Good evening everyone. Adequate notice of this special meeting setting forth daytime and location has been provided in accordance with the requirements of the open public meetings act on May 28, 2026 by prominently posting a copy on the exterior and the lobby board of the
boards of the office of the main board of education which is a public place reserved for such announcements. setting in submitting a copy can tap into wne.net and the Wayne district website. Please stand for the flag salute followed by a moment of silence.
>> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you everyone. Please be seated.
>> At this time, I'd like to take a motion. Submit a motion to the board. Oh, roll call. I'm sorry. >> Mr. Agnes >> here. >> Mr. here. >> Mr. Faber >> here. >> Mr. Hayman >> here. >> Mrs. Landry >> here. >> Mr. Paul, >> Mr. Pacos
>> present, >> Mrs. Regalosa >> here, >> and Mr. Pap >> here. This time I'd like to um ask for a motion to amend the uh the agenda for tonight to include a u
executive session at the end of the meeting for a personnel matter. uh the superintendent's uh evaluation. Is there a motion to move that? Mr. Agnes, Mrs. Landry, >> any discussion?
Roll call. >> Mr. Agnes. >> Yes. >> Mr. Alquin. >> Yes. >> Mr. Faber. >> Yes. >> Mr. Haven. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Leandrew. >> Yes. >> Mr. Proacto. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Raloso. >> Yes. >> And Mr. P.
>> Yes. All right. This time we are going like to invite uh Dr. Richard Grip and um Mr. Dave Hespy to present our
demographic study. Good evening board public. So tonight we'll be discussing the results of demographic study. probably take about I'm going to say 20 25 minutes and then we'll open it up for questions at that point in time.
So um I'm part of statistical forecasting that's the company that did the demographic study. Just a little bit of who we are. Um we've been doing this kind of work for school districts demographic study since 1998. I'd say 90% of our works in the New York, New
Jersey metropolitan area, but we go down as far south as Arlington, Virginia, outside of DC, and up north as far as Vermont. We probably done about 225 school districts in this state alone. So maybe about a third of all school
districts. And our company is the consultant of New York City public schools doing all their projections since 2006. For the last 20 years, we've seen every problem or interesting case under the sun with those folks. Um, I'm the executive director. I have a
doctorate from Ruckers University uh from the graduate school of ed in educational statistics and measurement. I was a former teacher before this world in educational consulting at Bridgeport of Ryarden in Somerset County. I taught physics and statistics down there for
about 10 years. um also taught at Ruckers University GSC at the grad level. I I still publish in this field numerous publications and as Dave will he knows because he works for Forzio, uh we're doing a a joint presentation tonight. I've also testified as an
expert witness in school demography and ALJ hearings. Uh Dave Hesby, I'm with uh Porzio uh compliance services. working on the study with Rich and some of our colleagues which I know the boards met.
Um I've uh spent my uh life in education. One thing that Rich and I do have in common, we're both Ruckers graduates uh undergrad grad. Um and um I've uh been at Rowan University as the
chair and a professor. I spent a lot of time in the uh doctoral uh program working with candidates. Uh very comfortable with statistics. I've also been in the education world. Um I was uh commissioner of education. I've been at
the department a number of times understand their world and I've also been in the higher ed world. Best job in the world uh as uh president of uh Burlington uh County College. Uh, I'm going to be focusing on the education
uh, implications of what Rich will be reviewing tonight and you'll probably hear more from me uh, in the future. But thanks for having us here tonight. Uh, we have a lot to say. So, I'm going to hand it over to Rich. Thank you for short.
Okay. So when we do a demographic study, I would say that most people if you've never seen one before, they always think it's just projecting enrollments. But yes, that's partly true, but there's so much more that goes into a demographic study. So yes, that's the top line. We
projected enrollments from 2526 through 2930. So that's this current year. And that's because the study was completed almost a year ago in August 25. What other pieces do we look at? Well, we look at the community as a whole. Who are you? What's your population trends
historically and where are you going? What's your demographics look like? What's your socioeconomic characteristics, your birth counts, fertility rates, things like that? Then we move away from the township and we start going toward the school district and that's where we start looking at
your historical enrollment trends districtwide for the last decade, also by grade configuration, by school. We also try to figure out how many BERS because you're a very large township. How many BERSs actually occur in areas that would feed into your particular
elementary schools for mothers whose residences in those particular zones? We also contact the township to find out about new housing starts. There's a lot of new housing planned in Wayne and how would that impact the school district in terms of projections.
So, in terms of of the township um historical and projected population, this is where you've been. Um the far left is 1940. So, everything to the left of that vertical line is all historical populations. To the far right, 2050 is
the projected population Wayne by a third party organization called the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority. not my numbers, but I'm just telling you they're projecting another eight or so thousand people here by 2050. Um, you can see if you look though
to where we are in 2020, 55 years a six years ago, you're roughly around 50 55,000 persons and it hadn't really changed much um in the last couple of decades. But the big growth here was really in the 50s when the population doubled, more than doubled.
So, as I mentioned at the outset, who are you as a community? You're about almost 3/4 white. Um, Hispanic is about 12% uh 9% or so Asian and 3% black. Those are the four largest races in Wayne. Um, like many communities in the
state, this is very common. You have a declining white population and increase in Asian and Hispanic populations. It it changes depending upon what you listen to in the census. Sometimes they say 2045 or 2050, but that's roughly the year when the United States will be a um
a majority non-white population at some point. Uh median age here is older than that of the state. You can see about 44 uh 20% are foreignb born. The two largest sources are India and Peru. A
very educated community about 50 57% have a bachelor's degree or higher. a fairly wealthy community where a median household income is 152,000. So that means that half the households have an income greater than 152,000 half lower.
Almost uh 20,000 housing units. That's a lot. Where 77% are one unit homes. That would be a detached single family or an attached like a townhouse or condo. About 22% are renter occupied. That's lower than that of the state. And the
median value of an owner occupied unit is almost 600,000 which is about 130,000 more than the state. So if I had to classify you as a community I would say you're definitely on the higher socioeconomic characteristics um in terms of some of the
socioeconomics that we're seeing here. Um our GIS person GIS stands for geographic information systems basically takes the address of all your schools and plugs it into a map. So there's all the schools and then we contacted your
district to find out where the boundary lines are of all the elementary attendance areas. So in other words, if someone moves into town and they live on, you know, such and such street, where would they go? So this map will tell tells you how it's broken down for
all the elementary schools. And then for the three middle schools, um Wayne, of course, on the eastern side of the township, there's the boundaries for that. And then for the high school north and south, you got hills up in the north and a valley down in the south. So let's
talk about your enrollment. Again, this is kind of dated in the sense that we did the study in August 25. So the most recent data that we had at that point in time would have been enrollment from the 2425 school year. So the way we report
data to the state of New Jersey, your district, is always around October 15th. um that's our so-called school census day. So in October of 2024, the enrollment in the district was 7548. If we back that up 10 years prior to the
1516 year, the enrollment was 8,21. So in the school districts lost almost 500 students over the last decade. Um but here's what's really interesting. The enrollments declined through 2122 um before reversing trend and stabilizing. We're going to see some
COVID um pandemic effects in a moment. There were some big declines in 2020 and 21 due to the pandemic before things bounced back up in 223 as some students returned to the district. We use something called the cohort survivor ratio method to project enrollments.
That's the state sanctioned methodology to project enrollments. We don't make that up. It's something that's been around for about a hundred years. So this is what I was talking about here. You can see this decline. Here's 2020 right here. You in 2020 alone,
there was a decline of 165 students. That's very common for school districts around the state. Right at the peak of a pandemic, a lot of parents refrain from sending their kids to school if it was in session um hybrid or remote. And then
you got this bounce back right here at 7623 um based upon people returning to school. But then in the last couple years it's kind of been flat. So really not much change in the last couple years. When we look at this slide which is showing historical enrollments by
grade configuration which is elementary, middle and high. If you fall asleep on any slides tonight don't fall asleep on this one. Okay. This is the one. This is the key. Um it's really interesting to me because we have elementary up the
top. We have middle school down at the bottom. And we have the high school in the middle. So I want to go over this with you. Um the elementary enrollment which is in top was fairly stable to this big drop right here which is the pandemic and then since then you can see
in general things have been going up except for this past year it you know dropped a little bit. Um at the middle school level which is the one down here on the bottom um enrollments have basically declined over the last decade about 184 students. Same thing at the
high school, a decline of about 325 students. Now, why should you pay attention to this slide? Because in in our field, um the the lower grades, elementary, are great predictors of what's going to happen in the future at middle and high as they move through the
system. So, these middle and high down here showing declining enrollment was probably from an earlier period of time where there was declining enrollment even at the elementary level way back when. Um, but this can signal a change in trend, but it's going to take a while
to move through the system to see the effects. So, to project the elements, we use something called the cohort survival ratio method. I'm going to kind of go through this quickly. I do it for the purpose, not for boring the heck out of you, but just so you understand how it actually works. It's not magic. It's not
like I got my little magic eightball. Um so how we do this is we look at the survival rates or what we call grade progression rates of students from one grade to the next. So I give you a simple example here. Say that you have 100 first graders in 2023
and they become 95 second graders the next year 2425. That ratio 95 over 100 is 0.95. We do that particular calculation for all 13 grade progressions. birth to kindergarten is your first and your last
is 11th through 12th. So it's 13 possible progressions. If the ratio is above one, that means you're gaining students due to inward migration. In this little fictitious example, it's below one. So you're losing students due to outward migration. You had five
students lost here in the net. So like I said, we do these calculations. We do it for a 10year historical period to see if there's any changes over time. These ratios usually we take an average of the last four or five years and in this
particular case of the 13 average ratios 10 of them were above one. So in the net this district is gaining students moving in due to inward migration. That's a key number there 10 out of 13. In 2020, two
of the ratios in that year were the lowest they had been all decade and that again was due to the co COVID 19 pandemic and they occurred in the lower elementary grades. We usually see it around kindergarten and first grade. So what we do is we take these average ratios that I just mentioned in the last
four or five years. We then multiply it times the most current enrollment. in this case was from the 2425 school year. And we assume that those ratios that we compute are going to be constant throughout the projection period. We also use birds. Birds are very
important because they help project our kindergarten students five years later. Um I had a conversation with some folks from New York City um last week or two weeks ago and they said, "Well, you know, isn't there a better way than trying to take the number of births and
figure out five years later kindergarten students?" I said, "Well, the best way, of course, we'd be knocking on doorbells and doing a census of everybody from the ages of 0 to four." Uh, unfortunately, I'm not doing that in New York, and we're probably not going to be doing that in Wayne. A door-to-d dooror census just is not feasible. So, this is what
they came up with in in our profession. So, we looked at the BERT data from your community from 2010 to 23. That's what was available at the time. BS really declined from 2010 to 14 before they reverse trend and stabilized. So you're going to see a graph in a minute. There
were 462 births in 2023, which is a little bit higher than in 2010 at 444. So you can see what I'm talking about here. There's decline. Okay. Then it's kind of gone up a little bit, but stabilized. So nothing really that much in terms of births. But now I'm showing
you the same table with the births right here. Here's the year right next to it. But how many kindergarten kids are five years later? And what we're seeing here is the ratio of 0.937 would just be 415 / 444. This is on top here. This is when
you had a half day K program. Um this very low number here is the pandemic year of 2020. And then the values in blue is when you switch to a full day K. In most communities in the state, when you switch from half day to full day K,
you see a bump up in your BTOK ratios because parents are no longer sending their kids to private or parochial schools for kindergarten. They're bringing them right here. And so you can see they are a little bit higher, but not really that significantly from the half day period.
Um, when we aggregate your um I should explain this first. When we get birth data from the Department of Health down in Trenton, uh we ask them to give us the data, the births, it's all confidential. We can't get names. We get it by census block, which is the
smallest geographic unit that the census has. And our GIS people then um take the census block data with your elementary attendance area boundaries and are able to figure out where the births actually occurred over the last 12 or 13 years.
So here's all the elementary schools and their births by year. And you can see that JFK, at least in the aggregate, has had the most number of birds over this time period, while the Ryerson area had about half that, the least. So when we
look at birds by attendance area in 2010, the dark blue and the lighter shades of blue are where the greatest number of birds occurred. So again, here's JFK. and we advance to 2023, you can see that there's more blue. It's the same scale. So, that means you're having
increasing births in those particular zones, but JFK is still the winner in terms of the most number of birds. And when we do it in the aggregate for that whole 13-year period, again, you can see JFK has the most and Ryerson down here has the least. So, remember I mentioned
something about a census block a minute ago. So I asked my GIS analyst, can you plot the birds by the census block in 2010 and 2023? So you can see down here in Randall Carter, that dark blue that wherever that is in the um the township,
I think that's Rand Carter um is where the greatest number of birds occurred in 2010. But watch what happens when I swing this to 2023. You see how you get a lot more blues and dark blues. I'll toggle back and you can see what I'm talking about. So you are getting shifts of where some of those
birds are occurring. Um, and plus a greater number of them. Again, the same scale. I do it on purpose so that you can compare one map to the other. And then when we look at the number of birds over that entire period in the aggregate, the dark blue is where the greatest number of birds are occurring.
Again, somewhere in the center part of the township and again the southern area. So the next thing we look at in the community side of things is who you are in terms of age. Um this is back in 2010. This is called a
population pyramid or an age sex diagram. If you ever want to have fun with demographics online, go to Gemini and put in the population pyramid of Japan or Korea and then take a look at compared to yours or an African country.
Take a look. Yeah. Um, so what's happening here is I've plotted the males on one side, the females on the other side. These are the percentages of males and females in each age class, 0 to four all the way up to 85 plus. What's
interesting here, back in 2010, um, the greatest number of people were 45 to 49 in both males and females. But you see this big hole here on both sides? You see, in a in a more um heterogeneous
community as far as socioeconomics, that would be filled in. But people in 20s and 30s might have a difficult time I just advanced it. They might have a difficult time getting into your community either for rentals or for properties because they're just too
expensive. So when I advanced to 2020, you can see how it's not as bad as it was in 2010, but it's still missing some people in those 20s and 30s because now you have the oldest um group for males is 55 to 59. But notice that the biggest
group for females is 15 to 19 down in the high school and college age area. Um part of that maybe could be due to William Patterson possibly. Um, but this is interesting because you're getting a little bit more heterogeneous in wealthy
communities that we see in the state. This this picture, I could take this and just blow it up and cross out your name, put someone else. We see that all the time. Um, so we see the change over time. Who were the biggest decliners and who were the biggest gainers over that
10-year period? In blue, I have the biggest decliners. Um, that's the 45 to 49 group. And the biggest gainers were 60 to 64 for males and uh 70 to 74 for females. There were actually gains if you aggregated males and females from 55
and up except for the 80 to 84 group. And there were big declines in the 5 to9 and 10 to 14 groups over this time period which would be elementary and middle school. So remember how we talked about that there was probably a decline somewhere here. I haven't been with you
uh other than this last year. But if we go way back, all right, starting from 2000, there was a period of decline here. And that's why because they're just missing some people in those elementary and middle school cohorts. So the big thing um I want to talk about tonight is the amount of housing that's
going on here um or plan to. So some of these are approved, some of these are proposed. The report itself has a list of what's been approved and what's not. Um, there's more than 3,000 non-herest restricted housing units. Most of them
are multifamily units, which is sort of atypical from what has been in Wayne. U, that would be apartments and town houses. The largest impact um would be on Pines Lake and Tunis Day. Um, they would contain 44% and 26% of the units
respectively. So Pines Lake definitely would take the biggest hit. When we look at the middle school level, uh the Skyler Pback zone would have nearly 3/4 of the units where almost all the units will be in Wayne Hills High School. The largest development is the redevelopment
of Toys R Us corporate headquarters, which is 1360 units. Um when we had did the study, like I said, in August, there was no site plan filed. When there's no site plan file, that means that there's no bedroom distribution available.
There's no unit types tell to us of what's coming on board. So, it's kind of murky. We had to make some guesstimates of what we think it would kind of look like. So, we did two projections then for you because of that uncertainty. We did what's called a baseline projection
and we did what's called an adjusted projection. A baseline is really let's take out all the housing. Let's pretend there's no housing coming online. What would the projections look like? And if adjusted would be, well, if everything comes to fruition in the next five
years, highly doubted, what would it look like? So, what did we estimate in terms of number of children? Well, almost a thousand over a thousand children are expected or anticipated from those new housing developments. And you can see most of it
is at the elementary level. And that's because the values that we use to estimate these number of children, we use something called the Ruckers University SER center for urban policy research multipliers. They are values based upon what you can expect in a
typical apartment, townhouse, single family home based upon how many bedrooms are in that particular development. So those are the numbers we used. Um this our GIS developer put together a nice map. It's one of my favorites because it really shows you where the impact zones are. Here's a list of all the
developments from the report. There's Toys R Us. Um, but you can see, you know, where they all lie. And again, if you just draw a line straight across the um the latitude part of Wayne, they're almost all in the northern part of the township.
So, let's talk about what we projected for you. Like I said before, two sets of projections, one baseline, one um adjusted for housing growth. Again, assuming that they're all going to be constructed. Now, regardless of when housing gets constructed, we're still
projecting growth here. You can see the baseline number right here in the next 5 years is 77.88. That would be gain a gain of 240 students um from the current enrollment in 2425. Now we adjust for housing growth a big
difference 8810 which would be a gain of 1262 students. So rather than look at it from prek to 12 why don't we look at it what that would look like for you at elementary middle and high school levels. Um you can see that we have a column at the top
um which actually shows you what the enrollment is to 2425 and also shows you the baseline and adjust it for each one. Um you can see that if um if nothing happens really in terms of housing enrollment is project decline at the high school. Now if you
were paying attention on that one slide I told you remember how we showed you that middle school decline it's going to happen go up to the high school. Well, that's why. But at some point in time, the housing would take over and be enough to counteract that declining enrollment at the um at the high school
level. But the biggest problem in my eyes is definitely at the elementary level. If all that housing comes to fruition, you're talking about almost an extra 700 students and at the middle school level about 3 317. So as a summary for tonight, what can I
tell you is that um enrollments are projected to increase in the next 5 years. And if you want to say why, well, it's it's kind of a perfect storm of different things. Um really, one is you have a lot of new housing. That's probably the biggest driver of this. Secondly, you have an inward migration
of students. We saw that 10 of those 13 average grade progressions are above one which is indicating that you are getting influx of children from one year to the next. Um but the housing is one issue but the migration inward is like I said we had no housing whatsoever is still
projected to go up. The enrollment gain is not projected to be uniform across the grade configurations because the way Ruckers computes their multipliers, the greatest um number of children always come at the elementary level from a new home. So that's why you're seeing the
greatest impact in terms of the G gain is going to be at the elementary schools. So I know that was a lot of info I threw at you, but entertain some questions from the board. >> Questions from the board. Mr.
>> Were any simulations done in addition to this or um is there any statistical confidence level um that these were done on? >> So actually wrote a paper on this. Um so to do confidence intervals is quite difficult because you actually have to
go back and do a lot of projections historically to get a lot of these standard errors and things like that. So you would have to do a lot of simulations. You're correct. But so no, that's more of a like a research project that would be a lot of hours, but no.
>> And so if you look at just the last year, there's been a tremendous number of houses sold in partly potentially because a lot of people that have retired moving back south, other people in New Jersey, but you also have a lot of flow
from people leaving New York and coming here. A lot of times they're coming with children. >> Now if you look there's been a lot of houses sold but I'm assuming that that'll probably have a larger impact too than what you expected because people are selling because price of
houses and waiting has gone up dramatically. So I guess from 25 to 26 we know what the enrollment is like how accurate that estimate was or >> I looked it up today because I figured that might be the number one question.
So this is according to the state. So the state just released the data year. It's 7527 as of October of 25 which is like I said the census day and and our projection um in this was 7484 and they're the same for baseline
adjusted because we didn't have any construction really planned for that year. So I think that the net or the variation was something like 40 students which is pretty good because in our world we look for an error rate of 1% per year. So that's about a half a percent. Um so if you go out five years
if you're within 5% of you projected you're going to break. >> So that by that same you go five years that's 200 students. Well, true. But so the problem with what we do is there is the best accuracy is usually in the one
to threeyear period. Okay? Because so many things can happen in a three-year period that we have no control over. I'll give you a great example. When we got hired for a lot of districts in 2019 or 2020 and January 2020, who could have told us that there was a pandemic happening and that just screwed
everything all up? or who could have told us that interest rates would go so high that home sales in most of our communities would tank. So those kinds of things, you know, can really play havoc with projections because we're really assuming that what's happened historically is going to continue for
that 5year period. >> Do you know where we are currently? 50. >> So it continues to tick up. So we're actually above the projection for next year at the close of this year ahead.
>> That would be my October 15 count. So that would be at 2627. You're talking about the 7714 number. >> 741. She says we're already in 75. >> Oh, you're looking at the baseline. So I'm looking at the one below. I'm looking at adjust because I'm assuming
some housing has to have been constructed last year. >> Yes. Some not a lot. Okay. So that so you have a lot of room. I figure we'll probably be there by the end of next year. >> Well, when you see those numbers, look, compare it to the October 15 count this
coming for years. So I'm trying to figure out how to manage it throughout the course of the year. >> Enrollment changes as you know daily. Thank you. My question is this. Um, we have at least one housing development
that's already been constructed and occupied right now. Uh, where do the estimates compare with the actuals that we're getting from kids and less developments? >> Yeah, I'd have to go back and see which development you're talking about and look and see what we project because I I don't have that.
>> Yeah, the one I know is Apple. >> Okay. Is that one of the ones we called out? >> Yeah. Yeah, it should be that >> number six. >> Number six. Yeah. So what we also find out is this this is a if I remember correctly is it apartments >> all apartments
>> half and half. So the other thing we have to kind of wait because there's sometimes a delay with full occupancy for rentals not least all right at the same time. So it might even be more than what it is for the register. That' be interesting to see.
>> Thank you. Anyone else? Rich, we're running into the situation now where next year one of our middle schools it's almost doubling in population and it has nothing to do with
building. It has to do with the terminal of housing where you have seniors who are moving out who are now selling their house to younger people or moving in with children. Sometimes you have multifamilies in a single house. How do
you project that or is that even possible? >> Yeah, that's that's very difficult because for us to to know where all those places are going to turn over. Um we do do a sophisticated analysis that we weren't hired to do for you guys. It's it's called a housing turnover
analysis where we do look at sales, but we don't break it down at the elementary attendance zone. We only break it out for the whole entire district. So it wouldn't really be helpful to you here. Um, so unfortunately that's one of the nuances of if we had a real spike in one particular zone in terms of home sales,
we wouldn't be able to catch quite frankly. >> Any other questions? >> Yeah, you're going to go into I just want to Mr. Hy, are you going to present this? >> No, not tonight. Um, I'll be uh this
next sequence, >> Dr. Grip. So, I just like I mean, since I've been able to digest the numbers, I like to do best guesstimates. So, I kind of land somewhere between your adjustments for your housing and the real the real
numbers. I mean, I think uh the data for your your real baseline numbers can't really change that much. I think it's only going to go up instead of down in those areas. So the area I've been kind of operating in, you know, the most average assessment would probably be
around 2030 and additional 550 to 650 students somewhere in between. Yeah, that's kind of what I crazy. >> Um, >> yeah, that would probably be, you know, because, you know, superintendent,
that's actually a good point because one of the things that we assume here is that every single development in that report would be built and occupied in the next 5 years. If Toys R Us has not broken ground, um to me it would be highly unlikely, almost next to
impossible that they would be in there by 2930. So that buildout could be pushed even further back. So to your point, it could be in that 5600 increase rather than a 1300 or 1260 increase because 5600s would still make things
uncomfortable just so the public knows. Um because mostly going to show up at the elementary level. They don't traditionally spread themselves around. Um, so that would be the uncomfortable 1300 catch up. >> Well, sadly, if it if it could be a
10-year buildout, but something like in my experience, when I see 11 or,200 units planned in a particular development, it sometimes takes a decade. >> So, you got time for that one. doesn't mean for some of the other ones you do. >> But where you have time
10 years looks like a long way out. But in the reality, you have to start preparing now because if you're going if you need additional classroom space, you can't wait for nine years to build it. >> That's right.
So, you kind of have to roll the dice a little bit and go off the projections. And if you look at the projections, and I'll take Mr. Sedadino, let's let's put it down the middle. You're still looking
at a catastrophic increase in the elementary schools over what they have right now. Because you have one school, if you look at the statistics, the slide you had up, uh, I think it was Kennedy, >> JFK JFK
>> that might be in the report rather than >> the report unbirths by attendance. >> You look at that number that number is kind of staggering when you look at it
at the impact. So the problem is that in order to think ahead and have a capital plan that's going to be able to accommodate those numbers and I mean even looking at 22 25 more
students per school. I get they're not at each grade level, but when you look at our classroom space right now, we are most schools, we are at our top number of our guide for number of students in a classroom.
I mean, we're we're at 28 in some schools in fifth grade, which is not a number that I don't think any of us here would like to see. And that's one thing that's one thing that I did notice when this is the first
time I've really seen this um this graph where people in the past have said well enrollment is down. Why are our classes bigger? And the answer to that really is is because if you look although overall enrollment is down in the elementary
schools we're higher than we were at the highest point in 2015. We have I guess it's like 40 50 kids more than that. That's the highest. Yeah. Right. >> A lot of the the downsides came in in the high schools. We know we have plenty
of room in the school, but that doesn't help. And then we have a little bit of space in the, you know, some of the elementary, some of the middle schools, but it didn't also decline easily. So there are some schools that, you know, I think GW have space, but the other ones don't because the decline didn't, you
know, that one probably that school probably had more of a decline than the rest. So that's an important distinction for people to understand is that's why the class sizes are up because enrollment is down. >> And like when you look at Ryerson school, one thing you have to look at is the flood buyout. How many houses we've
lost in that Ryerson GW catchment area that have caused a drop in the population in that school. But you you I I would never do this because it happened to me when I was in elementary school. They wanted me to go from Randle
Carter to Pines Lake to school. And you know, so people say, "Oh, well, you have room at Ryerson." Well, who wants to put their child on a bus from Pines Lake to Ryerson every day? One of the things that you know I I I
see when I look at this and you know you look at the increase of enrollment and sure there's the um structural needs but as a district who's just getting by financially right now and and already starting next year in a in a bit of a
deficit even though we have a balanced budget just in the elementary alone at the 2030 projections it's over $2 million in addition salary uh for the additional staff that would need to incorporate those students at 23
at 23 students per class uh for for the and I'm not putting all the students in the high in the elementary. I'm projecting around 400 of those students going to the elementary by 2030. That would be about over just over $2 million
in salary um for teachers at 23 kids in a class. not even taking in that any of them will have special education needs um will actually drive up those salaries or we have a place to put them. >> Yeah. So I guess another question would be is if you look at I'm sure there are
other districts that have gotten to the place that we are at earlier than we have. So they probably experienced a spike in growth. And are there any other districts like us because we have a very uh you know neighborhood elementary schools then we go to the three middle
schools and then two high schools. Are there other districts that have experienced what we have that are you know dealing with it but they're ahead of us like where they've gone for this you know maybe five years earlier or whatever and did they change the design of their district to make it more cost
effective? Did they try to you know make bigger elementary schools and close some down to offset cost? How other districts will do. So, not just trying to deal with the short term or near-term, what are they trying to do to think of the long term? Because this is a trend
that's probably going to continue for a long time because, you know, as it turns over, neighborhoods turn over year over year over year and you know, it could 20 years from now, it could be completely different because we have additional phases of these these housing builds that are going to have to come in too.
So, this is not a problem that, okay, we're going to build these 3,000 and we're done. We have more rounds of this that we have to go through where we're going to have to build thousands and thousands more. >> So, how are other districts trying to deal with it from a long-term perspective to try to, you know, even
this out? Because the costs are going up much faster than we can keep up with. And even if we could say, "All right, remove the cap." If we had to try to keep up with the costs and build new schools and do all that stuff, nobody would afford be able to afford to live here because the price of taxes would
just go too high too fast. So, how are they addressing all these different things coming in at once? >> It's a great question. Uh, first I think I want to say is that the number of housing units that are proposed here is one of the highest I've seen. I do a lot of these. Um
to put it to scale a lot of them like the big ones that I see are usually around 1,100, 1200 units. >> 3,000 is significant. >> We were in court for a lot of years. So we didn't build for a lot of years. We would use the other units to do it. So that was kind of came in all at once.
>> Um so generally it's a combination of a couple things. Of course, addition seem to be one way, but the other word that we don't like to talk about, I the R word is redistricting. Okay? So, there are some places now that your community's got a lot of a lot of spaces
that are completely at capacity or over capacities that may not work for you. But other school districts we work with, we move boundary lines so that you can have some students in one particular elementary school or one middle school will then go there. But as the board
will know as highly unpopular start with new bathrooms. Um but those are some of the options and of course new schools but I don't see that as much because it just takes so long and to pass a bond referendum as you know is not easy. So,
a lot of times I'm gone and it may be four or five years where I finally start hearing about what I had talked to them about before I finally hear something like a bond referendum passed or a bond reference failed or we wanted our redistric.
It sometimes goes at a glacial pace. Dave, you want to add? >> I just want just want to add because I think Mark had a great question there. What are other districts doing? But one of the problems you have is that you're at a size that there are
not many districts in the state who are at your size. You know, 8,000 plus students. The numbers are very small. also take into account that a lot of districts to to David's point that you add classrooms, they know
they're going to get state aid to support the addition of the teacher. You you can't make that assumption either. So, you actually are in quite a bind that requires this type of planning to try to figure out what those strategies are.
Why does size matter? Well, smaller districts can go to a single school, so redistricting is not a problem. The entire district goes to uh K to 5 and then a a 5 to 8 and then a 9 to 12. You don't have you can't do that. You're
just way too big to accomplish that. So, uh there are are possibilities that we will discuss with you. Um we have an architect looking at the building capacity issues to see where there might be capacity in these grade bands and so
we'll be looking at that. But that is the the question what are our options and what has been successful. Uh but to an extent you just need to realize you the the group of school districts you're
in um with these issues is pretty small. Yeah, you're in rarified air in terms of some of your enrollment sites. >> Any other questions? >> At this time, I'll take a motion to open to the public. Uh public's reminded not
to speak negatively about any student or member. Do I have a motion? This is this is awesome, Mr. Anyone in the public wishing to come on up? >> Michael Goddisman 94 Independence Day.
Um, okay. So, we have a study that you completed a year ago. Let me give you some actual numbers as accurate as we have them to date with regards to the development. 2961
units have been approved. for round three of affordable housing. Of those approximately 2500 will be multi multiple family and of those between 1,800 and 2100 will be
two-bedroom or larger. Not to mention another one that was approved for round four, which is an affordable housing development that will be all affordable housing of 130 units from which it looks like the school
district will receive zero funds because they're doing it as a pilot program. and our remaining affordable housing requirement for round four which was a th a thousand units reduced by that 130.
Taking those numbers into account was that impact your estimate of the potential increase in student enrollment over the next 5 to 10 years. >> Just want to ask you a quick question. So doing the quick math there, what's the total number that you have now in
terms of approved units? >> 2961. >> Okay. So we're close in the 3,000. So you know, again with round four >> coming up. So give everyone a little bit of history of the fourth round with COA.
Um you may have probably do some spots in the township that are earmarked for redevelopment or um housing developments. However, the way it works with this is even though it's earmarked, you need to have a developer in place that has to come forward that wants to
build that particular property. So just because it's on the books as a fourth round potential project, sometimes we have a hard time seeing it even come to f fruition for four or five years until a developer comes forward. It's got to make sense financially for them. So
don't know if your your numbers and mine are exact. talking about the same thing, but it seems like we're pretty close. I I don't think it would alter my numbers. >> And the fact that 1,800 to 2100 are twobedroom or more. >> That's that's Yeah, if you have the full
report, you'll see all that. We have all the bedroom distributions of all the developments. Um, just to give you a heads up, a two-bedroom unit, I'm going to do this just I'm just looking into my brain here to see those numbers. It's about three4 unit kids per two-bedroom
market rate unit. That's about the average. It's not as much as you might think. Um the three bedrooms are where it really jumps up um to usually around almost a half a children per unit. Um however, a detached single
family home is much much higher. It's about 0.85 children per house unit. So, if you were to build 3,000 single family homes as opposed to 3,000 multif family types of units, it would be a completely different story.
>> So, I think just one thing that I'm not sure if you know the answer, but from what I understand is regardless of these houses being built, whether it's built under a pilot or under regular taxes, we don't get a dime for that because we're stuck to our 2% cap of year-over-year
budget. So from what I understand, the benefit of these units is supposed to be that the taxes will help the township potentially to lower this cost to all hopefully reduce taxes across all the people, but we don't get any additional budget just because we build new units
or new houses. >> Dave, do you know the answer to that? Finance, >> you're right. In terms of the pilot, um unless there you're part of the agreement, the pilot agreement that the school district will get uh some of the pilot dollars. Uh but if absent that,
the county and municipality are the ones who get uh those dollars. So definitely Mark, you're right on target with the pilot. In terms of the 2% cap, uh there are uh adjustments to that and I'm sure your your VA could talk more about that
for enrollment increases. So enrollment increases do get factored into that uh to give you a little relief. Uh but ultimately if it's a pilot um you have to read the terms of the agreement and it could very well be you get nothing.
also typically don't get like a standard they'll get a percentage of their taxes if they're get like a small amount per student >> only uh under the pilot the municipality and the cap >> just under the uh the uh adjustment to the cap is that what you're referring to
I'm not sure Mark uh >> no so we don't I'm saying so there's no p we're not included in pilot from correct my understand we get nothing >> you will get zero for that for those uh for that community but you have to read the agreement sometimes it's >> we haven't negotiate as part of like we're not we are nowhere for that pilot
not getting anything but even with the ones that we have. >> Yeah. >> We're not going to get like a percentage of their taxes like all of a sudden >> for the pilot that the nonp for the adjustment to the cap. Uh well again the VA uh can walk you through uh the
adjustments to the cap uh that are there. One of them is for enrollment increases. >> We didn't get it because our enrollment decreased overall but next year our enrollment goes up we could get >> how big is the percentage that we can get >> I don't know the calculation
>> is it is it sizable potentially it's like let's say we get like 100 students do we get is that big enough to get anything and also the calculation from the state changes year to year so it depends on how they calculate it it's whatever is
given to us based on our ASSA numbers and how much money they have available and >> also not that we're a piece of the town's pie. >> No, no, no. Yeah. So, it's kind of like we did with the health benefit waiver, uh, the adjustment because it went up so
much, the state gave us extra, you know, amount to tax the town. So, the ability to tax it. So, the town is still going to pay, but we're it's allowing us to go over that 2% cap. It's a levy cap. So, it's really just
allows you to raise your local levies, but >> that's not the full uh total of your per pupil cost to go over. >> Our amount raises the taxes, but they're getting more taxes on the other side. We don't get to say, "Okay, we're going to
offset that by that increase. >> We still have to raise it from this like this portion." >> Oh, yeah. You still unfortunately just means the taxpayers pay more. She still >> Yes. Yeah. We don't want to have to hit anybody more than we have to. We are terrible.
>> Dave, you're very professional calling them adjustments. I call them gimmicks. >> Yeah. Well, >> all they are gimmicks to try to say, "Oh, here we throw you a little piece." But the gimmick for we get an 8% waiver for health insurance. Our health
insurance went up 30%. >> So, we're still 22% behind the >> Yeah. >> You know, and and that that's the thing. And I I don't I don't send that anything against you what you're saying, but my question is to both of you and I guess probably more to bridge.
>> When a pilot program comes in, do you tend to get more children in a pilot because of the lower price now >> or affordable? >> Yeah, thanks. >> Yeah, so affordable housing does have a higher student yield and a market rate
of the same type. So some developments we call them inclusionary. That means that they've got market rate and affordables in together kind of intermingled. You can't even tell who's market rate, who's affordable. But statistically uh the Rucker study has shown yes, there's a a slightly higher
number particularly in the threebedroom um count as opposed to a market rate uh apartment unit. Anyone else from Please could just state your name when you come up. I'm sorry.
Alicia, Alyssa Shaleri, Chestnut Drive. I just had a question. Did you figure in when you went to that one that you told us to look at with the three different colors? >> Um, did you figure into that I noticed you had preschool included with that. >> Um, now in I know my son was in
preschool with the first preschool class and that was in the 2020 2021 year. Does that figure into like so that lower amount was with the added preschoolers and then like we've continued to add preschool is my understanding. So yeah that so you didn't pull pre so it probably looks very different from like
probably looks even worse >> if I pull the pre. Yeah. >> Yes. Okay. And then also was there any figuring in about like rates of students going to county um state county tax or anything like that? >> So it's a great question. Um so in terms everybody got that question right county
tech um going to use some money or not. Um, so the ratios that we talked about, the cohort survivor ratios, we can't really we see that people are coming in or leaving a district. We just
don't know what the reasons are. That could be one of the reasons. So if there's inward migration, it could be, look, the housing is affordable here. I'm moving in. Or perhaps my job is here. Or I have family here. I'm moving in. moving out could be an outward
migration could be I'm going to the tech program and we would see it in the 8 to9 ratio dropping down. I can't remember if the 8 to9 was one of the three that was below one. It could be. I have to take a look. But to answer your question very explicitly, we don't have specifics on
that. We'd have to do a trend analysis over time of of where were people going, how many people are leaving to go to the tech, but we didn't do that. But you could see it at least in the net in those ratios of what's going on. >> But theoretically, if someone was going
to tech or someone was going to another high school in town, they're still our students where potentially they could revert back into our census. >> Sure. Sure. Absolutely. And so when we
to make sure everybody understands when you see account here, these are strictly in district seats. Um it's not taking anybody into account if you have to send kids out of district for special ed. Um so it could even be higher than what we're seeing here.
>> Any other questions? Any other questions, please? Good evening and I said my old 74B Sbury Road. Um my first question is you had
mentioned that you weren't commissioned to do a housing turnover. Is that correct? >> Correct. I don't believe that was even one of our options we even offered them to to look at. But yes, >> is a housing turnover study important?
>> Yeah, in this particular case, no, because you have other arching factors here as in new construction. Uh I'll explain really quickly. Housing turnover analysis looks at home resales only. It factors out all the other variables we talked tonight. So, will enrollment go
up or down or be stable just on home sale patterns? >> But it will not take into account those 3,000 housing. >> But would a housing turnover be important when it comes to cohort? >> Um, you know, here's the thing. You
know, the housing turnover that we see is usually embedded in all those ratios that we mentioned tonight. Just work with a district. I'm going to tell you guys this because I I'm almost betting this is going to someone's thinking about this right now. Um I usually get a comment that we have a lot
of seniors in our community. They're all aging out and we're all going to sell at the same time. And I'm going to tell them the statistic I just read, which I can't remember the publication, but it's not the case. Um, and a lot of it's because a lot of seniors have
grandchildren nearby. They have some kind of connection to that wants to keep them here. They may be very involved in their community, their church, whatever. Again, it's not as many as you would think. So, when we do these, I've done 20 years worth these analysis and I look
at homes that have 35 or 40 years of ownership, you would expect the percentage of selling at that rate, at that length of ownership and really high, it's less than 1%. Mhm. >> It's crazy. You you It's contrarian to what everyone knows and thinks.
>> What was what was it? You were hired I think in August of 25. >> Mhm. >> What was the cut off date you used to lock in the numbers? >> So would have been the June 20 June 25. So you know the last So our
cuto off would actually be the 2425 school year right there. Would it be fair to say that the bump in school enrollment in 2021 and 22 is directly related to CO?
>> Well, it's a bump down. It's a It's not a bump up. I'm sorry. I'm looking at home. So, >> okay. >> Um, >> yeah, it's it's definitely CO related. >> Uh, uh, bumps on 22 and 23. Yeah. So that in our so again I've seen a lot of these. So what you're seeing is here's
your uh here's your decline for COVID and then this is just the elementary level but then you get students that are starting to return back in 21 and then 22 but the bump in 22 and 23 now that's going to continue
to roll throughout. >> Right? They're in the system, but you could see that it's not like we're continually going straight up because you already decline, right? 60 50 students there. >> The reason I asked about the housing turnover
is that you can look over my shoulder. This is a 9-year trend on housing sales and Wayne using the MLS as a source of information. 23 24 25 is significantly under
precoid years. So that's why I'm asking about a housing turnover because if you have fewer housing sales then it could have an impact on public. One theory is is that if we ever get to
a place where interest rates are lower, it could cause some selling because who in their right mind would want to sell a home with a 3% mortgage right now, unless you don't know math. Um, so right now it's six I'm not shopping for mortgages, but it six 7% somewhere in
that neighborhood. So until that changes, we're not going to see that kind of influx. Actually in the report which the board has there is a home there is a home sale for the MLS statement in there and it does show the peaking around the COVID years and then
a sharp decline in the last three years as these interest rates have gone up. As a fun fact I just read the other day >> which would be this right here. >> It's I don't know. >> Yeah, that's that's that's really good. That's good. Yeah, that's really good. Um but first time ownership now is 40
years old. So delaying of ownership is really has an impact as many times you want to have these younger families moving in. Sometimes it's just hard to do it. >> I agree. >> Now going back to your number 3000
that is roughly 3,000 units. >> That's the anticipated fully built out by the end of 2930. >> Yes. >> Impossible. >> That's what I said. But I'm just saying we we did this for
the whole purpose of what would be the worst case scenario on the district if all 3,000 units that are approved and before the planning board came to fruition. We have to do that to give them the idea and planning purposes. What's going to happen? You probably heard me say to the superintendent
earlier that that Toys R Us development likely could take a 10-year buildout. So if you're going to frontload your bills, we're frontloading student population because that also gets spread out over a two or three year period. Am
I wrong? >> Well, it could be spread out over, you know, five or six year period. Y >> but there's some sort of distribution that house will generate a child >> not on day one, but perhaps in the second year, perhaps in the third year. >> So we make here's what we do. We make a
an an estimate of how many will impact immediately, but there could be secondary kids coming in or in the 0 to4 population that aren't captured because we're looking at school age children. So there could be children that are hiding down in that prek range.
>> Oh, totally agree. Now question for you because we have different types of development. >> You went mostly with the research multiplier. >> Yeah. >> Why not who's living in New Jersey? Well, that is >> two of them were different.
>> No, no, no. There's Who lives in New Jersey is the name of the title of the publication. It's a monograph by Ruckers Center for Urban Policy Research. >> 2018 was done. They just came out with another one
since then in 2025. That was after this report was issued. And the numbers are going to show lower yields than the ones that I had put together in this report. So, you could say that my numbers might be an aggressive estimate, but it's not by much.
>> Now, I I did want to agree with you that affordable housing units definitely generate more children for you. There's no doubt about that. In fact, I think they have an developers have an obligation when you're building to make
sure a certain percent of them were affordable housing. Would you agree that the multiplier for a single family home is different than a townhouse versus a
>> I was going to get there. Yeah. But a rent. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> No, single family homes, you might have heard me mention have the most children of any of the housing types detached. My only comment to the board is yes,
there's a lot going on, but you have to peel back some layers of the onion to see the big picture. That's just my personal opinion. Now, if I was sitting up there, everything he's doing, I would have asked for it. But I'm on
this side of the fence today. >> All right. Thank you. Anyone else from Republic? See no one. Any other questions from the board? See none.
Any old business? New business. Any board member comments? So I think it's important to note that it's this study that we're doing this small piece of what's going on but there are other things that are occurring
simultaneously like we are seeing a large increase in number of multigenerational and multif family living in single family homes that's definitely shown an uptick where we have a lot more you know sometimes six seven eight nine kids coming from this so
these situations are also impacting it we also have much higher um percentage of special needs children. Yeah, I think the state average about 15 14 15% were up to almost 20%. So there are a lot of other moving pieces that you know the
onion may show some but there are other things that we're seeing that are may not be part of the study but they're also driving the need for space and driving the size of the classrooms and such. So we're monitoring all of this but we also have to get an idea of where
this could potentially lead us. And again, I'm trying to think, you know, not not just next year, but 5, 10, 15 years. We don't have a long-term plan. And we unfortunately, we didn't have one in place 10, 15 years ago, and that's why we are where we are now. So, we have
to start and also have the same budget constraints that we have now. So, trying to come up with this plan at this point in time to have something that makes sure that we sustain the quality of education and maintain safety of our children, the is something that we have
to have a long-term plan for and that's what we're trying to work through and this is just one more piece of information that helps us get there. >> I just want to take a moment and say thank you for the presentation. Uh it's clear that you put a lot of time effort and you're have a vast knowledge on the
subject. I think out of all the questions everyone fired off on you the only one that you said I have to look back uh and get further information. So as far as I'm concerned it's highly reliable. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. I think a lot of the guardians uh and
parents of uh children in our school district and uh prospective guardians and parents of children uh entering the the school district probably want to know okay so what are you going to do about it then uh you know we had the failed referendum
to get the other or a new referendum started it's going to take a lot you know prices have changed we we did the charge. Um we we explored a lot of options uh with the previous referendum. You know, it could have went up to a
$400 million referendum, but we we cut it back, cut it back, cut it back, cut it back. Um so those numbers now are updated, you know, due inflation, due to other other things. So what are we looking at? You know, 2027, 2028 for another referendum, you know,
we're already behind. So just wanted to to put that out there. >> Anyone else? Um I think um sitting on the board um one thing we've heard over and over again is from the parents of the
students in our district with regards to class size with regards to the quality of education maintaining the services that we offer. And it's just abundantly clear that we're in a position where
yes, we want to do that and yes, we want to maintain everything and and keep everything moving in the same direction and um we have to be very creative and we also have put together a community committee um which is helpful. So, we're
asking the community for some feedback and some information, but I think it's very clear that we understand um the challenges that we face and it's not something that other districts don't face, but we're green is very unique in
the size and in the projected growth. So, I think it's something that people really need to be aware of and understand the challenges that we face. They're not uncsurmountable, but that's just me because I'm >> Yeah. optimistic, but it is it is um
realistic. So, and thank you for this um demographic study. It's like, thank you. >> Um just a couple comments. Uh Rich, Dave, thank you very much for your report. One of the reasons we
had to do the report again, and I know some people say, "Oh, you just did one a couple years ago." But in order to even consider a referendum, the Department of Education wants a demographic plan done within two years.
Now, they say five, but you do it in that one to two to threeyear period, they will accept it. If it's a five-year plan, you may put all your plans in, they turn around and say, "No, we're not accepting demographic study. Start
again." Now, you've just taken everything and gone back to zero and put yourself two to three years out. So, that is why yes, we did one for the last referendum and we're doing one now because the board right now um we're
looking possibly in 2028 of a possible referendum here. We have to We're at a critical crossroad here. Whether we want to believe it or not, we are we're in an uncomfortable but undeniable truth of
what's happening in our schools. For years, we've been able to absorb this. All right. With shifting landscapes in our town now, but structural realities we face today no longer is sustainable.
We look at class sizes. Every August. Well, from June to August, Mrs. Kazmark, what do we hear about? What do we talk about? Class sizes. That that drives every conversation the board's involved in. Class sizes. Where are they? If we
have to we have to add another class. Well, we have to add a teacher. So, now you're looking salary 40 to $50,000 in benefits. All right. you're looking at probably 125,000 for a
teacher. You have to add that in. So, there's a lot of ancillary costs that people don't understand and I get why they don't understand it. It's not just a matter, oh, we add another class. Okay, there's a lot of things that go in
add to add into another class. Do you have classroom space to add that class? Are you going to pull music from the classroom and go back to music on a car and art on a car? We did that for years
because we didn't have space. So when we look at the demographic study, it's clear and uncompromising in my opinion, right? We can't absorb this anymore and the impact of you know all this building is going to catch up. But
the the null factor I'll call it is the housing market with the number of people moving in. We are historically seen over the past two years where we have multi- families buying a single family house.
In one case it was related to me that we had three families in one home. No study you do, I don't care what study you do, are you ever going to be able to figure that those figure those numbers
into those numbers? Not going to happen. Right? The pilot programs the pilot programs hurt the school district in two ways. As Rich said, you see an increase in number,
but you also see no money coming in from them either. So theund say 130 units >> 130 >> 130 units going in on Valley Road >> all affordable >> all affordable housing 100% pilot program the school district gets nothing
out of that let's say there's 15 students coming out of the 130 that's 15 more seats I got to have now do I have to bump up and have another another open another class section and then the cost of the teacher on it on
top of So all the all these things add up. I mean, I'd love to have a seat at the table. Listen, I don't Affordable housing is a great thing, but let's build affordable housing. Let's not
build 80 units out of 500 affordable. And I don't care what side of the table you sit on, Republican, Democrat, independent, I don't care. They've all had a hand in it. All right? And they all had a chance to change it. None of
them have. We make these little tweaks. I call them feel-good tweaks. You rug you rub your stomach and it feels good, but nothing changes. It's the same thing with school security. They do the same stuff. Oh, put a metal detector in. That's going to make everybody in the school safe. Yeah. No, it's another
gimmick. All right. Um the bottom line is we're in a new wing here and let's talk Mr. Pakist brought it up. Based on New Jersey school construction averages right now, and I spoke to our architect today,
you're looking at anywhere from $550 to $650 per square foot for a classroom. They are hard costs. That's building the classroom. That's not all the soft costs that are involved in it as well.
So, let's go middle of the road with with the demographic study and let's say we need 30 new classrooms throughout the district roughly. You're probably looking at anywhere from 160 million to
200 million right now. We went out for the last referendum and I know people say, "Oh, don't talk about it. Don't talk about it." We got to talk about it because there's a reality to it. that last referendum at 147 million. Today you're
looking at closer to 195 million to do the exact same thing. Nothing different and the costs aren't going down >> and that keeps us in this situation five years from now, >> right? And that's not fixing it. That's
a mandate to get us through and hope we can keep the class sizes where we can. But we keep looking at these class sizes and say, "How can we do this?" Right? And even when we pulled art on a cart and music on a cart, we still have large
class sizes larger than we'd want. So there's a lot of things going on here. All right? And I mean, you you have what's going to come out in the uh future school study uh committee that's going to meet in two weeks. We're going
to look at all this. We're going to break oursel up into two groups and have two groups looking at two different things two different ways so we have input from the community on these things and what to do. I am not I'll tell you right now I am
not an advocate for redistric period. I am not. But perhaps maybe what we need to do is look at these new developments and redistrict them now before shovels go in the ground. So when you buy, you know
exactly where your child's going to school. But redistricting sounds easy. Oh, we could just move this from here, move that into there, this and that. Well, there's another thing we have to realize. Transportation costs.
If that child is moved more than elementary school, more than two miles in middle school, two miles from their school, we now have to transport them. If high school removed for some reason, it's two and a half miles. And there's
no fudge room with that. That's hard and fast and been hard and fast in this state forever just about. That's something that's never changed. So now again when you start looking at it's easy to say oh just do this just do that. Okay but what are the costs
involved? Our transportation costs are incredible. We have one of the biggest fleets in the state of New Jersey. And some people say oh why don't you look at outsourcing? We did look at outsourcing as a board at one point. The numbers were even higher.
So there's a lot of things that go into this and how we have to look at it. All right. Um the board's not hiding from these numbers at all. Nor will we surrogate the reality of those numbers. Moving forward, you know, our committee
is going to look at this and in the fall uh once the committee has looked at it and we get get some consensus from the committee on their thoughts, we're going to have some community forums just like this. I wanted open discussion. That's one of the reasons I that the board
asked to have this meeting like here today so we can have a discussion amongst everybody. But you know every resident, every parent has to be a part of this and we have to hear the input and the honest and the honesty that's going to come
with this. There's a reality to this and as I said earlier, the problem is we don't have time to wait. We already see impacts of numbers we have now. So, we have to start making projections
for that down the road. As Mr. Faber said, our budget can go up 2% unless we ask the taxpayers for money to go out for a referendum to build. The school was built with a referendum
uh you know 20 years ago. But there's the realities of it too because right now the class sizes are not going to get any by any means substantially smaller.
I don't let's let's take numbers and cut them in half. As I said it the numbers are going up. We're seeing that if we're seeing an impact now without all this housing, what's going to be the impact when the
next Avalon Bay goes online? All right, that's coming sooner than we have going online. You have the Alps Road project that'll probably be within the next year or so online, right? Avalon went online a lot lot
quicker than any of us thought. And Avalon has a lot more rentals than anybody thought because people were making the comment, who's who's going to pay $4,000 a month for rent? Apparently, there's a lot of people paying $4,000 a month for rent. You ride through you
ride through Avalon, that parking lot is substantially full, right? The town hall townous sold out before they even thought they were going to. And we saw a jump in the number of students from that right alone. I think
I think the number was between 10 and 15 out of 50 units. I think I forget how many condo units there are there. But the number with that like we all started talking because initially the projections from the town were 100 kids
out of there total. So we we have to see but we we also have to keep things um you know, focused here. And that's what we're going to do with the committee to
hear from the people. And we will be back in the fall with more meetings. We wanted to put this out there now to show the community what were the numbers we're looking at. And you know, you have other you have other variables going on in the town, too. You have the William
Patterson property, which from what I understand now has not been sold. That's an illegal battle, but you have the potential there. That's a sizable piece of property. And when you have big name builders coming
in whose names were associated with it, they're going to move quicker than a small LLC. They're going to come in. They're not making money if shovel aren't in the ground and people aren't renting the units. So, there's a lot of factors here. And you
know I hope let's take it digest it and you know as we move on in the process you know the community is going to be fully involved in it right any other comments right at this time we're going to move into executive
session >> no there's only one there's only one >> I thought that was just for questions >> I'm sorry >> very good um this time we're going to move into executive session. Uh the general nature of the subject we're
going to discuss is personnel specifically the annual review of the superintendent which we're required to do. Uh the matter will be discussed uh there'll be no uh no um action taking uh tonight. The only
thing we'll do is enjoy the meeting. All right. Thank you everyone for coming. >> Thank you. Thank you everyone.