[Music] good evening it is Thursday March 13 2025 i'd like to welcome you to the meeting of the South Brunick Board of Education and to call the meeting to order please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the
United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all i'd like to read a statement of advanced notice the New Jersey Open Public
Meeting Act NJSA 104-6 also known as the Sunshine Law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting the interest is discussed or acted upon
the primary purpose is for board members to discuss and vote on board business in accordance with this provision of the act the board secretary has caused notice to this meeting 48 prior 48 hours prior including date time and location to be posted in the South Bunduk public
library and board office filed with the township clerk and communicated to the home news and the star ledger it is also posted on the district website roll call mr palowski miss Julie Ferrara miss Alicia Khan mr roger Krishna yes mr mike
Mitchell present dr smith Raj here mrs lisa Rogers present mr rajes Sony mrs darthik here miss Lor Hernandez here we have quorum may I have a motion and a second to approve tonight's meeting agenda
mr mitchell and Dr raj all in favor i now I need an approval of the February 13 2025 minutes may I have a motion to approve the minutes of the February 13 2025 minutes
oh Dr uh Raja second and Deepa second okay so is she here okay next order of business is the report of the student representative Miss Samra good evening everyone our annual Mr sbhs
boys pageant takes place tomorrow on March 14th tickets are sold throughout this week for $10 at the activities office please purchase them before they are sold out our nine contestants will compete to win the crown of Mr sbhs tomorrow we will welcome back our annual
hosts Dr negraval Mr tulleski and Mr dler for another successful year you will also have the chance to win a free prom ticket by being placed into a raffle if you purchase a ticket for the show tomorrow student council may be excited for spring break but we are already planning for student government
elections and powderpuff packets for both events will be released in April our spring pep rally will take place on April 4th the Viking Leadership Alliance has extended their food drive through the first uh part uh it's on the anxious generation which is on Tuesday March
18th at 6:30 on March 19th we have a special education parent advisory group meeting that's also at 6:30 at BHL so I got to talk about a couple things real quick um obviously we have a lot of high school kids here tonight high school staff um we had some some
you know serious incidents in the last few weeks we had some fights we had staff having to get in the middle some staff got hurt uh and it didn't seem to stop for a few weeks which definitely upset the community upset the staff upsets the students upset the board uh
it was not a good look for South Brunswick and um what I want to say is uh the consequences for these things are going to be significant you you can't you can't have violence in a high school
there's no place for it so um you know we're we're currently working with students who are coming back after long-term suspensions and I will say some of them are very you know unhappy that they might miss prom uh they might not
graduate with the kids they might uh not be able to go on any senior trips but if you can't be trusted in the school you're not going to be trusted in other events it's just the way it goes we do this because we want all of our
students who come to school to focus on learning the fun of being in school the fun of being with their friends not about whether or not they're going to be caught in the middle of a fight there was uh kids who've gotten hurt as a result of other kids fighting we just can't have it so the kind of things that
will happen could lose privileges you could be suspended uh you could miss events you have to go through mediation because it's not just about the consequences al also about learning from the mistakes like mistakes are allowed trust me you want to make the mistakes here you make the same mistakes out
there you know we've had assaults if someone assaults somebody outside of a school after they're 18 years old that's jail that's not missing prom or or getting suspended from school for a few days it's jail so we have to work on this um
we heard from some students um I know that um at the high school they're doing some things at extended home rooms something tomorrow as well so um the other one that I know one of the more horrible things we could do to students is take away your phones but I'm going
to be honest with you if you use a phone and it's not just kids in the audience I'm not accusing anyone definitely not in this audience but I'm saying it out loud if if a student uses a phone and that phone causes or instigates violence that phone's gone
you you lose it and you lose it for a minimum of a month and what I mean by lose it you don't get to have it at home you you bring it into school and you'll drop it off with a security guard we will keep that phone all day your parents will bring you to school and take you home because you're
not going on the bus with the phone either or you're feel free to leave us with the phone for 30 days it's just not okay and I I I am hoping the kids in the audience tonight you know this you can shake your hand and go "Yes we do you know this we can't
have this so just understand that and you know uh anything you can do to help as as students and staff we appreciate that but that's the way it's going to have to be and that's the way it's going to be for a long time we can't have this in the
school okay another part um so the last week or so we had Facebook anyone ever go on Facebook parents kids kids if you don't yet don't start yeah really um so there was a car accident that
involved some of our students there was an incident with a with a weapon that involved some of our students and what's amazing is people that know absolutely nothing go on Facebook and act as if they know
everything i know you guys learn I'm talking to the students right now information literacy in your classes when you read something on Facebook or any social media post that does not make it true you know this teach your
parents because the adults on the South Brunswick community page do not seem to understand that when somebody posts something that that is true it's kind of like a parent i'll speak to the parents in the audience because I got a bunch of you here
tonight if your kid if you have who parents raise your hand if you have sibling if you have at least two children okay so let's just say that one child comes to you this is I'm sure it's never happened but one kid comes to you and says "Mom the other one was pushing me." Is that it is the story over does
the other kid get punished for pushing or do you want to find out both sides chances are the first kid that told you that the other kid was pushing push that kid first but you're not going to hear that side of the story because if I'm telling a
story I want you to believe I'm going to tell you the story that's only my side of the story i could lie if I want i could falsify i could exaggerate i could leave out pertinent information that is
Facebook that is the world of Facebook so when someone decided to say that the incident with the knife was directly linked to the a few of the fights that person knows nothing didn't stop them
they had to be expert on something they know nothing about what I can't understand and maybe the people watching could help me understand why do community members want to make their community look bad i can't figure out how that helps the community one day maybe I'll realize
it but I can't figure it out why do you want to say things that are not true that you don't know if they're true to excite other people in a negative way i don't understand it but yet that's what we have so we live with it just yesterday one of our
parents posted a link on Facebook and said that we have teachers that throw kids in closets dirty dark closets by the way now if that was true do you think maybe someone would
know about that if we were throwing kids in CL mr hines where are you there you are stop it Mr hines but I mean are we able only because his wife is here I thought I could pick on her she protected but
it like are we able to say "Wait a minute i hear someone said that let me process that and let me apply some reasoning some logic maybe ask myself some questions before I just believe it
and start to comment and add to it to hurt other people because guess what the person blamed for that is a teacher never happened of course we don't throw kids in closets but a teacher is now out there
feeling really horrible that that's out there but that person didn't care but not only that person didn't care the rest of the people who decided to comment on that and make it worse didn't care that's what's got to stop so we
hope you this generation now back to the kids you have to be the generation that doesn't continue that please use what you know about information it's not true just because it's written you know that about
textbooks it's perspective but when someone posts on Facebook or any social media account and gives their version of a story please remember there's another version of the story or the story is false altogether
you never know please that's my request it's my request to the whole community to please just remember that you can't just do well you can I mean you're allowed it's not a crime you can say these things on Facebook and any other social media site hopefully I'm going to thank our
teachers who are teaching information literacy who are holding kids accountable to remembering that they have a responsibility to themselves to do the leg work to determine if what I'm seeing or reading really is what's right
opinion fact and just falsehoods the problem is we live in a world right now where there's a lot of that going around on all sides of the aisle that's the way we are right now but let's not contribute with that said congratulations for being here tonight i will turn it over to much more funner
things is funner a word funner funner we can make it one mr dear funner is not a word no funner huh more fun next more fun next so much fun so much more fun i I want it back over to you this is This is This is going to be awesome i want to
thank everybody for showing up tonight this is awesome for tonight's audit presentation yeah it's on the It's on the That's what you got second let's change the order okay we're going to change the order he wants to change the order change the order wow here's the reason you guys
tell I could have all of you watch an audit presentation or I could care about all of you you have to approve i'm choosing to care i need a motion to change the agenda to switch the um audit presentation with
the National Merit commended student scholarship motion got a motion got a second all in favor all okay you're welcome sorry you are welcome okay then back to me so now it is funner stuff
funner i'm going to call up the principal of the high school Mr peter Varela i want to thank Mr feder for uh changing the order i'm sure everyone appreciates that so tonight's we're following up from the last board meeting on February
27th it's our second opportunity to recognize students for their performance on the PSAT so everyone knows being recognized by the National Merit Organization is truly one of the most prestigious honors for high school uh students every year
now to refresh our collective memories I'd like to provide you with a little background every year the National Merit Scholarship Corporation recognizes the 50,000 members of each graduating class with the highest PS PSAT scores as either semi- finalists or commended
students we are fortunate to have 46 commended students to honor this year and tonight we'll be recognizing all of them along with their teachers in keeping with our practice we invited our students to honor educators who have had an impact on their lives each student
was asked to write a short personal note thanking a staff member tonight each teacher will receive a framed letter in addition our board president Miss Laura Hernandez will present all honores with a certificate of accomplishment board President Hernandez please join me at the
podium before I begin I would like to thank Mr norman Chow a high school art teacher who used our district theme and provided us with a piece of artwork produced by 10th grader Oie Telivane the commended students letters have been framed with the
artwork it's really nice mr chow thank you for sharing your students creativity and Obie thank you for your artwork and talent i would also like to thank Miss Ramona Baker Miss Lurtis Amato Luis for their assistance tonight and I also like to thank Samira
for helping us as well yes with the first round please stand and form at the side as we start our program I thought I'd share some of the colleges and universities that our commended students apply to for admission as well as some of the schools they've been accepted to
so far you want there yep okay all right our first three honores could not be with us tonight but I'd like to recognize them our first recy
would have been for Far Forhana Ashik she's going to be majoring in computer science and tonight she would be recognizing Christa Kelly a member of the Brooks Crossing teaching staff our second student would have been Omar Ascar he would like to major in computer science and
premed recognizing Ramon Kenyon a member of the high school social studies department and third student would be Tanish Pona he w he wants to major in math recognizing Dennis Duncan a member of the SBHS and Crossroads North world language department
so we have Ashwika Benzel come on up sponsel i'm sorry she would like to major in finance and tonight she's recognizing Ellie Nichols a member of the high school math department come on up
you guys also get a certificate you can go sit down congratulations should we go sit yeah our next honore tonight is Sonvi Chobel she would like to major in industrial engineering and tonight she's recognizing Rachel Levanitis a member of
the high school math department [Applause] devala [Applause] she would like to major Stay here she would like to major in computer
science and tonight she's recognizing Christopher Haver a member of the high school math department the next individual cannot be with us tonight but I'd like to recognize Schllo Ganguli he would like to major in neuroscience and he'd be recognizing Scott Lawrence a
member of the high school science department my next honore is Shauna Goch he would like to major in pharmaceutical science and biochemistry and tonight he's recognizing Mark Alamo a member of the high school music department thank you
our next honore tonight is Chi Ray Sue she would like to major in political science and unfortunately um tonight Dr justin Negravel could not make it but he's a member of the high school social studies [Music]
department our next honore is Adia Jane she would like to major in physics recognizing Carlos DeLeon a member of the Crossroads North Language Arts Department congratulations our next honore is Irene
Joelle he would like to major in mechanical and aerospace engineering and tonight he's recognizing Matt Miller a member of the high school math department [Applause] our next honore is Pornavi
[Music] Khaki she would like to major in computer science and tonight she's recognizing Matthew Becker a member of the high school English department congratulations our next honore is Sidarth Kandakar i don't believe he could make it tonight
he would like to major in aeronautical engineering and he will be recognizing Erica Dwit a member of the high school technology department our next honor is Javish Kolivvenu congratulations he would like to major in business and tonight he's recognizing
Glenn Ferraris a member of the Crossroads North Math department here we go our next honore is Sutik Kumbam congratulations
he would like to major in engineering he's recognizing Kyle Broncado a member of the high school English department [Music] congratulations our next honor is Russia Kundu looked like she couldn't make it tonight
but she will be majoring in engine she would like to major in chemistry and classics recognizing Peter Honig a member of the high school English department our next honore is Sua Mel Pedi she would like to major in computer
science and tonight she's recognizing Dr roberto Debarry a member of the high school science department our next honore is Milan Mandu he would like to major in biology with a premed track recognizing Andre Holla a member of the high school English
department who cannot be with us tonight who would be recognizing Miss Arian Dow a member of the high school world language department all right our next honore is Sanvika Pasa she will be majoring in neuroscience and tonight she's recognizing Katherine
O'Keefe a member of the Crossroads North Social Studies Department come on down thank you [Music] our next honore is Adita Prabu guess he could not be with us tonight he would like to major in
mechanical engineering and he will be recognizing Alexander Rosenwald a member of the high school science [Music] department our next honore is Kunal Perau Hit congratulations
[Music] he is going our next honore is Muhammad Sadik congratulations he would like to major in computer science and tonight he's recognizing Ryan Fischer a member of the high school social studies
department honory is Garethther Srishi he would like to major in business and tonight he's recognizing Christopher Hines a member of the high school social studies [Applause] department our next honore is Garv
Sen congratulations he would like to major in marketing and data analytics recognizing Alexandria Robas a member of the high school math department from biotechnology and he would be recognizing Crystal Bernett a member of the high school dep um science
[Applause] department all right our next honor is Harsha Sudakur [Music] she would like to major in computer science and tonight she would be
recognizing Miss Samantha Sana Kunam a member of the high school social studies department good job good job our next honore uh would be she's she couldn't be making with us um Anika Thor she will be majoring in computer science and she would be recognizing
Steven Schiff a member of the high school math department and computer science chairperson our next honore is Caric Thalum he would like to major in biomedical engineering and he would be recognizing Robert Mastton a member of the Crossroads North Math
department our next honore tonight is Matali Toad she would like to major in astrophysics and tonight she's recognizing Mr jeffrey Tulleski a member of the high school science [Applause]
department our next honor is Meera Toprani congratulations she would like to major in mathematics and tonight she will be recognizing and she is recognizing Mr gordon Barnes a member of the high school math [Applause] [Music]
department our next honor is Kevin Vargas he would like to major in computer engineering and tonight he's recognizing Shamala Shisty a member of the high school science department congratulations
[Applause] our next honor is Haripra Velour congratulations harpria will be majoring in mechanical engineering and tonight she's recognizing Bailey McNavish a member of the high school special education
department here you go congratulations our next honor is Ganian Venu congratulations he would like to major in computer science and tonight he's recognizing
Robert Salino a member of the Crossroads North Science Department [Music] our next honor is Shriram [Music]
Vupila he would like to major in computer science and tonight he's recognizing Mr steven Trainer a member of the high school math department our next honore is Cadence Shu [Applause] she would like to major in aerospace
engineering tonight she's recognizing Kenneth Saddowski a member of the high school science [Music] [Applause] department and our final National America Minute student is Rob [Applause]
Yin he would like to major in chemical engineering and tonight he's recognizing Zachary Neman a member of the high school social studies department [Music]
to conclude my presentation I would like to now share with you a few quotations directly from the letters that were written to our staff though I wish I could share all of them students wrote "You pushed me to think beyond numbers providing me confidence that has helped
me throughout high school your support and encouragement played a vital role in my academic journey you challenged me to step out of my comfort zone and take on unfamiliar paths that albeit extremely difficult at
times shape me into the learner I am today i want to thank you for being such a positive energetic teacher you always bring a smile and create an environment where it's easy to engage with the material your enthusiasm for teaching
and commitment to your students is truly inspiring you create an environment where learning feels exciting and meaningful and you consistently go above and beyond to ensure we succeed and finally your guidance has shaped my education and my character you
have shown me how much a difference one teacher can make in a student's life faculty our students are proud to call you their teachers and know that you make a difference each and every day another group that makes a difference is our parent group i would like to honor
our students parents tonight for their hard work and support i'd like to share a few slides and recognize them and ask all the parents in the audience to please stand [Music] meaning that just makes the board love
what we do we just love it and to have the students here who are the best of the best and sitting right beside them the teachers that help make them the best of the best and the parents who really help make them be the best of the
best is amazing and we just congratulate you we are so proud of you um I just can't even express how I feel when I get to say congratulations to the kids and and the teachers and I know Mr
varela as the principal he's blessed he gets to get up here all the time and and and do all this so congratulations we are proud of you all and thank you teachers for what you do every single day [Music]
[Applause] [Music] we're going to take a five minute recess because even though the audit is amazing we're going to allow you if you want to stay you are very welcome to
stay if not you are very welcome to leave so we're going to take a five minute break do now I just come back to Okay so at this point I'm going to hand it over to Mr palowski yes to discuss our audit and you have on
your uh in front of you the uh manager's report and the actual audit um it's awesome reading material and if you I have to say if you do not want to take it home and put it on your nightstand and study it uh or even do a small
dissertation on it I will take it back because uh we always find them a home in our in our business office so with that being said Paul the stage is yours thank you Dave truth be told my wife is waiting in the car and she didn't want to hear me speaky about the audit either
so I'm sure they appreciate it as well so good evening my name is Paul Freda i'm an audit manager with Supple Clooney & Company uh we completed your June 30th 2024 audit in December we've issued two reports that have been filed with the state department of education um as Dave
said there's you have the small report which is the auditor's management report uh this report's required by the Department of Education and it outlines the different areas of compliance that we test um these areas include payroll the records of the board secretary and
treasurer purchasing federal and state grant compliance food service and student activities um had there been any audit recommendations as a result of our testing they'd be included in this report uh I'm happy to inform the board that there were no recommendations in
the 2024 audit uh the second report is your annual comprehensive financial report it includes the district's financial statements and our opinion on those statements you did receive an unmodified
opinion which means that your financial statements presented fairly in accordance with GAAP this is the the gold standard of opinions that you want to receive um so you did receive that again this year uh of all the financial schedules
in the report there's they're uh your financial statements presented in different formats uh in the front of the report there's something called the district-wide statements which show all of your funds rolled up into one including your fixed assets and
long-term debt then there's a presentation of GAP which are your uh the B schedules uh but I always try to push everybody towards the C schedule in the back the C1 it's on the budgetary basis and it really mimics the um the
budget that you adopt every year and it acts as a profit and loss statement where it shows your budgeted revenues and expenditures versus the actual results so it acts as a profit and loss um and this year your your fund balance
did decrease uh you finish the year with uh 15,956,000 a lot of that is already restricted or reserved though um there was 5,285,000 of the 15 that was either reserved for capital maintenance uh
emergency or unemployment reserves you use $6.9 million in your 2425 budget to offset taxes and that left you with a remainder of $3,351,000 which is below the 2% max
that the state allows you to have so you did not generate any excess surplus for the first time in a long time from the 2024 operations um are there any questions i'm sure you're dealing with that right now with your putting your budget
together i know last year you had excess surplus of about $3.5 million on top of your 2% this year you you've basically just have your 2% so I'm sure you're you're dealing with that right now um are there any questions about either of
the reports what we do fund balance c can you just repeat the surplus piece i I may have missed exactly what you Oh sure sure so your total surplus is $15,956,000 but again a lot of that's already restricted for a specific
purpose right right so approximately 5 million3 is used for various reserves again for capital maintenance or unemployment and then there was six almost $6.3 million that was used in last year's bud or the budget that
you're in right now that's that's where I'm lost and I apologize i see the 15.9 i see the 53 and look at page 12 that 6.3 is what you got me lost on i'm so sorry sorry that's the fund balance we're using in the current budget in the current budget 2425 so So the Yeah so
the situation uh that the statement that you're looking at is probably the gap basis and again I said there's three different formats of the schedules so the the gap basis doesn't include all of the state aid right that came in in July
so but the but the the number that the real number is the again the 15 million9 okay that's what I'm going to Yeah it shows up on your on the one schedule as 14,501 on the um on your balance sheet
the the first schedule of the handout which page is that which would be your B1 in the audit report oh oh oh right right right right i know which one it is okay yeah that's just a different basis of accounting yeah okay thank you for that absolutely
does anybody else have any questions no well again I'd like to thank Dave and and the finance office for for their help in in putting all this together you know I know you know we come in everybody's has their daily duties to do and we come in in for two or three weeks
and or maybe a little bit longer and uh you know and then we ask for other stuff on top of um on top of their daily duties so I do appreciate the help that everybody provides to us okay thank you much thank you so much thank you all right thank you do you
have a lot of fun doing this i asked that question i'm sorry do you have lots of fun well I I did notice that there weren't many accounting majors in that in that list finance there was a finance finance okay yeah well that that may change who
knows but thank you thank you so much for All right thank you have a good night me too and I I would uh I would be remiss if I didn't mention uh Kim Ahern Kelly Loraca David um Steven Corso and the business office all of the people that work in our office work hand in
hand with Paul providing all of the information that they need and they're they're our juggernauts they get things done that's great so hats off to them thank them for us yep please do thank you thank you so much all right have a good night you too
okay next up are you ready red do you have the uh budget there yeah you should absolutely did you want us in the front row last time you wore
[Music] Just going to wait for Reg to get that up on the screen [Music] all right folks so this is a preliminary budget hearing which means we are presenting to you a
budget that means nothing we did this last year too because it's way too early with all the different things that need to still happen to produce an actual budget the final budget is due I believe it's the first week of May and that budget will be sound you'll have all the bells and
whistles to it we want to go over a few important features today and kind of tell you where we stand right now so the first is state aid our lovely state aid uh this year the state uh made a rule that you cannot lose more than 3% of your state
aid so they proceeded to run their formula again which we're going to go through a little bit tonight and we of course lost the full 3% but the number that you have to keep in mind in the back of your heads is this this year they capped the loss at
3% now just remind 4 427 districts got money 133 did not get money 15 districts in Middle Sex County lost money usually it's only been one two or three and the
reason being given to the districts that are now like shocked that they've lost money is because their value of their town went up which is well I'm so done with that excuse at this point it doesn't really mean anything anyway so we got capped at 3% i'll show you what
the loss was but here's the number it's not on the screen 1.8 million 1.8 million is the amount of money more we were supposed to lose based upon the formula if they didn't cap the loss at 3% we would have lost
2.2 million plus 645,000 or almost 2.85 85 million so here's what it looks like the first row is your local fair share i'm
I've chose not to educate tonight you all know this by now all of you have been on the board you all know um look at 2425 to 2526 so in the 2324 to 2425 school year
that's when we raised the tax based upon the bill and we increased our local fair from 133 to 142 we were like pretty excited oh I'm sorry we increased our money to getting I think it became 133
133 we were like "Wow 133 to 142 we're getting really close now." Then they reran the formula and we're we're using a formula in the state of New Jersey that determined the local fair share to increase by
15% from 142 million to 160 almost 7 million in one year just think of the logic how could we be using a formula that increases the number you cannot
increase by 15% so basically there's no way to win south Brunswick is in a hole but the hole you're in is going to be if this doesn't change and I know I've said this before and we got to
change last year or we would be in a whole different world right now and if we weren't losing enrollment we would be in a whole different world right now but there is no way to win if they don't cap your loss next year and they
apply the formula again at your base which is 1.8 million less than the 13847 up there you start on July 1us 1.8 before the 2% cap hits you'll be looking at a number somewhere in the 7 to12
million short that's real if nothing changes again last year something changed at the last minute something changed i'm not expecting anything to change this year to be honest i'm just not and no more hope in the in in in the
state's plan for schools so we'll see anyway the numbers that matter on the are the red our state aid was cut as we told you by 3% which was 427,000 but also last year if you
remember we got 45% back of the 1.4 million cut which was about 645,000 they're also not giving us that so the million75 was in this current budget is no longer in next year's budget so we
start minus1,75,000 and then we go from there that's the reality so the tax levy cap we're going to do a little a little education here and Dave put this together so our current budget overall
operating budget is 157 million the tax levy which is the only amount we're allowed to tax above is 132,000 that's today that's right now this year 2425 so with a 2% cap increase that means we're allowed to raise the taxes
by 2.6 million okay so let's look and see how the district spends its money we spend 57% of our total budget that's the operating budget not the not the tax lovey side on salaries we spend
18% on benefits energy transportation tuition supplies bills and grounds and and and such okay there's other stuff right like other miscellaneous but we just want to show you some of the bigger
funds for right now when you look at this number now what you do is you take each of those numbers and you multiply them by the increase so we look at 57% of 157 is 89
million that is the cost of our staffing it's our salaries we have to multiply that by 3 and a.5% for next year that's 3.1 million remember 2.6 million is your your cap
so first first category we're already in the hole next category benefits the 11 12% increase that we have is below the national and the state average significantly but that's still a ton of
money so even staying better than average doesn't matter i'm going to show you a breakout of some of those numbers now we're at 6 point almost we're 6.4 million we're already in the hole even if we go above the 2% you're still in the hole because you're allowed to go
we're going to show you what a waiver looks like in benefit land energy cost 11% you all can look at your own energy at home and know 11% is low the reason it's only 11% because all of our energy is not electricity if it was that would
be 17% like everybody else in the state or 20% whatever it is this is just the reality of every single school district in the state of New Jersey transportation 5% is incredibly low incredibly low but it's still what
it is supplies 5% is reasonable but you know like luckily we don't buy a ton of eggs if we had to have a lot of egg supplies it'd be worse buildings and grounds which is facilities and all of that up a min 6% again
reasonable anyway to roll over this budget you need $8.2 million that's not even including everything but that's eight let's go with 8.2 two for a minute now you're allowed to raise with a 2% cap you're in a deficit of 5 a.5
million however the second line talks about benefits the state has a automatic waiver that a district can take for benefits it's not a number that Dave creates it's a number the computer spits
out when we put in the numbers that number allows us to move to 3 1.5% which would be still only put us at a minus 3.5 million as we go into next year now minus 3 and 12 million sounds pretty bad but last year we were looking
at almost 7 million so 3.5 12 million and enrollment reduction is why we're afloat or we'd be other districts that you can hear look around the news selling buildings i'm not saying you're never
going to be selling buildings but today you don't have to this is our reality and um I want to give you a chance at this point if you have any questions just before I go on does anyone need any any explanations so I'm not doing a a 30 slide
presentation tonight just getting to the guts of it anybody have anything all right so the next I want to just give you a quick overview of health insurance remember I showed you a very large number
glp1s anyone know what GLP1s are that is not in the finance committee that is the drugs such as Ozmpic that doesn't say that we spend 1.1 million this slide shows what it increased year-over-year
it's just year old on prescription 1.1 million not on prescription just on GLP1s what exactly ompics uh Waggoi was no hum is different um it's the
drugs that help with weight loss help with diabetes okay um that's that's not really for probably for chronic conditions not really um well here's what we are not able to do i couldn't tell you the the medical side no are they covered under
uh insurance oh okay yeah that's under insurance oh yeah okay so insurance in the country is somewhere between 20 and 30% increase insurance in the state health benefits plan is 29% increase insurance for just RX for which
is pharmacy in the shift the largest shift in the state is 25% just for just for um uh for um pharmacy so the country is being hit with these new medications
so we have a $1.1 million increase anti-inflammatory that's the humiraas and I try to use the ones you can see on TV you always see humra on TV that's the biggest one of the anti-inflammatory our biggest expense and that's over half a million increase not total cost
increase then we look at our procedures we get a breakdown of all the different types of procedures we have the increase in the cost of the procedures not how many procedures we have just if you look at um someone who had let's say a
neurological procedure last year had the same neurological procedure the next year it was about an 11% increase in the cost for the procedure not our not what South Brunswick does just anyone who takes the procedure the
total cost for that was an increase of 1.8 million now this is not the total we do have some some wins also so our total was an increase of 3.2 million but we're we're just showing you it doesn't matter what's going on right now the health
insurance in the country and these pharmaceuticals are off the charts and for districts that don't are not self-insured what they're being hit with are 15 to 20 or above percent increases on their premiums yeah
we're at 11 and a half% and no one is seeing an 11 and a half% increase on premiums that's not happening anywhere so we're still doing good but good is not good good is bad these numbers are crazy so again just health insurance is
above the 2% and every district I know every colleague I speak to and I speak to a lot of people about budget they're already bu underwater just in their health benefit increases then when they add their salaries and their transportation departments we have districts in this county alone that are
$15 million in the hole right now same-sized districts it's uncontrollable and a 2% cap if that stays will be the end of public education as we know it in New Jersey it's just a matter of time we're
survived last year it will survive next year because of the bill that allowed you to raise taxes to the point fortunately did not hurt families fortunately there's very low increase but still it doesn't end and I remember I ended my last presentation last year
by telling you we're still going to be in problematic mode for this year but we'd be manageable and that's exactly where we are the reason we know that is we do this we can see the numbers ahead of time like for example we know that next year I'm going to say it again
because I want this ingrained in your minds if we start at minus 1.8 million what do you do at that point because insurance is still going to go up all the other things are still going to go up you don't stop at 1.8 million hopefully we'll get a change
uh just one question so uh for the first two categories uh are generics also being um considered and this is included and we use a company called Remedy that assesses our use of of generics and they save us about how much
Dave about 800 so because we we assess all that it saves us about another 800,000 a year which is why we manage this in a way which would never happen if all you had was premiums okay so we we we do everything you can do to keep these costs down but that's just those
two categories of of a pharmacy yeah glps probably don't have genetics yet they probably Yeah so this is our saving grace is enrollment but what do we know is happening right now in the town building
we're building so once this becomes an issue plus all the other things an issue it's going to be a problem so as you know before I get into this you know what we're doing about that problem we're studying the problem now
this year with a full committee to see what do we do with redistricting reconfigurations what do we do with the realities of what's coming our way financially and with enrollment so we're not going to wait for it to hit us we're going to be prepared as best we can be
that's the best we can do for the community is be prepared so our enrollment in South Brunswick is excellent not good it's excellent class size of K2 of in the 19s
is excellent 35 being at 21 is excellent 68 is insanely excellent excellent at 19 under 20 kids average in a middle school class 912 is wide ranging it's all over but it's
excellent we cannot continue this this is what has to change doesn't have to get crazy but we have to move from excellent to good not from good to bad we're not at bad yet excellent to
good so what we're going to be doing over the next month month and a half is applying the actual enrollment in every single school in every single grade to determine what can we do to manage the funds
but we talked at meeting last night about a reality we have to manage the enrollment sometimes that comes with things that people don't like to hear redistricting reconfiguration moving a kid from their
home school to another school there are things that have to be done in order to manage this kind of fund problem the good news is we are focusing on not losing a program we are focusing on next
year's school year to not include things like you're hearing in other districts like losing music programs losing sports losing opportunities for kids cutting AP classes we're not looking at doing that for next year this is again
because of the work you did last year otherwise we wouldn't be having that kind of conversation you would have already lost those things and you would just be losing more now so the reason I'm not blowing the whistle is we're going to be okay for
one more year not good don't get me wrong we'll be okay because of our enrollment and because we've done a lot of things to manage this over the years we're going to be adequate does that mean job losses we're
hoping we don't see anybody who's on staff lose a job we have attrition through resignation and retirements and then we do have positions that have to be cut because enrollment can't they don't they don't they're not needed not because we don't want them but we can't keep them we can't have class sizes that
in the middle school in some cases next year would be 16s can't have 16s we can it's great but can't do that not if we have to cut programs instead so our challenge is how do we do this without cutting programs
you don't want to cut things that kids have opportunities for a little higher class size that stays within range of reason is still a better option that's my recommendation to the board not to cut programs unless we absolutely can't get through this but we believe we're
going to that's what we believe before I move on are there any questions scott you say that uh enrollment is going to go up as next year what we know is we have the building and we know that
at some point those buildings become alive next year we expect eight we expect over during the 25 26 school year we expect about 800 homes to be finished and occupied those 800 homes will start
producing students in the first year they won't produce zillions of students but it will start next year and then that the years after that will get exponentially quicker and more because you'll have 800 next year the year after
that you might have 1,600 but then the original homes that right now are producing only I think under 40 40 kids i think 40 kids the 200 homes behind four executive drive are producing 40 students that those 200 homes a every
year will will produce more students that's the way people buy houses they don't buy them with full age always with full school age but every year more come less leave so we expect those 200 homes to produce 90 students themselves just
those 200 that are built already so that's going to triple just those then you have the 600 new ones that will come during the course of next year those will produce you know K12 students and then every year they all produce more and
then more homes are built and the it takes five years after full build to get what's called a full yield but at full yield the 3,400 homes that we have that are currently slated depending on how long it takes to build them 5 years after they're all finished you're looking at about 2,300 students
so you know you said that uh now it is an excellent situation and we had to get to good yes so in the in the grade level from 6 to 8 and 9 to 12 what number are you identifying as good so we're playing
with that you know generally speaking in a middle school class having 25 kids in a class is normal okay outside of the South Brunswick universe 25 kids in a middle school class is extremely normal when I taught here I taught fifth and sixth grade i never had less than 28 kids not one year I taught here not that
I want 28 can't say I loved having 28 but that's what I had the reality is at that time at that time in South Brunswick it was growing and you couldn't keep up when they built Indian Fields after one year of building Indian Fields it was overcrowded because the building was going so fast at some point
if the building hits that kind of pace which right now it's not if it does it'll happen faster there's no way to know that yet but it is going slow so the final part of the question so if that moves in that direction is it going
to impact the instruction for the kids i mean so if you think about it if if you have 20 in a class of 25 will it impact instruction of course more impacts instruction the question we have to ask is will it impact instruction to a point that is
problematic because that would be cutting programs through increased class size so you're looking for the happy medium you're looking to see what the standards say you're looking to be reasonable we're not looking there are class size in the state right now that people have 30 in elementary schools
we're not looking like any We're not even having anywhere near those kind of discussions not even in middle or high school but at some point you might be having those conversations we're going to try and keep that out of this year's conversation and just be from excellent which is 19 to good which in my opinion
I don't think everyone will agree with me 23 to 25 is good for a middle school i I don't have any trouble with those numbers if I can keep them lower I would and we have been doing it because we could we can't anymore this is just the
reality of it thank you um Scott my question was more about the high school because I know middle school and elementary we may have you know as far as infrastructure is concerned we have some options and we can play around
with it but high school given the intake or the new uh you know population that's going to come into the town u you know the question I have is at what point will you how will you make that assessment whether the present
infrastructure will support you know incoming students because you will know that at the time of registration and we're already you know if anecdotally what I'm hearing is that we already are at like capacity in that sense for the high school so we're not um the high
school has about 400 seats available it'll be crowded at 400 seats but you have about 400 seats okay we have 400 seats okay maybe 350 to be a little nicer but you're looking at average class size uh at the high school of 650 a class which is 2600
and you could put 3,000 in the high school okay so so you're you're okay with seats in the whole K12 next year South is only going to have about 780 kids 790 when I got here they had,00 and then North has a little bit
of space so you still have you have space all over the place but the space doesn't its class size goes up a little bit you know and no one wants that and I don't want to be heard saying that I'm I'm excited about 25 in a class or 23 in a class i'm not but it's a question of
class size reasonable class size by any education standard or programs that that's that's the choices we're going to give you we're going to show you all that as we go over the next month and a half you'll be given the options and looking and see how to get
to the numbers and really it is going to come down to class size um some other areas as well as programs so to to Raja's question of is 25 too much well is 25 too much if it maintains all of
our extracurriculars all of our music programs all of our supports all of our programs for high level learners all of our programs for our support students then is 25 too high or you know do we do
we stay at 23 and say that the middle school no longer has a morning mo morning music program right those are how it becomes those become the conversations we believe as long as we can keep class size reasonable on a
reasonable average that's a better move for the district than to start taking away opportunities for kids and that's what you'll decide and we'll show you all this as we go we're playing with all this and looking at options but the board will have all this it'll be in public you'll be able to see
all these things so I'm just curious to know is there like a mechanism uh between the district and the township to sort of make an assessment can we really you know allow for for this extra housing or this you know that is
bringing this influx into do we have the capacity is there a conversation between us and the there is zero control of the district over what gets built in this in the township nothing we have no say so we have no ability to sort of uh you know raise our
hands or raise a flag and say like you know we are you know we are at that point where we may not be able to service all of the students that are coming in no the state of New Jersey separates completely the municipality and the school district in all facets that's why our budgets are completely different our leadership is completely
different the decisions for who builds how many they build is the town but I will tell you I'll give the town credit the town has been fighting this building since before I got here it's not the township of South Brunswick that is making this happen it is the state law
and the state mandates they've been fighting legal battles i can't imagine how many millions of dollars they've spent to avoid this issue for this reason and I think they're still fighting which is why it's slow so we're not seeing a massive influx right now there's 3,400 on the docket but they're
not they're not being built because the township is trying their best so this is an area uh for the township has been the most helpful they can be okay thank you that was going on Mr and we we there was several um families
from the shocks crossing 55 and older that corner we were trying to testify against it we brought petitions they've been fighting it for I remember how long have you been here now uh this is eight but when I when I got years when I got here the township explained to us that in the
next 5 years this was 7 years ago in the next 5 years expect 3 to 5,000 homes to be built mhm it is now eight years later and we're looking at about 200 200 so far so you got to give the town its credit for doing the best they can with
this and I want to say that publicly because they have been thank goodness because otherwise we'd already be underwater with that we would have to then think about um what's called a referendum going to the community to see if you want to build anymore because you would have to but right now we do not
need to build today if we were to uh propose a building it would be about housing preschool students um in in a way that would be what we'd be proposing not proposing building a school because we we can handle the enrollment for a
bunch of years still mhm the problem isn't the space it's the staffing costs right when you get more enrollment we have to hire more staff and if you're underwater and you have to hire more staff that just becomes that much more challenging so this is what we're trying to guard against with all of these decisions
thank you you're welcome so so just really the taxes part of this and then we'll wrap it up um the healthcare waiver we're going to propose that you do take the healthcare waiver if you don't take it it goes into your bank but you should take it because
otherwise you're cutting two more million dollars of stuff and then you are going to get into programs when we don't think you have to right now um the tax levy increase would be 3 and a half% or 4.6 million what does that cost we want to show you the difference if you
only take the 2% it would cost $12 a month this is a estimation we only see that number going down once we get the ratables in so we don't have the ratables yet dave used a static number from last year but since
our local fair share went up 15% i'm expecting those ratables to bang and if they do that 1210 could become anything lower than 1210 so it's 1210 a month or 120 uh 144 for the year if we
if we did 2% if you went to 3 and a half% the full it's another four a little over $4.25 a month to get you know all the funding that we are allowed to get legally without going to second questions now we could always go to second questions again and you'd have to
pick what you know you think you'd want to do that uh right now Dave and I haven't proposed that as a consideration at this time but it is something to consider we have districts that are going to special elections not elections special votes to just raise the levy
above the legal amount that's happening the other option we'll have at some point which you might really want to consider is moving your vote to April so that you then have more flexibility in the in what you spend and but it allows the town to say if they want to spend it or not so those are options that we can
talk about um we do worry of what's going to happen when the enrollment stops dropping if the formula continues to do what it's doing and you continue getting hit with these horrible cuts it it's it's going to eventually be we've
kept it out of being a problem but last year we were remember we were out of we were out of tricks last year then we pulled the rabbit out there's there's no more rabbits i mean we didn't think that rabbit existed but we found that one so maybe there'll be another one but I'm not seeing any sight of it right now i
know we still have senators and assembly men trying but there was a bill that gave flexibility that bill was chopped up to pieces and is worthless actually worthless uh anything they tried to do except for cap the loss has been
worthless for us again just remember they raised what they said the town should be paying in one year by 15% how could the town pay 15% more in a year absolutely
insane as we keep going we have preschool we are putting in for six more classes for next year those classes this is good for us this is financially good for us those six classes will be out of district
they are currently scheduled for Suzanne if I get this wrong please tell me sapling three classes and the learning experience three classes the learning experience is right on route one right when you turn onto Blackhorse Lane
sapling Suzanne Route 27 route 27 in the in the in like the area by um Brunswick Acres in Greenbrook that area by Tasty Sub yeah by what by Tasty Sub okay that's good at least he gets to go to Tasty Sub it's not a bad thing so preschool is increasing again we'll be
at about 450 preschoolers next year that's a big positive total state aid cuts as I shared 1,65,000 um the this is an issue the fund balance so in your audit report you
have a $3.3 million fund balance Dave unassigned unassigned money we need 6.6 six if you run it to zero 6.6 we're looking we're looking to put 6.6 in from this year so we're looking to put in 6.6
six from this year that's very tight but this is the way we've been surviving very tight we'll get there but it's very tight you don't want to be running an organization this tight which is why this year we are going to do some things to try and even out the
score a little bit but it's only going to help for a short period of time just there's no solution that's longterm for us there is a solution you can close a building you can sell a building just wait till the enrollment starts to come back and you have to buy the
building back or re reopen a building with no funding not good decisions but they're decisions we have to look at all the decisions are on the table for the next few years not for this year um miscellane revenue increase we
got a few things just so you're all aware the township will be paying us $70,000 a year for the use of our school buildings for recreation we talked about this we went to a vote the town voted down the the
question so we had to then provide a fee to the township they have been informed of the fee and beginning July 1 they owe us $70,000 for recreation but remember we owe them
$365,000 for the police so it's a $70,000 increase to our miscellaneous revenue we do indirect costing for example the preschool do I have preschool
responsibility what do you think does a superintendent have preschool responsibility absolutely just like anything else in the district so part of my salary can be paid out of the preschool grant which takes it out of fund 11 which helps
David Kelly Megan and Suzanne do that and we are able to cost out all of the people that are responsible for preschool down to buildings and grounds remember Dayton and Deans would not be open right now without
preschool right they would be able to fit in our schools the PSD program we would be able to do that so the entire cost of those buildings is being paid for by the preschool grant that makes it advantageous for the district if you remember when we first
bought the preschool we had the people who were saying "How dare they how dare they?" Thank goodness we do this it takes a fortune out of our operating budget covered by our preschool budget and more importantly 450 kids next year
are getting free preschool free full day imagine what it does for our families who live in South Brunswick that's a blessing for them huge so next year we are looking at a very very tight funding for capital improvements we have roofs that need to be done we have other things that need
to be done operations meetings is it next week or the week after we're going to be talking to the operations committee and they'll be bringing it back to the board about what we think we can handle there's not a lot of money left in those accounts and you know just from owning a house if you have a leak
in the roof eventually the leak gets bigger and at some point it starts to cause damage and you have to make a decision to patch the roof or replace the roof we've been patching and patching and patching we have to try to see if we can do any replacements on some of our roof
problems the tentative budget remember you're being asked to approve is not the budget we can change every single thing in that budget between now and May and we will be changing a ton david does whatever he does behind the screens i don't know i
don't ask him he makes it so it says what it says needs to say but we're not we're not fooling anybody we're not We did this last year too we're not pretending right now we are not prepared to be done with the budget yet we need more time and we're taking more time that's what we're asking you to prove
tonight last of our pieces of information here is federal funding we are currently moving forward with the existing federal funding that we have i cannot tell you with any level of
certainty if we will have all the funding more funding or less funding absolutely no way to know we're hearing all kinds of things but until there's any reality to them I'm not going to start doing exactly what I
said before the show started doing what other people do on Facebook i'm not doing it i do not know the answer i'm not going to pretend I know the answer we're going forward by May maybe we'll know some more about federal funding but as of right now we're just going forward with what we have i will say if we lose
any significance amounts of federal funding which includes payments left for this year by the federal government as well as our funding for next year in title grants and idea then all bets are off with what that would mean i have to see how much is hit and then what goes
at that point that can that might not happen till the summer which is unfortunate because we'll have already struck the budget by then but that's where we are and that is all we have for you tonight except for there's one more
slide reggie can you flick it so there's one more slide no huh it's the overall side that just the numbers have already been in there but it was a it was a final slide that just shows uh you're you're going to be you know today you're approving if you do
approve a $161 million budget which is up we're asking you to approve the three and a half% that includes the waiver if you like to discuss that tonight you can discuss that tonight or you can still wait and discuss it at the end when you know all the things that are on the table you can still make those decisions
all the way up until May okay I missed anything you got it any final questions no stabilization aid stabilization aid this year is zero yeah or minus 645,000 that's of today remember though
this of today like I said going too crazy today you know we got money mid is very difficult they're putting us in a very tough position but we're going to do the best we can for the community and the kids you had a question never mind thank you
all right folks thank you oh good thank you okay so let the fun begin with that huh and here we go and here it goes okay well on a little lighter note let's go to our board committees um first up
policy miss Khan anything for us no updates at this time we have not met uh finance Miss Rogers yep thank you Madame Chair um so the two committee members of the three myself and Miss Khan were present at the um finance committee
which was held um this past Tuesday also present were um Miss Mallaloy White Dr mammon Mr feder Mr proski and Miss Hernandez and basically all I have to say is ditto um we went through exactly
what Mr federer went through so the committee had an opportunity to ask pretty detailed questions u which is why you really didn't hear anything from us um but uh it was a very good discussion it was a hearty discussion and and there we have it thank you i'm sure you're
going to be speaking a lot in the next couple months on this uh Mr krishna operations uh we're going to have an operations meeting in next uh week or two weeks okay i don't have any updates at this time okay thank you dr
raj education um education committee met on March 4th uh virtually um u and uh present were uh Miss Karthik Miss uh Ferrer um Mrs
hernandez uh Mr morales um Mrs uh Mrs susan Lakburn um Miss Dr mammon um and uh we discussed quite a bunch of topics and u uh something exciting to report is that we will be having two new uh
careermies uh going forward at the high school one will be a teachers academy and another will be trade we've been discussing that for quite a while um so that has come to fruition now and uh I'm excited to report that and um uh there is also uh Mr morales uh was in
attendance and uh he shared with us uh information about the special education parent advisory group uh moving forward we we are looking to have an appointed BOE liasan attend these meetings uh there was also a conversation on u uh
the on teaching national anthem uh in elementary schools uh for now uh the because uh it is not required to be taught as per the um standards um it's it's uh off the table uh but the choir
uh and a bunch of select group of kids do learn patriotic songs um and uh the other topic we discussed were uh come okay uh the other topic that was discussed was um uh option to law change
uh to align better with the uh NJ law um and um a detailed minutes will be uploaded very soon um to the portal and this is my report great did we get hear back from Dr mammon about the standards on the minutes so so I I do have a
question for Dr mammon closer to Sorry sorry sorry sorry um so we did talk about the um national anthem being part of the elementary curriculum and you were going to check to see if we could do it we we kind of knew it wasn't
mandated otherwise we'd be doing it already so I thought we were checking to see if we if we could do it is that that's correct right that's correct okay so it wasn't that so have we we haven't answered that
yet am I correct no not exactly okay next ne next meeting next meeting okay good i just want to make sure I understood thank you so much okay I did it wrong then um okay any liaison reports anybody have anything on liaison
report oh deep on uh February 28th uh the high school had the Temptation uh musical show cultural and musical show it was wonderful it was uh lively and colorful and full of art and
creativity and I was very happy to attend it it was um from 6:30 in the evening to I think 9 or so and I don't know how I lost track of the number of performances that were there but I had a uh you know I had a wonderful uh opportunity to see our kids performing
and they had a lot of fun and I must commend the advisers as well as all of the teachers and the uh custodians who were there to you know run it smoothly and there was a lot of presence uh in terms of order and arrangement and there was security so I really commend all of
the adults who were there helping the kids uh with their uh I think it's called the Temptation Cultural Club or something like that but I'm I'm the name really you know just escapes me right now but I had a wonderful time attending that event i wish more of us could go
but I know um Mike was supposed to attend but last minute he was unable to so next year I hope uh more of us will attend that uh that sounds like fun sounds like fun okay no more liaison anybody else okay
um old business none at this time new business none at this time okay now we're at the public comments and this is for any topic since we kind of combine two into one and before I uh see if anybody like to speak
I just need to read the board of education recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on school matters of community interest complete copies of policy
0167 which govern this portion of the meeting are available to the public at the auditorium entrance online or by contacting the board office to permit the fair and orderly expression of comments we ask that the participants be recognized the by the presiding officer
and preface comments by announcing his or her name place of residence and group affiliation if appropriate and by completing the sign-in sheet that's at the podium please print legibly or we may not be able to document your name for the permanent
records each statement made by the participant shall be limited to three minutes no participant may speak more than once on the same topic mr palowski will indicate when you have 15 seconds remaining all statements shall be
directed to the presiding officer no participant may address or question board members no discussion between a participant and respondent shall extend a threeminut time limit it is our plan to listen to each member of the public once all questions and comments from all
members of the public are made the board of education may respond or respond via email in the most timely and efficient manner available all questions and comments made made will be noted mr palowski do we have anybody pre-registered we do not have any
pre-registrations okay are there any audience members who wish to make a public comment on anything come on down so so this is a reminder that I'm going to start every meeting when we have public comments we so welcome
um differences of opinions we do not welcome disrespect go be yeah there you go thank you everyone um I I got to be honest with you uh this is the first time I've ever name Oh I'm sorry um Chris Hoffman i
live in Kendall Park um I have a a daughter in high school and a son in uh Crossroads North um I got to be honest with you I thought there would be a lot more people here um I'm I I'm joined with a few members of
the uh South Brunswick High School who came here to we kind of came here to see what was doing with what um Superintendent Frederick mentioned earlier um with all the outbreak of of fights and and things like that and
um first of all let me just say what you guys do in here is crazy like I never thought sitting through this I never thought this is what you guys had to do my head's spinning i'm like I just thought you were a bunch of rich people sitting around talking about like who who can we you know where where are we
going to put this kid and whatever i'm just in awe of what you do i just want to say that superintendent Federer I look forward to your messages when schools are closed big fan big fan um I just want to say that so I have total amount of respect i used to be in the education field i was a teacher for for
a few years um I couldn't do it so I again I'm in awe of you guys um so I I just I know we're doing what we can do and this has all kind of taken a lot out of us i know a lot of students are
really worried a lot of parents are really worried um some wanted to be here tonight they couldn't um and again I thought there would be more here however I'm sorry I'm babbling i get I babble when I'm nervous okay um but just wondering what we're doing to prevent I
understand you you have things in place of punishing people and that's great but what can we do to kind of prevent and with the influx of new students coming in in the building and I know probably by the time all these students get in my kids are going to be out
but I mean it's just going to you're putting more more people in a tight place it's probably not going to get any better so I'm just wondering you know is there anything specific that's being done to to curtail all this violence you want You can it's all yours um so
the So tomorrow your daughter will be involved in an activity in the morning uh there was a a um meeting last week with all the students now again it's because it's so big you can't have them all in a room it's happening but we extend the home room time by 25 minutes and that's time is being spent dealing
with this exact issue about the preventive side where the kids are doing an activity tomorrow that's being third done through third block and um last last week it was done on I forget what day of the week it was but you can ask her about it and she'll be able to tell
you what they did um they read every school every class read a letter about the importance of you know taking care of the school and then how the kids were feeling they got to share that staff has been sharing that so all of this is being done as a way to prevent we've had
a very good week um we're back where we need to be um but we did have an obvious hiccup no way to describe it otherwise sure and um everybody wants it to be how it's always been so a lot of people are putting the efforts in to make sure that happens but it's really it's the conversations it's the opus of being
honest with each other it's um giving students a chance to talk giving staff a chance to share and talk and that's what we've been doing for the last couple weeks and and and it's been effective and unfortunately the other side has to happen also that is a deterrent for preventative as well sure you know it's
not it's not a consequence isn't only about um the student who's getting consequented and um I I when I was talking to a group of students the other day I talked about driving through Cranberry do you ever drive through Cranberry oh all the time what do you do when you What speed are you using when
you drive through Cranberry 25 miles an hour why is that because I live off a new road and I see the knuckleheads that drive down new road and I you can ask my kids the the profanity that comes out of my mouth to the people who are doing 60
and a 25 so I make sure that in a 25 I do 25 if it's 35 I'll do 50 or 60 but in a 25 I'm I know there's kids around so all of Cranberry is 25 basically right and the other thing that happens if you go 35 in Cranberry is you're going to
get a ticket oh yeah and you're going to get a ticket and it's it's the reality it's a consequence associated with the behavior so um when consequences are consistent and fair and reasonable and appropriate they work as a deterrent i I put my
cruise control at like 20 28 29 I feel four might four miles might get me okay but I will not go 35 miles an hour in Granberry and I set my cruise control to avoid it because I expect if I do there will be a consequence i don't like so while consequences are not the only way
we act it's about remediation it's about supports it's about being all the things I've said before and we believe that is the the pathway to get us back to normal which this week has been and we hope to see it going for the rest of the year and beyond right thank you Mr hoffman thank you thank you everyone you guys
are doing a bangup job i appreciate you before you leave the podium yet could you just sign your name is it Is there uh There's nothing here we got it we got We got it we got it okay got it chris Chris Hoffman two Fs two N's burnham Court thank you go Birds
thank you um anybody else in the audience no one okay no no no oh oh I'm so sorry i'm so sorry honey uh hi i'm Om Boser i'm a sophomore at the high school and I uh the first
question I have is about like the health insurance issues and uh one of the things that uh Mr federer talked about was the prices of like ampic and uh with the new administration and their ideas of you know like putting tariffs
on several countries ampic being a foreign product would would those tariffs hurt our district significantly i couldn't tell you yeah I I don't I don't Oh my I'd be glad to talk with you more about that if you want to give me a call i'm not sure the answer but I can
look to see if that is on any of the list i I honestly hope not okay and don't give anybody any ideas yeah uh and my second question is uh you talked about how the budget would be finished uh uh before like summer right
and like uh uh specifically talking about federal funding if federal funding is cut during summer would the state or like the state government would they just is it really realistic to say that they would just leave us hanging or would they like try to get something or scramble to get something done in those
months between uh summer and the beginning of the school year um if you don't can I answer madam please do so um I was asked to speak on this exact question to the joint committee on public schools which is senators and assembly who sit on a committee together
to address issues of school funding and schools in general and this was a question um my my testimony to them was if federal funding is cut the state of New Jersey is going to have a choice to make the one that you said which is
either leave us hanging or fund they're going to have to make a choice i explained to them that if they make the choice to leave us hanging they're going to have to decide what schools are not going to have to do anymore because we won't be able to afford to do all the things that that funding currently
covers so uh the answer to your question is if that happens for for our district it's about 3% of our budget so under 5 million if all the funding was cut which I honestly my prediction would be we're
not going to lose all of our funding i I don't see that but there could be some adjustments depending on the size of the adjustments if there are any if there are any there might not be any your question is my question to to the exact to the legislature the governor would be are you going to leave
us hanging or are you going to fund so you already have the question and just so you know M is also a reporter for the school newspaper right for you and and knows his stuff as you can tell yes go ahead if you have other ones yeah uh
thank you good thank you uh that's those are the two questions I really have thank you so much thank you nice job thank you hun [Applause] anybody else in the audience move on all right okay good job let's
move on our next order of business is the consent agent item review by Mr palowski does anybody have any question for you before they ask questions you know why I'm thinking asking questions because they read it right they read it all right anybody have any questions
they read it go are you ready all right everybody so here's our consent agenda review we have uh approval of some transfers business uh office operations approving some financials bills list and acceptance of funds for some non-public uh
compensatory uh education we're accepting a donation from Crossroads South PTO we have a resolution awarding a contract authorizing purchase over bid limit we're approving our audit report uh that was provided this evening we're approving a transportation contract you
can see in one nine our tenative uh school district budget the slide at the very end that we could not get to view um this is this is exactly what it is it's the budget the local tax levy um
total local tax levy of $136,978,830 and a total uh a total budget of uh $173,457,336 so um that's our budget that we're putting right now as a tentative we have a second reading and adoption of policies we're approving out
district tuition adjustments we have an extension of professional services for our special education programs and we have harassment intimidation bullying reports we have a list of student field trips we have a resolution for travel
and related expenses uh we have a sidebar agreement with the uh SBA um two of them it looks like and then we have a final uh a final was added 119 at the very last minute we
have a approval of our preschool education aid the actual budget uh program that we have uh put together um that's that amount that 8.2 million is an amount that we're um using for uh
this year's preschool education aid so that's a that's a wonderful number and again the impacts of that program have been absolutely um astronomic astronomical for the district and that's your consent agenda okay now does anybody have any questions for Mr
blowski on this no i just u I just want to congratulate the district on um both the cricket club and the flag football i think that's phenomenal that we recognize multiple um
groups in our district and I commend the district on doing that thank you okay um may I have a motion raja second mr mitchell roll call mr palowski raj and
Mitchell uh let's go miss Alicia Khan yes mr raj Krishna yes mr mike Mitchell yes dr smith Raj yes mrs lisa Rogers yes mrs d mccarthik yes miss Laura Hernandez yes
motion carries okay um yes please so um we had originally planned to go into executive session tonight to talk about student matters however I would like to suggest that we
forego this and we move this to 6:15 which affects the education committee meeting next meeting however we are asking for a guest to be here he's not unable to be here tonight he would be at our meeting at 6:15 next meeting which
is March 27th ed committee I would ask that you try to make that meeting on a different night on Zoom so so we don't lose the month and uh if that would be okay david I'm not sure what you need to do with agenda wise but if that's I just got pointed of order you did you need to
make a motion to say what do you need to do yeah I got you you ready go let's make a motion i need a motion to amend an agenda that's already been approved so a motion m rogers second okay mr mitchell motion all in favor in favor i any any
motion carries any knees no removing the executive session student matters any abstensions i'm covering everything there you go now you go to a journ okay and um now please note that the next scheduled board of education meeting is
sent for set for Thursday March 27th 2025 at 7:00 right here be here be square and I Can I make a motion to adjourn would you like to make a motion to No just you you have to Oh motion i was going to I was just picking you were
going to hit that i saw I was not I was preparing nominations we are sorry we are sorry for this behavior here we apologize can I have a motion to adjurnn miss Khan second Dr raj motion to adjurnn carry all in
favor i good night South Brunswick there are Oh any getting out of here any abstensions good night South Brunswick