button. >> Whatever. row back. That's okay. I like it. fantastic four towns meeting. Um >> sorry. >> Um so we will call whatever boards and committees to order and then we'll get going. So I'll call the regional school committee to order at 9:04. Um, >> financial call to order at 9:04. >> Anybody else? Callum. >> Nope. Ever. Everest town council called the order at 94. >> Anybody? >> Where you go? There you go. >> Shoot. and uh she's very fin. >> Great. Okay. Excellent. Thank you all very much for coming. Um this is the same presentation of the um budget for F27 that we had at our Tuesday meeting. Now we will share it with you. >> Good morning everybody. I'm Tanya McIntyre and I would like to on behalf of Dr. Z welcome you all. Uh Dr. Z is still coming on medical leave and so she's not with us today and unfortunately for you all you get me but I'm hoping that's okay.
So, I just wanted to make that very clear to everyone here. But, good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming by or tuning in or whatever it is for another extremely important day here in the city of champions. So, I'm going to take a few minutes to go over a few things with regards to process and whatnot and then um I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Labou here who's done an incredible job in his first budget here. So, um very difficult budget cycle as you could imagine. I'm sure you're all um anxious and not in a good way to hear what's happening here. But, I'm going to let you know. But, first I just wanted to talk about Excuse me. What today actually is um and some of the other key points. So, this this vote today from the board is a preliminary budget vote.
Uh I am the executive director of student academic success, director of curriculum instruction and assessment. Uh just for background I'm from South Carolina. I moved here last year. Um, I taught for 25 years, high school mathematics, and um, then I got in a central office. This is now my 32nd year in education and I have two grandbabies. Has nothing to do with anything except they're three months old. And I'm telling you, I have two grandbabies. Their names are Leo and Heisen. So, um, welcome. And Shannon will be joining us virtually. Actually, I have to go to the other side so I won't lose my wonderful, uh, teammate there. Shannon, you want to say good morning? >> Yes. Good morning and um I am not feeling well and I didn't want somebody else to get sick but I needed to be present. So thank you for allowing me to do this remotely.
It's also called technical review. It's a technical review of the budget. This is not the final budget. So, a yes vote today from a board member does not mean that it is the final vote on the budget. What happens and it's not nothing new. It's been around This is my 30th year doing a budget, believe it or not, which I was looking at the other day and this probably is the toughest cycle um that I've ever gone through in my career. So, what happens today is we put the preliminary numbers together so that we can balance the budget to technically a zero effect. Not zero increase or anything like that, but just to get to so the left side matches the right side, basically. Um and we we do all this with aid numbers, etc., etc. And we present a balanced budget to the board.
Um and Tanya is going to walk through the first couple slides and then hand it over to me and we'll um walk through the presentation together. >> Thank you Shannon. Hope you're feeling better. And we also have uh several team members here as well. Um I won't call their names because they are shaking their head. No. So there we are. Um so good morning to you all. I'm not sure if you saw the uh regional budget hearing saying that right. Uh well we where we went through the presentation. So I'm just going to do some highlights for you. Uh Dr. Z always likes to ground us in the students that we serve. Students are the most important part of our uh work here. So for the region, can you see I'm southern and I apologize in advance for my my isms. Um so we serve about 1,183 students.
So, every year every school has to balance a budget. It's nothing spectacular, believe it or not. Um but, they have to balance a budget. So, today um with the board's blessing, that we will present to them a balanced budget. What that does then is this allows Mr. Labou and myself to go back after this meeting over the next several days and put some additional numbers into a formula and a software system that the state runs and we come up with things called fatal errors. I know it sounds odd, but that's what it's been called for 100 years. And we fix some of those. Has nothing to do with any of the changes, but it's just, you know, we housekeeping stuff and then we submit it to the county superintendent who then will put our, believe it or not, put our budget on top because we are one of the only April election.
Those students are um a wide range of needs have a lot um of strengths and interest and learning profiles. We have about 25% of our students are special education students. And it's important to know that our special education students are not monolithic. So what that means for us is our neurodeiverse students come with different needs. So one student might need more um alternative uh instruction, one might need differentiation, one might need something different. So, as you think about that number, I need you to think about the vast majority of students that are in special education have something different going on, which is why they have individual education plans. So, it's not, oh, let's just do this one thing. Um, it's important to also know we have a growing multilingual population, and that's just not Spanish. We have, I think, 44, 46 different languages across um our district.
So we our timeline is a little quicker. We should get that approval back somewhere around the 18th or the 19th, which is next Wednesday, Thursday. We'll hopefully get the stamp that everything's okay. Maybe they'll talk to us a little about about a few submissions that we made with regard to tax levy, etc. And then at that point this board, these committees, and myself, Mr. Labou, um, we really start, and I keep calling it scrubbing. You scrub the lines. You do everything you possibly can to make sure that we are being the potential effect of students, programs, teachers, staff members, and of course the tax impact. So all that is still to come. Okay? So today, whatever you feel, whatever you hear, really it's important to get this to the county so we can start making some of those changes. Nothing may change from today. I've never seen that happen in my career.
And it's important to know that their needs are have to be addressed as well. Um not only just like special education, it's not only because we're good people, but it's legal. We have to legally meet their needs. Um as we go down, we have 12% of lowincome students and uh we have 3% of our population that's dual identified. So they could be EL students and special education students which also brings a host of things that need to happen for them to make sure that they have access and opportunity and that is the thing as educators we have to ensure that students have access and opportunity to grade level instruction. Thank you Shannon. Um so as we go you're taking a look quickly at each school. So three comprises of the middle and high school. So even as we bring strengths to our uh region, there are very big challenges that we have around academics.
Usually usually a board comes in and, you know, get some feedback here and there, looks at some things and says, all right, maybe we could change this, maybe we can do that, etc. Okay? All right. I will also say this. I say this a lot. I mean, last year was my first year, so I was kind of sitting back and, you know, watching a lot of it. This year is technically I guess my first true budget year. Um, it's not easy being up here on the dais. I think people think it is. Uh if you've sat up here, if you know somebody who has, they'll tell you sitting out there is a lot easier than sitting up here even as um chief administrators in a district. Nobody wants to affect livelihoods. Nobody wants to affect programs. That's not how it is. And we are absolutely not here to blame any past administrators, any past board members, any past boards of education.
And as you look at the um the the disparity, the disparity happens in um ELA and math as you see because those are our MCCAST tested um sections. And what we're looking at is there is a gap between um our high need students both in math and English. And it's not because teachers aren't working hard. It's not because students aren't working hard. It's just there is over the past decade, as you look at the region's scores. There's been this this divide that's happening. We have to ensure that our kids are ready for the regional schools. So, they have to be ready for middle school and high school. But also, we have to differentiate our instruction in a way that's going to take more collaboration, more work, um, stronger curriculum, those kinds of things to ensure that we can close the gap because it's not just meeting the kids where they are, it's making sure they get to where they need to be because if we only meet them where they are, they're going to get further and further behind.
Things were done for a reason at those times. I can't go back 7 years, 5 years and say, "Oh, they shouldn't have had a 0%." I don't know what was happening at the time in the city. You don't remember maybe what was happening at the time in the city. So, so we need to concentrate on now. However, some of the decisions in the past obviously affect moving forward. And that's not just decisions of the city, decisions of the state legislatures, cuts, etc. Underfunded programs in New Jersey in schools, you cannot have an unfunded program. So, if the governor gives us a dollar to fund a program, it's underfunded. It's not unfunded, right? So, we have a bunch of those, right? HIV is one of those. Um there's a lot of underfunded programs. So, a lot of that comes into play here. Okay? However, um there are a few things that got us to this budget that the board is seeing preliminarily this morning.
Um, thank you. As we look at the high school, that that trend continues. And I'm the new person here. You all probably have seen this data over the couple of years, but that's that thing still happens where our kids are still having this divide between our high need students and our general populations. And our job is to figure out ways to close the gap. And most times that's through strengthening tier one instruction. So, as you look at what we're doing, we're trying to align things so that there is a stronger coherence throughout our tier one instruction for all students. Um, a bright spot, Summit Academy. Shannon, will you go a little bigger? You know, on a little Thank you. Um, so Summit Academy is one of the bright spots. It's a program that we have designed for students with specific needs. Um, it is a place where they can go and get credit recovery.
Number one, I would be remiss if we didn't talk about health care. Everybody's talking about health care. I don't think anybody realizes uh the impact um in in employee pockets. That's separate. That's going up again. Okay? Again. Also, the impact is on the the board on the uh the local share of the levy. The taxpayers have to uh furnish that um that uh furnish that burden as well. Um we talked about this when I got here last year. We had we had the ability to lock in the 16 months and have a savings. Board decided not to not to do that moving forward. And and again, we're here now with exactly what I talked about a year and a half ago, even worse, even worse than what I predicted. Some of the 0% increases in the past, the reason why those occurred, I I don't know.
They can make sure that they're getting their needs met. These are higher needs than just our general um SE population. And so these students work specifically in summit to continue a graduation plan and be on the road to success for postsecary. All right. Now this is no surprise to any of you but our enrollment is declining. Over the past 10 years our enrollment has dropped 13%. Now it's important to note that even as the enrollment declined our needs have increased. we have more as these students identified and their needs are like I said earlier are high and it's different. So there is going to be a point where we start taking a look at how does enrollment affect staffing but then also how does the higher needs affect staffing. So um over the past 10 years as the enrollment has declined in the region the staffing models stayed the same.
Obviously for good reasons. You had a zero, a 9.something and then a zero. I mean, you know, the city year and the school year is different, so technically that 9.6% which was probably necessary to run and fund programs, really is only a 4.8%. It's half the year. Okay, so you have to think about it that way. When you get your tax bill, you'll see it, you know, you'll see it's it's um it's different unfortunately how they do it in New Jersey. Excuse [clears throat] me. Um but that affected us as well. No one's fault, it just it's a compounding effect. Uh negotiated contracts, we could sit here and talk about everyone's negotiated contract and the increments and all those things, but those bargaining units negotiated in good faith. They negotiated in good faith. We knew four years ago or five years ago where these numbers would be.
So in a budget crisis in a budget um crunch what happens is not only do you all look at what you can do from your lens as a school district we look to see is there a point that we can realign what's happening. Can we realign our staffing to really meet the needs of those students that we have now versus what we've always done? And that's what we're taking a look at. It's important to um make sure we pay attention anytime there's a talk of cuts or um transition or any kind of deficit. It is a hard thing because those are our colleagues, those are the teachers, those are the people that are working really hard. And so what we try to do is to minimize um the pain point there, but still make sure that we're aligned to what's our current needs are and a sustainable model for the future.
So, knowing that four years ago and now we're at year four, we have to budget for those. So, all of these things are real numbers. They're real numbers and and unfortunately um or fortunately, we knew this coming, right? It's called projecting. It's called budget projecting. So, I knew when I first got the job here that in a few years we would have to budget 4 and 1/2% this year for increases. That's that's what the way it goes. And the only way you can fund that is usually through a tax levy. It's by increasing the tax levy every year because you don't know what kind of state funding you're getting. We got very lucky here the last two years. We got a 6% increase two years in a row now. Two years in a row, but I I'm going to say that at some point that's going to stop as well.
So, uh, Shannon, do I turn over to you now or? >> Um, I take over at the next page. This is just a recap. >> Yeah, I but I want to if you go down, Shannon to the what's working. >> I want you to hold on to this. So, in my classroom, I used to tell students, I said, "There's a lot that's happening, but there are things that I need you to hold on to. There are great things happening in the region. We have strong educators. We have amazing students. I need you to know that just because we're trying to realign what we need to do fiscally just to be responsible and sustainable does not mean there aren't great things happening." So, as you look through and you go through your day, because I know this is about the four towns, I want you to remember that we have students and families that are relying on us to ensure that what we do for them helps them get to the postsecary life they're trying to achieve.
So, we just don't know when it is. Um So, again, that's these are not surprises. Um Again, to be very, very clear, to run this district the exact same way we ran it last year, the tax impact for this community, and the board was aware of this, the board is aware of this, they were aware of it last year, too, but this year the tax impact would be 20% 20% on average assessed home. That's close to $1,000. That's to run it the same exact way. That's the reality. And the breakdown of the actual general budget is very, very simple. It's a simple computational equation. 80% is salary, benefits, etc. 10% 10% goes right to the charter schools, tuitions, etc. 10% and the other 10% of the full benefit of the full budget is everything else. So, all of your programs, all those things that we run for our kids, it's really only 10% of the budget.