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 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 Al to the flag of the United
States of America the repic it stands one nation under God indivisible liy and justice for all Mr Haven all right I will now call the role Mrs Dalton
here Mrs granholm here miss Keller here Mr molfetta Mr aotto Mr Tor here Mr Valentino here Mr Weinstein here Mrs Z here and we have a
quorum Miss K resolved that the Board of Education approves the public and private session minutes of the February 24th 2025 board meeting second right I'll call the role in the minutes Mrs Dalton yes Mrs grolm yes
Miss Keller yes Mr Tor yes Mr Valentino yes Mr Weinstein yes Mrs on yes minutes past 70 correspondence and information Dr mingle thank you Mrs an the board is in
receipt of one email regarding the district's life policy there were two HIV investigations both of those at Woodland School and both were confirmed incidents of HIV and there was one in school suspension also at Wen school thank you Dr mingle pardon
me good evening and welcome to the March meeting of the Board of Education happy St Patrick's Day everybody um I have just a few comments March 17th through the 23rd marks neurodiversity celebration week which is a global
initiative to achieve a world where neurological differences are recognized and respected as all as are all human variations depending on how our brains are wired we think move process information and communicate in different ways neurodiversity is used by some as
an umbrella term to describe cribe alternative thinking Styles such as dyslexia dyspraxia discala autism ADHD to name a few but regardless of labels celebrating and respecting neurodiversity is about recognizing each
individual's unique strengths skills and talents and promoting understanding and acceptance so on behalf of the Board of Education I would like to thank all Administration staff and community members that contribute to making our schools places where all learn ERS
Thrive and all learning styles are supported I would like to draw attention to item C8 where the board will vote to accept the retirement of Katherine kogler who has been in the district for 16 years and Rebecca mag who is retiring after 19 years with the district thank
you to them for their service to the students and families of Warren and we wish them well in their retirement I also draw attention to item B8 on tonight's agenda and on behalf of the board extend our thanks to the Township Lions Club for its donation in
the amount of $700 to be used to support a classroom project at the middle school and finally thank you to the residents of Warren who turned out on March 11 for the referendum vote your engagement in this process is greatly appreciated and the vote results will allow the district
to immediately get to work on improvements that are necessary for the health safety and Weare of our students staff and visitors to our buildings thank you thank you very much uh that's all for me Dr mink thank you Mrs an just a few
celebratory comments here today regard uh related to some Warren Middle School events first just a few months ago we celebrated Warren Middle School's participation in the American Heart Association kids heart challenge in the new year uh War middle school once again placed in the top schools in the nation
at number six among middle schools for the amount of money raised for the AHA kids heart Challenge and Brandon the student who was here being celebrated was once again the number one individual fundraiser in the country so congratulations to Brandon and all of the war middle school students and staff
who participated in that uh good cause we'd also like to celebrate the Moa Middle School robotics team which last weekend placed first in the Sumo bot challenge at a competition in Bridgewater that's under the direction of Dr Cooper and finally if you don't already have tickets you should get your
tickets to see The Adams Family this Thursday Friday and this year new Saturday MAA here at the middle school they always put on a really great C and so we hope to see you there thank you Dr mingle I missed one thing I do want to thank the board members and members of our community who
showed up for Reed Across America I think we have a couple people here if you want to comment on that experience you can before we move on to other matters no pressure you loved it say that no I I have done that almost every year since covid and this year I had the pleasure
of doing it at Mount horb which I thought wasn't allowed and so I took advantage of it and wore the silly hat and was also assigned to read to my daughter's class so I was uh it was just a win-win for me in that day so I I love doing that and uh welcome
all board members to do that in the future years so go yeah it's definitely fun I got to go to Central School I did a third grade class and a preschool class I read um my go-to firefighter book that's really fun for the kids and uh the preschoolers got to see me actually go on a call which was fun so I
made it really loud when went by with the truck afterwards cuz we're like how do you know when there's a call and I was like right now but it was a it's very it's it's nice to work with the kids and and see the environment that they are in and and to see their teachers work with them too so it's I strongly recommend doing it if
you get the chance thank you guys like I know the community appreciates it so much when they see board members show up at these things so thank you very much um moving on we do have a presentation this evening led by our business administrator Mr Hegel it's the preliminary 2526 budget I turn it over
to you thank you all right I'm gon to not make the same mistake I did last month and I'm going to hold this up to my mouth so I can be heard pretty well um my name is uh Chris Hegel I'm the business administrator here at the district and tonight I have the pleasure of uh presenting the
tenative budget for next school year the 25 26 school year can you advance to the next slide um before I get into the uh specifics of next year's budget I'd like to start with some thank you and those thank yous go out to our uh Finance operations and security
committee uh for their due diligence uh with the preparation of the budget and I'm gonna that I'm about to present uh the committee met multiple times um over the course of several months uh we have our monthly meetings and it became a large part of that uh in addition um Mrs
Zan the committee chair um assisted me in meeting with each of the board members uh individually or in groups of small groups of two uh that was very helpful for us to get to a good place with this year's budget so thanks to all for dedicating quite a bit of time um
outside of the normal board process for uh those uh those important meetings thank you um before getting into the specifics of the budget I think it's important to take a step back and um look at the mission that drives us and what we're doing here and why we're
here and why we're asking taxpayers for uh resources to continue our operations um um our mission is to uh provide our students with a safe nurturing yet challenging environment uh with an outstanding education that engages and
fosters academic Excellence provides for a healthy social emotional development and a lifelong passion for learning our budget is essentially a financial representation of that mission so tonight when we are thinking about all the things that we're going to talk about that are very technical and very
Financial in in in nature we should keep in mind um that Mission because it come all comes back to that the next slide looks at the process that we use here at the district to develop our budget it's a process that
really starts in the fall usually in September or October where we distribute information to our budget managers this district has nine each of our School principles is a budget manager um then our our assistant superintendent our special services director Our IT
director and our facility director or our oper director of operations are all our budget managers so they were given information in the fall to provide us with um budget uh requests for the coming year that information was all gathered and and put into a budget model
around the winter break that was then developed into a first draft of the budget that the administrative team worked through and was eventually provided to the finance committee in February from there the uh finance committee worked through the budget at
that February meeting and came to some um difficult yet important decisions about how to move forward with the budget for this year following that we had those individual meetings that I discussed earlier um after those meetings were um completed just after those meetings were completed we had our
announcement of state aid and as you'll see in the presentation the district fared pretty well with that this year that brought us to um to the ability to complete the budget now that we had the final piece that was done in March it was provided to the entire board through
the finance committee agenda for March um that led us to tonight's presentation and the uh the adoption of the tenative Budget on tonight's cassette agenda um from there we will um have a budget hearing at the finance committee meeting
that's scheduled for April 21st that'll be in person uh in this room at 4:30 and then following that on the 28th we'll have our final budget hearing and the budget adoption at the next meeting in April so moving forward let's talk about what drives our budget what drives the uh our
expenses so we're going to start on the expense expense side of the budget um these won't look very different than last year um the biggest one is our increasing enrollment that drives a lot of the things that we do as a as a district um first and foremost with the budget it's very important uh as we look
to keep class sizes the same and continue to move forward without changing our guidelines increasing enrollment becomes a significant budget driver the others I'm going to run through relatively quickly uh because they tend to be the same each year um
contractual salary increases we have um contractual salary increases that range from 3 to 3.4% those are all included in this budget our healthc care premiums have increased roughly 14% this year um that is not uncommon in the public
sector space um depending on our plan the increases ranged from 8 to 20 2% which is significant we um as a district make Capital purchases each year and this year we are also including some capital projects in our budget so that is included in the 2526 budget as well
uh we also are ex seeing increases to our special education costs uh that have been above normal over the last couple of years and then the last three the pers employer pension contribution Transportation cost and then below where
the zoom bar is it says uh uh Insurance both our for our buildings Auto and workers comp uh those have all gone up significantly in the roughly six to 10 percent range moving on to the next slide uh let
me just turn my page here so how do we pay for all that how do we pay for those very significant increases and um we look at really uh three revenues and we're going to start with the biggest of them all in this district and that's our tax Levy uh under law the board is allowed to adjust
the tax levy um without voter approval using our case for different adjustments they're they're listed here for uh your review they include the enrollment adjustment which looks at U as the districts enrollment gone up in our case it has so we do have a enrollment adjustment this year a much smaller one
than last year the second is the inflation adjustment this is commonly referred to as the 2% tax levy cap um in our district because of the enrollment adjust adjust it's actually more than 2% this year only slightly more because of that very small enrollment adjustment um there is also the ability
for the board to increase the tax levy to account to take in to offset the increase in in health insurance costs that is called the healthc care adjustment that amount is almost over 900,000 for next year and then the bank cap adjustment which is the largest of
them is the um is the compilation of unused tax levy in Prior years essentially the board um not going to its maximum um allowed tax levy which this board has done every year that I've been here and for many years before that
um what happens is that unused Levy amount gets banked and that bank can be used or not used in future years this year that amount is almost 1.7 million moving on to the next slide if we had um this is an if this is not the
recommendation of the administration but if the board were to use all of those allowable adjustments uh the tax levy could have been raised by nearly $3.6 million which would have been a levy increase of 7.74% instead tonight's proposal uh
provides for a tax levy increase of 5.99% which is much lower than that alternative the one above as well as no greater than any of the district's recent Levy increases the next area of Revenue that I want to talk about is state aid and
this is one that's um out of our control in that we are um provided a number U by the state each year that's largely formulaic in our case we we fared quite well last year we realized $3.3 million
in state that's this year this current Year's budget the one we're in right now for the budget for next school year we realize are going to realize nearly $3.5 million that's an increase of almost $200,000 which is a
5.73% increase um that is um as you read the papers that's a very good outcome for our district and we've been very fortunate in this in this area and it's been very helpful to uh our ability to keep things reasonable terms of other Revenue this
is that third area I talked about and this is a compilation of several items uh the first is interest in investment income uh we're budgeting $225,000 there over the last couple years this has risen significantly due to two factors the first being an
increase in um interest rates that uh in general has been seen in the market in addition we've been um very aggressive in our investment approach we now um we have a small amount that we keep in the bank but largely we keep a lot of our investments in treasury bills um they
yield um we actually just purchased some treasury bills last week and that particular purchase yielded 4.3% U uh return for uh the districts summer fund tuition we have a summer program each year um as everybody knows the tuition
that we expect to get from that program next year is coming summer is 210,000 preschool tuition um this number is lower than last year simply because we're reducing the number of of preschool sections by two um so the tuition number last year was almost
500,000 this year it'll be 374,000 we receive uh revenue from some of our from shared service agreements that we do with other District districts related to transportation that is added to other miscellaneous Revenue which includes things like Chromebook insurance and then things checks that we get that
really don't belong anywhere else uh finally we use fund balance this is the school's essentially savings account uh we have a fund balance procedure that we um look to each year that documents how we do this and for the 2526 school year
it dictates that we uh we dedicate $586,000 of the savings uh into the budget for tax relief moving on to the next Slide the um and this is moving back into the
expense budget just so we're so so um it's uh clear to the board and to the public uh this budget includes um resources to keep to provide for Staffing levels to maintain current class size guidelines all basic skills
and advanced supports for for our students including the reach program summer fund enrichment supports so that summer program that we talked about that's somewhat tuition based it also includes an enrichment program um that is provided to students for free and
that is supported by this budget and then it also continues to fund an expanded child study team and therapist staff to meet the increased needs in both special education and mental health so going on to the next slide this is a summary of the revenue budget
just to reiterate what um what uh we've discussed before um the tax levy uh increase is there at 5.99 state in Aid increase from that's dictated by the state's Aid formula is 5.72 um to offset the capital projects
that were identified in the U expense side of the budget this budget does use $986,000 from the capital reserve the uh and then the other Revenue as as discussed ear earlier is a slight decrease and that's because of
the the uh reduction in prek sections that are contemplated in this budget it also provides for $1,000 more from the fund balance from the year before you'll then see that the total budget is roughly $55 million so this next slide I think is
probably one of the most important slides to everybody in this room and that's the slide of how we apply the tax levy to assessments to figure out what each person's individual ual tax bill will be so the tax levy as we talked about will go up by 2.7 almost $2.8
million what does that mean for the average residents we're going to start with the third row there which is the total Township assessment the total Township assessment so the total value all real estate the assessment of that real estate and Warren Township is $6.1
billion that's with a B that means that the assessment has changed in just one year's time by over $500 million which is increase of almost 10% the average home value over that same period went from 900 from excuse me
from 890,000 to 970,000 that's an increase of almost 80% $80,000 or an increase of 8.75% so when you look at those differences the fact that the average home value went up at a lower rate and
the total Township assessment what that means is the commercial property values went up even faster faster than the total Township assessment which means commercial properties are taking on a greater share of the tax levy this coming year than they did this year and
what that means if you look at the last line the average this is for the average home and I should say that your tax situation will depend on your own personal situation this is just for for that person that happens to own the home that's the average home value which is the
$969,000 home taxes will go from 7388 to 7783 this is an increase of $895 for the year $33 a month that is an increase of 5.35% which is actually a lower increase than the tax levy it
should also be pointed out that the tax rate the overall tax rate for the town goes down significantly because the tax levy increase is is by far outpaced by the uh by the total assessment in the
town which really grew quickly this year moving on to the next slide which is the next to the last slide I believe um another important thing to talk about is as we look ahead to 2627 Bank cap uh is an important number
in that it represents the board of education's decision to maintain a tax levy below the maximum amount allowed over the past three years these monies remain available to the board for three years just as I said they represent the difference between the allowable tax l
ly and the budget's actual tax levy so for the budget that's about to um that'll take place in 2627 the one that will start in a couple of months because it seems like we're always working on the budget here um the
2324 Bank cap of 300,000 and the 2425 Bank cap of 500,000 will be available for use at that time uh this budget for next year the one I'm presenting on tonight does not provide for any Bank cap so that's in bold and so that's uh
unfortunately zero so that is um that's where Bank cap will be for us as we start next year so as I wrap up I just want to talk quickly about the next steps uh the next step is for the board and that's to approve the tenative
budget as a part of tonight's consent agenda once that is done um over the next couple of days my office will um transmit the budget and all of the the back background documents ation to the office of uh the County Office of Education for approval there will be a
public budget Forum with the finance committee that's scheduled for April 21st at 4:30 this will be the committee's regular meeting for April there will be a budget hearing at our next board meeting which is scheduled for April 28th at 6:30 and then following the budget hearing at the same
meeting the board will be set to adopt at 2526 budget um so with that I will conclude my presentation return to my seat I'll answer any questions the board may have thank you for your time does any member of the board have any
questions I have two Mr Weinstein thank you so on slide I think it was eight if I remember correctly it showed actually a transportation decrease of 22% yeah so let's talk about state aid okay so these are
um can everybody hear me yeah so the state aid numbers are the only numbers in The District budget that we really have no control over we are essentially given these numbers um by the state and my understanding is they
are formulaically rivet so the way I read these numbers is that they gave us an overall increase of $188,000 as to how they took
$248,000 away from Transportation but in this at the same time increased special ed by $340,000 I can't speak to that okay I can ask the Department of Education why um but in the end it really
isn't that important to know why it's really money that comes as an input into our budget um the one that was most surprising to me was the fact that the security aid went up by 65 % which is on a percentage basis just a gigantic increase um when I get these numbers I
focus almost exclusively on that summary number so I I don't think that answers your question Mr Weinstein I can certainly attempt to get an answer for you um but it's not something that I really focused on as we were putting together the yeah no no problem it was the only significant decrease I saw which is why it stood out to me so I
figured i' I'd ask but if I'm understanding correctly the state determines the allocation of the percentages to get to final figure they they they determine the um allocation of the eight amounts okay and then we create percentages by doing the math
associated with them as you compare them to last year okay thank you and then the other question I had was confirming so in 2025 26 school year we will have no banked cap is that that's correct based on I assume what we
need to spend on this year so yeah so the way the bank cap works is if you look at this year's Levy let me go to that slide and um Mr Miller if you could put up
slide let me see um you should yeah I heard to the SL yeah I think that's probably the right way to right thing to do um if you could put up the slide it's page six it's called allowed adjustments to tax levy
caps there you go so if you look at if everybody looks at this slide it shows the the types of um allowances that we are adjustments that the board is entitled to um make to the to the tax levy each year anytime the board doesn't
use all of its enrollment adjustment inflation adjustment or healthc care adjustment any amount that's unused from those three is um is then included in the bank cap for that particular budget year so in this
budget year we used all of our enrollment adjustment all of our inflation adjustment all of our healthc care adjustment and a portion of the bank cap so because we used all of the first three the banked cap attributed to this budget year is zero
okay thank you Mr Miller okay thank you you're welcome any additional questions anybody just more of a comment I have shared this feedback in the past when we talked about the um strategic
planning and so as part of that process we did a survey of the community including staff residents active parents um I think we got 500 responses and probably one of the most overwhelmingly you know sort of uh
Insight that was the strongest of all the things that we learned was just the support for maintaining small class sizes so as Mr Hegel just walked through the budget is very heavily driven by uh enrollment teacher salaries and so we
had 90% plus of the people who responded to that question say that class sizes was very important to um their experience of the schools and what they value so I just think that's important to kind of reiterate here um that that
was just I think part of what Mr Hegel was covering around connecting you know the priorities of a district and then the actual budget it takes to deliver on that so that said when we first saw the budget we were looking at a 7.7%
increase and we got it down to 5.9 because of working the budget Mr Hegel do you want to comment on any of the ways in which we did that yeah I'd be happy to um one of the one
of the ways that we um we did that is by doing a restructuring of of our PA professionals um that'll be done in a way that um provides for appropriate programming um to our students um but also we'll eliminate roughly a dozen
positions um from our staff roles um we expect those positions to be reduced through through a combination of attrition and and other methods um by the time school starts in September and we um we anticipate that between salary
and Health Care uh we saved roughly doing the math in my head here about $500,000 through that process thank you so just make a quick comment every year the amount of time and effort that
goes into forming a school budget for the coming year can't be overstated hard questions detailed answers debate reflection more questions go into arriving at a budget that supports the programs experiences and class sizes
demanded by our community delivered by the highest quality staff and which supports the success of our students these are hard decisions and they get harder every year as costs rise and enrollment increases the process would not work but
for the exceptional work and support of our superintendent Dr mingle the business office staff led by Mr Hegel and by the devotion of the members of the Board of Education Mr moletta Mr Otto and Mr Valentino who sit on the
finance committee for sure but also each of the remaining members all of whom made time for one-on-one meetings to go over the budget um it it's one of the primary respons posibilities of a board of
education is to uh create and pass a budget every year um it's one taken very very seriously I know by every member of this body so thank you to all of you for the time and effort you put in over the last few months following finance
committee agendas meeting with the business office staff learning about what's happening here and assisting Us in making the uh hard but necessary decisions that um still get us to a budget that as I said supports the success of our
students thank you very much we do not have any discussion items this evening so I'm going to move on to reports for board members appointed to external assignments I believe only one has an update Mr Weinstein Watchung Hill shared services regionalization
committee yes so there is going to be an April 10th Town Hall at the high school in the learning Commons where more information will be provided on that uh we will also send out information uh touching and connected to that town hall to be able to attend in our community
briefing so keep an eye out for that if you would like to attend thank you Mr Weinstein U moving on to committee reports curriculum and Technology committee Mr T so we met on uh you hear me okay so we
met on February 24th and discussed two topics generative the gener generative AI project prod policy generative AI policy can you the winter results can you say one more
time for me please generative AI good job thank you appreciate it thanks for the opportunity um right so going first to generative AI policy we discussed the pros and cons of adopting the St Sate policy which is actually optional we're
not obligated to the biggest discuss was around the risk to academic Integrity that said dealing with that specific issue is already embedded in the board's policies and the high school is also partnering with Bernard's toown to uh over the course of the next year
on this topic so for three reasons a that it's optional B that the current board policies cover the issue as things stand today and C there's a learning opportunity through the high school collaboration the curriculum committee does not recommend moving the policy forward for full board
consideration and then uh the SEC the second thing we looked at was the I winter results and we were can't read my own handwriting sorry inform the assessments have been discontinued at kindergarten level so that's an important update
effective this year uh we also reviewed the trends which are all good um The District's intervention programs and processes and importantly there were no red flags quite the opposite the district is um progressing well trending well and has the measures in place to
intervene and course correct where required so overall the curriculum committee were very happy with the presentation that's it thank you thank you Mr T uh there is no update Finance operations and security so moving on to Personnel negotiations and Communications Miss Keller the Personnel
negotiations and Communications committee met on February 21st uh pretty short update we discussed uh a few job descriptions and a potential sidebar with the wtea and we also spoke about the referendum Communications and Outreach which is what just
passed that's it for committee reports so we are now moving to the first opportunity for public commentary this is the first of two such opportunities I ask that everyone 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 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 I would look to the audience but we have none tonight
so moving on to zoom our Zoom audience do anyone on Zoom wish to address the board of education on agenda items Last Chance seeing none do I have a motion to close the first opportunity for public
commentary motion second all in favor I opposed abstained the first opportunity for public commentary is now closed Dr mingle do you have anything on agenda items I do
just a couple quick comments here so item B6 which is the adoption of the 2025 2026 tenative budget to follow up on Mrs Zan's comments thank you to Mr Hegel and the entire Business Office Team the administrative staff that works really
hard over many months to put together a responsible budget but also to Mrs an as the finance committee chair so you thanked everybody else but didn't necessarily call out yourself for the amount of time and energy uh it takes and as as we go through these challenging budgets um which are more and more challenging because of
enrollment increase so we for the first six or so years of my time in the district I don't want to say it was easy but it was relatively easy relatively easier because we were reducing staff to match the fact that we had fewer kids and so the budget kind of in some ways took care of itself that is no longer
the case as Mrs on pointed out in the time that every board member puts into understanding all those drivers and really trying to balance how do we maintain the the programs and services our community expects of us while being responsible to the taxpayers that that is a very difficult and timeconsuming
effort so thank you to everybody for your efforts on that front B7 um is one of those it's a very rare reapprovals as benign as Internet services except that as you can see in the motion it's at a significant savings
on a month and annual basis and which you what you can't see here is for a superior product as well so thank you to Mr Hegel um Mr regor Our IT director and everybody else who helped to make that happen also reiterate the Warren Lions Club for their support the Lions Club is
probably one of our biggest if not our biggest uh donor of funds to support students and student programs and so thank you to them for their support of that program at Warren middle school and then finally I would just point out in case it didn't pop out when people were reviewing the agenda that item C2 is
employment for next school year 2025 2026 we are in the very fortunate position to be out ahead of many area school districts in our hiring process because of enrollment growth we know where we're going to have openings uh in addition staff that are retiring have
given us more advanced notice than usual thanks to some aspects of the new collective bargaining agreement between the board and the wtea so we are already in the position of recommending a candidate for next school year here and uh Miss Gorski our human resources coordinator and I will be at a job fair
on Thursday interviewing people for the remaining openings that we that we already know about so we're excited to be out ahead a little bit it's a very competitive market for certificated staff members and we have openings and hard to fill places like School nursing school psychology teacher of of autism
and things like that so we're excited to be able to recommend our first person with more to come hopefully on the next agenda thank you Dr mingle does any board member have any item on items for board consideration that they would like to pull for a discuss question or separate
vote seeing none Miss Keller motion to approve items for board consideration A1 through A5 B1 through B8 and C1 through C11 motion
Sor all right I will call the role on the consent agenda Mrs Dalton yes Mrs granholm yes Miss Keller yes Mr tour yes Mr Valentino
yes Mr Weinstein yes and Mrs Z yes thank you motions pass 70 thank you we have no unfinished business or new business on the agenda this evening so we are moving now to our second opportunity for public
commentary this is open to any topic you would 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 um going directly to our Zoom
audience is there any member of our Zoom audience that would like to address the board on any topic um M Singleton good evening Rachel Singleton 22 deal with Trail West I was just wondering if there was any update on the
uh kitchen um that has been uh proposed if there was any movement towards um finalizing anything to do with that it's been quite quiet for a number of months and also I was wondering if it would be possible to speak to um the reduction of
the kindergarten sections um and and the reasoning behind that um is is that to do with the the state a that was Avail possibly available but then became unavailable just just wondering about those two issues thank
you very much thank you Miss Singleton do we have any other member of our Zoom audience that would like to address the board last chance do I have a motion to close public commentary comment second all in favor I
opposed abstain uh the second opportunity for public commentary has now closed Dr mingle would you like to address some questions yes definitely thank you so the there has been no additional work related to the the kitchen um concept but I this is a good
opportunity for me to put in a plug that we anticipate next month in April making a presentation about our proposed strategic plan for 2025 to 2030 what the goals are there which will include an entire category called planning for growth and the idea about the kitchen
other facility needs and and everything that comes with a growing community and a growing school district will be part of that presentation and that goal so um if people are interested I hope that you'll tune in come in person uh for that presentation at our April board meeting and the kitchen will be part of
that conversation as far as the preschool sections Miss Singleton you got it exactly right we increase sections this year thinking that we were going to get increased state aid and so we needed to make sure we were full in compliance with the preschool expansion Aid as people might have seen the amount of
money the state is giving to districts for that program has gone from 40 million to 20 million and next year to $10 million for for new school districts to become a part of it we unfortunately were not selected as one of those districts and so without that state aid we couldn't justify making cuts to other
parts of the budget to support a program that is not mandated which is why we decided to reduce preschool a little bit um at this time thank you thank you Dr mingle and I believe that wraps us up Miss Keller motion to
adjourn motion all in favor I opposed abstain okay we are done thank you everybody for your time and attention