to 12 10 to 12 percent um and there's no state aid for new construction is that right not in your case because you don't have enough unhoused students the formula is based on what's called unhoused students which are students who don't have space to go into based on the Stage Formula which is based on the size of your the gross area of your building divided by an area allowance based upon the grade level of the of the child of the student So based on that formula no and they have an expectation that we would have significantly higher class sizes than the community is willing to or should you know then that's subjective yeah well right it depends a lot on how the buildings are laid out I mean obviously there's a lot of factors go into that that make some it works better for some districts than others okay so just to make sure we're putting out I'm putting out correct information it's $551 per the average assess home if the referend is at 85 million and a little more if it ends up uh at the higher end of the range it's probably $30 but I'm concerned that average 800 is going up you think or not what do you mean going up because because the houses are selling for more and more well it depends on what's being the the assess rates when you get your your card um right now the average um home is selling for 53% more than the assess value oh sh no no that's tax Public public information will be more more stable no because that's the average okay so it it doesn't yeah assess values stay they're based on the assessments right and and if you make improvements to your home they'll change your assessment too so a lot of the homes that have work going on their assessment are going to walk but that's different from market value okay um anyone else have any questions so go ahead well I just wanted to thank George um he's already been thanked but his uh incredible care and the way he has listened um to the board to members of the public um to the staff to the building principles um has really been fantastic and some Architects get wedded to their plans and it's wonderful that George and his team have shown a sign different amount of flexibility and have been willing to adapt their plans as good ideas have been raised explored examined and now uh put into the plans can can I just SEC yeah very fle compared to people in the past you're quite flexible open-minded and I think you have a encyclopedic knowledge of what's going on it's quite impressive thank you appreciate that and I I would say I'm also delighted how you've been able to um you know we went from having a saying here are all our various needs but you gave us a plan that actually meets our needs on so many different levels and in so many ways they're interconnected and efficient and so I really appreciate that from F fixing the flow at the middle school to figuring out what to do with the technology space where we maintaining art in fact improving our ability to hang and show art um you know replacing the newa gallery which is which is an older space but bringing it into a way that we can use it for classrooms but it's also it's just meeting so many of our objectives and and it was it's been a pleasure to work with you thank you thank you very much I appreciate that thank you George all right and uh moving on now uh we have the budget hearing um with Mr Baldin Mike have a good night thanks for coming tonight all right have a good night everybody thank you [Music] great so I'm going to go through this um relatively quickly there uh were no changes between the tentatively adopt Budget on March 18th and the uh final ad U budget that's up for adoption tonight at this board meeting um our mission statement we promis to prepare all our students to leave lives uh lead lives of joint purposes knowledgeable creative and compassionate citizens of global Society um budget calendar in highlighted yellow right now is the public uh budget hearing which is still required to be advertised in two newspapers so um amazing two physical newspapers but um just anyway so that's where we are tonight it's been a uh a long process with a lot of work from a lot of people in the district um budget drop drivers uh we talked about last time um you know meeting students needs post pandemic inflation and scarcity um once again I think I just referred to another little spike in interest rates that was unexpected um transportation costs um have gone up significantly um increasing uh obviously improving our pedagogy is a constant focus of the school district and continuing um to maintain and improve our facilities um we'll go over the accomplishments super quick we've uh passed two referenda and we're talking about another one um the past two we're dealing with maintaining and improving our facilities the next one would be about um increasing capacity for um uh student enrollment that is projected to go up uh we've completed uh reviews of math di special ad technology and continue to plan for increased development in town that I just talked about um improving our pedagogy um we also are utilizing uh grants available from Princeton University and the state to offer extra supports and tutoring to our students so some really good things are going on um the taxpayer uh impact of the budget adoption uh we always have the two different years you have a calendar year the towns on the calendar year the school tax is passed through the town collector um so the adopted calendar 2024 School tax would be so with the um swi increased in assess valuations the effective tax rate uh would be uh 2.27 uh versus 2.48 so slightly lower when you have increasing tax bases which has have been the norm for most of the last 15 to 20 years here um so that helps to deflect or defay some of the increasing costs of education and other services that government provides um this is a little bit uh more in the details you can see here what I was talking about this is the the uh fiscal year our fiscal year is June 30 this uh town has a uh December 31st calendar fiscal year are um overall when we combine Debt Service and the general fund um the tax levy increase year-over-year uh would be 2.07% which is slightly less than the uh compounded annual growth rate over the last seven years of 2.14% um we're looking here now below at the calendar year which combines two of our fiscal years um the tax increase would be uh on the average household which we were just talking about would be about $237 I'm just under that um this chart here is a a nice comparison uh it shows our enrollment growth which um slowed down during covid and at the bottom shows our operating fund uh tax levy increases so um 2.17% this year is uh significantly less than the last two years which is a good thing um this is a combination once again showing our combined operating and Debt Service at 2.07% um banked tax cap so there's a tax levy cap in the state New Jersey with the few exemptions um the most common one here um is healthc care waiver so in the current uh budget process we um we've had a healthy uh Workforce so our health insurance uh is tied to the state when the state increases theirs we're allowed to um increase ours so if ours don't align directly with the state it creates a problem but when the states went up um this year and we're not going to be using it this year because we don't need it we put it in the bank so to speak and we can tax it later if we need it so that's a good thing um we are using some expired um banked cap which is what puts us a little bit over that 2% um this 51,000 would um be going away this year if we didn't use it and um so the total Bank cap are using for the years 146,000 just over that um this is a chart that shows our major bud major budget driver which is um salaries uh benefits and Charter School expenses is just about 83% only leaves about 177% for the remainder this smaller pie chart shows um that remainder piece um which is uh out of District tuitions transportation and gold um energy costs um maintenance and custodial costs um non salary maintenance to custodial cost insurance legal and Professional Services and when we get done there it leaves under $5 million of the remainder or just under 5% to spend so our adopted budget tonight this is some of the details of um our salaries um and we can see that the in Gray I've highlighted some of the areas of pressure um student services Transportation has been a real driver um of increased uh expenses two years of uh more than 20% growth um you know a couple years ago we couldn't find bus drivers so we had to increase our rates which were too low um as we've done with a lot of our our service sector so it's been helpful um to those people um District benefits has also gone up uh although we had a nice year this year um with uh our health insurance inre increase so that's a good thing our overall Revenue um is the vast majority of that revenue is from local sources either our local tax levy um and then most of this tuition is uh from cranberry um who sends their high school students here to the district um there's a little bit of tuition from uh staff um who send their uh some of our staff choose to send their students here for tuition um interest has ticked up a little bit so there's a little bit of positive with some of the inflation um state aid uh we've had some uh good state aid increases year-over year uh with the state formula though that funds charter schools so charter schools are public schools um you know we've I've done a fair amount of work in the last couple uh months on that um it is interesting so they index uh the inflation is sort of passed through to their charter school so our increase in the charter costs have uh out paced our state aid increases so kind of a wash there um and then um we budget for Extraordinary Aid which is a Grant application which we do each year based on super high um intensive needs of certain special education students um and we have our money from Princeton University which has been very helpful um in this in these inflationary times and um that's really in a nutshell our Revenue um as we can see our tax levy is uh it's about 80 80 something percent of our overall um budget Revenue um here we're looking at the expenditures big picture um clearly uh salaries and benefits um the benefit increase here is mostly fund balance uh we are forced by the state state of New Jersey has very uh tight or conservative rules on fund balance um as compared to uh most of the states in the country so we go through that when we uh deal with Moody when they do our rating reviews but we're only allowed to keep um 4% um in fund balance and so they they uh Force us to budget uh the remainder each year um but we uh want to keep our fund balance at closer to the levels where we are right now so we don't intend on spending that hopefully um although you know inflationary pressures um have challenged us um there um we can look at um some pressures um with uh student services we can see here year-over-year Charter School in uh forecasted increase uh over 7% um that is an uh will be shed up to the actual at the end of the year they take the student counts that we do in October which is finalized in December and then at the end of the year in June coming up uh this year they do counts at the charter school and we uh work with them to verify those counts of they are weighted counts so they would get uh more funding for um multilingual Learners uh free and reduced students on free and reduce launch or special education students so those are really the driving forces behind our Appropriations um in the budget that opens it up to uh any questions uh from the board and then uh from the public thank you Mr Balden um that was a very uh concise and informative presentation I thought You' like that I was trying to be concise thank you I appreciate it so I put my book away we're good um can I ask you a question so I know you touched on it briefly but we've been reading a lot about uh cuts and state aid to other districts and um I I know that we uh I think received an increase of 4% is that right or no never mind uh we did we got about 5% but it was fully more than slightly more than fully offset by the increase to Charter schol that was my next question that was my next uh that was my next point right got it yeah so whatever that increase was which was 440 and how much more are we paying 550 550 so it's a negative so I have to give you a raise Brian yeah double it okay all right thank you well I appreciate there are lot of district with the state funding formula they have been you know slowly going through enacting that formula and then um certain districts are getting uh the the the thought is that they're waiting the wealth Factor part so it's kind of a split formula based on student population to then wealth factor in a community so there's uh some communities are having an awful lot of volatility so yes yeah well um I appreciate all the time that you put into this budget and I was reading something that our um average tax increase over the past five year is it five years or 10 years five years was 1.95% or tax levy increase the effective uh that slide that's from the tenative adoption um and it was also in in in something that will be coming up tomorrow in the papers yes yes so um Elizabeth K has been working closely with us on all sorts of press releases once again yeah she is here Elizabeth hi Elizabeth uh so anyway I just wanted to say thank you and good job thank you all right any other questions any Debbie all right it has to be a comment that I always make um hopefully we're not spend more on parking and we're getting more parking from our friendly um town and school supplies I know they're small dollars but how many of those little boxes can you have and it's not you Matt it's maybe our principals our teachers like we need cut some of that from the budget I know some parents have way too many pencils so I just wanted to share that thank you thank you anyone else no all right um and now it's time for bub comment um only on the um budget so if anyone has any comment about the 24 25 budget presentation that Mr Balden um has spent so much time on please come to the microphone Mr Balden no one has any questions because you did such a fantastic job and engine engine and her oh I'm sorry engine sorry Janine we know it was all Janine thank you because you know um we're all here for the kids and this is the most important the most important thing that we have to work with our kids so thank you for your careful attention to the budget I have a point just a question yeah and that is um I assume that these presentations are all available on the website or will be after meeting and and then also for the planning just to mention also on the demographics we gave The Abridged version for tonight but there's actually a much longer presentation with all the details that's available on the website so for people who want tomorrow for people who want to see again we were going through this very quickly we're talking very quickly but we've all spent a lot of time I don't want to misrepresent tomor tomorrow or as soon as possible let's let our people but after so there are three different presentations but just if people are looking and want to spend some time because I know for me it's hard to process all this so quickly so um and for the board we've seen this many times but the public can find it and it although they call it a science it's not so we'll be hearing from people I'm sure about oh yes projections but all right anyone else no all right Mr Balden are we gon to vote on that now or is that part of uh yes we are can I get a motion please Brian for adoption of the final budget 2425 second Mara daan Kendall yes Betsy Bago yes Beth Baron yes Adam uh no maybe I can make a comment later but why I hold on a sec hold on um okay just so I know that you're still so how it goes is we make a motion and then uh there's comment so but I didn't call for it so um please go ahead oh um first of all again I could be completely wrong what I'm about to say and I want to say and I say this from the heart this board they all all have their superpowers and I wouldn't say that if it wasn't true I've been on this board for three months and they have be cognitive um organizational communication research in depth I think this is more philosophical um disagreement and I could still and again I can't parse my vote I don't want to abstain and I I'm 40% agree with this budget 60% don't right now and I could be wrong I'm philosophically disagreeing in a nutshell like I have a longer version but I won't go into it if you want to hear it I can always you know it's a FIV minute one I'll do the 30- second one I'm still not clear about demogra demographics volatile Financial pressures uh where we already are already have incredible Financial Resources we're in the top five in our peer group so I'm afraid that Rising costs in a nutshell will cut into the operating budget cause deficits and cause us to cut teachers and staff um at the same time this isn't really get mentioned and maybe this is the way real reality is But Rising taxes are driving out people especially people on fixed incomes poor people oftenly often or minorities I know this for a fact I know friends and that hurts the DI diversity we want but at the same time you know this is philosophical too this is where we want to go this is the right thing to do you know I can accept that thank you um Mr baldon did you want to call his name again Adam Beerman we voting now you're vote we're voting now I'm sorry sorry with the parliament if few procedure problems uh no uh debb bronfeld yes Martin franceski yes Elanor hubard yes Susan caner yes Brian McDonald yes Rob Christopher yes the motion passes thank you Mr Balden all right so um as I mentioned before we're GNA have our first public com uh comment on any item oh no sorry agenda items only um so if you have anything to uh no no no I was moving it I move I said if you were listening at the beginning of the meeting a long which I know was a long time ago um I said I was gonna I don't like the public The public's been here almost two hours um I don't like to wait that long before there's public comment um so you know what we can just do public comment on on any any item so um oh yeah there's a list hold on first up is first up is Erica Snider um and if you could just state your name uh the street you live on and um if you could please keep your comments uh to three minutes we would appreciate it oh three I timed it for two all right DNA uh you made a good minute back right I'm Erica Snider lawrenville Road um tomorrow there will be a lottery with 10 families competing for three available spots in community Parks Kinder DLI program which has been capped at 44 students even with that Cap CP has the highest Kinder enrollment to date for next year just like it did last year at this time showing the demand for the program is there and is increasing and over the summer were there no cap we would continue to receive new families who move into the CP catchment area we also have historically had some of the highest class sizes in the district and next year will be no different while dealing with the ramifications of the DLI Lottery and how this will limit the access to our school community park has been informed of Staffing cuts that don't reflect the long-term proposed plans the reduction um I'm sorry the elimination of a full-time art teacher to a part-time art teacher seems very short-sighted as we are looking at the plans to add a very large addition to CP we were told this change is because we have low enrollments and fewer class sections however in most grades less sections doesn't mean less students in comparison to other schools to the 10 families in the DLI program Lottery tomorrow please know that we want all of you at community park and we will will continue to advocate for you to get the education that you want for your child to the parents at Littlebrook Riverside and Johnson Park please remember that this board has promised redistricting and that what is impacting Community Park does impact your children as well you just might not know what applies to you yet and to the board members and district office I would ask that moving forward we hear no more talk about empty classrooms at Community Park which has been wielded this past year as a weapon whether intentionally or not to pit the community against Community Park you have chosen to have these classrooms sit empty by not allowing for the expansion of the DLI program even though there is demand by reducing our specials access and ensuring that we have the highest class sizes in the district moving forward so while we don't have as many sections per grade as other schools that is by your choice you chose not to provide Staffing when it is warranted and our amazing teachers will still provide exceptional instructions in many cases for 22 or more kids per class even if their counterparts at other schools have all of their classrooms used with 14 seats filled we would too if you let us and with much more parity in students per section taught across the district as well thank you thank you uh next up is Kim marks hi everybody um so I am Kim marks uh 17 h and I wanted to say thank you very much um for your words tonight Dr Foster for all of the work that went into uh the words that you spoke tonight uh the work that is going to be um coming from them I know that for some people it doesn't necessarily mean a lot um but it it um it's been a rough go right you know and um I my family and I moved here uh started in January of 2017 in the district and in October of 2017 I kind of started in this conversation because my son experienced anti-Semitism in the district I talked to a number of parents that time and I learned that you know gosh things were pretty bad and there were a lot of conversations and that same eighth grade class went to DC came back from the Holocaust Museum and had a major anti-semitic incident in the in the school right and so things have been getting worse and worse and worse out there and in here and I know we've been fighting against it and when you see what's happening on the news and you hear what people are saying it's just greatly appreciated that you have said the things that you have said that you've made the commitments that you've made so thank you very much thank you uh next up is Lisa Jack now thank you hi Lisa Jack now um speaking as a private resident from fand Road and I don't speak off the cuff as well as Kim so I wrote mine down um so I want to start to say um I want to start by saying I'm very happy and I'm also very sad sorry this is really hurt I think it's okay to have both feelings after listening to Kathy Foster's statement tonight on anti-Semitism thank you first to Cathy and the rest of the administration for listening to me and other Jewish parents and students whom we have come to you and said that things at Princeton schools are not okay I've been reaching out for years when our Middle School dropped State mandated Holocaust Education and as we started to see anti anti-Semitism Rising which it solely has since 2021 and intensely since October 7th tonight we're seeing the biggest most public step being taken at PPS and for that I say thank you for recognizing that anti-Semitism is real it is dangerous and it is growing the Anti-Defamation lead just released statistics showing there was an average of one anti-semitic incident in the US every hour of every day in 2023 and New Jersey's played a large role in on that our state is second only to New York with the most reported incidents and this includes incidents at K through2 schools which increased 135% last year Kathy thank you for publicly stating tonight that anti-Semitism will not be tolerated in our district thank you Kim too and other leaders for taking time to meet with me other parents and with leaders in the community to learn and better understand in doing so it's great that you'll use better resources to guide professional development and curriculum changes you're expanding your vigilance about incidents and recognizing that hivs are not the only way to document and respond to Jew hatred and you've outlined several things to be aware of as forms of anti-Semitism and anti-semitic behavior and while I'm truly grateful for all that I've mentioned and that some forms of anti-Semitism have been outlined I'm not clear um exactly where this is headed for Debbie's question earlier beyond the forms that were mentioned there's many other ways that anti-Semitism presents and though PPS has chosen not to include the examples provided in the IH definition I do hope our administrators teachers board and staff will learn and understand those as well so you can really protect our children I am one of the parents that proposed adoption of the IH definition of anti-semitism as a guide to be used in curriculum professional development and to truly understand what is and is not anti-semitic when it comes to occurrences in our school schs and so I'm sad because without a full guiding definition I fear education will not go deep enough and the understanding of where their Lin should be drawn will be a bit vague it's sad when we have to limit what is described as anti-semitic because it means someone else can't say something hateful it's devastating that Jew hatred is political and where those words end up being used against us we're seeing this play out dangerously on college campuses and seeping into High School environments around the country and as a Jewish parent I'm sced our world is a very desperate place when Jew hate is tolerable I hope and I'm grateful that as you have stated there will be no tolerance here whereas other minority groups have had statements or definitions adopted by our board demonstrating their commitment and ensuring other others understand and know how to follow it it appears that Jews are not having that day and that makes me worried because it is important so I do hope that PA statements are created and that these details get codified and that goals are set and measured because Kathy leaves us after the next school year and she won't be here to guide things and it's taken us years to get here and we need to keep moving forward thank you uh is there anyone else for public comment on any agenda item no okay so uh moving on Oliver thank you for your patience student board member report okay um yours unfortunately Alex wasn't able to make it but um you'll just have to deal with twice the amount of me um welcome back um it's been a pretty busy month um so let's recap what happens um first Princeton High School's research program I think today just won Samsung Sol for tomorrow contact UM um the project um focuses on creating robots that use artificial intelligence to preserve the indigenous language me the research project highlights the interdisciplinary nature of PHS combining science and engineering with Humanities and the service and the betterment of society second Princeton High School just held its annual day of dialogue with numerous cultural groups and Affinity groups it offers a chance for Princeton High School to Showcase its to the entire community and build stronger bonds across divides finally March and April also marks the end of the College admission season we wanted to take uh we wanted to take our time to discuss some takeaways with the process and express our gratitude with so many of the teachers staff and guidance counselors who've played such a pivotal role in the process so just starting off we wanted to be thankful for everyone and all the adults who have spent hours Helping Seniors um from writing recommendation letters to reviewing essays or helping kids just find their interest and what they want to do there's no way any of us could have completed the process without any of the adults um with that being said we wanted to also focus on two ways that we could help improve career and College advising first through improving the environment around it and second helping students explore their interests outside of school so first of all we all understand that being a high schooler especially in senior year is extremely stressful and difficult especially when kids you're watching other classmates get acceptances into colleges or programs while you may or may not be getting them and may or may be experiencing rejection we're thankful that so many teachers have given help on choosing and selecting colleges and making a college list but as a whole a lot of the culture surrounding College admissions amongst many of the students in our GR can often feel stressful and toxic whether this year it's seeing classmates disparage others saying that they only deserved or they only got into their schools because of their gender or their family background or students aggressively releasing the information of other students and comparing themselves to others in public it's clear that oftentimes the culture is extremely and toxically competitive one of the things that I think helps explain this is that while our school puts a significant end emphasis on the strategy of College and Career Consulting we've often ignored the emotional and behavioral side of the process to be fair this issue can't be solved with one teacher one action or one policy it's a broader cultural issue that we have to deal with as a district and I think one way to start is by having teachers and staffers and College counselors and guidance counselors describe the importance and the ways that we should be thinking about responding and feeling the emotions of college and Senior year separately Princeton Public Schools is also unique in the dozens of opportunities that it offers whether it's Princeton High School's AFF forementioned cultural diversity its strong Arts programs which put on Broadway caliber Productions or its science programs which just won the Samsung sare tomorrow competition but as amazing as princeon public schools is there's also dozens of opportunities outside of school that can pay a pivotal role in developing students interests or their future careers um or research interests and during senior year a lot of us found out that many students did take advantage of these opportunities including some of them include internships at Fortune 500 companies positions as researchers and think tanks and working in Elite summer research programs and while these opportunities are great for the students who take it it's also concerning to see that there's not that much information inside Princeton High School about taking in those opportunities ities while some of these opportunities do present a high barrier of Entry including pre-ol programs that often cost thousands of dollars to attend many of them are free or even pay students to participate and so in response um what me and Alex have been doing is working together to create a list of student opportunities outside of school that are pretty much all free or if they have a cost offer significant financial aid um and so at the end of all of this and through the college admissions process we hope that we can build a better and healthier um culture surrounding College admissions that teaches kids to take the process carefully deliberately and to take into account their emotions but also be aware of the way they treat others and the way they talk about other people because while College admissions is definitely stressful we have to be extremely concerned of the way we carry ourselves in our school thank you so much [Music] thank you Oliver appreciate your um careful thought about the process I would also add that you know juniors are also affected yeah yeah having one myself been a rough year um but thank you Oliver um okay um moving on now um hold on one second we are moving on now to K one policy's first reading uh K2 to policy second reading uh L1 harassment intimidation bullying and then we're going on to M1 which is the board committee highlights Equity committee is up first and Debbie braunfeld is going to tell us all about the meeting we don't read them how many years have you been on the board the equity okay sorry the equity committee met on Monday April 8 on zoom in preparation we read the equity audit from 2018 we discussed what was improved at PPS since the audit and what we still need to work on we discussed that each committee should have Equity goals for the 2425 school year to help spread the work of equity we then broke out into two groups to discuss actionable goals for the njsla the New Jersey student learning assessment in English and math um and some work is being done examples are tiered support during instructional time AIS being taught in our elementary schools at the middle school we have 90 minutes learning of ela and math and reading plus and math after school we're also offering high impact tutoring and math lab at PHS we now have Saturday Academy which is helping students our next meeting will be on Monday June 10th at 6m in person in this room Valley Road please join us thank you Debbie uh next up is uh longterm term planning which I'm sure will be brief because we spent a lot of time on yeah I'll just say long-term planning met on April 18th and reviewed what was discussed um this evening and we meet again on May 16th and continue the uh ever ongoing process of long-term planning yeah and and I do in all seriousness want to thank you um Brian Susan Mara and Debbie it's only April the committee's changed um and I want to thank you for all the time and um effort and thought you've put in um to the plan that we'll be um voting on to submit to the Department of Education tonight so thank you community owes you a debt of gr seriously a debt of gratitude it's been a team process so we're grateful and we're grateful for the administration and we've we've grown and we learned and we've been working on this now for years and we're in a very good place so we're happy to bring that recommendation right thank you uh next up is operations with Susan caner who is also going to keep it brief because we had the budget presentation um so what else is going on okay I'm GNA read you a long list of things that are going on we picked me to do this rather than Brian so thank you sure uh so we met April 24th at 8 am the committee received updates on the 2022 referendum which includes uh roof projects on four schools and Elementary HVAC work which will be done this summer we then received updates on the 2023 referendum which includes doorart Ware security veses PHS cafeteria pool lighting it updates security cameras the PHS track and potential playground work all of which the district is overseeing at one time it's truly an impressive effort they are making and we thank them and we received some updates on smaller non- referendum projects that the district has either approved or is considering we discussed sustainability as we always do and Jenny lmer of sustainable Princeton provided updates on Energy Efficiency campaigns our schools and our continuing e efforts as we explore electric buses for the future and waste audit we then dis discussed several grants and budgeting issues that will appear on today's agenda for voting and we adjourned into close session to discuss the budget which was just approved our next meeting is May 9th at 8: am and I do truly want to thank Matt Dave Janine like the whole team because the amount of projects they are overseeing is truly uh an impressive effort and I think the whole committee really thanks them and if you're interested in the more details come to our next meeting and those me May 8 I'm sorry May May 8 May 8th and those meetings go on for a while right each of these projects is discussed I just listed them but each of them we get a true update yeah so anyone who wants more information we'll get it there thank you uh moving on now to personnel with Mara franches uh the Personnel committee met at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday April 8 18th we discussed the new roles and job descriptions for the chief technology officer supervisor of early childhood and the supervisor of mtss and special projects all of which we you've seen tonight we also discussed expanding the science supervisor role to comprise all of K through2 and some are counselor hours at the high school middle school allowing for at least one counselor to be available Monday through Thursday all summer um as been as has been noted by our superintendent in kind of through the budget we've we also continued discussions on streamlining and maximizing our resources through staff attrition while always ensuring we're good stewards of the community I I think it's really important for the community to understand that schools are constrained from increasing their budgets by more than 2% with very few exceptions um in times of increasing inflation and increasing enrollment it's even more important to comeb through the budget to find any possible savings and as Personnel expenses comprise over 70% of the budget of approaching 80 um carefully maximizing our resources in this area is extremely important our overarching goal is always to keep our students at the Forefront and to maintain the higher standard of instruction for our children and to keep all of our beloved teachers so each year we carefully consider if retiring or departing Personnel need to be replaced if positions can be combined and if we're fully utilizing all of our Personnel in our current Administration is doing the very difficult and very painstaking work of a deep dive into each role and position within our district and we applaud their work and effort as it has been both difficult and timec consuming but it is incredibly necessary as each year we're required to fill a gap to find Savings in our budget to stay within our cap and as as our as Mr Beerman pointed out um it's our goal to keep our beloved teachers and to do that we have to really really really control our budget so each year we do come through and to highlight the the atmosphere that we're currently working in in this state just right before this meeting I was checking my emails and East BR there's a headline East Brunswick Schools they're cutting 50 jobs amid an 8 million budget shortfall that headline is occurring throughout the state through a number of our neighbors everybody it's something that it's not a it's not a future worry that we have it's something we worry about like in near term it's something we strive every single budget cycle how are we keeping our services not affecting the service that we're offering our children and God forbid let you know keeping our staff the end product may result in difficult decisions and a change in certain aspects of the culture we've become accustomed to but it represents very necessary and important change that allow us to continue the best and broadest educational experiences possible for our children Our intention is always to maintain the same quality and number of minutes of instruction in the classroom um and that's what we're do in Personnel so our next meeting will be it's regrettably closed but if you come to operation you'll hear all about the budget uh our next meeting is Thursday May 9th at 8:30 thank you Mara uh and then last but certainly not least student achievement I'm sorry so I'm trying to get out by 10 um policy with Beth Baron policy polic man in April 17th and we reviewed the policies that are up for first and second read this this evening and our next meeting is on May 8th and the public is welcome to join us we meet about I think 3:45 you meet in person right we no we meet 3:45 on May yeah okay and you can come listen to the you know complex and dry policy discussions but we work through everything so okay thank you Ben great okay go ahead student achievement uh very quickly we met Friday April 12th at 11:00 a Dr Foster gave us an update on the work um that she spoke about tonight regarding the anti-Semitism statement um we heard from our administrators about summer assignments so students might be very excited or not to hear that we have optional um Elementary summer assignments once again in uh English and in math and those will be posted on our website in about a month I believe is oh tomorrow probably tomorrow and then we'll do an E blast on Thursday perfect we can't wait get uh a start on that and then also our Middle and High School summer reading as well and I appreciate the committee's conversation about that and all the work of our administrators uh we have an old overnight field trip to Japan on our agenda this evening we spoke about that in student achievement um we had a great presentation about uh U the extended school year looking for high school student volunteers to work with their program in the summer so if there any aspiring teachers out there or other students who'd like to work with um students in our in our programs there is an opportunity to do that then we did meet in close session our next meeting is May 17th at 11:00 a.m. and please feel free to join us on zoom on Zoom y all right right thank you um so now we're going to move on um we have N1 retirements stop me if you need anything N2 resignations and three appointments and four Personnel items and five leave of absence and six substitute student placements and seven curriculum instruction and eight student services and nine job descriptions and then we move on to uh curriculum and instruction the Grant application for uh local Recreation Improvement Grant thank you to Mr Balden for finding that uh and we're going to ask we're going to try to get it again right we received it once so good luck to us um student day field trip and then we have a student overnight field trip which is going to is which is an action item and can I get a motion Debbie second Beth can I make a comment Oh yes any comment go ahead um I will be abstaining from this one I'm having an issue with um I know this trip needs a nurse and I also know our school district needs a nurse and right now we had to increase I think we're paying over $200 to get sub nurses and so I want to make sure we come up with a policy where we're covered the 50 kids going on the trip I think it's great and and obviously they need the nurse but there's you know over 3,000 that are still here that also need a nurse so I'm abstaining because I need to just make the statement for me okay thank you anyone else no oh sorry oh no you were right what was I right I was right asking for comment oh yeah yeah Kendall speechless yes Betsy bag wheel yes Beth Baron yes Adam Beerman oh yeah Debbie bronfield abstain Mara franceski yes Elanor hubber yes Susan caner yes Brian McDonald yes Rob Christopher yes motion passes thank you Mr Balton I'm moving on P1 student services uh oh no I'm sorry I forgot o for facilities waiver submission um and moving on P1 professional Consulting Services 2324 uh P2 educal educational placement of peoples 2324 revised moving on now to the business finance plant and operations 01 Financial reports um 02 an action is that an action item okay um is that because of me yeah okay I checked I didn't see anything but I appreciate that can I get a motion please uh Mara second Beth oh sorry Rob next time D Kendall abstain thank you Betsy bag yes Beth Baron yes Adam Beerman uh yes Debbie bronfeld yes Mara franceski yes Elanor hubard yes Susan caner yes Brian McDonald yes Rob Christopher yes motion passes thank you um Q2 fire and evacuation drills Q3 project submission to ngj doe for review and approval um Q4 Cooperative purchasing membership Somerset County Q5 bid authorization uh the PHS trainers room renovation P6 acceptance of donation um so we would like to thank uh the Little Brook PTO for um Their donation of um playground equipment which is a dinosaur um I think the cost was $35,000 and that will be installed relatively soon right yeah the foundation was installed over spring break um and then the hopefully early summer I hope they invite us to climb it um yes you're welcome to yeah yeah but uh we're grateful to the Littlebrook PTO and all the PTO that are um contributing to our children's education uh next up is acceptance of donation from uh PF for the Riverside kindergarten and we're grateful uh to PF and also to the Riverside PTO for um making that application um then we have um the registration travel agenda and then moving on to our second and our third tonight and last public comment the there's anyone here who would like to speak about anything on their mind no okay we wore you out sorry uh so moving on now to S1 the uh consent vote can I get a motion please Mara second Rob Mr [Music] Balden D Kendall yes Betsy Bagel yes Beth Baron yes Adam Beerman uh yes Debbie bronfield yes Mar franceski yes Elinor hbert yes Susan caner yes Brian McDonald yes Rob Christopher yes consent agenda passes thank you Mr Balden and then um just uh coming up next next week uh we have a meeting here it's are we starting at six o'clock the public portion public portion uh and that is our annual um Personnel um staff appointments thank you um so that'll be six o'clock uh and then our May meeting is May 21st um thank you all for attending thank you to our Administration it was a jam-packed but really to all of you um we know you all put a lot of time and effort and thought into the meeting and we appreciate it and with that can I get a motion to adjourn Brian second Mara all in favor good night thank you