001all right good evening everyone please stand good evening everyone please stand for the flag salute II to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stand One Nation God indivisible liy and justice for all please stand for a moment of silence may be seated in accordance with the open public meetings Act njsa 10 4-6 adequate notification of this meeting has been provided by advertising in the record and posting notice in the Board of Education administration building and finally notice with the city clerk I hereby call to order the regular public meeting on Wednesday March 12th 2025 in the pavano building 1912 Street hict New Jersey 07601 at 616 6:16 p.m. Miss can you do a roll call please yes Miss A M May here Mr Carol present Miss
002C is Miss Gilmore here Mr Martin here M Frankle here M Harris presid Mr Ty here we have a core Perfect all right be it resolv that the hackin Board of Education determ it necessary to meet an executive session on Tuesday March on Wednesday March 12 2025 be it further resolve that these matters will be made public when the need for confidentiality no longer exists can I get a motion to go into executive session motion by trusty Pringle second by trusty ammer henza all those in favor say I technically have to put minutes the reason for the close session the reason for the CL session is personel personel to discuss personal thank you um so the post session 17 thank you session e e okay okay you do call please yes thank you for public
003session miss pres Mr May yes Mr Carol yes here yes M Mar yes M springle Harris yes all right so do we left the public in now yes we are now open back to the public portion have the door open just so the public that is watching is aware we are allowing the public to come in you here for the media else be hell hi there's chairs here some on the side thank you you can leave the the door open all right excellent okay so at this time we are on page two of our agenda which is our resolution and and missing our board secretary is going to present um the resolution to approve the prary the preliminary 2025 2026 school year budget okay um thank you madam president good evening everyone as a school
004business administrator I'm responsible for preparing the budget for the hackin school district for the school year 2025 26 the district is required to prepare a preliminary budget which will be submitted to the county the final budget is due on or before March 19 2025 upon approval of the budget by the county a public hearing will be held on April 24th 2025 and then I will go through line by line and we I will present it to the public so that the public has a greater understanding of what we're doing so each year it becomes more and more challenging as you try to use limited resources to meet to meet our strategic goals um we have to educate our kids in a thorough and efficient manner using our available resources um the way this budget was
005put together I met with all the stakeholders individually and then we put together this PR preliminary budget um as a precursor to me delving into the numbers um I will tell you that our state aid increased by 2.3 million um for the general fund and for 333,000 for preap also um the tax levy that I um seeking to balance this budget is less than last year so those are the two good notes that I have to begin my presentation with so on page two uh we have charter school funding which is a number that's given Us by the state um the general expense is a number that's all our general fund expenses falls under that category capital outlay is capital expenses it's self-explanatory so the stop total there is for the general fund 153 m176
0061800 now after that we have our special Revenue fund which is made up of our titles and our State um that's 10 grand sorry 10,149 802 um so the total Appropriations and also a revenue is 163 mil 326,000 62 um going to where I want to point out um our tax levy how it was calculated so each year if we have not used up our 2% we're we're allowed to have a 2% cap if we have used it up it gets carried over for three consecutive years and that number is called Bank cap as of 2526 school year which is the budget I'm preparing right now we have 2 million 82,000 85 sitting in our bank at in addition to that we have our 2% allowable tax levy which the state gives us that's the
007state give number so looking at our base here of 2425 if you add up if we add up all those numbers um the amount that the school district is allowed to Levy for taxes is 98 million 892 not $63 however as I further explained on the lower part of B if you flip flip it over you'll see that where the 2% allowable tax levy is 1.8 million we have the state has given us additional money for increase in enrollment and for the bank cap instead of using that 2 million I'm using a lot less I'm using 44629 so the tax levy for next year that I'm going to be including in this budget is 97 m236 974 which is a decrease compared to last year um the other part of this is really the county
008requiring me to explain what iner budget just so that the county is knows that the district is making the effort whatever money we're spending it's on educating with the thorough and efficient education that they're looking for us to implement in the school district that we have allocated funds for that so these are numbers that are required for us um in addition to that I have they always require us to put the monies that we spend on Capital because when we when we have a reserves when we finish our budget budget year whatever money is left over we're allowed to build our reserves and when we put because we have to get County approval board approval in order to move that money into Reserve if we're taking it out they want to know that we're taking
009it out and we're spending it on Capital and we're not putting back in the general fund we can only use capital reserve for Capital items so for next year we have the um Hiller boiler is like really like top priority that we have to spend money on that um that's this is the number that we got from The Architects BMR and it's already been sent to the state and the state has approved it so if that's what the what the $1,675 th000 yes the other numbers that is on page four those related items that I spoke to you before where that very required by the county that highlight these numbers so they can do a comparison and see what we are spending money on what they consider the the most important things that would enable
010this District by P or professional development if you look at it it's a lot got to do with professional professional development and they want to make sure that our teachers are getting the p that they need so that they can educate the kids and so this is the reason why we presented this way and I really do believe that I've covered everything here and so I will ask M St to do the honors thank you thank again uh as Mrs sing said this is a preliminary budget because it has to go to the county superintendent to give blessing so what I'm about to do is to offer d1a through d1g for approval uh as our preliminary budget excellent so we have a motion from trusty Stein can I have a second trusty missing a roll
011call please yeah okay Miss alra yes Mr Mayor yes Mr Carol yes mmore yes Mr Martin yes Miss springle yes Miss Harris yes Mr St yes motion passes excellent all right thank you okay so at this time we now have public comments so um for the past month and a half or so I've been reading the policy 0167 which is our public participation and board meetings today I will read the shorter version since this is a special meeting it's a much smaller uh so it says public participation shall be governed by the following rules one if in person a participant must sign in must sign the signin sheet and be recognized by the presiding officer and must preface comments by an announcement of his or her name Municipality of residence and group affiliation if applicable
012two each statement made by a participant shall be limited to 3 minutes duration during the public session three all statements question or inquiries shall be directed to the presiding officer and any questions or inquiries directed by a participant to another board member shall be redirected to the presiding officer who shall determine if such statement question or inquiry shall be addressed by the presiding officer on behalf of the board or by the individual board member and for all board and or superintendent responses to questions or inquiries shall be held until the end of public participation at this time public comments is now open if there's anyone from the public that would like to speak that is in the room first you may come up just remember to State your first and last name is there anybody
013online okay all right so at this time public comment section is closed moving on to board comments and we will start with trusty Carol good night all right thank you H trusty Martin good night all right trusty arah since this is a special meeting just keep my comments short a huge thank you to miss Singh and her team at central office um for um all of their work on the preliminary budget and just also wanted to reiterate that this is a particularly challenging year financially speaking because there is a lot of uncertainty regarding um federal aid that can be received and federal funding that comes into the district um so the fact that we were able to not utilize the full amount that that of the tax levy that it's less than last year um
014you know and is still responsible in ensuring that you know our we are able to support all of our educational programs I think is a really um big accomplishment so a huge thank you um JY a I concur with trusty's comments and a special thank you to miss sing for answering all my questions as the newcomer I appreciate your patience and good night all right trusty Gilmore um I just want to say good night trusty fringle everything that my fellow truste said good night vice president s um I too would like to thank Miss sing and her staff um I've gone through the numbers I know what they've been doing to get to these numbers and the fact that we're below last year's tax lby I think has a lot to do with how they
015oversee the budget and uh that's my comment excellent all right and last thing of course I reiterate everything that my trustees has said um but thank you Miss say thank you to the central office staff for Gathering all this information and answering all the questions from the trustees at the committee meeting uh we truly appreciate that um and we look forward to the April meeting when you get to do your big presentation okay looking forward to it all right so at this time um I need a motion to close our meeting so second by Carol all those in favor say I anyone oppose excellent it is have a good night everyone thank you so much