[Music] The May 1, 2025 open public finance meeting. The Woodwards Township Board of Education will please come to order. Please rise for a salute to the flag and a moment of silence. Alian to the flag of the United States
of America to the republic for stand. Okay. Roll call. Mr. Secretary. Miss Anderson here. Mr. Delipro here. Miss Perez here. Mr. Mohammed here. Mr. Triboser here. Mr. BZ here. Mr. Harris here. Mr. Secretary is required by the
Sunshine Law. Please read the notice of meetings. Thank you, Mr. Harris. The New Jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon. In accordance with the provisions of this
act, the board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be published by having the date, time, and place thereof posted as follows. On January 21, 2025, emailed to the Home News Tribune, the Star Ledger, and the Municipal Clerk's office posted in Ros Street School number 11, and the board
of education administration building, also published on the school district website. Excellent. Mr. Wolferman. Tonight is the board's annual required open public meetings uh public meeting on the uh proposed budget. Dr. Masamino, he will
walk us through his presentation this evening. Doc, it's going to be a slow jog, Mr. Harris. It'll be a slow what? Slow jog. Slow jog. We're not We're not going to walk tonight. So the o the the budget overview is going to contain uh information on our revenues, our local tax impact uh with
comparison our overall budget breakdown, our expenditures, initiatives, and projects. Um this is a snapshot of our general revenues. Um unfortunately, we are one of the districts that lost state aid, which is seen in the chart. Uh the 2% tax levy does help balance it
out. So we are running um at a deficit compared to last year. And looking at the local tax impact uh last year we did borrow the 2% um we were able to make the payment on debt service which kept the taxes um flat less than flat uh this is the
valuation uh for this year for 2526 comes out to about $93 u per household. This is the pie chart. I won't go through it because obviously it's a little tough to explain. It's much easier to read. Um, but this does give you a breakdown in in a visual depiction of what our expenditures look
like for the upcoming school year. Um, as a matter of increase to look at our expenditures, there are two major items that jump off the page. Um, your total salaries and benefits um, at a $12.4 million increase and then our private school uh, tuition are out of
district students. Um, there is no uh, cap on those costs. those schools um and entities including transportation can can go up uh rather significantly which um is visible on this. So those are the two items um salaries and benefits and and private tuition that obviously were
the biggest biggest expenditures by uh by quite a margin with the budget that we have for next year. There are some initiatives that we are able to implement. Um, we're going to expand our tiered system of supports. Um, as well as uh continue implementation of a university universal
literacy screener. Um, the law requires a K to3 screener. We're going to go K to 5. So, it's comprehensive across elementary school. Um, we are infusing some instruments in our district arts program. Um, equipment for our broadcast journalism courses, screenwriting, film production,
um, and middle school science curriculum uh, program updates as well. We budgeted uh the high impact tutoring program was a a success. So we will you know continue to to have that as a service for our students. Um continue to facilitate assemblies K to2 um school
safety, substance abuse, student health and and student conflict resolution being the main uh focuses of those assemblies. And then obviously our our credit recovery expansion uh 6 to 12 um to provide opportunities for these students who have had uh interrupted time frames um or have met with
difficulties. Uh we want to make sure they're on a path to graduation. So this is a tremendous thing that we're going to continue and expand upon. We're looking to expand our best program into the high school. We currently have it at the elementary and middle school levels. Uh we're making some revisions to our preschool
curriculum as well as our Soore program. Uh we are opening four new elementary autism programs and one new high school autism program. Our projects which many of these are continuations. Um one of the areas that we were able to really
balance this year's bud budget was uh cutting back on the money that we had allocated for projects. We we've had a lot going on. We've done a lot in the district. Um I thank the board for their support because for a lot of years u buildings grounds is where the the budget was cut. Um so there was a a a
staunch commitment to make sure that um the the long-range facilities plan was followed um continues to be followed and we focus on those projects um on a need basis. So you can see the continuation of Avenue 4 and 5 uh drainage at Islam Middle School, lighting at Warbridge
High School, egress at Oak Tree Road 29, uh Ford's Middle School parking lot upgrades u and a partial roof replacement at Kennedy Park School 24. With regard to technology, which is um in no small part of backbone of a lot a lot of what we do curricular-wise, um there's some new VM server upgrades,
middle school core switch upgrades, and refreshments on our our student onetoone Chromebook plan. I encourage everybody to take a look at this. Um our final budget adoption is next Thursday, May 8th, right here at 6:00. Uh that will be a full board meeting. So if um you're
interested, please do come out uh for the meeting to talk about a myriad of issues including the budget. And Mr. President, that is all I have for this evening. Excellent. Thank you, Dr. Mesamino. We appreciate this. Uh I'm going to make a few comments and then uh board members, if you guys have any questions about the presentation, please
fire away. I want to thank Dr. Masmino, Mr. Wolfman, his entire team for putting together a a balanced budget in light of $4 million less than state and federal aid. Uh, I want to commend you for putting together a budget that reflects that cut. Uh, this year's budget is
actually $4 million less than it was last year. So, that's commendable in in finding savings uh and efficiencies to to make that work without impacting current programs and services. Uh, furthermore, uh, this administration put forward a number of new initiatives as
outlined by Dr. Masamino to to strategically invest in our students. So, I want to thank you for that. Uh, and then finally, uh, thanks to the administration for answering a number of my questions and I know a number of other board members, uh, questions. Uh,
I think over the years, we've, at least myself, I can't speak for everybody else. I've, uh, I've learned the budget and and have had less questions and that's thanks to your thorough answers and us working in in partnership. uh as required if if any board member
wishes to make changes to the budget or propose additions those types of things need to be said here at a board meeting. So I want to just put two things on the table uh for consideration next week in our committees. Um, uh, Vice President Bourdan had, uh, brought to my
attention, there's a proposed, uh, proposal relative to physical education, like a supplemental program for our RISE students. I want to just have a conversation about that next week. Uh, in the event that has some merit for our
consideration. And then, um, I'm doing some digging in on this. Um, specifically, it has to do with solar energy. It's, uh, known as community solar. I don't know if you guys are familiar with this. It's a statewide program that's been going on since about 2018 2019 where solar panels are
installed on warehouse roofs rather than on our own school roofs where we can where we can elect to draw that power from those rooftop solar installations. And what's nice is you get a discount for that for that energy. Uh so Mr.
Wolferman, it's a it's a new law. There's a couple school districts that have put out RFPs for this type of of power. With our energy costs going up about 10%, finding savings, I think, is is something we're going to need to continue to explore. Uh, as Dr. Masamino
and I have discussed, there are some dark clouds out there relative to federal and state aid in the future. Uh so we we should be uh mindful of continuing to find efficiencies uh going forward should should any cuts uh ever
materialize. Uh something that that should keep us all of us up at at night to some degree. So we'll work through that. Uh I did have one question on the presentation doc uh under the project the VM server upgrades. What is do you know what the VM stands for? I know Mr.
Massberry is not present with us this evening. Mr. Harris, I'd have to talk to Mr. Sperry specifically um when it comes to technology. I definitely want to defer to the expert on that. Sure. Yeah, it certainly sounds like it's a a higher
level uh tech uh term that uh but we'll we'll get an answer on that. Either way, we're investing in our IT infrastructure. So, with that, are there any comments, questions from any of the board members this evening? Mr. Sedan is joining us for for the record. very much. Anybody any
questions? No. All right. Just uh just just a comment if you don't mind. Um I know I had a few questions also going back and forth. So I'd like to thank the administration for responding to them. And I do have I think one open item uh that I'll get a response to before our next meeting next week. So I thank you
so much for for sharing your comments, any thoughts. Mr. Harris, may I respond? I just want to let Mr. Muhammad know I did respond to it um just before this meeting started. So you have it already. Oh, it's in my in my email. Okay. Thank you so much. Okay. Very good. All right.
Uh hearing none. Uh we don't have our attorney here uh to to advise me otherwise, but this is the portion of the meeting where I would open it up to the public for public comment. Being that there's nobody here, I don't think I need to read the whole script about uh public comment. Um for for those viewers
at home, I apologize. No one no one is here. But we will be discussing the budget again next week. As Dr. Masamino pointed out uh May 1st is our budget adoption uh where we will adopt it. No further presentation. Dr. Masamino, the presentation will be on the website. Yes. May
exc statement. You said May 1st. Oh, I May 1st is today. May 8th is the meeting. Yeah. Thank you. All right. With that, uh the chair will entertain a motion to adjourn. So motion second. A motion by Mr. Treeer, seconded by Mr. Delp. Did I hear you right? All in
favor? I. Any opposed? Gary, we'll see you on the eighth. [Music]