WEBVTT

METADATA
Video-Count: 1
Video-1: youtube.com/watch?v=kAUFzpp3Uz4

NOTE
MEETING SECTIONS:

Part 1 (Video ID: kAUFzpp3Uz4):
- 00:00:05: Meeting Called to Order, Roll Call, Pledge
- 00:01:43: Budget Presentation Introduction, Board Members Relocate
- 00:02:02: 2026-2027 Budget Overview: Process and Timeline Explained
- 00:05:14: Revenue, Tax Levy, State Aid, and Fund Allocation
- 00:06:36: Tax Increases, Property Assessment, and Fund Revenues
- 00:08:10: Revenue Adjustments, Enrollment, and Healthcare Cost Concerns
- 00:11:16: Expense Allocation and Budget Breakdown by Category
- 00:13:17: Rising Healthcare Costs and Experience Ratio Impact
- 00:15:27: Budget Comparison, Staffing Positions, and Program Retention
- 00:17:21: Additional Staff and Maintaining Student Programs
- 00:19:16: Chromebooks, Technology Updates, and District Projects
- 00:21:11: Electric Transportation and Strategic Budget Planning
- 00:23:44: Concluding Budget Presentation and Board Questions
- 00:24:10: Insurance Company Ranking Discussions
- 00:26:55: Board Members Take Seats, Public Comment Begins
- 00:28:02: Motion to Close Public Comment on Budget
- 00:28:36: Thanking Budget Team and Opening Up Agenda Items
- 00:29:07: Board Action: Approval of Minutes and NJSIAA Enrollment
- 00:29:41: Field Trips, Calendar Revisions, and Tuition Rates
- 00:31:11: Dual Enrollment and Delayed Testing Opening Discussions
- 00:32:32: BF2526: Routine Actions and Next School Year Plans
- 00:34:35: Budget Bid Opening on Renovations at Various Schools
- 00:36:29: School Development Authority Project, Copers and Funding
- 00:39:07: Facility Usage Rate, Salary and Facility Usage Increases
- 00:40:48: Personnel: Retirement, Resignations, Summer Hours
- 00:42:02: Committee Reports, Correspondence, Old Business
- 00:42:39: New Business: Memorial Day Parade and Washington Fence
- 00:44:01: Motion to Open and Close Public Comment
- 00:44:20: Closed Session for HIPS, Personnel, Attorney Privilege


Part: 1

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I'd like to call this meeting to order. >> Roll call, please. Mr. Karate. >> Okay. Mr. Akamando, >> present. >> Miss Bali, >> present. >> Mr. Dello. >> Uh, Mr. Aello, >> present.

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>> Missello, >> present. >> Miss Roloff, Miss Torbick, >> present. Mr. Traverso >> here. Misselli >> here. Stand for the pledge of allegiance, please. >> I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the

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republic for it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. Adequate notice of this meeting has been sent to all members of the board of education and to the Bergen record in accordance with the provisions

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of the open public meetings act chapter 231-1975. At this time, please be advised that all cell phones and electronic devices are to be turned off. Um okay. All right. I'm going to turn the meeting

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over to the superintendent now. >> I'll wait until Wednesday. >> Okay. All right. Um, then >> you with BA. >> Okay.

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>> All right. So, we're going to do a presentation of the 2627 budget. Mr. >> So at this time we'll ask our board members to please relocate to the chairs and we will have the budget presentation. >> We need a motion to open.

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>> Oh, sorry. >> You were mad at me. So, >> where was I? Don't >> worry. It's too dark. If we went over Okay. Thank you, Board of Education. Thank you to our school community. Mr. Kra and I are going to present our 2526

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budget overview. 2627 budget overview. We looked at this presentation. I don't know how many times. Okay. >> We we didn't we didn't catch the biggest part of the budget presentation. That's embarrassing. All right. Thank you to our board of education, our board of

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trustees. The asterisks are the our board members on the policy on the budget committee and we thank you for your support. That's right. >> Okay. So, the budget process uh takes a couple months, right? We start in

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November. Um the administrators send in their budgets to us. They're due before the uh winter break and then we, you know, everything goes into the program and then the January we come back and then uh Mrs. Vlet and I sit with the administrators. We go through all the

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proposals uh pretty much for the month of January and then we set up meetings with the uh budget finance committee and we start set them up. So there go from February to to March and then March um we submit a final budget or tentative budget to the to the full board and it's

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approved. It was approved at the March 19th meeting. It then gets sent to the county office when it's due and uh they review everything and they get back to us. they got back to us on April 23rd that everything was in order and we can move forward with where we are tonight

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at the public hearing. So, tonight is a public hearing for the public to ask questions and then Wednesday the board will adopt it. Uh and then after that then July 1st starts the new

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year, new purchase orders and we are on the move. Um the state requires that uh school districts submit a balanced budget. The revenues have to equal the appropriations. And as you can see the top number up there, we're a little over 49.5 million.

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And that's where that's where we are. That's broken into three funds. The first one's the general fund. Um almost $47 million is where you think it would be in there. That's all the salaries, benefits, supplies, textbooks, insuranceances, everything to run the school for that

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school year. The next fund, the special revenue fund, is a fund that's set up for any federal, state, and local grants and awards that we receive. So, the money comes in and it's earmarked for uh specific items and then we do purchase

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orders and that tracks those funds that way. And then the last one is the debt service fund. That's for pretty much all our um uh prior referendums. Uh pretty much that was it. And then there was some like a retirement uh bond years

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ago. But pretty much like we did the 2023 now, right? 2023. Yeah. Three years ago, those bonds were paying off. Now that principal and interest payments are recorded in this fund. So there's tax levy and state aid that go against that. So that's the three funds.

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The next slide is uh want to get this out of the way early. This is probably the worst slide of the whole presentation. Um as you're reading the paper with many many school districts, pretty much all of them, there's just huge tax increases and um

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as you can see there, the general fund increase is a lot higher than the 2%. I'll get into that a little bit. Um, but overall what it equates to is on the bottom there, $399 to the average house. In 2026, that's a half a million. In

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2025 is it was $473,000. So the annual taxes, your taxes would have gone up 400 uh 4 $399 on the average house. Um, Saddlebrook has a rolling assessment. A third of the

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town is assessed every year. So that just keeps everything um pretty much up to date as best it could be. And the year the the general fund increase and the calendar year levy, they don't match up because school districts are on a fiscal

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year July to June and the town is on a calendar year January January to December. So that's why things are you got to take half and half. It's it's too much to get into, but that's why those percentages are are different. Getting into the revenues now. This is

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just a uh simple pie chart showing you that as you can see there 89% of the revenues come from the taxes that you saw on the previous uh slide. Uh state aid is next but um tax levies

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capped at like I said 2% but there are two adjustments and I'll get into a third one but there's two adjustments that could exceed it. One is an enrollment adjustment. uh the state looks at our um annual uh student enrollment counts we put in every October. They average it out, do this

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crazy calculation and they project what it will be. So this year we had no uh adjustment for enrollment. So there's nothing there to to use. Health care with all the uh increases in health care costs there again another calculation go through the system. It allows you to

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exceed that 2% cap whether you need it or not. So when we're building the budget, we're trying to build it on the 2% levy, flat state aid, and we'll look at these other um adjustments later. So when these when these calculations are done, whether a district needs them or not, they're in the system. If you don't

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need them, they get banked for use in later years. So we had some money from prior years that was going to be expiring this year, and that was a little over $400,000. So when we were building this budget uh with those huge health care costs, we

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had to use these use the healthcare adjustment and we had to use bank cap and that's why you see the huge tax increase. If we didn't do that, there would be uh many cuts in the budget which we were trying to go through. I mean just cutting $100,000

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uh in non-sary lines, I think we hit probably at least 50 lines. Um salaries is salary and benefits is where you're going to get most of the money. We don't want to, you know, cut staff. Actually, we need more staff if if we had more funds available. Um the next biggest

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revenue after the 89,000 state aid. >> So with state aid, um the state has a funding formula and every year when we submit that enrollment count in October, they base our numbers off of that. So there's a formula and there's like a formula for special education aid by the

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number of special ed students and and they give a dollar amount. There's security aid, there's transportation aid. So when they run these numbers in the program, right, it comes to a dollar amount. When you add up all the when you add up all the states, I mean all the um

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the board of ed this the um the state doesn't have like we don't have money for everything. So you could see where blue is the actual money received and the gold is the shortfall. We should have received more money from 202021

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school year. The state was trying to fund the state aid formula a little bit more each year. And by the fifth year 2425 you see where we received everything we were supposed to get. and we thought it would continue, but it didn't because districts that obviously

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if we're getting more money, other districts are getting money taken away from them that are probably overfunded from years before they, you know, went to the state and they said, "How can they, you know, survive?" So the state, I think the last two years has put in again the formula

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and then they can't fund it all the way. So they put in a cap. You could only go up 6% max. you know, it could go down 3%. So, between the 3% and the six is where everybody falls in that that category, but you could see the one year will be 600 some thousand dollars in uh

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this current school year and next year's $590,000. So, you see where we're just short funds and obvious fund it, we would have more money uh to use. I think that covers that one. So, let's now go to the uh the expense side

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appropriation. So 95% of our budget is is pretty much fixed in all these different categories and they're just spelled out. I'm not going to go through them all. You can see salaries and employee benefits. I mean that eats up most of the budget. Um in fact that's probably about 70% of the 95% is made up

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of salaries and benefits. The rest of the items are um required by IEPs, transportation, utilities. So it's it's there's not a lot of wiggle room. the extra the other 5% is where we have have to look or else you have to you know again to find stuff is to cut staff.

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We broke down here's another pie chart. We broke down the budget into seven major categories um listed on the right there. If you could see that the direct instruction and support services when you add up all those monies together we're spending a

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little over 56% of the budget directly with the students and employee benefits. Next biggest cate makes up uh almost 20% of the budget in employee benefits is not only uh health benefits but it's also pension social security and so

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forth. But uh included, like I said, was the benefits. And on the next slide, we did a graph here showing that uh they pretty much doubled benefits going back five years. So we're up to $8 million in our budget

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for medical, prescription, and dental expenses. And that's that's net of employee contributions. So it's a huge hit uh to the budget. And I'm going to go through on the next slide. Um this is a little bit just want to talk a little bit about this because it's a little confusing but there's an

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experience ratio. So whatever he talks about get out of the state plan go somewhere else whatever there's an experience ratio that we're in fact it was on a couple agendas ago I think maybe December where we're asking the state for another report so we could see where we're at and where we could

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maybe shop for other benefits. So what happens is we go by a dollar. So they want to see everything that we're paying. How much are they paying out? Obviously, if you're a higher risk, you're giving them a dollar. We're giving them a dollar, they're paying out a dollar something. So, they're losing money. So, what happens is you get

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higher uh percentage increases for the following year. In the state health benefit program, um everybody stays in there. They accept everybody. All districts stay in there whether you're have a a positive rating or a negative rating. And um everybody just it's all

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absorbed into a self- insurance fun. So it's hard to So districts that have a good rating can go out on their own. What's left all the bad districts and it's just it's just an endless cycle and the and the funds the state is it's hard. That's why we're getting these huge increases. That's that's on the

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employee benefit side. But it's health benefit costs are going up all over the place. So we're not able to go shop around to go to a different fund or somewhere else. Uh we just ordered the uh report again. We should have it soon and see what we could do. But our over

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month after over month is just not looking good. For example, we I've been here for a while now. We went out I don't know 12 or more years ago and uh we had a little blip where we went down a little bit but then the next year we went up and we went from coming out of

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state plan into another plan did all that paperwork and the next premium went up 46%. So, you want to have a good a little a little track record there of showing that you're paying less um you know for the for the insurance company to give you a good rate and to stay out

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of it. But we do have our eyes on that and um if we're able to have a chance, we will try to do something else. This slide is just a comparison of the budget from the current year we're in uh to the proposed budget. Um on the

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on our website. Uh there's a budget folder that has more of these lines in detail. Uh it shows the advertisements in the paper. There's also in the budget folder on the website a state userfriendly budget that every district should have on their on their website. If everybody goes there, if they could

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tell me if they think that's user friendly, then great. Uh we'll also put this uh presentation in that folder as well. So, if you're uh who's tired of hearing me talk about depressing news on the

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budget, >> let's I was going to switch. Okay, >> here. Let's wait. So, we're going to switch to Mrs. Vietti to give us some uplifting news. >> Thank you, Mr. Karate. So, again, so with our budget for next school year,

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what we're looking at is we're retaining all our current staff positions and student programs. So there is one position we had to we added a middle school Spanish teacher this past school year. We were unable to fill the high school Spanish teacher position for the

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latter half of this school year. So one of those middle school teachers has requested to actually move to the high school Spanish teacher position. So we're not losing any staff, but we did cut one position. I want to share that we are not in um we're not in that

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mindset of we we don't have any fluff. So, we don't have a director of guidance, wellness counselors. We don't have small class sizes. Um, if you recall last year, we had two first grade classes at Franklin School that had 27 students. We don't have that where other districts are cutting staff because they may have 10 or 12 students in a

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classroom. We don't have that here. So, we're really kind of stuck as to cutting staff, what we're able to do. We were able to eliminate that one position, which did help us. Um, but we are adding a girls wrestling coach. That's actually a requirement. NJSI I IA.

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Thank you. It is a requirement to have a girls wrestling team that you do need a coach. So, we're able to add that to our budget as a stipen position. And we have our curriculum writing. So, again, in order to stay on top of everything and in compliance with QAC, we are updating our

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curricula and oops and our professional development for our teachers. So, we still, you know, we want to make sure that our teachers are getting the professional development that they're requesting and what they need. Um, you know, in thinking about this, we're also considering our special education programs and making sure that

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we're training our ABA classrooms, our MD classrooms, making sure we're starting off the school year strong with them because if we're going to house these programs, we realize that we need to have better training for them. As I shared, not only are we maintaining our student programs, but we're really excited to continue with the Amplify

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curriculum. You've all heard us talk about this. We had presentations. So, we've been slowly integrating it into our worlds and we started out with K and one, then two, then three, then four. And we're really excited for next school year to continue it to grade five. And our parents are excited, our teachers

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are excited, everyone has totally bought in. They're all in and we're really seeing progress uh across the district. So, we're really excited about that program. For technology, we are continuing. So all students in grades five and nine will be getting new Chromebooks, their

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Chromebooks, then go um move down to the lower grades, the K1 and two students who are not testing grades. We are also in our budget, we have iPads for our providers, our child study team, because a lot of the assessments are moving to online assessments for OT, PT, all those

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tests that they need to do. So if we didn't do the iPads next year, we would have to do it the following school year when it's mandated. So we're ahead of the game there. and with our staff Chromebook updates. So, our staff, you see our Chromebooks that we have for the staff, our board members have them well. They're rather large and a little bulky.

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Um, we're hitting that year mark where it's four or five years that we're ready to start looking at replacing them. So, we're going to start a slow transition um next school year of purchasing more modern Chromebooks for our staff and starting that cycle.

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This is a slide on our projects that we're looking to do. So you see to the left it has through the operating budget. We have, you know, word of fountain upgrades that we continue to do. Tyler bement we do every school year. The gym floor refinishing. We do new science tables and stools. Our middle school

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classroom, we only have one middle school, I believe one middle school classroom that's truly a science classroom. So we are looking, one of the science classrooms has really old, outdated furniture. So we included in this budget new science tables and stools and then Washington school new

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risers because our Washington school program has grown and they have been borrowing risers from the other buildings and what happens is with that transportation of taking the risers from one building to Washington school and then back they're they're destroying them slowly. So we have decided that Washington school especially our

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youngest learners they need to have sturdy stable risers. So, we are cleaning that in our budget. And then you see to the right we have funds in our maintenance reserve and those are the projects that we're looking to complete. So, you can see we're we're still looking to make improvements to our facilities. I'm not going to go

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through each of them, but you can see where needed. Mr. Kate and I, we actually visit the buildings, we walk through. He's really good at taking pictures and he notates what we need to work on the following school year. So, he's he's great that way. Um, so you'll see bathroom partitions, little things.

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He's very observant, so he notices these things. He takes a photo and then we add it to our projects for next school year. For transportation, we are looking in the new budget. We do have um a school bus that we are looking to still determine if we need it, but chances are we will. So, we want to make sure we had

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it. Um a van, an electric van for student transport. This is mainly because we do have um with our sale program here at the high school, we have work-based learning where they are going out to the community and they're working for a couple hours or a period a day. So having the electric van to transport

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them eliminates the need for a giant yellow school bus to take them to these to these sites. So then we don't need a school bus driver. You can just have a driver take these students to their placements and eliminates the need for a school bus driver as well as a giant

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yellow school bus for one or two students and then also an electric fan for food service. Uh financially I think it makes sense. We do have a charger here in the district and they're not driving excessively across. They're staying local. Um so same thing for the food

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service to take them uh they start here at the middle school high school and then they go to each of the K to6 buildings. So absolutely so looking ahead this is our final slide. This just says that we really just want to stress to the board and to

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our school community that Mr. Kate and I we we thank ourselves. We count our blessings. Your support is absolutely amazing. you allow us to do all these great things in the district and we are really grateful. We're it's strategic. We want you to know that we do follow

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our strategic plan. We're going to near the end of that soon, but everything in this budget is part of our strategic plan that we created a few years ago. We are we sit as a team as a leadership team and we plan accordingly. So, we have members of our leadership team. they're doing whereas other districts

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might have a director of guidance, our director of curriculum is also overseeing our high school guidance department. So, we have our administrative team really goes above and beyond. They're doing extra duties and it's working and I thank my blessings every day to have every member of my leadership team. Um, but I want

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the community to know and you to know that nothing is just really nonchalant. It's planned. there's there's a purpose for it and we're really moving forward and there's lots of good things happening across the district that we're really proud of. So just want to take this moment to just say thank you

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and to Mr. Kruddy as well for doing our budget. >> Thank you. So that concludes the presentation. We'll open up uh questions from the board members and then we'll open up to the public. So, what causes them to be causes the district not to be a good district? So,

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you're paying out the the insurance company's paying out more than they're taking in. They're collecting a premium from us, but they're paying out more. >> Staff claims they have medical Yeah. Whatever medical uh procedures are going through, we're using it. We're using it.

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Yeah. We're using it a lot. >> How does a district rank? >> Yeah. >> No, it just it goes by they go by one like a dollar. So you'd be like 1.1 1.2. That means you're spending over that.

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But there's no like um uh it's just based on whatever district, whatever the staff's going through, you know, it's just the use of the the plan. >> We're ours is not ours hasn't been good for a while. We're not like really high

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over one. I've heard other districts with higher numbers than us, but we're still over it. So, we're spending more than the insurance company's, you know, getting from us. >> Yeah, some are they're under, but not like, you know, not like they're not using it, but it's not it's not over

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one. They go as experiment. They go by this this one. So, some are maybe a point eight, a 0.9. And that if you have that steadily, then you're you're good, right? There's there's breakage there. You're under a dollar. They're taking in more than they're putting out. So, you'll get an increase. I mean, you'll

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get a you'll get a percentage increase, you know, every year, but maybe it's not it'll be better than when you are when you're over one, but it'll it won't be like super good if you're like a a 60 70 like, you know what I'm saying? Then you'll get really good rates and you could have could just have

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younger staff not depends. A smaller district might have better than a larger district. It just all depends on the years. But, you know, we had it from month to month. It does fluctuate when they just look at an average. It is It's hard to It's hard to >> Yeah. I don't even know if that drives

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it. They know certain things that um the claim wise, but it's more of obviously cancer ones or any kind of long-term medications and everything, but that's >> Any other questions? Thank you. >> All right. Yes. So, we'll come back to the

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>> Okay. >> We'll come back to the table. Board members, you can take your seats again and then we'll open up. The next public will be just for questions on the um budget. Year's coming to an end. It's a great time.

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>> I know it's busy. >> That hurt. >> Freezing. >> Was I so surprised that I was born? Yeah. Okay. >> All right. I'm going to open up the meeting now for public comment only on the uh budget.

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>> I need a motion. >> Motion. >> Second. >> Okay. All in favor? >> I would anybody like to speak? >> No, you're good. >> All right. I'd like a motion to close. >> Motion. >> Second.

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>> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. All right. >> All right. Um, did Mr. Karate, did you want to do anything for a business report other than the budget? >> No, I don't have anything else at this

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time. The budget's been consuming me. >> Okay. Although at this time I would like to say I want to thank you very much for being very fiscally responsible for our community and for all the hard work that both of you did. I we very much

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appreciate it and I'm very happy that we didn't have to cut any staff. >> So truly very happy. Um okay so let's open up for agenda item. Okay.

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>> Motion vote. Second. >> Okay. Uh board action B2526.39 through B 2526.41. Any questions or discussion? >> We have the minutes. We have the HIPS

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that were discussed last month. And then point 41, we have the NJSIAA to enroll as we do each year. Okay, >> I could go down. >> Okay. Yeah. >> Okay.

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>> Education and curriculum. >> Uh E2526.612 E2 526.67. Any questions? >> All right. So, field trips. We have um grade one at Long School. They're going

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to Brother's Pizza. They did pizza making last school year. They had a great time, so they're doing it again. And then we have our marching band color guard coralers. They visit our elementary schools every year to promote their program. Then we have our revised school calendar for next school year. There was an error

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on the original one. My apologies. We needed to add the three additional days for our built-in snow days. So we just tacked on three days to the end, which does affect our high school graduation for next school year. So if you take a look at it, our high school graduation

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would be I need to zoom in June 22nd. >> Then we have our preschool tuition rates. So we were we have been stag stagnant with our preschool tuition rates over since I've been here. Um we were at 7,400 for a full day and 3,00 something maybe 3,400 for a half day.

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So, we did do a survey across the county and we are recommending increasing our um preschool tuition rates to a full day to be 8,000, a half day, 4,000. Make it nice and nice and cut and dry. 66 is dual enrollment with the College of New

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Jersey. So, this one we h we currently offer a lot of dual enrollment courses at our high school. Um most of them are through Bergen Community College that we partnership. We have one through Sunni and this MOA will allow us to have our AP courses also serve as dual enrollment

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courses. So with that, what that means is our students that are taking AP, whether or not they pass the AP test, they will still be able to get college credit for those courses. So, it was we we thought it'd be a great um a great incentive for our students and hopefully

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increase our AP numbers and at the same time just develop an additional partnership with a local college we're excited about. And then 67 is delayed opening for our NJS NJSLA testing that has started this week. So, thank you to the board trustees because I know I

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reached out to you. Uh we didn't want we're trying something different where we didn't want to do a full week and tire out our students. So, we're doing Tuesday, Thursday testing, which is why it's a little bit of a wonky schedule, but we're trying it out this year. Um, it is a new plat testing platform that

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the state is using. So, what we learned with NJGPA was you can actually do all of reading in one day, you could do all of math in one day. So, instead of dragging it out over several days, which is what our original plan was, that's why we kind of went back and revised our testing plan. And we came up with this.

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We're going to try it out this year, and we'll see how it works. All right. Does anyone have any questions or discussion? >> Are we good? >> Okay. All right. Mr. Aamando. >> Yes. Um BF2526.91

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to BF2 25526.104. >> No, I'm wrong. >> Um 21. I went to the wrong page. Sorry. What the? >> Keep going. >> Great googly moogly. Um the BF2526.122. >> Wow.

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>> So >> yeah. >> Well, while you're looking that over, so if I may comment, um the first three items are are routine monthly uh actions we have starting from 0.94. Um these are all our our annual actions

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for the uh next school year 20 26 27. So you have any questions going down their appointments of professionals and the the banks the newspaper we use. The only thing is I have to look on 0.9 for the tuition rates. I'm not 100% sure I adjusted them yet. So I'm going to go

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look at them tomorrow. So that's the only one that may change. Um going down the list uh through 100. It's the P 104 is the petty cash accounts that each the schools have. 105 bid and quote thresholds. You know

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who signs the the checks some authorizations. 108 is the renewal of uh food service management company Ponttonian. It's within the allowable percentage increases and that's the state language that they need to see.

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109 is their recommendations for uh the prices established for next school year based on the costs of items. And like everything else, everything else is going up. 111's the budget we just went through.

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112's our school position. Any questions on those items so far? And I'll go through the rest of them. 113 is a uh bid opened up on April 23rd. Uh this was part of um the current year budget and then we're going to transfer

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out some more money from Cap Reserve. Again, we're being squeezed with uh rooms and storage areas. So, this was to renovate several rooms here at the high school, create an area here where a lot of the stuff that's on the stage and in the hallway can get stored. Uh creating

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a room across from the main office for uh just technology since they're losing their space in this room that we're renovating. uh give the middle school uh principal an office there where her uh administrative assistant her on the same

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room and um and redo some uh area in the kitchen, you know, to do his office and storage areas. So that included that um which was in a base bid. Uh the alternate is to do uh Franklin School, their media center. Again, he was uh

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looking for rooms. So, we went back and looked at that area with the architect and were able to to use half the it was like a media center and classroom area to turn into the one classroom side into three uh different rooms, a conference

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room, an ESL room, and a speech room. And that frees up some other rooms upstairs to to put different programs in different areas based on uh the student need. Uh, alternate two was the cafeteria and

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we're still the attorney, he just reviewed it um a couple days ago. We got a protest from the second bidder which we're going through and working that out. We think everything's done and we're able to move forward with that on Wednesday. I'll put the numbers in there tomorrow. Uh 114 and 115 are part of the

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u school development authority uh projects we had where we get some state funding. So, the first vendor had done the uh boilers at Franklin Smith in Washington and we had some them do some other work while they were doing those boilers. So, that was a change to that

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contract of $15,000. And then the other one that did uh high school and long boilers. Again, we had them do some stuff, but it ended up coming out to be a decrease in the contract. So, those are revised contract amounts.

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116 is uh list of equipment we're selling. I think that's mostly technology. 117 is um we're coming through for our copers. There was still some time left on the current lease financing, but usually when it gets to like when you're

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in that last year, the copers are starting to have more problems and stuff. So, we went through it uh with our copier company uh which is on state contract. We're able to reduce the number of copers. We added some features on there um like the cloud faxing so we

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don't have separate phone lines for faxing and we're able to reduce the monthly cost going forward. 118 is a transfer from cap reserve funds once I do the uh 113 fill the numbers in. We had a bulk of the money already in this year's budget 2526. But I need

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money to do Franklin School 119 is in the 2627 budget as we discussed before Taliban projects. We just broke them up into different um base a couple alternates in case

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depending how the uh funding came out, but it looks like we'll be able to do most of of those rooms. 120s workshops and 121 continue to review food service meal count balances and you know talking

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to the state there's no other way to do this. we we contact the families and try to collect the funds, but when we go through them, there's a lot of times where a family had a free and reduced lunch application uh in the system, they're getting free meals and then, you

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know, they don't submit another one for the next year, so then charges start going on their account. It takes a lot of for work it out. A lot of them are just clearing up the balances like if they had an application in for the whole time and the the amounts of uh are the team deemed uncollectible.

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And the last one is just cancelling old outstanding checks and annual item I do and get ready for the audit. And the tax list has it from several funds and student accounts where checks are old and not cashed.

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Any questions on those items? Thank you. >> We're good. All right, let's do facilities and operations. Mr. Store. >> Sure. F2526.12 to F2526.13. >> Any questions?

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on just on 13, I increased the hourly rates a little bit just based on, you know, salary increases for next year and a couple of the fees uh for facility use. They're mainly used here at the high school. We don't we don't we don't get too much use at the elementary schools. So, I up the um I think the

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field usage and and maybe the auditorium a little bit because they're the ones that are heavily used. >> Any questions on on that? >> I think they're quite conservative. through the chair. I have a question. When a let's say a soccer team wants to

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use one of our fields and they request permission and they're granted, are they given any kind of anything that says it's a permit or something that they have permission to use the field? >> They get a uh email back from our program that they could take and have it

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on one. >> Thank you. Does anyone else have any questions or discussion? Okay. All right. There is nothing for policy uh negotiations. Nothing. Okay. Uh

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personnel. Um I will do that. Um we have P2526.67 through P2526.81 that we will be talking about and close. Brian, does anyone have any questions though?

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>> I will say so. You'll see 67 Mrs. Ripus at our high school English department. She has submitted her retirement. >> No, she's retired. >> We wish Mrs. Ripus the very best. Um, and Dr. Osborne, our high school vice principal, has also submitted his

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resignation. He is moving on to be principal of a district closer to his house. >> Police is retiring. It doesn't occur as much. >> You'll see the summer hours for our school counselors and then all the staff and summer

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curriculum writing that we can go over more in close session. >> Does anybody else have any questions? Yeah, I'm very very sad to hear surface is leaving us, but I'm very happy for

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her and Mr. Osborne as well. Okay. All right. So, um, committee reports. Do we have any committee reports? >> No, not tonight. Okay. Liaison reports. >> Anything? Okay.

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Correspondence? >> Nothing. Okay. All right. No correspondence. Okay. Old business. Anybody for old business?

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No. New business. We have the parade >> for Memorial Day. Okay. on May 24th. We'll discuss if anybody would like to participate. >> Yeah. >> Yes. Okay.

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>> Yes. So, I put out there the calendar invite. If you could respond to that or or send me an email, me and Mrs. Vileleti, and let us know so we could let the rest of the board know who's who's going to be walking in there. >> Okay. Through the chair, under the new business, did something happen to the

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fence at Washington? the fence uh the corner of uh what is that market and it's not Westminster. I forget the other road. Anyway, that fence was taken down by us. >> Was it I was it or anything? >> No, no, we just were taking it down.

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>> Oh, >> cleaning up the property. Getting ready for the sign. They dug the trench. Sorry. They dug the trench and then the sign um the post of the sign I think is getting installed on Thursday and the sign may be installed the following week or so. Uh they're also working on the

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one on Coolage. Uh I think tomorrow morning they're going to install the post if everything's on schedule and then that sign will be installed like the following week. But yes, the fence at Washington was taken down and it's staying down. >> I just know somebody here and we missed it or something.

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>> Good observation. >> All right. Can I get a motion to open the meeting for public comment? >> Motion. Second. >> Okay. Would anyone like to speak? No. Okay. Can I get a motion to close the meeting to the public? >> Second.

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>> Okay. All right. So, hold on. Where where's my statement? Just right here. All right. So, we are going to go into close session. Whereas the board of education must discuss matters which are not appropriate for discussion in a

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public meeting. And whereas these subjects are within the exceptions of the open public meetings act and are permitted to be discussed in close session pursuant to New Jersey SA 104-12B. And whereas the board of education

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intends to discuss matters as follows. Where am I? Hold on. We intend to discuss um a hip case personnel and attorney client privilege. Whereas the length of the closed meeting

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is estimated to be approximately 30 minutes and action will not be taken now. Therefore, be it resolved that the board of education will recess into close session for only the afforded subjects and be further resolved that the board of education hereby declares

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that its discussion of the afforded subjects will be made public at a time when the public's interest in disclosure is greater than any privacy or governmental interest being protected from the disclosure in accordance with the open public meetings act. >> Can I have a motion to adjourn the

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meeting? So motion second. >> Okay. Good night everyone. See you on Wednesday.