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 9 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 to the flag the United States of America
and to the for it stands one nation indivisible with liy and justice for all Mr Hegel I'll Now call the role Mrs Dalton here Mrs granholm here miss Keller here
Mr molfetta here Mr Otto Mr tour here Mr Valentino Mr Weinstein here Mrs Zan here we have a quum Miss Keller resolve that the Board of Education approves the public session minutes of the January
27th 2025 Bo meeting do I have a second second right I'll Now call the role in the minutes Mrs Dalton yes Mrs grolm yes Miss Keller yes Mr molfetta yes Mr tour yes Mr Weinstein
yes Mrs Z yes Dr mingle correspondence and information just one piece here there was one Hib investigation at the middle school which was not confirmed that's the only thing that section thank you Dr mingle welcome everybody to the February
24th meeting of the Board of Education I just have a couple of brief remarks appearing on tonight's agenda as item 7 C is an advancement on the guide for Miss Alexa Toledo congratulations uh we always love to see this um this happen for somebody who's put in the effort to
advance themselves professionally also appearing on tonight's agenda under item C12 we are accepting the retirement of two individuals who've served in our in our district Linda deiso and Jan Brennan and we wish them the very best as they
um head into retirement at the end of this year and that is all Dr mingle superintendent's remarks thank you I guess first uh as you'll hear in our presentation tonight I just want to remind everybody that the polls are open
on March 11th for the special referendum you'll hear much more about that in just a few minutes and while we were at the Warren Township uh committee meeting last week talking a little bit about the referendum there was also an announcement there from mayor lantai that I wanted to Echo here about efforts
that are underway at Warren Middle School related to applying as a national school of car as the board is aware this is a goal we set a couple of years ago that over the course of a series of years we would take steps towards the ability to apply for and hopefully be recognized as a national school of character in order to
do that schools must meet rigorous standards that are outlined on character.org website that they call the 11 principles uh framework for schools and I'm just going to read this to you from the organization so you know kind of what they're looking for in schools
this is a competitive process that requires students in our case which will be led by the student government Association parent engagement and staff engagement in the application process to show evidence of the the uh the different principles that they have in the organization so their
belief is that schools function best when students and Educators treat each other with kindness respect integrity and embrace other character strengths when learning together being recognized as a school of character means all staff students and parents have made the commitment to create a school culture
that intentionally emphasizes and models a wide range of character strengths more importantly we are raising good citizens good neighbors and leaders of Integrity that will positively impact our community for generations to come so you'll hear more about this over the the months uh down the road this is a
multi-year process but we're very proud to take the first steps at War Middle School towards that that recognition thank you Dr mingle we have a presentation tonight so I'm going to welcome our architects who are going to um give us some information and um Mr
Hegel Mr Hegel will start us off about the referendum taking place March 11 good evening everybody um for those that don't know me my name is Chris Hegel I'm a school business administrator here at the district and I myself along with our
district Architects Prince sjin and Michael perer director of operations are going to present briefly on the upcoming referendum on March 11th before I get started um with our brief presentation I'd like to remind everybody that the referendum vote is on Tuesday March 11th we have two polling places in the
township for this vote one will be at Warren middle school so right here in this building the other will be at uh alt off of Washington Valley Road uh polls will be open from 6:00 AM to 8:00 pm um so it's a full a full 14-hour
voting period um my understanding too is that ballots have been mailed out at this point and um so voters who typically get their ballots VIA mail should probably have those in their mailboxes already keep the microphone CL closer yeah okay maybe I should hold it
that'd be good is that better yeah it's way better all right so the Warren Township School District is in need of Capital Improvements to maintain School facilities and to provide for health and safety of students and staff the district has done a really good job
through our budgeting process of methodically saving for such needs through our capital reserve fund and we've done this for many many years and we continue to do this with this year's budget uh the district will receive approximately 34% of the project cost
we're going to talk about tonight in state Debt Service Aid uh through the referendum process that's why we go to referendum for this so you're probably wondering if we have the money already in our account why go to why go to a vote why look to get um uh voter support
for projects if we already have the money in our account and the reason is really simple we expect to spend $8.5 million on these projects that's how much we plan to borrow however when we repay that debt in a year's time so our
objective is to take out this debt this summer probably July or August of 2026 so excuse me 2025 and when we take out that debt it'll come due in about a year's time usually 11 months is what we did last time when that debt comes due it'll go
on our 2627 budget and our our contribution will be that lower number the district cost of $5.6 million at the same time because we've gone through the correct process of getting this approved by the state the state will provide us with
Debt Service Aid of $2.9 million that will directly come into our budget and also into our bank accounts as a part of this process so when that bill comes due for $8.5 million we're not entirely on the hook for it the state's helping us with this um this is one of the two ways
we typically get state aid the other is through our annual budgeting process which we'll talk about at next month's meeting so with a combination of our district Capital reserves and The Debt Service Aid that I just spoke about there is absolutely no tax impact so
taxpayers do not have to worry about their taxes going up at all is covered either Through The Debt Service Aid or through our capital reserve with that introduction I'd like to turn it over to heon from pret sjin and she is going to talk about the referendum timeline and
some other parts of the procress okay good evening everyone my name is hayan Chan I'm with pret s Architects um so just to recap on how we got here the district has spent a lot of time and energy in putting together the project
list so about a year ago in February we walked with the District administration all the different schools and identified uh potential projects within two months of that we uh prioritized those projects and came up with final list and then in July of 2024 we were then given approval
to submit to the doe and what this is is applications down to the Department of Education um it requires an actual application as well as schematic drawings um so that happened in September of 2024 within three what seemed like forever months we finally
got approval from the doe we got PC letters um and then from there in January we put together some marketing boards uh to help the district Market this and communicate with the public uh what the projects would be uh for this referendum and then as Chris and Matt
were saying March 11th is the vote date just to give a quick overview on the referendum projects so districtwide we have the um exterior strobe light upgrades as well as security camera upgrades and public address system Replacements at all of the schools at
all of the elementary schools we have a playground replacement and then at alt we have an interior floor repair as well as interior Corridor door Replacements at Mount horb school we have an interior Corridor door placement and then at Central we are upgrading some of the
storage and mill work within each of the classrooms at the middle school we have also an interior CAD door replacement um a security vestibule upgrade as well as a foldable partition wall removal at the gym as Chris had mentioned um the total project cost for all of these is about
8.5 uh the state aid is at approximately 34% which comes out to be 2.9 which means that the local share would be 5.9 again this is a no tax impact so just to go a little bit deeper into the districtwide projects for the exterior strobe light upgrades um this
is actually the blue light on the top left image um this F uh this strobe light actually is an indicator to help some of the um emergency response teams know if there's an event going on in the school this will Flash Blue um on the outside of the building so that they know there's something to respond to the
security camera Replacements there are outdated uh cameras within the district so just providing an update for that would help the administration um as well as you know the school staff um monitor anything that's going on within the buildings and be able to use that system to response to any respond to any
emergencies the PA system within each of the schools are also outdated and some of them are actually not working so we are going to replace those as part of the referendum um and this will also help um Communications within not only the daily Communications within the district but also in the event of any
kind of emergency that that's all integrated within the district response thank you ham so I'm going to dive into the indiv idual buildings a little bit and the projects going on at those individually my name is Michael Pate director of operations for those who don't know me
um so inclusive of the projects that hon talked about the districtwide cameras security upgrades things of those nature um we're also going to be doing some other work so at alt uh there's some interior floors the pictures on the right you'll see kind of give a shaded area of where in the building actually we're talking about um there's cracks in
the floors unlevel unlevel areas of the floors so we're going to be uh redoing those floors and the interior Corridor replacement you're going to hear that over and over again um we did Central in the past and now we have a plan to do the rest of the schools to not only bring them up to our security standards
but also bring them up to fire code Angel El Tomaso is also getting a new playground you'll hear that over and over again as well as we go through this process Central Schools getting some storage and mill work upgrades as I'm sure most of you know that is one of our
is our oldest building in the district um but the yellow shaded areas are where we're going to be getting some new Cabinetry in central school and a new playground here as well Mount horb the corridor doors again bring us up to fire code and for
security reasons as well as new playground at Mount hor Woodland School again all the other security upgrades but we are also getting a nice brand new playground at Mount HB all our playgrounds Mount um Woodland Woodland is actually our oldest
I believe 1998 and uh even the newest playground is still well over 20 years old Middle School Corridor doors again bring us up to fire code and for security reasons and along the lines of security security vestibule we've installed it at the elementary schools and we're looking
to do one here at the middle school foldable partition wall uh the new gym and as the I'm sorry the old gym and the all-purpose room both have non-working foldable walls um very heavy and we're looking to replace those and
possibly put in a curtain in place again the security vestibules that are proposed that's proposed for the middle school here we've done this at all the other uh elementary schools in previous plans and again using our district Capital reserves and the 2.9 or so
million in state aid we would get this would be a no tax impact as this referendum goes no tax impact for guess we'll open to questions if there is any is any member of the board have any questions so
these um a lot of what we're talking about here are either vitally important to just the student experience like playgrounds or just safety and Communications the doors the fireproofing um I don't want I'm going to knock on the table here if the
referendum does not pass what is the implication these them like things that are very important that we want to do regardless so I just want to kind of open the floor with that um that question actually came up with the township committee this last week and I gave a response there publicly so
I think I'll just repeat it here um these are necessary improvements as you state not only do these go directly to Safety and Security of our student staff and visitors to the building they also provide for um facilities that will be available for public use such as the
playgrounds this work needs to get done if um the referendum does not pass then the entire cost this work will be borne by the school district we will lose the opportunity to share the 2.9 Million from the state um that would almost certainly
have a significant impact on the school's budget as well as the time frames for the completing of these projects and I dare say certain projects would be deferred um as we recraft it how we would go about paying it so again
if the referendum fails we lose just shy of $3 million participation in the cost and if I could add to Mrs Z's response um right now we have enough capital reserve to pay for our share their local
share um we do not have enough capital reserve to pay for the entire set of projects so there would be a deferral of sorts um we we are also and you we'll talk about this more next month when we talk about the district's budget but the
the other part of the capital plan that the board approved in June of 2024 includes um funding of projects through our operating budget that aren't eligible for State Debt Service Aid and if this referendum didn't pass it would
delay those projects as well so it's it's very we can't take a position on it but it's very important to the financial health of the district that the referendum passes do we have any other question questions from any board member I'm just curious um is there any way to repurpose
or donate all of the the playground equipment that is currently in use can anything be done with that or is it just pass its prime um I would say it's passed its prime for sure and I I wouldn't want to repurpose or donate to
somebody and then something happened with it um it's it's beyond its life expectancy and it it's time for replacement any other questions of course not a question don't worry I wouldn't do
that that's fine I just want to make a comment I I shared this in January I just want to repeat it um what for the people watching the video this is the third time in uh only six years that we've done this kind of no tax impact
referendum um with Mr P as our director of operations with the team from pret sjin as our architects of record that's brought in a total if this referendum passes a total of $24 million of projects with the state paying $8 million of that cost which is um an
enviable position that a lot of districts wish they could be in to be able to raise the resources so that we're not incurring long-term debt to do basic up uh maintenance and upkeep uh as I think we take a point of Pride that our our facilities aren't flashy they are extremely well-maintained due to our
custodial staffs our maintenance staff Mr Pat's leadership and architect so thank you for for being here to share the presentation and for that's a lot of work on top of the regular day-to-day work to have those three referendums uh kind of going on simultaneously for the last six
years it's nice when we can get the state money to come back to Warren so thank you to our Architects Mr Pate everybody for your presentation we could and get back on video
here okay one moment okay moving on um we do not have a discussion item on tonight's agenda and we are going to move on then to uh reports from board members um who have been appointed we do not have a report for the first three entries here which is
the New Jersey school boards Association delegate assembly Somerset County Education Service Commission or the wung Hills municipal Alliance committee I believe um the next listed is the Warren Township opioid advisory committee and this is an appointment that's been yet
is yet to be made and I am going to ask um Miss granholm if she would take that position for us sure thing all right Richard grolm will be the uh board's representative to the Warren Township opioid advisory committee thank you for serving um there was a meeting of the
wung hills shared services regionalization study advisory committee Mr Weinstein do you have anything for us there I do um B Morrison member of the Wong board has asked that we share a um summary of the uh of the meeting which
I'm going to do right now uh Wong Hill shared services regionalization feasibility study Advisory Group met on Thursday January 30th 2025 to receive an update from the project research team from the Rowan School regionalization Institute researchers shared the
progress made on data collection and the next steps in scheduling interviews for superintendents business administrators curriculum directors special services and faculty they also highlighted the ongoing work in evaluating facilities transportation and demographic graic projections the group plans to
communicate with the public through local media outlets and a proposed Public Town Hall in early April study process remains on schedule to have a preliminary draft report presented to The Advisory Group by May once the draft report has been presented the next steps in the process will be
determined thank you Mr Weinstein um I do want to take a moment to comment on the progress on data collection that is referenced in uh Mr Morrison's um prepared statements um attending this meeting it became very clear that a
tremendous amount of data collection has taken place and that the administration of our district in particular has devoted many many hours to assisting the regionalization team in accessing and collating relevant public information
responding to requests for meetings with our superintendent ba head of curriculum and special services and providing detailed information related to our facilities our students and our curriculum and as um on behalf of the Board of Education I do want to take
this opportunity to thank them this does go above and beyond what is already um a high level of tasks that they are being asked to perform in addition to running our school district relating to the fact that we are in the middle of a um strategic plan process in the middle of
a referendum process and uh continuing to have ongoing conversations addressing growth in the community so thank you to them really it's been as I understand it well more than a dozen hours of additional time at the very highest
level and thank you to your teams who have been of assistance to you moving on to committee reports uh there is no report for the curriculum and Technology committee so Finance operations and security met on February
18th with all members present uh this was our lifting budget discussion meeting um the bulk of this meeting really will become apparent the public after this week we are waiting right now for the state aid number which I think
we can count down in hours till we get it 72 72 hours or less or less we will we will receive the state aid number uh that number is the remaining piece of the puzzle of building the budget um as
soon as that has been received the balance of um uh where we will be making choices in the budget will become apparent and the full budget will be made available to the uh public I believe at our next Board of Education
meeting um the uh committee also discussed its um continuing conversations with the township committee with regard to Pilot funds and other opportunities for shared services and also uh followed up on the status of
the the crosswalk project uh which is over by Woodland School um the next meeting of the finance committee is on March 10th Personnel negotiations and Communications Miss Keller the Personnel negotiations Communications committee
met on January 27th we reviewed the committee description which we do annually and we did not recommend any changes to it we reviewed uh job descriptions as part of the uh annual fiveyear review plan we also discussed potential changes to the titles of
secretary and webmas to make them sound more current um we discussed options for the revised titles and any implications of the change and The Next Step at the time was for Dr mingle to follow up with the committee with a final recommendation uh we also discuss the upcoming referendum which you just heard
about and the communications and Outreach to the community about it so just one last opportunity to reinforce that messaging the referendum vote is going to happen on Tuesday March 11th it'll take place at the middle school and Alt from 6:00 a.m. till 8:00 p.m. so
the normal voting hours uh and lastly the committee discuss the historical adjustments made to substitute compensation rates if I can just add something um since you brought up the polling um at alt in the Middle School something that we learned when we were at the township
committee this last week is that they have set the polling machines so that any Warren voter can go to either location and use any machine so even if your ballot designates alt or the middle school you can choose to go to either
location uh to cast your vote so yeah cool um no report out on the ad hoc strategic planning committee at this time so we are going to move on to the first opportunity for public commentary
I ask that anyone interested in addressing the board please raise your hand or use the raise your hand to feature on Zoom each speaker is asked to limit their comments to three minutes please begin your comments by stating your name and address and by directing your comments to the presiding officer 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 opportunity for public commentary later in the meeting so looking to the room first and seeing nobody do we have
anyone in our Zoom audience that would like to address the board of education on agenda items see nobody do I have a motion to close first opportunity for public commentary motion second all in favor
I opposed abstain first opportunity for public commentary is now closed Dr mingle do you have anything on agenda items just one thing this came uh after I had sent you my update this afternoon so item
83 which is an ad of District placement I just wanted to point out that that's it's not actually a new ad of District placement it's a change of placement for a student who was already out of District normally I would give you that information in my update and it didn't get it there in time okay thank you does any board member
wish to pull any item for board consideration for a separate conversation or vote seeing none Miss kellerer motion to approve items for board consideration A1 through A3 B1 through B6 C1 through C12
and D1 through D2 do I have a second second Mr H all right I will call the RO on the agenda Mrs Dalton yes Mrs grolm yes Miss Keller
yes Mr molfetta yes Mr tour yes Mr Weinstein yes and Mrs Z yes motion passes 70 uh thank you Mr Hegel there is no unfinished or new business on tonight's agenda so we will move into the second
opportunity for public commentary this is open to any topic you wish to raise to the board's attention again I ask that you raise raise your hand or use the raise your hand feature on Zoom remember that comments are limited to 3 minutes and please state your name and address before beginning looking first to the
room seeing nobody in the room do we have anyone in our Zoom audience that would like to address the board on any topic Last Chance seeing none do I have a motion to close second opportunity for public comment motion second
all in favor I I opposed abstain second opportunity for public comment is now closed Miss ker whereas the open public meetings act njsa 104-1 permits the Board of Education to meet in close session to discuss certain matters now therefore be it resolved the Board of
Education jours to close session to discuss specific perspective or current employees unless all who could be adversely affected request an open session action may be taken upon return to public session for length the the meeting is anticipated to be approximately 15 minutes and be it further resolved the minutes of this
close session be made public when the need for confidentiality no longer exists do I have a second second all in favor I opposed abstain the board is now in executive session
e e e e e e e e e e
e e session everyone in favor I opposed abstain the board is now in public session miss Keller motion to adjourn we have a second second all in favor I opposed abstain the the board meeting is
done thank you