So that's one of the reasons why we are favorable. We made some adjustments to benefits to be more in line with the actual expenses. Um again our professional services where um we have those specific items that um we are outsourcing because sometimes we can't get staff here to fulfill the positions. Um our other purchase services uh include pupil transportation. It also includes tuition. Uh we have our main bus contract for uh transportation has been encumbered but again the perdm items uh are not. So as those come in to be paid we encumber them at that time in order to um pay them with a purchase order. And we do have some vendors uh we have timing issues getting um invoices. Um, as an example, we can go online for um electric and gas and we can pull up our own invoices. We do not have to wait for them to come here um to sites and facilities or directly into um the main campus central office.
And whereas on Wednesday, March 4th, 2026, Amber Vargas was formally recognized for these achievements at the 2026 Bergen County Unsung Hero Award Ceremony held at Henry P. Becton Regional High School. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Cliffside Park Board of Education officially recognizes Amber Vargas as an unsung hero of Bergen County and the Cliffside Park School District. And be it further resolved that this resolution is presented to Amber Vargas as a sincere token of the Cliffside Park Board of Education's congratulations and best wishes for continued success. Mr. Genucci, if you would Sure. Um, unfortunately, Amber is present at the time. I will receive the certificate on her behalf. Thank you very, very much. I wanted to thank Dr. Pentangelo for and the Bergen County School Board Association for chairing me and hosting the event. Uh, it was very special. They gave a very special shout out to Cliffside Park, so thank you for that.
So, thank you so very, very much. It is Earth Day. So, we you all have a plan of what you're going to do for campus cleanup and projects and we will be very ready for our A+ celebration on Friday morning at 9:00, um, in the gym. So, thank you and I will turn it over to Mr. Nathan. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Great to see you. Um, just a few reminders before we go do our service day on the campus. Um, it is that time of year that it's warm enough for snakes to be out. So, make sure that your adults check your areas prior to sending the kiddos into that just to make sure. Um, Barry has already done a sweep, but they are hard to find. So, please sweep. Make sure kiddos pay attention. If you see a snake, what should you do?
Uh mainly meeting uh other board members from around the country. And um hearing about other people's problems really puts your own into perspective. So I'm very grateful to be a board member on this district and just dealing with what we have to deal with rather than what's going on around the country. Uh I did uh attend a session put on by the website Ballotpedia that collects all sorts of political survey information and tracks candidates, but they did a really good school board member uh survey. And I was able to They recommended signing up for their newsletter, uh the Hall Pass, which tracks school board elections and school board issues all over the country. And it was a great opportunity to listen to not only the presenter, but the uh other board members who ranged in ex- experience of like 2 years like me to 40 years.
I just I couldn't understand the gravity of it until I was in it. So, I'm leaving here knowing that I have long-lasting connections with students and staff and I thank you for that. Um as any parent with 5,100 children, I hope to hand them over and to good hands and I am very confident in Officer David Sod. Um having him the last couple of days it's been very fun to see how excited he is. He's literally lit up meeting staff and students. I know he'll continue to keep our students safe and he's going to have fun doing it. I'm very excited for him and this opportunity. So, I am leaving very sad but uh I'm leaving with a full heart, countless memories, and a deep uh respect for what this district does for all of its staff and students every day and I thank you very much for the opportunity and uh making me feel a part of the BPS 101 family.
>> Oh. And they were able to tour around and kind of walk through the construction site and they kind of got an explanation of how it works. So, that was really great that they did that for the students. Okay, great. Bill, do you know are we on target to for completion? >> Yeah, so far everything looks good. I talked to Jason a little bit the this afternoon when I was at the high school. Uh-huh. But if you look at the pictures, I mean, I think we're doing very well at that point. You could probably ask Keith. I we're on target for the most part. They're going good on the outside of the middle school. I asked Mr. Okrzynski at the last meeting, has there been any, you know, Again, they're doing it during school hours. Has there been any interruption? And I asked Mr. Nothing.
We have not applied for it because we are a performance accredited school, and so what that allows us to do is instead of reporting our number of school days that we attend, we get to report in minutes. And because we run one transportation route, um we do often exceed our minutes. Sometimes schools that they might have just elementary routes, just middle school high school routes, they run a little closer on the minimum minute requirement, but we always have banked minutes, so then we can use those to have our teacher work days, or sometimes we'll have a snow day and we choose not to make it up. We choose to use some of our banked minutes that we have. There's been some talk questioning whether the state is going to do that again this year, and so one way that schools who aren't performance accredited, they apply for permission from the state under HB 1003, and they ask that they can use minutes instead of days.
And then there's one picture with the large group in front of the Capitol building. So again, just wanted to show you guys a couple pictures that kids felt that they wanted to share with their with their classmates when they returned. So um thank you again very much. Mr. Ty is going to tell you real quick just how he incorporates this in his class. >> Okay. Um, you know, I've been lucky enough to be able to travel and do some different things and and um give the kids the opportunity to do this. It's something you know, amazing. You know, I look back uh I remember studying in a book a Van Go picture and you know, we'd looked at it several times and then I got lucky enough to go to the New Chicago Museum of Art and got to get up really close to the picture and I remember getting so close I could see in the eye of Van Go and it had a hundred different colors in that picture.
Instead of recording my own voice, I used Canva create to create an AI voice recording, which I then had to enter into my code on Scratch. At this time, would two of the board members like to come over and test out our projects? >> [laughter] >> There, go test it out. Me, too. Me, too. Go test it. >> [laughter] >> Tony and Tony, I like that. All right, so Don't embarrass me, okay? Okay. >> [laughter] >> Hands up, take that, too. Yep, go ahead. Oh, shock. I got to get shocked. >> [laughter] >> What if you're wrong? Say what? >> [laughter] >> Oh, he used a computer voice. Weather [clears throat] blade. >> [laughter] [laughter] >> Like like or not. Of course I would. It's the touch screen. >> [laughter] >> Thank >> [laughter] >> Thank you so much. You can see how fun the interaction part the interactive part is, and they were able to present these to second grade students and have them come and interact with each one of their projects.
So, as our new accounts payable person gets up to speed, maybe he'll be able to go online and print the invoices before we even get them for us to start getting them into the system. our other supplies. We have another supply line which because of the new uh building, DHS West, the school lunch program does not um pay for certain items for the new building. So, the general fund has picked up those items and these were non-budgeted items. And we have dues and fees staff development which includes the instructional improvements which I mentioned before which are one-time expenses for the schools that we have purchased. So under salaries um we have open unfilled positions. We also have the ARPA salaries that I mentioned that are budgeted here in the general fund but the expenses are in the grant. So these are reasons why we are favorable this year in these two categories in this category of all the um salaries once added together it was 7 million in total.
Uh, Ms. Prais is here in attendance. Ms. Prais nominated, uh, Amber and, uh, presented the award to her. So, I would like to call Ms. Prais up so she can just read what she read at the, uh, at the event. Thank you, Mr. Genucci. Um, so, this is what I read, uh, for Amber at the award ceremony officially. Um, the Cliffside Park High School Unsung Hero Award is proudly presented to Amber Vargas, a student whose impact is felt not through loud recognition, but through quiet dedication and compassion. With a very strong academic record and an even stronger heart, Amber consistently puts others first. She's been a dedicated member of Wonder Girls and that holds very dear to my heart, so I'm very proud of that. Throughout all four years of her high school career, embracing its mission of wellness, leadership, and service. And she is also a founder and the president of our brand new animal advocacy club this year.
Move away and go tell an adult, okay? All right? And at this point, we'd ask Sue Woodward to come up and she's going to say a couple words on the final dedication of our amazing greenhouse. Thank you all. I am his granddaughter. And my grandfather started volunteering with the Master Gardeners in Green Valley years ago. Then he started volunteering up here at the school. And in the mid-90s, he and uh Bill were instrumental in getting this greenhouse built, along with all of the organizations and volunteers you see listed at the other end of the greenhouse. Uh my family and I would like to thank everyone who participated in money to getting this project back up and running 30 years later. I'd like to think my grandfather's looking down. He's very happy that we're honoring him this way. I want to give a special shout-out to my husband, Ken Woodward, who put in tireless hours on this project.
So a lot of great minds at the conference. And lastly, and probably most important, I got to see our President Corrio uh present at a session on SOFG with Dr. Crable. Um and then lastly well, that's all I have on NSBA, but I could go on. Uh let's not forget the Creighton Community Council meeting this Thursday, 6:00 at Excelencia. Thank you so much for that, Mr. Jones. Ms. Gibson-McLean? I did not go to San Antonio and I don't know what we had a advisory committee that got canceled, so I feel like I haven't done much since the last board meeting. My apologies, everyone. I don't know. >> [laughter] >> That's What was that? Oh, yes. For part of the See, things blend into my professional day cuz I left the jail, went to that, and then went back. So, Not [laughter] because you >> No, exactly.
Thank you. Photo time. Not done yet. We're taking one more. All right, thanks. Dr. Smith, if you would remain at the podium, uh uh if you would, could you do us the honor of introducing our incoming SRO? Yes. So, David Saad, Officer Saad, is a Batavia police officer. So, some people don't know that our school resource officer is a Batavia police officer. So, Officer Saad's been with the Batavia Police Department for 8 years, and we are excited to welcome him next fall to the high school as Officer Gooch has said. He He has been at the high school this week and will continue to be there until next week, just learning the ropes from Jamie, obviously. Uh big shoes to fill, but I I have full confidence that he'll be able to do so. So, welcome. Thank you. Yeah, it's been great to have you.
>> Wow. >> So, it's it's going well like they like they said it would. Are they working evening hours? Do you know that? >> Okay. All right, good. So, we are on schedule for completion sometime sometime this summer, right? Yeah, I would assume before Keith, before the next school year. The >> Okay, Keith. Keith, the inside classroom The inside stuff that that when we took out that auditorium part with the concrete, that should be done I think for next school year. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Wow. Man, we are rocking and rolling here. Uh President Brown, we have Mr. Gallegos now just to make sure that you saw he's now joining us uh via uh the phone. Alex, I know your voice. I I I want to see if you are AI. So, please please announce your name. Must be AI. Must be AI. Alex, can you hear me?
And so, the board has to make a resolution giving us permission to request that. So, that's what I'm doing is basically kind of a backup plan for us in case the performance accreditation would go away that we would still be able to apply for the waiver day so that we could have our teacher work days, and our calendar would stay intact as it is um, already approved for next school year. No changes. No, but you said it's really just a backup plan that would allow us, um, to be able to continue with our same setup for our calendar. Just a different route. Question regarding that? So, I'll make a motion to accept the HE 1003 flexibility waiver resolution. Entertain a second. I'll second that. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Next, uh, will be the approval of the 2026-2027 enrollment caps. So, we are an open transfer district, meaning that we do take students who do not live in our current district and we do allow them to attend here at Bar Reeve.
All right. And I couldn't see that in book. I I couldn't I couldn't experience that until I got there to see it in person. So, you know, I had the same feeling. I went to Flend the Frog and was able to look around and think about the pilgrims when they arrived. And um then uh last summer, I took my son out to LA and we were driving through the country and we made it outside Denver. And I as I got outside Denver, I saw this wall of Rocky Mountains and the stretch from all the way north to south. And I was thinking as they during the Oregon Trail, what were the these people thinking, these settlers that were traveling out there? And you know, you can read about it in a book, but until you see it with your own eyes, it's hard to really imagine.
So, great job, guys. Thank you. Uh in third grade, we used Scratch to bring our ELA curriculum to life while studying the Viking Age. And this happened this year. Instead of just reading about the Vikings, students became digital storytellers. They used block-based coding to build interactive narrative scenes that demonstrate their understanding of Viking daily life. By designing algorithms and sequences, students had to think logically to make history move and interact on the screen. At Yeah, you can. This uh Oops. >> [laughter] >> Our scratching Viking our Scratch Viking project for third grade. These students applied the design process to complete the Viking challenge. Building on their CKLA unit from the classroom, the project began with a question, "What did a typical day look like for Vikings?" The student worked with a partner to brainstorm realistic daily scenarios, then used AI-generated Viking clipart to plan a story in their notebook.
Yes. 7.1. And then we have benefits. Um Mike has been very aggressively going through the benefits to make sure that we're not as over as we have been in the past. Um we are recording the monthly charges of the invoices uh funds that come out. So we're we're doing that on a monthly basis. Um if we go down to professional services, we have a technology service line which is 5.0. This is where the one time 4.5 million sits of technology items that have been purchased for the one-time um expenditures this year. We go to the next page. Our property services, we're checking into the rental um for its service and we raised to get those bills out and get those checks um recorded in this line. other purchase services, the tuition and transportation. We have a lot of different tuition line items and we are we know we're over in transportation, but next year um we were trying to uh create the budget so it comes in a little closer that we're not as over.
Um she very much stepped out of her comfort zone. If anyone knows Amber, she's incredibly quiet, incredibly quiet, incredibly shy, but this was like a really big thing for her, so I was really proud that she did this. And it's gained really big popularity at school. She She even took a day for me for Wonder Girls because they brought puppies in and who can argue with that? So Um so she did that. She led meaningful service projects. She raised awareness for animal rights. Her volunteer work, especially at our local homeless shelter, has shaped her passion for health care and service to the community. She's a first generation college student. She exemplifies resilience, humility, and selfless leadership. She's truly an unsung hero and she makes North Brunswick High School a better place every day. THANK YOU SO MUCH. >> [applause] >> YES. YES. YES. UM ONE THING I DO WANT TO mention Dr.