##VIDEO ID:-2QE96a_3ow## 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 thank you statement of adequate notice in compliance with the open public meeting act chapter 231 laws of 1975 state of New Jersey adequate notice of this meeting of the South Liber Board of Education was provided in the following manner on January 15 2025 the notice was delivered to the office of South River burough Clerk and posted at the Board of Education administration building on January 15 2025 the notice was faxed mailed to the following newspapers home News Tribune Star Ledger on January 15 2025 the notice was posted at the South River borrow clerk's office roll call Mr Rosa please Mr basac Mr basac has been excused Mr buson here Mrs Bush here Mr M burn here Mrs L here Mr neelson here Mrs Sadowski here M young Yao here Mrs urbanic Mrs urbanic you've been excused calvine Sami here you have a Corum thank you sir board secretary minutes so for the minutes we have um the special meeting minutes for December 16 the regular meeting minutes for the same date and the reorg meeting minutes for General uary 2 motion for the meetings of minutes motion to move the meeting minutes in accordance with board policy second [Laughter] second use of facilities Mr Ros all in favor I I thank you sir use of facilities Mr Rose so for the use of facilities we have number 683 all the way to number 701 motion for the use of facilities Mr buson second M burn all in favor I financial report sir m l I'm sorry it's okay be it resolved that the Board of Education hereby certifies that it is in deceit of the financial report which indicates that no major account has been overe exended and that sufficient funds are available to meet the district's Financial Obligations for the remainder of the fiscal year the finance committee recommends that the reports of the board secretary and the treasur school monies for November 2024 be approved and ISO move so second second mski all in favor I we're going to go to the superintendent's report this evening okay okay yes thank you Mr neelon um a few items um first you have items 3.2 3.3 and 3.4 which are confirmed hips um and then for my monthly report just a few quick items it is Schoolboard appreciation month and each of you have a certificate of appreciation in your folders um just really our way to just say thank you for all you do for the children of South River and our community um I have a detail my superintendent report about our budget and the process this will be here until we do our budget hearing so you'll see some more information about our budget process as well in our next meeting our high schoolers had a Scholastic showcase this month where they had the opportunity to really learn about the courses that are available um in our program of studies including electives and um it was very well attended and I think from the feedback I received they really got a lot out of the experience uh in residency our residency office continues to um do a wonderful job they continue to ensure that the children we are serving do indeed uh live in South River and they have identified several cases where um the students really should be re-enrolled in their home school districts um and so really a commodation to that department for for doing a tremendous job I want to remind uh the community that our prek registration for school year 2526 is open um that registration closes April 25th and applications are going to be reviewed very quickly after that submission date so please if you haven't done so already and have a three or four-year-old that lives in South River and you are interested in our full day prek program please go ahead and um fill out that application to show us your interest in the program and to conclude my superintendent report I would like to have our auditor who is here Jerry you're tucked away somewhere I don't see stuck in the corner there you are um who's going to come up and just give us a brief report on the audit that is presented on your agenda this evening a brief brief okay so my name is btz I'm a partner in The Firm of Samuel kleinon company we are the appointed Auditors for the school district for the fiscal year Ed June 30th 24 Our obligation is to the board to uh perform the audit and to report on the results of the audit um I'm happy to say that we have a what's called an unmodified opinion meaning the records were presented properly to us okay and we have no comments uh and or or that require a uh a recommendation which would require a plan of action we have none of that okay um how how did we get there our records are uh records from the district are presented by your management team to us um our job is to do the audit on those records okay and the audit sometimes U well we get involved in sampling okay uh everything has to be justified we can't just you know pick what we feel like looking at and so we do a sample of payroll transactions we do a sample of expenditures uh we look at and verify your enrollment counts we verify your meal counts uh that are done through your food service for which we get reimbursement on a per meal or per breakfast basis we we checked all through those items and we had good results the biggest areas that you have are expenditures and payroll payroll we run a sample okay maybe we'll sample 40 or 60 various items throughout the year but again randomly and we found those results to be very good and what we test for is to make sure that everyone is paid who gets paid is paid in accordance with board authorization and or your collective bargaining agreements so those results were successful and I think this was our second year with this new payroll person who replaced a longtime person and we found her performance to be very good we're comfortable with with her um and and that's one of the problems with some of the audits when there's transition you know you could be have a 30-year run of of really no problems and a new person comes in and then you got problems however if there were the staff here like for example Johnny would have probably picked up on it before we got there which is also important that it the system could have the ability has the ability to pick up a problem before it gets to our level they're not saying there everything was perfect but if there was a boo boo and he caught it and fixed it before we got her that's a good thing okay it's where a boo boo happens and it slips through to our level and then there's a problem so with payroll was properly administered the payroll taxes were properly paid and they're properly cut off with regards to the fiscal year expenditures um look we could do a lot of fancy talking about auditing we look at a random sample of anywhere from 60 to 120 invoices plus a bunch of other invoices that are big dollar items we check those out and but we check them for as a uh documentation is proper meaning all dispersements are properly supported by invoices two charged to the correct budget code three to the correct fiscal year and uh also in compliance with the public school contracts law okay you met all those tests th those are the biggest things to do bank reconciliations here which is of utmost importance are done monthly by an independent uh Treasurer uh he's also the CFO for the town his work is excellent so he reconciles the bank accounts monthly independent of of inside the building over there and that's the way it should be districts are allowed to eliminate that position but I don't think that's a good idea someone else you need a second set of eyes to look at things plus Johnny's got enough work to do he it it doesn't take uh it it takes a lot of time to do it correctly okay so we got good results from all that okay uh we did look at some of your food service uh expenditures not what we paid them but what they paid their vendors um so far that looked pretty good uh we looked at invoices from the various suppliers we looked at time sheets expenditure reports theirs cash receipts we checked the cash receipts that they obtained which all go into your own bank account we verified that those items were properly uh deposited And Timely and also to uh again I said we we check your enrollment counts okay we we spent a lot of time making sure that the kids are all properly accounted for as of October 15th so in the end we have um pretty good audit results we have a nice set of Records um I will tell you we transitioned this year from a an old computer system an old computer service okay uh those are usually pretty tough um it takes some time for to work out some of the Kinks so but we were able to get through everything and and and formulate our opinion also too um we filed the report on time okay at 8:00 uh last THS last Wednesday night and it was kind of a minor miracle since Johnny was out for eight days prior to that and sort of we needed him to get us information and he through his staff was able to get us everything we needed and that report got uh recorded at about 8:00 um last Wednesday night so we were able to I had my whole office on hostage that no one leaves the office till we get that receipt so that was all done and and and again we have an unmodified opinion based on the records as presented there's no nothing that happened that would require us or the board to do a corrective action plan you have two documents by the way the the thicker document is a joint venture between us and the business office a lot of statistical information that's in there now it may not matter internally here or locally but there are there is information in there that uh people who evaluate school districts for either what they're spending how they're spending what the results are or on Wall Street if you're going to again go out for bonds somewhere down the road they look at all the information that's in these documents there's a lot of information here about South River itself as well as the school district and the revenue uh the revenue flows the rable base the employment base big taxpayers all that stuff it's it's a pretty standard thing in the industry so it's not just all about what I'm saying here tonight a lot of the information that's in here okay was provided by either Johnny's office or the CFO from the town or we dug up a lot of it uh through all the different Publications that are out there so that that's the document that's a joint venture and the only thing inside of that that belongs to us is our Auditor's opinion the thinner of the two documents is our representation to the board since we are answerable to the board about the the operation of the business office and as I explained we had all good results from all the testing and I think for the first time in a few years our 30% of the expenditures for the Food Service fund did not exceed the it did not exceed the requirements so that's a good thing and by the way a lot of districts had that and it was only because there was so much money out there floating around from the government that they you know one agency was giving you more money because of covid and then another agency was saying you're over the 3% or the 30% so it's it kind of worked itself out so in the end but I do want to tell you that that your support staff across Street was very supportive and very uh Cooperative with us through the whole process so in the end we appreciate uh everyone's help and like I said we filed it on time and we're happy about that so very good thank you Mr than so any board members have any questions Jerry we're good we're good good want I just want to give thanks for for you and your team I know the dedication and the time you took especially while I was out um medical issues um thank you thank you for getting it on time no nobody was allowed to leave the office and and including the secretaries they didn't leave so um we're all good then we're good thank you so much see you next year we appreciate it I'll see you sooner I'm short let's move we're all good superintendent report and then I'll do student yes I think you have to prepare a resolution or accepting the audit okay okay all righty okay thank you thank you have a good night CH good see you too jar good this thing keeps falling thank you all right student board rep we're going to go to you for your student board because we're going to go into Clos session and I really don't think you want to hang around and listen to all that nonsense uh the high school's drama club will be having a dramatic production of clue and a new world languages Club has been added which plans on continuing the um events usually held by the German honors Society that's it okay thank you very much thank you thank you motion to move the superintendent report John second Johnny all favor I very good okay to go done for the night retion yeah I know I got to do public now down that screen this time we're going to uh open for reception of visitors uh the public May address agenda items only at this time please state your name and address and please keep your comments to a 10-minute time limit anybody from the you're the only one Julie the agenda nothing on the agenda okay that we'll close the public portion John can we open it to any comments okay because we're going to go into Clos session we're going to open it to any comments so if you like to come up now cuz I said once you're done we're going to go to close Okay so thank you Happy New Year Happy New Year to you do you want my name and address please Julie ma 189 Main Street um so happy New Year I just came on a fun note um something I've been a little passionate about lately that I've been looking up um has anybody ever heard of the bike bus movement uh it's something that a um teacher in Oregon port Portland Oregon um created within his Elementary School of a uh bike bus uh movement to school so this teacher created this program where once a week no matter what the weather was they had a train and like a leader to bike these students from their town all the way to school uh and it grew so much that he kind of made a business out of it of exploring and showing other cities how to travel and how to build a community where it's safe to bike to school um so not recently Monclair New Jersey started it as well I've been following them on Instagram if you look them up they're bike bus Montclair um they started with a few kids and now they're up to like 300 kids biking to school once a week so I wanted to bring this up because I know it's winter now and we have our 21st century program where sometimes we have to create um meetings with the parents to kind of get input on things so I wanted to bring this up today to see if it's a possibility of maybe creating a meeting uh to gain interest in parents and students and seeing if this is a possibility for our town uh I know this would be a long process we have to implement and speak with our Police Department create routes um pick a day pick a location for bikes to be uh the great part about this if you look it up is they start with the younger schools like primary and Elementary School uh parents are involved kids are involved um everybody has a volunteer position in this so that everybody bikes to school safely uh they're required all to wear helmets so I think starting that young will bring our kids to you know see how cool it is to wear helmets and not think it's a drag to have to put that on to come to school uh in some cities that I've been looking at they even you know we've got our kids that like to do the electric scooter as well uh but that's the older generation like depending on how we implemented and start it um I don't know I thought it was something fun that we could think about it's a small town we're always talking about walkability and the traffic that we have with our uh cars in the morning and maybe building something like this once a week and making it grow and becoming part of our you know everyday morning coming to school would be something fun so I wanted to bring that up I've got a bunch of information on it as well and if you look it up there's lots of stuff in Montclair you know uh I don't know how large Montclair is compared to us but I know it's very hilly kind of like we are too so I feel like if they could do it this is something definitely that we could try or see what everybody's interest is in this so great I thought I'd bring that up uh I have more information if you want me to email it or try to schedule something and just see how um people in town would react to something like this I thought it was a really good idea to start getting our kids more active especially as the spring comes so if we start now maybe this is something that we can flow into you can certainly email information to me and then we'll follow up and see um what we can do okay thank you and then I've seen something along the lines of that not with bicycles but with older kids meeting up and and walking younger kids to school and like you said it turns into large groups of kids walking to school so maybe if the bicycle one doesn't work you know cuz if kids can't afford a Bic something maybe we can narrow it down to to walk room yeah so it's a good idea Dr will look into it if you email her the information and then I just had one small question regarding um our morning entrances I have three kids in three of our schools uh I did notice that all of our schools open up and give us 15 minutes from doors opening until school starts except for the primary school so in the beginning of the year it wasn't such a big problem cuz everybody kind of got there but as it's gotten colder I've noticed that more parents have been trying to do the drop off for the primary school and 10 minutes just isn't enough if you're not in the parking lot by the time that they open those doors uh you'll never be there in time because as We Know by 8:40 officer Joe has to go inside officer John has to go inside and then he's stuck going to the front of the door letting in like 50 kids that don't make it in the that 10minute slot so I was just wondering how come that's the only school that doesn't do the 15 minutes yeah it it really all has to do with how much um how much time there is between us having our contracted staff on duty and being able to open those doors but I do know now now in the Colder Weather all of our schools and I've asked the principles to do this now in the cold weather all of our schools as soon as students arrive they're bringing them in and um we are compensating staff for for being there to supervise the children outside of their contracted hour so that we're bringing kids in um and not leaving kids outside to wait uh in the cold so if you're arriving a little bit early your child will definitely be let in during the cold weather for sure yeah I just see it like not so much when the doors open but like just because there's only those 10 minutes before they close the back entrance cuz then he goes straight down into the front to then have to open the door in the front so I've noticed more because of the cold parents are now having to leave the parking lot park and then like I would say at least 50 kids every morning have to go through the front door but they wait cuz he has to go from the back you know just that 10 minute slot of the drop off the more cars that start doing that because of the cold the the less productive I guess because then he has to go inside and they have to you know I would definitely reach out to Dr liberman um and talk to her about it directly she knows where her staff is at what time and and um how she's using um and positioning the staff in order to be able to maximize that amount of time m um so I would definitely reach out to Dr lman and just definitely um see what the what's behind it and and if there's anything she can do okay all right well thank you that's all I have have a good night resolve that pursuant to section seven and eight of the open public meeting acts act the following subjects to be discussed at a session of the Board of Education close to the public attorney client privilege and personnel and personnel and give me the last line it is presently anticipated that the items to be discussed and closed session can be disclosed to the public when resolved motion motion second second all in favor I yeah all righty we're going to closed