Like you I went to this school not too long ago, right? Um I I love Marlton. I do. I really really do. Um, years ago, I I I would have thought to myself, there's no way I'd want to live any other place. But it's like, you just have to think to yourself is like, is this going to get any better, right? You ask me, this school district shouldn't raise taxes for the next like decade or so because of how much we just raised tonight. Um, and to that point, it's like now we have no excuse. Now we have to have the best services, the best instructions, the best classrooms, the best teachers, everything, right? Because now it's the old saying, you get what you pay for, right? And people are now paying for it. Um, so I I really really hope that, you know, some actions happen at the state level, uh, where Trenton can can get its get its stuff together.
Again, this is a comparison u where we were last year to where we are todayish. Um we are at only 70% collection rate. I do want to point out that this does not include um any fee waivers or families that can't pay. Those fees are not in here. So that 70% is actually um people who owe fees who have not paid yet. Um, we're hopeful as the year wraps up that we might get some payments. I want to encourage um, people to go online and fill out fee waiverss um, or set up a payment plan. Anything would help. Thank you. Thank you so much to both of you.
Um, I think east we have four kids right now who have indicated that they plan to walk at both. Um, and then north is probably similar. I don't have that list in front of me, but it's usually a pretty small number. And that's generally athletes um that that end up deciding they want to walk at both. So, it's it's generally a pretty small number of students who who take advantage of both ceremonies. Um, so it it's not a huge number of our class that would do that. And board members, there's nothing magic about a requirement on an approval for this this evening. Um I I think we technically have until the end of August. We do not in any way want to wait till the end of August because fall athletics will have started by that point in time. But uh it could be it could be considered next month if in fact you wanted.
um you know, some changes happen with with with who's leading us um and the funding formula can have some common sense to it and that we could get some of our money back and that we should take that money that we in theory would get back and and we should dedicate it to property tax relief for EU Township residents should that happen. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dearcy. Any other qu uh comments from the board? Mr. shock just to kind of respond um to Aiden's comments. You're right. We should make sure that everybody is held accountable for this. There's no excuses. We gave everything we could to support the schools and we need to make sure that everybody's accountable for that and we as a board need to do that and that's what I want to see going forward. We still need to fight at the state level.
Any questions? Okay. Our end of the year fund balance were removed. where we're projecting to be. We're projecting to be at 68 million. So that about 20% 25% 25%. Which compared to where we've been before that will be really good for but the goal is to try to build it up. There's some there's some good indications if you look at the financials. For example, this at the month of March, we spent suspension left on supplies. the material than we have uh in prior year. So we we're doing certain things right even the salaries we actually lower than what we projected. So we we're hopeful that I we will hit 68 million and maybe a little bit higher. Okay. But our goal is to 25 million uh 25% minimum. that's what the uh the minimal percentage of fund reserve is supposed to be for school district.
This was not at all intended to be a uh anything we thought would raise any controversy. But after the newspaper article uh from last Saturday and then this evening's board meeting, we certainly should hear from folks if there are concerns we haven't heard from at this point in time, but we also didn't receive any after the newspaper article hit on Saturday, but does not need to be. We could pull that one out if you wanted to wait another month. Sorry, new tech teachers back there supporting tonight. You don't have to come back in May. It's all the way in uh August 31 to modify your your school district accountability system, but we like like I said, we would want that approval in May uh at the latest to get everything set up for from a system standpoint. Nick actually would love it earlier than that.
That still needs to happen. you know, that still needs to continue and hopefully we can, you know, do something down the line, you know, about to make things better. But as of right now, you know, I use my vote to support the schools and support the teachers. And what we need to do is from here on out is hold everybody accountable. You know, there needs to be results. There needs to be, you know, progress on things we want to see progress on, and that needs to happen. And if it doesn't, there's no excuses at this point. So make sure everybody's held accountable. Thank you, Mr. Bach. Any other board members would like to share an announcement? Mr. Bilman, just one last thought. Mr. Dearcy, I just want to agree entirely. Now that we have the funding, it is our duty to make sure we have the best schools, the best classrooms, and the best educators possible for our children.
So if we hit that, we're in goodstead. But I think with so many unknowns right now in the in the economic environment, the more we can add to our reserve, the better off we'll be because it provides us the ability to be able to weather any headstorm uh headwind, I'm sorry, over the next uh year or so. Okay. Thank you, board. Thank you, Mr. Buffy. Um next, uh Mr. Queen, thank you. You have a 11.2. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Kgatti.
I know. Thank you. Thank you. All right. The next cabinet report is going to be a brief one. You've seen this one already um uh in some cases some parts of it twice, but it's just a second reading of the the policy uh that policies that were first posted on March 14th online. First reading was at the board meeting on March 31 and then um this second reading this evening is for approval. This one includes these eight policies up on the screen in front of you now uh from wellness starting at A275 down to armed security which was presented at the last meeting and also related to the uh additional appropriation hearing for this evening.
It's our responsibility to do that going forward. I wholeheartedly agree. Thank you, Mr. Pilman. Any other comments from the board? I will just end by this board knows I'm not the most articulate um board president. So I will just say that I wholeheartedly and emphatically echo every single sentiment shared by Mr. Pilman and Mr. Thompson during their board member announcements. With that motion to adjurnn. Motion by Mr. Peeleman, seconded by M Mr. Thompson. All those in favor? Hi.
Are there any questions to the memo provided to the board of education about the pool regrowouting? I I just have one quick question. I know that you you indicated in the proposal that the reason you wanted to go with this particular vendor was because they had basically fulfilled all of the requirements. Um the other two did virtually nothing or do we have any info any intel on them? We couldn't get any references checks on them and then and then the clarity we did get was not good out of both groups. So even with us trying to communicate with them was was a task in itself. Okay, makes sense. And the one important thing that I want to point out is the timeline that we're working is very tight. We don't have time for some mess. Yeah. Our pools are used almost year out. So, we're going to take it down for about six months.
Happy to take any questions on the second reading of package four of the policy board policy reorganization if you have any. Okay, Mr. Brineer, try to stay quiet while you're talking finance. I'll try not to butt in. I think the printed agenda says on the agenda I had Dr. Boseman was next so presentation and the paper agenda are not in the same order. Sorry about that. That's okay. Um real quickly uh Mr. Nan just to answer something you said about the budget. um latest figures we received last week from the Legislative Services Agency when they calculated in the curricular funding, we were still able to get 2% increase for next year and 2% the following year. That was we we haven't got those numbers in hand, but that's what they're telling us. And when we factor in that $2.4 million or yeah, $2.4 billion shortfall the state has, um I'm thankful that we're getting the 2%.
We want to make sure that the person that we assigned to do the work can do it well and on time. Absolutely. Okay. Okay. Thank you. All right. Moving on. Thank you. Action item 12.1, approval of bus lease agreement. Can I have a motion, please? Make a motion to approve the lease agreement to replace 72 buses at a total cost of 12,769,965 over a 5-year term. Second, Miss Venmouth. I, Dr. Mario, I, Mr. Cerone, I, Miss Simon, I, Mr. Gatewood, I, Miss Johnson, I, Mr. Pler, I. Motion passes 70. Action item 12.2, approval of changes to the school day structure at the junior high level. Can I have a motion, please? Make a motion to approve the proposed changes to the school day structure at the junior high level for the 202526 school year. Second, Miss Venmouth. I, Mr. Gatewood, I Miss Johnson. I, Mr.
So, um, something Dr. Boseman and I discussed a lot on Friday, just thankful we're getting anything when other agencies are getting flatlined or cut. So, um, let's look at our first quarter, which uh, again was a a great first quarter for BCSC. Um, revenues for the education fund are up slightly, and that's due to our increase in ADM count from the fall. So, that those numbers affected our revenues for the first quarter. The operations fund is down slightly, but that all can be attributed to um no interest income for the first quarter of this year. Uh well, lower interest income for the first quarter this year. Instead of investing almost all of our money with Trust Indiana, um we have put some of our a lot of our money into securities and it's an 11-month security that we will get an interest payment in uh June.
Cerone. Hi, Miss Simon. Hi, Dr. Mario. Hi, Mr. Blober. I motion passes 70. Action item 12.3, approval of Brocall RTU installation. Can I have a motion, please? Make a motion to award the Brokaw RTU installation project to Oakbrook Mechanical, Inc. in the amount of $148,800. Second, Mr. Poger. I, Mr. Gatewood, I. Miss Venmouth. I, Mr. Cerrone. I Miss Simon I, Dr. Maria, I, Miss Johnson, I. Motion passes 70. Action item 12.4, approval of asphalt and concrete pavement projects. Can I have a motion, please? Make a motion to award the asphalt and concrete project contract to Abby Construction Company, Inc. for a total cost of 3,00 I'm sorry 3,330. Yeah, right. 3 3,330 two concrete 3,337,335 if they can get a second second at 3,3 [Laughter] for the record. Dr. Maria I Miss Johnson I Mr. Pler I Mr. Cerone hi Mr. Gatewood. Hi, Miss Venmouth.
And so our second quarter we will catch up with that incre interest income amount as well as we will have our our first property tax payments at that time. And then operations referendum fund there is no revenue at this time because that is purely property tax revenue based. So, next up, uh, education fund expenditures. Uh, salaries are up at about 6% and a large part of that is the increase that, uh, we had for salaries, the raises we were given, plus um, we had some new positions added when the ESSER funds, those positions were rolled into the education fund. um benefits were up a little bit higher than the salaries, but that's uh turf went up another half percent this year compared to the past years the state has encouraged us to do that. And then other expenses are up uh looks kind of significant.
I will abstain because I have a family member that works for Abby. Okay. Miss Simon, I So, six approved, one abstension. Um, action item 12.5, approval of junior high school novel selection. Can I have a motion, please? Make a motion to approve the junior high school core novel proposals for 202526. Second. Before we vote, I just want to say one thing. Um Dr. Paul, if we could look into the eighth grade, um there is a selection for one of the um one of the uh parts of the semester where Neil Gman's um one of his Coraline I think is the text that is being read. with the recent accusations that have come out against him, can you and your team just look into that and make sure that um that is appropriate moving forward? I missed what you said. If you look on the stuff that you presented to us for the junior high when it goes through the various um chapters of what's going to be taught, there's text of his that is used and there's been a lot of um very disturbing allegations that have come out against him that I think would be um worth our while just to look into.
Um it's 35% but that's timing of payments on some of our annual um fees that we have. We paid some in March this year that normally has been paid in April in the past. And then as we budgeted, our transfers to the operations fund are down this this year compared to years past in the operations fund. Again, salaries up due to increase in salary payments that we were able to offer as part of the budget. Benefits that are are about the same. other expenses. Again, similar to the education fund, it's timing of when we made some payments on annual annual fees. In both the education fund and operations fund, the first quarter, we are well under budgeted amounts for the year. So, we're on track there as well. The operating referendum fund expenditures, um, this is kind of exciting. on the teacher salaries, it's up 6% and a big part of that is because we've got about 15 more teachers that were uh are getting referendum payments there.
Thank you, Miss Venmouth. Hi, Dr. Mario. I Mr. Cerone. I Miss Simultton I Mr. Gatewood I Miss Johnson I Mr. Clover I motion passes 70. Action item 12.6 approval of high school African-American studies textbook selection. Can I have a motion please? Make a motion to approve the high school African-American studies textbook selection. Second. Mr. Seron I. Mr. Gatewood I. Miss Johnson. I Mr. Clober I Miss Venmouth I Dr. Maria I Miss Simon I Motion passes 70. Action item 12.7 seven approval of renewal of state waiver. Can I have a motion please? Make a motion to approve the resolution authorizing the submission of a state waiver application to exempt a student participating in showqu choir from participating in physical education. Second. Mr. Gatewood. Hi, Dr. Mario. Hi, Miss Johnson. Hi, Mr. Cerone. Hi, Miss Simon. I Mr. Pler, I. Miss Venmouth, I. Motion passes 70. Action item 12.8.
Um, one of the big goals of the referendum was attraction or maintaining our teacher staff longer periods of time and we're seeing that result happen which is a great thing. Staff salaries are up at about the uh raise amount, benefits up as well. um safety and security uh is up significant but again that was a timing of a payment uh our payment to the um county. We paid the first quarter this year. Last year we paid it in the second quarter. And then STEM labs is also up as well. And again all of these uh lines are well within the budget expected for the year. Fund cash balances remain very strong. Education fund is down slightly. Again, that was part of our budget goal was we're reducing that uh level a little bit. Operations fund is up about uh $300,000. That will go up again significantly when we get that uh interest payment.