So, does that just mean that we're going to say that it's like always restricted other than these three times. Then I think it would be open to your schools code of conduct. Okay. Whatever you write into Monte Vista's student code of conduct about like before and after school use. Okay. So is that what we're putting in here? So I'm so sorry. We have families waiting and some other things happening. So I just didn't hear the last part. So we're deleting this sentence and then we're we're including a sentence that says something about like policy can be determined by sites additional policies or were we just taking that out? I think it already says that cuz it says that they will use their phone in conformity with the student code of conduct which is that. But the student code of conduct they're discussing is the policy code of conduct right here, not like our individual one.
>> Yeah. I just I just I'm concerned that you know we already have a high central admin and regional costs already and if we're going to itemize this are we going to itemize other things and see where we can cost save on those other spots too? >> Yeah. So, one thing I would like to mention is the so um and I'm going to say this broadly for all three districts and then I'll zero in on Pelum. For central office staff, we are 54% region, 42% Amherst, and then 4% Pelum. And that split ratio came from many years ago um based on enrollment at each of the districts to determine how much uh percentage of someone's salary should be charged. that was um what was used probably over 20 plus years ago. Um so if we were to look at the current enrollment now for the same configuration that we haven't changed um Pelum's percentage which would actually be around 6%.
That's 1.4 million. Okay? Mandated health insurance costs. That's what we've negotiated with our employees. They go up 8.6% more than three times the the the 2.5%. $775,000. The retirement assessment goes up 8%. $350,000. The Keith Tech assessment goes up almost $400,000. It It went up a lot this year. Folks, these aren't choices. These are things we have to pay. And that adds up to the 2 and 1/2% increase. That's before we've added a fire or talked about funding a firefighter or a teacher or anything like that. We have just eaten up with things that we have no choice over, our 2 and 1/2% increase. Again, folks, it's math. It's just math. $1.4 million. Again, that increase. You take out all of our insurance, which is which is, you know, things like property insurance, the increase in that, $800,000. You subtract, again, employee retirement, the pension assessment, that's $352,000.
Next is investing in the stock market. Now, a lot of us have probably heard of investing in the stock market, but not not all of us really know exactly what it is. Now, when you invest in the stock market, you're buying small pieces of companies called shares, and you're trying to make money off of the appreciation of those shares or dividend payouts from those shares, which I'll talk about more later in this presentation. And some pros of this for high schoolers like us who might not have a lot of money is that you can start with as little or as much money as you want, and it's much more accessible. Now, for the purpose of this presentation, I'm going to uh focus solely on the stock market because it's much more accessible for high schoolers like us who might not have enough money to invest in real estate.
Uh, right now, uh, on Monday, our administrators, as well as our school counselors, were trained, um, from the Renaissance company for Edge Climber training. I also want to reiterate something that Mr. Reinforce said, being in the buildings during Read Across America, reading to all different ages was definitely the highlight of the month. You know, besides the fact that it's Women's History Month and there were a lot of activities and culminating projects surrounding, uh, Women's History Month. School 5 hosted their International Night and they did a fantastic job. So, in the future, I promise you, Board, we will get you invitations to some of these wonderful events that you asked for. Um, and I want to, you know, commend, uh, the high school had a lot of testing this month. So, I want to commend Mr. Genucci and his team, um, you know, Mrs. Brennan, uh, for really, you know, working so hard to get WIDA up and going this month.
It's the one that we did like 50 2 505. I don't even know which one it is. Um so that would mean that we would um So this this sentence alone doesn't say that schools can make it for their own like they can't make their own wireless policy. This just means that like they're required to use it like following whatever's in that previous policy which is like um you won't damage property, you won't like hurt others. So I think uh if we're going to do that and we are saying that every school could have their own policy, we would need to add some verbage cuz that that's not exactly what this particular sentence is saying. And by the way, I'm totally down with this. That's fine. I just feel like we got to like clarify more of what you have there. Yeah. What if we say Let's see.
So it but we haven't changed that we've kept it the historical 54 42 4%. So I guess I I I don't know the answer of would is 4% you know should it be less than 4%. Based on enrollment the answer would be no. Um if there was another mechanism for determining that then uh we would have to revisit between all three districts. I guess my question is like who is on that 4% and then the yeah I'm concerned that there's a growing cost of Ammerst that we're a small school. So even if we're 8% it's still like the costs grow for Ammerst and we're absorbing that growth even though it's only like let's say 15 to 30 kids that come into our school. I I I just want to make that clear. I guess >> um I'm not sure if you wanted a response to that or if that was just a comment, but yes, I I do hear that.
And then Keith Tech, again, $400,000. It eats all of that up. We do see a little bit of relief with our debt service. That comes goes down $336,000. But again, when you net all of that out, it pretty much takes up all of that 2 and 1/2% increase. Again, before we talk about anything else, increase in subscription costs. Everybody knows what that looks like. Increase in fuel costs. Everybody knows what that looks like. We face it, too. The biggest irony in government is that when we need the money, you need the money, too. I understand that. We understand that. We understand this is a difficult conversation. But again, what we want to show you is that we have been good stewards of your of your money and that, again, this is a math problem. And so, [snorts] I'm going to leave it at that and and I will leave plenty of time for for questions.
Now, how can you invest in the stock market? Well, first of all, before you do any investing at all, you always want to research the companies that you're thinking about putting your money into because while you can definitely make money off of the stock market, you can also lose it just as easily. Now, this includes things like looking at the brand of the company. Now, what does the company do? What is their mission? What is their goals? And after you've done that, you can look at certain metrics of the company. Now, there are many different metrics, and some people spend their entire careers learning about this and learning how to apply it to stocks. But essentially, these can tell you about a company's valuation, growth, and more. And you can also look at how the company's spending their money. If they're spending more than they did this year than they did last year, if they're spending too much, if they have if they have debt, how much they spent last year, etc.
So, WIDA testing for our, um, ML students is almost over. It's coming to an end. And I just wanted to give a shout out once again for Wellness Week to all of the schools um, for doing, you know, such a creative job this year. And a huge shout out to the PE teachers. That's it. Right. Do we have any committee reports that anyone would like to share? Uh, just on buildings and grounds, everybody sees the improvement that went through the district. I know, uh, Lou emphasized on budget, but there's not many, many school districts here in the state of New Jersey that can do all the capital improvements that we've done throughout the years. And and on a bottom line, that was a, a plus for the district, a plus for the taxpayers. And I got to commend the Lou's, uh, you know, good budgeting and doing that where we didn't have to go out on referendums and, hurt the tax levy.
Can we just add with student code of conduct and school site uh I don't know. Student handbooks? Well, if we're just talking about before or after school, like the use um and transportation, I feel like you could say something as like um and like Jay or Katie help me out cuz I never remember how the sentences go, but it's something like >> Yeah. the superintendent provides uh like well, allows their designee administration or their designee or something to um develop uh before after school policies in accordance to governing board student code of conduct and um site needs or something. Do you know? Yeah, I I think I think we could make this even a little more beneficial here because um what if you did something like students are required to use their wireless communication devices in conformity with the student code of conduct and as directed by school staff.
Um but it what has been happening is that Amherst was essentially covering the cost for Pelum's registration and being that uh since the superintendent has been in place and I've stepped into this role we're really trying to ensure that subsidation between the districts doesn't happen and our financials are clear for what is each district should be and is responsible for. Um so be if we're separating out um Pelum not being with Amherst for the registration process um then Pelum should you know I mean it should have been done a long time ago but Pelum should be paying for their clerical to do their registration to do their school choice um for their implementation of their curriculum and PD thing things of all of those sorts that we've been working Okay. Um, can I also talk about the report itself? >> Um, I think so. It's part of the presentation.
>> Michael, can you show the slide with the $100 bill with the money coming out of it? >> It's not on this one, the one I was able to pull pull up right now. Okay. So, um and what we will have, I should point out, we will have all of these up, I believe, on our um on our uh on our website. Um yes, we will have we will have all the slides. We'll have um a link to the recording of the meeting. And then we will also we'll talk about it later, but we will have Q&A. Um all the all the questions, all the answers um that have been submitted, we'll we'll post up on our website, so it's a resource for everybody. But and what Brandy is talking about, just for everybody's um information, is we actually took a $100 bill and broke it out.
After you've researched your companies and chosen which ones you want to buy, you choose how much of that company you want to buy. Now, you can either choose how many shares of this company that you want, or a new thing that's come up in the last few years is that you can choose how much money worth of a stock that you want to purchase. So, each stock has a share price. Let's say it's $100, for example. You if you bought four shares, that would be $400. But let's say you don't have enough money for four shares, but you still want to buy more than three shares. Well, you can buy three and a half shares if you want. Next is you execute the trade, which you can personally do by logging into your own personal stock account and simply clicking a button or executing a command to buy the stock.
So, uh, you know, that's all good stuff. And, uh, our buildings are in good shape. You know, our brick and mortar, you know, tight, everything's good. So, I know the next few years the budget's going to be challenging, but, uh, you know, our buildings are in good physical shape. So, that's important. Uh, still closing out a few projects with the UniVents over at the, school here. And, uh, we've got, uh, some money built into the budget, as everybody knows, to, uh, uh, do a lot of, uh, masonry repairs and concrete work around the high school. Let's do those, uh, famous steps that take forever to go up, especially for a guy like me that's older. But, uh, you know, they need some TLC. So, uh, that application went to the, you know, Department of Education. I think it's back and, uh, we're going to go out to bid and see if we could, uh, do it within our budget.
Okay. So, that what that would do is it would give you the ability. So, if you've got that kid who needs to you know, use their phone to coordinate with mom then someone at pick up or drop off can say, "Yes, you have you know, you have permission from me as a staff member to use your phone to do that." But, it doesn't give kids blanket permission to just pull their phone out and use it in any way they want. And even if they do pull their phone out to use it in any way they want, they're also held um they're also held to the student code of conduct. So, if they use it in some way to disrupt the learning environment, like by you know, trying to film somebody who doesn't want to be filmed or something, then then you have that protection as well.
>> Okay. Yeah. Um I guess I'm uh as I was reading the report the things the terms like pressures, supports and needs are not explained in a way that uh families and community community members need to make informed decisions. For example, like highquality support and services, but it doesn't say what those supports actually are or what they cost. And if we're going to be asked to invest in new services, we need to know specific positions, interventions, and price tags and how they differ from what Pelum already provides. And then um Pelum is praised for strong academic program, but it doesn't include any academic data. Um no comparisons, no growth metrics, and no plan for improving instruction in FY27. If Pelum is strong academically, and if improvement is needed, the data and plan should show it. And I guess we went over the $6,000. Um I guess the other thing is framing of school choice is incomplete.
This is what you spend on debt service. This is what you spend on schools. This is what you spend on police and fire, right? And I think a good, you know, if you think about spending and what we spend, the biggest thing we spend our money on are our employees. And I So, on the municipal end of things, just uh to help you understand kind of what we're spending our money on. In 2007, we had 118.7 FTEs. That means full-time equivalent employees. So, we had one employee per 124 residents. We actually ended up laying off a little uh over seven FTEs during that year. And then in 2025, you know, that many years later, the town has grown by 4,000 people and we we 148.7 FTEs. Actually, that's one employee per 127 residents. We haven't really grown much at all, and I should say the growth in those employees, a lot of those are not on taxpayer funds.
Now, how do you make money off of the stock market? Well, every stock has a share price as I said before, and you can make money off of this share price appreciate appreciating over time. Essentially, when more people are buying the stock than selling it, this creates demand for the stock and the stock price increases. Conversely, when more people are selling the stock than buying, the demand goes down and the share price is going to decrease. However, one common misconception that people have about this is that when your stocks are worth less or more than they were when you bought them, you've actually gained or lost money. Now, while it is true that the asset you have is worth a different amount than it was when you bought it, you never truly make or lose money until you sell the stock. So, while people tend to panic when their stocks are down, one thing that you have to remember is that you never lose money until you sell the stock.
So, that's pretty much it with buildings and grounds. Anything else, Lou, I may have missed? No, Joe, just to piggyback on that, April 14th is the open bid. Keep everyone posted. Okay. Any other committee reports? No. Okay. Uh, so, we will take a look at a couple specific items, um, in the agenda. If you could turn to page three. Page three, um, down at the very bottom, there's a resolution to recommend, uh, and accept the retirement of Lori Levine, uh, school counselor at school number three. I had the pleasure of working with, with Lori when I was, uh, high school teacher, high school supervisor. Um, so, a couple weeks ago when she called me for, um, a meeting, I kind of had a feeling that, um, you know, the talk was coming. So, we had a great conversation, um, and I truly wish her well on, on the next chapter.