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Public meetings act was provided by written notice on January 6, 2026 to the courier news echo sentinel star ledger tap into Warren and the clerks of the burrow of watchung and townships of Greenbrook Longill and Warren. Roll call. Mr. Decker >> here. >> Miss Ferono Rosmerki

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>> here. >> Miss Lee >> here. >> Miss Potter >> here. >> Miss Prosa >> here. >> Miss Trump >> here. >> Mr. Burnberg >> here. Pledge allegiance please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the

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republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Okay. Let the record show that Miss Rexford has >> arrived. Okay. In accordance with the provisions

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of the New Jersey Open Public's Meeting Act, be it hereby resolved that the board move into executive session to discuss confidential personnel and legal matters after which action may be taken. It is expected that the matters discussed in executive session will be made public as soon as the need for confidentiality no longer exists. May

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have a motion to go into executive session. >> So move. >> Second. >> Second. >> All those in favor? >> I. >> I. Great. So we're in executive session shortly. Uh we expect to be out by 7:30. Hopefully not much longer after that.

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And we'll see everyone then. Thank you. Appreciate it. Welcome back everybody. Uh few minutes past 7:30. I apologize but we had some important things to discuss during executive session. Uh but now we will move forward. I believe this is our

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final presentation for the 2627 school district uh budget. I think we've been through this three or four times already and I'm sure uh Dr. Jwer and Mr. Schultz have some exciting hopefully new stuff to tell us or maybe

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it's just more of the same. But either way, uh looking forward to yet another scintillating presentation. We have nothing new uh to report. So we will go through this um a little bit faster than we did last time with some less detail. However, this is our

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official public hearing of the budget. Uh so in our timeline, we are at the bottom April 28th public hearing on the budget. I do want to uh as I did last time, just thank the board uh for your work in putting together this budget. I think it definitely allows us to

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continue providing the exceptional programs we provide for students in a very fiscally responsible manner and I know you spend months on this like we do administratively. So I really want to thank you for that and for your thoughtfulness as we um had to work with some very uh strict budgetary

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constraints and and challenges this year. Uh we always obviously reference our strategic plan goals which next year you will see uh new redesign goals. We will be presenting our proposed strategic plan at our next board meeting. Our anticipated enrollment you know

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continues to decline although the decline has slowed down. In terms of our new academic and uh co-curricular purchases we obviously have a number of technology upgrades that we make every year. With regard to our co-curricular additions, uh that includes some instruments, athletic equipment, and

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uniforms, which are recurring costs in our budget. And for our uh operations, we are finally purchasing some new vehicles that uh we managed to cut out of the budget every year that I'm really happy we were able to keep in this year. A new dump truck, a new pickup truck

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that will also have an equipment for a trailer for our band equipment, and um some upgrades to our phone system. our digital media lab renovation uh and our regional drive paving project are part of this. I was driving back and forth on that today to see some of the athletic

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events and I'm really excited we're getting that repaved. Uh and then we always have doors, HVACs and roof in our budget every year. So that's another recurring item that's quite costly. I'll turn it over to Mr. Schultz. >> Thank you Dr. Jwitt. Uh all those

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projects that you just discussed are all being funded by capital reserve maintenance reserve. Uh 675 coming from capital reserve 125,000 from maintenance reserve and we have 600,000 that we're utilizing from uh tuition reserve. Mr. Sty actually set that aside last year at

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the end of the 2425 school year because uh he foresaw that we were going to need some tuition uh funds for this year for declining enrollment from Greenbrook and some other r rising costs. So that was a huge help into the budget this year. Uh here's an analysis of our state aid. We got 51,543

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more this year compared to last year. Uh that's state aid is roughly about 6% of our total budget. Our operating revenue uh comparison compared to last year is pretty consistent. Uh tuition reserve tuition revenue is uh almost flat. Use of

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surplus reserves that increased due to the tuition reserve I just mentioned. Uh state aid is pretty much flat. It went up to 51,000. And our tax levy is a total increase of 3.9%. That's our 2% allowable increase and then uh another 1.9 used for the

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healthcare waiver. Uh so operating uh revenues are increasing by 3.7%. And on the other side the operating expenditures are also increasing by 3.7% overall. Uh 5% increase in salaries and benefits. The board was very proactive in switching our prescription plan so

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that we switched over to Benard. So, we actually did much better than other districts uh when you're comparing health health uh benefit increases. Uh one notable decrease was our special ed out of district tuition that went down about 20%. That was a huge savings that we were able to reallocate some of those funds elsewhere in the budget uh to not

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burden taxpayers. Our per people pupil cost uh comparison, this is from data from 2425 just comparing us to other regional schools. uh our numbers are much lower than most of the other districts and this is this compares just all the apples to apples compared with other districts. So we're

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roughly about 23,000 in the 2425 school year. Uh Dr. J, you wanted to comment on referendum. >> So we did also um highlight this when we presented to the townships on our budget. So, we have done three successful referendum uh projects using

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debt service aid and uh you can see that those have totaled about 12 uh.7 million. We are going to be looking to uh do a new referendum. Uh we're in the planning phases for that and we did mention that to the townships when we uh did our circuit presenting the budget to

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them so that they know that that's coming. But the plan is for that to be a tax neutral referendum um since we do have the bonds uh maturing and uh we can roll those into new ones. So we are excited. A lot of that as I said at the the township committee meetings they're

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unfortunately rather unsexy projects um because they are maintaining our building. So there will be a lot of uh HVAC and probably uh even though you know our roofs we we did somewhat recently but now that's been a while um a lot of infrastructure pieces but we

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are hoping to get some innovative projects in there for our innovative spaces as well because we've done a nice job um upgrading a number of our spaces in the school. So I would love to see some more science labs uh in that and a couple other um upgrades to our spaces. So we are like I said in the planning

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phases for that right now. And then this I I feel like another title for this slide could be what this budget buys. Um you know because of the financial support of the community and and the board um we are continually able to

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provide programs for our students to showcase their talents um and really find their passions. And a couple of the the newer programs that we highlighted up here, unified flag football uh and girls flag football are wildly popular. Our unified flag football had a had a

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game today and they've that has expanded. They have unified cheer. Last week when I was at the game, they had um our unified choir sing the national anthem. They and they perform at halftime of the games. This sat Sunday we are actually having a color run uh uh

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sponsored by our unified club. So that's become uh very very popular and active as well as girls flag football which I know again has a very a very high number of participation this year. Just this past Sunday, uh, we participated in the New Jersey State Band Gala and, uh, they

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did Sophie, were you part of that? I heard you guys were outstanding, uh, and incredible and that is we were one of four in the state from Central Jersey for the first time ever. So, that is quite an accomplishment. Um, and then I always like to throw up our our very impressive

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AP results. Um, we have made such tremendous progress through the years thanks to the commitment of our students and our staff. And I always like to clarify that this is not an endgame and this is not a target, but it's an indicator that we're moving the needle

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in the right direction. We're not just having the same students take more tests or, you know, fewer students do better on more tests. We are consistently on the College Board honoral for expanding access and achievement. So we administered 1321 AP exams to 533 AP

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students. Our mean score was 4.25 and we had 284 AP scholars. And I know I presented all of this in March, but it is so unbelievably impressive that our students rose to the occasion. And for our staff, that's a 912 effort because that is something that we start

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preparing them for as 9th graders and encouraging them to take a chance and take an AP course and push themselves. Um and there is very clear research that taking an AP course helps students prepare for college uh you know for college level material. Obviously that is the purpose of an AP course but

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there's um actual quantitative research that shows that they do better in college after taking AP courses um and AP material. So congratulations to our students and our staff on that. >> Uh this this slide demonstrates the change the tax allocation change. uh the

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state provides us with the allocation breakdown of our three sending districts uh based on the change of elementary enrollment uh regional enrollment. Uh we also get the change in the valuation uh for all the townships. So as you'll see Warren went up 11.15% Wong 14.56 and

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Longhill 9.38 and the change in the regional allocation Warren decreased by 617% Wong increased by.33 and Longhill increased by 284% of our regional allocation. Uh here's the proposed tax impact for

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Warren. Uh the average home increased by 52,183 about 5.38%. The tax rate actually decreased. And what that means is the average home and the assessed values increased more than our tax levy for war and share. So that actually decreased. So the regional tax impact is

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uh $3,54627 for 2026. That's an increase of roughly uh $5822 uh 1.6 67%. For Wong, uh same information. The average assessed home increased by 61,660

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6.58%. Uh tax rate also decreased. Uh the the regional tax is 3,3617 for the average assessed home. That's an increase of $7057 compared to 2025. And that's a 2.14%

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increase. And lastly, Long Hill, uh, the average assessed home went up $59,277. That's about a 9.52% increase. Tax rate also decreased there. Uh, the average assessed homes regional tax portion is $2,596.77

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for this year. Uh, it's an increase of $551 compared to 2025. That's roughly a 2.18% increase for Longhill. And Dr. Jan and I uh over the last couple of weeks, we went to Longhill, Warren, and Wong. presented this data to our township committees. So I also want to thank the

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township committees for having us at those meetings and uh thank you for your support and does anyone have any questions? Okay, great. >> All right, thank you. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. Again, I want

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to thank uh the administration for all the hard work they put in and u I'm sure Bill, you probably get a couple months off and then you start right up again for next year. I also want to thank the board and all the hard work they've done. Uh we certainly don't sit idly by

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while the administration just pumps out some numbers. uh our finance committee and the other committees work very handinand with uh Billy and whoever else is involved and uh it's really a team effort and it's certainly a dedicated

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effort. Again, our goal is um first and foremost to do what we can for the students. Really provide them with a uh I know there's certain goals that we have, but at the end of the day, provide them with excellent educational opportunities as well as opportunities

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outside the classroom, whether it's uh sports, extracurricular activities, and stuff like that. Um unfortunately, costs do go up. Uh but you can see uh we really held the line uh pretty nicely

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and certainly if you uh for those who follow what goes on throughout the state uh and the spending other districts have had to cut dramatic amounts of money out of their budget for whatever reason and even if you look at the K8 districts I

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think our numbers with regard to increases probably much better than theirs. Uh with regard to the three individual towns, every year it kind of, you know, some towns go up one year, some towns go down. Here it looked like it was a couple percent even though the

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uh budget went up by over 3%, the tax only went up by basically 2% which is pretty good considering inflation and certainly the healthc care expenses which are just out of control. Uh so again, I just want to thank everyone for their hard work and we're

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we're certainly committed and we certainly feel the pain. Nobody here wants to spend money they don't have to spend and uh so you know we keep a watchful eye on everything. But again, so I thank everybody and all the hard work and look forward to do it again in another

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few months. Okay. Uh now there's opportunity for public comment on the school budget. So anyone who has a comment with respect to the uh the budget more than welcome to uh come up and make a comment and that is not the first opportunity

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for public comment. There will be a public comment period but this is just a comment period with respect to the budget. Does anyone have a comment with respect to the budget? Seeing none I will close that part of the meeting with regard to u public

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comment. Do we have any action items? >> That's this that's this part. >> Okay, great. Okay, great. Okay, so let's move on to D then. >> I need somebody to move them.

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>> Okay. >> Yeah, >> second. Any discussion with regard to those four items? Okay. Roll call, please. Mr. Decker, >> yes. >> Miss Fer, honor, >> yes. >> Miss Lee, >> Miss Potter,

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>> here. Oh, yes. Sorry, step behind. >> Miss Prosa, >> yes. >> Miss Rexford, >> yes. >> Miss Trump, >> yes. >> Mr. Bernberg, yes. >> Hey, do we have any board correspondents? >> We do not. >> Okay.

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reports and presentations. You have any comments, Dr. Jo? >> I do. I have a few things to share. So, as we all know, the art show kicked off tonight, and I know many of you got to walk through it. Uh on your way here, we had the National Art Honor Society induction tonight, uh followed by the kickoff of the art show. Uh Thursday

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evening concludes the art show with the jazz concert. Uh we do have also have 9th grade NJSLA testing this week. AP testing is coming up. We had the junior prom last Friday. So, we are in full swing of our spring uh activities that lead into the culminating activities for

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the year and spring sports are also obviously in in full swing and starting to almost wrap up and the students will report on some of the achievements of of those teams and individuals later. Um, I also just want to mention about the agenda item on here. I'm not sure which

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number it is. Uh, revising the calendar. Not sure if that's in the uh is that in the A items. >> A8. >> Thank you. Um for A8, revising the 2627 calendar. So just to give a a brief

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explanation, um the WH had brought forward a concern regarding taking back the Friday before Memorial Day should we exceed our emergency closing day allotment. So the board and administration reviewed the concern and we came up with the alternative of making the Friday before Memorial Day a

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day of school instead of a day off. Um so in but that means instead of it being a day off that would become a day of school if we exceed our a lotment of emergency days and this is for next year by the way not not this year we're talking about the 26 27 calendar. Um it's a day of school which the board

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could consider giving back if we don't use our a lotment of emergency closing days. Doing this also brings the calendar to 188 staff days and 184 student days which is the as per the collective bargaining agreement the maximum amount that we can have. Um so I

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and a couple other members of the administration met with the WHREA leadership uh two weeks ago on the 14th and shared this proposed change and they were also in favor of it. So you'll see the revision to the 2627 calendar on the agenda and in the attached. So and again

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that's for next year not this year. this year that Friday is still as of now because uh barring we don't have any other closings that is still um a a holiday but next year it's going to be a day in the calendar. Okay. All right. That's it. That's all I

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have. >> Great. Thank you. Um my comments have been already made with regard to the budget. You know again just thank everybody for that comment. Quick comment about the calendar. Every year we seem to go through the issue

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with uh snow days. Suddenly we have one, all of a sudden we have two. All of a sudden we have a concern now what are we going to do if we have a third or something like that. So I for one am a fan of again minimum is 180 pursuant to the state law and pursuant to the

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contract 184 for the students. So my view has always been more education is better than less education because we are here to teach the students after all. So, I'm good with that. Billy, business comments. >> Uh, the only comments I have are thank you to the board for the support on the

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budget. And I also just wanted to comment on uh a revised item on D15 under the finance section that is just to include the le the authorization for the lease purchase for some of the items in the budget for next year. We uh our bond council was able to get us a resolution to put on the agenda yesterday. So rather than waiting a

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couple more weeks until May 12th, we uh put it onto the agenda now so they can start their process in going out to bid on the lease items so we can start purchasing the uh equipment for next year. >> Great. Thank you. Okay, we have our student representatives uh back. We

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haven't seen them in a couple weeks. Uh Sophie Lamb and uh Juliana Santos. Please, what do you have for us? >> Okay, so this month's student achievements and school events are as follows. On April 15th, we celebrated our 21st annual World Language Honor

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Society induction. We inducted 186 students into four World Language Honor Societies: Chinese, French, Italian, and Spanish. After the induction came the seal of biiteracy recognition ceremony. This is our ninth year participating in

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the NJ DOE sealed by literacy program and we recognize 67 wait yes sorry 67 graduating seniors who have achieved 86 seals of biiteracy across 12 languages that include Bulgarian, Chinese, French,

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Georgian, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian in addition to English. This is a testament to the cultural and linguistic diversity of our school community. Special acknowledge acknowledgements were made for 11

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seniors who will graduate with two seals of biiteracy plus English effectively making them triilingual. Two students were recognized for their unique sets of linguistic skills. The first was Genesis Valiente. In addition to being inducted into two world language honor societies,

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French and Italian, Genesis will graduate from Wong Hills with four seals of biiteracies in French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. The second student is Philip Leavonian. Philip has set a Wong Hills record for the most seals of biiteracy with six in Chinese,

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French, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. At least four of these languages were self-taught. We also believe he may hold the record in New Jersey for the most seals of biiteracy ever awarded to one student. We are awaiting confirmation from the NJ DOE.

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It is with immense pride that we announced a historic milestone for our music program following the 2026 CJMEA Concert Band Festival. On Thursday, March 19th, our honors wind ensemble delivered an extraordinary performance, earning a pre prestigious gold rating

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for the second consecutive year. Demonstrating exceptional artistry, the ensemble placed fourth overall among all competing bands from across central Jersey, a feat that has earned them an invitation to the New Jersey State Band Gala. This invitation represents the highest honor a concert band can receive

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within the state, and this year marks the first time in our school's history that our students have achieved this level of recognition. We are proud to announce that our district achieved a perfect 100% acceptance rate this year um for New Jersey Jazz Choir auditions. Every student who auditioned for this

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prestigious ensemble was success was successfully selected which is a significant testament to their individual dedication and the strength of our music program. Those students are Jason Barnoski, Meline Felbum, Demiana Doss and Lobby Thiagi. We look forward

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to their upcoming performances and celebrate the hard work they have put into representing our schools at the state level. In a spectacular showing at the 2026 AMTJ cont contest, the Wong Hills math team calculated their way to third place overall in the state and competing in

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the highest stakes gamma division, which is for schools with over 1,250 students. The team secured an impressive second place finish. Senior students Claire Pang and Darren Shu have been selected as winners of the Bristol Meyers Squib Company Scholarship. Pursuant to an

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agreement with the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, this special scholarship award is sponsored by Bristol Myers Squib Foundation, Inc. Congratulations to Michelle Yabboa for winning the scholarship award for the TED Summer Program 2026 Learning to Be

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Heard Global Public Speaking Challenge. Congratulations to Noah Mutchnik and Kathleen Wang for being nominated and accepted to the Governor's School of Engineering and Technology hosted by Rucker University School of Engineering. Congratulations to Cayen who competed in

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the Terara North Jersey STEM Fair. The TNJSF is a prestigious annual in-person science and engineering competition for students in grades 9 through 10 from 10 northern New Jersey counties. Held at Kain University in Union, New Jersey. It supports student research and offers

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awards and scholarships. 17 Model UN students traveled to Ithaca this past weekend to compete in the Cornell Model UN Conference. Our delegates did an amazing job representing our school through four days of intense debate, negotiation, and high stakes diplomacy. We would like to

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give special recognitions to our three individual award winners, Philip Yousef and Charlie Ford, who's actually in the audience tonight. Both earned verbal commendations for their strong contributions and um persuasive arguments within their

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committees. and Roxanna Nasserin was recognized as an outstanding delegate for exceptional leadership and diplomatic skill. Continuing on with our school events at Girl State and Boy State, each student as they register becomes a citizen of an assigned city. The citizens set up city

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governments and elect city officials. Each student is assigned to one of two parties, federals or nationals, so they may see how political parties function. They develop their own party platforms and discuss issues they choose. All of the elections are carried out according to the existing laws of New Jersey.

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Candidates are selected based on academic achievement, leadership, patriotism, community involvement, extracurricular activities, and will be interviewed. Congratulations to Bridget Belellfield, who was accepted into Girl State this year. We are pleased to announce that nine of our students have

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been officially selected as delegates to represent American Legion Post 293 at the 2026 session of American Legion Jersey Boys State. There are Eric Dong, Jake Eversaw, Pierce Gornstein, Soyer Orlando, Ryan Louu, Jack Marinowski,

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Gideon Mineri, Damen Mochia, and Cayen Arf Patel and Tis Rangara John were selected as alternates. This prestigious program will be held at Ryder University from June 21st to June 26th. Selection is a high honor recognizing these young

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men for their leadership, character, and academic achievement. Patrick Ganley and the economics club hosted a Zoom interview on April 17th with Professor Brian Kaplan, a distinguished professor of economics at George Mason University, a Princeton PhD, and a New York Times

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best-selling author. The Holocaust and Genocide honors classes visited the Museum of Jewish Heritage field trip as a part of their study on the Holocaust. On Monday, March 30th, students of Italian 1, 2A, and Italian Culture and Immersion were invited to participate in

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a presentation about the process of cheese making in Italy. Following the presentation, students were able to taste all of the cheeses discussed. Kira James, a professional food educator, certified cheese professional, and cheese monger, delivered a detailed presentation to students explaining the

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importance of food and culture, specifically the important role it plays in Italian culture. She also gave an overview of the history of cheese and explanation of the protected designation of origin system, which protects the integrity of authentic Italian goods. James also explained the specific

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cheesemaking process of the four cheeses all imported from Italy that the students tasted. Parmesano Reano, Pecarino Romano, Castell Roso, and Lou Burier Pichin. The Italian program is able to continue to offer inschool activities thanks to a grant from the

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Italian-American Committee on Education. On Wednesday, April 15th, Italian 3 and 4 students accompanied by Mrs. Balsmelly and Mrs. Strong participated in a field trip to Montlair State University. Upon arrival, students were warmly welcomed

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by Professor Traniano and several of her advanced Italian students for a conversation on their connections to the Italian language and an informative presentation about the undergraduate and graduate Italian program at Monontlair State. Watch Hill students also took part in an engaging survey designed for

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language learners aimed at guiding them toward career paths where language skills are a valuable asset. and the program was called um careerhub for international language learning. During the second part of the morning, the students met with professor Andrea Deini

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for an in-depth discussion of Nova Mundo directed by Emmanueli Chrisi. The film explores the immigrant experience at the turn of the 20th century following Sicilian migrants as they journeyed to the United States in search of a better life. Students had watched the film in class prior to the trip and engaged in

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thoughtful analysis and discussion of its key themes, preparing them to participate actively in the university level conversation. The discussion with Professor Deany was highly engaging and offered students deeper insight into the film's historical context and the relevance to conversations about

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identity and immigration today. And finally, our athletic update. Congratulations to softball player Riley Babrowski for pitching her 500th career strikeout. Lac lacrosse player Nora Herko earned her 200th career point this

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past week. Last week, 10 spring season athletes attended the spring sportsmanship summit along with other athletes from the Skyland Conference schools. This was a wonderful opportunity for student athletes to share ideas and feedback regarding high school athletics. Meet the coaches night

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during eighth grade orientation was a huge success. offering the class of 2030 an opportunity to explore the athletic opportunities here at Wong Hills. And congratulations to the class of 2026 scholar athletes. Skyland Conference scholar athlete were Antonio Giuliano

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and May Higgins. Somerset County Scholar athletes were Anthony DeAndrea and Rally Rowski. And finally, our NJSA SIAA scholar athlete was Omar Mohallam. And that is all. Thank you.

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>> Great. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Students were busy the last couple weeks. Good thing we cut the budget presentation. We had time for your report. Whoa. Okay. Um committee reports. I believe finance we did in executive session. So, uh we will not be

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doing that. Uh okay. So, now we have the first public comment period. Uh first opportunity for public comment. The first public comment period will be limited to agenda items for this meeting only. The second public comment period will be open to any topic. All comments are limited to five minutes. Do we have

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any public comment with respect to agenda items this evening? Okay, seeing none, we will move on from that. We'll close the first uh uh public comment period. Uh any board discussion? Anyone have anything they want to

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discuss? Okay, we're going to move on from that. Uh we had some agenda items. Is there any discussion with respect to those? I think we discussed those uh in executive session if we had them. Okay.

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Then moving on action items. >> A147. >> Oh. >> Oh, sorry. >> All right. I'm moving A1 to A4, A7 to A9.

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>> Carol, >> I apologize. I was >> She gave She gave me her mic. >> Okay, good. I thought I was just being rude. Okay, special. Okay, roll call. >> Mr. Decker, >> yes. >> Miss Ferrerki, >> yes.

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>> Miss Lee, >> yes. Miss Potter stepped down. >> Miss Praza. >> Yes. First. >> Miss Rexford. >> Yes. >> Miss Trump. >> Yes. >> Miss Mr. Burnberg. >> Yes. >> Mr. President, I move A5, A6, A10, and

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A1. >> Second. >> Any discussion with regard to those items? >> Roll call. >> Mr. Decker. >> Yes. >> Miss Feron Rosemurski. >> Yes. >> Miss Lee? >> Yes. >> Miss Pasca? >> Yes. >> Miss Rexford? Yes, >> Mr. Trumpour. >> Yes, >> Mr. Burnberg.

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>> Yes, >> Mr. President, I move C1 to C11. >> Second. >> Any discussion with regard to those items? >> Roll call, please. >> Mr. Decker, >> yes. >> Miss Fazeron Rosemurski, >> yes.

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>> Miss Lee, >> yes. >> Miss Prosa, >> yes. >> Miss Rexford, >> yes. And Miss Potter's back. >> Got it. I was coming back to her. I'll circle him back. Miss Potter, >> yes. >> Miss Trump, >> yes. >> Mr. Burnberg,

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>> yes. >> President, move D5 through D 15. >> Second. >> Any discussion with regard to those items?

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>> We did that in the beginning. >> I apologize. >> I made that same mistake earlier. >> I panicked for a second, actually. >> Yeah. Any discussion with regard to those several items? Okay. Roll call, please. >> Mr. Decker, >> yes. >> Miss Feron Rosemurski, >> yes. >> Miss Lee, >> yes. >> Miss Potter, >> yes. >> Miss Prosa,

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>> yes. >> Miss Rexford, >> yes. >> Miss Trump, >> yes. >> Mr. Bernberg, >> yes. >> Okay, we move to second opportunity for public comment. That could be any com any uh item not necessarily related to agenda items, but anything else have to do with the school. Are there any public

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comments? Yeah, please come on up. State your name and where you from. Uh >> my name is Charlie Ford and I'm from Greenbrook. So I've been here before and now I'd like to present something that I've been working on with the club that I'm in that I just think you guys would find interesting and um when it comes up

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later on you would know about it and have an idea of what it is. So I started um a group within a club. So, the Interact Community Service Club, I started the Warriors for Warriors group within that club, which is specifically focused on helping out veterans within the community. And so, one thing that

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I've been working on with the club adviser, Mrs. Kelly, is we're working on creating an honor wall that would go in the school. We've already picked out a location that might work um right on one of the wood panels by the side of the pack. Um, and it would be I have a picture. It's like a American flag that

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has 500 spots for names for military alumni to watch on hills. So, we've re I've reached out to the person that makes them these honor walls, um, Donna Farley. And so, the price for the honor wall would turn out to be $8,000, but I believe that I would be able to fund

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raise this amount of money. Um, so I have experience in fundraising. And what I would do is there would be all the Chamber of Commerce businesses we would ask for uh, donations from, as well as um, PBAs and fraternal service organizations like the Lions and the VFWs, local organizations that would be

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willing to help out. and additional plaques would be put up for any institution that would donate more than $500. And so while it's a expensive outright cost, the cost to maintain it and uphold it for more alumni um would

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just be $10 per plaque engraved, which the club as it continued would be able to cover for each um new alumni that graduated and joined the military. And the price that I said initially, 800, that includes the engravings for all the plaques. So, I know we have a spot on the website that has a spot where all

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the military alumni are listed and that's a bit more than 100. So, we still have um great space for expansion on the plaque. And I was just like to present that and show you guys how it is and that I have um this club that's working on it and you guys are most likely going

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to be seeing more of it. So, thank you. >> Thank you. Sorry, what was his name? >> Charlie, I have a question. How many spots are on that black? >> The early years of Watch Young Hills, the draft was still in effect. Virtually every >> everybody

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>> every male student was in the military. Very few weren't. So, I'm not sure you have enough spots. >> Hold on one second. So I just something to think about. You don't need to answer me. Yeah. I I just wanted to be sure you were aware of the

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fact that virt you >> probably 80% of the male population in those years >> had to fulfill their military requirements. >> Yeah. Um what I was looking at I was looking on based on the watching hills website they have a list um that has a list of a military alumni they've

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collected and now there's a form on the website for anyone that um is not on the list. they could submit the form and get added to the list. >> So, we'd have So, you bring up a good point. We'd have to figure out how we can get records, I guess, of of the people that are not. And so, I I Charlie, I really

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commend you for your commitment to this. And, um, you had approached me, you actually brought to our attention that there wasn't a link, there was no longer a link to the form on the website. So, we fixed that so that um, alum can register. Uh but I'm so that's something um you know certainly we could brainstorm about is how to find out

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accurately because I'm sure the people who registered are more recent um I think they are more recent military alum if you look at the the list. >> Yeah. >> So um and you know that's something we could figure out how to to address. Military records are public documents.

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They uh everything can be looked up now. tracking down those names to a, you know, you'd have to cross reference them all to our graduates. >> That might be something that one of the local organizations would be willing to help you with because that would be, you know, a a heavy lift, I think, for you know, you to do, but maybe one of the

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local organizations in in the towns would be interested in helping us gather that information. >> Yeah. >> So, >> and thank you. >> Also, a lot also a lot of the towns have been working on this. You see the flags and everything hanging. Yeah. So, the

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towns may have already done it that you could just reach out to the council on each town and they will give you all the information. I mean, I can tell you who to contact at WHung, but you know, I'm I'm assuming that each town >> Yeah, that would be great. Yeah,

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>> my prior school had done that. They uh there's plaques in I guess in the lobby area, whatever. Unfortunately, I think it's just for the fallen heroes. >> Yeah. versus right all of them because >> most towns do, >> right? I'm not suggesting one over the

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other, but as Carl referred, I mean, there's probably several thousand >> people, you know. >> Yeah. You're never going to get a thousand, you know, 10,000 names. So, you you might want to reconsider and just make it a commemoration

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>> to all veterans. >> Okay. >> That are Watching Hills graduates. Yeah. Something like that. Um, >> but good food for thought. Okay. Thank you. >> But we appreciate your thought. >> Thank you. >> I think there's uh definitely, you know,

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agreement that the board is very interested in honoring the veterans in any way we can. So, thank you, Charlie. We appreciate it. >> And again, I am a father of a veteran. So, uh I certainly appreciate >> and I'm an honor of a current one. >> Yes. Are there any other public comments? I'm

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going to close the second session uh with regard to public comment, but just talking about honoring people last Thursday night, I believe. Uh we finally unveiled the uh Thomas Dance Thomas Dancey uh plaque wall. uh when you walk

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in the building uh walk to your right, you'll see, you know, a nice uh big plaque and you know, wall honoring him and all his greatness and legacy he left for all those. So, and it was a very nice reception. I was there and um so it

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is nice when we can honor our own so to speak. Uh is there any other business we have? Oh, sure. Thank you, Heather. Um, one of the other things we announced at the um the dedication uh to Dr. Dansancy was

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the Thomas F. DGY I'm going to say the title wrong, but it's the Thomas F. DGY Memorial Education Foundation. Um, and we are currently accepting donations. Um, when I say we, I'm an an exeicio member um as the superintendent, but the

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the board um consists of actually Mr. Morrison, uh, Mr. Stay has offered to be the treasurer. Mr. McConnell is the chair. Uh uh Russ Schumacher who's an alum and and head of the alumni association. Uh I know I'm missing a couple Oh, sorry. Heather Trump, a

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representative of the board. Um so we're actually working to get a meeting together um for that. And the purpose of that, you know, we've been talking about one of one of our goals that you will uh hear about at our next meeting for the strategic plan has to do with finding alternative revenue sources. And the Ed

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Foundation um is one of those and one of you know Dr. Dancey was very passionate about instruction education um providing for the students and the teachers. And so we have to actually meet as the board um of the foundation to outline we have

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bylaws but we have to outline um a little bit more details about what the money will go towards. But in our initial conversations it's to go to towards grants so that staff would apply you know for grants for their classroom for for particular projects that we you know don't have district funds for. Um

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there might be larger district-wide grants that that we might do. Um we've been looking at ed foundations of some other districts. Mr. McConnell reached out to me about this uh you know a while ago and asked if I'd be willing to to work on this with him and I'd asked if the board you know would uh was supportive of this and so he's done a

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tremendous amount of work with Mr. SI. We are approved an approved 501c3 uh and so we announced the this at um last week's dedication and we actually had envelopes uh with the name and address so that if anyone wanted to send a donation uh we could start doing that

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but we will get a lot more information to come and we will eventually get all of that on the website. Uh but you know hopefully that's really another nice way to honor Dr. Dancey's legacy um because he was all about the students. So if we can find additional ways to provide um for the students and provide these

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exceptional opportunities given the increasing budgetary constraints, I think he would be really proud that he's a part of that and that's being done in his name. So and I I really want to thank Terry McConnell. He was the one who got this off the ground. He was a he's a retired vice principal from here.

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You'll still see him at our athletic events. He works a lot of those. He all of his kids went through here. Um yeah, you guys probably know him even though he was gone before you came. So, um, so he's very very actively involved and just has a love for the school and the community. And so I'm and

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I'm enjoying still working with him. Um, I enjoy working with him now more than I did when he was here. Just kidding. But I know he's watch he likes to watch the board meetings. So he'll see that tomorrow um because he still watches these. Uh, but I I really appreciate all that he's done. And Mr. Sty as well um in terms of helping us out with the

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accounting piece. So that's been that's been great. >> Thank you for reminding me of that, Heather. Anything else? I will entertain a motion to adjurnn.