i got you Mr official um calling to order the April 16th public meeting of the Vernon Township Board of Ed uh Mr slim can we get a roll call miss Brock I know you Mr to order the April 16th public hearing
of the verdict mr smagalia here Mr canino here Mr fischer here Mr cross Miss Pallet here Mr sweeney here Miss Ferella here Mr zimmerman here we have a quorum
it is recommended Oops sorry if the board enter close session for the purposes of discussing legal personnel and student matters can I get a motion so move second stephanie all in favor i we closed
It is recommended that the board return to open session can I get a motion so moved second second all in favor i excellent um can we get a roll call mr slim
Miss Brock Mr sebacia here mr cantino here mr fischer here mr cross Krauss Miss Pallet here Mr sweeney here Miss
Varela Mr zimmerman here Miss Gianella here we have a quorum m it please rise and join me in the pledgece 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 item G reading of the public notice mr slam the New Jersey open public's meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to
attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interests is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of the act Bernie Township Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting to be published in adequate notice has been provided and notice this meeting has been properly posted in accordance with the New Jersey open public meeting law
uh just a couple quick notes uh our next work work session meeting is May 1st 2025 that'll also be our public uh hearing for the budget and then our next public session will be May 22nd 2025
thank you Mr slam item H approval of the minutes uh did everyone have a chance to uh I know we had some changes to the minutes i think we've confirmed that those were made to your satisfaction um all right so can I get a motion
to approve the minutes some moved second Stephanie um any questions or comments we already said that already um can I get a roll call mr canino yes mr fischer yes
Miss Pelllet yes Mr sweeney yes abstain on items three and four as I was absently notated miss Aarella yes mr zimmerman yes abstain from item one and two as it was
mr smagalia yes motion carries thank you item I president's report um in case anyone missed last week's meeting the big headline there was the announcement that our superintendent Mr rogers will be retiring as of August 1 um I spoke last week to thank Mr rogers
for his contributions to the district and all he's done for the community during his tenure he will be greatly missed and we wish him well in his future endeavors um later tonight we will hear from the district's NJSBA field representative Kelly Mitchell who will be giving a presentation on the
superintendent search process um I've received a few calls from community members who are interested in helping with the search we very much want input from the community and Kelly will be talking about input sessions that she's holding where staff parents and community members can share their perspectives in the meantime we also
have a survey available on the website um it's right on the homepage we're already getting quite a few responses so I'm really happy about that but I encourage anyone who hasn't already filled it out to please go and fill it out um last week's meeting also included a presentation on the district's energy
savings plan which I mentioned because we will be voting on it tonight if anyone watching missed that presentation it is available through the YouTube channel and we will be posting it on the website as well um and then tonight we will also be hearing from representatives of our architecture firm
about the district-wide facilities assessment that they conducted to assess our infrastructure needs uh that's coming up next and as with many issues worked on at the committee level those of us on finance already had the opportunity to hear that presentation and ask questions but I wanted the full board to see it and have that
opportunity as well as the public uh so we have a pretty full agenda so I'll stop there so we can move to the presentation um so item J Pete Campasano you are up pete is from USA Architects hit the
hit the lights let me just I'm gonna move this just to you you can you can leave one till we get going we're good and uh put this down
here okay talking about this tonight uh good evening everyone i'm Pete Campazano with me is uh Mark um from uh we're from USA Architects and uh we're here tonight can you hear me all right is this okay good
all right uh we're here tonight to talk about uh your feasibility and uh study that we put together over the last several months so what I I'd like to do is give you a brief history on uh the
statemandated long range facility plan and feasibility studies um the process that we went through so that everyone understands the the process that we did um the report itself the body of the
report what's in the report um so you can understand that and then um at the end uh we've got several uh slides uh pictures of various uh components of your school buildings that we can show
and and talk about so the feasibility report that you asked us to do what I ask or what I recommend is that you use this you know if if there's any coaches in the in the audience um
it's a playbook it's a living document it's your plan of action it's something that I hope you would refer back to um when you start to discuss your facilities this puts all the information and we could add to it and as things are
completed we could cross those off the list but we could use it as a living document so that you can plan and be proactive in addressing your facility needs as opposed to gee the boiler went
down we got to fix this we got to do that what do we do where are we getting the money from it's it's a much more uh methodical way certainly um to do it and um we applaud you for doing it and uh so
so the the the long range facility plan so um the state of New Jersey mandates that every 5 years on the zeroyear and the five-year all school districts all 660 school districts in the state file a
long range facility plan and back in the late 80s when I started um doing these um they were similar to the reports that you have before you in 2000 everything went online and everything was data
driven and it got away from the photographs it got away from the actual plans and the documentation of of facilities and I I think to a detriment but um since 2000 they've been on on a website um and that plan in and of
itself has been used less and less by school districts they really don't use it much yes they comply with it every 5 years and you're going to comply with it when we submit their document requests but other districts like yours you know they turn to these types of facility
reports so that you have an accounting of all your buildings the age of the building the units the mechanical systems the windows the roofs and and everything about it um and what's the condition what's the life expenses are are certain things ending or nearing the end of their life so that again you
could you could plan for it so that is essentially the history of of long range facility plans but with your specific plan and the way we did it the process uh when we first instituted this several months ago we
met with the administration we met with your facilities director Joe Vancerk uh and we took existing floor plans uh blueprints old prints and gathered those documents and then you know using uh
computer AED design came up with new floor plans that that we could news we then sent those plans to all of your principles we introduced ourselves we wanted to partner with all your principles um they were integral in the
development of this um and they were tasked initially to give us back those blank plans with all the room numbers and the room name so now we have an upto-date and current uh floor plan um we then met with the administration and
just got at a 10,000 foot level a sense of your district you know when we meet sometimes with districts they're overcrowding they're a thousand seats short uh other districts have buildings from the 20s that are falling apart other districts like yours you're kind
of at a crossroads the the facilities are 40 50 years old and uh they've been maintained and some things may not have been maintained as well and you're kind of at a crossroads on how to uh address those items that are nearing the end of
your life and and quite fortunately um early on we found that um at least we believe and uh you probably agree uh you're not facing any capacity issues uh here but we we did notice from the plan
that special education as it is rising and there's more uh IEPs individual education plans that's sort of pushing into all of your schools um where additional rooms are needed or six
occupants and a teacher as opposed to 20 or 18 for a full class so that's something that we can talk about um later on when we get into the education side of of the report so after we got everything back from the the principles
we met I interviewed all of your principles um we talked specifically to to a lesser degree education uh and curriculum but more so the bricks and mortar they brought in their facilities directors and uh we had a great great
meeting we then toured all of your buildings and they showed us uh some of the issues that they felt uh were important to the school so we identified them and uh they were instrumental in leading us in uh at least the initial
direction we then came back gathered our own data we brought in mechanical electrical plumbing engineers uh some structural engineers just as an independent look we've gathered more data and then we've developed uh the
report um that you you have and that report the way it's developed when when you open up the the report you have the introduction similar to what I just told you tonight the facility overview what we did the codes all the codes are
listed that we we followed there's an executive summary basically a paragraph or two about each school uh essentially the age size uh some of the components from a again a very general level that uh we've determined are or could be a
priority or a need to be uh certainly considered and then the next section is is is I think fairly important where again going back to what I said about a playbook we list I don't want to say mine or our recommendations
because this is Not your architect dictating to you this needs to get done this year and it costs X no what we're trying to do is tell you in a sense as a building as a facility what you should consider because this is you that are
considering this what you consider to be a higher priority versus a lower priority item and what we mean by that I believe you know one of the the highest priorities maybe one two and three 1 A B and C but the building
envelope you know what am I saying the building envelope it's the roofs the walls the windows the exterior doors because if you can't keep the weather out you don't have a school um and you know that could be one and we've listed it as one similarly important certainly is
life safety you know how do you do one over the other and that includes the fire alarm the public address emergency lighting you know and and to a degree the the the building generators which each of your facility uh each of your facilities has um then you know
accessibility the Americans with Disabilities Act and that is toilet rooms the elevators in some of your multi-story facilities um classrooms lock sets locking and that then
dovetales into security hardware and and and security um that leads again then to interior and exterior doors as it relates to security um certainly then site improvements the walks the entries
the site circulation auto drop off pickup we've we've witnessed all of those and there's for the most part we're okay but you know there are um requests for for improvements and you can certainly improve some uh and then to a lesser
degree finishes which is flooring ceilings um and yearly maybe maintenance or yearly replacements as things get older and wear finally any case work builtup mill work uh furnishings that
are constantly in need of replacement storage needs and then at the end of the section there's an asterk that says educational needs we mention educational needs as an asterk because you can't really put it in priority order it should be a separate item it should be you with the
curriculum committee or your board saying educationally we need this at this school and it's separate really from the brickandmortar uh approach you're also going to see some projects or items that are still
highlighted in yellow and the reason why they're highlighted in yellow is basically we're seeking additional direction from you we mentioned a few things and there's multiple options that we could further explore on this so it's
basically highlighted in yellow and we say you know what we'll work with the administration uh the business administrator facilities director on how to present additional information to you but that's why they're they're highlighted um following that in the general sense
we then taking that information um put it to your district so if if the building envelope was one and life safety was two and these are these are the priorities well then where do we stand so what what we found the most concerning
um were your your roofs um some are still under warranty and I want to talk about that for a second some are out of warranty um some have multiple layers of roofing um more
than is allowed for by uh the international the IBC New Jersey state code uh but that would be probably your most pressing item we could look at it with with some pictures that we'll show you later on um as we show you um the
schools um next would be fire alarms uh we're we're pleased to see that the fire alarm is being replaced at the high school that's good but there are um uh let's say fire alarms that are
nearing the end of their life everything has a life expectancy everything has a life cycle and when you get to 30 40 years it's it it starts to become problematic you start to get more troubles um the wires in some instances
are degraded uh the devices uh just simply stop working they go into trouble uh certainly it is no longer up to today's code um but that's not overly alarming it works it will get the the
kids out of the building i don't want to scare anybody about that but then when you do uh additions or renovations or upgrades you need to address it and it becomes problematic so fire alarms is very certainly key um similarly the
public address um is also a high priority item emergency lighting similar um it's old um it needs to be improved some of it needs to be updated uh to today's codes um some of it although it's tied
to the generator um does not meet today's codes where it needs to be separated from the generator where um while the lights are on the generator good uh so is the refrigerator the freezer and everything else in its
same priority order the emergency light should be put in front of that there should be a separate transfer switcher that is automatically comes on first before anything else maybe minor things but certainly um something that we've we've identified you also have and we'll
look at it again um some building HVAC units around the district we got it provides air conditioning the classroom was great um but it is a concern with how the condensate that water that develops during the cooling
process right condensation the condensate drips on the wall and it's damaging your brick work on the outside um there's many ways that we can look to fix that many different options that may very well be one of the items that I was saying that might be
highlighted in yellow because there's there's like I said a lot of different ways that we could we could take care of that another concern that we we saw was keen your cane system so what am I talking about every couple of years every time there's
an addition every time there's renovations the grandmaster or the pyramid of your keen system gets degraded you know you have one grandmaster two or three sub grand masters and so on so that the lower
level people only have certain access and and on up to the superintendent you know who has the the grandmaster over the years as people left and didn't bring their keys in additional copies were made you know things get changed it
is now difficult and you and one of the the ways I would describe this is you see custodians with 75k rings on on their on their belts because one deals with a whole host of things a keen upgrade would certainly benefit the
district it's added security um it would address all of the out keys all the keys that have been lost or never brought back and it would just add security it was something that your facilities director and I had a long conversation about and it's something that we would
really look to promote it's not um I don't say overly expensive because you're not replacing the entire piece of hardware you're just replacing the core key you're taking that out and and replacing it um
also we've looked at a few elevators actually including this school elevator to our south uh is intermittent doesn't work and and certainly should be um replaced and the same at Vernon Township
High School uh the elevator next to the auditorium um further down the list your accessibility um with all of your toilet rooms while they don't meet or for the most part don't meet you've tried to meet where
you could uh the accessibility standards of the ADA um they're 40 and 50 year old toilets toilet rooms you know gang toilet rooms that that are tired that need sanitary upgrades that you know the the the tiles
no longer get clean uh some of the fixtures have been broken down it's problematic um a select updating of that for sanitary and health reasons would certainly um be a priority
item also you'll see a lot of HVAC heating ventilating air conditioning fresh air ever since 2019 fresh air has become very important and the air cycles and air changes in districts is
certainly important and we've listed a lot of of units that are nearing the end of their life that should be replaced um in in all of your schools and then selectively uh a lot of envelope issues with with
windows as as well um after those sections where we say you know generally these are priorities and specifically these are some of your priorities that's going to be to you to talk about to debate to decide and
that's in competition with other things right your budget how you face those but at least you now have the information that you can make informed policy decisions on how to approach this and then following all of those uh initial
overviews all six of your schools have its own section so the first part is just a general description uh the grades how big it is when it was built how many additions and we had a fun time trying to figure out um all of the multiple additions over the years and then we
went into observations starting with the exterior the building envelope we looked at bus pickup drop off problems with that parking um and then moving to the interior any structural foundation issues floors ceilings walls all of
these have sections in in every school uh the doors the hardware um following that we went into all the spaces classrooms uh sizes of the classrooms the components of the classrooms your core facilities the gym uh library
auditorium cafeteria kitchen talk to your kitchen personnel uh looked at equipment because eventually that also would uh need a cycle of of replacement the main office the nurses office any of the faculty support rooms uh the toilet
rooms once again um art rooms music rooms and and the like that's all followed up so that's really like the architecture side then there's a whole second section of that school facility with mechanical electrical and plumbing um
observations finally down to suggestions on magnitudes of replacement or improvement i don't want to say it's an estimate because it's more of a magnitude is it a $10,000 item is it a $100,000 item is it
a million dollar item it gives you a magnitude from which to work at so that when it does become or is projected to become a project additional study and additional investigation can go into it we weren't going to do detailed cost
estimates of the thousands of items we have listed uh it would have taken another year to do and it would have cost money that just doesn't mean anything now you have magnitudes um and they're based on prior projects and basically square foot cost so for
example roofing now you know from last summer to the fall what was the average price of roofing replacements okay that times the square foot of the roofs gives us a budget number at about 15% for any
unforeseen conditions any uh uh legal bonding or other uh cost contingencies and we come up with a general magnitude on uh cost that's all tied together and that's times six of the the the schools
so basically introductions general overviews components of priorities your priorities which we can talk about uh that we could talk about tonight um each individual school facility everything um
you know the tile floor um you know the ceilings the exterior doors the windows the heating uh the ventilation the fire alarm and everything about it um in each of your six
facilities so I'm going to take a second break is there any questions on that i mean we covered just a lot there i hope we got half of it but you know if you could take one thing away like I said um I hope you use the books and you write
all over them and you post it and you talk about it and you go back and use it as a reference as you plan the bricks and mortar side of of your future your future budgets so Madam President if there's no
questions let me show you a couple pictures so we can now baby dim the lights or if if that's good with everybody all right so what we have uh all six schools we'll start with Vernon Township High School so with Vernon
Township High School all of these are you know the site uh we've got pictures of the site the exterior the roofs the interior the plans let's start Mark with the exterior and uh we'll talk about you know a building envelope from front of the
building well go back for a second i'm going to I'm going to just so you know one comment that we have and it's just a commentary um it it could be a very low priority item it could be something that we do eight years from now but a canopy at the main entrance a large
canopy at the main entrance could serve a great purpose children waiting as buses are delivered they're underneath or as parents are waiting they're sheltered from the elements it's just a commentary that we've added in terms of basically all all your schools that you
know it's included in the report all right all right some of the you know the Corbin keep going so can we Okay so this is this is some of the cons that we saw so the top left windows you can see pretty much you can see how the window glazing is fading
um the units themselves are oh about 40 plus um they're call for replacement and again are they leaking no are they problematic yes you'll also notice
there's no um identifiable numbers so that's another thing we list um the room number should be prominently displayed some of your buildings have it some don't u but this is for emergency responders to know um the room numbers
so that's that's an example good you know of the windows and you can see how some are are fading i think years ago you we looked at possibly doing some things with this and we just we just couldn't get it over the over the finish line all right keep going
that big blue thing is a dust collector uh for uh wood and other things yeah keep going just to just to so you'll see you you're going to see a each school has about 60 or 70 pages three or four pictures to a page and
then some of our notes that support a lot of the documentation some of the exterior doors and again we we saw um Oh hold on for just go no no go back go back you're going to stop right there okay so so we noted some of the exterior doors we
tested every exterior door we found some that closed about 90 to 95% so it could be a closer adjustment so that the force is enough to close it could be the fact that it's old it could be that it's racked a little bit uh and and needs
replacing but a door that doesn't consistently close is a security concern obviously uh the other thing that we could look at if we do look at hardware upgrades is to limit the handles on the exterior if the door is used 99% of the
time for regress only then why do we have a handle on the outside of the door it's a little passive ways to harden um the school let's go to let's go to roofs for a second here so you'll notice uh I guess with this picture as with with most um the lighter
gray versus the darker gray the lighter gray is material deposits and that's because of incessant ponding which would degrade the roof at a faster pace water settles there and minerals in that roof or in the water when it evaporates it
leaves the mineral deposits go ahead Mark um and that's why we get what we get again patching inconsistent flashing go ahead little bit of rust going
on some more and again that gray area of ponding that's what I'm I'm talking about you know standing water on a roof a roof should relieve itself of all puddles in ponding within 48 to 72 hours
and if it's longer than that it could cause a premature uh degragation let's say of of the uh of the of the roof why don't we go back good let's go to maybe Glenn Meadow the middle
school let's look at how about interiors let's look i mean we looked at rooms and other things i mean this is what I'm telling you it the interesting thing for the most part this may be one of the older schools but um for the most part a lot of your schools were built around
the same time period which means they're around the same age the same construction classification and have those same life cycles so that's why you're kind of at a crossroads because you don't have six buildings each built
20 or 25 years apart where that life cycle is different you've got a lot of your facilities at or similar in age that will require um improvements in in the near in the near future how about let's interiors
let's uh toilets to toilet rooms we talked about toilets before so just so just a commentary the the floors get getting difficult to clean the one by one tile a lot of grout you just you can't clean them anymore
coupled with the block walls now um all of the indentations and the inconsistencies you know just with the mortar does trap bacteria there's there's better ways to improve the toilet room with a monolithic floor monolithic walls easier cleaning and
certainly accessibility as I'm talking you can just fly through them yep yep so then some of the floors missing some of the walls keep going you just get a you get a sense of the fact that they
are aging and you know you you have a lot of toilet rooms in the district i'm not kid you know so you could do like other districts you do a systematic replacement you could do it out of yearly capital you could do as part of you know a big a larger project
um but you you work with the principles you work with uh your buildings and grounds committee as to targeting those gang toilet rooms that are used the most take care of them and then you systematically improve um throughout the
district uh how about Lounsbury let's go to Lounsbury um and we'll try to go to toilets again let's just Yeah the toilet rooms so again you know similar age as I was
saying you know the tile the walls uh difficult to to clean a lot of room there for one one toilet tightness uh we'd look to try and improve it you know a lot of times that what we've done is you you could have a toilet room with
six six stalls no handicap stall a lot of times we'll take one of them out and that becomes a a five foot stall instead of two three-footers it's one handicap stall that we've done before we gone
from six to five um it's okay with the plumbing count and we can prove that out uh we can do that and create handicap facilities where none existed before keep going these are not the photos of my vacation
I'll tell you that okay back up how about rolling hills so let's go to rolling hills now um what happened we looked at exterior let's let's try the exterior and um Okay oh here we go so
this is what I was talking about before uh window AC unit below the AC unit that dripping condensate the water from the air conditioning unit is getting on the bricks and is degrading the bricks and you can pretty much see it there's another picture you
can see the black marks um and that's going to eat away at the mortar that water as it travels across the brick um erodess the mortar over time um it's hard to believe that a little trickle of water could do damage but over time um
water in time can certainly do damage okay keep go back for a second that's so that was that's not bad so 204 that's room 204 the high school didn't have that that's the uh emergency photograph but that's difficult to see uh because
of reflections we would look to a decaled system maybe to uh certainly improve it and we could talk with your police department um in order to facilitate that it's a lowcost item and uh something that we would recommend u okay so again some water and moisture
damage yeah Mark all right how about back out again how about uh Cedar Mountain let's go to interiors oh here we go so um let's go to classrooms so when I
talked about special ed pushing in um there I think there's ways that we can improve that and take these spaces so that's that's two classrooms it's two classrooms separated by a little you know uh folding little partition between it and if you're talking about kids with
IEPs or kids that are uh uh learning comes at a at a more difficult time you know trying to separate two classrooms it's it's tough so they what they do is one classrooms at one time and there's no class on the other side so it limits the room that big room for just one
class but if we could somehow subdivide these large triangular rooms at a at a lowcost option we could give you more small group rooms to assist with special education um and and it could certainly
benefit uh not only the special education population but the the capacity of of the facilities keep going let's see a couple others let's see what we got here so again it's a it's it's what I'm talking about big room one or two small you know and you're talking about speech
a teacher maybe two three students um for a big room where we could have two or three classes going on um it could certainly aid what other pictures let's see otpt otpt yep okay um finally Walnut
Ridge so Walnut Ridge um you know let's end it with Ruse roots were we found to be the most problematic so starting here again of ponding water um we think it's in excess of 72 hours so that water's just sitting up there um and that's
that's paused for the most part you have an existing roof uh the original roof the asphalt roof uh right in in attachment to the the um decking you uh in some instances have a sprayed foam
roof over that and then the third roof uh which is problematic is the the roof covering some of those roofs are under warranty and and some are not go ahead next one but what we're what we're
finding again the the the the pot marks that we're seeing of the spray foam coming through creating those marks go ahead i think we have a picture okay okay so this is this is another good picture so so the roof warranties are not going to correct uh the flashing adjacent they're not going to correct
the rising walls what you see there that white paint looks like white paint is actually a white chalk and that's the mineral deposits coming through um when rain seeps into the wall the rain itself
will carry those minerals and salts and there's minerals and salts in the brick as the sun hits that brick and bakes the brick and dries it out the water comes back out through the brick leaving those chalky white salt deposits which is
known as aphlloresence and it just eats away at at the wall um so while some of your RS do have warranties um there the the RS are not warrantied with the flashings they're not
warrantied at the HVAC uh um curbs they're not warranteed um at rising walls they're not war warrantied um on edging and and you know while the membrane itself is warranteed other
things are are not but you need to well the ridge is probably your worst uh of all your facilities that I would recommend uh you know certainly uh looking towards replacement you know and and is it going
to fail you know who knows um but you are spending more and more money every year um to patch and repair all your roofs we've asked the BA that um in our conversations and that budget is is
rising why because there's more and more issues as components around these roofs start to fail it's it just takes time and money to to patch and repair them do we have any others with that so let's go back
that's good so go back to the beginning so so essentially um you got a there is this thing see I got a pretty thick report you know a lot of pictures um some budgets or magnitudes
uh a detailed assessment hopefully of everything hopefully we've captured everything um if we haven't we'll certainly work with the administration um to capture it i want to thank the principles that were instrumental certainly the administration that that helped us um in putting it together and
I I hope it's to good use and you get a lot of of use out of it as we move forward um the next step in the process is for you to accept there's a resol there's a
simple resolution that we need performer for the state of New Jersey the state of New Jersey wants a resolution saying that you are authorizing your architect business administrator and whomever to submit your long range plan to the state for consider for reviewing consideration
we can pass that whenever you want that's one of the items we need to submit to Trenton um along with some of the items here um so that in the months following you'll get a certification that your long range plan is approved
and all is right with the world so with that um I want to turn it back to Madam President to see if there's any questions i know we covered a lot uh thank you thank you very much thank you
thank you thank you Pete okay so questions um from board members does anybody have anything carl you had said that on Walnut Ridge there was multiple roofs underneath the
pre-existing Yes forget the term is that something that you found consistently on I know was this on every building or is that just the older building i would say most most yes yes um what we found and again
um um some were assumptions made um and there were educated I don't want to say guess cuz more than than a guess um a spray foam roof in and of itself is
a fairly inexpensive way to cover a problematic roof and obtain a warranty for 5 or 10 years it's it's probably the most inexpensive way to do it you're not removing the roof it's one or two
applicators out there spraying the foam foam lies in the foam seals it's a closed cell water eventually makes its way to the roof drain you've got yourself a roof that could be problematic if there was water from the
old roof trapped underneath that yeah um and that's certainly a no no that should have all been cut out we don't know if it it has or not so we didn't do any thermal scans obviously that's a lot of money to do a thermal scan so why do we think there's there's there's three roofs so if there's a spray foam roof
and you can see that because of all the undulations we know that there's a roof below it which is the original roof because that's why they put the spray foam over it and then the third roof being the rubber roof on top of that we think that there is three and the code
allows for two and my sorry that's okay governor that's my assumption is that if you put spray foam on top of an older roof that's roof is obviously older but it would void any warranty we had which I mean I'm assuming an asphalt roof from the original construction of the
building would not have a warranty to begin with well again yeah again it's conjecture but we're assuming the reason you put a spray foam roof on 30 some years ago right because the rub the rubber roofs are anywhere from 8 10 15 years old so the spray foam
was probably 8 or 10 years before that so at least 20 plus um the reason why you're putting spray foam on that roof is you're out of warranty and you're having problems with your roof right it's it's again that's what what we would do now if this ever became a
project uh one of the things we would certainly do is do a series of core cuts cut into the roof right kind of it's like a probe right we probe down down to the deck what kind of deck is it what other materials we would take that
material send it out to a lab get test back is it as fast as containing or anything hazardous that we want to know before a bid bring that back um and then again look at how we would go about the process of of the replacing the roof
working probably with Joe and Ray and the administration thank you you're welcome yeah have a question it's probably irrelevant now but when Carl was talking about the roots you said there were two layers are
are allowed oh yeah so let some had three yeah so so and it's it's um it's it was interesting i was I was um um the state of New Jersey the international or the the the New Jersey
administrative code right is 5 col 23 which is the building code the overlying building code that state code references the international building code the IBC um and every couple of
years that gets updated and New Jersey has adopted that and also enhanced it so it's the IBC of New Jersey that's the International Building Code that code states if you're going
to re- roof or provide roofing on a project there's criteria you could do this do that that but one of the criteria is you're going to put a roof on it could have no more than two two is the maximum you put a third on you can't you can't do that okay and I'm not
making any judgments that happened 15 20 years ago i'm just reporting what we found and it is problematic um you know and and and you know I'm not a Debbie Downer i'm not a doom and gloom guy but here's we
live in a very latigious world so if something happens to that roof and it could be you know inconsequential that there's three roofs something happens to that roof where you need to seek damages right from your insurance company you
run the risk of well you have three roofs up there so it's a risk thing you know i I I it's maybe that maybe it's conjecture on my part but I I just um it's something that you know you're
you're aware of and something that you should should address as you can you know it's keeping the water out you are spending more money every year you can't put another roof on it some of the roofs are out of warranty some of the roofs
have five or 10 years left on it but as you can see from Walnut Ridge the surrounding components are starting to fail so it's not the membrane itself it's the surrounding components that you're going to keep spending more and more money on so if the the unfortunate
thing is that when you do uh work on these roofs they're going to have to be replaced right down to the deck and then built up thank you yeah that's that's probably one of your biggest items that and some life safety items fire alarms public
address and and the like that we found you mentioned that some of them are under warranty but if they're all at these multiple levels layers then then what what layer is under is currently under warranty the uppermost rubber
roof still has an effective warranty so that probably we didn't I didn't read it personally but I'm just conjecture i would assume that that warranty is uh for you know 10 or 15
year warranty 15ear warranty against defects against you know if the membrane splits they'll repair it um but that does not include things that are not specifically part of that that membrane so the the rubber itself is still
warrantied right but if you get a hole in it from uh a tree branch that falls on it I don't think that's covered go ahead right um so me and Mr vancer look at those so our understanding is essentially similar to what Pete said um
that it has to do against material defect um so for example punctures and things like that where we've had to do repairs specifically to the rubber membrane have been for punctures where we've had to pay um I don't know if you recall but we had um ST emergent um
capital funds the last 3 years um and we did spend probably around 70 to $80,000 of those funds those are funds from the state that they gave us during the year to address some issues um on roofing repairs across some of the the buildings some of the were masonary you know um
and so we have been spending money on it but honestly without you know the SDA merchant capital funds would have been something we would have been able to take care of right away without those funds and many of those roofs were under warranty that needed repair but they did the warranty didn't cover the the issues
that we have with the roofs yeah so it would just if it was still a no warranty it would just be the rubber membrane and my understanding is it would just be for um material defects thank you okay um so just overarching question um this binder
has I don't know how much would you say uh worth of described projects that we could undertake over everybody sitting down i'm sorry everybody sit down so let me preface it all right it's it's all in
right all in uh is it's probably around hund00 million right okay that's not saying Madam President that you need to spend $100 million today or in the next
5 years um once you read the book um you will see that there are priorities there's recommendations there's observations uh suggestions all of those things uh
add up and I I'll give you a case in point um boom behind me at that door when you walk out tonight you will see to the left wire within that glass wired glass okay it's against the code today well
then how the heck did it happen so years ago when I was a young kid back in the 80s and 90s when we were doing it wire glass was actually a code requirement why because we're in a room and when we leave this room to exit a building assuming that door is not there we need
to get into a corridor which is an exit access corridor and we need to leave so that corridor shell needs to be protected so if there's something a fire in here that fire should not break through that wall that that's our exit in order to get out so that wire was
meant to strengthen the glass so the glass wouldn't break or or or fail and actually lengthen the time a fire the fire resistance of that barrier over the last 10 or 15 years there's been more and more accidents where somebody has
put their hand through it somebody's has just come in contact with it and it breaks right you can imagine if you could put your hand and the wire shatters you just get cut up so the the the state of New Jersey the international building code says no more
wire glass well that's in there are we going to spend tens of thousands of dollars to replace that it's been here 30 some years but it's in this book as a recommendation so that if that door ever does get changed we know to change it right right if some benefactor gives you
a million dollars yeah then we can change it but it it is it is an observation that we made um that is no longer allowed by the code but certainly something that is in this book that details it because we tried to pick up every little thing that we could
so it's all encompassing okay so you've got everything from soup to nuts in here yes but some of the things in here you would say are uh pressing matters of safety and and uh infrastructure repairs
that are more pressing right so in your experience working with school districts how does a district like ours which does not have a lot of funding uh ready at hand uh handle handle this like how you know is it is it something where we should be
doing incremental repairs as we can or should we be bundling all of these things into a referendum and putting it to the taxpayer what what do you see as the best course of one size one size does not fit all um it depends upon your
uh uh fund is it 1230 which what's what's your capital reserve capital reserves uh fund 12 12 fund 12 so you know what what's your capital reserve account um what's the amount per year that you will devote your budget to and
that's competing with curriculum that's competing with salaries certainly rising costs of of health care right um that it's a difficult choice because what's the first thing in the budget normally to get cut capital reserve or or capital projects right we'll do it the following
year um but if if you can make an effort to do those projects and start to take these bites at the apple to reduce things as you start to plan for larger projects that that could certainly be uh
the way to go because you know you could plan for two years for a referendum and the referendum could fail so those are two years that you could lose on improvements that are you know pressing um you may not have and that could be the larger projects you know you don't
have the $3 million or something it would take to replace the roof at this school can't you're not going to get that in the budget we know that um in addition to that if it is through a referendum uh the state will partner with you on that um the state since 2000
um wants to promote the capital improvements of existing schools especially in districts like yourself that don't get a lot of money from the state so if you're
getting 3 or 4% 6 what's your state aid here 6 8 10% 12% whatever minor it's not 40 i'd have to check yeah but it's it's less than 40 we know that the state would offer the state would offer 40% on uh eligible projects so if it's a
million-doll project if the local uh base could have 600 the state would provide 400 which has been very uh valuable for school districts similar to yours um that could do more with with
less funds so there's I would say you would look at all aspects i would think a a a you know a committee to debate and and decide which is the most pressing
um how much can we put every year with everything else in our budget and if we can't we can't but those discussions need to be had in light of the costs that are in here because these costs are going to go up next year three four 5% we know that right um so we're uh
68.8% tax levy 25.1% state aid uh 3.4% budgeted fund balance and then 2.8% is a combination of extraordinary aid reserves miscellaneous revenue and tuition thank you thank you very much okay uh Carl I have one last question
yes going back to the roofs because I've been thinking about this if we have three roofs on a building Yes is there a chance is that something that was recently put into the code or is that something that's always been code because sometimes That's a great question if we put three roofs on a
building that is against code that's that's a great question so I don't know when I got to this age because I was always the young kid with a bunch of older white gay-haired guys around me and uh when I was this guy's age you
know we referenced what was called the Bokeh Code it was the bokeh i still have a 1987 edition in my office it's a simplified version of stayout yes stay allowed so so so uh you could go back to
that code um and and it was it was two roofs so it has been there as long as I've been an architect since ' 87 so it's always been two no more than two if you have one you can put one on top that's it you have two they have to come
off for a new roof thank you for that you got a call anyone else questions mr well that leads me to a question then is there a is there a legal liability for the contractor who put the
third roof on top of the second roof when he knows he shouldn't have done it i I'm old enough to know that I'm not an attorney that's a question you got to ask i don't even want to go there i'm just making that observation yeah I'm I'm just making that that observation
all right anyone else all right thank you so much for coming really appreciate all right and again you know um if there's if there's typos let me know you know I did 90% of the typing in this um I love doing this um and if there's
things that you want to add to it if you have questions please see the superintendent or the VA and they'll get them to me and uh I look forward to continuing to work with you thank you very much thank you Mr campus thank you this is one of our first projects that we wanted to get done as we address all
these issues so thank you very much all right uh item K public comment this is for agenda items only and student um student comments i do want to just reiterate because there was some confusion last week that uh we will not
answer questions during the public comment portion of the meeting but after public comment is closed we may if we have the answers handy um address them um do we have any members of the public who I need to read the um Oh right we have to read the notice sorry thank you
that's okay i can skip it if No no you have yeah we do prefer you read it sorry uh during the course of the public meeting of the Vernon Board of Education the public is offered the opportunity to address the board on agenda items and any issues regarding the school district the board reminds those individuals who take this opportunity that they must
identify themselves by name and section of town and limit their comments to agenda items and/or issues that directly relate to the operations of the school district issues that are raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board or administration at the time of the meeting or at any time all comments will be considered and response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate
board requests that members of the public keep their comments to a limit of 5 minutes to be courteous respectful and mindful of the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding students and employees of the board of education should be thoroughly considered by the speaker and may or may not be responded to by the board administration be advised that students employees have
rights confidentiality and other protections under the law students name should never be used the board bears no responsibility nor will it be liable for any comments made by the public during the public portion of the board meeting members of the public should consider the comments in light of legal rights of those affected or identifying their comments and be aware that they are
personally legally responsible with potential liability for the comments that they made to the board thank you Mr slam um do we have any members of the public who would like to make comment i seeing none anyone online nobody online okay
moving on to item L student representative report my favorite parts of the meeting some good new stuff yeah some good stuff today um hi everybody um so yesterday we had the STEM
humanities NCT induction ceremony um so I want to congratulate all the newly inducted members and seniors who received their chords um I got three yesterday um yes Woohoo was right um I believe there was over 100 students that were recognized for their academic
achievements so that's definitely something that we should all be proud of it was um but it was honestly I've been to like the ones for the past four years so it was really nice to like I've seen everybody go through their stuff and all my friends got their stuff so it was very nice to see um spring sports are
officially underway all of our spring athletes have begun games and we're excited to see what the rest of the season holds um today there was softball I believe bunch of things are going on so if you can make it to a game baseball game lacrosse game anything you should
go they're all good um AB tests are so soon and all of our AP students are preparing i know I definitely am and then this week is our spirit week and so far we had Adam Sandler day which is my personal favorite anything but a backpack day which was yesterday and
then today was pink out and tomorrow is a battle of the grades so each grade is assigned a color and then we have our pep rally tomorrow in the afternoon um tomorrow is also the plyballs fundraiser for the sophomore class it's from 12:00 to 7:00 at Sparta so if you want a ply
bowl uh go for it i'll be getting one so maybe you'll see me there um and then everybody's excited for a well-deserved spring break and I wanted to wish everybody a happy Easter thank you thank you very much thank you Tina and I want to say I have props for the P person who brought the kayak right and the car door
as being anything but a backpack yes i didn't That was ambitious yeah my freshman year there was a kayak last year there was a dirt bike uh no engine though they took the engine out so it passed the rules um got there was a sled
car door one girl brought a Lego box that was pretty good i like that one so yes definitely yeah there was a Gatorade cooler yeah there was lots going on there yesterday but I had more I had my normal backpack but Adam Sandler was my
day i love Adam Sandler day all right sounds like fun okay item M superintendent Mr rogers I have a couple things from my report i won't repeat the ones that Tina went over but thank you Tina walnut Ridge is screening for kindergarteners entering into September so please make sure that if you have a
kindergartener for next year you make sure that uh they're given their screening cedar Mountain students and families participated in family math night tonight i missed out on that this usually one of my favorite nights thank you for the VTA for sponsoring rolling skills rolling hills schools is hosting
someone special day today and tomorrow uh I've heard a lot of great news about the PE special someone's in our students life visiting Rolling Hills today it was been a great day lbury Hollow students participated in instrument test drive on April 8th it was a test drive so the
music wasn't out where it needed to be yet but people are deciding on instruments and uh I'm very impressed on where they get by the time they're in middle school and high school as well um congratulations to Glenn Meadow students who recently were inducted in the Triam Music Honor Society the National Junior
Honor Society and the National Junior Art Society uh they had many accolades as well as the high school uh students as well um congratulations to Uriah Sack Allen who has been selected to attend the prestigious Governor School of Engineering and Technology that's quite
quite an accomplishment i believe we've had three students in the past uh five years uh attend Governor School which which is quite an accomplishment for the high school and the VS VTHs Jazz Express competed in the first jazz competition at Sparta High School earning the award for best overall trumpet section uh
Joanna Brunes received the award for the best overall soloist trombone congratulations i enjoy watching them in the in the in their jazz performances throughout the year as well um we're pleased to announce the district artist of the month for April the Cedar Mountain Primary students artwork is being displayed at the board office as
soon as you walk in you'll see it on your left please look i always notice some names that are familiar to me and uh throughout the district and the Glenn Meadow students artwork is being displayed at the municipal building um old business i believe we touched on everything that was old business if there's anything that that I had missed
please bring up again and I'll make sure I cover it at the next uh meeting item C is a harassment intimidation and bullying reports for April 1st 2025 to April 11th 2025 attachment A 2A it's recommended to the board to approve the following faculty staff appointments
assignments etc in the chart attached realize there's an attachment as well for 55 through 58 um I'd like to thank the uh building administrators and staff who who've uh um been in the interview process i think
we we got ahead of the game this year and were able to uh get a lot of people who are looking for jobs ahead of uh other schools and be able to offer employment to some uh highquality uh teachers so I'm excited teachers and staff members i'm excited about that
item B it is recommended to the board to approve the mention that letter A goes onto the addendum too letter A yeah letter A goes on to the addendum too yeah I I mentioned that i did sorry that's items
55 through 58 on the agenda um I I remembered that this for for a change i remembered it right um letter B it is recommended that the board approve the attached personnel agenda for the 2025-26 school year locations are tenative and subject to
transfer quite a comprehensive list um letter C it is recommended the board approve the following six period appointment letter D is recommended the board approve the following professional development um in the chart above is
covered by title two grant funding and a lot of a lot of the below has to do with the uh preschool expansion aid uh training that was necessary letter E is recommended that a board approve the random drug testing and school safety reports for March
2025 letter F it is recommended that a board approved the harassment intimidation and bullying report reviewed at the April 10th uh meeting letter G it is recommended that the board approve the following policies for second reading and following and final approval p0164 conduct of board meetings
and P 0167 public participation in board meetings letter H it is recommended the board approve the following resolution whereas a comprehensive equity plan must be developed for the school years 2025 through 26 through 2027 28 the Vernon Township Board of Education authorized
the district's affirmative action team to conduct the needs assessment and develop a comprehensive equity plan to be submitted to the department of education and whereas a district affirmative action team consisting of Mr russell Rogers Mr vincent Gagliaso Mrs karen uh De Mr raymond Slam and Mrs mrs
nancy Schultz are involved in the needs assessment and if necessary writing a corrective action plan letter I it is recommended that the board approve the affirmative action officer for the 2025 school year the Vernon Township Board of Education appoints a district superintendent of schools as affirmative
action officer for the 202526 school year and it's recommended that the board approve the revised uh school calendar and we had we had updated the one uh holiday as well thank you Mr rogers um can I get a
motion to approve the superintendence resolutions M2A through M2J as listed so move thank you Carl second second Charlie um can I get a roll call oh questions or comments
sorry put my notes back here yes um on the add agendum uh number 8 58 is that being paid by the um uh mentee as well i'm 90% sure i will follow up tomorrow as well i did ask
that question i'm pretty sure the menty pays it uh we had some different people out during different time frames with which adjusted who the mentor was okay anyone else seeing no questions or comments can I
get a roll call mr fischer hi miss Pellet yes mr sweeney yes yes I have to abstain from item 44 in recommendation number two and abstain from item six in recommendation number
or letter B thank you Mr cara yes mr zimmerman yes mr saglia yes mr cino yes motion carries thank
you item N Mr sl when you're ready uh just a quick budget update uh still waiting to hear back from the Division of Early Childhood up until today i think I mentioned before I had reached out to the county BA uh he had
personally reached out um and he had asked them to get back to us by a certain deadline which they did not so he actually involved uh one of the assistant commissioners of education um so I did get a text um right before our meeting opened saying that he did have a
phone call um with actually u Mr booker who is in charge of early childhood and their fiscal specialist so I'm hoping to have resolution on that for tomorrow um and that's important because the P so PA is the preschool expansion aid um budget it's a separate budget that we have to
do now that we have the preschool program but it feeds directly into our operating budget right um so it's important because I've submitted our operating budget and me and the county are waiting to hear back from what from PA to see if they will allow those positions that they approved this year
and then told me to remove if they'll allow them to stay in or not um so what I'm thinking right now based off the response I got is that I think a majority of the positions they're going to say that they can stay um but I'm waiting an official word for that and the ones that uh will not stay I think I
mentioned previously that um I had reached out to other BAS in the county that also have this program and we kind of talked about things that are allowable for offsets so uh I'll basically exploring those avenues uh which are allowable uh to to offset some of that cost so it doesn't negatively
impact our operating budget um so that's where we are right now i'm hoping to to be able to link up with him tomorrow um finalize that and that way we can get our um advertisement out um cuz obviously that's a statutory deadline and our response was has been like we've
reached out to you in in March and we have not heard anything from you um and I have about four or five days left before I need to send it to the paper so it's got a little stressful but hopefully we'll have it closed by tomorrow and we can move forward okay fingers crossed
um so uh letter B uh uh use of buildings and grounds as noted below letter C field trips as noted below uh then so number two we're on recommendations uh so letter A uh is recommended the board approve the following financial reports as noted
below you have the list of checks which is attachment F1 list of hand checks for March 2025 which is attachment F2 transfers for March of 2025 which is attachment F3 and purchase orders for March 2025 which is attachment F4 letter
B approval of the board secretaries and treasures boards as noted below that's attachment F5 and F6 letter C is recommended the board approved transportation as listed below we have quoted routes quoted trips uh we also have a jointer with High Point uh
Regional Board of Education to transport Vernon students on the following High Point route uh letter D is the board accept the donation to the Vernon Township School District from the Lansbury Hall SCA and then $1,500 for Colonial Bay at LSA school for fifth grade students in place of the field
trip to Museum Village letter E is recommended the board accept the funds for the American Heart Association NFL Play 60 grant in amount of $1,000 letter F is recommended that the board approve the application for the Dollar General Literacy Foundation grant in amount of $5,000 letter G has recommended the
board approve the following resolution this one has been a long time coming whereas whereas the Vernon Board of Education advertised for bids for the window project at Glen Meadow Middle School project at Gl Middle School uh whereas the lowest responsible bid for the
project was submitted by Panoric Windows and Door Systems Inc with a base bid in the amount of $520,000 together with a contingency allowance in the amount of $225,000 alternative number one in the amount of $95,300 alternative number two $122,000 alternative number three an
amount of $60,100 alternative number four an amount of $38,750 altern alternative number six in the amount of $15,000 or a total contract price in the amount of $1,93,150 and whereas the bid submitted
by Paneric Windows and Door Systems Inc is responsive in all material respects and whereas the board desires to award the contract for the project to Panarch Windows and Door Systems Inc now there now therefore be it resolved the board hereby awards the contract for window replacement at Glen Meadow Middle School
project to Panic Windows Door Sims Inc and the total contract amount of $1,93,150 the words express the condition upon panoramic windows endorsed since any furnishing requisite documentation as required in the project specifications uh the board president and the board sector hereby authorized to execute such
agreement and any other documents necessary to effectuate the terms of this resolution letter H is recommended the board approved the withdrawal of $347,820 from the capital reserve to fund the Glen Meadow Middle School window replacement project is reflected in the district's long facility
plan and that is for the um state portion which we will be reimbursed for later as the project uh progresses we apply for reimbursement uh is recommend letter I is recommended that the board approved the renewal notice with frontland education the burn town board education
62,1903 effective July 1 2025 through July 30th June 30th 2026 attachment F7 letter J is recommended the board approve the contract with Aspire Adolescent Counseling Center for to provide services for student number 20942 at a rate of $675 a week letter K
is recommended the board retroactively approve the North Eastern Interior Service LLC quote number 14644 change order and amount of $6,100 attachment F8 letter L is recommended the board accept the donation to the Vernon Towned School District from the Cedar Mountain Primary
School sea for t-shirts in the amount of $2,298 for kindergarten and first grade students letter M has recommended that the board accept the donations to runtown school district from the Cedar Mountain Primary School SA and $3,845 for transportation costs for the kindergarten students field trip to
Space Farms on April 30th 2025 and first grade students field trip to Museum Village on May 1st 2025 letter N is recommended the board accept the donation to the Verntown School District from the Cedar Mount Primary School SCA and then $5,352 for the kindergarten students field trip cost to Space Farms on April
30th 2025 and the first grade students field trip cost Museum Village on May 1st 2025 letter O it is recommended that the board approve the 2025 2026 payroll schedule that's attachment F9 so I'm not going to read through all
of these because I will I you're going to lose your voice right yeah I will yes absolutely uh so letter P is recommended the board approve the following resolution it's a resolution approving the energy um savings plan as noted below a long one
this one I'll have to read letter Q it is recommended the board approve a contract with Honey International Inc for a price currently not to exceed $5.5 million to provide and saw the energy conservation measures described in the school district's energy savings plan approved April 16th 2025 in a form
approved by the board general counsel and or special counsel and subject to the availability funding the board president superintendent and or business administrator/port secretary are authorized to execute such contract on behalf of the board of education and the signature signatures thereon are
conclusive proof of the required review and approval of the contract Yeah I wouldn't have made it through uh letter R is recommended the board approve the following resolution resolution the board of education of the township of Vernon in the county of Sussex New Jersey authorizing application to the local finance board for the financing of the energy savings
plan and approving on first reading an ordinance for the issuance of energy savings obligation refunding bonds to finance the energy savings plan there's still more to add yeah I'm scrolling down is recommended that the board approve
the following resolution the board president the superintendent of schools Honeywood International Inc and the architectural record business managers such as board secretary Goldman Professor PA and special counsel and other appropriate representatives of the board are hereby authorized to submit any required
educational plans and the schematic plans for the energy conservation measures to be installed in the school district's facilities and undertaken in accordance of the school district's energy savings plans together with such other information as may be required to the New Jersey Department of Education for approval to make application to the
commissioner of education on behalf of the board for approval of of any required educational plans the schematics and energy savings project and if necessary any required amendment to facility glance in accordance with the requirements of Njac 6A to 26 2.3 2.1F 3.1 and
3.11 the board representatives are hereby farther authorized and directed to submit the schematic plans and any other required information to the planning board and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection for review and comment if necessary letter T is recommended the board authorizes Sun Honey Wall International Inc to obtain any necessary construction
approvals for the energy conservation measures letter U is recommended that the board approve the following resolution resolution of the board of education of the township of Vern in the county of Sussex New Jersey boarding a power purchase agreement and authorizing various actions in connection there with
it and then we have on the agendum letter B is recommended that the board approve the energy savings guarantee offered amount of $38,000 by by Honeywell International Inc for measurement verification costs almost
there only for the contract of the first year renewable at the option of the board of education for each year thereafter i feel like we should have a round of applause john's not here this week he had a lot
he had a lot from last week you know so okay can I get start myself I guess can I get a motion to approve the business administrators resolutions N2A through N2B as uh this second
thank you questions or comments um I would just like to highlight based on what was just mentioned that the windows at Glen Meadow are part of a 6040 split with the state and we in the beginning it's been
many years wanted to do the high school also included in that originally but due to other priorities our capital reserve drew down and we couldn't afford to do the high school windows but we still were able to do Glen Meadow so it was part of that program that he was
speaking mention And it's finally good it's one of the first things I think we It's exciting to many years ago that it's very exciting to cross that finish line um can I ask
and maybe Ray you can answer does that 1,900 or 93 is that the 60% or is that the total the state's going to pay 40% of that so it's the total for the the contractor
there's also architect fees um and the total amount is under the amount that our SCA application was for so that's the full amount okay and then we'll get 40% once we go through the different steps and there's different submitts for reimbursement as the project progresses okay but we have to fund it up front and
then we'll get the reimbursement yep makes sense thank you Charlie yeah Ray um ENF you had the uh we had two grants where where is that money going forwards one was from the NFL play 60 grant and
the other one was for the Dollar General or C fund there grant i believe the NFL play grant was for Rolling Hills one of the teachers submitted a uh that grant and what's it used for i'm sorry like uh is it for
teaching supplies or is it um I can't recall letter E off the top of my head but I believe letter F was for library books library book okay and then could you explain what Frontline does for us uh so Frontline is
our software uh having to do with staff right uh so it's well it's more than just staff there's management uh to put in for uh trainings to put in for uh put in for
evaluations uh we tried to make a switch I believe the year two to a different program for evaluations and it did not go very well and uh probably uh tripled the amount of time for administrators and teachers to go through the evaluation process so last year we we
entered into the contract again for the the significant amount of uh time savings and how much easier it was to to deal with uh as far as completing evaluations which is one module of Frontline and then it's also where all
our travel is tracked our travel approvals um like Mr rogers says all our absences are tracked in there as well um so it's basically kind of an inclusive staffing module um for the entire district okay and one last question um
with the EIP that we're this is what we're we're passing right to to go in does this cover anything in that book um yeah it so um it does cover a number of items in there um I think the
probably the most exciting thing that's covering is the high school auditorium it's replacing the two I think they're like 50 ton RT units you may have seen those on the roof you wanna Yeah we got Mr vanc Kirk in audience there we go there you go give me a little break he's
got he's got more and more exciting list uh yes within the ESIP there are um nine rooftop units um that will be replaced um there's eight of them on at the high school and then the one that serves um
the main office at Rolling Hills um will be replaced and these are all items that were uh pointed out in the uh long range facility study anyone else oh Joe we should thank the Cedar Mountain uh SCA for providing over
$11,000 to send our kindergarteners at first grade graders on their class trip this year that's awfully nice of them yes and they do an awful lot of fundraising and uh obviously they fund a lot of it yeah our SCAS are pretty
amazing also the Lansbury Hollow SCA for the museum oh they're not going to the museum village this year though right they're doing their the uh reenactment revolution day or colonial day colonial day okay well still that SCA also in
they find a lot of opportunities for our students also uh Mr slim uh item V that's the savings that they're guaranteeing right yeah so they're guaranteeing the savings um that was optional um we discussed it
on the finance rounds committee we felt that was prudent to at least have that for the first year um to guarantee obviously that once everything is in that we're actually meeting those those uh savings parameters for the EIP yeah we should have probably highlighted that
because it was a finance committee discussion so we we pay third what is it uh it's uh so $38,000 for the first year they come in they'll measure everything that they've installed just the guarantee that they're meeting the savings um that will then each year
after that go towards paying off the bond which funds the projects and if we don't meet that savings it guarantees yeah and if they if they don't meet the savings they'll cut us a check for the difference right and then they'll fix whatever the issues are so that going forward it will meet those savings we'll
build an insurance policy for Right i'm sorry can I can I follow up on your question go ahead um so if if it if it let's say it fails this year and we get the reimbursement we to if it fails again next year we have to get another policy
or is it still covered under the first year's insurance we can renew it right we have to renew it so payment so So if they don't fix it correctly we will and we don't pick up the insurance we will be at a loss my understanding is that when they when they fix it they would
they would reme-measure make sure that they're now meeting that standard but I can follow up just to make sure i I believe they presented that they there was a very high percentage rate of of meeting I believe they presented to us somewhere close to 100% but in that first year just to make sure that there
isn't any loss i think the the committee decided that it was worth an insurance policy for that first year so we could remedy anything if if something did happen that first year thank you that's I think it's very wise that we do that yeah that was the feeling of the
committee but I'm glad we explained it um okay any more questions comments can we get a roll call miss Ballot yes mr sweeney yes miss Varello yes mr
zimmerman yes miss Mr smaglia yes mr canino yes mr fischer I motion carries okay item O public comment um the prior public statement will apply
to all public comments do we have anyone in the audience scott Castle from Glenwood um I know you don't answer questions directly but uh first one was I just I had heard uh architects fees and I was just wondering if this architect did he get a set fee
for his report or does he uh get future fees you know based on his recommendations that are followed or not i was just curious on that um I did watch last week's meeting and just a couple of comments on that as far as the
SAT goes I heard a statement that made that was similar to you know we're we're good there with the scores um saying they were like,00 or whatever when I looked they were like 1084 i could be wrong on that um but when I looked
around at like uh lower-end four-year private colleges um it was like 1090 was about the minimum that they would accept for SAT scores um and when you look at the mid-range ones you know it's more closer to 1,200 and things like that
so you know that aside um it just it's kind of concerning that I it seems like a large group of our kids wouldn't be able to get into those colleges um you know unless I'm reading something wrong there um but I do think that you know I looked at other
districts that had a little bit higher scores and they seem to have like a continuous improvement type plan so no matter what the score is like even if our scores were 1250 our average you know we should have a I would think anyway we would have a 2-year or a
threeyear plan or whatever with now we want to get to 1275 these are what we're going to do these are the milestones it's the goals things like that so I don't know if we have something like that and I'm missing it um but it'd be nice to to know that um as far as the
budget goes um I did like uh Mrs vearelloo had some a good group of comments basically asking about project status and where we stand compared to the budget and everything um I was wondering if that could be something
that maybe gets on the agenda for you know monthly we're active projects where are we with the budget if we're going over you know what's the reason for going over and if we're going under you know what are we going to use that money for um and then uh Mr fiser
had a comment where he wasn't in favor of seeking approval you know to raise the taxes over the 2% without having an actual reason for it which you know I'm 100% for um and it just to me we we
still seem to perform kind of backward budgeting where we figure out how much can we possibly raise taxes and then how do we fit our our budget into spending that much money um and I know we said you know getting that approval doesn't mean we're necessarily going to raise
the taxes but if you look at how we've been budgeting the last couple years I'm pretty sure we're going to be using that money um and lastly I you know we said we make cuts and it was mentioned like health benefits and things like that i do budgeting all the time that's something that you know for me we call
it SRC which is savings um savings uh renegotiating and consolidation and that's like a savings it's common sense things cuts are actually harder and I know we jumped to last time again I don't know who mentioned it but they said you know we
we don't want to lose teachers which obviously we don't want to lose teachers um but we need to look at cuts and say that okay if we reduce the admin budget or IT budget by 10% or we postpone this project until next year see if we can
afford it then or you know whatever it is and what are the consequences of that and that's what you kind of look at before we immediately jump to hey we can raise taxes more the the governor said we can continue to you know kill everybody with the taxes i'm just afraid we're killing off our we're strangling
our own town because one of the benefits for here was the taxes were a little bit lower um yeah I know I'm running out of time but um you know and we don't have a major highway we don't have a lot of that stuff and you know a big benefit to that is you know that the taxes were
lower and now we're creeping up and we don't have the same town um amenities that other towns have but yet our taxes are getting close so all that being said you know I just I like some of the comments and I'm hoping that we don't just immediately raise the
taxes as high as we can possibly go without a actual reason dictated so thank you thank you Mr castle um any any additional public comments do we have anyone online
there's nobody online with their hands okay terrific um I mean not to cut anybody off but uh Kelly's been waiting so item B our presentation on the superintendent search process thank you Mrs mitchell for
joining us tonight we have slides right yeah sorry yes thank you thanks you'd be happy to should we should we wait for Ray or we're good oh um well he was here yeah he he heard it
already last okay so should I just Okay i just want to thank everybody uh for their support of New Jersey school boards and thank you for choosing us for your search it really means a lot to me and um you know I I just appreciate your confidence in us so tonight we're going
to go over the overall process of the uh superintendent search and um and talk about uh the legal requirements what it looks like the the calendar for the search and then we'll talk about the um input sessions as well
so just to start with the legal contract and salary requirements the uh legal requirements are that the uh the person that is a candidate would need to possess a school administrator certificate or a certificate of eligibility um there was a lot of
confusion uh last time that we hired a superintendent was that they said "Oh well there's a certificate of eligibility that means that they are not a superintendent." Well that just means that they weren't a superintendent prior um and that that certificate of
eligibility is basically the same thing but they do require a mentor so if we hire somebody that's a principal or um a director in any way things like that uh they would have that certificate of eligibility they would need to have that but then they would require a mentor um
but I just wanted to point that difference out because the last time um there seemed to be some confusion in the community about that um they do need to be a New Jersey resident within a year of hire so if we you know because we're so close to the border we might have
people that apply that are in New York State they will have to become a New Jersey resident within a year and then of course if there's a board member that has a relative that works for the district in any way they would recuse themselves um from any and all matters
regarding the search now the uh contract requirements there's a minimum of 3 years and a maximum of five and it has to end on June 30th because we have that August 1 date to start our minimum will
now be uh 3 years and 11 months and our maximum will be five so we have to be mindful of that as we go through um our contract negotiations that our minimum will be 3 years 11 months and then uh
the contract itself once we negotiate everything does have to go over to the executive county superintendent prior to board approval now that executive superintendent um looks at the contract itself and makes sure that it's comparable the the salary
and everything with the credentials experience and you know the county guidelines of of what that looks like so um that you know kind of just keeps a stop gap so that um if something was negotiated that possibly was way too
high that would be a red flag and it would be sent back for renegotiation so just keep that in mind so conf confidentiality is super important back in the day um they had tenure for superintendence um that has
since gone by the wayside so the confidentiality piece is really super important because if somebody was applying for our position um they are not tenured in their position so uh we have to make sure that the identity of
the candidates are really kept secure a lot of times community members have been a member of a committee for a search committee and that was very prevalent uh years gone by but now because of that change um that is no longer uh something
that can can transpire so the board itself would be the only ones that are legally bound um to that confidentiality through the code of ethics when we talked about ethics training the other day we talked about I will uphold confidential all matters um pertaining
to the schools we are the only ones as board members that are governed under that and um legally bound by that so the board members will be the only ones that can participate in the search itself so then the question is asked
well then how how can community members you know participate in this at all well we're going to have a series of community input sessions where uh the board will then get all that data from those input sessions and that's how they'll keep that top of mind when
they're selecting the candidates um and so that's something that takes quite a long time we we uh do that over several weeks uh and the our community um input session is going to be May 5th at 7 o'clock at Lounsbury right here in this
room so uh I know that I want to thank Mr slam because he did an amazing job of making sure that the ad went out right away that the survey was up and running so thank you Mr slam you did an incredible job and I appreciate how
proactive you were um because of him being so proactive i can tell you that I look at the survey every single day and I see that we have 350 um you know uh people that have gone on there already and answered some of our questions so uh that's that's really
quite good it's only been up and running since Friday of of last week so that's uh that's a lot so that's saying that your community really wants their voice heard and um I'm hoping that uh you know a lot come out to those sessions we are going to have sessions for staff as well
and then also for students uh we usually do a middle school um input session and then a high school input session so we are going to coordinate that uh with the administration to get those up and running but that is the um the link
there uh for the survey and it is up on the website as well any questions about the community input session at all right how does all that information get to us yeah that's a great question so what I do is after every input session
um I'll put together a summary report and that'll get sent out emailed to you also um that can be put up on the website so that the community can see all that input and then at the end towards the end when we pick uh the first round uh candidates right before
that you'll get all the information on the survey as well and that's a rather large report it's usually about 20 pages so I'll give that to you ahead of time because you're going to take all that data and keep that top of mind when we're selecting our candidates so we met on uh April 10th uh
to go over a couple of of things about the uh search itself so we we picked out the calendar and also the custom um application questions and we uh went ahead and did the development of the ad so you can see there that those two
meetings uh you know we did that type of work on the 11th of April we placed the ad uh for the superintendent search itself and then we started uh receiving applications so that is up and running we have received many applications so
far uh again the input session uh for the community will be on May 5th at 7 and we will also let the community know when we're doing staff and students as well so um once uh May 12th comes I I
come in and I meet with the board and we go over the pool the candidate pool so what we'll do is the portal will open on May 5th for for the board members to look at all the applications on the 12th we'll talk about you know who they feel
um they should they should choose for that first round interview uh and they pick about 10 um 10 of those uh applicants for that then the first round interviews will be on Saturday May 17th at 9:00 and then May 19th uh at 5:30 for
the for the first round once we go through those first round interviews on the 19th of May we'll pick narrow it down to that uh that second uh round candidates on uh May 27th at 5:30 we'll be doing the uh round two uh candidates
and then it will narrow that down to two to three finalists and that finalist uh interview will be on June 4th at 5:30 once all that's done uh the board selects their finalist and then we start our vetting process where we will be
calling the uh references we'll start the negotiations and then we'll get it over to the county superintendent for approval so you're seeing that like early June mid uh mid June and then the board would then uh publicly appoint and
hire uh hopefully right around mid June and that would get us to that August one um this is all subject to change i you know if we get through all those candidates and we get through all those interviews and we decide you know the
board says you know what I I think that there's not somebody that just fits that bill then we stop and we we start all over again and again that would be at no cost no extra cost to the board we would just put the search back out
charles I just want So on August 1 right so you said the the contract's going to be 3 years 11 months based off of August 1st um what if they're they're in their old contract for another 90 days does that make our contract
uh eight months so that's something that we're going to have to negotiate you know um they won't be on the two they can't be on the two contracts correct no okay so uh sometimes districts will allow their uh current superintendent out of the contract early um because
we're in those summer months they they might feel comfortable with letting uh them go um it's it's going to be a matter of uh negotiations so this is all very hopeful thinking like I we hope we can get to that point if not we have to
adjust our sales a little bit and um and negotiate that out so this is what the ad looks like up and running on all the sites uh and ready to go but uh I just wanted to point to the qualifications so when uh the board sat
down and we talked about qualifications these are uh some of the qualifications we came up with now just notice that when you say required that is a disqualifier so if we said uh required for all these aspects if that um
candidate did not have some of these aspects we would not be able to interview them so the board decided to cast a wider net and that's why you see that preferred piece um in the qualifications and that allows the board to when they're looking at the
application say you know kind of give and take on on what's important to them based on all the input sessions uh so this was just to cast that wider net um it does give us a bigger pool of applicants to look through so that's
what the board chose to do um and again you can see there that the position is available on August 1 the deadline for all the applicants will be at 5:00 on May uh the 5th and then this is a snapshot of where
all the advertising is uh again we just uh emailed about 900 emails to past candidates uh that were in other searches with New Jersey school boards and we uh send out to all nearby colleges uh the associations all the
professional associations um and even the school business u administrators association as well uh because sometimes people look there most of the time they look on New Jersey school board's website that's very prevalent for them to uh find the ads
so now when the applicant goes on this is what they're going to see is required of them we we did do those custom questions and I'll talk about those in a minute they'll have to have the letter of interest in the resume their certificate their transcripts and uh
references now you see there that it says the last performance evaluation that's why number one by statute you have to have that done uh July 1 for all your CSAs but it's super important um to see that that's something that we're
going to be able to examine so you'll see that uh performance evaluation as part of your application so on May 5th your portal will open you'll receive an email from me and then uh it will be password protected and then you'll get
in there and and those are all the items that you're going to see when you open that for each candidate so when the board and I sat down on the 10th we talked about what uh custom uh questions we wanted and uh there was a series of topics so the board chose uh
these four topics that felt they felt that was uh the most important items to them uh so the curriculum development the financial resource management community relations and outreach and then being a skilled communicator uh so
they will uh the applicants will have to go ahead and do um a narrative on each topic themselves so when we talk about those input sessions you could see there that uh that all the stakeholder input sessions with that data and summary report go
into that selection of the first round candidate the board um will go ahead and give their input as well and then the qualifications from the ad all point towards that selection process so this is what the interviews look like so round one will be about
eight or 10 um and it'll take about 45 minutes per applicant so that's why we have those two days uh set aside for that and they'll be very structured so to be legally defensible the applicants will be asked the same questions by the
same board members in the same entire um roundroin type of uh situation and they will um make sure that uh it stays exactly the same no questions will be asked it'll be just those questions um that we select and then uh we move on to
round two uh and that'll be about four or five people and that's a little bit more detailed most of the time boards choose to do a presentation uh based on a scenario um sometimes climate and culture sometimes uh you know a 90-day
plan their first 90-day plan something like that a presentation on that and then the board members can organically ask questions based on those presentations and then that's usually about an hour per applicant and then
that final uh round will be about two to three and again about 60 minutes and that's more detail oriented about the candidate themselves so uh when we meet for round two after that we'll talk about what task we want for the final
round sometimes boards just feel comfortable in just sitting down and having a conversation based on the first two interviews themselves and then once the candidate is chosen uh the reference checks are done by the board the board calls the
list and uh there is a form that I give to you to fill out um that has all qualifying questions that you ask those references sometimes if uh you know they're not the candidate's not worried about confidentiality at this point they
will do a district visit and um and tour the schools and and talk to the stakeholders and schools um it's not really prevalent but sometimes we do have that happen and then uh the contract negotiations go on with that county superintendent and then once
that's done we have the appointment at a board meeting and that's really um a very nice celebration at the board meeting you know you the vote is affirmative we have um a little bit of a celebration and that way the um new superintendent can meet some of the
community members if they're at that meeting and then I just put here this is the last slide this is what uh the stakeholders input sessions are going to look like these are the questions that um will be asked of them and uh like I said I'll I'll do a summary report for
you after all of this the students uh the students input um is a little bit different uh we do a little bit different for them um but it's it's really so great to hear from them because you'd be surprised like we sometimes we focus on so much things
that we say "Oh this is really important to students and then when you hear what they have to say it's so interesting you know and it kind of like moves the needle a little bit." So I think that you'll really enjoy that aspect of it too any questions
no well thank you so much and again Mr slam thank you so much for all your help it's really been so great thank you thank you Kelly how are we doing on the survey responses 350 that's crazy right
it was so funny the director called me and and she was like "Oh my gosh like Vernon is on fire with that survey." And I was like "I know it's so great it's It's so great to hear from the community and it's all like really good stuff so I I can't wait to share it with you yeah
really exciting yeah so thank you that's awesome kelly I did think of a question i'm sorry the questions that are asked during the interviews yes are they already planned out do we in your packet from um
the 10th i I put a copy of them in there did you i'm sorry no it's all good it's all good but we'll talk about it again at the pool delivery so um when I do that pool delivery I'll bring them again and we're just going to have probably about 10 to 12 we're going to select
them and they have like there's a probably I think there was like seven different buckets on on topics and uh and we just have a conversation and and you all decide which ones you want to ask great thank you sorry yeah but they're uh they're really great and uh
you know they um they help guide us but they have to be asked the same way in the same order by the same board member when we're in there because that's really super important we need that consistency um to be legally disable all right thank you okay
oh my pleasure thank you thank you thank you for being our light person Denny appreciate it sitting here in the dark before all right um item Q open board member forum um I did want to try to
speak to one of Mr um Kessle's uh uh items which was the SAT um I got that number off of the New Jersey high high school performance data um and I believe it was above,00 the um national SAT average is
1028 i'm fairly confident that we've been above that for a bit now um and the New Jersey average I believe is 1049 so you know it it's definitely not the case that you need I forgot what
number you said um in order to go to college because plenty New Jersey is one of the states that sends the most the highest percentage of students to colleges so you know you can get into college with the lower one but we do we are prioritizing and and attempting to
increase scores that is a word goal so just just wanted to uh state those things if that's helpful and we also prioritize the CTE program for um our students who are not planning to go to college and on that front we have 36% of our students who take uh CTE at least
one CTE course um those are career and technical education courses that prepare kids for the workforce uh versus the state average which is 7.6% so we do pretty well in those things um so could you I don't know if you're prepared for the others or do we want to circle back
next week architect so the one the w the wide range facility uh plan was developed on a fl um so there's no uh you know incentive for us to you know they don't get like an extra amount if
we pick something on here um obviously if we move forward with the project they would have to you know do design documents and things like that so there would be fees associated with that work but this was a flat fee and it um actually came in a little bit under um what was budgeted and this is a new
architect that they chose last year going through an interview process as well through the RFP process um and then um I just want to talk about the application that we filled out with the taxes i believe only schools that qualified were those that the state
determined didn't meet thorough and efficient education through funding again that's a you know I've talked about the state and the state aid as well um I believe there are only five schools in the five or six schools in the district um Vernon Opacon Stanh Hope
Byum and I'm not sure what the other schools were but it was a the select few that that qualified for that application yeah so it was based off of whether the district met their local fair share as determined by the state um and then also
the second criteria was whether the district met the state's definition of an adequate budget um that and then if those two criteria um for example if we didn't hit those two things then only then could you have the opportunity to even apply for the
additional exp uh additional authority so I want to correct myself so that's not meeting the local fair share which they have us you know talk about it through an efficient education also when when you raise the budget 2% it's 2% a part of the budget so it's only a 1.4%
budget increase when 70% of it is uh staffing so you know it's it's allowing us to raise the budget 1.4% 4% of the cover for for any staffing and uh program increases in the budget yeah so
basically um salary and benefits are about 74% of our budget um tax levy is about 68% of our budget so 68% of our budget is going up 2% 74% of our budget is going up by the contractual increases which is 3.25% or 3% depending on the
association and then there's also horizontal movement on top of that so the 2% by itself for example this year um wouldn't have covered our PCR change so PCR is position control roster so the 2% tax increase by itself wouldn't have even covered our PCR changes uh or
increases rather uh we had an increase in state aid and when I say an increase it's more like the state gave us back some of the aid they took away previously we're still down about six or so uh million dollars in state aid from where the district used to be uh but some of that came back to us because
they um changed the way so let me go back a step so last year's about a million came back because they found they fully funded the state aid formula for the first time this year uh another million came back because they changed how they look at special education aid
um which you would think they would have always looked at it this way uh but they essentially said "Hey we're going to look at the number of special education students you actually have in your district and fund you based off of that." Um so Vernon has probably about 25% special uh you know students that have an IEP um so because of that we had
an increase in our special education state aid uh and although we had a decrease in our equalization state aid which is connected to that that funding that we lost with the S2 funding formula uh the the positive of the change of special education outweighed the negative of the equalization aid so that
other I think it's like 26 or so percent of the budget um those are things like utilities um you know facilities which we don't have a ton of money facilities this year we didn't actually budget any projects other than the projects at a capital reserve um and then you're also talking transportation you know we're
talking out of district placements tuition um there's not a lot of money in supplies uh you're talking liability insurance to the entire district things like that um and all those things are going up more than 2% every year um so it's difficult because uh as Mr rogers
uh basically said you got 68% of your budget or 60% of your revenue only going up 2% and then you have the rest of your budget the environment we live in where everything's going up more than 2% for example uh I think we have 12% budget for health insurance increase uh we
probably have about 12% for liability insurance increase i mentioned the salary increases already um the CPI for transportation is I think about 3.5 or 3.8% 8% and that's only if they renew if they don't renew that means they're going to increase it more than that because they're going to make you go
back out to bid and the only reason you don't renew is because they want to raise it they want to raise it more than that that CPI amount um you know I think we all know we have some pretty hefty increases in energy uh that are coming up really for everybody um and we're trying to get out in front of that by doing that EIP um which includes a PPA for solar uh which will insulate our
future budgets from this farther increases um but essentially I guess what I'm trying to get at is there's significant increases across the board of the budget the entire budget um and it's very difficult to keep that within that 2% and uh throughout the year we do look for savings we look for additional
revenues uh I do try to highlight that um you know through the meetings and I do talk about it in the budget um presentation as well but um it's just it's difficult to keep living that environment without major cuts having to include programs or staff and we just
have to try our best to um do the best we can for the students and staff welcome all right anyone Carl um so two things first I have a question um I remember when Dr shep gave her presentation on the test scores didn't
our SAT test scores go up like 20 30 points we are uh second in the county and um we're right on Sparta's heels now so yes because I just remember being really because I know the SAT test scores are something I've been watching too i remember being really proud of
that um secondly update to community relations um we have received a multitude of applicants and I'm really excited as to what the next steps will be we're going to be having a meeting soon where we're going to discuss which applicants we want on the committee we
want as many people as we can handled so I'm really excited to see how that will develop and thank you to everyone who applied and again if you are interested the application is it's on the website right i believe so yes and we put it out in the digital backpack there's also
links to it on social media so please apply the more applicants the better we want a heavy community involvement and I'm excited about the state of the district and during that time there's there's a uh I think a Instagram post where and one of my favorite parts of the year is finding out where the
seniors are accepted or where they're going to college next year and so you get a you get an idea of where our kids are going to college and what they're majoring in which is wonderful because that's that's a goal throughout this whole education process we have here at Vernick yeah that's exciting did you
want to say something about the SAT scores i think I stepped on no there's different snapshots that they give us as far as scores so they may have been different than the average or whatever was given in in the uh in the performance data report but like you said the performance data reported high
scores and we do we do look at that in a regular basis and it's a point of emphasis at our uh at our curriculum meetings that we have committee meetings with with the board and if there's a a course of action there's been a lot of talk on how do we how do we what kind of outreach should we do how do we get the
kids to apply for the the review classes we have uh during during the school year and uh can we inform uh parents better because a lot of a lot of uh people in the community think that their only financial uh option is is county college
and with a lot of them find out especially through the FASA where all the kids are required to fill out the FASA for now they find out that some of the other state schools and other schools are are meeting almost similar costs to the county colleges if they're at need so we're trying to encourage kids to to look at other other options
for themselves and uh some of those are the trades as well a lot of my my son's a junior in college now and a lot of his friends are making uh uh close to six figures in in the trades right now which I highly recommend for a lot of our students as well
yes sorry we're beating the SAT like like a dead horse um from like the student perspective too um I've had a couple friends just uh SAT is test like a lot of schools are test optional now the school that I'm going to is test optional it's actually the only school that I submitted my SAT
score to coincidentally but um some kids don't even take the SAT because they know that they don't have to take it to get into competition yeah and still go to college yeah exactly i have a friend that didn't take it at all and she's doing just fine and you know all that kind of stuff but um I think that's
another thing to take into account too because some kids just aren't taking it that scores that you're not getting that you could be getting you know and some of those kids are in classes we're going to say the same thing here yeah we Yeah I I could talk about that no but we want to encourage kids to take the SATs because especially for scholarship
opportunities so that get that opens the the door window they can take the SATs see where they're at and see if they're eligible for scholarships and some of the schools that aren't test optional they don't have to submit them but it g it gives opportunities of scholarships for those kids there's automatic we do encourage kids to take there's automatic
merit for certain scores and if if you don't do well you don't have to submit them so there's kind of test optional we have all of our students take the PSAT to have an idea of where they're at and and when if you take the PSATs there's great programs where you can input your your PSAT results to help to provide
study guides online to help you study for the SAT so it's only the things that you don't know instead of reviewing uh like like I did back way back in the day every single instead of having to go through your SAT book it will give you the problems you got wrong it'll give you a variation of that problem so you
can practice practice practice and yeah I didn't mean to like diminish taking the SAT but it's some don't get hers as well and then obviously too um I think like from the student perspective too I think we it could be a little bit um better advertising the SAT um the
courses yeah the courses through the high school because I mean maybe I just didn't see it and that's fine but um no I I always thought that as well because I mean I don't know I I'm always saying just push it out on every single medium instead of just on the emails because
you know email scrolls down and people don't see it so So yeah we're working on that that's okay yes it's a work in progress okay uh so anybody else right i have a couple so um we've been talking
about the budget for you know over a month now and I think you know I've made my position clear which we all know is a minority position on this board um one
of the arguments that I that I keep hearing is that the 2% cap doesn't allow us to keep up with inflation uh but we're actually this year looking at a potential increase of 4.4% while CPI is 3.3
3.5% so uh we would in fact be uh outstripping inflation and if you take into effect the municipal and county increases which could bring uh Vernon taxpayers increase up to 10% this year
we're significantly outstripping inflation and that would be the second year in a row where I'm starting to struggle uh is the fact that outside of you know the people that I would usually expect to
hear from and thank you Mr castle um I'm not hearing much push back from the community and it's unfortunately making me start to wonder you know if if you have a board
that's considering increasing taxes at a rate that as I said far outstrips inflation for the second year in a row and there's no push back from the community does it mean that the community is okay with that
um and you know I I know that Councilman Higgins mentioned something at the the town meeting the other night and I want to mention it again now if this is something that the community uh is concerned with uh you're running out of
time to say something right we we vote on this budget on May 1st is that right that's correct so um you know like I said my view is a minority one if if members of the public feel strongly enough about this and want
to try and convince my colleagues here uh on how they feel you're running out of time to get that done um other thing I wanted to mention uh I mentioned this to you before Jen uh I graduated from
high school in 1976 and that was our nation's bicesentennial and you know uh high schools and colleges all across the nation folded that bicesentennial theme
into their graduation ceremonies and I don't know when the the district starts planning or whether it's just parents or whatever i don't know how it goes but just a reminder for me that next year is
our 250th uh anniversary i don't know what they call that don't look at me you don't centennial it's really easy i don't know what they call the 250th but it's just a
a reminder for me that you know if people are planning graduation themes and stuff uh you know that's a big one m and uh the the last item I wanted to mention I wanted to thank the members of
our our tech team and you Jennifer for getting me on the ground progress since January there I am i'm very happy about that so thank you better than your picture yeah I was
going to start bringing my picture and putting it over here you're on now yeah you can hype well you can't really hide behind it um Ray I don't know if you want to talk about the the fact that it doesn't really outstrip inflation because of the real numbers in the way
that it works but um yeah so um that'll be I'm assuming general inflation but we're in a school environment so we have health benefits going up like I said to 12 based off our brokers 12% you know liability insurance 12% um we have PCR
going up you know either 3.5 probably about 3.5 or so percent um and that's a large portion of our budget um so while inflation might maybe have an impact on like supplies or ordering and things like that the increase in those sorts of costs it's not really going to reflect
the increases in transportation um health benefits insurance um definitely not energy in this upcoming year um and those sorts of things that are just increases that we don't really have control over right um we go to bid for
transportation but if we have one person that bids that route we need to transport those kids so we're going to pay whatever that that bid is um that's 4.4% of the total budget which really tax budget not the total budget yes so 74% is staff and benefits and
then 20 um 24% tax is tax levy it's uh 68% so it's 2% on the tax levy so it's 4.4% of 68% so it's not 4.5% of the 2% but then you still got the municipal encount so
instead of 10% you're 8% after losing about 10% of state aid over the years yeah so it's it's really but the what I'm saying is I get No I know i I I get what you guys are saying i understand all the arguments what I'm saying to to
the taxpayer right i'm addressing the taxpayer you're looking at a potential increase with with the numbers you just gave me of 8% this year right with inflation at 3.5%
i'm I'm counting municipal that's only our part of the taxes not the total so what I'm saying to the taxpayer is if you're okay with that then stay silent right if you're not okay with that have your voice heard
i mean I don't want my taxes to go up 10% but I want my the next generation of Vernon students to have a good education and I'm willing to contribute toward that because um I think it's important for our town and for our country and then if you want to get selfish about it
your property values so yeah I mean I don't really want to be okay with it well I get I I get all that and that that's what I'm saying if if that's what the taxpayer wants then but it's not eight because we're we're 50 we're 58 60% going up 4% and if the town went up
4% it's not going up 8% can I get because so only first of all because you average what the town and the county and the government do has nothing to do with us our job is about the Vernon school district i don't agree we don't I think we need to I think we
need to keep it in mind of the board member it does not say take into account anything about taxes never mind the town council or the county or the country or anything else or the state and it's a shame that four council members who are
on this board don't seem to remember that part of it because I hear they spoke about it at the last meeting so that's one thing the other thing is with the 4% or 4.2% 2% of that will go to the operating part of the teachers which we know is
too low the other two have is for capital projects which we just got a book with $111 million of projects which will be done over 10 15 years 20 years whatever it is but some of those things need to be prioritized
and we can't kick those down the road because we just look back on what previous boards before any of us were here were doing they put three roofs on a roof that as Miss Beckerella pointed out was probably illegal to do at the
time so they're separate entities and you know we don't deal with we can't control the town we're not here to control the town the county the state or the federal government they all work independent of each other for the most part so but I just like to point that
out and then the decision goes down to and as I talked about before if we're not going to that percentage because if you stick at two most of it is going to be staffing and programs and we we've already cut two years ago a great deal of that and you that didn't go over too
well with the public so if you're looking at sticking at 2% I want you to tell us you got nine months between the next budget you know what what are we going to cut what what people also need to remember is why there's a 2% cap all right because it used to be right before
Christmas came along it used to be that double-digit increases were common in New Jersey i lived in a town that raised taxes 20% one year raised property taxes 20% in a single year right new Jerseyy's
property taxes were completely out of control right because the state was tossing all of its money at at the Abbott political machines and districts like ours were getting neglected right so in order to to deal with that they
would raise taxes like I said double digits was common right so the way that that got dealt with was that they put a cap on how much you were allowed to raise your taxes every year 2% wasn't a random number that's what CPI was when
they did it now of course the correct way to do it would have been inflation adjusted but they did it right all right but if if towns like Vernon keep jumping on every opportunity to raise the taxes
as much as the state allows you're just getting back to where we were 30 years ago i disagree wait can I just Yeah you're done sorry um the reason we have this opportunity is that the state is saying that we don't have an adequate budget that's how we got the opportunity
so in a way you're right they said you have to cap it at 2% we don't want to see these 20% now they're saying "Oh gee you know what you're right 2% isn't enough we're going to let you do more." And that's because they recognize that we need to do more so I you know it's just our reality it's which is you know
in in my opinion what the state is doing is trying to end the run around the state right now and eventually eliminate the cap and then we're we're back to 12 13 14% increases every year the state is trying to put the burden back on the
taxpayer but you know the alternative as they're pointing out to you is to cut programs and teachers and and have our students lose out because we refuse on principle to do what we need to do to do right by our students because and that's not something that I can get behind i
you know it's it's a philosophical difference I guess and we haven't been growing at just a 2% which I think is hard to sustain as well like it we and we agree on we talked about the S2 funding where they cut they took our state taxes and sent them to other districts other than Vernon so we're
we're fighting that as well so the the truth of it and I'm low taxes will be great for everyone is right now within within what we have right now in our budget if you're looking to cut taxes or stay at 2% you need to look at and this is this has been one of the toughest
parts of my job the last three years you need to look at staffing and programs and say what in the staffing and programs do we need need to look at to cut if we're not going to go above the 2% so um one of the things I just wanted to point out and we discussed it in the finance comm I can't remember if I
discussed it um with a full board I may I probably did um but just in case anyone uh hadn't heard it before so last year we had the revised budget and um we were able to get a lot of projects done um in that revised budget i think it's about $1.1 million either completed or
funds reassigned to things that essentially broke during the year right um so this year you'll notice I don't have I mentioned earlier you don't have any projects budgeted out of tax levy funds and the reason for that is that those funds last year from tax levy that
we were able to use for projects this year had to be used to balance the budget so we didn't have the ability to do projects out of the tax levy again but and essentially what I'm trying to say is if that money hadn't had been there that 1.1 million we would have been looking for 1.1 million worth of
cuts this year so my concern is that again this year we basically got a million back from the state right it's difficult for us to rely on the state be like you know what hey here's another million back that'd be fantastic i will be jumping for joy if the state gives us more state aid money back next year um
but if they don't our PCR increase is still something that we're having trouble covering right and there's other increases like I said they're going up sign more than 2% um so that's kind of why when you kind of say you look at opportunities to try to get that revenue that's cuz if you don't then you're
going to be having the conversation of which which programs you no longer want to offer because that's really the only way you can save we don't have a lot of cuts um you know we're not So I think this is a common I'll share so I submitted my budget to the county and one of the comments I got on my budget
from the county was "Hey your admin cost is too low." That was one of the that was one of the comments I got from the county they said "Your per people admin cost is too low move salaries into the admin lines." And I called him up i said "I don't have any other admin administrators I can put in the admin
lines." And I said "Okay fair enough i'll remove that comment then." But the point being is that we don't have a lot of administration here we're not we don't have we're not overburdened with administration we have a low per people um admin cost yeah the idea that Kessle
re you know mentioned which was just cut 10% from this cut 10% from administrators cut 10 that we've done that already they did that we've been doing that for there's nothing left to cut so and we have fewer administr you know as he as he mentioned the county's questioning why do you have not you know
why I just want to make sure my comment is understood all right i'm not saying anyone here is wrong right i'm saying I have a different opinion it's a minority
opinion and I'm just saying if if the public agrees with me make your voices heard if you don't agree with me then either stay silent the way you
are now or make your voices heard that way yeah that's my stance if you do agree with us with this make your voice I I'm encouraging them to come to make their voices heard as well or this time next year or a couple eight months from now you're talking about what to cut
from the from the budget uh Carl so in going off of what Brian was saying Brian's perspective it's totally valid right and we I don't think anyone at this table would say that what you're saying isn't a completely valid
and understood perspective and when we as board members make these decisions especially myself I'm always thinking about that perspective how much more can people take because Vernon is one of the few areas where it's still affordable to live i mean New Jersey has become such
an expensive state to live in it's disgusting but at the same time how can I sit on a board of ed and not think about the student and in my head that always comes first but at the same time we haven't
agreed as a board if we do get approved for this increase to go to the full 4.4% we haven't made that decision yet um and I'll never forget it was one of my first meetings here and I remember we were making that decision on whether or not
to make that massive cut that gut-wrenching cut of like 35,40 teachers and staff forgive me if I didn't use the right verbiage and I remember seeing a crowd here bigger than anything I have ever seen people who have students in
the district parents there was a News12 New Jersey person here do you remember that there is a news camera there like when the public the public is always paying attention and there was a big crowd here when we went to do the
increase too but just remember the loudest voices aren't always the only voices and you have to listen to everything you can possibly hear and at the end of the day we were elected to make difficult decisions decisions that
keep me up at night but it's going to be a tough one and everyone's perspective is valid all right I think that was a good ending note but anyone else has a comic charlie you're always good for one more yeah I
mean I just want to just talk about SATs more but Oh yeah let's Okay policies no I just want to know SAT numbers I think are might be a little bit misleading from what we get because kids take multiple SATs sure but I was
just thinking maybe in the future if we can just look at we have the SAT program which is phenomenal and kids are a lot of kids I think took participation in that we can look at the beginning score and the end score if if the kids took it before the before the prep and after the
prep we can look at that score because I think that shows us more how we're doing and the other thing is um you you know like if we looked at their their highest score right if you took you know because you only have to submit the highest you only submit what scores you want to submit for most schools and if you took
took it five times you failed it four or you got a 900 four times that's going to knock down the average so I it's nice to look at the whole holistic number but maybe if we can look at something a little more I when we talk about that in curriculum I think we need to look at what snapshot is taking of the SAT
scores because there's different snapshots of different uh times that they take it so uh I I I do believe on NJ uh smart it is uh like this window of when these kids took the test but what we what is very interesting for me is I look at every year I'm a big data guy so
I'm looking at the performance data reports it's nice to see look at where the averages were with the PSATs and look at where their SATs are and there is there is even that large growth between their sophomore and and junior year to to senior year as well and the other the other you know I have I just
have more fuel to keep on throwing this fire here so we have do um or if we're we're doing this budget increase right if this is happening are we going to be getting a plan will the plan be like you showed last year uh projected projects
so this the public can know exactly where the funds go to and yeah so um we haven't gotten the application we applied that's all we applied um so the next step would be seeing if we get approval and then if we
get approval the board deciding um uh what if what amount if any they want to utilize and then if for whatever projects they want to move board want to move forward with uh we would treat the same way as a revised budget uh where we'd have a list of those projects and then you know we could provide an updates on those as we go forward um so
for the revised budget we had done a facilities update in September if anyone wants to check it out it's on the business office web page under business office pres all right i got to get the counter got to talk to it but anyway so we would treat the same way where we we would um
do do a you know facilities update um probably sometime in the fall I would I would say um and then uh obviously we'd follow back up um with any updates or any questions that the board had on that uh as things progress because I think it's important for people to see that this is what we
want to do it's getting done or if it's not getting done this is what broke that we had to move the money to you know because sometimes things this is the uh the application we had to we had to say what we were hoping to do with Yeah so um the finance committee Yeah i know
there was a Do you want me to discuss yeah okay do you want me to do you want me to talk about it um do you want to hear it then i mean I guess open it up real quick um yeah um I have one more comment but so you got to look for it
i'll say the other comment okay yeah yeah I got to look for it real quick sorry so and the last thing I just want to say um I just I just I was very extremely impressed with the uh honor society this week um I it was well organized well attended for 2:15 I think
I I got there a little late 2:20 2:20 a meeting uh lots of you know family members um support um teachers um and you know it really well attended they did a well job um I hope it's a very it was amazing how many people walked up
the stage and got more than one um one arm society um you know they get to wear a lot of ropes yeah some of my friends had like seven of them i was like "Oh my gosh heavy." Yeah like heavy neck over there so I just hope that's inspiration to the
other children in our district that um you know to look something to look forward to and work towards um you know it's a hard journey to get there but it's not not impossible we have a wonderful teaching staff that you probably can test to that that will help
you along along this way to get to those that that spot so would like to see a lot more kids there next year it would be awesome but um I liked it it was very good definitely huge sophomore class there so even that's impressive so crazy
okay briefly briefly okay um so these items um you I'll try because he can I don't have I don't have a lot I don't have a lot of voice left um so you'll see in the in the recommendations these items are in line with some of those higher recommendations in the facility uh
facilitywide assessment um so uh one of the items is the Walnut Ridge fire alarm replacement um the uh next item would be the Rolling Hills Primary School fire alarm replacement um next item would be the Vernon Township High School PA
system replacement um and the next item will be LMO Middle School Science Lab replacement and then the last item is Lansbury Hall School PA system replacement so safety security and then um a curriculum based item as well all
right okay are we good for adjournment um item R adjournment can I get a motion and a second thank you um all in favor
all right