Yes. Absolutely. Give that one more couple 30 more seconds to let people trickle ready on the left, ready on the right. Call to order. The meeting of the South Hunter Regional Board of Education is called to order. Adequate notice as
required by the Open Public Meetings Act was provided on December the 17th, 2024 by posting the notice with the respective clerks of the city of Lamville, Burrow of Stockton, and Township of the West Amwell and advertised in the Hunton County Democrat and the Trenton Times newspaper. Please
stand for the flag of 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. Roll call, please. Jen Besser, here.
Martha Dennis here. Janet Bashetti. Brian Keys. Kevin Kovaleeski here. Aaron Olirri, Michael Strauss here, Ronnie Todd Marino here, Jim Gallagher present. Um before we get started, I do want to acknowledge
that Mr. Keys, one of our board member uh is not here this evening because his wife recently passed away. Um Aaron Keys was a graduate of South um 1989 I believe she graduated. uh and she spent most of her life in this
community and most of her life doing things to help this community. Um she has two children who have graduated from South Hunter uh a third child who is a junior here now. And uh I just wanted to say uh for myself and I think I can speak for the board and the entire South
Hunter community that uh our our hearts are with the Keys family and uh we are uh we are thinking of them and praying for them. With that, Mr. Sho, I think we have a starting presentation. Yeah.
So, as we've been doing frequently at board meetings, trying to represent and honor some of our students for their amazing accomplishments. We have one this evening. So, at this time, I would like to follow up Principal Jen Mcnite, who will give you some background, and then our students will be coming up uh
to be recognized by the board. Thank you. Good evening. So, the New Jersey State seal of biiteracy is award given to high school graduates who demonstrate profic proficiency in English and at least one other language. In New Jersey, students can earn the state seal of
biiteracy by achieving a score of five or higher on the stamp test in all four domains, reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Seniors in our AP or honors French and Spanish classes provided their profic prove their prof proficiency in their language of study
by scoring intermediate mid or high in reading, writing, listening and speaking. This is the level at which speakers are deemed fluently functional. While all of those receiving the New Jersey State seal of bi literacy reached a significant benchmark, it should be celebrated that
many students scored well beyond it, reaching the advanced working fluency level in multiple skills. We are so proud of our students for this accomplishment and we are proud to award this distinction to the following students. Um, our French student Yenia
Guerrera, she earned both in French and in Spanish. Next in French we have Iris Lee. And in Spanish, Kathleen Bartek, Dominic Carluchi, we'll give Ava Dugan, Lucas Graveier.
And I must say, Lucas earned his while taking Spanish 4. He didn't he hasn't even uh reached the AP level yet when he took the test. So, congratulations. Um Eduardo Labaro, Annalia. Nexelli Cruz Lopez.
Aaron Paresi. Aaron had a big day. We just said it in one day. Yes. For those that don't know, I'll say I'm sorry, I don't want to embarrass you, Aaron, but he was named one of our two, him and Sophie Henman today. You might have saw baseball scholar athletes for
the year. Liam Cyra not here, Amy Xavier Gomez, and Dominic Zawadski. Congratulations to all once again on such a great accomplishment. Um, moving on to the report of the
student representative board. Lucas, uh, what's going on? Hello. Um, for sports, um, just to repeat what Mr. Suz said, um, our seniors Sophie Henman and Aaron Pereizy were honored with, uh, our scholar athletes. For softball, they
have a win loss record of 7 to three and will be playing in the 101 Sussex tournament on S Saturday. Baseball, they're um at a five seven to five and will be also competing in our 101 Sussex tournament this Wednesday. track and
field. Our track team will also will be competing in our 101 Sussex tournament this Thursday. And as well, our golf team will be competing in the Skylands Conference tournament tomorrow. For clubs this month, Key Club
has uh made a trip out to the Watershed Institute where they learned to cut down and pull invasive species. They also prepared a bunch of teacher appreciation cards this month. Environmental Club. Our environmental club took a trip to the youth assignment youth summit
climate, excuse me, um which was hosted in East. They were they learned a lot about different aspects of keeping our environment healthy and strong and keeping the world clean. Last Thursday was bring your
child to work day. So a lot of so our peer leaders helped uh with fun activities for the South and SAP kids. The kids got to create a bunch of different cards and like tie dye crafts and make cards and little paper mâché
stuff. Um, and the peer leaders assisted with that. Today was a big day. It was the blood drive. South hosted our blood drive. Um, where students, staff, and community members were able to donate blood. Um, I as myself donated blood and
I saw a lot of my peers donating blood as well. Uh this Wednesday is our teen arts festival. So students in the jazz band, vocal ensemble, students who have performed in the musical and who are performing in our upcoming play, as well
as students who have created visual artwork pieces will be heading to the Hunter County Library to attend the county arts festival. This year there will be students from all different districts in our county. and May 1st or this Thursday, the senior class will be
deciding where they will end up. Uh they will be wearing merch uh for their future college, university, branch of military, or future employer. That's all. Thank you. Um next up, we have our PTO and LAF update. Do we have anybody here
from the PTO? I just got an email from Jess from the baseball field. Okay. For an update, I'll read it. Uh on Monday, April 21st, the PTO bought lunch and gift cards for our bus drivers for bus driver appreciation day. That was right here. We actually were there. That was
pretty awesome. So, thank you to them for doing that. The walkathon at the elementary school has been pushed to June in an effort to spread out more fundraising efforts. More information will be circulating soon. The walk-athon for 512 will be here at South on
Tuesday, May 20th. Middle school on location end of the year events. Fifth and sixth grade dance activity night will be on Friday, May 30th from 6:30 to 8:30. It's a drop off event. There will be a DJ, candy bar, glow sticks, treats,
outdoor activities. There'll be something for everyone. Sixth grade end of the year trip to Dorny Park is on Thursday, June 5th. And the middle school on location end of the year picnic will be on Friday, June 13th, directly after school. They'll have a barbecue style
food, whiffle ball tournament, and inflatable obstacle course. Field day for the elementary school is on Friday, May 16th at the elementary school. Um they'll have inflatables and also um a barbecue. Middle school on location
field day is Wednesday, May 28th, and we're they're working with Miss Ryan on more details. And I know there was several emails that went out today, but teacher appreciation week is May 5th through the 9th, so next week. We've been hard at work in planning for all three buildings. Please look out for
signup genius that went out. We have parent square this week. We need donations for all three buildings and help with setup and cleanup. If you want to help in an alternative way, please reach out to the PTO at shrsdtogmail.com. Um, how about an LAF update? Do we have
anyone here from the LAF tonight? We do not. I can think of there are two other things that happened well that happened and are coming up. So, we have the talent show on Friday and that's my favorite time of the year because there's so many talented kids. It's really amazing the dance and I think
it's just it's heartwarming, lovely. It's just um and then the the production for the um our place is on this set Saturday, right? Saturday night. So that's the one act play um that the students are putting together. And we
also have the art show coming up. The first ever uh South K12 art show is actually this Friday night. So we're really excited. We've never involved elementary before, so it's going to be a brief time.
Okay. Um, correspondence. We do have two uh two items correspondence which are available online for folks to review if they're interested in seeing what people are writing. Can I just follow up to that? Please do. So, we had, just to let everyone know, we had two other
correspondents that came in throughout the month and we didn't post because they include student names and uh staff member names. So the board did receive those communications, did read those communications, but obviously based on the nature we didn't uh post them as far
as our agenda, but I just wanted to make that known. Okay. Next up, uh we are uh looking for a resolution to approve the minutes, the regular meeting, and the executive session from March the 17, 2025. Do I
have a motion? A move by Ronnie. Second. Second by Martha. Thank you. Any discussion on those uh minutes? If there is no discussion, then we'll vote. That's a voice vote. All in favor? I. Anyone opposed? Does anyone
need to abstain? Okay. Um with that, uh it is uh it is that time of year. We have to uh approve a school budget for next school year. And uh so we will be holding our annual budget hearing tonight.
Um we will uh uh that will be a presentation on the budget uh some discussion of that and then we will be voting on that later this evening. Um so I do need a resolution to enter the budget hearing by Michael. Thank you very much. And a second please a second
by Jen. Thank you very much. All in favor? I we are in the budget hearing. Thank you. Yes. So this will kind of be a tag team effort with myself and Mr. Harris. be taking turns on different slides. Just a couple things I want to make you aware of. Um, you may have seen
this lately in the bottom corner here, but I think it is important as we have these conversations to really again focus on our strategic plan that we have in place through 2028, some of the different components, because I think you'll see as we go through our slides that um there's a natural connection
with our strategic plan and our our budget. I also create a QR code so if you would want to follow along on your phone rather than trying to read some of the smaller print that me up there you can scan it. I'll send this out tomorrow and make it available to everyone as well that they want to be able to go through the slide deck
presentation. So I always start out with our mission statement why we're here um you know a small close-knit district obviously providing I think it's important the dynamic and innovative part educational experiences for our students. uh this is something that we looked at as part of our strategic plan
and obviously maintain through that process as we develop our new strategic plan. So that really has to be a driving force and something we should continually be thinking about as we plan our budget for next year as we look at our goals for this
year and many were you know followed from year to year right a progression they're not new so especially the first one we've been putting a lot of emphasis on academic achievement so this is not a surprise this is something that will continue to be a goal for us as a district uh we've
talked a lot about MTSS ES multi-ter system of support and the different supports that we're putting in place. That was part of uh Jan Allen's presentation back in October when we did our achievement report as well as um our midyear benchmark report. Professional
learning communities to providing staff the opportunity to collaborate with one another um grade level or content based on a variety of different things including student achievement data. Um, goal four is really, really important, social emotional learning. And it's, you
know, I've talked about this before, but we do have a committee that's been meeting. They actually just met today after school all year long taking a look at a qual program for next year in Lumac. So, there's consistency across the district. So, you'll be hearing more about that in
the months to come. And then obviously facility planning and a major focus this year was on our 58 building which I have in my superintendent update of where we are with that. But we're really excited as we come to the the home stretch of finishing out our referendum on the on the two big projects that we've been
working on over the last several years. So what is a school budget? Well, it really is a planning tool that reflects what we value, right? As a district, going back to that mission statement, uh we must be fiscally responsible. We know obviously how difficult budgets are and the folks that
you know are paying for our budget. That's something we have to continually think about. It is a planning tool and it is used for contingencies and to mitigate risk. So we're in good shape as we open up our new middle school in September and obviously with our building, you know, that we just
renovated in Lambertville. So, you know, our elementary school, both of those two buildings will be in great shape from a facility perspective. Obviously, this building we continue to maintain and something we got to think about, you know, as far as our our operating budget, but all the different things in these pictures are important because it
just shows the many many different activities that our students are involved with. Um, and the hope is that we have things even for a small district to meet the needs of all of our kids and our all of our kids' interests. So, um, we're excited about that being able to
provide that. What do we value? So obviously student achievement and you know academic achievement it's really really important and opportunities for our kids but then there's a lot of other things that really make us a comprehensive district right all the many extracurricular activities for all
of our students that we provide the social emotional learning supports that we have for our students and also our staff really being able to provide professional development opportunities being able to support them if they want to go out of district for professional development opportunities and training that's extremely important long-term
planning for academics. We've been spending a lot of time on that. We will continue to talk about that of how we're focusing on our data driven instruction and looking at our assessment scores and progress monitoring and see how our students are doing. We committed this year to doing um not only our
achievement report, but doing benchmark presentations. We'll be doing our spring benchmark um presentation probably at our May meeting, if not or at June, just to kind of show how the year ended out. That's really important. long-term plan for staffing. So, there's been a lot of
conversations happening over the last couple weeks right before spring break. We met with staff to let them know who's going to the 58 building, what they'll be teaching, who's staying here at the 912. So, all those conversations have been had and obviously everyone knows where they're going now. Um, and then
obviously I mentioned before about our facility just making sure that we're maintaining especially this building which will now be our old building. So it all starts u in October about once the new school year starts. As soon as we get into it, we get back to it with meetings with principles, meetings with
the directors um to talk about what are our needs for the following year. Um so once that occurs, then I'll sit down with Tony, the superintendent, to discuss um the preliminary budget. Um I will get final budgets from principles and directors no later than December
20th. Um, right around that time, we also meet with the county superintendent and the county expo to just go over our current year's budget to see how things are going and if we foresee any challenges or anything during that time. Um, at that point, we put together again a quick preliminary budget based on a
number of different things. Sometimes it could be two or three different budgets depending on a number of different things um in terms of state aid, tax levy, things like that. Um, we review that budget with the administration team. Um and then in February we look to do that with the finance committee and
said this is what we think the budget's going to look like. But again at that point we haven't received state aid numbers. So everything is tentative. Um once the governor's address comes out in February two days later we do get those state aid numbers and we're able to finalize and then do the budget work session.
Um, we do a preliminary budget approval in March, but that so we can submit that to the county for approval. And then from there, we end up here tonight with our final public hearing to adopt the budget. So again, that's where we are in our budget planning process. We've drafted the final budget and tonight
we'll be asking the board to adopt that budget for 2526. Some important terms. Um, again, general fund, that's the money that is used to pay procuring year programs. Tax levy, that's the sum raised by the school district after subtracting out other revenues like state aid and
federal aid. Debt service, that's like referendum, that's the money that's required to cover repayment of the interest in principal in our debt. Uh fund balance, that's anything that the school district has left over at the end of its fiscal year. Uh bank cap, this is an important one we're going to talk about a little bit later. Um bank cap is
something that allows the district to exceed the 2% cap at some point during the budget process. Um and then capital reserve is the reserve account we use for the approved capital projects. And then another term that's important in this process is equalization rate which represents the average level of
assessment in each community which determines their percent share which we'll talk about a little bit in a moment. Which by the way just we like to clarify that we do not make that decision on equalization rate that comes from the county. So factors that affect the budget. Um,
again, staffing and benefit represent the majority. Um, we'll look at that in the pie chart in a little bit. Special education programming and services, extracurricular, co-curricular activities. So, that's your sports and that's all your after school activities. Maintenance and operations, as Tony said, keeping the buildings open and
running and safe and good, ready for education. Uh, transportation, that's, you know, buses, bus drivers, it's getting everybody to and from school safely. That's after school activities, that's late buses. Um, and then raidables and state aid. So again, ratables, that's your tax levy. Um, and
then state aid is dependent every year on the governor and the assembly. So here's the breakout. This is from last year's audit. 60% of our budget is made up of salaries. Um, you can see 2% is utilities, 7% is tuition.
That's for students that can attend in district. 17% is benefits. So as we said before, salaries and benefits make up the vast majority of the budget. In this case, 77%. It's usually anywhere between 75 and 80. Um, you will see some other numbers that seem a little smaller compared to what their actual costs are
and that's just because salaries is all salary. So things like transportation might be more than 3% but that's transportation without the salaries included. So again, salaries, benefits, classroom supplies, program supplies, that's your curriculum materials, uh special
education, technology, that's your laptops, that's your Chromebooks. Um the subscriptions that go into classroom on every single day, um internet hotspots for students that don't have internet access at home. uh textbooks, um everything that you need for co-curricular activities, not just the
paying for the people to do them, but all the supplies, materials that go into that. Um same thing for extracurricular activities, um your custodial and maintenance, your utilities. So that's, you know, keeping the lights on, that's oil, that's heat, that's gas, um grounds and maintenance, curriculum instruction,
professional development, as Tony said, is very important. the curriculum writing and you know making sure we understand what's in the textbooks transportation and then polytech tuition which Tony will talk a little bit about. So we dug into this pretty significantly in our work work session because I think
it's important for everyone to understand the way this works. Um, so if you've been following along, right, we have students now that participate in our Polytech program. And for the most part, what the Polytech's been in the past is a program more of a partday
program for students in 11th and 12th grade where they would go part of their day and then they would come back and their other half of the day either in the morning or the afternoon would be with us. But that's evolved over the last several years. So now what's happening is they are developing four-year programs, right? So, not f not
two-year, but four-year, meaning that students now have the opportunity in ninth grade to go to Polytech for a variety of different programs and and they don't come to us at all. Um, there's a brand new building that's opening up on the North Hunter campus in September. It has a whole host of other
four-year programs. And what's happening with Polytech, they're actually going to be eventually phasing out their 11th and 12th grade programs. And all of their programs will now become 912, right? in the next couple years. So, that's significant because I think folks don't
realize when we have students that go to either a partial day program or now a full day program, we have to pay tuition for that. Okay? It's not just free. Um, and if you look at it for this year in particular, you can see that the tuition rate per student for a full day
four-year program was n $9,848. For a halftime program was 5,112. So, we had 11 students in the full-time program this year and 21 students in the half-day program. So, that's $215,680. Um, we also have to provide
transportation for those students. So, back and forth to Polytech. That's an additional 63 almost 64,000. So, just this year it's cost $279,351 for that program. Um, we also lose all of our state aid. So, we get
state aid for students that we have enrolled in our district, but if they're enrolled in Polytech, we lose that state aid money. We don't get it. Um, so it's one of the reasons why you've probably heard we've had some um significant conversations about a performing arts
academy here at our high school starting in the 2627 school year because as we continue to lose students and we continue to lose funding, it is a concern, right? So we sat back and and and talked about, you know, what is it we could do to perhaps develop a program that we would not only attract students
to stay in South Hunter, but also attract students from other communities to come to South Hunter. So we are in the process, and you'll hear more about this probably in our May meeting in my superintendent update, but we are in the process of developing a partnership with Polytech to open up an academy. Um the
first year of the academy will have dancing theater and technical theater and then eventually the year after more vocal and um like band instrumental and the goal is when other districts have to pay the 9,848 they would be paying us a percentage of that to come to Hunter and
they would be our student. So I just want to you know make sure you're aware of that because it is obviously um an expenditure that we have to focus on you know when we're building our budget. The nice thing for Polytech is because there's been concerns about tuition
increasing, we did just get notification that they are going to flatline the tuition for next year. Originally, they had planned on raising at 3%. And they decided because some of the districts with the 2% cap didn't, you know, respond real well to 3% increase. So, at least for next year, they're going to
keep the tuition at 9,848 and then we'll see where we go from there. But it is something we have to plan on as more and more of our students may take advantage of that. So we talked a lot about expenditures. Um how do we pay for it? So the revenues that the district receives. So this we get about $4.4
million in state aid. That's this year's numbers. Um federal aid we're antic we typically get somewhere around one 1.4% of our total budget in federal aid, but we're anticipating a 25% reduction in that number. that could represent as much as 100 to $150,000 depending on
what the reduction ends up being. Uh tax levy makes up the vast majority of the revenues again about 85%. Um also preschool expansion aid represents about $1 million. School choice funding represents almost $1.9 million in this
year's budget. Uh CA program rent, so we can rent a couple of classrooms to the CDA school, which represents about $160,000 for next year. uh fund balance. That's money that was available from last year's budget that we or from this year's budget that we can use in next year's budget. And this year, this time
it will be about $200,000. Uh student activities fees, municip miscellaneous uh revenues, things like that um will represent about $53,000 or at least did last year. Um we hope it will equal that or exceed that this year. And then interest on bank
accounts. Last year's interest was about $44,000. That's excluding the NJ ARM account. Just a couple things to mention real quick. Um the challenge with the federal money is we're not going to find out until the end of May, June what that is, right? So
obviously we're here tonight hopefully adopt our budget. So we're guesstimating based on what we've been told to anticipate 25% reduction but we don't have those numbers and we will not have those numbers you know probably for about another month or so. So that makes it challenging. Um the other thing I just wanted to mention too, some folks
may not know what is municip. So we do have um a very talented employee in our district. Um Alan Albanir who's in our maintenance staff who uh has the ability to recognize when maybe something has outlived its life for us as far as equipment or different things that we have within the district and he puts it
on municip site for folks to be able to look at and bid on and purchase. and we've generated a a good amount of money over the last several years as a revenue in our budget by doing that. So, budget challenges, um there's a tax levy cap of 2% that the board
cannot exceed that except in a few different instances. Um but in general, the law states that it must it can only go 2% without going out for a vote to the public. Um, one of those, uh, allowances that allows you to do that is called a health benefit adjustment, and we'll talk about that in just a couple slides. Uh, that will allow the board to
exceed the 2% cap without going out for a vote. Um, average salary increases across Hunter County have been well above 2%. Um, we are currently in negotiations with our largest bargaining unit right now. Um, but we expect that to be above the 2% the settlement to be
above the 2% tax levy cap. Health benefits 42526 is expected to increase 11% for medical and 11% for prescription. Um the state health health benefits plan is 15%. So we're still in the right plan. Um but health benefit increases have been going up significantly the past several years.
Semi- reduction semi is a federal funds program that helps schools pay for medically related for services medically related. Um this school year we received almost $32,000 and that's been reduced to 4500 for the next year. So, a reduction of over
$25,000. Um, energy costs are expected to increase in double digit, if not high double digit percentages for next year. Um, transportation costs with fuel and repairs continue to exceed 2%. Uh, out of district tuition, which is an unknown, but that typically exceeds 2%
and then as Tony mentioned, polytech tuition. So, again, what's the impact of these salary increases? So total salaries for 2425 if there was zero increase in that it would be about $14,255,000. If there was a 3% increase then that increase would be about
$427,000 was um if it was a 3.25 or a 3.5 you can see those numbers go up. Each.25% is $35,648. So again depending on what is agreed upon uh the impact could be 427,000. It could be almost 500,000,
could be more. And correct me if I'm wrong, just raising our budget 2% is about $400,000. That is correct. So obviously kind of do the math there how that plays out. So again, as we mentioned, health benefit increases, that's also a
challenge. Uh an 11% increase over this year's health benefit cost would increase it by about um $451,000 after some employee contributions and things like that. Um, it's a significant number. So again, as Tony said, a tax levy 2% increase is
approximately $400,000. A 3% salary increase would equal approximately $427,000 with a health benefit cost that we know is going to increase probably about $450,000. So again, on our next slide,
that's where we talk about negative budgeting. So, we know right off the bat going into 2526, we're looking at almost an $880,000 deficit um before we even talk about what that tax levy increase could be. Um other things that go into the
budget again are the ratables. Um and this talk, we'll talk about this in a little bit as we talk about the tax levy. Um again, the ratables have increased in each municipality 42526. um you can see how they've gone up and that imp impacts uh overall things like um your school tax
rate percentage share that's what Tony had mentioned before we don't determine this this is determined by the county and the state um for 2425 the percentage share was 52.6% for Lambertville 5.8 for Stockton and 41.5% for West
Point. This is a list, I know it's tough to see, but this is a list you want to be at the bottom of. This is all the school districts in Hunton County. Um, and this is their overall school tax rate. Um, so as you can see, the three municipalities that make up South Hunter Regional, West Endwell Township,
Lamville City, and Stockton Burough are in the bottom four of this list. Um, so again, even though we do talk about increasing taxes with the tax levy, it's still something where we feel that we're doing a strong job because of being at the bottom of this particular
list. So tonight, as part of our budget, uh, we have funding allocated to our capital reserve account and there's two projects in particular that we're focusing on. So he followed along with the board um you know back in the late fall we we spent a lot of time really
starting in the summer but then in September and October talking about facilities and now that we become a 512 campus it was really important the board made a commitment how can we do the best we possibly can to keep all of our student athletes on school grounds right
now we have a lot of different programming especially middle school that's going off school grounds because we don't have enough fields so we looked at if you remember at the behind the possibility of clearing out a significant portion of the wood behind a new middle school um to develop some
field space out there. When we did that and had some engineering on that, we basically concluded that we would be able to get a softball field in there, a varsity softball field, and we would be able to get like a multi-purpose field, but we would not be able to get a regulation size multi-purpose field that
could be utilized for games only for practices. And the price tag estimate on that was between $1.6 six and $2 million, right? So then we started to really take a step back beyond all the clearing of the trees, which was a concern as well. Um, you know, what if we looked at the possibility of taking
our football field, which is probably only used four or five times a year for our home games um in the fall season and put in turf and then it could be utilized every day pretty much six days a week by all of our different programs. um as well as in the spring uh because
we could put a softball diamond on it and be able to use it for middle school softball and instead of sending our middle school softball team to Hua Park, we could wind up keeping them on campus. So the board after much discussion in December um did approve a quote for a
turf field. Uh it is part of the budget as far as our cap one of our capital projects. We are working on that working through the testing of the soil. uh DRCC um Bill River Canal Commission and all the different permitting um to move forward with that project. And then the
second project is the city parking lot next to our elementary school. So everyone knows who's been to Landville how challenging that lock can be. Um we've been working on this for a while now. I just had a conversation this afternoon with Mayor Noak about it. So
we are also working through the we are not the city is working through the DRCC and permitting for that particular space. So just so everyone knows kind of how it played out when the application was put in to take that parking lot and
actually pave it with permeable paving, right? So it's pvious paving that we have to put in that parking lot. Um the DRCC wound up looking at all of the field space, not just the parking lot, but also Elely Field as it considered it one whole site rather than just a
parking lot. And I will say that um over the years there were some things that were done in Elely Field um that did not go through DRC approval um DRCC approval. So, as part of that, the city is working with the RCC of where can we
find some type of happy medium so we could hopefully move forward with paving the parking lot because it will be permeable pvious paving. It's only going to help storm water management because it's going to drain through and when we did the paving and everything for the building and the lots that we own, we
did all the underground piping and everything's ready there for us just to hook into. So again, we're kind of stuck um as we have been on many of our projects, some of the uh permitting processes that can be very tedious and challenging, but we're still hopeful that we're going to be able to move forward with that at some point. And as
soon as we hear back, the DRCC did request some additional documentation from the city engineer, which speaking with Andrew Noah, the mayor today. They're in the process of providing, and then we'll see where we go as far as next steps. But um you know that's a long-winded way of saying that both of
these projects are in our capital reserve count as part of our budget. Keeping in mind capital reserve is just that. It's for capital projects. So if you're going to be doing things like turf, paving roofs, big projects that we plan for that's in a capital reserve account. A capital reserve account is
separate from your operating budget. Right? You So you could have not that we do but you could have $10 million in your capital reserve account. You can't take money out of that and put it into your budget to inflate your budget, right? It's not legal to be able to do that. That money has to be earmarked
just for capital projects. It cannot be used for your general operating budget. That is, you know, under the guidelines of the 2% tax levy or Apple. So, what does this budget include? Well, it includes obviously the opening and final stages of our new
middle school. It maintains our class sizes, which you're going to see in a second. It also has several full-time uh employee positions that we'll need for the middle school, a Spanish position, a French position. You'll see we have a candidate on our personnel agenda
tonight for the art position. And then because of the square footage of the building, we're required by the state of New Jersey to hire additional custodian because they have a formula they use based on square footage. How many custodial staff did you need? We will be hiring a
custodian. But in the process and with the reconfiguration, we've also eliminated some positions. So we will be eliminating four full-time teaching positions and three paraprofessional positions uh based on need. So again when we talk about you know adding
positions and we talk about a 2% tax levy and then where we are with our reconfiguration and you saw with salaries and benefits kind of where we're in the whole before we even start. This is the way that we do our best to try to get to that number balance our budget. We want to make sure that we're
maintaining professional development funding, you know, both in-house, so folks that we bring to work with our teachers, plus the ability for our teachers to go out and do workshops. So, that's in this budget. Obviously, mental health supports are extremely important. We know all the challenges that our
students face when it comes to me mental health. You remember that several years ago we hired specifically just a mental health clinician who her only job is to provide case manage it management to our students and families to do family
counseling. She's not doing scheduling or college planning or anything that just focused on mental health need and that's in this budget. We will be implementing a new pro uh program K5 for social studies. We're going to be maintaining this budget 65
extracurricular and co-curricular activities and enrichment opportunities for students districtwide and that includes a lot more opportunities for our students in 58. I think one of the things that's exciting about beyond opening up a new building and beyond the academic pieces is that we're going to
have a lot of opportunities for our students in grade five through eight to get involved in whether it's athletics, clubs, inter murals, all kinds of different things that they did not have access to in the past. Um, our late buses have been a huge success. The nice
thing about our budget next year is it includes now because it'll all be on campus for 512. So right now our late buses can only be utilized for students in 712. Next year it'll be you know 5 through 12. But any student who wants to stay after for whether it's a club, activities, enrichment, sports,
transportation should not be a barrier, right? We will provide transportation for all of our students. Um home internet Andrew mentioned before. So any student who has you know a financial hardship it's really important that they have internet at home so we have things in place. will provide hot spots for
students so they can maintain all their academics. We've had a huge push in dual enrollment courses. So many many schools and you you know if you follow along in education this is a big hot topic in high schools to prov try to provide our students as many opportunities as
possible to earn college credit while they're in high school. So you know students can literally graduate high school with a year under their belt of college maybe even more. So that's a huge cost savings to parents. We all know how expensive college can be. So, the more dual enrollment courses we have
and we provide those opportunities for students, that's a huge win. And we have several articulation agreements to be able to do that. Um, gifted and talented program. So, you remember last year, uh, we did a review, we had a consulting company come in and do a review of our
enrichment program. Uh we've had a committee that's met throughout the year, an advisory committee that was chaired by Miss Lennon and we have staffing that's going to increase next year for our students with that have been identified as far as our gifted program as well as programming
implementation changes. So that's all part of the budget. And then finally, I mentioned before the additional field space, you know, for our 5B athletic program class sizes. So, I think everyone when they see this um would recognize that we are in a very good
place when it comes to class sizes, especially compared to other districts and some of the challenges they're going through with their budget process. Um, kindergarten is always a TBD because we never know. Uh, we've learned in the past couple years that we can't just roll over the preschool numbers of our
four-year-old because we tend to get a lot bored. So, you know, this year I think we're at 59. So, uh, you never know how that's going to play out. But again, with our this is like the final piece of our reconfiguration and we can see where we are. And I know way back when families were concerned. I remember
when we had some of these conversations, what's going to happen to our class side? Well, based on the reconfiguration, based on the board's commitment, our budget, I think we landed in a really good place as far as what our class size will look like for next year.
So, Tony had mentioned FTE before. stands for full-time employee. So while you may be a single human being um you could represent a 0.5 if you only work four hours of an 8 hour day or if you have a bus route that's four and a half hours or five hours it might be some fraction of that. So you can see all
these numbers don't end in nice decimals because of different um number of hours people may work. Um you can see in 2019 2020 uh the district had 199 um FTEES and in this budget we're projecting 183
FTEES which represents a total of you know a little bit over a million dollars in savings over those years. Um one note that we do have we have FTEA if the pea funds went away tomorrow unfortunately these are FTEES that we could not put
back into the general fund. um these employees would unfortunately we wouldn't be able to maintain them moving forward. That's one of the reasons why we're very fortunate to have the PA funds to continue to maintain that program. So just everyone knows preschool expansion aid that's what that stands for because you know so you know
we love to use our edgy speak sometimes. I get lost in the weeds. Yeah the other thing just to mention and we talked about this in our work session. So we you know when we came up with our reconfiguration plan we knew this day was coming. So gradually each year um we've been kind of reducing staff more
through attrition right of staff left depending upon the situation not filling the position. So it wasn't all left like this year when we were actually going to finalize you know our budget. So you are finalized our reconfiguration. So you can see what that's looked like over the last several
years. So again just a little bit of tax levy history. Um so you can see in 2018 2019 the school tax levy increased 2.85% 85%. Um, now you see that the tax even though there's an increase each year, whether it's 2%, 2.85, whatever it may
be, you'll see sometimes the school tax rates went down and that's through that ratables number that we talked about before. When the ratables go up, that can decrease the overall tax rate. So that's why sometimes you won't see a consistency there between school tax levy, but a decrease in the school tax
rate. Um but you can see over the past three years 2020 222 23 23 24 and 2425 the tax levy has maintained at the cap of 2%. And it's important to notice if you just look at like 1819 through 2122 although
it's above the levy 2% it wasn't something where the board went out to vote it was for a different allowance of what's Andrew is going to talk about that allowed them to go above the 2%. So we talked about bank cap. Bank cap is if you have an allowance. So again there's different allowances
whether it's um the health benefit adjustment. So for example, health benefit adjustment, the state benefits went up 15%. And so we are allowed to increase our budget based on what fif based on the difference between what the
standard increase would be and that 15%. So I know that's a difficult concept, but the basic idea is is that if your health benefits go up over a certain amount, then you can increase your budget by that amount in order to offset those cost increases. If you if the
board chooses not to do that, then the board has the ability to use that spending authority to go over the 2% without going out for vote uh for three years. So again, we have $99,38 bank capped uh that will expire at the end of next school year. So if
it's not built into the following year's budget, then it will fall off and the board will lose that spending authority. Then you can see as they progressed um in last year's or in this year's budget um there was 122,280 boarding spending authority that was not exercised. And if
the board adopts the budget that's on up for proposal tonight, this budget will generate an additional $271,916 in bank cap for a total of $493,000. But again, that's spending authority that would still require the tax levy to be increased. It's not just
money that's sitting in the bank somewhere. So bank cap can be a little bit of a misnomer. Um so again the health benefit adjustment that the board has the option for this year is $377,335 and again that's because of the
11% increase to healthcare costs. Um as you can see the in the previous slide the bank cap that is projected is 271,916 and that's because u we are asking the board to go over that 2 and a half% and use some of that health
benefit adjust adjustment for this year's budget and we'll talk about that in just a little bit. Um another note is uh the board must use all the current year's health benefit adjustment in the budget before it could tap bank cap. So that's why the the bank cap isn't being
asked to be used but a portion of the health benefit adjustment. Do I go over tax options? All right. Tax levy options. So again the board could increase 2% which as you can see I know this is a busy slide so I'll just highlight a couple. Um and that would represent the increase of 400,000
$48,000 approximately. Um, if the board chose to go at 2.5%, that would represent an increase of $510,592 and so on and so forth. That final number, the 4.63 max, which represents
$945,000 of a tax levy increase, is what the board could do without going out for a vote based off of using all of those adjustments that we discussed prior. So that's all the bank cap and all of this year's health benefit adjustment. So that's the board's spending authority, but not necessarily that's not what's
being recommended or exported. So all the list that I just went through, what does that entail as far as what we need to make all this work to balance the budget? What we're basically asking the board tonight is a 2.5% tax increase um tax levy increase.
So, taking into account all these bullet points, taking in account the slide that Andrew talked about with the health benefit 11% increase, trying to project out as best we can with our current negotiations with our largest group where we're going to land with that settlement to balance the budget. Um,
you know, we're asking the board to approve tonight a 2.5% tax levy using as Andrew mentioned before some of that health benefit adjustment go over to 2%. Yep. So again, this a little bit of a busy slide. These are the assumptions that we use in the next slide. So to do
the calculations, so it's again just talking about some of the important numbers here. The number of parcels in Lambertville is a little over 1,600. The average home value is $448,000. Um these all and then you can see the sources of where the this information all came from came from. So
you can look at it yourself. The percent share of 52.6%. Um, and so what would the impact of a 2.5% increase have on the average taxpayer in Lambertville? You're looking at approximately a monthly increase of about $10.33. The bottom number of that
highlighted column. So an annual increase of about $124. If the board went with what it had previous 2% increase, the annual increase would have been for the average taxpayer about $98 a year or $8.17 a month. So again, this just kind of shows
the impact of all the possible options. And then the one that the district is recommending to the board to approve tonight, that's for Lambertville. Um same thing, this is the assumptions. These are the um numbers that are used to determine the f the figures for the next slide. This is for Stockton. Um,
and again, a 2.5% increase on the average homeowner in Stockton, um, would be an annual increase of $115 with a monthly increase of about $9.58. And then finally for West Amwell, again, here are the assumptions. Just again, information that goes into
determining the next slide. Um, so again, 2.5% increase for the average West Samuel home homeowner would be about $156 for the year or $13 a month. Now, again, if you're going decide to check my numbers, you will see that some numbers might be different
based on where you get your information from. Um, for example, um, when you look at the, uh, municipalities userfriendly budgets, they do it over a calendar year, whereas the school district's fiscal year is July 1st to June 30th. Um, so some of the numbers are going to
be slightly different. So if you look at it and say, "Wait a minute, why did we use this number instead of that number?" Please give me a call. I'm happy to walk you through it. I know there's a lot of information on the slides. And then one thing I just wanted to mention when we talk about referendum debt, which is totally separate from the
budget, as you can see at the top of my slide, operation wise, you know, that's our mortgage that we have to pay. Um if you remember obviously we're still carrying some old referendum debt um from a project um back at West Annell but that will be expiring. So that
expires in January of 2026. Right? So what will happen is the way it works taxpayers will start to see relief from that in July of 2026. And you can see where you know really the hike
2425 you know as far as you know interest and and the actual principal that number over $3 million you can see that it drops for next year for 256 and then for the following year there's a significant drop because that old
referendum debt will roll off and then it only we only have the existing refer referendum debt. So although that is totally separate from our budget, just wanted to make note of that because I know when we talked about the referendum and the budget specifically, uh we knew the first couple years was going to be a
bigger impact because of both debts that we're carrying, but obviously there is light at the end of the tunnel and that is coming or that will roll off for our taxpayers. All right, so that is our presentation. We'll open it up first to the board with comments, questions.
Yes, we'll start with the board. Anyone on the but we've already discussed this in committees and we discussed this in last month's meeting but does anyone have any questions about the presentation? So we uh one thing that was not on your slide was included in the budget but we
are we had talked about tutoring. Yes, we are going to do after school tutoring on our own. That is correct. Be tied to safe you know. required high impact. Correct. And that so typically that's title one money with
the federal, right? This budget includes it in the general fund. So that way in case there are we wanted to guarantee typically we were getting co funds correct for it but it was only for certain sets of students. Yes, Jim is right historically title federal the
federal program called title one as a funding source that covers that kind of program and then we have used those federal funds in the past. What I think what I'm hearing is that we've built a money into the budget. If we don't get federal title one funds, we will not we
will still have the program. It will not gives us more flexibility of who we can use to where title one prescribes that's why we had to do the certain grade level where now we'll have based on the data especially when we do analysis on our scores when we start testing next week
uh that will allow us to target we'll have the flexibility to use it as we should fit I would just say with the with regard to federal funds and you know Tony mentioned we won't know until uh the end of the f of our fiscal year, what our
federal funds are going to look like next year. And Andrew mentioned that we've already gotten the data on the semi program, which is a program that's run through Medicare, where we had a a drop from 31,000 to 4500 for the upcoming school year. We didn't use a percentage there,
and I think it's worth noting that's an 86% cut in that federal fund. But we are hopeful that our overall federal funding will not be cut that sharply. But we do not know, that is one of the uncertain things that we're that we're dealing with as we go through this
question. Any other questions from the board? Okay. Well, with that, this is a public hearing and so we will go into a a period of public comment. We'll open it up if you folks have uh questions. Um we'll kind of follow this is not the uh
there will be separate public comment periods if you have nonbudget related questions but this is for questions on the budget. Um we will follow the same kind of rules that we do for a normal uh public comment period. We invite you to come up to the podium.
We ask you to tell us your name and where you live and you know present your uh you know make a statement to the board or present your question. If we can if we can answer it we'll do the best that we can to do so. Um, with that, uh, the public comment, this public hearing is now open. So, does
anyone have someone they'd like to uh bring before the board or ask your question? Okay. Do we have any online? One, but it's not related to Okay. Well, we'll hold that for the our regular public comment period then. It was a very thorough uh proposal presentation,
Andrew. Thank you. Um, so I will just say final final opportunity for questions if uh I think we're good. So we'll close that uh period of the public hearing. L you got to go. Let's go home and get your homework done. Thank you for being here. Have a good night. Um so
then we need to uh um we are up next. We need a resolution to approve the South Hunter and Regional School District's final 202526 budget. So moved by Ronnie. Can I have a second please? Second. Second by Kevin.
Thank you. So we've had opportunity for discussion. It's our final opportunity to discuss. Seems that we are ready to vote. Okay. Let me start with Jen Bachelor. Yes. Martha Dennis. Yes. Aaron Oiri.
Yes. Kevin Kovaleeski. Yes. Michael Strauss. Yes. Ronnie Tarino. Yes. Jim G. Yes. Okay. Um, our superintendent report is next. Just a couple slides. Okay.
Um, I'll slide it out for you slides. So, just a couple things, shout outs. So, we had a lot of I mean, we talked about some of the different things that have happened, but there was two in particular that I wanted to highlight from last week. Uh it was an awesome
night and day last Thursday and Friday for preschool and kindergarten. Uh we had our first ever prekk expo at South Hun Regional Elementary School. Um if you had a chance to come, it was amazing
and there was a lot of people a lot of people in the audience right here that were responsible for that happening. But I want to give a shout out to Dawn Rhodess um who is here and then Kristen Netes who um handles all of our kind of
preschool as far as parent council group and Dawn obviously is you know the coach and just huge with our preschool program. The event was phenomenal. I mean the amount of vendors that we had there was just incredible. We had School
of Rock was there. So, one of the coolest things about it was the kids from school rock were performing right outside the entrance of the elementary school. And as I noticed looking around all these community members because it was loud. All these community members
just started coming not knowing what was going on but like what is going on? Is there a concert over there? So, it was phenomenal. Huge positive turnout. So many resources for our families. Um, I thought it was really cool that the
commissioner of education came because he will have a child in kindergarten next year and he sn he came in, you know, kind of under the radar, but I recognized him as soon as he did and went over and had a conversation with him and he was there with his wife because he lives in our community and
was just thoroughly impressed, raving about the program. So, I know there was a ton of work that went into it. So, I just want to thank, you know, Kristen and Don and all the other folks that I know were there working because it was simply amazing. Uh, and then followed up
by that. So, I love this picture. Um, Dawn also planned with some of our staff touch a truck. So, this is a great community event. We had it at Westwell. Planning wise, the date got
moved because the first date was bad weather. We didn't, you know, Dawn didn't realize it was literally the day after the expo. So, you know, she had to be exhausted. But we had all these community folks, municipality folks, everything else had trucks all over the
place. We brought our students over from the elementary school that were in the preschool program in kindergarten, plus our students that were at West Annual. And it was awesome. They just loved it. I mean, I have video of it. Um, and the cool thing was our students in fifth and
sixth grade, which you can see two of them here on the end, they assisted and walked around with our little one, right? Kind of got them from station to station and help facilitate. So, that was really powerful. The kids were just in heaven as you can see in the front end loader here with the all sitting in
the bucket. Um, it was just a really awesome day on Friday morning. The the weather was beautiful. So again, like just two phenomenal programs that feature, you know, I think especially Friday, we're both on them. We're just phenomenal community events um and
partnerships all part of um you know, our strategic plan and how looking to build those relationships with community partners. So, just wanted to give it a huge shout out to all of our staff and then the one, you know, involved. Um, and hopefully you saw I
did post on social media one of the recordings with School of Rock with the one of the groups. It was about 15 um students. I almost walked over and said, "Where are you going to high school?" Because we're going to start performing arts again. I was just wondering. Um, but I have I heard through the great mind that I think they're all living in
Pennsylvania. Um, so just some updates on the middle school. So hopefully you all read the email that I sent out on Friday to the community. I posted on social media. So Bach Construction, who's been the main
contractor for our job, demobilized from the site last week. Um, we had a lot of discussions about that because they are really done with all their part of the job other than punch list items. The last big piece of it is our septic system. And as you followed along and
I've been providing updates and you know I talked about this before with some of our other projects with some of our permitting and dealing with D um and DRCC. We did have some delay. So our septic equipment is due to arrive at the end of May and then we'll be installed in June. Um, and the question came up
like because Bach's contract technically ended on 420, like do we want them to stay on site to oversee that? And if we do until July, what's that cost going to be, right? And basically that cost would have been about
$62,000 to do that to keep the trailer on site, keep their construction manager on site, and to oversee job. Um, so we made a decision not to do that and we reached an agreement which is actually on our finance agenda tonight which kind
of lays out what they need to do finish out the job and what we're going to be overseeing as part of finishing out the job. Um, landscaping will begin May 1st, so this Thursday. And if you didn't notice and drive by today, the fence is gone. So when they meant they were going
to take it down the week of the 28th, they meant it because it was gone by 10 o'clock this morning. So, the entire site is open and accessible, but as I mentioned in my email, and I'll mention again in my next slide, it's really,
really important um that we do not have folks going on the site because it still is a construction site even though the fencing found. Um by taking the fence, we had a choice. Do we leave the fencing up? If we did, it was going to cost another about
$27,500. So, we decided not to do that. Um, you can see some of the pictures of the color schemes, lockers, and the gym just came out amazing. You can see the gym floor was really awesome. Um, so although the fencing is down, we can't
have students. I know we want many staff members that want to go over and peek through the windows, right? We can't do that. We got to stay off the site. Eventually, we'll get a certificate of occupancy. Eventually, we'll have open houses for our staff in the community. Um, but not until we get to CO. We have
a flooring contractor, the same flooring contractor we use for the elementary school that's right now installing all the flooring in the building and we're hoping to be done by the latter part of May. All of our technology installation will start on May 19th. And then the same furniture company that we use for the elementary school is starting the
first week in June. So, we still have a lot going on. Um, you know, the entrances, you know, are blocked at night. We have we're going to have signs up kind of no trespassing just to make sure we do our best where folks are not going on site. And then something that's really exciting, we pushed really hard
on this, but our new softball field will be opening up a week from Wednesday on May 7th. We have a home game against Denilan at 4 pm. We've also it's going to be our senior day. Um fans will be able to watch the game in future games this season from the outfield. So, as
you can see, you know, we have our brand new back stop, all of our sod for the outfield, our new solar scoreboard. I actually took this picture right here from home plate today looking out from the field. It looks awesome. The grass looks awesome, but we have to keep all the parents kind of in the outfield area
because everything behind the back stop where sometimes parents would typically be is still construction, right? There's big stones, things along those lines. We don't want anybody to get hurt. But we're really excited that next year we we pushed hard, right? This was something that's been on our radar, something we made a promise to, the
board made a promise to to our thoughtful parents and the fact that we were able to deliver on this. Just a huge shout out to our contractor, our site contractor, GMP, just has worked tirelessly to make this happen. Carl Caper, who is our director of facilities, have done an amazing job of
getting this ready as well. Um, so we're really excited next week that we'll be able to kick it off for the end of the season. We're telling folks, bring a lawn chair. We'll probably have a couple sets of bleachers in the outfield and we're asking folks not to park at the middle school, right? Because the lots will be closed. You can park at the high
school or I know in the fall a lot of our parents kind of park down the street there on the side of the field hockey field. You can park there. That's all temporary. Obviously, you know, once we get the building done that the parking lots will be open, but it's going to be an exciting time. We're going to do a ribbon cutting next week for the game.
So, if you're available, um, come on out. And I know that our our team's going to be really excited to be able to finally get to stay home for a game instead of have to go down to. And then the last thing I want to mention is uh we did get finally we had some delays, but we got back the
broker's opinion on the West Annwell School. So So just for folks that may not know what's going on, we had um a commercial real estate broker do an assessment of the property based on the actual school building as well as the house that's in front of it. um and how
much they think the property could be worth. They came back as an ASIS condition. So, you know that we've talked about some of the challenges we've had environmentally with the order and specifically the business next door to the school, but they came back with this number a little bit over $3
million. Just for those of you that may remember back in 2021, um when we had that done, right, uh it came in about5 at that time. Now the house wasn't included but I don't think the house makes up that big of a difference. Um so this evening actually
on our agenda in exec sesh we will be talking about this in further detail some more of the le leg legal things of next steps as far as what we're going to do as far as you know perhaps the sale of this property. Um, I have some information from our attorney. We'll be discussing about transactions and how
this process legally all works. And then we'll be sharing more details, you know, in the next month or so as far as next steps of the building. Obviously, at the end of the school year by June 30th, we'll be moving out completely of that building. Um, and then we'll figure out next steps. The board will make a
decision on where we go from there. So, I have my Okay. Um, that brings us to the the first uh period for public comment for the regular meeting. Um, same rules are the same as before. If you have uh something
you'd like to bring before the board, please uh come on up and uh state your name, your community, and uh um please try to keep your comment. Thank you. Um so, my name is Carrie Corboy and I am West Township resident and um I just wanted to first of all
extend some sincere thanks. I recently sent correspondence to the board and had such a quick response and probably more thankful I am that the board was so proactive and already has a policy in place since January to address you know if ICE were to show up on school grounds and how to handle that
and to train staff. So just really really thankful about the proactivity of the group. Um I also um wanted to just ask and I think it's a twoprong question. One is I had a question about whether there would be voter registration activities on campus for
students turning 18 or anybody new moving to the community or anything along those lines either for the June primaries or obviously for the fall election because I wanted to volunteer if I could help with that. And then more generally just ask the question that I I don't have children in the school
system. I I haven't. Um so if there is someone I can connect with just about getting involved and and how to be helpful as a community member. Um, I I get the newsletter and I read them, but a lot of that's sort of after the fact information. So, how I can get ahead of that and then put my hand up to help.
So, thank you. So, I'll I'll answer your question real quick. So, yes, we do do that. I can connect you with our counseling department with the registration. Uh, we do we work with Hunter County on that and then I'm more than willing to be your point of contact. Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Does anyone else have something they like to bring? people board the city. If I could just make a quick comment on the preschool event. Um I I want to kind of rewind to that strategic plan that
you started the budget presentation with and one of the things was community engagement and and that just was such a fantastic opportunity. Um, and you know my history with the PTO and that touch a truck event has been whispered about for years and years and years. I loved
seeing that come to fruition. Um, and then and then also the community engagement in the fair. Uh, it's just such a unique opportunity for us now that all of our students are together and that we can that our staff can work and
collaborate in new ways. Excellent. Um, this is a public comment. Does anyone else have a comment they'd like to make? We do have one online. You want to read that one? Yes, it is from uh Mark
Donland from Lillia. My name is Mark Donland. For the past two years, I have been president of the South Hunter Regional School District special education parent advisory group. And that our son is a senior this year and will be graduating. my participation with CPAC will be
coming to an end. I wanted to say it's been a pleasure to be able to serve South School community and I hope district parents will see the value of CPAC carry forward next year. Thank you for all of your hard work. Thank you, Mr. Don, for your being on
that committee for a long time. Um, any other uh final call? There will be another opportunity for public comment at the end of the meeting. So, if you have comment, if you have a question that comes up afterward, but um seeing as I I don't believe there's another comment right now, I'll close
the uh period of public comment and we'll move to our uh our business. We'll start with the buildings, grounds, transportation, finance, and safety committee. Uh that committee did meet on Thursday evening. Uh we discussed the
preliminary the final budget which we already passed as well as uh the Westwell school and a number of other matters but um I'm going to seek a motion to approve items A through Q and we can talk about them if anyone has any specific
questions. Do I hear a motion? Motion by Jen. Thank you. And um a second to the motion. Second by Kevin. Thank you very much. Um discussion. Anyone have any questions? We are renewing a number of
of contracts as you can see in item item D. Um we have uh the um you can follow pretty much here. I don't know that there's anything that's um not explanatory.
I would note that our the uh lunch prices are staying mostly stable except they're going up a little bit at the machine. That's correct. Think they're going up 30 cents at lunch at the elementary school. Um, but we are, you know, renewing that contract with Masios
for the next school year. Masios has been doing it for a long time. If there's no discussion on items from Q, then let's vote. Martha Dennis, yes. Kevin Kaleleski, yes.
Michael Strauss, yes. Jennifer Bachelor, yes. To Marino, yes. Jim Gallagher, yes. Uh, personnel committee, I'm going to ask Mr. Suzo to give a quick report on that. So, obviously, we talked about um the recommendations for appointment or
the personnel actions that are on the agenda. But one thing I wanted to highlight in particular. So, um, after a rigorous and extensive search for a new high school principal, um, I am happy tonight to introduce Mr. Adam Wright,
who's right here in front of me in in the first row, um, who I'm recommending to the board to take over as our principal uh, for July 1. So, just a little background, Adam is now the sitting principal at Manville High School. Um before that he served for
several years as vice principal um at Delval High School. Before that supervisor of social studies in uh Montgomery School District and before that was a high school social studies teacher uh in the Montgomery school district. So u it was a rigorous process
several different rounds. So we thank you for your patience and we're really excited for you to join us officially on July one. We're going to do a staff meet and greet on Wednesday this week at 2:55 in this room. And then Adam's actually
leaving um Thursday to go to Florida with his senior class at Vanville. So he'll be back on Sunday and then we'll work on solidifying a date for a parent meeting for him as well. So welcome to Southg School District High School.
Okay. So with that, I'll need a motion to approve items A and B. So moved by Michael. Thank you. And second by Michael. Thank you. Any discussion on item paying big vote? Starting with Kevin Kovaleesque.
Yes. Strauss. Yes. Jennifer Bachelor. Yes. Martha Dennis. Yes. Ronnie Todd Marina. Yes. Tim Gallagher. Yes. Mr. Wright, welcome to the district. Okay. Uh, let's see.
Curriculum and technology, Mr. Strauss. So, curriculum and technology met on Monday, April 7th at 6 PM. Um, our technology update, there's nothing pressing. Um, our our technology captain was golf
captaining the golfing team. Um, so, um, we did go right onto the homework policy. So over the last year um the policy has been created by a staff advisory council. It came from a um as a
direct result of last year's survey from parents and community members that something needed to be put into place. So we are reacting to that um that feedback from the community and um we reviewed a preliminary version of it.
Um, in addition to that, the staff and the district parent council will have reviewed. Um, we will be looking at it one more time and then we'll be making a referral to policy shortly thereafter. Um, we also made a referral over to
school and community for the communication surrounding that so that um, it can be implemented in a full communal way next year. Um, and as we discussed a little bit further, Miss Lennon kind of went through a little bit
more of scenarios of how the policy would be implemented more than the actual wording of of the policy. Um, and I I did want to just point out one thing. We've recently added Witten Wisdom and Reveal Math. Um, and there
are homework components in those curricula already, those programs that we can kind of just take and give to our teachers and um, use without adding any extra burden onto this. Um, in addition
to that, we talked about the performing arts academy. Um, a dance teacher has been identified and we will be running dance classes next year. uh that is a requirement as we move into the academy and the next year is that the the classes will have been running um and we
are looking and I think may have moved beyond to the point that it is um satisfying a PE requirement for next year um the curriculum is being developed as we speak um and TCJ is
going to be working with us as a post-secondary partner um they will be adding a dance program in the next year or So, it's really a wonderful opportunity for us to expand dual enrollment as well. We also got an update on the
gifted and talented parent advisory council. They did write a mission statement. It is in my update and in um in the the agenda. And we also heard a little bit about parent information meetings um that Miss
Lennin did for both transition to high school and transition to middle school. And those decks are included in the agenda as well. Um just a real quick, we've got a lot coming up in curriculum. Um the middle school program of studies is going to be addressed in the next
month. Um we'll be looking at the high school program of studies shortly thereafter. Um, we also are going to be looking at a pilot program for um, grades 8 and nine algebra 1 and um, we'll be looking at the results of a pilot that we're currently doing with
common lit which is for grades 9 and 10. Nothing to move. Excellent. Good report. Our policy committee policy. Thank you. We met on April 1st. We have one item for first read which is a man a mandatory change to policy 8500 on food
service. Uh this is as a result of a change in the federal workingclass families and anti-hunger act uh which was revised requiring requiring vision revision to several state statutes and ultimately our policy guide. The changes
involve new terminology expansion of income eligibility to qualify students for free meals and additional parent notification requirements. Uh we did notice in going through this that there is a reference to the um US Department of Agriculture and the New
Jersey Department of Agriculture that is not correct and we will make that change. Again, this is on the first read so the board should review this and see if they have any other um changes before we get to the second read. On the second read, I'm going to take this slightly out of order because I want to focus on the changes to the
policy and regulation 90 through20 cooperation with law enforcement. We've covered at previous meetings there were the mandated changes were two new requirements and one language change having to do with adding other drugs to a particular section of the policy. But what we talked about specifically had to
do with changing language in section B3C uh when it came to notifying the district's responsibility to notify parents when there had been interaction with their children in law enforcement. And so those sections have been changed particularly in B and C. We'll start
with A. It says school officials shall not notify the students parents or guardians in instances of suspected child abuse or neglect. And then accept is stated above. School officials shall notify a student's parents or guardians when the student has either been the target of law enforcement investigation
or if they've been involved in law enforcement. So you can see that exact language in the policy that's been changed based on our previous discussions. Our next uh second read is our policy, our new policy, mandated policy on the spectator code of conduct.
This has to do with incidences of unsportsmanlike conduct. Um there are there is a tiered uh disciplinary framework that's in place for first defenses for football, suspensions from attending the next one home game from all other sports. Suspensions for attending the next two home games. For
the second offense for football, that's suspension from attending the next three home games. and for all other sports suspension from attending the next five home events. And for the third events, there'll be the suspension from all subsequent home events. And of course, there is discretion that rests with the
superintendent upon consultation with the principal if there's a need to increase disciplinary actions. Our next policy and regulation for second read has to do with student smoking. This is to make sure that both the policy and the regulation are in line with the level of understanding and
that we are appropriately notifying uh uh we have to report on the use and seizure of electronic smoking devices and that is it. So I would like to move our items for second read which is our
policy and regulation 20 9320 uh our policy 9163 and our policy and regulation 5533. Okay. So moved second by second. Any
discussion on those policies? Then uh let us vote. Senator Jashetti. Should I abstain because I walked in halfway through Martha's presentation or you can if you if you feel most comfortable, you can. That's I read. If
you're comfortable with the policies and you want to vote yes, you can vote yes. If you don't want to, you know. Excuse me. Kevin Kovaleleski. Yes. Michael Strauss, yes. Jennifer Bachelor, yes. Marco Dennis, yes. Ronnie Tugino,
yes. Jim Gallagher, yes. And uh school and community this month. So I am very grateful for the report. So I will be repeating some of what I said in curriculum on a very different aspect.
But um the first thing we did was review the school in performance school performance report um and um how that is presented this year. It basically is um from the state and um we looked at updates to it. Uh again chronic
absenteeism, the seal of biiteracy, visual and performing arts and discipline were all included this year which is a change from previous years. Um we also looked at student recruitment and retention for the performing arts academy. A little bit more about the
plan. Mr. Suzu shared what he has already received. Um it'll begin at the arts festival and um Polytech is developing a larger plan. Um the advisory council will be meeting um on
4:30. So um in on Wednesday night and there will be more information after that. And as I mentioned um we are we looked at the parent FAQ to support the new homework policy and um discuss strategies to communicate and
successfully launched the um in 2526. Miss Bachelor was really very helpful in creating four key questions um that were why home why homework and why the specific amount how do I see the
homework how much homework and um what will be the parent involvement at each level. So we are going to be developing that along with instructional materials for um both parents and um some key talking points for teachers at each
building level. And then finally, we talked about the um media alerts that are coming up. Um the afterchool enrichment being one of them and the success of that program and again how it does involve the community. Um and then
finally, the high school principal has been selected. We just approved and we'll be talking a little bit more about um him and also the selection process uh in an upcoming alert. Very
good. Can also tell you that LPS still retains that new. Oh, excuse me. It's hard to break. I'm sorry. Okay. Um, with that, uh, we will go to, uh, item
11, our routine information items. Um we do have no report for we could have not last full open report. Um we did have safety drills on the dates that are listed in the in the uh agenda and um
our student enrollment report is attached to the email for anyone who is interested in looking at that um at home. So with that brings us to the final period of public comment for this evening's meeting. Um, once again, if anyone has anything they'd like to bring
before the board, please come up and uh and uh let's hear it. Uh, seeing no comments from the public, do they have any comments online? Okay. Uh, then I'm going to
close the period of public comment. Um, and we do have a need to move to have a shorter executive session this evening. will probably take about a half an hour. There will be no action taken after we come out of executive session. So, we will need a motion to go into executive
session at 8:30. So, moved by Ronnie in a second, please. Second. Second by Kevin. All in favor? I. Light.