okay good afternoon everybody um notice is hereby given that in accordance with the open public meetings act chapter 231 the laws of 1975 notice of this meeting has been sent to All School offices officially designated newspapers fil with the Township Clerk and posted in
the Board of Education Office 48 hours in advance of this meeting roll call please certainly Mrs Pinelli here Mrs here Mr White here Mr rosini I'm here uh flag salute I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America and to the rep for stands one nation God indivisible liy and justice for all okay um I don't really have anything to add uh with regard to the board president's
report other than I think we're done which is interesting too I talk about the weather a lot but it's got a lot of components meaning it's days missed by you know the kids and adding on days to the end of the year as well as there's a financial aspect to it in terms of clearing snow and all the other things
so I think we really did well to you know hopefully Dodge that bullet I know that there's been storms in April there was one when I was in college which ruined the baseball season but hopefully we don't have that and that's about it um with regard to committee reports
Let's uh start with Mr white buildings and grounds nothing to report for this evening uh Mrs burwitz is not here do we have anything for communications and policies nothing other than there are several policies on the agenda for first reading tonight okay Mrs Sande
curriculum and Technology no update at this time our next meeting is in April okay Mrs Pinelli do you have anything to say about Finance uh yes we just had a finance meeting um tonight we we will be voting on our tenative budget that's uh business resolution
B9 um Miss iolo will speak more to that and once it is approved it will be sent down to the county um tomorrow then we will hold a public meeting on May 6th that's my
report um I have nothing to add about negotiations and Mrs assour is not here with regard to Personnel is there anything that we need to know that and think of okay um please take note of the committee meeting schedule down below um and now with I'm going to move on to
public comments on agenda items only and I'm also going to add um uh again we're going to get to a point later on where we're have public comments on General items these rules will apply equally for both um the riverville board of education is committed to encouraging
the citizens of Rivervale and employees of the Rivervale School District to speak directly to board trustees in order to facilitate this communication residents and employees are requested one to sign in before speaking two to maintain an appropriate sense of decorum and three to limit their remarks to no more than five minutes the board will
also take under advisement the written comments and opinions of non-residents that are submitted to the board secretary being mindful of its responsibility to maintain the orderly conduct of meetings the board retains the right to rule on such matters as the speaker's right to address the board as well as the appropriateness of the subject being presented the board's
decision in such matters is final the board has also also reminds all members of the public that while it subscribes without reservation to the principle of keeping the community informed by policy and law it cannot allow public discussion of personnel matters nor can trustees comments on any current or
pending litigation if a matter concerning an employee of the Rival Public Schools is of Interest or concern to a resident the matter should be referred to the responsible building principal or the superintendent of schools by telephone letter or email I'm going to open the meeting uh
to agenda items old at approximately 710 p.m. is there anybody who wants to make a comment on an agenda item seeing no one I'm going to close it at 7:10 pm and move on to Mrs sori's superintendence
report okay thanks good evening everyone first I I tonight I do want to just thank the PTA they brought in a national PTA Reflections program for all of our students and this program uh it encourages creative expression and appreciation for the Arts across various
disciplines like dance um music and it really did provide our students with an opportunity to showcase some of their talent and I'm particularly proud to announce that several students from our district received honors for the New Jersey PTA Reflections competition so I
want to say congratulations to Addison fahe for receiving the Award of Excellence for dance choreography Annabelle lber uh for also receiving the Award of Excellence for dance choreography Drew Ryman um he received
the award for um music composition and Grayson fun for receiving the Award of Excellence for photography um they are then going to go on to compete at the state level um so I just want to congratulate all of them and thank the PTA for their support and
bringing this program to our district it's it's at least the first time that we've had it here in my time here um and it it might even be the first time we've had had it um and if so it was really a nice program and our students
represented our district very well so that's all thank you that's great thank you good report uh Mrs Zolo board secretaries report okay thank you just a reminder to the board still uh several of you need
to enter your ethics forms they're due March 30th the um n J school boards workshops there's a virtual spring conference and Equity Expo if anybody's interested please let me know I'll sign you up
reminder that tomorrow I'm sorry Thursday evening at 6:30 is the pasek Valley regional board retreat for those of you that are able to attend that's at pcak Hills and the Rivervale
DPW has been coordinating with the county to do a cleanup project and they have students involved and they're going to be cleaning up the property at Woodside and they're going to be doing that on the 22nd so they'll be
supervised and it's a nice Community event and then also just to advise the board as we move forward with the annex renovation project we had our building walkth through last Friday we had two
vendors to cont contractors show up we've had probably eight contractors pick up the bid specs but not all of them came to the walkth through so the bid opening is on the 2nd of April we
hope that we have lots of competitive biders and we look to award that contract on the 8th of April in terms of the proposed 2526 budget thank you to the finance
committee members who have participated in this it's not an easy process and I know at times it becomes overwhelming but we persevered and the as Mrs Pinelli had stated in our
agenda we're looking to approve the tenative budget so that we can submit that to the county they review it and then our public hearing as we will presented to the public on will be on May 6th so as everyone is familiar this
is a revenue cap the way that the budget starts is from last year's tax levy there's an automatic 2% that the board can elect to increase their budget by in this particular case there was an
increase in enrollment that the state uses a weighted average to calculate from our Assa numbers which are from October 15th we report the number of students in different categories and from October 15th of
2023 to 20124 there was an increase in 39 students so in order to accommodate for those students they need supplies and there's additional costs the state recognizes that and they allow for an enrollment adjustment which means that
you can increase your tax levy by that adjustment the enrollment adjustment that was calculated by the state was 475,000 that is an automatic adjustment it's not
anything that the that the Board needs to calculate or request it's just based numbers to numbers from one year to another so the finance committee we met and we talked about the increases that
we are seeing in terms of the budget one of the examples is that we have a rather large increase in the tuition rates of our outter District students we also have a rather large increase in terms of
our health benefits which um the state is in control of and that was a 12% increase on the majority of the plans that are offered so overall those were the two major areas as well as we're expecting a
12 to 15% increase in our utilities which has been um advertised in in online and in in the paper so in terms of our budget the finance committee we've had our
discussions and with all in we have a few retirements which have been taken into account we have had um these increases and the recommendation of the
finance committee is to utilize the enrollment adjustment we do have banked capacity that is available however it is not recommended to utilize that banked capacity at this time because that would
also increase your tax levy the finance committee believes that all of the finances and U financial obligations and the educational obligations are met within this budget we are utilizing
$100,000 of our emergency Reserve to offset some of the health care costs we're also using $198,000 to offset some of our maintenance costs from our maintenance Reserve as well as using $600,000 from
the previous budget that was not spent I've increased the interest that we are expecting for the year based on interest rates we did receive $83,000 more in state aid so with that being
said the recommendation for the budget is a 3.97% increase tax levy to tax levy with the additional rate of that have come onto the books for the town
that will be a 2.26% tax impact so in terms of dollars that is $153 33 on the average home which is $595,000 that is the recommendation of the
finance committee and again it's B9 in our agenda and remember this is our technical budget adjustments can be made at the public hearing so further discussion can be had and that is the recommendation at this
time does anybody have any questions um just wondering that 475,000 that you talked about for the 39 students that is something we're going to pursue or not we are okay um and the 12 to 15% on the
utilities that's just a projection at this correct right okay and that's based on industry standards that's not just River Veil any other questions okay that's all I have for
this report thank you thank you it's very detailed thank you uh um so we'll move on then to General resolutions General resolutions G1 through G4 somebody move it please I'll
move G1 through G4 second I'll second discussion okay um roll call vote please certainly Mrs Pinelli yes Mrs Sande yes Mr White yes Mr rosini yes would somebody please move
B1 through b19 so moved second second any questions or discussion on this the major part which we already
went over B9 okay roll call vote please certainly Mrs Pinelli yes Mrs Sande yes Mr White yes Mr rosini yes and now would uh somebody please move P1 through p
I'll move them second second um thank you just going to note that uh we're losing a lot of our senior good teachers um Mrs Janti again will be uh missed anything else okay roll call vote please
certainly Mrs relli yes Mrs Sande yes Mr White yes Mr rosini yes so now we're going to move to public comments General items as I mentioned earlier the same rules apply as I read earlier and I'm going to open it up to
General items on public I'm sorry public comments on General items at approximately 722 anybody going to close it at 7:22 o business new
business are we going into closed motion motion toour anybody against I'll second okay thank you thank you everybody