We are Actually, which stands one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Thank you for joining us here in our um Republic Bank Performing Arts Center. We are in this room or we moved
our location. Um, and we really want to thank the student council who's putting on Mr. Washington Township on Thursday for moving their rehearsal to earlier today so that we could have the room right now. They were supposed to be in here rehearsing for Mr. Washington
Township. So that just a plug for them. U Mr. Washington Township is Thursday night at 7 o'clock. You can buy tickets at the door for $15 if you've never seen Mr. Washington Township. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's a different
senior boy um for every month and they put on a lot of silly dances and it's a fun it's a fun event. You can find out more information on our website. So, thank you Mr. Anderson, student council, and everyone involved in that event for accommodating us so that we could have
the big screens. These are the big screens um for the budget presentation which is one of our our most important meeting of the year. um you'll see a QR code or it was up on the screen. It'll come back up and if you use your camera on your phone to um point it at the QR
code that will take you to this budget presentation. Uh what else is in there, Janine? The budget presentation and um um the attached to the agenda we all Oh jeez, you can just tell me. This is longer louder than the other room. Sorry
about that. Um you can tell I was never a performer. Um, we also attached next to the resolution is the advertised budget that was in the newspaper. So, we make a bunch of copies, but we always run out. So, we tried to attach that so everybody could see it. Oh, the agenda.
That was what I was forgetting. The agenda for the meeting is there is um also on the QR code. So, if you want to follow along with our agenda. Okay. So, first up is our budget presentation. Um, if you want to begin with that, Mrs.
We're just putting the QR code back up. Oh, okay. Thank you. Okay, hang on. I'm sorry. Well, I'm not in my email yet, so the site cannot be reached. Let me pull it up on my phone before we do
that. Um there has been I know a lot of conversation and I I hate not giving out information but just due to personnel issues uh you know confidentiality within personnel. Um we have been looking for a long-term
um acting superintendent and yesterday we had a meeting for the purpose of interviewing folks that had applied for that position. We are waiting for approval of that. Um, we're waiting for the finalization of that agreement with a long-term candidate from the county.
We thought we would have it before tonight's meeting, but we did not. So, we are go I'm going to put a motion on the table to hereby approve this is my vision here um Annette Miller to serve as the acting superintendent in addition to her
current role of assistant superintendent for student and special education services effective immediately through the date that the acting superintendent position is filled by anyone else. Um I guess I can share and Ari will stop me if I can't that if we get county approval during this meeting we will
read that resolution. um and move forward with that. But if not, that would happen at our May 13th meeting. So the motion on the floor is to approve Annette as the acting superintendent in addition to her role until the 13th. Can I have a second? Second.
Okay. Roll call, please. I'm sorry. Oh, any discussion? Excuse me. Any discussion? What' you say, Linda? I take back my second. I forgot. I can't take it. Okay. I like hearing more seconds. Usually, it's like crickets. Any discussion on that? And I just want to thank Annette too before we vote because
she has a very big job and she's straddling two jobs and she's always available to us, always willing to help, never says no and is just a very loyal, wonderful person. Thank you, Annette. Uh, roll call, please. So I don't forget.
Mrs. Hardong, abstain. Mrs. Bloom, abstain. Mrs. Baker. Yes. Mrs. Clancy. Yes. Miss Chilla. Yes.
Mr. Li Liberty. Yes. Mr. Serrano. Yes. That was very loud. I didn't hear you. Could you repeat that? Could you say it again, Mr. Ross, Miss Kazmple. Yes. Motion carries. Thank
you. Thank you, Annette. Thank you. Now, moving on to our budget presentation. Did I forget anything else? Sorry. Sometimes it's hard to transition from being in the close session to the public session. Um, and there's no buffer or gray area because
we go right down to the minute. So, I apologize sometimes when I'm flustered when I start these meetings. Go ahead, Jenny. All right, here we go. Okay. Um, tonight is the uh budget presentation. It's the public hearing. So, I'm going to start the presentation. Um, just for
the agenda, I will go over a timeline because I know a lot um tends to happen between the tenative budget and the public hearing. Um, you know, our budget presentation, we just try to include the challenges and description of what's in
the budget. um any budget information we can provide the tax impact. Um one of the things that we always do during the um as a requirement at the public hearing if there's any changes from the tenative budget we map that out um I'll
talk to you about that in some slides towards the end of the presentation and then uh finish with our final budget numbers. So, just to get into the timeline, on February 25th, the governor's budget address um was done
and on February 27th, we received our state aid figures. On March 18th, we had scheduled our tenative budget presentation. So, one of the things that we're required to do is prepare a tenative budget. Um the board of education has to approve it to submit it
to the county office for approval. Um you can make changes between the tenative budget and the public hearing. Um we did not approve our um budget on the 18th, but we did approve it on March 25th. Uh the deadline to submit to the
county office for approval was March 19th um which which we missed, but we submitted it on March 26th, which was the day after um our board meeting. We did re receive approval on I guess what the process is is the county office will
review and approve the budget. Sometimes they ask questions and we kind of go back and forth about some things. Once the bud the tenative budget is approved by the county office, it's advertised. So you probably may or may not have seen an advertisement in the
newspaper. If you didn't see it, I did attach it to the agenda so you can take a look. Um and that advertised budget is a um a a template document that's produced by the budget software. So everybody's um budget advertisement
pretty much looks the same. Then on April, shortly after we submitted the tenative budget, we received word that we were um eligible to apply for a tax levy to submit a tax levy incentive application, which
allowed us to go above our 2% tax levy cap. We were allowed to do that um for two reasons which um I'll get into a little bit more later, but our budget was under adequacy, the spending and because according to the state's
calculations, um our community is not paying their local fair share or what that means is our local tax levy is under what the state says it should be. Um, so if you were attended or saw our
board meeting on April 14th, we put together an application and tried to hit, you know, we sat together as a board and administratively and made recommendations of some of the cuts that uh we were really just worried about
from a staffing um, you know, andor safety perspective and we submitted the application. Um, so one of the things that I'm going to present tonight, that is what's considered a change to the tenative
budget because once that's submitted, I can't go back into the software and change it. So, we had a resolution that mapped out what we were adding to the tax levy and what appropriations were being increased. Um, I am disappointed to say
that as of today, we still have not received approval from the state. they're kind of coming in late. Some districts received them right before their public hearing, some still have not. We haven't received ours yet. So, unfortunately, what that means is when I
do get notice, um, if parts of it are denied, we will have to have another meeting prior to May 7th. May 7th is the final date that you're allowed to approve your budget um, in its final form. And so we would have to have
another meeting just to outline the changes that we would have to make if part or you know part of our application is denied. That is happening to other districts. Um so I'm keeping our fingers crossed that doesn't happen to us but
that's what happened on April 14th. And then tonight obviously is the public hearing on our budget which um we're allowed to have between certain dates at the end of April and May 7th after our um budget is approved by the
county office which it has been. Um just talk get into some of the challenges and some of this I talked about um at the tenative um budget hearing as well. Um, we are an S2 district, which means for a while now,
about seven years, we have been losing state aid. Um, because years ago when when the funding was frozen, our district started to lose enrollment, but we were still receiving the same amount of state aid. So, we have been losing state aid for quite some time. I'll have
a a chart um later to show that to you guys. Um, we have also been consistently over adequacy, which means that the state has a calculation of what they determine to be an adequate budget based on the number of students you have and pulls
from different line items in the budget. Our spending has been over. Um, it was significantly over for a number of years and then obviously as we lost money that number came down. Last year we were about four still about four million over
adequacy and then this year when we submitted the budget with the amount of cuts we had we were actually under for the first time um which is good and bad. So, it's bad because who wants to be spending under adequacy? But at the same time, part of the reason why we've been
penalized every year um for state aid is because we've been over adequacy. As I mentioned um according to the state's calculation which is based on uh our property values or our
ratables and the local the um income of our residents we are taxing under our local fair share. So when we looked at our state aid notice from 2526 according to the state's calculation our tax levy should be
around 112 million. When we submitted our tenative budget which included a 2% tax levy increase it was around 100 million. Um so again if you listen to our budget presentations especially over the years
where we where we were losing for S2 we were dish one of the districts that was um under our local fair share but also over adequacy. So we were um unfortunately one of the districts that continued to get penalized. Um, continuing with some of
the challenges we talked about, um, obviously the appropriation side and what you can spend in your budget is driven by your projected revenue. Um, school districts, you know, we have two major sources of revenue, which is our property taxes and our state aid. Um,
this the number that you see right now, it's a little bit different than what I presented at the tenative budget, and that's because um, of the tax levy incentive application we applied for. So, our original state aid notice was a decrease of about 1.3 million. Um, part
of the tax levy incentive application uh because we were increasing our tax levy, the um state gave us a small percentage of what we increased in the form of state aid. So, we're going to be receiving if if
our application gets approved about $252,000 um that's considered in other state aid. You'll see that um on another sheet, but anyway, our overall state aid decrease is over a million dollar. Um tuition, some of these other areas I'll go into
is just based on projections and what we've been seeing over the past couple of years. We're budgeting for a tu a a a a $50,000 decrease in tuition. Um semi-reimbursement is a form of revenue where we can apply for reimbursement um
for students that are available for Medicaid for certain services that they receive um for whatever reason. This number is dictated by the state. They give us this number based off the off of the number of students that qualify and what the um billing rates are. Um, so
that's a decrease for us this year of around $190,000. And that that actually happened statewide, but we have no control over that number. Extraordinary aid, that's another form of state aid that we get later. We actually have to spend first
and then towards the end of the year, we apply for reimbursement for our um special education students that have um, you know, a certain price tag that go along with them. We don't know what it is until the end of the year. That the
state also kind of like goes back and forth between what percentage of the actual costs they are going to reimburse us. So this is a number that we have to project and we have to be um careful with it. Um we are keeping the budget number flat but we have re seen a
reduction over the past several years. So we've had a little bit of excess but we we no longer have that in that area. um surplus where you've probably heard me talk about surplus. We no longer have excess surplus to budget. What that is is um you're allowed to keep a certain
amount of surplus which is excess revenue or unspent appropriations. Um anything over and above what the state allows you to keep, you're forced to budget as a revenue. So over the years of decreasing budget and just you know
nickel and dimming certain areas obviously you end up with less and less unspent that falls to surplus. So we have a decrease there. Um and just all of these factors kind of contributed to the budgetary gap that we were trying to
close. Um just one couple words about budgetary gap. Really what all that means is when we're projecting going into the following year and we have our projected revenue versus what we think we need to cover all of our expenses,
the expenses are higher than the revenue. So you kind of we spend months, you know, administratively and working with the board on trying to figure out um how to get there. We had a couple uh revenue increases. Again, this looks a little
bit different than our tenative budget um application because of the I mean our tenative budget that we submitted mainly because of the tax levy incentive application. We did submit the tenative budget with a 2% tax levy increase which
was um the $1.9 million you see there. The tax levy incentive application that we applied for was an additional 5.13% um just over $5 million. And then like I said, we also got um some state aid um
because we were able to apply for that. And then we also increased um just miscellaneous revenue areas of the budget where we um are budgeting for gate receipts for a while. We didn't charge um admissions fees and um we will
will also be charging for paytoplay. Um, again, just a couple um points that I probably said already about the surplus. Um, surplus is excess revenue, unspent appropriations, and we've just had, you know, significant reductions to our other expense
accounts, not necessarily salaries and benefits. And then also just rising costs in all areas, all lead to to less money left over at the end of each year. Um, some just to give you an idea, another thing, and you you hear this
statewide, if you you listen to other school districts, you know, we only have, especially districts like us, we're losing state aid. We can only increase one portion of our revenue by 2%, but we're dealing with um, you know, larger percentage
increases in areas of our budget like health benefits. Um, that was 10%. We are below the state health benefits increase but still 10%. um you know we have contractual increases um tuition energy we were told to budget um a large
percent this year and just you know we've found doing our comparisons over the last couple years in budgeting that just you know parts and supplies for things like school buses and repair and maintenance and in the areas of technology just overall uh price
increases um have continued to hurt us other challenges with the budget and then just issues with our budget in particular that that make us a little bit uncomfortable particularly you know as a finance person we do not have
capital projects budgeted in this budget. Um you know you talk about the cost of maintenance going up and when you have unexpected expenses that's something that also leads to to less surplus at the end. Um we have done a
couple of rod grant projects and uh part of the tax levy incentive application was one more project that we're trying to get done. We are in the process. We completed you guys have heard us talk about the energy audit and so we're
hoping to get all kinds of um cool lighting projects and energy efficient HVAC projects done. We're in the planning stages of that and developing what um an overall project schedule could look like. It does include a solar option. So, if you're looking at the
agenda tonight, we're just approving to enter um to utilize competitive contracting to go out for um RFPs for power purchase agreements for solar. Again, that's not approving solar right now, but just giving us the option to
look at plans and get pricing. So, we have again we have no capital projects budgeted which is a concern but we're trying to take care of things in other creative ways. We also don't have um furniture replacement budgeted um equipment
technology not a whole lot um other than student devices um for grade three um we were not able to replenish our um capital reserve during 2324. Just some more budget information just
just for presentation purposes. We have uh resident enrollment numbers over the past several years. This is based off of a count that we have to do that we have to report to the state on October 15th every year. And those enrollment numbers are used um to generate our state aid
notices that come out the following year. So again, you know, down a little bit, but it's been kind of steady over the past number of years. This is just a recap of our state aid um for I guess as many years as I could fit up there. Um if you look at you know at
the bottom the red those are the numbers. That's what we've been losing. As I mentioned we were an S2 district. Um the loss of state aid that you see in 2526 is the number I pointed out earlier which originally was 1.3 million. And
then you see kind of um almost little below the middle of the page is the 252,000. That's the additional aid that we applied for along with the tax levy incentive application. So this has been an issue for us for a number of
years. Um other budget information I just you know this is just a revenue comparison. And I did talk about it in all my bullet points, so I won't spend too much time, but you can see some of some of the numbers there as far as, you know, our our fund balance not being available. Now, only part of that
number, just so you're aware, is the excess that I was talking about. We in the past have also um relied on some money that we're we would be projecting to have at the end of the year. it's getting a little too tight to to feel
comfortable doing that at this point. Um, then you can also see the local tax levy, the total increase that we talked about, the 2% plus the application, um, the decrease in state aid, the decrease in semi, um, and then a couple
of the increases that that is what I showed on the other slides. So again, the revenue I just like to kind of recap because it does drive what our spending is. Special revenue, if you're looking, you know, we tend to focus a lot on the general fund because it's our operating budget. Uh we have the most control over
that. Special revenue, you we're we um budget for student activities in there. It's a little bit odd, but it's basically you're just kind of putting in there um a projected number, but that's money that, you know, we don't have access to. So, it's money that's raised by, you know, our our our student
groups. That's why it's in a special revenue fund. It's money set aside to be used for a specific purpose. Um, we also have our state aid and federal aid in there. Um, most of the state aid that you see in there is our PEA funds or our
preschool funds. Um, and then, um, federal aid is our, uh, you know, our titles and our idea funds. We are we can only p uh budget uh 80 to 85% of what we've received in the past. This is um a
number that we don't know at the time when we do the budget. We again we have to budget a certain percentage and then sometime over the summer we'll find out what our actual allocation is and then we can put together a um a fuller budget for that. So that's our um special
revenue fund. And then our debt service fund is funded through local tax levy. And this goes back to whenever the borrowings were done. We only have one more refunding on our books that goes off in 2030. So the debt service fund
houses uh the money that we need to pay the annual debt service payment. Um so that's going down from from 2425 to 2526. So you can see if you look at the to at the bottom there, our total budget is actually decreasing from one year to the
next, which is, you know, never good news in a um a time of rising costs. Um I try to include some information like this in the presentation every year just forformational purposes. Um just to kind of break things down by category and
I'll just touch on like a couple of the categories, what's included in there. Um we do this by um category. Um all school districts utilize a certain um chart of accounts and each section of the account number means a a certain thing and we
have to account for expenses in a certain category. That's so you can compare, you know, to other districts and group expenses where they should be. Um if you look at that um the the salaries and benefits is a is a huge
portion of our budget every year. um areas like purchase the next one down, purchase profess professional educational services. That includes all kinds of professional services and consultants, but it also includes um
things like uh online platforms and um technology platforms that the district uses. Um and then again repair and maintenance leases and rentals which you know we do have an annual lease where we
um work on replacing buses and curriculum adoption and things like that. So the payments for that are recorded there. You have your transportation insurance. Um you know you can see some of the percentages there which are a very minor percentage
when you compare to the total budget. um down towards the bottom, the capital reserve transfer. That's the um rod grant project I was talking about. Um that's just the proper accounting for that. That's going to um handle one of our capital
projects. Um and then just get starting to get into where our budget cuts are. So just you know going over our budget process. Every year um we start our budget from scratch. So different budget managers and administrators throughout
the district build their budget based on very specific details of what they need. Um and that gets built by department and by location. We have um primarily just balanced our budget over the past couple
years on you know cutting vacant positions and through attrition and and you know nickeling and dimming supplies. Um this year's budget we did the same thing. We also sit down and we look with each budget manager. We look at um what
we've spent over the past couple of years to make sure there's nothing extra in there. Um and just make sure each and every item in the budget is um necessary. Um, and then this budget and
bud the past few budgets that I've been a part of anyway has, you know, we've made eliminations across the entire district. This is just a recap um of our budget cuts. So, we have we do have reductions in staff andor time across
the entire district. We have certificated staff positions, 31.5 positions, administrative and non-unit positions. There's a total of 11. We have um some support staff positions where the um a reduction in in
time or schedule, 75 positions and 28 position eliminations. Um we have 14 administrative support positions being cut. Um we talked at our tenative budget that when we do look you know specifically at certificated positions
um we do look at um not affecting class size. So a lot of those positions are spread among all levels and all different subject areas. Um let's see. We also reduced in the areas we were able to reduce our
transportation budget in areas and that's mostly because we have been able to build up our um our labor force and so we're doing a little bit less outsourcing because we have more drivers for our buses. It's also cheaper now um
than using contractors to lease a bus. So, if we have if we don't have buses in our fleet, it's actually cheaper to lease a bus and hire a driver than it is to go to some of these um outside contractors. Um we've reduced our lease.
So, as I mentioned, we do an annual lease where we we um replenish vehicles and do things like that. We actually reduce that. The only impact that has on the operating budget is one year of the lease payment. So, we we kind of did that to help us out with the budget. We
did have eliminated middle school sports. Uh we were able to add back the high school sports that we heard a lot about at our budget meetings, our public meetings. Um we had a reduction from at co-curriculars at all levels. Um and
then we also asked our budget managers to try to submit their initial budgets with at least a 20% decrease. So, there's been a lot of work over a lot of months. Um, just to mention, um, I just
try to mention what is still included in the budget. I know if you're, you know, listening to other districts across the state, we're hearing things like, you know, cutting preschool and even if there's preschool funding, cutting it because you have schools aren't able to
afford full-time kindergarten in some places. We have not done that. So, we still have our preschool funding on our full preschool program in place that we've been ex lucky enough to be able to expand every year. Um, full day kindergarten is still in our budget. We
are still doing a curricul curriculum adoption in certain areas. It's limited and scaled back a little bit, but we're still working on curriculum adoptions. We haven't cut anyies um at this point. there's some, you know, reductions in the offerings within
those, but we have not cut anyies. Um, we still have funding for our in-house ESP and BSP programs that, um, we brought inhouse in the current budget for 2425. Um, and we're still
continuing with our Google and Chromebook transition. um part of our lease. This is just the major areas that we have covered in the lease. So we have some data and assessment resources like your linket that you hear uh you know our curriculum
people up here talking about. There's some technology infrastructure that absolutely needs to be replaced because it's it's end of life. Um we have elementary, high school, and ELA curriculum adoption. That's probably the largest portion. a small portion of high
school science curriculum adoption. Um we're replacing buses. Um for those of you that that don't know, you can only keep bus school buses on the road for a certain number of years. So we have a replacement cycle to make sure um we keep replacing the ones that have to go
off the road. Um and then I mentioned before we have student devices being replaced for grade three. Um this is the recommended tax levy increase that we're presenting in the budget tonight. So the total um you've
seen these numbers on other slides, but it's over $7 million. It includes the original 2% that we proposed in the tenative budget along with the 5.13 that we applied for in our tax levy incentive application.
And you can see as as it stands right now, our tax levy is around 105 million. Again, just going back to the state's calculation, their calculation, it it should be around 112
million. Um, this is just a recap again, the the the 2% plus the 5.13. Um the gray area in the middle is um according to the tax assessor an average assessed home in Washington
Township. So it gives you the annual the impact of this increase basically on the average home. So you see the annual increase to the right and the monthly increase. Okay. The next few slides is going going to review the changes that
happened between the tenative budget and um the adopted budget. There's only two areas. This is the first one where we made changes um from within the budget. So sometimes what happens is you know either you're struggling to try to put
something back or as in this case you get final numbers after you submit the tenative budget and you can kind of decide what to do with that. um and then propose the change at the public hearing. And then what happens after the public hearing once the budget is
approved, we go we go back into the state software, our county office is aware of all this and then we can update the budget to its final budget form. So this is what we did within the budget. We heard a lot about the um athletics
that were reduced at the the the high school programs. Um, so the decrease in appropriations that you see at the top, that's where we had um, our numbers for health benefits came in a tiny bit lower than what I had them in the tenative budget. So, we're taking some money from
there. And then there was a um, upon further review of the athletics budget, a program that will not be needed, a technical a tech program, not a a sports program that is not needed for next year. that came to
$64,710. And then we're adding back to the line items that were originally reduced for the the sports that we outlined in the tenative budget. And then the next couple of slides is the only other changes is just
outlining again which we did um we did this at our April 14th meeting if you were here and it was all outlined in the resolution. So this is the increase in revenues. So, this is the revenue side of the tax levy incentive application
that we filed. Um, just over $5 million is the actual tax levy. So, that's going to be the increase. And then the 252,000 is the incentive aid or the aid that the state offered us in order to, you know,
incentivize this. Um there's a couple slides here, so it's not going to add up till you get to the bottom, but um some of the areas that we added back, you'll see the the first couple of blocks is for um the salaries
in the area of um assistance on the special ed side. We had some staffing concerns from our original cuts and took the opportunity to um to fix some of that. Um we also had some area cuts in the areas of um guidance and we were a
little uncomfortable with that as well. So we um included that as part of our application. So you see the salaries along with the corresponding um health benefits. there was some reduction in the custodial services area that we were
you know super worried about not just um coverage covering the areas but also staffing um some of the positions. So we um took the opportunity to correct that. Um we had some concern we had some
secretarial um air reductions in the area of um some secretarial positions. Um we we again were super worried about coverage for some of the buildings and the offices that they were reduced from. So you see the um this the salary lines there along
with corresponding benefits to correct some of those concerns. Um and then the last couple are um let's see this is salaries for funding needed for um support staff
salary increases. And then the very last item that's the count number starts with the 12, the 915,000. This is the safety related U project I told you about. One of the reasons why we wanted to get this project in particular done is because
um we did apply for a ROD grant. So we were awarded we were able to get 40% of this project funded by the state. So whenever you get that, you want to take advantage. And then this particular project is um not not as energy it's
energy efficient but not in the way that would really help um with our energy audit. So we wanted to kind of take care of this one in particular. So then that'll give us the flexibility to hopefully add more um energy efficient H
you know lighting and HVAC uh type project tend to be more beneficial um when you're doing an energy audit and an energy savings improvement program. So we wanted to go ahead and get this project taken care of. So that's the total you saw the increase of the 5.2 on
the re revenue side and then um those are all the expenses. So if you looked at the advertised budget, you looked at the tenative budget, and then you look at the final budget, the changes that I just mapped out on the slides are the only changes that are
happening. And then this is just the total budget by fund I like to put up there. Um because if you're looking at the resolution, this is the total budget that we'll be submitting. And that's it. Thank
you. Uh any discussion? or are we all talked out? Okay. Well, while you're thinking about that, of course, you can make a comment at any time. We will take a report from the director of data, technology, registration, and school community outreach, Mr. Mike Dilio, who will
update us with a report. project graduation. And so I wanted to publicly thank them. Um over the last week prior to spring break, we had people's choice in all three middle schools and in um the high school as well. Um it's such a nice event that
happens at the secondary level where in this particular year approximately 140 or 150 kids were celebrated for just being good, honorable human beings that represent the culture of their schools in a positive way. And I wanted to um
congratulate all of those students and thank all of that the staff members that joined in that event. Um special shout out on April 16th. I don't know if you noticed CBS and then ABC News showed up to celebrate um our high school
engineering club that's advised by Mr. Gollesvki. Um they hosted their second annual spring fling catapult competition. The event and the scholarships were established last year uh to celebrate the life and memory of Sophia Bennett, a sophomore who was an
engineering student and tragically um lost her life in a in a motor vehicle accident last year. So, this event raised over $400 and that will go directly to that scholarship to be first awarded in 2026, which would have been the year that Sophia graduated. And this
year's spring fling featured a golf themed nearest hole contest featuring students design construction trebuchets and catapults. And the event allowed our ear our engineering students the opportunity um to show off their STEM skills by having a ball or a cantaloupe
or a head of lettuce go flying. And the competition team from Washington Township consisted of the engineering club was captained by senior Lily Henderson and juniors Josiah Carter, Spencer Cade, and Jaden Ramos. And the m machine was constructed over the course
of the year culminating uh with the culmination of a 100 hours of iteration and design and competition. um the contest at the at University of Delaware team featured um WTHs alumni George
Fitzgerald as well. So um UDL won that competition and uh that's a major accolade to our STEM program as well as our engineering club. So kudos to Mr. Golashesky and his team. Um some plug for some upcoming events. Wednesday. Uh
tomorrow it's district art night out here in the core and it's from 5:30 to 7:30. Selected works from all buildings K through 12 will be on display tomorrow evening. Hope you can join us. And then Thursday 51 is Mr. Washington Township
up here on the stage. Make sure you purchase your tickets for the fun event. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Dilio. Can I have a motion to approve the letters of discipline and correspondence? Motion approve.
Second and a second. Second. All in favor? I Can I have a motion to approve the minutes for January 7th, January 21st, January 28th, February 18th, February 25th, March 18th, and March
25th executive and public session. Discussion. You have discussion. We have to make a motion and second motion on the table yet. Can I have a motion to approve? Motion. Motion. Second. Okay. Discussion.
Um, I had asked about something on the 17 25 minutes that was not included in executive, but I never heard back about that. But I don't really think we can discuss it in public. Pat, it's extremely hard to hear you
over here. Oh, yeah. We're having trouble. I had asked a question about the executive minutes on 1725. I think I think I sent it to you, Annette, Julie, and Steve. I never heard
back about that. Yeah, that that's something we can't discuss in public. Um, so I can vote just no on that at this point. That that's correct. Okay. Thank you. Just just want to make sure. Can we table that then? Because I I raised the
same question on yesterday. Okay. So, okay. So, are you saying just vote no if you don't agree to the accepting the minutes? So, to clarify, any of you can make a motion to amend the minutes? That's obviously not up to me. That's up to you. if you wanted to make a motion to amend the minutes. I
don't know that anybody and I don't want to speak for the rest of the board. I don't know that if anyone on this board has seen the proposed motion that or the proposed amendment that you made. So I would suggest that if if they haven't, you would have to bring that up to them at another time on in executive. Okay.
Correct. Can we can we hold off on that and talk about it on the 13th then? Yeah. or or are we able to table table the the minutes for the seventh because there are some concerns. You guys could vote on the motion right now and if there's not enough people to pass it then you could finish the discussion as
you guys attempt to amend them however you're looking to amend them. I mean what I'm saying is we can't we can't table one of them. We have to vote no on all of them. Oh no. You you somebody could make a motion to table one of the items if that's what you want to do. Okay. Okay, I'd like to bring I'd like
to make a motion then that we table uh January 7th's minutes so that we could talk in executive on the 13th. Just to be clear, January 7th only. Correct. Yeah, January 7th. So if somebody both both of them on January 7th January 7th
and 21 I think she said just 20 21st. So your motion would be for January 7th and January 21 to be clear. I'll make a motion. Okay. So, this is not a roll call vote, but I'm going to roll call it, I guess, because there's that.
Oh, did any can someone second Conniey's motion if you agree? Anyone? She wants to table January 7th and January 21st executive session minutes for further discussion and then you can vote yes to the rest or no to the rest. So, we need
a second on that or I second. I second. Okay, Pat seconds. So now I'm going to say all in favor. If you vote yes, then you're approving all of the minutes except for discussion. No, no, no. You guys need to have a discussion on Conniey's motion to table those two
items and then you'll vote to table those two items if if the board members want to table those two items and then you can vote on the remaining items. So any discussion? Yes. So, I think we've tabled this once before and I just the only thing it
we're in April 29th and we've approved no minutes for the year. So, if it's going to be tabled, action needs to be taken and we need to vote on it. I mean, I don't know how material your changes are, but if they're not that material, I would say
we we can't hear. It's not that we can't hear. Can you hear me? All of this is muffled. Sound system is terrible. So I'm saying, can you hear me now? Yes. All right. You can't hear me now. It's April 29th. We have approved zero
minutes for the entire year. Um, which just isn't a good look. So, we've tabled these particular minutes before, if I remember correctly. If we're going to table them again, we need to take action to amend them. If not, and the changes aren't material, let's approve them and
move on. I brought this up last month, too, and nothing happened with it. The problem is they're executive session minutes, so we can't talk about them in public. What I think I can say is that Mrs. Blom shared with me um things that
happened in executive session when I wasn't in the room and that were said and so um I guess those of you who were in the room would need to approve adding that to the minutes. The January 21st minutes have very like sort of some
language in them that seem that that comments on people's like intention or attitude which really shouldn't be in minutes. So I think that's what it is is to try and just get like basic this is what happened the nature of the thing and to have complete minutes. So I you
know I don't know we can't say like yes it's April that's frustrating but we don't update the minutes. So she has been asking okay so how about if we table them we go back into executive tonight we work this out and we come back and take action and vote and
approve them. Can everybody agree to stay? I'm okay with that. Yes. Fine by me. I'm okay with that. Okay. So, the motion on the table is to prove approve everything except for Why don't we table the whole thing, talk about it in executive, and come back out and vote
on them. I No, I I think we should approve the ones that we can approve just we get those out there and then let's just deal with those two executives. So, at least we got some minutes approved for the quarter. And the current motion on the table is just to table those two, January 7th and 21st. You guys should vote on that and
then proceed to the remaining two. And it should be noted that the ones from January were not ever mentioned until March. So even though they're late, they're late now by a month. We didn't have them on the agenda until March.
Right. Right. Okay. So I have a problem with tableabling the whole thing. It's a two. Okay. Um, so we're tableabling January 7th and January 21st. The motion is to approve everything except for that, which we
will table. I think it's cleaner to table the whole thing, talk about it later, but we'll table those two things, talk about the main exact, come back out and vote on just those two things. Okay. Okay. So, we're going to vote to table
the two minutes January 7th and January 21st. Um, all in favor any executive just executive for those two dates, right? Correct. Yes. All in favor? I I
Okay. Now we have a motion to approve everything else executive and regular session from January 28th, February 18th, February 25th, March 18th, March 25th. Motion second. Okay. All in favor? I I I
just have one thing. Uh Julie, already had discussion. Um if it could just be noted, I'm abstaining on March 18th and March 21st just because I wasn't here those two days. Okay, he abstained. You got that even though
it wasn't all in favor? March 18 and 25 18th of March and January 21st. it. There's it's nothing major here. It's just, you know, if you read through the minutes like it's, you know, when you read every single thing, you just want
it to be right. That's all. Nothing nefarious. Okay. Old business. Um, by the way, if anyone wishing to speak on um to the board at the microphone or especially if you want to um make public comment regarding the budget presentation, please take a card. Where
are the cards? Are they in the back? On the table. Uh on the table in the back. take a take a card. Please fill out your name um and your address and the things that you want to talk about. And the reason why I want to stress that is sometimes we get cards and it just has
like the person's name and it'll say like agenda, but Lori puts that stuff in the minutes, you know, and it helps her do this. If you can write down at least what you intend to speak about on the card and write your name legibly, that would just help with some housekeeping
things. Okay. Old business. Uh, Callie is not here. She has nothing. She will report out um in May. Any other items of old business? Yes, Scott. Okay. Got a couple here. All right. First one. Uh, we had data
presented in the previous meeting about uh foods and the cost being much higher than other districts, like to the tune of 1,500%. Um, I think that's something that we should look into and discuss within
business. I'd propose that we that's something that we take up in business committee. Okay. Noted. Thank you, Steve. Can you add that? Great. Thanks. Okay. Next one. Um, so it's come to my
attention with the doctrine of necessity that was invoked. It was invoked because of conflicts or perceived conflicts of some potential board members.
My understanding is that information's come to light that two of those members are no longer conflicted um due to an advisory opinion issued by the school ethics commission. In my opinion, I would propose that the action that we
took under that doctrine, you know, should not have been valid. I guess legally it would be valid, right? questionably legally valid, but the action the perceived conflicts did not exist. Um, I would like to make a motion
that we resend the actions that we took under that doctrine of necessity because the conflicts that we thought there really weren't there and if we want to vote on that action that we do it again without the doctrine of necessity being in
placed. That's my motion. Okay, we need a second and then we can have discussion. Does anyone want to second that? I second it. Elaine seconds it. Okay. Discussion. I'd like Ari to respond. Actually, well, if if you guys want me to respond, we need to go into executive session and have that discussion. This probably should have
been brought up in executive session prior to to coming out here so we could have talked about it. Um, but any response for me would be solely legal advice at this point. I'm not going to tell you guys what to do or not to do, but if you guys want legal advice, we can someone can make a motion and go into executive session. Um, I'd like to
comment before we go into executive, if we are going into executive. So, I just want to preface I'm going to make a few statements and describe some actions I took as an individual board member. I asked for an
advisory opinion from the school ethics commission regarding my recent conflict imposed on me on March 18th. In my opinion, this was done deliberately to remove the superintendent. I have since received
the results of the advisory opinion. I'll just briefly summarize um the opinion with a few excerpts from the advisory. It's too long to read the whole thing, so I'll just give you a quick overview. Um basically the review of the specific facts and circumstances
detailed in my request. It says you do not have an automatic conflict related to matters involving the superintendent as the superintendent is not the individual who has filed charges against
you and although not part of your request and as you are aware the president and the vice president of the WTA have filed a complaint against you. the pending matter creates a conflict that prohibits you from participating in
any and all matters related to the WTEA. So basically, I'm not conflicted on any matter regarding the superintendent, which is exactly what I stated on March 18th. However, I am absolutely conflicted on any matters of
the W with the WTEA, which does make sense. Thank you'all. So I guess I amend my motion that we go into executive to discuss this topic. So what's your motion right now? You're saying if we're going to discuss it,
we'd have to go into executive. So I'm saying I'm making a motion that we would go into executive to discuss it. Annie Lane seconded that and we're into discussion. Okay. in part of discussion. I I'm not in favor of going into executive right
now to discuss this yet again when we need to approve the budget or not approve the budget and move forward in a lot of business that the board actually has to to conduct. If you want to go into executive, I would suggest we do that after the meeting and come back out since we're already doing that. I also
would like for Ari to respond to Miss Chill's comments. So I will respond to the extent I can and I'll save the rest for when we go into exactly because I think we still are planning to go into executive
obviously. Um so I am aware of the uh school ethics commission advisory opinion that was issued. Um I understand what it says. I'm not trying to get in an argument
about it. Um I'm not certain that the school ethics commission had the opportunity to review the underlying ethics charge, but I'll leave it at that. I I don't want to get into a debate over their decision here. I'm sure we could further that discussion if necessary when we go into executive, but
uh you know, I don't really have anything else to add to that right now. So, I just want to comment real quick that the advisory is very clear that they did review the ethics charge. It's actually footnoted. So, I just want to make sure we're not misleading the public to thinking that the school ethics commission did not do their job
in reviewing the ethics complaint because at the time I filed it, I did not have a formal ethics complaint. Um, coincidentally, on the same day that I asked for the advisory is when I actually officially received it. So, um, there's a footnote here that
they are aware of it and they did review it. So, I just don't want to mislead the public. They reviewed it. They're aware of it. It's right here. This is why I didn't really want to get into this, but the the footnote doesn't say they reviewed it. The the issue I have, as I tried to explain to you, and I again, I'd rather have this discussion later,
but uh they clearly say in here, "The subject matter and the inquiries posed in this request, meaning your request, do not appear to be related to the pending matter." That's a reference to the underlying ethics charge. the rationale behind the opinion that you were
conflicted solely related to the subject matter of the underlying ethics complaint. So I I don't really know what what that line means. I could only interpret it the way I can interpret it. And it seems to me they were for for whatever reason, and I'm not saying
that's at your fault, but they weren't considering the the subject matter of the underlying ethics charge. So you're disagreeing with the school ethics commission. I'm not disagreeing with them at all. I'm not, if I could finish, I'm not clear as to what they actually reviewed and in what context they
reviewed it. And I would never have access to that information. I don't know that information. I They wouldn't give me that information if I called them and asked. I'm just reading this line that simply says that your request does not appear to be related to the pending
ethics matter. So, I provided you with my initial filing as you requested. So, you had all the information that I gave them and reviewed. I just think that um if you want to talk about it executive, we can. If not, I I'm happy to wave my attorney client privilege and talk about
it in the open public because I think that you're in my opinion discrediting the school ethics commission. It literally says here that they reviewed an advisory opinion. So, I don't want to discount it. something that was ruled on by the school ethics commission to say that I was not conflicted because the
superintendent did not file the ethics charges. And although I didn't ask for an opinion about being conflicted with the WTEA, that actually really makes sense. So, I'm glad that they said that because I shouldn't vote on matters like that. Carol, it was very clear. Can you say you wanted to wave your attorney
client privilege and talk about it? Can you can you explain did you send them like I'm unclear on the footnote thing. I sent them everything. You sent them the actual like complaint. They at the time I'm going to say this.
Um at the time that I gave the advisory, I didn't have the complaint. So they sent it literally I sent the advisory and it notes here that they then received a complaint. Okay. So they didn't read what like the
actual accusation. So we can twist it all around. It actually if we just think about it in common sense they said here that the complaintants cured all defects and filed an amended complaint that was deemed compliant with the commission's
regulations. So they knew that I had a complaint in an ethics charge an ethics complaint which is what they ruled on it because had they not had that how would they know that two members of the WTEA filed on me? I didn't have anything. I
think the point that's getting lost and I'm not trying I'm just I'm just saying that I think you're arguing with the school ethics commission. I'm not conflicted. That's it. All I'm saying the point that's getting lost here is the school ethics commission is only charged with ruling on what you asked them to rule on. They clearly say here
that what you requested is not related to the pending matter, meaning the pending matter, the underlying ethics charge. So, I am interpreting this to mean that they did not consider the substance of the ethics charge. They only considered what you asked them. Again, I can't No. When I
ask for clarification, Ari, on that, what they're not doing, they want to be clear that they're not ruling on the ethics complaint. They're not saying yes or no. They're ruling on my conflict, which is what I asked. I didn't ask them
to rule on an advisory I didn't get. Now again they're just saying that your request does not appear to be rel related to the pending matter. The whole issue of the opinion of the conflict was related to the underlying allegations in that document. All I am suggesting is I
do not know if they actually considered whether or not the context and substance of that document that was filed is a reason that you should be conflicted. All they considered was what you asked them to consider. That's all I'm saying. Okay. That's fine. I'm just I'm just
saying in the advisory it actually says that I'm not conflicted on a filed ethics complaint. You conflicted me for an allegation at that time. It was not filed. I'm just being clear. That's what
happened on March 18th. You're not I was conflicted because of an email that was sent. It was not a complaint. Again, I'm not saying you were conflicted because of a complaint. You're not hearing me. I am saying that the suggested of first of all, the term I conflicted you is not
accurate. I gave you an opinion that I believe you were conflicted based off of the allegations in the complaint. I don't need to get into those allegations. That was what my opinion was based off of. Um I don't know that the school ethics commission made a determination as to whether or not you
are conflicted based off the allegations in that complaint because they weren't asked to do that and they don't do things that they're not asked to do. I could certainly seek further clarification from them if you want me to and maybe it will show that I am, you know, not accurate in my interpretation
of this letter, but I would only do that if that was something that you wanted me to do. Obviously, I I um I just want to add something. Um I had said all along that I was not conflicted. I did ask for an advisory opinion from you. Um I did
file and um in the uh thing from the uh advisory I am not conflicted and so that vote should have not been held. Yes. So I I didn't issue an I think you said you asked for an advisory opinion for me. No I know I I saw a copy of it and the
rationale behind your conflict had nothing to do with uh me. Uh some your conflict council told you that you were conflicted. I don't disagree with anything else that you said but right along that it was not conflicted and asked for an
advisory advisory. No no I can't issue any opinion. So what Ari's Mr. Schneider is referencing is you before I was even on the board, you guys hired an attorney and paid an attorney to decide about conflict and
that attorney decided that Elaine and I were conflicted. Are he Ari had nothing to do with that. So I don't I don't understand why that was okay then, but now it's not okay now. I mean it just conflict and these types of things like
that's why they shouldn't be used as tools. They shouldn't be used as tools to, you know, make people not be able to talk about certain things. Like you can't just file ethics on someone and say, "Well, you can't talk about that now because there there's an ethics charge pending against you." That's a
problem. What if we're going to go back into executive, can we discuss this when we go back into executive? any uh any client attorney questions you have. Obviously, she can't hear over people whispering. All right. What's the motion? What's the
motion on the table? Can we just finish? What's the motion on the table? We'll discuss it in executive. Okay. Your motion is you want to discuss Carol's conflict. No. No. You made a
motion to I believe you made a motion to resend the action taken under the doctrine of necessity. Correct. I think is is that amongst other things possibly. Yes. Um but then we talked about possibly going into executive session to discuss it. So, I don't know
if the mo was the motion ever seconded. Yes, I second it. All right. So, why don't you make a motion to table this and we'll discuss it later in executive session. Okay. All right. I make a motion to table this uh motion to and discuss it in executive. We were in discussion. Wait,
I have a question. Elaine seconded it and we were in disc Elaine seconded that motion and we were in discussion. So, why is it all of a sudden being tabled? It's a roll call. It's a roll call and we never did. It's a roll call, Loriy's saying, and we never did it. So, I'm going to roll call that. Do you want to
rescend that vote? Roll call, please. I want to understand the vote. What are we voting on? His motion was to resend the doctrine of necessity. And what was the second part of it? You're voting on Yeah, that was my mo my motion was to resend the doctrine of necessity based
upon my understanding about the conflicts, but and and the action taken as a result and the action taken as a result of it. Yeah. And what what is a yes vote and what is a no vote? A yes vote would mean that the action to place the superintendent on leave uh is
overturned and a no vote stays the same. Correct. Based on based on Scott's motion. Yes. I don't want to speak for you Scott, but I think Yes. But then he said to amend the motion. Well, that's because I think you said we should discuss it and you could
explain it in executives, which I would be happy to have further explained in executive. I'm no lawyer. I mean, if you have Yeah. If you have legal questions, I'm asking that they be discussed in executive session, obviously. Yeah. I guess I'm basing this upon my layman's interpretation of what I've read about
the doctrine and conflicts. Um, that's why I made my motion. And if you're saying there's more to it, we should discuss it in executive. I'm open to tableabling it and discussing executive. I think this would have been a lot smoother if you would have just brought it up in executive when we were in executive for an hour and a half. We ran out of time. We went over because I had
more things. So happy to go into executive later tonight. So just to be clear, I we're wasting so much time. Let's just get this over with. Okay. I don't see this as a waste of time. So this is the big going back and forth and amending and all this. Okay. So the the motion that the amended
motion is to go into executive to discuss this. So a yes vote means you want to discuss this in executive. A no vote means you don't want to discuss as an executive. Correct. Correct. Okay. Correct. Roll call, please. Thank you. If you
want to discuss it in executive, you say yes. If you don't, you say no. Mrs. Baker. No. Mrs. Bloom. Abstain. Mrs. Clancy. Yes.
Mrs. Chilla. Yes. Mrs. Harton. Do I have to abstain from that because it's a superintendent question? Yes. Then abstain. Mr. Liberty. Yes. Mr. Serrano. No,
Mr. Ross. No, Miss Kazmpo. I have to abstain. So, four abstensions, three yeses, and two nos. But we will discuss this in executive. Yes. Okay.
Can I have a motion to open to the public? Got additional business. Go ahead. Um, you did. Previous meeting, we voted to suspend policy 0176, which basically is the policy about that says our
solicitor and our negotiator should not be the same attorney. Uh, personally, I'm not comfortable with that given that we're not able to get advice from anybody on that other than our existing attorney that's currently filling both roles.
So, I would like to u make a motion to undo the suspension of that until we can discuss with conflict council the implications of having our negotiator and solicitor being the same attorney.
Okay. Can we have a second? I second that. And I want to say that that motion was made at like 12:304 to 1 in the morning. Any other discussion? I have comment. Uh that policy actually is outdated. Uh
when we when um Bush Law Firm came on board three years ago, we uh negotiated uh with uh our solicitor as as well as him being the negotiator. It's
uh not something that you have to have a separate person uh to do negotiations and be the solicitor. That's not that's not that that that does not happen in all districts. We had a policy. The policyy's outdated,
but it's still a policy. Policy is outdated. Or not. It's still policy. We were gonna I think I think what was discussed is we're going to address that in committee and we haven't really had a committee because we've been doing the
budget. So, we ought to stick to what we said we're going to do. We're going to talk about it in committee. Committee didn't meet. Any other discussion? We have conflict council, but we can never ask them about conflicts. This
seems like a great question that we could ask to our conflict council. I don't think that the policy committee has met. Is that correct? Other than for budget or was that the meeting that was cancelled? I'm sorry, Pat, what did you say? I don't think the policy committee has met
since then because I think it was budget or I think that that actual meeting was cancelled. We haven't talked about anything except the budget in committee. So, so re regardless though whether it be outdated, we have a lot of outdated
policies that we seem to follow very strictly. Um, it's still a policy. It is. And we voted to suspend the policy. And if you read through it, um, you know, in some of these that were created a little while ago, I have to look at it
and I think Ari, you even commented, some of our policies are actually more strict than the law. And I think we had a discussion about um which one prevails, right? Um either way, we have
a policy that specifically says that those two people shouldn't be the same. So, it had to be created for a reason. I don't know what the reason was specifically, but it's there and it's a policy and I think it's one of the major
functions as a board is we have a policy, right? So Scott made a motion to suspend the policy. I think even if we come to some kind of a an agreement in terms of how we're going to handle it moving forward to Ela's point, this was
like a almost 1:00 in the morning thing that we did because a public member brought it up and said you have a policy. You're actually violating your policy. So we had to address it. Nonetheless, it's still a valid dated or not. We can't if I look at all these
policies I can say there's a lot of dated policies but we still follow them. So I mean I support suspend like re how would I say it not suspending the policy and figuring out what we're going to do and maybe come to an agreement. We can even put it in executive session
afterwards to talk about how we're going to handle it. But it's specifically in the policy talks about the reason why and the potential conflict of interest in doing that. It's very I mean it's very specific so to just ignore it. Okay. But so the motion is to put it
into executive. Any other discussion about whether or not we're going to put it into executive? I mean we can just vote to put it in executive and just talk about it. Well because he has a motion on the table and I'm allowed to vote on it. I'm trying to vote on it. Okay. So we can take a roll call vote on the suspension of the policy of on not
suspending it. If you prefer to do that, that's fine. The motion was to put the policy back in effect until we can discuss it in executive. Okay. It's really just to resend the action taken to suspend the policy. Yes. Resin the
action taken. Resin the action. Okay. Got it. Explain the vote. No. Is we keep it the way it is suspended. No would mean that that the action's not rescended and it stays as is. Yes. Would mean that the actions
rescended and the policy goes back to how it was. Okay. Can you repeat that? I didn't hear that. We don't hear that back here. I said yes means that Can you hear me now? If Okay. So, if you vote yes to
resend the action taken, that means that the policy would go back to how it was prior to that action being taken. If you vote no, that means the action will remain in effect. So, I still don't understand. So if I want to invoke the
policy right now that we're not using, you got to Can you I can't hear you. If I want to invoke the policy So embarrassing, the outdated policy that we are not using right now and I think we should use it, do I vote yes or no?
I'm sorry. You got to repeat that, Pat. I didn't understand what you're saying. If here here's the easiest way to say it. The action that was previously taken was to suspend the policy. Okay? By suspending the policy, it allowed the same attorney to work on negotiations
and serve as general counsel. If you want to undo that action, you're going to vote yes to undo that action. If you don't want to undo that action, you're going to vote no. Okay? That action will remain in effect. Okay? Got it. Yes. Roll call, please.
Mrs. Bloom, no. Mrs. Clancy. Yes. Mrs. Chillow. Yes. Mrs. Harong. Yes. Mr. Li Liberty. Yes. Mr. Serrano. No.
Mr. Ross? No. Mrs. Baker? No. Mr. Zumple? No. Can I have a motion to open to the public? Motion. A second.
Second. All in favor? I I Randy Ford. Sorry. Randy Ford, Washington Township. Um, just I'll start. Can you guys hear me?
Yeah. Okay, cool. Uh so I had more to talk about with respect to the budget but I kind of want to ask a question with respect to the doctrine of necessity. I haven't heard the answer of
who determined each conflict of interest. So at some point I would like to see if I can understand who made those determinations in the March 18th and March 25th doctrines. Uh, the other thing is, and I know I
harp on parliamentary procedure sometimes, but from the galley, it seems like members of the board are making motions and they're being seconded and then there's clarifications.
and you should pick somebody who does the clarification and then that person who made the motion can actually agree that yes, that is the motion I'm trying to make. Um because it seems like Miss Gazemple, you've actually changed some
people's motions. Um, and maybe it's not material, but you know, Scott made some motions about executive session, about the doctrine, about rescending, and then it sounds like, hey, this is the motion that we're going to hear. So, um, that's just, you know, something I think so we
can understand what's actually being voted on. Uh, with respect to the budget, there's a, I guess a paytoplay where the anticipated revenue is somewhere around $150,000. I was curious, do we have that already
figured out in terms of what we're going to charge and where the 150,000 comes from? Because I remember in some prior meetings, uh, it was brought before the board that you could lose people if you go to paytoplay. And I'm not saying that
that's the right or wrong issue. I'm just curious as to getting some more insight into where the 150,000 comes from. Uh my final question because I have others but you know I'll just keep it. The there's a settlement with the
WTEA tonight that's on the agenda or at least I think it is. Um um Mr. Trash is shaking his head no. So maybe it's it's not. But at some point when these are voted on I know there's certain exemptions to OPMA and OPRA. Um, but I
think it'd be nice to just get a sense of what those settlements generally are just because I can I guess Oprah to the extent it doesn't cover with an exemption. But right now I have two OPRAS outstanding from March 19th and
March 23rd that have not been answered. So that's great. I can Oprah things, but then if I don't actually get them, it doesn't do me much good. So, uh, thank you and have a great night. When it comes to conflict of interest,
um the conflict actually um resides in the board member. The board member decides whether or not they're conflicted. They can either take the advice of the solicitor or not based on that conflict. That's my understanding. That's accurate. So when Mr. Schneider
or any lawyer up here says if I were you, you know this, you could you should be conflicted on this. You know, you might want to consider yourself conflicted on this in an abundance of caution for this reason or that reason. You can say, "Thanks for your advice. I'm not conflicted and you can vote
however you want." So, um, the conflict was that's all I'll say about that conflict is determined by the board member based off of the um the advice of the attorney. And I think he made his adi his advice clear. Um paytoplay
Janine 150,000. How much savings is that accurate for pay to play? So when we budgeted that we were conservative um we worked with um the athletic director and some staff that were in place prior when
this was done. We were conservative based on the number of athletes we have and just went off of a couple of different models of neighboring districts as far as um what they charge per year. Um the other comment Randy that you made
and I don't I'm not changing people's motions and you know parliamentary procedure. Um, the best situation if you have something that you want to discuss as a board is to bring it up in executive and say to the board, I'm going to make this motion when I go out there and to maybe even share that with
us. It's when we get it when we're out here and I we can't hear, you know, I don't know what's being said, then somebody changes and amends the motion that they just made based off of the discussion. You know, it should be I'm making a motion, seconding the motion,
discussion, and vote on it. That's the way it's supposed to go. So, I'm just desperately trying to interpret people's motions when they make them. The WTEA settlement is I I'll let Mr. Schneider respond to that. It It's not a contract settlement. It's the settlement of an
unfair practice charge. And it is in the agenda as well. I'm sorry. It is in the agenda, right? Yeah. You you you were they talked about it in executive, but I don't think you were in there for that. because it's WTE.
Um, the Opras, uh, I don't know what to say about that because we don't respond to OPRA, but I will say it's budget season and it's very, very, very busy and there have been a lot of meetings. I don't know what else to say about that. Okay. Angela
Teruso. To say I am upset would be an understatement. In looking at the bud budget presentation, and I'm not reading from my notes because I don't even know what my notes mean right now. um you had a reduction in hours for 75
support staff members and 28 positions eliminated. So I guess I would like to have clarification on exactly what positions have reduction in hours because basically that means that you're taking benefits away. That's the way I look at it. And you're either doing that
by 15 minutes or 1 hour or 1 hour and 15 minutes depending on what you do. So those people, all of us would not only be losing our benefits, we'd also be losing income. We already have trouble bringing people in. We've all said that.
I see the vacancies. You've had teachers come up here and talk about it and how understaffed their classrooms are. And here we are taking benefits away from people. 75 75 and eliminating 28 positions. Um,
back in March, our executive committee was asked to meet with Dr. Hibbs and Mr. Sweeney, and we did. There were two of us there. Dr. Hibbs spoke to us about the possible cuts to all staff across the board and possible cuts
um to their benefits or possible cuts to reduction in hours is basically what he said. They were looking at that. They weren't sure exactly what they were going to do. They gave us dates of May 1st that riff notices would be given out. They were working on those
diligently to try and make sure they weren't giving out everybody a rift notice. And I'm hoping that's not going to happen. On May 2nd, they said a letter would be sent out to the community, I guess, explaining all of that because they know people are going to be very upset and devastated by this. And then on May 13th, if your position
changed by minutes, you would be on the board agenda with those changes. um we asked them not to settle not to send those during the middle of the day like they did before and they agreed to that. Then in April after everything
happened with Dr. Hibbs, we then met with our interim superintendent, Mr. McGee. When we spoke as an executive committee to him and asked about the timeline for the riffs, we were told that he was working on the budget and to hold off as we were hoping to try and
keep everything intact. So now I guess that Mr. McGee is gone. My question is what are the cuts specifically to support staff? How many assistants? How many custodians? How many food service workers? Who's losing benefits? Who's not? Um because we have a right to know that. And we have the we have a right to
know that tonight because you're going to vote on that budget tonight. So we have a right to know that. Um we also want to know when we're going to be receiving those rift notices if May 1st still is the date we're going to receive those. Um, the second part of that is we just
raised the budget by $7 million. That's tax dollars, you know, up to cap. $7 million. And we're still making all these cuts to support staff. It's support staff. It was support staff last year. It's support staff again this year. It'll be support staff again next
year. And eventually, you'll have no support staff. And you will have succeeded privatizing through attrition because that's what's going to happen. You're literally privatizing without privatizing. So if that's the goal, congratulations. You're going to have that goal. And that's disgusting. And
that is seriously that hurts children. That doesn't just hurt us. That hurts children. Children are affected directly by this. We are the people that work handinand with those kids. And I apologize for being upset, but this is has been such a stressful time for every
one of our staff members. I'm sitting here and I have no less than 35 text messages from people watching at home. It's disgusting and it's disgraceful and it's disrespectful. So, I'd like to know who's being cut, what hours are being cut, is it assistants, how many
assistants, is it specialized, regular ed, who is it? Because we need to know that. You're voting on it tonight, so you already know who it is. Thank you. I accidentally hit the button. Sorry. Um, our lawyer said we can't respond to
the personnel questions. Angela, I'm sorry. Brandy Williams. Hi, good evening. Um, I'd like to piggy piggyback off of what Randy said about the pay for play. Can you specify what sports are going to that's going to affect and also the gate
receipts? What's that entail? Like what are you charging? and for what sports. Um I also want to address Carol said that she was okay with waving her rights. So why did we not discuss
further about the ethics complaint? And then I do want to ask Ari um the way you kind of went at Carol was just it seemed very aggressive and the way you spoke to her
about her ethic rule uh ruling ruling. But previous uh meetings when Julie talked about her ethic ruling ruling rulings um she said that they've came back and she's been cleared. You never addressed
that. You didn't have anything to say. So why do you have something to address with Carol's and in the matter that you did it? It was very aggressive and I don't understand. Aren't you supposed to be working together? Then I also feel that I I'm only
speaking for myself is the confidence that we have in you. It just seems like there's a lot of dramas surrounding the attorney. So can the board look into possibly getting another some bids? Is that something that could be done or are
we in contract with you? And how long is the contract? Because it just seems like there's a lot of misinformation when it comes. Um all right. Thank you. Okay. I mean, the board could get another attorney whenever they want. Uh
there's no definitive amount of time on any attorney contract. Um if I not I'm trying to figure out how to respond to your other question. I don't think that I was overly aggressive with Carol in any way. If if I was, I
would apologize. Um, I was simply ask responding to questions related to advice that I gave. Um, again, if there was an appearance that I was overly aggressive, I apologize. I don't think that was the
case. That's not normally how I uh do business. Regarding C uh Julie's ethics charges, I was never asked to answer any questions on that. That's probably why the two of us never or or all of us never got in a discussion about it.
um for the gate receipts. Um Janine's not totally sure at the minute which exact sports. We think football, football, basketball, wrestling, but we don't want to say that that that is a um a finalized list. Just said that just saying that communication will go out
about which sports. Um and then oh the waving privilege. I mean I'm not that's fine if she wants to wave privilege. I'm not comfortable talking about her personal, you know, the accusations made against her. If Carol wants to talk about that, she can
do that. Jenny Murphy, what about Well, pay for play and gate receipts are it's the same. You know, she doesn't have that information. That would be the athletic director. Hey, good evening. Um, I didn't plan to
speak on this, but something came up. So, now I have to comment. Um, policy committee was abolished at the reorg from my understanding and it was put into individual committees then I that you talked about it. We're talking about who was going into it may not have been
the reorg date. It might have been the next meeting. So I I firmly remember you saying that you would deal with policy in each individual committee and I believe Mr. Serrano you were chair of the policy committee the year before and I don't believe that you're chair of any
such committee now. Um so either you have one or you don't. Um I believe it's one of the most important committees a board can have because policy is the rules that you follow. Secondly, the um solicitor negotiator
question, Connie Baker, it's not an outdated policy. You're correct when you say not all districts do it the same way, but there was plenty of boards with smart people on it like Eileen Abbott and others before me that put that
policy in play for a reason. And I'm not sure if you guys understand what that reason might be, but coincidentally, it's conflict. That's kind of funny because there's a lot of conflict in this room. But so the solicitor represents the
board not just in meetings. The solicitor represents the board for special education, for individual cases against employees, for general liability matters, for a lot of different things. and you're representing the entire
district. You're on the township team, team township. You're also a solicitor. It's the same person. And now you're adverse the union against the the board essentially in a negotiation that creates at least a perceived conflict of
interest. That's why many districts separate the firms. When I was first on the board, we had separate firms. Over the years, we ended up having separate lawyers from the same firm. But that's the history of why that policy exists.
So when you decide you're going to abolish a policy, it may help to talk about some experienced veterans seasoned administrators in the district that could probably give you the history of where those policies came from. The last thing that I want to
comment on is the discussion between Ahri and um Carol Chilla. Let's just hypothetically say that Ari Snider, the board solicitor, was wrong when he conflicted Carol Schill for the purposes of
allowing everybody to vote and suspend the superintendent. How exactly is Ari not conflicted in handling that issue right now that's before you guys? because
essentially he's defending himself in what could be perceived as a legal malpractice issue, right? He's saying what he did wasn't wrong. If that's not at least the appearance of conflict because he said, "Hey, look,
Carol, I conflicted you." Because he did. That's my understanding. he conflicted you from um because of the ethics complaint which then opened the board for everybody to vote on the firing of the superintendent. If that decision was wrong, how is he the one
that's able to correct it and defend his own action? So, I don't expect to get an answer, but I I certainly think it's something to consider. Thank you. So um the policy committee there were no policies at
reorganization when I came in January there were no policies they were I mean sorry there were no committees they were a committee of the board and it and if you watched those meetings it was it was a yman's effort to just get the three standing committees back and we agreed
that we would talk about as we used to do Jenny when you and I were on the board policies related to those committees so anything so for instance this one that's negotiated ations. Maybe that would go into all three so that everybody who goes to a committee can talk about that. So the pol it's not
that the policy committee was abolished, it's just we reinstated the three standing committees. And there's just been so much going on with the budget, which is very concerning to all of us that when we have our committee meetings, it's pretty bare bones agenda and it's just the budget
presentation. Um I don't know why I wrote the word reason here. Uh we didn't abolish the policy. It's just suspended for now. Ari can't conflict anyone. All he can do, like I said, is suggest that someone, you know, that they might want
to think about before they vote. I mean, you've you've heard us a lot, Jenny. You've done that before, too, where you say, I've done it, you know, in an abundance of caution. I'm going to abstain on this. And so that that's just not how conflict works. The attorney says, I think that you you could have a
conflict. You could have a problem with this. you could have some um legal issues down the road and then you you vote as such. Also, the superintendent is not fired. Nicole Lu, before we go on real quickly,
I just want to clarify. So, Ari, I wasn't conflicted. It was like a practical joke. Is that what you're saying? Because you're saying that I had the decision. No, it's not. I'll just put it because because this is the way it's I'm think sitting here like
wait a minute. So I had the ability to say no I'm not conflicted because I believe that I said that several times in executive session. I actually believe I made a statement publicly and I said this is precedent
setting. I said a lot of things. So at no time did I get any advice from our board solicitor that said well it's just my opinion you don't have to follow it so we don't have to invoke the doctrine. I just want and we could talk about it in executive too but I just want to
clarify. Is that what you're saying? What I'm saying is that you you the board you've been to trainings on what conflict means. So I know you understand that you decide if you're conflicted based off of the advice. And I think the disconnect here right now is that nobody
out here knows what you have been accused of. And if they did, it would be very clear as to why you would be unable to vote on the superintendent. If I don't think it would be clear, if you're willing to share what you've been accused of doing, that might Okay. So, I
just want to stop for a second. I understand why just sort of morally you shouldn't be voting on things related to him. You know what I'm saying? Yep. I know what you're saying. So, um, as soon as you're truthful and honest and clear about what you've done, then I'll do the same. So, there are allegations and what
I'm going to say is that when the time is appropriate, I will absolutely make a public presentation because at that time, I probably won't be on the board because my term is over December. But, um, make no mistake, the public will learn exactly what happened and exactly what I was accused
of. I have no problem doing that. This would not be the appropriate time, so I'm not going to do that. Um I I'll go back to the question that I just said though that the unless I'm incorrect said to me that night I am
conflicted. So I was unable to vote on the employment of the superintendent which is why we had to invoke the doctrine because we didn't have a quorum of non-conlicted. That's what happened. I was not given the option. What I don't want to happen is people walk away and
say, "I decided to just say, sure, I'm conflicted." That didn't happen. I was not allowed to participate in that vote. We had to invoke the doctrine because we didn't have a quorum. That's what happened. So, I just want to be clear that I was not given the option to not be conflicted.
I'll try and explain it with my situation. Sure. You guys had the conflict attorney and he said Elaine and I were conflicted. Ari said to me, "I don't believe you and Elaine need to worry about this conflict attorney. There's there's no legal advisory opinion or anything." And you I think
you agreed with that, too. Um I still didn't vote because that's what we were being told by an attorney. Whether I thought the guy was legitimate or whatever, I still didn't vote because of the perception. When the advisory opinion came back, Elaine and I were not
conflicted. that happened after this whole thing with voting the superintendent on leave. I just feel like it's difficult with these situations because unless you're going to be fully transparent about what's happening, like it just leaves too much
open to interpretation for people that don't have the information. When I had ethics charges, I shared them. I gave them to people. I let them see what I was being accused of and I defended myself for years. I had to do that while people got up to the microphone every
single blessed meeting for three years when I wasn't even on the board saying she's unethical and she's being brought up on ethics charges. That was an inaccurate way to position that. One thing I want to u mention, I want to get off this for a second and finish answering Jenny. Peg Mi emailed me
during the meeting um to clarify what we had asked her before because I remember when we had Kmart and Scatcher. We had an attorney from KART that negotiated and we had Joe Bley and she said we have this policy because a solicitor that would be like someone serving at the
meeting, the lawyer was attacked in the parking lot because they someone was upset about something that happened in negotiations. They had the wrong person. So the policy was put into place because a board member brought it forth. I don't know exactly which board member that was. We've had the same policy since a
different partner from the same firm. There is nothing legal or ethical preventing it. I said, "Can I say that you shared this?" She said, "Sure." So that's from Meg Peg who was our BA for 30 years. Nicole Nudy, I just want to add that I kept saying that I wasn't conflicted and
I was advised that I couldn't vote. Amen. sister. Me too. And I just want to say that that goes further. That goes to this is just my opinion. The issue that we had with the conflict attorney from day one and that's a whole another
issue. Mrs. Lenoodi, is she still here? Yeah. Um, there is something on one of the slides that said there was $9 million of tuition. How much of that is for sending special ed special ed kids out of district? and could it save us some
money if you put that 9 million into resources in our own district to accommodate their needs here like into support staff that actually takes care of them and keeping them in district. Um Janine said that the state says that we
should be at 112 million. How many years of increasing taxes and reducing staff clubs and sports are we looking at? We're on year two. How many years in a row are you projecting that this situation is happening and is the goal to get us to the state state
recommendation of 112 million? Julie, you just said this was a waste of time talking about possibly discussing more unethical practices. Regardless of what the outcome is, I have do not care at this point that it
was removing the superintendent or the budget or whatever it is. The problem is is that this board still continues to argue, still continues to backfire against each other, and there's so many unethical things happening all around.
And I have mentioned more than several times that as a parent and as a resident, it's very hard to trust anything that comes out of any of your mouths. It's not a waste of time talking about a possible attorney conflicting somebody
wrongly to remove a superintendent. That's not a waste of time. That is something that should be discussed and publicly. I agree. If whoever said that. I said that. I agree with you. You said it was a waste of time. Um why does no one up
there think that this is a big deal? Scott seemed pretty passionate in talking about it and it kind of got shut down. Um, it seems that Carol was accused of something that hasn't been proven yet. It seems that things are
accusations and assumptions and Julie mentioned the word perception a couple times. Um, she perceives it a very different way than you seem to perceive it. Why does your perception matter and hers doesn't? and she's the one that's supposedly
conflicted. Regardless of perception, it's still not proven. So lawfully, if she wasn't supposed to be conflicted, and she was, and it could change the whole trae trajectory of things and it
cost us money for a second superintendent, it should be discussed. Um, another question is, is there any talk moving forward of putting the grading floor back to where it rightfully should be? Um, I have heard a
pers a perspective from a couple educators that actually agree to this because I couldn't understand why. Um, and as I can appreciate their perspective and respect that, it I still don't understand why this is for the
greater good. From one of the conversations I had with an educator who was in favor of moving the grading floor, she said in this conversation that it was really important because in this district's 504s are hardly followed
and IEPs are not upheld. That's the problem in itself. Um, is there a way the grading floor can be restored to an acceptable integrity? Um, and also find ways to allow students that do need the extra help that this 50
would help them in a different matter. What is the district doing to enforce 504s instead of moving the grading floor to 50? Um, and just real quick, there was a message that I received from somebody who was leaving and it and I
did ask if I could read it. Um, it made me extremely upset. I'm sad to leave this district after 11 years. There's no room for growth. Our board of education is a disgrace and a disaster. I've been inquiring and waiting for six-hour position since November that hasn't been
available. Yet, there are multiple vacancies. I do not think our schools are equipped with the proper staff and resources needed for children we are housing. That can be a controversial statement. I'm not saying we shouldn't have students of certain certain students in our district. I'm saying we
need additional supports that the township isn't providing for to be successful in my opinion. I have a skill set that needs to be put to use to help children learn and grow in a safe and healthy environment. I have fought for my kids, my children, and I will continue to fight for all of them. WTPS
is too big with not enough advocating parents and guardians. Most do not know their rights, what's available to their kids, and I need to work in a place that I can stand behind and be proud of. It makes me sad to leave a place I called home for so long. All schools have left have their underbelly of issues, but Washington Township has surpassed this
statement. I'm going to miss the students so much. I started to feel like a failure and that I was failing the students I work with and I can't. And that's when the process began of leaving. Every child deserves more, especially more par. Please fix that.
Can I say something? I can't really answer any of those questions. I don't know if Annette or Janine want to Did you want to go? Yeah, I was going to um We've heard the grading policy brought up multiple times. I just Is that something that we
could address in IIA? Yeah, it's on our agenda. agenda we we spoke about a little bit last week. I I can address the tuition. I believe I can start that start there. Um tuition is clearly increasing in any of
and most of the out of district programs. Um, since I started this position, um, my my leadership team, our teachers, our support staff have assisted in bringing not only students
back into the district. Um, I believe we have more than tripled our in district specialized programs in the last 10 years. Um, but we have cut in half the students who were outplaced. Um, that being said, we do have students who have
specific educational needs and at times they do have to go. Um, we have to use placements that are not within the district. Obviously, we make all attempts to keep students within our doors. We want our students in our
buildings and and I I don't disagree that um that we have to work really hard to really recruit staff, especially staff who work with our most specialized learners. Um I'm just trying to remember
all of the questions here. I wanted to specifically talk about the tuition because that is something that um that one of the challenges of bringing specialized programs within the district. We have incredible resources. We staff with related service personnel.
Um our teachers, specialized programs that we use, but um programs need space and so that in itself has been problematic. Most of our specialized classes are at full capacity based on the code. Um so that's another
limitation we have. It certainly doesn't stop us or our team is always looking for ways to increase programming within the district. Heather Wickcraft. Hi, Heather Woodcraft. Uh, Washington Township. I want to talk about some of the Robert's rules. Um, to
table a motion, you need a second, no debate, and then there's a vote. So, when you guys brought up tableabling the minutes for later, there was no need for a debate. Um, to get an amendment, it needs a
second. You can vote debate that then vote. However, the amendment is not owned by the maker. Um, once it has been said out loud by the chair, they can no longer amend it. Um,
let's see. Then doctrine of necessity. In order to resend something like that, you need an actual motion, policy or rule needs to be second. Full debate when there's no notice. Robert's
rules requires uh two to three two/3 majority. Um if it's already been executed though, you can't resend it. Um, anything else that happened ends up
out of order, but I had a question about the shared busing. Um, because last school year, I think it was, there were plenty of times my daughter ended up having to sit on somebody else's lap to get herself home from school or there was no
room on the bus because they combined buses for different uh, routes in the district. and she actually ended up walking home. Um, so I was just wondering how that's going to look if we're picking up other kids along the way and dropping
them off other places. Thanks. So I guess my only comment there is I would if you could reach out to me and let me know which bus that you're talking about. Um when we I talked about shared busing, what I was referring to
is if we have um kids on a bus that we're outsourcing, so we're using a contractor instead of inhouse. We're trying to bring those inhouse to save money. Um I'm not sure your specific issues, but if you want to give me a
call, I can look into it. Sarah Simpson. Hi, Sarah Simpson, former teacher, 15 years in the district, parent here as well. Um, I specifically wanted to ask questions that I want answered tonight.
If we need concrete details, you can send them to me tomorrow. But uh starting with the middle school sports. So we brought back the high school sports that were on the table to be cut. But when we say middle school sports, and I'll go slow if you need to write these down, but I want to know what
middle school sports programs are cut. So we have three levels. You've got I believe it's just wrestling and field hockey that travel and play other schools, which is really sad and deplorable in among itself that that's the only sports that we have. Um, while
I'm sitting here listening to everybody complain about your ethics, I looked up Pitman, Kingsway, Gloucester Township, Bankbridge, Clear View, Kingsway, Westford, Depford, Deli, Glboro. They all have at least five, six, seven middle school sports. We are going to
cut them. So, back to my question, is it just those two sports? Is it also inter mural basketball or the things that the children are playing within the three middle schools? And does it also include the I guess you'd call them club after
school that sometimes they run. We're one of the biggest soccer towns and we might get the kids to be in a soccer club. So I want to know which of those or all of those are cut. I'm going to throw the word equity at you. A lot of times we talk about kids and sports is
often that they do have preference for things and we talk about the equity of band or drama or any of these other areas. But you have a group of kids that you're now taking possibly everything away from them that they do. These children might not be involved in
student council, art, STEM clubs, drama. What are they going to do to stay out of trouble? This is a decision that people will move out of district for. I need you to really think hard. And then the details that I do want to
know is the paytoplay. Can we pay to play middle school sports? What I want to know and Jannine, if we have to, we can communicate and work in your same position. I just want to know the details specifically of what these middle school sports are
costing and what the difference is to pay to play at that level versus the high school level. We can't take opportunities away. And then if you want your high school to be good, you can't take the middle school away. My daughter right now is every day
talking at her club team with all of her friends who in all those schools I just named are getting to play after school softball. Oh, my school team did this. My school team did that. And I'm like, I live in a premier community and we don't even have that sport. I need you to think. I sat for an hour listening and
not a single thing came up about children. It's all about you guys right now. And it's children. And this is my kid and their kids and and trust me and all the staff here because I'm on your part like jobs. We all want a piece of this pie that I'm doing a school budget
myself and I know there is no money to be found and we all want that and you with jobs and I get it. But I believe wholeheartedly that this district would step up and pay if you can let our kids play these sports. So please consider that. And then while I have a minute and
30 seconds, I want the board members to know that as an ex-teer, I was on the grading coalition that was formed union um representative. They did not listen to us. We told them over and over and over again how a grade floor is not listening, how the retakes, how there's
inconsistencies. If you want to know, I can tell you anything you want to know. Right before I left this school last year, I put together a 12-page graphical representation and went to the grading coalition and shared a survey that I did on my own time and put all this together to share with the highup administration
here in curriculum about what we as teachers found an issue with. And I was told they wouldn't even look at it. We're not going to look at this in the grading coalition. And then all my friends got cut apart from this. Your staff is telling you, I'm telling you as
a parent of a high educating functioning family. My daughter is not learning what she could. We're not challenging them. Her friends are not doing work. It's it's across the board. The kids are not being challenged and everybody is suffering. Get rid of that grade floor.
Eastern high school used to do if you fail fourth marking period, you can't pass graduate. We got to find something. You can't tell a kid because they got a 70 the first half that they do nothing. And guess what? They're doing it. And if you think anything otherwise, please
call me. You have my number. I will give you the details. I'm now not on their side. I'm on your side and I'm a parent, but I know everything. Thank you. Please, if you can answer all these sports questions. Sure. Can you answer questions? I can
answer the sports. Um, they it was wrestling, field hockey, and basketball. So the other stuff is not cut. No. No. And Tom Baldisaro. I was going to start by
saying that this budget is a disaster. And and while I may feel that, that's not the most important adjective I want to put to it. I'm going to put scary to it. Um, listening to everything, you know, when you start, and we've been doing it for a while, but when you reduce hours of positions to make a
budget, you're in freef fall. And I'm going to say a lot of stuff, and I hope I hear a lot of yeses, honestly. I know you may disagree with some of the things I say, but but you have to plan. And what's the saying? Failing to plan is planning to
fail. That's what you're that's what this budget is. Okay. We are not focusing it. Thank you, Mrs. Simpson. On kids, okay? Now, I'm going to be a little less popular with you. I know. But, um, you know, I'm not against
anybody. I'm for kids, okay? And we have to be as efficient as we can. Last year, I commented during the budget that we were spending like seven a little over 70% of our dollars on salary and benefits. This year it's gone up to 75. That may sound like a good thing, but
it's not. It means you're cutting around the edges. And when you do no capital, you're you're playing with fire. Um, you know, for any poker player, Connie, you play poker, allin works every time except the last time when you go bankrupt. Well, that's what this is.
That's what's going to happen here. You keep cutting hours, you're going to lose staff and not get them. You're going to bankrupt your staff. You're going to bankrupt you. I talked last time, you know, Mr. Liberty brought up the the food service. I'm going to I'm going to put full
dollars over five years. If we spend what we're spending now versus the average district, that is $5 million that we're not putting to education, that we're not putting to teachers or support staff that are
affecting our kids. A vote for this budget is a vote against kids. It's a vote against education, guys. You've got no plan here. You're going to be cutting next year. Mr. Liberty said that. It's obvious. You can just look at the budget. I could I've been doing it for
years. You're cutting big time next year. And you know what? You're out of things to cut. It will be teachers. It will be, you know, we hear support staff every year. There'll be more of them. You have to be as efficient as you can be with your dollars. And you are not
not even close. The losers are the kids. I don't know what you guys don't understand about the danger you are putting this district in. If you approve this budget, you're wasting $5
million. You just asked the township of Washington Township for $7 million. What if they don't give you the ability to to raise taxes next year? You're going to be cutting tons of
positions. You don't want to I know you hate the word privatize. I know. I get it. Then sit together with the union and say, "Every other district is doing it for a million less. How can we do it?" You got to work together. You got to partner. Okay? If they can't figure it out, then you know what? You got to
figure something else out. But you can't nickel and dime it. You cannot you can't just keep cutting hours. We heard Miss Lenudi say that the person who resigned, she was looking for six hours. You are harming the district, guys. Get over it. Get over yourselves.
Get over promises. And think about the kids. Think about the teachers. I don't care union, non-un. I don't care. Think about the kids. You're failing. 100% you're failing. You improve this budget, you're
failing. Because again, it's not about education. Because next year, way do you see the cuts you have to do? And it's going to be the positions if you enter into long-term deals where you could have saved a ton of money, you're cutting teachers. And I don't want to hear anybody up here complain about lack
of money. You know, you talk about under adequacy. I don't believe that one second. You know, the state said the words. I showed you the data. I showed you the actual data. Washington Township before this tax increase is in the 89th
percentile of tax rate based on our home values. Okay, that means hundreds bad, hundreds the highest. We're 89. We're going to be in the 90s next year with this big increase. So it you should not be putting that on our backs. The
failure to plan is on you. And if you approve this budget, you're just approving big pain next year. Let's figure it out. Take my tax dollars. You already took it. Put it into capital because you're going to need it. Don't
put it into things that you're not going to be able to afford to in the future. Start planning. You don't have a plan. What's our deficit for next year? What's it for two years from now? What's it for three years from now? Everybody should know that before you approve this budget.
Chrissy Kosar. Good evening everyone. Chrissy Kozar, Township resident, 20-year veteran, school bus driver. So, I was here many years ago when I was president of the WTS SBA for
the loss of the 30-minute lunch for our assistance. dropping many members from ever being able to have a pension. The reduction in hours, sure, it's 15 minutes, that's nothing. What's 15 minutes mean? Means a pension means
health benefits for the lowest paid people in the district. The people that turn up every day, look after our students. The district will lose staff. Okay? Hey, they can't afford to work
here and be paid no benefits and no pension and not earn a pension. You're going to lose caring staff for our children. There was a $10 million deficit last year, a 10 million deficit
this year. What is our support staff community looking at giving up next year? Okay, you've taken away their lunches. You've taken away their pensions. You've taken away their benefits. You've taken away the pride
that they used to have when they come to work in this district. And the people that suffer are the students. Okay? They don't have people that work with them every day that form relationships that take care of them while they're in the district. We have people that come in
with outsourcing companies. And I think this is what you you're aiming for is just to basically get rid of all support staff. It takes away um the need for you to control anything because somebody else controls it. Uh it takes away the responsibility
of you paying a decent wage, paying benefits, offering a pension. That's a lot to a pe to people. I've worked in this district for 20 years and my salary is $28,000 a year
and I live on my own. How am I supposed to have afford a house? You take my health benefits away. What am I supposed to do? What happens when I don't have a pension? I've worked here for 25 years and I don't get a pension. You have to think about these things. We're the people that come in
and look after these children. We're the people that hold this township together along with our teaching staff. Okay. When you finish taking us apart and there's no one left of us, then where do you go? What are you taking then? Where are you going to start then?
Teachers, administrators, you got to think about what you're doing here because you're absolutely decimating this community. In the last 10 years, and I'll speak to the lady that spoke a little
earlier, you have brought back triple the amount of students into district, and I commend you for that. That's wonderful. But you're doing it with a hundred less support staff positions. Okay? So, we're all stretched to our limits. We want these students
back in township, but you have to be able to support them with the services they need they need from the support staff that work and live in this community. How do you expect to recruit staff when you've nothing to offer the
ones that are already here? Thank you, Candace Morz. Good evening. Um, thank you for allowing me to speak. I was at home watching, dealing with my children. My husband's been away for about three out of four weeks of this month. So, um, navigating school, navigating their
responsibilities, and just sitting at home, I was getting aggravated and fired up. So, I felt the need that I had to get out of my pajamas, put my schoolwork to the side, and come here and speak to you. I didn't come here tonight with a prepared speech. Um, I kind of created it while I was sitting here. I came
because I'm upset. I'm tired. I've watched members of this board argue with each other instead of working together to solve real issues affecting our schools, our teachers, and most importantly, our children. Do I need to remind you that this isn't about personal agendas? This is about
leadership and right now we need you to lead. We need solutions, not infighting. Every moment spent arguing is a moment taken away from improving our schools and supporting our students. When you act this way, what example are you setting for these students? Do you think
they believe you have their best and best interests at heart? I'm asking, no, I'm pleading with you to remember why you all are here. The community is watching. Our kids are watching. do better, please. What I see unfolding in
our district deeply concerns me, not just as a community member and parent, but as someone who believes in the promise of public education. Instead of working together to solve real issues, board members, and the public seem locked in a constant battle. It's become
more about personalities and politics than about progress. While these disputes rage on, the issues that matter most are being pushed aside. One of those is the reduction, if not elimination, of basic skills instruction, tier 2, tier three, and
intervention programs. These programs aren't a luxury. They're essential. These programs support our most vulnerable students, helping them build the foundational skills they need to succeed in reading, writing, and math. When we cut these programs, we are cutting opportunity. We are cutting
equity. Why aren't we talking about that? The infighting distracts from the core mission of our schools, educating children. The louder the arguments get, the more our students fall through the cracks. We need to stop treating education like a battleground and start treating it like the shared
responsibility it is. This is a call for unity, for leadership, and for focus. Let's redirect our energy away from conflict and toward solutions. Let's put our students BSI and intervention programs and other vital supports back on the table, not as afterthoughts, but
as priorities. Our students are watching. They're watching every single one of you. My kids are watching this meeting and they are fired up. They're upset by the way you all act, by the way people treat each other. You're care more about fighting against one each one another and not caring about our kids.
Stop fighting each other. Why did you come here? Why did you run for this position? because you care about children, not each other. Not what this one did, what that one did. Worry about our kids because our budget is failing. I have a two kids. One's ready to graduate. I have a junior and I have a
sixth grader. I'm ashamed to say I don't want her coming here. Not because of sports, not because of cutting of sports, but because of our programs that are being cut. And by the way, you, every single one of you are acting. I'm over it. I'm done. Our students are watching you. Show them what real
leadership looks like. Thank you, Chris Bakish. Hi. I I spelled it phonetically for you this time. Um so, uh great speech, Morz. That was great. Um, I wanted to talk strictly
about the budget, the ethics, all the other nonsense. It's nonsense. It's nonsense. You all know it's nonsense. I don't know why we keep having to have this discussion for two hours every other week, but we do. Um, but the budget, so I think this comes down to
really central administration. Um, right? They create the budget. Um, the board approves the budget. if yes or no, whether they approve the budget or not. Um, so the question I have is when I look at your
budget and you flip through it, I mean relatively fast. I know we don't have a ton of time, but there's a lot of things on there that I questioned. Number one is you had to, and I'm directing this at administration Janine, you had to have
seen this coming. This was not a shock to the system. If you look at your own chart, you can see we were negative, negative, negative, negative, negative. What were we doing all that time? Why were we not making smaller cuts, making
more efficiencies? You show your energy budget is up 25%. And now we're talking about solar. Now you're 10 years late. Where have you been? Other school districts have done this years ago. You're now in talks about solar. you are
well past the point of talks and now you're coming back to me a resident telling me I have to pay an extra $200 400 $700 a year that's based off of the current assessment of our homes as we all know Gloucester County is also in
budgetary problems and you know what they're going to do they're going to reassess our homes and when that happens that 400 becomes 800 that 800 becomes 1600 that's not fair to the taxpayer because you can't do your job. Your job
was to budget with the money that you had and you can't do it. And I know you can't do it because we're in budgetary crisis and I pulled as many public records as I could find on salaries in central administration. Disturbing to say the
least. We had an HR person leave at 92 and we hired somebody at 155. What sense does that make? That makes no sense whatsoever. We're in a crisis and you're out here handing out money. $60,000.
What did that person bring to the table? Clearly, they didn't have budget experience. Why are we $55,000 easily pays for the golf program, the diving program, all the other programs you want to cut from
kids? On your little chart up here, it said, "Our goal is to focus on students and student activities." No, it's not. No, it's not. It's to pad your pensions, to get your raises. That's what you're doing in central administration. Why are
there at a minimum six, eight secretaries, 12 secretaries who got secretaries? There's a secretary for every person in that building, including one who was just hired during this budget crisis. as you like to call it,
$85,000 for a secretary in administration. Was that necessary? I don't believe it was. I don't believe you're really going with a fine tooth comb through these budgets. You're looking for easy pickings. Instead of looking at all of your top paid people,
you went to the support staff and you went, "Let's cut 75 of them. Let's cut their hours." Yeah. Let's cut their Yeah, cuz that's going to impact the budget. that $10 million negative budget that you have that you created. We
didn't create this. You did. You haven't been paying attention. You didn't have a plan. And it's obvious. And it's obvious you don't have a plan for the future. So, what's going to happen is we're all going to have to foot the bill again next year and the year after that. And we're tired of it. We don't want to foot
the bill. Fix the budget. Central administration. I don't know. I believe there were two, if I'm not mistaken, two more assistant superintendent, 180,000 plus each a year. That was in this budgetary crisis time we had. Did was that necessary? Can
we start asking maybe some secretaries to be shared between different resources? Why does human resources have their own secretary? Why can't they share it with special needs? Why can't they share? No, everybody. I'm looking at this list. Everybody's got a
secretary. all making 60 70 80 90,000 a year. Does it help the kids? Can the kids call the secretary and ask for help for homework? No, they can't. They're asking these people, these teachers and the support staff that need help. And
you're up here talking about cutting the staff. Start with the staff in central administration first. Way too many people. Way too bloated. Needs to be fixed. But put put the onus back on the educators. They'll take it. They'll
help. If you tell them we'll get rid of 10 people in administration to save 20 of these people, everybody here would agree. We'll help. We'll answer a call. And what these heads of HR and heads of this and heads of that. You can't answer your own phone. You can't schedule your
own meetings. Thank Thank you. I'm sorry. Your time is up. I'll be back. Thank you. Thank you, Jerry Trashy. I'm not sure what what's left to be said after that. I will however
attempt it wasn't that long ago and I'd like to remind everyone both here as well as those watching. I believe Scott, you made reference at one of the previous meetings. You made reference to the fact
that he you found it hard to believe and understand how after last year's debacle with the district budget, how we were not more diligent in our efforts to make sure that this financial crisis did
not reoccur. You were right. I concur. Now, approximately a year later, we find ourselves not in the same predicament, but in a worse
predicament. I like Mr. La Liberty and along with members of both the WTEA and the WTSSPA find this unacceptable. Furthermore, someone needs to explain to
us why our NJA representative, Mr. Greg Yordy has repeatedly requested information from the district, specifically from the business administrator as well as the head of human
resources, asking for information that we're entitled to in regard to negotiating our contract, the support staff's contract, so on and so forth. In Mr. 's most recent request on April
23rd. It reads as follows. Mr. Sweeney, I am once again following up on my email below to which I received no response to the questions I posed requesting salaries of many specific
individuals. Some he did in fact end up receiving, but the ones that he did not, he specifically once again asks, "Are you telling me that these employees have not had their contracts approved?
Therefore, are they still being paid their salaries from 23 24 school year?" Are you also telling me then that they have not received a raise for 24 and
25? Please send us the contracts for 2425 for the following individuals. Our business administrator Jannine Wctor, one of our assistant superintendents, Annette Miller, another assistant
superintendent, Pamela Nathan. As a reminder, the WTA and the WTSSPA are entitled to those contracts for bargaining as follows. And then he
concludes by citing all of the perk law that requires that the district provides that information to us. Can anyone explain why all the stonewalling is taking place in providing the
associations with this information? Now, I'm quite sure that this budget, and we've all heard it this evening, is going to result in massive cuts to our teaching staff, our support staff, and probably programs that hurt
the kids. Without full transparency regarding the expenditures requested, how can any of you sleep at night knowing how you've hurting this
district? Once again, the burden of addressing the district's budget concerns fall on the backs of those who can least afford it. We need to straighten that all out because every year the budget crisis, as
you've already heard, does in fact worsen. And again, it keeps falling on those who make the least amount of money in this district. Madison Ambrose. Hold on. I have a question. Yes, Julie. Yes. All right.
This one's for you. What do we have to do? What does the board have to do to legally riff a central admin position? Because I don't think that any administrator here would agree uh to riff one of their own. Rightfully
so, right? They need to look out for each other, but I do think it's necessary. So, what does that process look like? So, legally, the board has the right to riff a position in consultation with the superintendent. The standard is in consultation with the superintendent.
consultation, not so much agreement. Correct. That's correct. Okay. All right. Thank you. I'd like to put that on the agenda to discuss an executive session later on. Hello. Uh my name is Madison Ambrose. I
am a former employee here of the school district. Um I come because I I had some ideas. I had mentioned before in my uh one of the previous things that I had talked about. It was a student Chromebook uh repair program. Uh it was something that I wanted to start before
I left. Uh unfortunately I did not get the chance to do that. Um it was something that I had kind of talked about with with Dr. Pamela Nathan um because she's in charge of curriculum. I had listened to a podcast where they talked about Lakota schools and their uh
school of cyber security. They kind of have a program similar to ourmies where it's a three-year program where students start their sophomore year. They learn uh technology- based courses and then they have hands-on learning because they have like a studentrun help desk. Um we
transition to Chromebooks uh this past year. Uh we were supposed to fully transition over I think the next four years. Um, but if I'm understanding the budget correctly, it looks like we're kind of pausing that just because we don't have we're not able to purchase, you know, the next fleet of devices for
students. Um, the reason I'm suggesting this is because even if I'm not here, if somebody's willing to put the work in to do it, it is something that I think would be really beneficial for the district. Um, it would save you money as far as tur like for repairs go. It would keep repairs inhouse. We currently have
a contract with Acer. Uh it's two years where we um any or two years for a device or two incidents my bad for a device meaning after this device gets damaged twice is technically not able to get repaired anymore through Acer. Um
but Chromebooks have the ability since they're mostly softwarebased they continue to get updates from Google for seven years. meaning if you start purchasing third-party parts to continue to do these repairs in the district, you can really create a a longer lifetime
out of these devices. Um, currently with the Surface devices, it's a 4-year plan. Um, so if a freshman gets their new device, by the time they're a senior, that warranty is about to expire in the summer. Um, and then usually we recycle those devices. Uh the Surface devices
are not repairable the same way the Chromebooks are. Meaning we wouldn't have that four-year expiration date. We could continue to repair them and kind of create like Frankenstein Chromebooks that have refurbished parts in them. Um in a budget situation like this, you have to get creative. You have to be
willing to work with stuff that's refurbished that's not completely brand new. Um I mean, I even remember being a student having textbooks that had like scribbles in it and stuff like that and we made do. Um, you know, I think that that would be something that kids who
want to pursue a career in technology. It's a great hands-on learning experience. It would give them something to look forward to during the school day with, you know, stuff like sports possibly getting cut. This is a program that you could start with little to no money. If you have somebody that's
willing to teach it and you have somebody that's willing to be from technology kind of be a leaison, then it's something you could do. I know with like the teaching curriculum in New Jersey, it's required to have like technology courses, whether it's like a
computer science class. I know it has to be offered if it doesn't run because of like not popularity. I know that's a different case. Um, but that's something that I want to suggest just because I wanted to see it happen while I was here. Unfortunately, I'm not anymore. But if that's something that interests
anybody and any of the staff that work here, I would definitely suggest looking into it because I think it's something that students could really look forward to in the midst of all this stuff going on. Thank you. Thank you. I have a motion to close to the public.
I have a motion to close to the public. A second. Second. All in favor? I I Okay, moving on. Um, and I have a motion to approve the items one and two under the report of the
superintendent. Motion to approve. Second. Second. Uh, roll call. Oh, sorry. Any discussion? Second. Roll call,
please. Mrs. Baker, yes. Mrs. Bloom, yes. Mrs. Clancy, yes. Mrs. Chillow, yes. Mrs. Harton, yes. Mr. Liberty, yes. Mr. Serrano, yes. Mr. Ross, yes. Miss
Kazempo, yes. Motion carries. Motion to approve item number the only item under instructional affairs, field trip destination. So moved. Can I get a second? Second. Any
discussion? Roll call. Mrs. Bloom. Yes. Mrs. Clancy. Yes. Mrs. Chillo? Yes. Mrs. Harton? Yes. Mr. La Liberty? Yes. Mr. Serrano? Yes. Mr. Ross? Yes. Mrs. Baker?
Yes. Miss Kazmpo? Yes. Motion carries. Can I have a motion to approve items one and two under policy? Two policies. Um they are eligibility of resident non-resident students up for second reading and the student grievance policies being abolished first reading.
I have a motion to so moved second. Second. Any discussion? Roll call. Can I ask a question real quick? Why is this student grievance policy being abolished?
Mrs. Miller. It looks like a Strauss Esme situation um where everything's crossed out. Yeah. So, yeah. Mr. Sweeney, was that did you put that or or Mike? I'm not sure who put that on the agenda. You could help me out.
So it's a outdated policy. There was language in there that we were not following in terms of um student council being a part of the grievance process. We have our own process in place that's reflected um internally at the building levels. This was all included in the
memo that was sent out. This policy being is there going to be another policy put in in place of this? No, it's not a mandatory policy. Again, we have procedures in place to change command at the building levels for students and
families to express concerns. Okay. Roll call, please. Mrs. Clancy, yes. Miss Chillo, yes. Mrs. Haron, I'm going um yes for number one and no
for number two. Mr. Liberty. Yes. Mr. Serrano. Yes. Mr. Ross. Yes. Mrs. Baker. Yes. Mrs. Bloom. Yes. Miss Kazempo. Yes. Motion carries.
Motion to approve items one and two under student activities and communications. So moved. I have a second. Second. Any discussion? Seeing none, roll call. Mrs. Cello, yes.
Mrs. Harton, yes. Mr. Liberty, yes. Mr. Serrano, yes. Mr. Ross, yes. Mrs. Baker, yes. Mrs. Bloom, yes. Mrs. Clancy, yes. Miss Kazmpo,
yes. Motion carries. Now, this is finance and facilities. Please be aware that I'm asking for a motion to approve items 1 through 28 and number 27 is the budget HR. Oh, excuse me. I skipped HR.
I scrolled down too much. Okay. Sorry. Motion to approve items 1 through 17 under human resources. So moved. Second. Any discussion? I just want to congratulate um Mr.
Oprah's um retirement. Um he talked for 31 years in the district and um I know him and he was outstanding. Thank you. Thank you. Roll call, please. Mrs. Hartung. Yes. Mr. Liberty. Yes. Mr.
Serrano. Yes. Mr. Ross. Yes. Mrs. Baker. Yes. Mrs. Bloom. Yes. Mrs. Clancy. Yes. Mrs. Chillo. Uh, yes to items 1 through 16.
Abstain on number 17. Miss Kazmple. Yes. Uh, motion carries. Uh, can I have a motion to approve items 1 through 28? And now here number 27 is the budget. I just want to get a motion and a second
and then we can have discussion. Motion. Second. Okay. Discussion. Okay. I said a couple things. One, just acknowledging on N28. That's the next step in the um energy audit process.
Just basically getting us to somebody can help consider the solar options. So that continues to move forward. Uh on N27, the budget, I've already gone into depths about my view and personal view on the budget. So I'll be voting no for
those reasons. I just don't think it's setting us up for success in the future and it's putting the burden on the taxpayer. Okay. Um I'm was kind of like going back and forth with 27. Um, I really have a hard
time asking our residents, our voters, our people to pay an additional 7.13, whatever it is, uh, in taxes. And so, um, I am going to vote no.
I have a question. Janine, you said we have dropped dead of May 7th to have this submitted, correct? Yep. That's the latest date that you can have a public hearing and adopt your budget. Okay. Thank you.
Question Janine. If the budget doesn't get approved tonight, are we able to meet before the 7th and try and figure out how to fix some of the issues that we might have? Wait, is that Am I not allowed to ask
that? No, I was going to say the county superintendent will require you to meet before 7th. It's not It won't be an option. Okay. So then the answer is yes. Okay. I would just like to know, you know, what are the next steps if the budget fails? Um so you're saying if we have
another meeting, what really can change between now and then? And then if it goes to the county and it's not approved, do they get control over it? and what is in and out of it. For for the sake of the public, can you just explain? The first step in that process would be Janine reaching out to the
county superintendent or net reaching out to the county superintendent. And more likely than not, um the county superintendent will require you guys to have a special meeting and figure out the budget yourselves because it is the board's budget at the end of the day. If that doesn't work, you're almost in
uncharted territory at that point. Um, but yes, I suppose uh I suppose the county superintendent could do something like that. Um, but but I again I think more likely than not the initial reaction is going to be a requirement
that you guys have a special meeting uh immediately at some point next week to figure it out. Any other discussion, comments? Well, I I didn't get to say it in executive because it was going to be a suggestion for next year, but I think one thing
that the public needs to know is we didn't really meet together. We met in small groups to go over the budget. And my suggestion for next year was going to be even if it's a Saturday or a Sunday or whatever, we got the same
presentation, but we didn't get to hear what each other thought about the budget. And I think that that was really a big mistake. And it's an error we made last year, and it's an error that we made again this year. And this a no I at the very least would
force us to sit down as a group and review it. Thank you. Just real quick, I I just want to um say thank you to the donation for the
um clarinet the the video Paris clarinet to the music program. Um and It's a nice donation to the music program. So, um, and that donation was made by, um,
um, Mrs. Linda Pollock. So, thank you. Any other discussion about the finance agenda? Roll call, please. Mr. Le Liberty. No to 27. Yes to the rest. Mr. Serrano.
No to 27. Yes to the rest. Mr. Ross. Yes. I want to say no to 27, but I'm concerned that the agreement with the support staff is in there, but then I I feel that there could be more
cuts to help those people who are losing benefits. So, I'm going to say no. Number 27. 27. Yes. To the rest. Mrs. Baker. Yes,
Mrs. Bloom. No to 27. Yes to the rest. Mrs. Clancy, no to 27. Yes to the rest. Mrs. Chill, no to 27. Yes to the rest.
Mrs. Hartung, abstain from 24. No to 27. Yes to the restful. No to 27. Yes to the rest. Number 27 did not carry. Can I have a motion to approve um
the item under special education? Motion to approve. Second. Any discussion? Roll call. Mr. Serrano. Yes. Mr. Ross. Yes. Miss Baker. Yes.
Mrs. Bloom. Yes. Miss Clancy? Yes. Miss Chilla? Yes. Mrs. Haron? Yes. Mr. Le Liberty? Yes. Miss Kazmpo? Yes.
Nothing under negotiations. items of new business. One big item we have is we're going to have to figure out what to do now because um not only do we have to have um a meeting to further discuss how we're going to handle this problem, but a lot
of a lot of notices are going to go out now that are going to be very disturbing to our staff. almost makes me um when the budget doesn't pass, you don't have a budget now. It's approved to pay anybody. So, I just again, Ari, stop me if I'm saying too
much. I feel like I can't say enough actually that I just want people to be aware. Um I really know I know that there will be meetings with the administration and they're they, you know, are going to do that. They have that plan in case this happened. Um
but when you get um a a riff notice and you know we need a budget in order to to bring our employees back. So this is a scary time. I've never dealt with anything like this. I don't really know what's going to happen. I don't like not having um I don't like not knowing
what's going to happen. But obviously the will of the board was to vote no on the budget. So, we we need to make some additional changes to make that work. But, I just want to be clear that um you know, our staff are they're going
to get some upsetting ma mail and that's not our intention. Our intention is to support teachers and staff over and above everything. Anybody who interacts with a child is of our concern. And that's one of the reasons why I get a lot of emails and people coming up to the microphone talking
about outsource this and outsource that. As a parent of three children, two of whom are still in school, one of whom is going to the high school next year. I want my child to feel safe at school. There need to be adults at the school
um and I'm speaking personally. I'm not speaking at the board president as the board president. There need to be adults at the school that keep my child safe. So, I'm not in favor of cutting any of that. I I I think that, you know, we if anything, we need more disciplinarians
in the high school. Um, I think a lot of changes have to happen there. I have like a wish list of what I wish could happen at the high school having to do with the schedule, having to do with security, having to do with the amount of seniors that leave every day. I mean, there's so many things and it's just it
is very upsetting to come out to these meetings and burn almost two hours talking about stuff that has nothing to do with that. Literally nothing. So, you know, if you want to talk about outsourcing people and stuff like that because of a budget reason, I care about the person that serves my kid lunch.
That person sees my kid every day. I want control over who's hiring that person, supervising that person, and making that person person accountable for their actions and behaviors. making them come to work, making sure they're not taking pictures of your kid or something like that. You know, that's
important to me. So, as a mom, as a single mom, no less sitting here till 11:00 at night while my children, one of whom is sick, are home alone, single mom. This is all very upsetting. And I agree with the parents,
you know, who say that they're scared for their kids to go to high school next year. Be I am too. And I am I'm very sick and tired of all these conversations. I don't want to talk about myself. I don't want to talk about ethical stuff. I want to talk
about, you know, for example, we spend a lot of money. We send spend a lot of money sending kids to GCIT and my kid goes there. One of my children goes there. There are people out there that are there are districts out there right now that are talking about ways that they can reduce the amount of money that
they're paying to the tech schools. We haven't even had any of those conversations. Those people have contacted me. I've reached out to them for more information. And again, is that what's best for my child who's there? Probably not because he gets a great experience. I don't know if people know this, but at GCIT, they only take four
classes a day. So there they have four classes, which means they transition only four times. So there's less nonsense in the hallway. There's more directed time as to what they're doing in the classroom. They can devote themselves to four things. Not I mean, think about that. eight different transitions throughout the day. Like,
there's so much stuff like that that's just messed up that the grading floor, all those things. I'm so sick and tired of hearing the word ethics and legal and all of this stuff. Just You're right. We need leadership.
We do need leadership. I thought that that person was me years ago. It was. This is not what it was years ago. This is very different in every way. There is no trust at all between the board and the administration. And that's something that's occurred over the past two years. And I'll reserve my judgment for as to
why I think that has happened. But there is no trust between between folks and it's a very backbiting environment and it's a situation where people think they're going to lose their jobs every day and it's negative. It's problematic and those are my personal opinions. Hey
Julie. Yes. Can I have a comment? Uh I just wanted to get some information. Um I don't know who would answer this. uh we applied for uh additional money and we made an application. So I want to know
what what now with the with with turning down the budget. Does that have anything to do with that application? Maybe Janine would know it. It won't affect it as of right now as long as we adopt, you know, adopt
a budget by the deadline. Okay. So, so when we when we agree to that application and the things that are in the application, they stand. Yes. Okay. Thank you. I mean, unless the county denies unless Yes. So, just keep
in mind we haven't gotten final approval. So, we have to see what happens with that, but we don't go back and change that application. Yeah. That that's what I mean that on once we get if we get final approval what we what we applied for is what's what stays. Yes,
that was listed out. Thank you. But we need to be we need to like we need to be think about this because a lot of times too, you know, it's very easy to speak at the microphone about things, you know, and I hear but I hear a lot of conflict conflict there. You know, we
can't not tax above the 2% and get everything we want. Clearly, we can't get everything we want in even doing that. We're taxing 7% and we're still unable to do the things that we need to be doing. I'm I'm talking
like major changes like closing buildings. Big stuff has to happen in order to fix those things. And we haven't had conversations enough. I tried to bring up some of those ideas when I got back on in January. It's just been nonsense after nonsense after
nonsense. And we and we honest if we're all being honest with ourselves, we talk about nothing substantial. No. Nope. And I want to I want to thank Janine. Janine has put a lot of work into the budget. This isn't a reflection on her. But I also want to tell you as myself, not as
a board member. Since the day I got on this board, I feel like we have been pitted it against each other in so many ways that we can't talk about publicly. That's all I can really say. But it's been intentional and we have
psychologically taken the bait and get are very comfortable with turning on one another. And that doesn't do you any good. That doesn't do our staff any good. That doesn't do our children any good. No one is doing well because of
the way that we have almost been trained to treat one another. If I may, who is that? It's me. It's Annette. Um, it it just I I looked I I just have to
say that I am entering my 40th year in this district. In those 40 years, I have never witnessed a budget not carry. And I'm going to apologize to my staff because the implications that happen are
far more reaching than we can imagine. I understand that the board has a right to make a vote and to work together to solve the problem and so many stand at the podium and question administration. I have been an administrator for almost 20 years in
this district. No one asked me to step forward in this position. Special education and student services is one of the most challenging departments in this district. Not because of the children, not because of
the staff, because of the needs that we have to work hard to serve the children who often cannot speak for themselves. And I stand by that. Not all of us agree in that effort, but we all work towards the same goal, and that's kids.
Everything we do is about the children. When we had a had a vacancy, a need for someone to step forward in the absence of a superintendent, I became a new grandmother that evening. I was not
available. My dear friend Gretchen Gerber took that chair and she did it 100% for one week and it was relentless trying to be the director of elementary education and the superintendent. I sat
by her side and never left because none of us wanted to make a mistake. I then stepped forward in my role as assistant superintendent because that is what I agreed to do. I did not ask for money. I did not ask for time
because I knew the most important challenge we had ahead was this budget. And throughout that time, I had to listen to what I often refer to, those who know me well, is noise. A lot of noise. And I had to really filter
through that noise to keep the central goal, which is children. I value every support staff member, many of whom are my friends. I value every educator, every administrator. I value the members of
the board who volunteer their time to work together to try to do what we need to do so that our kids have what they need. But what I have witnessed in the past months has been very, very upsetting. I have sat silently, but I
sit silently no more. I have offered to stay in this chair until this board has somebody who can can do that job. So, I can go back to being full-time assistant superintendent of special education student services. I've heard arguing.
I've heard people at the podium. I don't fault people at the podium. They're speaking with passion. You are the stakeholders. You are the people who represent the children who are in this district. We don't have a company. We don't produce a product. We don't sell goods and bring
in revenue. We're at the We're at the mercy of the state and the federal government. And I'm just asking I'm asking the members of the board to really think hard about every step, every decision you make and to please, I
implore you to please work together because in the 40 years I have been doing this, I've never seen a budget fail. And I am just heartbroken at knowing what are the steps that have to go forward now.
And I am hoping as we go into exec, which I'm more than willing to put in the hours, which everybody who knows me, I'm unafraid to do, but I'm just saying we need to work towards doing what we need to do because there are so many implications with this decision this
evening. You have a right to make your vote. You have a right to ask for questions. But I can't allow staff to work in fear because that only hurts kids. and that I'm sorry. I I didn't mean to take too much time. I I tried to
listen, but tonight I just I just couldn't stay silent. So, from that I'll I'll Julie, you can take over. Yeah. I don't know that there's anything else really to say. I I really do hope that when our staff gets notification that they understand somehow that we're still
trying to work on this and make it right. Um, can I have a motion to open to the public? Motion to open. Can I have a second? Second. All in favor? Hi.
Um, Jenny Murphy, solicitor complex policy. Thanks, Annette, for those comments. Angelie, thank you for reaching out to Where where' she go? Thank you for uh reaching out to Peg. Um I wasn't aware of a fight in the parking
lot, so obviously that fight happened when I wasn't on the board. Um, Scott, I wanted to address something that you brought up at the beginning, um, which was you guys are going to go into executive session and talk about, um, the solicitor being the same person, I believe. Um, I do want to just talk
about the reasons that we always talked about when I was on the board for that being optional. You can do it, and there's reasons why schools do it, reasons why schools don't. Um, the same acting attorney as both solicitor, board attorney, and labor negotiator typically
revolves around conflict of interest and ethical concerns both under state law and New Jersey rules of professional conduct. The key issue is conflict of interest. The attorney may face a conflict of interest. Their duties as solicitor providing legal advice to the
board clashes with the role as a negotiator and engaging directly with unions or employee groups. For example, a solicitor. As solicitor, the attorney advises the board on a legal strategy and may have access to confidential matters that
influence negotiations. If that same attorney is then negotiating on behalf of the board, their impartiality could be compromised. Impairment of judgment. The attorney must exercise independent professional judgment. Combining both roles may impair their ability to advise
objectively. Um appearance of impropriety, board accountability, and transparency. The dual role can also complicate the checks and balances system within school governance as there may be less oversight of negotiations if the legal adviser is also the
negotiator. There are relevant cases on the SEC about that. Each district's different common practice is to retain a separate council for negotiations to avoid these conflicts. advisory comm uh SEC advisory committee
on ethics have previously cautioned against dual roles where conflicts or ethical dilemmas are possible. So the issue of conflict is something that you should consider in this conversation you're going to have whether to keep the policy or not keep the policy. And I
just did have one question um to follow up on. So um with Mrs. Chilla's conflict um Mrs. Kazmple made a comment that the board member determines if they're conflicted or not. So I'm assuming that you're not telling volunteer board
members that they shouldn't follow legal counsel's advice. Um and so if that's true and if if the board member decides if they're conflicted and and Mrs. Chill said that she said the night of the doctrine that she wasn't conflicted multiple times to
the solicitor. Um, how exactly did the resolution to going to invoke the doctrine of necessity get to the floor if Mrs. Chilla said she wasn't conflicted? If that's what you're telling me is that you decide yourselves whether you're conflicted or not. So, there was two questions. Are we not were
we advising new board members not to follow the solicitor's advice? And two, how did the resolution get to the floor if Miss Chilla said she wasn't conflicted twice and then you voted on it? We didn't know because you did the doctrine in between executive and the
regular public session. So I wasn't there to see exactly when it was read in and I believe the resolution was posted the next day. So I had those two questions. Thank you. I go ahead. I I think the answer to the first
one um the board solicitor gives advice, right? The board solicitor also suggests that the board member can go to the SEC and seek an advisory opinion which has happened more times than any of you are probably even aware of with this with this board over the last several months. So all board members are aware of you
know the final authority on this on any ethical issue comes from the SEC. I myself or any other board attorney is simply giving legal advice. Um that that's something that's been discussed numerous times with this board. Is that the full question?
Yeah. I think what pe I think what people aren't understanding, Ari, is that the conflict that you you your opinion was that there was a conflict not because they were named together at by the complainants, but it was the content of the complaint. It was the
actions that were taken. Yeah. Right. Like I just it would be but it would be a lot easier to explain to people if Miss Chill would just share what's in the complaint. Randy Ford like I really feel like we can't
even take any more questions on that. If you don't want to share it, you don't want to share it. I really feel like you should stop saying my name in general. Like stop saying my name if you want to have like a knockdown dragout. Like we just had people come up to the podium. We've switched over from the
conversations about ethics. Let's go back to them again and bring up my name. It's leadership. Let's move on. If you want to talk about your ethics that are still pending, we'll do that, too. As you can see, I'm sitting here. I've discontinued the conversation about
ethics because at this point, we've moved on. People's lives have been significantly impacted by a budget and you're continuing to bring my name forward. There's no reason for it. The speaker, we're done with it. The speaker at the podium brought it forward. Mr. Ford, and you don't have to comment. You
can move on. Uh, Randy Ford. Uh, with respect to the budget not being approved, despite the budget not being approved, there were a number of items that are in the budget for 25 through 26 that this board did
approve tonight. So, just before the meeting's over, just want to throw out that you approve the semiformal dance location for 26 and 27. Um, the electric supply, you know, I know that's a purchasing agreement, but
the elevator full service maintenance, vending machines, uh, bid renewal for monitoring and maintenance services, sports safe testing. I don't you know again if if you're not going to have certain sports do you still need
those all I bring that up just because 10 or 12 of these agenda items are probably more than just minimum contracts that the board is just going to have somebody sign presumably
tomorrow or in the next couple days. So, if you're not going to pass the budget tonight, you might want to consider tableabling those or making some whatever motion you're going to make to not approve those until maybe, you know, a week from now or before May 7th or
9th. So, that's just again related to the budget. Um the other thing is with respect to meetings about the budget and what what I don't understand is I don't know who can call a meeting
but I got to imagine that either the board president the vice president a majority of you up here are all saying we want to meet we want to spend more time we want to talk about the real issues but then don't don't blame us for coming up
and talking about certain things, just do it. Make a special meeting. You had a special meeting Monday. You all know how to do it. Do it again for the budget. Have it every night. I don't It doesn't We can't do that for you. So, I just want to call out that don't say because
I come up and talk about conflicts or Robert's rules or something else that I'm somehow deflecting, which by the way, I am a product of a single mother. My father when I was three killed himself of a drug overdose. So listen, I
get it. Everyone has families. I have three kids in the district, too. I want the district to be safe. I want it to be responsible. I come up here to talk about certain things that I do feel passionate about. Um, and I really wish that we would just work to protect the
staff, work to protect the students, and then work together everybody. And just stop saying you want to. Just do it. It's not that hard. Make a motion tonight. Hey, let's meet tomorrow or 48 hours, whatever. Ari can tell you how many hours you need for a special
meeting. Do it tonight. Make the commitment to put it on the agenda to go and have another meeting. Um the only other question and it is about a conflict or it is about you know process there. There's policy 0168 which talks
about recording board meetings. Says the board secretary shall make an audio tape recording of each board meeting which includes executive and public. Just curious if that's actually being done. Thank you Nicole Ludi.
I have a question about cutting middle school basketball. Uh what exactly is that saving um as they play each other? Um how much money can the district possibly save by having three middle schools play each other in our own gym?
Um I know that's something boys and girls, it's something that they very much look forward to. Um is there other options for things like that that you're cutting? Have you looked into sponsors? Have you looked
into PTO's? Um, I would happily personally donate basketball t-shirts to every single one of those kids that wants to play. Take that out of your budget. Um, PTO's come into my store twice a week
during fundraising season and I happily give them things as long as, as many other businesses do, too. Why can't PTO's fund some of these clubs and sports and activities? They have tens of thousands of dollars
that are supposed to be for the kids. I'm part of the PTO. They're great organizations. Um, has that been looked into to save some of these clubs or activities? Um, and I also just have a couple questions or statements from
people that either aren't here and messaged me during the meeting or that don't feel comfortable speaking. Uh, don't shoot the messenger. Um, I want to confirm that when again these are from random people at home. I want to confirm as just so we are clear that Mr. McGee's
resignation had nothing to do with the board. Someone that directly knows Jack personally has said it was said at the last meeting that it was because of health issue. This was a direct lie to the public. Um, obviously personnel issues cannot be made public, but it was wrong to mislead the public in thinking
it had nothing to do with being bullied and forced to feel a certain way and ultimately bail on a job that he loved. As a parent and resident, the only thing we are hearing is conflicting sides of everything. There are two sides to the teachers union. There's two sides to the
board. Where is the trust in the truth? Whether people like the answer or not, we just want you to be transparent about everything. There's been a long very long line of mistrust that lies with this district and it's continuing to this present day. Please tell us the truth on why Jack McGreed really
left. Again, don't shoot the messenger. Does Julie still play Candy Crush on her phone as the public is speaking? Has Connie Baker ever attended an actively participated in an executive session, committee meeting, and public sessions intoxicated? Is there it was previously
mentioned that Dr. Hibbs refused to allow staff members to speak to board of ed meetings and he was portrayed that it was basically dictating and doing so on the account of control and lack of caring and respect amongst the other things. Is this an accurate accounting
or was he enforcing an already created policy? The following is a message from another staff member we work with and it was discussed at work and this is the reason we are asking. There was an incident involving April Renetti that reportedly directly went to Julie
Kazmple regarding students monitored in the RBPAC. Protocol for that would call her to go to Mr. Anderson right across the hall. Instead, she went to a board member who in turn called Mr. Anderson. Mr. Anderson spoke at a board meeting saying that the bullying was not unsafe
and that he was angry that it was being said that it was. I fully trust Mr. Anderson's judgment. I could understand why he was angry being that the policy states there is a chain of command. If Dr. Hibbs enforced the policy stating that we had to follow the chain of
command, he is doing his job. The union leaders didn't like that among other things that he had stated to hold people accountable for and in turn started to spin a different story to the rest of the general p general membership and to the public to try to get them to agree
with their end goal to have him removed. Was April Renzetti reprimanded for breaking the chain of command and public policy? And if not, why? I know you cannot talk about personnel. However, there is a long email chain between Miss Kazmple and Miss Renzetti
that has been Oprid and Miss Kazmple entertained and continued the conversation knowing it broke protocol and policy and did not go up the chain of command. Why is she not on the hooks for ethics against this? Julie, your entire speech deserved
an Oscar because all of the problems that have stemmed from this board at this time are stemmed on your ethics. Those words have never been thrown about so much since you have been here. You create the conflict. The public has a right to speak about it. The way you walked away and looked back at Miss
Murphy and kept walking was disgraceful and disrespectful. I watch every meeting from home and notice that every meeting you disrespectfully pay zero attention to anyone speaking that you don't care for. We are the public and we deserve your un unwavering attention. You're the president. Act like it.
James Msadi. All right. Good evening. James Msati, resident here, Washington Township. This room really is a lot louder than the other room, isn't it? It's pretty crazy. I mean, it makes sense. It's a great theater. It amplifies well. Um, so a couple things.
Uh, I sent after last, uh, board meeting, uh, a message to the board, uh, with a recommendation for providing feedback for questions that were asked from the public. Uh, because there was a number of folks who kind of observed that it's difficult. You're up
here, you've got your five minutes, you guys get rapid fire questions, and it's hard to keep track a lot of times of what's out there. Um, there was a couple that were missed tonight, but I think you guys did a much better job of addressing the questions that were asked. So, there's a lot of discussion
and debate and criticism on a number of topics going on, but I wanted to provide just some positive feedback of whether it was intentional when you listened to the email that I sent and the request that I made. Uh, I observed that the board did a much better job of responding to the questions. There's
room for improvement, but there was much better acknowledgement of the questions that were being asked. We understand we get we get frustrated by the fact that there is things that you guys are not allowed to comment on but at least being able to acknowledge hey we heard this
question get asked whether it's Ari can we ask this answer this question or whatever it may be just being able to acknowledge that we have questions as the public and that they're getting asked at the podium goes a long way to bridging that trust. Um, so I want to acknowledge that I saw this week being
better. Um, on the topic of trust, there's a lot of it that needs to be built. Um, I touched on this a little bit last meeting when I came up. Um, I was going to hold off on this particular topic until after we got past the whole
budget discussions and budget issues and things along those lines. But uh for those of you who have never read the book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by the author Patrick Linsion, um I personally would love to facilitate leading a book club discussion uh with
the board, with the WTEA, with the rest of the union leadership, with the community. Um it's a great fantastic book. It's a parable. Uh the audio book is a few hours long. Uh we could probably cover it in two or three sessions. uh we can I'll pick a night of
the week, you know, that doesn't have other board commitments, things along those lines. But it really goes deep into, you know, you can't build a team unless you start with a foundation of trust. And forget everything else that's being talked about and everything that's
being said. from my perspective whether that's the underlying issue and we have to figure out how do we get to a spot where we are going to disagree and we can agree that we disagree but we have to figure out the trust part first or we're never going to get past any of the
other stuff and you guys are going to keep on festering on each other and Miss Bloom I really appreciated kind of your acknowledgement of we feed the beast right and so when we bring negativity to this microphone it doesn't help you guys
get to a positive space, right? So, that's why I'm not just asking the board to consider joining me on this venture. Uh, talk to Ari if you're allowed to attend that. I don't know again if there's rules against it. Um, but if there is, I it's still a book. It's not that expensive. It's relatively short.
Would strongly encourage you to read and maybe again set up time during your executive sessions to discuss that uh as a group. Uh, I think it would go a long way to really helping things. Uh the last one that I would love for you guys to consider when you go into executive
session to discuss the budget is the fact that you heard a number of folks bring up uh and and again you know even other members on the board the fact that there is a known issue coming from a budgetary perspective. uh there's contracted increases for the next
several years, right? Um I would love for you guys to put a plan together and whether that's, you know, through Mr. Toronto and the budget business, you know, committee, you know, if that's from the staff. Again, I was on the budget task force of the community last year. I would love to
volunteer to help again more with putting together a two-year plan, three-year plan, fiveyear plan, and let's start building, you know, special sessions about the budget. Let's start that in October next year, not in April,
the day before we have to vote on it by mandate, right? Let's let's help educate the public. I I own an accounting firm. I've been running budgets and P&Ls for over a decade. And you know, I understand how to build a budget for a multi-million dollar organization. A lot
of people don't realize that a million dollars is the equivalent of less than 1% of our total budget. We need to educate folks on this stuff. Thank you. Can you tell me the title again? I just got the five dysfunctions of Yep. Five dysfunctions of a team by Patrick
Lencion. Thank you. Terry Shear. Hello, Terry Shakar, Washington Township. Good evening, everybody. Long night again. We're in a crisis. I'm not sure if I would consider it a crisis
when it seems to be 100% predictable. We were uh not in this room I don't think last April, but unless there are some significant changes to how we function as a community, I expect we'll be here again next April. Expecting different results by taking the same budgetary actions year after year is not
impactful. We have to think of a different strategy. I've asked the board and I will continue to volunteer to enhance our community engagement and transparency. I think the solution is through collaboration. We need to implement uh overall fiscal strategies
and policies for long-term stability. By just reacting to one budget year, um we're not solving the problem. We have a theater full of engaged community members, employees, teachers, service members here tonight and very often. And
I think it would be great if we could use some of that time and energy to help make a better plan for the future. We should be focusing on pursuing additional funding sources like ideas through the business committee. You can't we're not going to resolve these
budgetary concerns by taking a red pen or even a chainsaw to services. That's just not going to solve the problem. Um the district initiated the community task force. I think that's great. I think we need to involve parents and educate them. Uh 75% of the budget is
going to be predetermined already by compensation and benefits. I don't think by addressing any of the other areas, we're going to make impactful uh decisions for the community members. I'm really concerned about the assumption around some of the uh claims in the
budget around savings, around cutting hours and benefits. This is the same strategy as last year. I haven't seen the audit results from last year as I don't think they are yet available, but I would caution uh the board against counting on significant cost savings through these actions. uh an estimate of
cost avoidance by eliminating some of these uh employee costs is not the same as savings and I would assume that when you're talking through some of these ideas the risk associated with the plan um it is not significantly changing through um those small cuts. Thank
you Carrie Capio. Carrie Capio, parent of a student in district. Um, I was up last week. I'm hoping the more I come up here, the easier it is for me. Um, I would like for the board to take into consideration
when you go back into executive session. A lot of people have been talking about the cuts and the students. One of the other things we've heard in over the past several months from educators, band, drama, art, the shared
services having to run from one school to the next is not working. Are the teachers making it work? Yes. Is it working? No. Mr. Anderson was called out a a few meetings ago whether or not having the students housed in the
auditorium when they didn't have enough support staff or enough subs. Um and his response was he made it work. That doesn't mean it's working. It is not working for the students. You guys are going to go back in. You've talked about cuts to the
bottom level of the support staff. Again, you you have to start from the top. it that it's simple math there. You cannot continue to run the schools without the staff that are in there every single
day. Teachers are being reprimanded for not being able to do their jobs when they are given different responsibilities. Is that fair for the for the educator? the teacher has to they they they they're teaching one class and have to run to another
building, another school to do a different job and then they're being reprimanded for not doing it effectively. That's not fair. You have to do better. Start somewhere else. This I'm I'm not the numbers guru. I'm a human
service person. You are not doing right by these students. That's it. Baldisaro, can I can I make a motion to go past 11 PM, please? Oh, yeah. I was just Can I have a second? Second. All in
favor? I I think that was the majority. Any nays? Okay. Um, just in light of what Mrs. Miller talked about earlier. I want to I want to repeat something I said last week and
you know I know it's going to go a little bit counter to what was just said but you know as you go through budgets you need to rely on data and you know that's the the data I gave you on on the food service and how we're 1500% above. You know that's a place you
look wow we can figure something out. You I was a little alarmed to hear Mr. Srano talk about riffing at the at here and and mentioning administration. So, I want to remind you what I the data that I shared with you. We are among the lowest in the state for administrative
spend per student. That's a fact. And I heard the frustration in Mrs. Miller's voice when she I think felt like people are questioning, you know, administrative team. And you know, there's a whole bunch of people up here
and I've dealt with most of them over time. And I know how hard they work. And if you're going to sit here and want to make cuts that, you know, either the superintendent didn't recommend, if you're just going to do that on your
own, that's dangerous. Look at the data. Okay? Don't just blindly make things, you know, got to cut from the top. I'm I'm all for that. Trust me. You know, I I worked among the leanest executive teams I've ever seen because we use data. And for executive teams, we
decided we wanted to be in the 35th percentile. For the rest of the staff, we wanted to be in the 50th. So, we held ourselves to a higher standard. Well, we're already doing that here. We're in the 25th percentile for administrative staffing. You go lower, you're you're
risking. I saw the the report on on uh safety at the high school. Was it detentions or whatever? They've never been higher. We have there's a lot of risk in our buildings and so think long and hard. You know, don't just cut to
cut. You have to make sense of things. And this is, you know, Mr. Msati just talked about starting in October. I I I disagree. I think it should start for next year tomorrow. You know, I'm joking because I know you got to finish this budget, but you know, Miss Bloom, you talked about how you made a mistake last
year and then you did the same thing this year. Man, I hope we don't hear that again. You know, you got to fix that. If you need information, you got to make sure it happens and bring it up. Bring it up publicly. Embarrass somebody if you have to, but don't let you not getting
something cause you to not have the information you need to make a decision. Um, but also don't blindly make decisions either. Little advice, you're in panic right now. You're in you're in stress. You're in trouble. Do not make
any long-term commitments. That's the worst thing you can do. You can't commit yourself to something five years from now. You don't know what your revenue is going to be. So, I've been there. I've done that. And we outlawed long-term contracts. You know, one maybe two is
the longest is all we would do. That's the prudent reasonable thing, especially when you guys are at most here for two and a half more years. That's the only guarantee you have. If you agree to a five-year contract today, you're committing to people who
aren't even on the board yet, and you're hamstringing them, it's a dangerous time. Long-term contracts are not what you need to be doing. Um, just pivoting, I want to talk a little bit, Mr. Schneider, about the the doctrine. I know the fir I'm not talking about the first one. I'm talking about the second one. When Miss Kazmple
read her advisory opinion at that point in time, you know, she mentioned she wasn't conflicted and Miss Clancy wasn't conflicted either and you had mentioned that at the next meeting. You know, it didn't get talked about, but you acted this board acted on the doctrine after
that. That is not a legal opinion. That's a legal error. And I'm concerned as a as a community member about risk. I would hope that every decision that was made on an error should be
rescended. So whatever actions you took after, you know, that that was cleared. I'm not arguing the first one. Um and and also to mention when you when you brought Jack McGee in, you used it under the doctrine, but you had seven board members who were unconlicted to to put a
put a um to put an interim in. Mrs. Chill was conflicted on Dr. Hibbs. Miss Kazmple was conflicted on Dr. Hibbs, not on an interim. So you mistakenly, again, another mistake gota, you know, we got to watch what we're doing here because we're creating risk for this district
and we can't have that. But I would hope that you can respond on, you know, again, we we did the doctrine after we clearly had five non-conlicted. And then the last thing, the policy, shouldn't policy discussion happen in open session? So, when you're going to talk
about waving a policy or or whatever, that discussion should be in open session, not close session. Okay? Executive session is not to hide things from the public. It's to talk about the things that you can't legally talk about in open session. Executive session is
for budget, I'm sorry, legal and personnel issues. And that policy pertains to legal issues. So, that's why it was discussed in executive the the doctrine was only applied um as it related to the superintendent. It was
not applied to uh hire uh Mr. McGee at the time. So, I'm not sure where that's coming from, but it was not used for that purpose. It it had a singular purpose and it was not used after that ruling that uh Miss Kazmple brought up
was learned by me. Brady Williams. Hello. Um, I do want to give you guys some appraisal. Um, like the other man said is I'm very proud of you guys. You did all start answering questions this time around. I mean, it did fade off towards the end and got
sidetracked, but you guys were doing better with answering questions, trying to be a little bit more transparent. And also, I want to condemn the people that voted no towards passing the budget. Thank you. Um, but then we just had to listen to
the rants focusing on um how upset you are that the budget failed to pass rather than focusing on how you're going to fix it. We just had to listen to over like a five minute rant of how upset you are. Then you shouldn't have voted no, Julie. It kind of felt like we were kids
being scolded there. Like we listened to you and you were it came across as if you were very upset that it didn't get passed. I don't know if it's because it's a burden to you. I don't know. It's going to have to take because you mentioned, oh, I don't want to waste two hours. Well, that's what you signed up
for. Um, now I want to get into what's the chain of command when it comes to the budget. Who gets the budget at first and who does it go to? Does it go is it the superintendent and the BA and then it
goes to the board? How who is who's all involved in it and what can you give me the list of the chain of command? When did you guys start working on this year's budget? Um, do you guys sit together and go over line items of the
budget? Pat, you mentioned you haven't all met all together. I don't understand why you're not all sitting and going over it. How did you guys You just read an email, you looked at it and just agreed. I don't I don't know why there there isn't one another meeting like you
didn't have a meeting before this. A lot of you guys said, "Oh, we just saw it." I don't I don't understand how you're having a meeting with the public and then not reviewing it first. All right. And then you guys talk about it's all about the kids. What steps have you taken with the teachers
that keep coming up here and begging for help? The past three meetings, they keep coming up here. You have one teacher crying that they can't keep going to the different schools. It's too much. What steps have you guys done? Have you done Have you even reached out
to any of those teachers? With the increase of the taxes, it doesn't solve that problem. How can you ask to raise the taxes, present a budget, and then not fix the issues that the teachers are coming up here and crying? Okay. If you could just go ahead
and give me my answers because you guys were doing very good with that. So again, the chain of command, I would like the breakdown of all that. Also, what are you gonna do about the teachers and moving on to the different buildings? Thank you.
Talk about budget. Thank you. I can just start off talking about the budget process. Um the budget is usually started in the fall, really right after the school year starts and um put together by budget managers and
administrators in the district. And then in most years we talk about uh most of our budget discussions with the board tend to happen in exe um not executive in committees. Um because we have smaller groups. when you talk about the
budget in public. You can talk about things like revenue and taxes, but you know, a lot of our budget is driven by staffing. So, you do have to talk about staffing either in small groups or executive session. Um, and then, you
know, we just do our best to share information. Um, like I said, a majority of our meetings were in small groups where everyone was receiving the same information. Again, the challenge with having a big group discussion is going
into ex being very careful. We can't even really mention like a position by name and not a person because if you can connect it to a person, it's it's not right. So, the the conversations tend to stall and you keep going back into
executive session. Um, Yes. So most of that's done in committees. When the whole board is together, it has to be an advertised public meeting. You have to take public comment and you have to talk in front of
the public, which is fine. But you know for for instance like like Janine said most of the things like our resources are human and so our most of our expenses are human resources and so when we have discussions about things it
always affects personnel which you can't talk about in public. So for instance you make a meeting of the full board and you come out and you you know have your public comment time and all of that and then you have to go into executive to have those discussions. It's seems like
a more efficient or we we thought it was have practiced for years a more efficient way that it's been done is to have committees which are small groups of under quorum so five or four people um and it's the exact same presentation
that's given so like Annette and Janine and Gretchen and everybody you know they spent we all spent um we had committee meetings like three weeks in a row I feel like where they came every single night at 6:00 and gave the same
presentation to the small groups of people. So, by time the week is over, we've all had that information. The Friday memo comes out, then, you know, everyone's talking, well, I want to do this or I'm thinking of doing that and go back, okay, well, when you go to committee next week, you can talk about that. I mean, it's it's basically like
non-stop conversations, but we met more this year than I've ever met about budget in the past. In my experience, it started back in like November or December and you would get your audit in January and then you would
start planning um a budget retreat in February, budget committee meetings in February. Then the um as Janine had in on her presentation, the governor's budget address is usually around like the third the last week in February. That tells you how much aid you're going
to either be cut or be given. Um well, that's usually like a day or two after that. then you have to have your budget presentation done three weeks from that point. So when we said we just when we voted no on the tenative budget, we
literally had just gotten it like I think two days before a couple it was like a couple days before um that we received it. And so no one I I can't speak for everyone else. I didn't feel comfortable voting yes because I didn't feel like I had enough information. I didn't see a line item budget. I didn't
see an audit. I didn't see those things that I had seen before. Um, then you have a month to you you you send that to the county in March and then you have a month to work on it before this, which is the public hearing of the budget. So, sure, you could have a meeting of the
full board once a week during that time. I don't know that that's the most efficient use of the board's time because you need to have those conversations like as we've all had in committee where you can toss ideas around, you can ask questions, you can feel comfortable because it's it's an
executive session asking a question like well if you do away with that how many how many teachers are we going to lose you know or if you cut this program do we still need that administrator? we have to be able to ask those questions and we can't do it here, you know. So, that's kind of how it's supposed to work. But between the tenative budget
and today, I feel like it's been non-stop meetings. I I mean, the administrators are there every night. There are committee meetings almost three nights a week. Um, so yeah, the the next step that we have to do is we have to have
another meeting of the full board before the 7th to talk about what we're going to change. I can't even imagine what's going to be changed between now and the 7th that would be of like significant enough, you know, that could because a lot of the things, you know, that we
would need to do are long-term planning. Um, which again, when you work with contracts, you have you have to have long-term contracts. We live off of union contracts, you know, so it's tough situation. Um, I hope that answers it.
Uh so so I guess chain of command is not really like the right it's everyone's problem like there is no real like person who like releases it to the next person so on so forth. Hey Julie I just want to comment real
quickly. Um I just got a text from home. I think my child may have tore her ACL so I actually have to leave. I just don't want anyone to be like why is she leaving? Why isn't she executive session? But I literally I can't, you know, I have to take her because I'm a
single mom, too. So, I have to go, unfortunately. I'm sure I'll be able to catch up, but there's nothing I can do at this point. I have to go. Sorry, Joey. Can I just say that I really think that um Annette and and Janine did a good job. I have no criticism of them,
but what I was trying to say was you get together in small groups and say, "I think A is important. I can't convince the whole board that I think a is comp important. I may convince people in my
group, but then the the the other night they're not going to hear my concern as to why that was important to me. So, I'm not criticizing them, but going forward, I think we have to have, in my opinion, only full meetings so that even if
they're late, even if they're on weekends, that's what a retreat is called. I think we do need to be together to hash things out. And I think it could take hours, but I think that's what's lacking. Oh, yeah. As a group,
and that's what, in my opinion, that's what we need to be doing. Chris um batchish I you didn't write it phonetically. I know I probably messed it up. Sorry. I I I said I was coming back up then I decided not to come back up and then two seconds ago I decided to
come back up because when you say chain of command it is somebody's budget. It's the superintendent's budget right because he's starts it. Janine as business administrator should know what's going on in that budget. I I'm not hearing it's like nobody takes any
responsibility for it. It's everybody's got these little pieces that go here and there and there's no responsibility at the end of the day. The business administrator needs to know what is happening in all the lines of that budget and should know. And there's no
doubt that Peg had that down. So, I've seen it done. I've seen it done well and I've seen it where it's not done well. These little committees and then everybody arguing and then not talking to each other is just feeding into this. Nothing's getting done. So clearly that
is the problem. There is a problem and and yes I I Miss Miller is upset that her you know this budget didn't pass because it wasn't good enough. It needs to be better. It's there's no plan for the future again and it wasn't good
enough. And yes, a lot of people put a work in a lot of work into it again in little tiny groups cutting the tiniest little things here and there but not getting you to any real substance. So I think it's time to take a look at like other avenues of how else
can you fix that budget and where else can we cut? And again, it start seems to me is figure out who's getting all the money and who's also hiring their friends and who's being overpaid for positions that clearly two years ago
weren't being done. And somebody mentioned that it wasn't like this two years ago. What what changed? I wonder what I don't know. But it seems to me that the superintendent was a big problem in this organization.
Whether he was good at his job or not, either way, it caused so much rift within the school board. I think you really need to think hard about bringing him back between the teachers and the board because that didn't work. Clearly
didn't work. And is not going to work if you bring him back. It's you're just going to wind up in the same spot. And then we're going to wind up in the same spot. Then it's just going to be arguing. Half of you are Hib's friends, half of you aren't. It's he seems to me over the last two years he's the key to
the problem besides all of you. He really it stems off of you. Half of you like him, half of you don't. So I don't know. I just think when you go back and talk in your executive session, you should really think long and hard about who
you're doing this for. Is it for you or is it for the kids? Is it for the staff? Who is it for? And I think you'll come to the right decision if you go, who am I doing this for really? Am I doing this for the kids? If the answer to that question is no, you shouldn't be doing it. Thank
you. Um motion to close to the public. So moved. Second. All in favor? I Okay. Um can I have a uh motion to move into executive
motion? Second. All in favor? I. Okay. So, resolve that pursuant to section 8 of the open public meetings act, the public shall be excluded from the portion of the meeting involving the discussion of if Carol's not here, we're taking that off. The
other two things I had were the lawyer attorney client advice and personnel. Say personnel. Steve said I just wrote okay um further resolve
that discussion of such s was that everything I think that was everything in my notes sorry this is my this is my candy crush that I'm playing it's a book filled with everything everyone says further resolve that discussion of such subject matter and executive session can
be disclosed to the public if any action is taken by the board either at the resumption of the public session at the conclusion of the executive session or at a public session at a later date. So, I don't know if we're going to take action. So, if action may be taken. So,
we'll be right back. We'll be back. I don't know. 30 minutes. 30 minutes. Hey, And we are back with Disney's week of wishes to mark the 45th anniversary of Make a Wish. Disney is the world's largest wish granter, making more than
165,000 wishes come true. That's since 1980. Will Reef has the story. Hey, Will. Hey, George. That very first wish granted in 1980 was granted at Disneyland. And this year, Disney is kicking off its first week of wishes at where else but Disneyland. Working with
Make a Wish to make as many dreams as possible come true for kids like Justice Brown. Take a look. This is my own castle. This is your own castle. The wish queen. You're the wish queen. Yeah. Justice Brown's wish is coming true. The
Eboliant six-year-old recovering from a removed brain tumor, receiving the royal treatment with her family. Heat. Heat. So, I don't we're not taking action on anything. Change. We got to change the minutes.
Oh, right. Can I have a motion to close executive and move back to the public? Can I get a second? Second. All in favor? I. Okay. Motion to approve the executive minutes from January 7th and January 21st based
on changes discussed in executive session. Can I have a motion to approve? You amending or approving? What? Did you make a motion to amend or approve? What? I made a motion to approve them with the amendment with the amendments that we
discussed. Okay. Understood. Motion. Second. All in favor? No. Huh? Oh, who seconded it? I did. Ralph. Uh, any discussion? Yeah, I'm I'm not
voting. I'm upstating because I don't remember. Is there any Is there any discussion like outside of your vote? No, I don't remember. Okay. Roll call. Motion to approve the January 7th and January 21st executive session
minutes amended minutes based on the the discussion that we had as documented in executive. But you're doing them separate, Julie. You're doing each separate. No, we're not. Who's doing both
together? Yes. Connie. Connie. Connie. Yes. Yes. Wake up. Yes. Uh, no. Can we separate the two? All right. So, I'm going to go no for the seventh and yes for the 21st.
But abstain. I wasn't here on the 21st and I didn't hear the comment on the second or seventh. Um, yes to the 21st. Abstain on the 7th. I wasn't in the room. Did it carry? Did I carry
Okay, that was the only action that we were taking. Can I have a motion to adjurnn? Are we going to Excuse me, Julie. Are we going to have a meeting or anything on in reference to the budget? We We do. I mean, we don't have to figure that out
right now at midnight, but we do have to have a meeting. I guess we can Janine can propose something of or somebody. How do you want to work that, Janine? Um, I think we maybe we can like talk about it tomorrow and propose. Okay. Okay. And then I'll send out an email and see if everyone's available. Okay.
So, you're going to ask for an extension. Is that is that what is that what Ari said? You could we can go to the seven. Oh, we can go till seven. Oh, so we'll have something before the seventh.
Hopefully. Okay. Motion to adjurnn. Second. All in favor? Bye. Hi.