Too many women. That is the big troop. Okay, we're going to get started. Can we start with the pledge of allegiance? I pledge algiance 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. Okay. Roll call, please. Mrs. Balado here. Mr. Esticard. Mr. Pico. Mr. Valardo here. Mr. Yagnum. Mrs. Herald here. Mrs. Shariffstein here.
Okay. This is to advise the general public and to instruct that it be recorded in the minutes that in compliance with chapter 231 of the public laws of 1975 entitled the open public meetings act the Stanh Hope Board of Education located at 24 Valley Road Stanh Hope New Jersey has caused this
notice to be posted at the office of the Stanh Hope Board of Education mailed to the New Jersey Herald the Municipal Clerk of the Bureau of Stanh Hope the Stanh Hope Post Office and posted at the Valley Road School and on the Stanh Hope public schools website setting forth the time, date and location of the meeting. The Stanh Hope School District in
partnership with the community commits to provide a quality comprehensive education for all learners with equal emphasis on academic excellence and citizenship through values, respect and service. Our vision is to inspire and cultivate a community of innovative, curious, compassionate, globally minded
learners equipped with knowledge knowledge, problem solving skills and the ability to persevere to make a positive impact on society and shape a better future. Uh this is to advise an executive session will be held for the purpose of student confidentiality. Formal action
may be taken and then uh we're just going to quickly switch the public hearing and the presentation so that we can have the Girl Scouts up first. They have a presentation for us. They have a presentation. So, this is your clicker that's going to move you through the slides. So, each
person can hit the next one as they go. You're going to talk into this microphone. You're not microphoned in the room, so you have to speak loud. Okay. The purpose of our meeting or good evening everybody and um we are meeting here to present to you all our proposal
to have a waste receptacle placed within the school grounds. We have been working on months we have been working for months on our girl scout bronze award and this presentation fulfills one of the requirements to earn it. During our presentation, we will talk about our
research and hopefully obtain your approval and support for our project. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask at any point during our presentation. We have 16 girls and have been together since kindergarten. We love helping our community and other
people. We participate in various activities including making cards for seniors and nursing homes, collecting food donations for the local food bank, collecting items for the local animal shelter, marching marching in parades, and participating in vendor fairs. We
have also helped our school community by donating backpacks with all the supplies and cleaning the courtyard. We are Girl Scouts because we like helping our community and hanging out with our friends. We like being silly and going on lots of adventures. We also like to hike and go camping and learn different skills. We have learned how to make
fire, set up tents, and cook outside. We are also CPR certified. Girl Scouts have three awards to earn during your lifetime. They include bronze, silver, and gold. Each award takes a very long time to earn with a lot of hours researching and figuring out ways in which we can
improve our community. For our bronze award, we have chosen a project that is going to leave a long lasting impact on our community. As we walked and hiked our town, we noticed that there was a lot of garbage and animal waste. Some animal waste was not bagged or the bagged or the bags were dropped along
the path. This led to our attention about the dangers of pollution and the impact of the waste that has on our health and our town's appearance. As a result, we are proposing an installation of animal waste receptacles throughout our town.
The purpose of us coming tonight's board of education meeting is to request permission to install a receptacle within the school property. There are many negative impacts on animal waste and garbage that is not disposed of properly of properly. The most obvious one is that littering
is not only illegal but is bad to look at. The town does not look pretty and well-kept if we have loose garbage all around. It also looks gross if you see dog waste around the streets. We have especially seen it on our hikes around the school and the path leading to the high school. People do not have any
container in which to dispose of it or they choose not to bag it because they have no supplies available. Unbagged dog poop poses significant dangers to human health, the environment, and even other animals. It can be harbor harmful
bacteria, parasites, and viruses that can cause illnesses in humans, contaminate water sources, and disrupt ecosystems. Dog poop can contain bacteria like E.coli and Salmonola, and parasites like roundorm, hookworms, and
tapeworms, which can cause various illnesses in humans. Dog poop can attract pests and fleas and ticks which can carry diseases and cause further health problems. So with all this information, what is our
solution? Our proposal to solve the ongoing problem with animal waste is to install a few receptacles in our town, including the one around our school. We are also providing education to the community members about the health risks
associated with dog waste and how poorly it impacts on how our community is viewed. We believe that the that people will care more about their environment and the cleanliness of our town once once waste receptacles are more easily
accessible. Residents should have accept access to dog waste bags and receptacles to keep their community clean during their dog walks. We search all over for the best solutions. We even looked at what other towns are doing and the simplest and
quickest way is to provide dog waste receptacles. There are a lot of companies that sell these and they will only require a digging of a small hole with concrete to hold it up. Some of our dads have been unknowingly volunteered for this task. We have two samples for you to
view which are on your table now. Once you've considered our proposal and allow us to install a receptacle, we will begin the installation process. We worked hard to raise funds to p purchase a receptacles that will be donated to our school. These are some ways that we raise funds.
Um, we raise funds by selling Girl Scout cookies and we actually make 85 cents per box that we sell. Um, we participate in community events like cleaning up the town. We do vendor fairs where we sell items that we've made by hand like bracelets, cookie of crayons, and
gingerbread houses. And because we want to install more than one receptacle, we will need to raise money from more funds. We want to ask local businesses to help fund our projects in exchange for advertising their business on the receptacles. We can also start a GoFundMe page for community members who
want to donate to our case to our calls. We are also asking the town council to determine if they have any available funds to help with purchasing receptacles that we want to set up around town. For the receptacles for Valley Road School, we are donating money to purchase it from the funds we
have raised on our town over the years. As we gathered information for our project, we also spoke to local residents to see if they viewed the waste if they viewed the waste as pro problematic. We are lucky enough to
speak to several residents who provided us with testimonials. They all shared with us that they wanted to increase the number of receptacles available so that so they wouldn't have to look at dog waste on the ground. We want to thank Miss Melly, Miss Frank, Miss Connley,
and Miss Bolanini for their help. We also met with Mayor Ronco to learn about our town and council members and how our local government can help us with our project. We sincerely hope that you have enjoyed
our presentation will support the installation of a receptacle within our school grounds. We thank we want to thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to answering any questions you may have.
questions. How many are you looking to install around the town? So, we're going to put one on the um for school. We're going to put one we're going to put one on the path to the condos because that's where
um we saw a lot of dogs. Yeah. 10 around town. And how much does each one cost? Um, so each one varies from $200 to $500 depending. Anybody else with questions?
Uh, first off, thank you. That was a wonderful presentation. Uh, who's responsible for removing the waste bags? jump in with that question. Our dads are their dads are not thrilled about that. But then to answer your question, Mr. We
have spoken to Mr. Ros right when we spoke to him and they are in the process of identifying sort of that meeting of how the town would help that building their garbage that's the wonderful
notion they would like to they want or something like that. So it's TV ideas more on the town um to budget. So this is a tiered plan to install this
over years. We probably will have a budget to do it here once. So they're hoping they build the next several years, but we're hoping to get started. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Sounds
like I need to get the Girl Scouts on my calendar to figure out how to install. Thank you, girls. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And and for our our scouts and for our parents, I know it was difficult for you to see and hear back there. Um, you can
access that whole presentation on our website because we're live streaming. Uh, so you'll be able to get a pretty good view um on our YouTube channel if you wanted to share that with any of your family and friends. So, thank you though so much for for coming and for sharing so much great
information. All right. So, next order of business is our uh budget presentation. Okay. Before you go, I I have to introduce uh so we we've been fortunate enough we uh our previous business administrator who was with us
um full-time uh took another position a little bit more than a year ago. Uh and we were very fortunate to identify Mr. Dan Borggo uh to serve as our interim business administrator. Um and and he's been here for a little bit more than a year. Um I've learned so much uh from
him um as I think most of our staff that has worked directly with him has. Uh, and it's uh it's it's an honor to have him present this budget tonight because it incorporates so many things that we have worked so hard to try to get into
our school and into our schedule. Uh, and I think you know the major impact is at the middle school level and I see a lot of our young ladies over here uh who if they're not already there will be entering that middle school very soon and I think you'll see a lot of direct impact there. So Dan, thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you. Turn on here for her support me finance committee. Wait, there you go. uh when we when we produce a budget uh
the main factor one of the contributing factors is number of students program offerings and what's happening throughout the state is is that the funding source is falling more and more on the local taxpayer than it is on the state of New Jersey than it is on some of uh the federal government of monies
coming in. So we try to do a analysis and projection of where we were where we are and where we really think we're going. And as you could see uh in our 2425 actual year, we've increased to our projected and that's uh to 30 preschool
students. We're very pleased to announce that we've partnered with a private provider to take uh 30 spots of preschool students, which uh the key component to the preschool program in education. It's it's free to the
taxpayers. So that is a great thing that this community offers and we're very proud to go from one class to two classes to now projected four classes. We're looking at 15 students in a classroom. So four times the 15 gets our
projection of uh 60 students. We could also see our private school placements and those are students. So you want to understand is that get placed in a private school of which we pay tuition for that we can't educate those students here. So we're going from one to two
justformationally a private school placement could cost anywhere between $85,000 to $150,000 per student. So we really do a great job of educating all those students inhouse and only those that we can't educate here we would send out. Uh
another key component is the students received that is students that are coming into our district of which we charge tuition to other districts to educate their child. Here you'll see a students receive 171 191 18 and you'll
see the decrease down to six and four. That's because the difference where was our preschool program that we used to have that was parent funded. So that moved up to our regular on roll and those students came out of our students received. This is comparing us to other
school districts and it's from the state of New Jersey website. So it's a constant uh a constant monitoring of school districts and this is just showing other K to8s with approximately 400 students of enrollment and where Stanh Hope falls with some of our
neighboring communities. Byum is at 21832 and that's per pupil cost which means the average that a school district spends to educate one student and you can see the different numbers they vary from 21,000 all the way up to
28,049 and you could stand hope is 22,891 and there may be a fallacy of the more you spend the better your education. You know what could that could be is a in a higher value is that you have a more
senior teaching staff. So the cost of your teachers is costing more than maybe a blend of teachers or more more inexperienced teachers at lower steps on the guide or your health plan cost if you're have an unhealthy cohort of teachers that drives up your plan. So
there is no correlation between unit cost and a better education or less less programs being offered in the school district. There's a lot of compelling factors that make this up and we fall right in the middle. And I looked, you
know, throughout our county and in Mars County and the number is, you know, between 22 and 26,000. So we're right in that in that cohort. Uh just to so everyone understands the budget process, it actually states
November to March we start that process. But myself, Cararissa, uh and Steve, we're already looking at 2627 on how we could plan to the future because in education, you have to stay a little bit ahead of where we think we're going, what's going to happen with state
funding, what's going to happen with federal funding, and we want to really be positioned in the future. So everything that we institute, we're not pulling back in a year from now due to budget cuts or uh less state aid or items that
we cannot control. As you could see, the process starts in November to March with our administration. We then pass it through the finance committee of the board of education. It moves on to Mr. Hagman at the March 19th. Gave a tenative budget presentation to the
board. We get that approved by the county superintendent in the state of New Jersey and we move forward to our public budget hearing which is this evening, April 25th, April 30th, I'm sorry. Uh with every budget, it's a really simple concept. It's similar to,
you know, a homeowner. What you bring in is what you could spend going out and you can't really create a negative. So our spending total spending plan is 9.9 million or about $10 million. And you could see the various sources of revenue
that we've generated. And wherever you see a withdrawal from a a reserve, those are dollars that we earmarked for future projects. So this is a planned withdrawal to help help us assist with a half million dollar door project to help
us assist with pulling up a underground storage tank that we have to help us assist with air conditioning in the school. So these are all planned items that you really can't fit in your 2 to 3% budget increase. So you have to create I'll call them buckets or
wheelbarls of money. One is called a capital reserve for capital projects. One is called a maintenance reserve for maintenance projects. Then we also have our state aid. We have our federal grants. We have miscellaneous income and rents. We have our tuition that we take
from other school districts. And then we have the interest that we receive on our money. We've also did a little something unique this year is we have debt service. Debt service is your mortgage that you paid on your long-term construction project that you approved three or four years ago. That's usually
funded dollar for dollar by the taxpayer. In an effort to expand our programs in our current expense budget, we said, "Why don't we fund out of our one of our wheelbarls the debt service so then we we can then add more money
into our current expense budget to provide a full-time specialed teacher to provide a full-time math teacher to increase our music and art teacher from 7 to 1.0 know to really run a full gamut of a middle school concept. So that when
you see capital reserve transfer to debt service, that's exactly what we're doing. So we're taking it from one component using our dollars, funding it, and then moving the dollars we saved, 180k, and moving it up to current expense. And then all we've done is
given a pie chart of all our different sources of revenue. And the more it's almost as if you have a household, the more streams of income you have, the better off you are. And you could see all the different streams of revenue we have all pie charted. And like many
other districts, the biggest component of funding a uh a school district is local tax levy. And that's 53 54% in our school district. And a public school is people driven. 75 to SE 78% of what we
spend salary and wages and benefits. So when you're really looking at this school budget, when you take out transportation, tuitions, maintenance, utility bills, you're talking about we have control of maybe 6 to 9% of the budget. Everything else there is
contractual or mandated by the state of New Jersey. And that's another key component to remember as you're saying, "Oh my goodness, why can't we do this or we do that?" Because once we roll, everything is so fixed, you're really limited in your growth. Our expenses, what we have on the left
hand side of our revenues is what we must have on our right hand side on our expenses. And all of these expense categories are derived from the state of New Jersey. This is not unique to Stanh Hope. Every school has a universal set of accounts. So what you see in Stanh
Hope, you'll also see at Lenipe Valley, you'll also see at Randolph, you'll also see at Cherry Hill. They are the standard accounts broken down into each category which we must do so that when the state goes to compare all of the uh school districts in New Jersey, they
have common cost centers that they can make all of their funding formulas and rating all of your school districts for your per pupil cost and all of your expenses. So you can see your regular program instruction which is salary of your teachers. That's a big piece of the
puzzle and that's 2.2 2 million. And then the other big piece is in column two, a little more than halfway down, is employee benefits at 1.46 million. So right there you have a big component of our annual school budget made up in
those two expense categories. Again, as we spoke of prior, you could see your salary and wages, your employee benefits. We have a a chart showing all the expenses in our district. And if you add in all the salaries from all the different areas,
all your benefits from all the different areas, you're going to creep up to close to 70% to 75%. One of the things I guess, you know, I must have done 50 budgets in my career. uh you know so it's this budget in in a smaller school district you can
make greater strides quicker and implement things much quicker because the bureaucracy of getting to where you need to go is much more difficult here we've had a plan since I've started here of Steve wanting to get that middle school concept with not.7s to 1.0's
knows where they rotate through. We know that it was a a board initiative moving forward. So, we were working on this probably for a year and a half to get this to where it needs to be. Uh we're continuing a shared service which is very unique in a lot of school districts
with our Billing Ground uh supervisor, with our speech therapist, and with our physical therapist. And even how creative you got with this position, you know, you're you're probably spending all in about 50% of what you would have paid a full-time person with health
benefits. And it really works. Uh Carissa is excellent of filling in the blanks on Tuesday and Thursday when I'm not here. The transition works well. Steve is great. You know, we're a phone call away from each other, a FaceTime. So, it's really, really working well.
Uh, another big uh, uh, highlight is our state aid increased 86,000 and I know people are upset because according to the formula it should have been much much more but with the 6% cap positive nor negative the most you could ra be
you know raise or or reduced would be that 6%. So you know we took one on the chin because our number would have been a little higher but we were able to in spite of that expand our programs. We've expanded our program in the preschool.
You could see it from a 153,000 to 831,000. And that is a dollar by dollar funding from the state of New Jersey that we pass through to provide this service at no cost to our taxpayer. And that and that's a great thing we're doing. As I stated before, we're
increasing our staff, one full-time math, one full-time special ed, increase in art and music from 70% to full-time with benefits. That bullet estimated is about a $270,000 bullet. So, to do
everything we had to do, we had to bring 270K of new monies into this budget to afford all of this. What does this mean to the taxpayer of the community? is that our increase in the 2425 school year was
3.42 and our increase in the 20 526 budget is 4.12 which equates to $134 increase per house assessed at $195,100 which is the average home in
the community. Uh, and I, you know, I a lot of districts are struggling to maintain what they have and it's throughout the county and I'm in a couple different counties and we were able to add program, add people with a
sustainable model in place to have it live on for the next year, the year after that, and the year after that, which is a real a really, really good thing. The dollars you should know is what the state refers to as
adjustments. That is money that the state allowed us to spend in prior budget years, but we opted not to do that. And you almost get to bank it. Not spend it, but it's held over here in a bank that if if you ever want to access
it, we can to expand your budget. So we have an enrollment adjustment of 367,000 and these are gross numbers. A healthc care adjustment of 68,000 with the adjust with the addition of our state aid increase of
86,000 it gave us some wiggle room to increase program. The thing that's nice about this is that in 2627, a year out from now, we still have a half a million dollars in bank cap
plus whatever that current budget 2627 when we go to produce that budget generates. So again, we have more spending capacity to either bank or utilize. Another key component is those other wheelbarls we were talking about.
Actual cash that we have in our capital reserve is a million dollars. Actual cash that we have in our maintenance reserve for 2627 is $261,000. So we have the latitude in the
future if I'll say something. We wanted to build a third gym. We could go into our capital reserve and say, "Here's money that we could utilize for that." And the difference between capital reserve and your maintenance reserve is
capital reserve is a fixed asset type of improvement. Something that we're not going to have to recur with that expense. A door project, we're going to buy the doors. They're going to be good for the next 25 years. A maintenance reserve is more maintenance of exhaust fans here that we're going to have to,
you know, update maybe quarterly or yearly or every three years. So that's the difference. So we've wheelbarrow that money or save that money for future years. We may not want to use it in 26 27. We may want to use it in 2728 3031,
but it's there as a trust fund wheelbarrow that we just put aside. Another good thing is New Jersey ARM is an instrument that public schools have to invest their money and it's insured up to 250 million. The interest rate as
we speak today, daily rate is 4.5 which is much higher than a bank. You're liquid in 24 hours and you don't have to buy a three-year CD. So, we've really been exercising that those dollars in that fund again to generate interest
that's compounding that's going to make that capital reserve next year a million50,000 because we're getting 5% on our money annually. So all of these items on this page, which is important to the sustainability of what we're doing, to how we got to where we are, to
how we were able to go over the 2% cap, are all based on the adjustments and the bank cap and the reserves that we've been saving up for over the over the two years that I've been here. And it started prior to me getting here. So all we're doing is really creating a long-term strategy to sustain it and
maintain it. Again, if we look at the impact on the taxpayer, it's a $1343 for the year. It's $11.20 for the month. And that's based on the average home, which is assessed
at 195,100. Again, not to hit the panic button, if I own the average home in Stanh Hope, the real estate value and the assessed value are two different things. homes may be assessed at 52% of
fair market value. So that is the assessed value that the town uses as a neutralizer to make sure that they tax every home the current value based on what they have. So your home may be worth 500,000 400,000 300,000 but the
average home as the town looks at it is 195,100 and for that home you're going to see uh $1120 increase per month. Uh again, you know, I'm I get excited to come here for the three days a week and the once a
year time I come because it's a good thing that we're doing, you know, and what we try to do is stretch the dollar and you know, our motto is, you know, usually this position is like the no person, you know, oh there's no money, there's no money and you know, uh tell
me the one reason why we can say yes, not the 20 to say no. And I think that's what makes us a little different here. And it's, as far as I'm concerned, and I travel all over the state, it's a hidden gem in Sussex County. And I think you have great leadership, great board of
education that has a foresight to let us go and run. And uh that's about it. And Steve, again, thank you. Carissa, thank you. The board, thank you. And thank you for listening, guys. Any way we could improve on what we do, just email me.
The presentation's up on our website. the user friendly budgets up on our website and if you have a question you'll get an immediate response because that's how we work here. So, thank you. Thank you. And hopefully you'll approve it and then we'll send it down to the state tomorrow. Anyone have any
questions? No questions from the board. Thank you, Dan. That was great. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. Right. That brings us to your long list of reports. It's a long list. I'm going to be as quick as I possibly can. I
promise. Uh so for uh HIV suspension, since our last meeting, we've had one day uh of inschool suspension for one student. We've conducted three HIV investigations, two of which uh were founded. Um my second item is a reminder for our board that the New Jersey School
Boards Association workshop for 2025 is taking place in October uh October 20th through 23rd. Um if you are planning to attend, if you can confirm with us, that would be greatly appreciated. Uh Cararissa went and booked rooms for each
of our board members um which can be cancelled, but it's obviously best to cancel them early if you are not planning to attend. Um so if you know already that you you cannot attend, you have a conflict, please let us know. If you know already that you are 100% going to attend, that is also helpful
information so that we can plan accordingly. I'll send an email if that makes it easier. Okay. Um we uh we did submit a proposal to present uh again this year at school boards. Um we presented two years ago on our um
self-contained programs on how to improve special education while also generating revenue for the district and it was very wellreceived. Um my proposal for this presentation is based on effective communication to the public uh
through the board of education and uh it stems really on the broadcast that uh we've instrumentally improved I think over the last year and a half. Um if approved uh Mrs. Shariffstein and Mr. Lama um will
hopefully uh join me in presenting this information. I'm pretty excited about it. Um we uh received the 232 24 school performance report uh which is a collection of data that tells us um whether or not we've met specific
targets in terms of chronic absenteeism uh student achievement and student growth. Um it's like a 60page document. I I will be sending a letter out to families this week uh showing and explaining how they can access the document. Um but we did extremely well.
Uh some of the highlights that I I want to point out is that we met or exceeded all growth standards. Uh we met um our 23 and 24 performance targets for math and language arts. We met all participation targets for the NJSLA and
we met all of our chronic absenteeism targets. So um in this document it's blue and red and we have all blue. Um, none of the none of the red none of the indicators of not meeting targets uh were for the 232 24 school year. Uh, so
that's really good stuff and I'm excited to share that out. Uh, wanted to briefly congratulate again our spelling bee winners. The spelling bee took place on April 2nd. Uh, in our third and fourth uh, grade division, we had Logan Penza as our spelling bee champion. Our fifth
and sixth grade division was Malia Fernandez. And our seventh and eighth grade division was Jacob Campbell. Congratulations to all of the students who have participated in this year's annual spelling bee. It was a lot of fun. One of the events I always look forward to uh to hosting.
Um the next item I have is that our Treps marketplace took place on March 26th. Um wanted to thank Miss Eder, Miss Capola, Mrs. Dataldo, and all of our seventh grade entrepreneurs um for all of the efforts that they put into making that a success. Thank you to all our
students who uh perused and purchased items. I hope you had a lot of fun and to the parents that supported our students through this event. Um it's uh we've been doing it now for I I want to say eight or nine years. It's always something that we look forward to doing. Uh wanted to thank the HSA for uh
conducting the spring carnival and bookf fair. uh a lot of fun that that was had. But most importantly, um you know, I I want to thank the HSA for continuing to provide opportunities for our students to get together, uh enjoy time in the
school, um grow socially, um because we all know that that's just as important as the academics. Uh so, thank you to them for hosting that. I know it was a lot of work and I hope that they were able to raise some funds uh for some of the great programs that they do. Um the
on April 11th uh we had the superintendent roundt award winner lunchon uh that was held at Perona Farms. Um although we've uh already had him here to congratulate him, I wanted to again congratulate Aiden Bruner, our eighth grade award recipient. Uh he was
able to come um with mom and stepdad and it was a really nice lunchon that um recognizes the top student in every district throughout the county. Uh, and what's even more special about, you know, that actual opportunity is I think we're the only county in the state that
still does this. Um, you know, and a lot of work goes into it and it's welld deserved because these kids are outstanding. Um, we had Lenipe Valley's band visit on April 14th. Um, hopefully girls, you you enjoyed that when the band came out. They come to each of the
sending districts almost as as a recruiting tour. Uh, but it's also a lot of fun. They show the kids. some of the things that they do up at the high school and they tried to to push the kids into the direction of music. Uh and uh we have a pretty good showing uh here
from Stanh Hope in that that band. Uh and it was really exciting to see the kids come back and perform for our students. Kindergarten screening took place on Monday and today. Um thanks to everybody who participated there, our teachers, our related service professionals, uh Mrs. Milan. Um, at
this event, we invite our incoming kindergarteners to come in to meet our staff so that we can get a good feel for what their readiness is, if there's any any areas where they might need some special attention as they come in, uh, so that we're not learning all of these things as they come in in September. Uh,
it helps us be more prepared, put together a comprehensive class list. So, thanks for all the staff and the parents who were able to bring the kids. Our numbers are are are quite large. Uh I think this time uh last year I think we were had like I don't know like 16 kids
enrolled. Uh we're in the mid to upper 20s already and we always expect at least a handful of kids uh to register from now through um the beginning of September. Uh so we're excited for these uh welcome these kids into the school. Um on May 6th at 7 p.m. we will have a
preschool parent information night. Um this this will be for the parents of the students uh who were accepted into our program, the free preschool program. Uh we'll have two classrooms here for general education students and special
education students. And we are partnering with First Impressions Preschool uh down at the the Lynen Avenue uh location where they'll also have two classes. Uh there'll be room for up to 30 students at the uh old Lynen Avenue School at First Impressions
and we'll have uh room for about 16 to 18 general education students here in our program. Uh so we'll provide information there for parents. We're very excited. I think that we're up to about 50 preschoolers uh that are registered. Um to put things into
perspective, last year we had 13. So we went from 13 to 50 in two years. at no expense to to the taxpayer. Um, and then, uh, the last item that I have is just a real quick summary of eighth grade events. Our eighth grade shadow
day is on Friday, uh, May 27th. Our Washington DC trip is held from May 28th through the 30th. Dinner dance is on June 4th, and the gradu graduation ceremony will take place on Friday the
13th, which will also be our last day of school. Um, that's it for my report unless anybody has any questions. No question. 27th on a Friday. It's Tuesday. Tuesday. That's not a Friday. It It is Tuesday. The date's right. The day is wrong.
I'll make sure it's reflected on It's okay. That's a Tuesday. Okay. All right. Moving on. Mr. Valardo. Yeah. I was unable to attend the committee meeting. So, if someone could fill in for me, that would be great.
Carmen and you. Yes. Yes. Okay. Um Okay. If I just run through for committee meeting. Yes. For personnel. Um most of which uh most of the items on the personnel committee are reflected in the agenda. Um we started discussing appointments for uh the
2526 school year. Uh which we'll have a um the board will be making um approvals for next month actually in two weeks. Uh we had to approve um some instructional homebound hours for our physical therapist and also to conduct evaluations outside of her contractual
time. Uh we discussed extended school year appointments which again is reflected in our agenda and summer custodians. Um the one item again that uh I'm requesting that the board approve on our agenda is uh to approve the
ability for me to hire staff prior to the next board meeting. Um this is a really busy time in terms of interviews um and and hiring. Uh we have secretarial positions. Um we have par profofessional positions, we have teaching positions that we're looking to
get hired. And to not have a candidate wait until the next board meeting gives us an advantage in that it allows them to start earlier and it also allows us to offer employment before another district can possibly come in and take that candidate away from us. So I always
appreciate you uh taking a look at that. Um other than that everything else is really reflected in the uh in the agenda. Thank you. Uh business services M. Sure. A few things were discussed. First thing was the the budget which we already went over. Uh there's going to
be motion to increase or decrease the LDTC. Correct. Um there's few contract contract approvals we're going to uh will be up for the pest control and compliance uh electrical contract and the occupational therapy company JB
along with uh Alphabest uh extending extended till next year. Um the door project is moving forward and the music room renovation is also doing quite well. Great. Those var right happened
over spring break. Um, anybody who's interested in taking a walk after, you're welcome to go down. Um, still need a little bit more storage in there to make it look pristine. Um, but there was an addition of a um, and how how would I explain this? A separate room
within the music room so that students can practice individually that's soundproof so that Mr. Bear can also do larger group instru instruction um, at the same time. So, it's it's very nicely uh, it was very nicely done. Any questions? Moving on. Policy. It was
a really light policy month. There was just one that we're going to do the first and second reading of tonight. Policy 5710, student grievances. There really wasn't much of a change between the policy that already existed and the policy that if you had a chance to look
at it or look at it before you vote tonight, it just really outlined the steps more. So in the old policy it said okay you could do A B C D and E. This one broke it down a little more with this is the first step for A. If if you don't get the result you're looking for
these are the next steps. So it just gave a little more clarity but nothing substantive changed in the policy itself. Any questions? All right. Moving on. Ed services. Um so most of the discussion at the meeting settle um centered around
the fact that the building next door is for sale. It is an educational facility of about 16,000 square feet. Um the current facility is at maximum capacity. They are um looking to potentially
acquire the building. Uh they do have enough funds currently to actually acquire the building. However, that would pretty much deplete their their funds. So, they're in the process of exploring in the coming months um alternative um means of funding the
acquisition. Any questions? All right. And just very quickly, I only have two items on my board president's report. The first is um our grant is still sitting with the state awaiting hopefully approval for the regionalization studies. Um they did tell us it would be two to four weeks.
We're past that timeline, but it's with the state. So I don't when we know we'll know. And then the second thing Steve reminded me when I got here today uh the CSA evaluation period is upon us now. So we have the next two meetings to get that completed. He is going to put in
his information uh over the course of the next week. Once that's done, you'll get an email indicating that we can all go in and do our portion. For the newer board members, again, you are you don't have to participate in the process if you're not comfortable. But what that does mean is for those of us that have been here for a while, we need enough to
have a full quorum. Otherwise, we have to go through a doctrine of necessity and it's a lot of paperwork. So, everybody else, if you could please participate if the two new board members don't feel comfortable doing so. Okay. Thank you. Uh, that is it for me. And that brings us to public session
number one, agenda items. Is there anybody from the public who'd like to come up and speak? No. All right. Seeing none, we will uh then have a motion, please, to move to executive session. Motion. Second, please. Second. Okay. Be it
resolved that the Stanh Hope Board of Education adopts the following resolution. Whereas the Open Public Meetings Act, Chapter 231 of 1975 permits the exclusion of the public from a meeting in certain circumstances. And whereas the Stanh Hope Board of Education is of the opinion that such circumstances presently exist. Now
therefore, be it resolved by the Stanh Hope Board of Education, County of Sussex, and the State of New Jersey, that a closed session of this board of education, where the public shall be excluded, will be held at this time for the purpose of a student confidentiality. Be it further resolved that the action of the board with regard to the above entitled matter shall be
disclosed to the public at a later date and to the extent that the same is not prejuditial to the interests of the parties involved and would not result in a possible invasion of their right to privacy. All in favor? I. I. Any nos? abstensions. Okay, let's move into
executive Second. Thank you. Voice vote. All in favor? I. No. Abstensions. All right. Uh, that moves us on to travel and workshop reports. There were five. Any questions on those? We just did. Yeah, that's fine. Let's
move out for a minute. Nope. We're good. Okay. Uh, minutes for approval, agenda items. Can I have a motion, please? Motion. Can I have a second? Thank you. Uh March 19th regular and executive session meetings. This is a voice vote. All in favor? I. Any I wasn't. And same
with me. I was not here either. Two extensions. Right. Yes. We're good. Yes. All right. That moves us to the budget adoption. Can I have a motion, please? So move. Second, please. Second. Okay.
This is a long one. It's a lot of pages. It's a lot of pages. It's everything we went through in our presentation. I can give everybody a minute if you want to just review it there in writing. Yeah, feel free to ask questions if you if you have them. I was just curious and
I didn't think about it while Dan was here. I would have asked him when he put up the chart with what it costs to educate per student in the districts that were higher. I just were curious. Is transportation factored in for that? It is. It's the full budget divided by the number of kids. It's a very simple
formula. There's not much that's excluded from it. There's a few things, I think, but um yeah, that was my question. Yep. Any other questions? No. Okay. Roll call vote, please. Mrs. Bonalado, yes.
Mr. Eftart, Mr. Pico, yes. Mr. Valardo, yes. Mrs. Herald, yes. Mrs. Sharpstein, yes. Motions carry. Thank you. Administrative action items. Can I motion, please? So moved. Second, please. Thank you. All right. We have
items one through two. Is that it? One and two. Okay. A long one. Yeah. Okay. Questions or discussions? Just want to say I am super excited that after 10 years, 10 years, not a year and
a half, 10 years, 10 years of trying to bring the art and music and all of that back to full-time that we are here. It is great and with minimal financial impact to the community. So, it's fabulous. Thank you for your hard work.
Um, if you don't mind, just real quick, just transparently giving full disclosure for F and G. Uh the reduction in F is not uh out of a desire to not continue the shared service. Um the charter school in which we sh current currently share that position is not
caught up with payments uh all the way back from last year. Uh so I can't in good conscious continue a partnership with uh a district that hasn't paid us regularly. That said, they have had a significant change in their administrative structure. uh we have
begun to receive payments. Um if we are paid in full or at least close to paid in full by the summertime or by the start of the next school year, I would certainly entertain engaging into that shared contract again, shared service contract again. Um other than the fact
that we haven't been paid, everything else has been great. um you know so they're confident that we'll get paid up and if that is the case then you may see you know a future motion uh in the summertime re-engaging into that shared service um for G the reduction of of the
world language teacher is strictly based on this the master schedule change right we're adding music we're adding art we're adding STEM we're adding math that time has to come from somewhere and part of that is our middle school students are currently uh um engaged in world
language three days per week using the Rosetta Stone platform. Next year they'll have world language twice per week instead of three. So there's the reason for the reduction, but they'll have art, music or STEM four days a week
instead of two. Um so again, and they'll have two blocks of of math at the middle school instead of one. What kind of feedback have we gotten from the kids or staff with regard to switching to Rosetta Stone? Uh, so we did a pretty comprehensive survey at the
midpoint of the year. Um, it was mixed as we expected it to. You know, engagement is low. I mean, when you're engaging with a computer instead of with a person, we would expect the engagement to be low. Um, you know, I a good number
of kids have said that they are learning. um a good number of kids are really progressing through it. But as we kind of expected, it's it's it's really driven by the student motivation. Motivated students are are doing really
well. Unmated unmotivated students are not. Uh currently we have a pass fail um for the course. I honestly anticipate continuing with a pass fail next year. Um although I will be the first to tell you that I prefer u a human being in
front of the classroom providing instruction there are reasons that we moved in this direction and there's also benefits right we needed to to more greatly support our English language learners and using Miss Connelly in that
capacity instead of at the middle school capacity has really supported those students across our school. Um, and the Rosetta Storm also allows our students to choose from different languages rather than just being, you know, stuck to to learning the uh Spanish language.
Um, you know, students can switch from year to year. You know, if somebody's learning Spanish in sixth this year, they can do French next year and then German um their eighth grade year. If a student is really dead set on learning German, they could do German in sixth, seventh, eighth, and who knows, maybe
enter test into German two or German three when they go up to the high school. Um, so there's possibilities there, but I'm not going to sit here and tell you that it's it's perfect. It's it's not. Thank you. Can I have a roll call vote, please?
Sure. Mrs. Batalado, yes. Mr. After Mr. Pico, yes. Mr. Ballardo, yes. Mrs. Herald, yes. Mrs. Sharpstein. Yes. Motions carry. Policy action items. Can I have a motion, please? So move. Second. Second. One item. Student
grievance policy. Any questions? All right. We'll move right to roll call vote on this one. Mrs. Bonalado. Yes. Mr. Eter. Mr. Pico. Yes. Mr. Vardo. Yes. M. Mrs. Herald? Yes. Mrs. Sharpstein? Yes. Motion's carry. Thank you. Education action items one and two.
Motion, please. Motion. Second. Thank you. Any discussion? Okay, hearing none. Roll call vote, please. Mrs. Balado, yes. Mr. Ear, Mr. Pico, yes. Mr. Ballardo, yes. Mrs.
Harold, yes. Mrs. Shariffstein, yes. M. Motion's carry. Thank you. Personnel action items 1 through 13, addendum item 14. Can I have a motion, please? Motion. Second, please. Thank you. anything.
We talked about most of these during the committee report. A lot of discussion over the course of the year about uh Mrs. Yonai's retirement, looking for her replacement. We did a pretty a fairly comprehensive
search. Um it was probably one of the the the closest uh position searches I've ever been involved in. I had four very very qualified candidates, three of which I brought back for a second interview. Um, and I'm I'm really excited uh to recommend the appointment
of of Nancy Lashure uh who's a Stanh Hope resident and um you know I I think is really excited about the opportunity to to work here in the district and I'm excited for the the chance to get to work with her. So she's in audience. What's that? She's right here in our
audience. Oh, she's here. How are you? Any other discussion or questions? All right, hearing none. Roll call vote, please. Mrs. Bavado, yes. Mr. Eterard, yes. Mr. Pico, yes. M Mr. Vado, yes.
Mrs. Herald, yes. But abstain on nine. And Mrs. Sharstein? Yes. Thank you. Okay. Business services items 1 through 18, addendum item 19. Can I have a motion, please? So moved. Second, please. Second. Thank
you. Those are all the contracts Mr. spoke about. Any other is the ASUS program for our guest. Okay. Yes, we have it. We're in there for electric. This will be for the gas now that we're on. Now that we have gas.
Excellent. Any other questions, discussion? Hearing none. Roll call vote, please. Mrs. Balado? Yes. Mr. Eter. Mr. Pico? Yes. Mr. Bolardo? Yes. Mrs. Herald? Yes. Mrs. Sharpstein? Yes. Motion. All right. That brings us to new
business. Any new business before the board? Done. All right. Just very quickly, I'll mention we have our um Sussex County uh school boards association meeting on Tuesday, May 6 at the Newton Country Club uh where this is the fun one of the
year where everybody gets honored uh teacher of the year as well as board members with extensive years of service and there's one board member is being honored for 50 years of service at the meetings this year. So I can't even imagine that but 50 years uh and several at like 35 and 30 and uh a bunch of
folks at 10 and 15 years as well as anybody who's earned designations or certifications. Uh so two people on this board will be honored at that for that as well. So if you would like to come please do so. Should be noted that Mr. Shariffson's being honored for 15 years. 10. Is it 10? It's 10.
15 yet 10. Miss Balado has a new uh new board member. So yeah. All right. Congratulations. Any old business? Okay, hearing none. Public session number two. Anybody left would like to speak?
All right. Hearing none. That moves us to uh adjournment. Can I have a motion? Motion. Second. Voice vote. All in favor? I. No extensions. All right, we're clear.