##VIDEO ID:-1ZnGFlmYOg## the adequate notice of this regular meeting as required by the open public meetings Act was provided by the posting mailing delivery and filing of this notice on January 9th 2025 this notice was on that date posted on the bulletin board in the township office sent to The Courier News and tap into Warren and filed with the Township Clerk of the township of Warren all in accordance with the requirements of the open public meetings act please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance Ali United States ofce Mr Hegel I'll Now call the role Mrs Dalton here Mrs grolm here miss Keller here Mr molfetta Mr Otto Mr tour here Mr Valentino here Mr Weinstein here and Mrs on here we have a quorum resolve that the Board of Education approves the public session minutes of the January 6 2025 board meeting do we have a second second I'll call the role in the minutes Mrs Dalton yes M grolm yes Miss Keller yes Mr Tor yes Mr Valentino yes Mr Weinstein yes and Mrs on yes minutes past 70 correspondence and information Dr mingle thank you Mrs z uh nothing to report correspondence in the Hib report there were two investigations both at Mount horb school one was confirmed one was not and nothing to report in the suspensions tonight thank you Dr Mingo good evening and welcome to the January 27th meeting of the Warren Board of Education just a quick couple of comments appearing on tonight's agenda s C4 uh the board will be approving the retirement of three long serving members of the district um we are really very blessed that we have so many um professionals uh in our district that have served here uh decade over decade um so with congratulations best wishes and some regret we will be saying at the end of the year goodbye to Dr Cooper who has served since 1997 and that's 28 years by my count M La blonde who has served in our district since 2001 for 24 years and Miss Lathrop who has served in the district since 200 7 18 years um we wish them all the very best and uh congratulations as they enter into retirement also appearing on tonight's agenda as C5 we have reason to offer congratulations to some of our other staff members who are advancing on the guide this is one of two opportunities in the course of the Year where um staff members are um given the opportunity to advance on the guide as they demonstrate their continued commitment to their professional growth in education so congrat congratulations to miss Middleton Miss Scalia Miss Glenn Miss Shey and Miss Carol um again the district is very fortunate to have um the high quality long serving staff that uh teach our children and and serve the um the members of our district and with that Dr Mingo thank you Mrs an I just have uh one thing for this section tonight which is if I could read a resolution from the state of New Jersey Board of Education which was in honor of New Jersey school board recognition month which is January whereas the New Jersey state board of education has established rigorous standards through its promulgation of the New Jersey student learning standards which set the expectations of academic achievement for nearly 1.4 million public school children and whereas New Jersey's locally elected and appointed Boards of Education play a vital role in ensuring that their local school districts meet state standards and adhere to state and federal education statute and regulations with the goal of preparing all students for college in the workplace thereby enabling them to compete in a global economy and whereas New Jersey's 5,000 nonpartisan local Board of Education members and Charter School trustees are public servants who dedicate their time without pay or benefit to the oversight of School District Operations through sound financial practices and comprehensive policies on curriculum Staffing and other areas to ensure the well-being and academic achievement of all students in the district it goes on to recognize that it's the efforts of local school board members like R9 here and Warren that are what bring to life the state's uh aspirations and education and so joining acting commissioner Kevin deer I thank all the members of the Warren Township Board of Education it is truly in many ways a thankless volunteer job in in some cases but hopefully you all know how appreciated you are by the administration and by our staff and students and families thank you Dr mingle moving on to presentations we do have a presentation of the audit report by Mr Steve McDermot um sir mind good evening again my name is Steve mcdermit I'm the audit manager with suban company responsible for the 2024 fiscal year audit uh we completed a majority of the field work back in August but there were some loose ends that got tied up in December and we were able to issue our report it was just before the last board meeting so we couldn't make that one but um that's why we scheduled it for tonight um as part of our audit we released two reports one of them being the AER or the annual comprehensive financial report that would be the larger report if you had the the hard copies it contains the financial statements the audit opinion the notes to the financial statement and the statistical section we also put out the AMR or auditor management report and this contains our findings if there were any on different areas of compliance such as administrative practices uh purchasing programs Food Service the application for uh state aid Student Activities Transportation Capital assets and all the different areas the Department of Education requires us to comment on um it's a fairly short presentation tonight because the fin in and recommendations are none um there were no material adjustments or you know significant findings that are reported and the audit opinion is unmodified which is the kind of opinion that you definitely want so I will move on to going over a brief summary of the fund balances so your general fund is your main operating fund and on the budgetary basis the grand total of the fund balance was 11 million 95943 and that appears in the act for an exhibit C1 if you were to look at that and the breakdown of that is your um yearend incumbrances are 393,000 your excess Surplus from the previous year fiscal year 23 that is being used in this year that we're currently in now is 585 ,000 your restricted reserves you have capital reserve of 6,959 315 a maintenance reserve of 118,00 emergency reserve of 11,659 and the unemployment Reserve is 53577 and then your unassigned fund balance which is the maximum that you're allowed to have based on the state's calculation is 1,96 544 I just want to go over a few things that are going to be changing in the government accounting world that would affect your reports in the coming years so uh gby which stands for the government Accounting Standards Board puts out their pronouncements periodically and number 101 is being implemented in the year that we're in right now for the financial statements and I'll just read their summary from gby the objective is to better meet the information needs of financial statement users by updating the recognition and measurement guidance for compensated absences that would be your your sick pay your vacation pay any any pay that you're entitled to acrew of that nature the objective is to be achieved by aligning the recognition and measurement guidance under a unified model and by amending certain previously required disclosures um unfortunately there's not a whole lot of guidance out there on that yet so that'll be our new reason to delay things probably in the future which is you know unfortunately the way things tend to go when we're waiting for uh guidance on changes from various departments um we also have this is a little bit farther out the single audit threshold will be changing for the fiscal year 26 um the the way the language puts it it's effective for years beginning on or after October 1st 24 the federal single audit threshold will increase from 750,000 to 1 million and that is a Federal Regulation but the state tends to follow suit with that we don't have definitive uh you know word on that yet but we do anticipate that the the state would also go up to 1 million and what that affects is um how and how often and how we select individual Grant programs for testing um you guys were above the the threshold for federal the past couple of years with the covid grants but once those grants go away there's a chance that you could dip back below the threshold once the threshold goes you know up to 1 million so it could affect you guys a little bit for the audit um so at this time if you have any questions related to anything I said or anything that you've seen in the reports I'd be happy to answer them does any board member have any questions okay thank you very much thank you very much Mr mcdermit um before the board moves on though I I do want to call out um our business office uh Mr Hegel and the business office staff to receive an audit report with no recommendations completely unmodified is your hard work and um we are um very proud of you and very grateful so Mr Hegel I hope you share this with h your staff and I see Mr Metta wants to join me I second there we are um exactly the kind of audit report we love sitting through so thank you Mr mcder thank you Mr Hegel thank you business office staff a lot of hard work goes into that I'll second that and just say you know it's always a pleasure to work here the staff is great to work with and even though there's usually a few loose ends that uh take us into the winter months when we're here in the summer everything you know really goes smoothly so we we appreciate that very much okay I love hearing that that's great and I'll let them all know that first thing tomorrow morning yeah please do have them look at this part of the uh video maybe how much the board appreciates them all right have a good night guys thank Youk you thank you very much pardon me wait Mr Hegel to return sorry we wait for Mr Hegel to find his seat again no it's quite all right we can be a little loose a little bit okay so we're going to move on to the board's discussion item annual the Warren board reviews discusses and reapproved its board Norms of communication and operations uh these Norms are unique to the Warren board and in fact have acted as a model to other districts who have sought to establish similar standards the purpose of the Norms is to ensure effective governance and decisionmaking ensure transparency to the public and to each other and to provide the administration and experts who advise the board an opportunity to adequately prepare information for board and committee members this is when the board is most effective when every member has the same information and the time to prepare whether it's by reading that information asking questions undertaking additional reflection or research when the Administration has the opportunity to gather relevant districtwide information Andor outside expert advice and when the public has been given adequate notice on our agendas of possible board action or discussion on a given topic we avoid whenever possible bringing any matter to the a board vote that has not enjoyed this level of preparation and discussion unique to Warrant Is our commitment to use of our committees as an effective way of organizing the work of the board and acting efficiently but also with complete transparency to all board members committees only take up topics that have been delegated to it by the whole board and each committee agenda is circulated to the whole board in advance of any committee meeting this allows all board members to be equally informed about topics and supporting information being discussed at the committee level each board member can rely on the chairperson to limit committee work to items that have been noticed in this way to ensure this level of transparency and efficiency we ask that each board member abide by the flow of information detailed in the Norms regarding committee meeting agenda meeting expectations and communication the Norms also address communication between members at board meetings the goal again is to give every board member the opportunity to be adequately prepared and heard on any topic before the board for for discussion we always treat each other with respect and with the goal of acting in the best interest of the district and our constituents to ensure transparency efficiency and mutual respect among board members we ask that each board member abide by the Norms as they relate to the conduct of board meetings finally to ensure that every board memb concerns receive due attention we ask that board members abide by the Norms as it relates to raising issues for inclusion in committee and board agendas again we want to make sure that members and very importantly the public all receive adequate notice of board discussion and actions and I prepared that overview in part just because that allows all of us to kind of know what we're talking about but also sometimes I don't think the public knows how unique the waren board is in our board Norms of communication um I have been approached Myself by representatives of other boards who have come to us and ask can share that with us um and know some something that we can model um a prior president of the Board of Education actually did a presentation of this with Dr mingle at the New Jersey school board association annual meeting um their big convention um so this is unique it's it's special and um we revisit it every year and um and this is an OP that is this opportunity to do that so with that kind of overview I'm going to ask if any board member wants to discuss any changes um the anything you'd like to bring up with regard to these board Norms nope okay these will appear on the agenda for the board's read-option I believe the next agenda okay fabulous thank you very much moving on to committee reports um curriculum and Technology committee Mr tour so uh the curriculum committee met on the 21st of January to discuss policy 5756 and next next steps present were myself miss brome Mr Metta Miss Keller Mr Kimmi and Dr mingle the discussion focused on the proposal the whole board received regarding the abolition of of the policy and was further informed by advice from outside council with these resources and reference points and through the discussion the curriculum committee concluded the following the committee and board will need to relook at the policy at this time though we should not use board and District resources to do so until the ongoing cases have concluded when judgments have been issued doing this enables the committee and the board to have a fully informed discussion and develop policy with all the necessary information to hand to do so immediately invites a number of risks and the revised policy will quickly become Obsolete and again need revising the curriculum committee discussed and reiterated the board's harassment intimidation and bullying policy remains in effect and protect students from actions that may cause them to feel unsafe demeaned or harm in the interim the administration will address and manage each situation that arises Case by case using the full range of policies at their disposal so at this time no other action is required by the curriculum committee a board thank you Mr T Finance operations and security committee met January 24th um with um all members present uh we did we did have our First Responders go off to save some lives in the middle of no oh my goodness it was a false that's good it's very good as a house fter it that's all we got up best yeah oh my goodness yes so I will admit that finance committee lost our two two heroes in the middle of the meeting but it was a fairly short meeting anyway um the uh we are at the beginning of the we're at the beginning of the calendar year but not at the beginning of the budget process we are deeply in the middle of it um at this stage as is customary every January we get the um newly formed committee all uh sorted out with um all the links and information uh this year fortunately our committee is the same is constituted the same as it was last year so most of this was familiar to us as we looked at getting ourselves ready for the next meeting which will be a big one uh so we did discuss the budget process and key budget drivers um and uh Mr Hegel reviewed budget information with the committee um and the fact that um you know what are the most significant budget drivers uh which would be the five-year Capital plan um as well as um the health insurance um that we we pay for our employees and the employees participate in uh the next meeting Mr Hegel is going to continue to provide scenarios to the committee for review regarding potential state aid levels and how that will affect the overall budget and tax levy so the next meeting's likely to be one of our longest ones uh at this meeting budget buddies were assigned this is um again something that's unique to the waren district that we uh do provide budget buddies from the finance committee out to the rest of the board members and this is part of our process of making sure that all board members including those who don't sit on the commit um have access to um uh detailed information about all the spreadsheets and and information that the committee works with um and uh we took a look at the communications plan for the March 2025 referendum reminder on the 11th of March uh we will be going to The Ballot Box with a referendum that communication plan is already in place we have board members that will be attending um uh function at our various schools one of which has already taken place and that will continue through February up to March uh Dr uh mingle Mr Hegel and myself will be appearing on the 20th of February at the Town committee meeting uh to do a presentation on the referendum and to answer questions that might arise then so this is an ongoing conversation and uh information can be found on the uh schools District's website as well um the committee then did go over the commit committee description which um appears on tonight as b11 for approval and made some small changes to the description we've added in a point um which reflects that the committee will be working on um facility plans that meet the needs of for um Community growth um and that's it for finance uh we do not have a readout for personnel negotiations and communication evening so ad hoc strategic plan miss the ad hoc strategic planning committee met on January 10th uh we discussed findings to the community survey and we discussed some of the draft priorities that were coming out of all of the data that's been collected s thus far from the different workshops survey itself um and then we discussed a plan for the third engineering team session which happened on January 15th um wanted to take a minute to talk about some of the I w't say highlights but some of the insights that I thought would be helpful for the community at large to um to understand things that I thought would be helpful or interesting about um what information they gave to us in terms of their responses um so we actually had 500 people on the precisely 500 people take the survey um so thank you to everybody who took the time to do it um it was a mix of um parents of students who are currently in the schools parents you know sort of alumni parents of those who have graduated moved on um community members as well uh and staff um the data was shared in the last Community briefing to the school Community um but I thought this would be a good opportunity in this readout to cover a couple of those highlights there was a lot of qualitative insights that came out of it so what was shared in the community briefing was a mix of um sort of the priorities and the summary qualitative you know um comments I think there was 50 pages of open and ended um uh data that we got back from those 500 people um and then there was the quantitative findings as well uh so I wanted to share some of the easier more digestible stuff here not the open-ended feedback um just note because I'm kind of a data analytics nerd I want to be clear this is not every single 500 people answered these questions so it was a subset everybody could you know Skip questions if it wasn't relevant for them so full transparency um so we asked um participants to prioritize um the top academic programs and offerings that they wanted to see Warren offer um so Steam and core academics Reading Writing and math were definitely got were the two highest priority items umal which is social emotional skills uh came in third and then that was followed close mostly by visual Performing Arts enrichment courses and early childhood education so in terms of where sort of people saw the priorities in terms of programming academics that's what uh that's what the insights showed from the quantitative survey um we asked people to prioritize the allocation of Financial Resources so where would they um you know if they were given the budget what would they do with it right um so there were 10 options uh that people could could prioritize academic programs curriculum was the most prioritized so that was um definitely came in first by a fair amount um it was followed by security and Technology infrastructure those were pretty equal um the fourth and fifth most prioritize were social emotional needs and keeping class sizes small to that end we specifically wanted to gather feedback and insights about how the community felt about small class sizes as you many of you know that has been a priority over the years um the community has said that they feel that that is important to um academic excellence and was a priority for the school so we wanted to see and validate is that still the case um so we explicitly asked about the importance of small class sizes to the quality of education and 92% responded that it was very important or extremely important um and lastly we asked about how important quality schools are to property values and about 97% indicated a lot or a great deal of importance so those are some highlights there's a lot more data to be shared and um we are having two more engineering sessions and the next one is on February 10th thank you Miss Keller at this time um we will go to the first of two opportunities for public commentary I ask that anyone interested in addressing the board please raise their hand or use the raise your hand feature on Zoom each speaker is asked to limit their comments to 3 minutes please begin your comments by stating your name and address and by directing your comments to the presiding officer um that will be move please know that the Board of Education welcomes and encourages input from the Public Public commentary is intended as an opportunity for the board to receive such input but is not intended as a Q&A session following public commentary if appropriate the presiding officer or the superintendent May provide some response for this first opportunity we ask that your comments be limited to items that appear on tonight's agenda there will be a second comment opportunity for all other comments later in the meeting so at this time looking to the audience seeing none looking to zoom M Andrews hi this is n Andrews I am the President of the Warren Township Education Association and I just wanted to take this opportunity on behalf of the entire Union to extend our sincerest congratulations to our retiring colleagues Dr Cooper Mrs leblond and miss lathro your dedication and hard work have been invaluable to the school district as well as to the staff and students of Warren and we just wish you all the very best in your well-deserved retirement thank you thank you Miss Andrews do we have anyone else in our Zoom audience that would like to speak seeing none uh do I have a motion to close public commentary motion all in favor opposed abstain the first opportunity for public commentary is now closed Dr mingle items for board consideration and action thank you just uh three quick comments they're all on items in the B Finance operations and transportation section the first one is B7 we've talked about this here before but I just wanted to point out the first year of our second grade swim program this is an optional program for children in second grade it's a water safety uh partnership with the Somerset County YMCA the sorry the greater Somerset County YMCA it's the Basking Ridge uh location we have about 40 families who have signed their children up for this which will take place during the school day we'll transport them and supervise and we will uh we hope make sure that every single young person in Warren has basic life safety skills for being in and around water which is really important thank you to Mr kimik who's done the leg work on making that partnership happen B8 is a updated contract with alphabest uh many of you know alphabest as our before and after care provider during the school year starting in summer 2025 they will also provide services during summer fund which will give parents another option for additional enrichment this program will can be layered on top of our summer fund program so that children can be there later into the day for families who need that level of service and really exciting this program will include a field trip component so families who sign up for it their kids can have enriching field trips after the summer fund morning so that's a really nice new partnership with alphab best and uh finally in B9 I just want to Echo Mrs Zan's congratulations to Mr Hegel and his team on their successful audit thank you Dr mingle would any member of the board like to will any item for board consideration for separate Vote or discussion um I am going to pull one thing uh relating to policies before we go to a vote there is a policy that came to us a for review that does not appear on tonight's agenda for a first read reading um it was a policy entitled acceptable use of generative artificial intelligence uh this policy is not a mandatory policy it's optional and it was written by Strauss Esme from scratch um I believe probably to respond to inquiries coming in from various school districts little history back in 2018 the board undertook a great policy review I think only Dr mingle and I were here for the great policy review it was fun was it fun um literally every single policy went through a committee process of review before adoption by the board that was binders like this um we have many many hundreds of policies thousands and thousands of pages um they were bundled into groups and referred to committees for initial review um it took months it's a very very long process since that time and with the hiring of Strauss ese policy revisions both mandatory and optional have gone through administrative review before coming to the board for a first and second reading before adoption we do not currently have a rule regarding committee review of new policies in advance of going to the board I don't really recall that we've had many instances like this um where a policy is completely coming to us from scratch and it's not a mandatory policy where we are responding to some sort of Steve action um we recently received this revised policy a proposed policy it's not revised a proposed policy from Strauss ese which is brand new not a revision of any current policy and which is not mandatory um relating to the use of AI in our schools so I am asking the board to consider um whether um that the polic does not appear in tonight whether we would like the board to refer policies like this that have no precedent in our current policies and are not being driven by mandatory um State action review Send this first to a relevant committee for a first reading before it comes to the board agenda and for that reason it doesn't appear tonight so I'm seeking everyone's input on there I agree yeah okay all right so with that um I don't have anything further to say on policies Miss C okay motion to approve items board consideration A1 through A3 B1 through B12 C1 through C10 and D1 motion second all right I will call the role this is on the entire consent agenda Mrs doton yes Mrs granholm yes Miss Keller yes Mr moletta yes Mr tour yes Mr Valentino yes Mr Weinstein yes Mrs an yes pass 8 Z okay thank you everyone we do not have any unfinished business or new business on tonight's agenda so moving to the second opportunity for public commentary um this opportunity is open to any topic you wish to raise to the board's attention again I ask that you raise your hand or use the raise your hand feature on Zoom remember that comments are limited to three minutes and please state your name and address before beginning seeing nobody in the room with us here do we have anyone on Zoom that would like to address the board last chance see none do I have a motion to close second opportunity for public commentary motion second all in favor I opposed abstain the second opportunity for public commentary is now closed oos Miss Keller motion to adjourn have second all in favor I opposed abstain this meeting is Jed thank you everyone