001good evening everyone it is Monday March 17th 2025 happy St Patrick's Day to all it is our Monroe Township monthly Board of Education meeting I'd like to call this meeting to order can everybody please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation indivisible andice for all Miss Allen can we have a roll call please yes M Alvarez here miss Bora here miss dep here miss Fabiano here Dr pek here Mr pero here miss Ratner here miss Sharma Mr Tano yeah Mr ziker see no okay we have a quorum inance he was he was supposed to be virtual but I don't know if he's made it on or not okay okay are we going to call
002him is that um maybe when we go we can call when we get to session yes okay um in accordance with the provisions of the New Jersey open public meetings law the mon Township Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting to be published an electronic notice provided the date time and place thereof posted October 25th 2024 and March 14th 2025 at all schools on the district website home News Tribune cranberry press and file with the clerk of the municipality thank you our next item on our agenda is the closed session resolution where there as the senator Byron and Bear open public meetings Act njsa 10 colum 4-6 provides that the Monro Township Board of Education May hold an executive session from which the public is excluded to discuss matters that are confidential or
003are one of the N subject matters listed in [clears throat] section 12b of the act and whereas the board hereby declares that its discussion of the following subjects will be made public at a time when the Public's interest in disclosure is greater than any privacy or governmental Interest being protected from disclosure now therefore be it resolved by the monor Township Board of Education that the board shall go into executive session to discuss the following items additional items may be determined and announced as needed uh pending or anticipated litigation matters covered by attorney client privilege matters involving employees in terms of with their employment in contract hi investigation involving students be it further resolved that the said discussion may be disclosed to the public when reasons for discussing and acting upon it in close session no
004longer exist action may be taken on any of the items stated above is there a motion motion second motion by Miss depine second by Miss Bora the board will be in closed session for approximately 1 hour and we will return at 7:15 oh all those in favor sorry I okay good evening everybody the board has returned from Clos session and we're moving on to our next item on the agenda which is the approval of our board minutes um the first item is our public Board of Education meeting minutes from February 19th 2025 is there a motion to approve second motion by Mr tufano second by Mr Pay are there any um recused oh thank you Miss Bor recuses any other exensions or recusals all those in favor I I okay then the next item on
005our agenda is the close session meeting minutes from February 19th 2025 is there a motion motion [clears throat] motion by Miss dep second by Miss for are there any exensions orus what was WR um just the question recusal on no just a recusal on the portion um pertaining to conflict okay did you can you say that again did you hear I don't know if you heard her just recusal on the portion of close session uh we conflict this and I'm recusing completely uh miss any other exensions or recusals all those in favor I I okay the next item on our agenda is our student board members report good evening everyone today we're starting off with the student board members report and we're beginning with the Barkley Brook Elementary School Barkley Brook celebrated read Across America
006week in the beginning of March with a week of themed school spirit days the week began with the schoolwide reading train while our students joined in for schoolwide drop everything and read and students wore clothes that represented different Dr Seuss books throughout the week during read Across America week the school was excited to welcome many guest readers into the classrooms the guest readers included Menor Township High School National Honor Society students District employees Menor Township Board of Education members members of the Town Council the menro Township Police Department chief of police and mayor Delina Barkley Brook thanks everyone who took the time to visit the school and read to students in preparation for read Across America week the students spent the month of February listening to five specially selected books selected for their grade level
007during read Across America week each school was scheduled for a battle of the books in their Library where they had to answer questions about each of these stories the students who received points for every cor correct answer the battles were very close classes battled each other in a bracket style competition it was a fun week celebrating literacy moving on to to Brookside Elementary School uh Brookside held a PTA sponsored mad science Avatar run on February 25th read Across America dress themed days took place on March 3rd throughout the 7th the replenished food drive was held between March 3rd and March 14th and they received a tremendous amount of donations at Brookside uh developmental disabilities Awareness Month spirit week will be celebrated at Brookside from March 21st to March 28th and now we're going to be
008moving on to the Woodland Elementary School Woodland School celebrated read Across America week as well during the week of March 3rd with several activities including mon tancha middle school students visiting Woodland School to read to the students Woodland students visiting mil Lake to read to their students unified pal students read reading to Woodland classrooms a Scholastic editing Workshop the author of The Cam Jansen series David Adler also visited Woodland and the student council organized Spirit Thursdays staff and students are participating in Wellness week this week students will be introduced to new and exciting Foods in the cafeteria in partnership with the food services department and re recess activities have also been planned with the food of the day moving on to Oak Tree Elementary School read Across America was celebrated the week of March 3rd
009with themed days held during the week on the 7th Oak Tree had guest readers and ended the week with a schoolwide reading training in which everyone took the readers pledge on March 17th Mrs dinmore read the same story about taking responsibility for our actions to the entire School throughout the day as part of their one book one school program coming soon maker space night on March 27th March Madness tournaments on March 31st the oak tree Express traveling the globe on March 21st and an author's visit on March 25th and now we'll be moving on to Applegarth Elementary School the Applegarth PTA organized a wonderful read Across America day on March 7th numerous members of the community came in to share the love of reading with the students the spring book fair was also held on
010March 12th and 13th Applegarth thanks the Monroe Education Foundation for supporting the colonial America assemblies enjoyed by the fourth graders on Friday March 14th applegrad school is looking forward to the author visit from Alan Katz on Tuesday March 25th this visit was coordinated by our the media specialist Marin borest and supported by the PTA of Applegarth Applegarth has an assembly scheduled for Friday March 21st to reveal the mask readers from read Across America week a special thanks to miss borest and Mr H who worked with his high school students to videotape this activity up next is mon Township middle school on Saturday February 22nd the mtms robotics team representing uh co4 e0 qualified both of their teams for the upcoming state tournament and NJIT despite it being their first sanctioned signature event their students made
011it to the finals and qualified for the NJ VEX IQ rapid relay state championships at NJIT by winning the innovate and Design Awards these Awards recognized teams for their creative problem solving and Elite engineering skills exciting update for the mtms robotics team this past weekend um consists of that and that their Code Zero Vex robotics team competed in the the NJ state tournament and came away with a huge win they earned the design award which qualifies them for the Vex robotics World Championship in Dallas Texas this may the design award recognizes teams that excel in engineering design and documentation it's given to the team with an outstanding engineering notebook showing clear planning brainstorming and problem solving throughout their season this award proves that Code Zero isn't just great at building and programming robots they also
012think plan and design like real Engineers mtms is also proud to announce that 13 of their wonderful musicians were accepted into the 2025 intermediate region bands students from miss rosen's and miss tf's math classes helped collect coats and winter clothing to donate to the homeless in Trenton through Sandro's coat rack the following students are the mtms spelling B winners performing well in their annual spelling B first place to akara jagan second place to Arna vyakaran and third place to abina vaka my apologies if I butchered those names on March 6th and 7th mtms held its annual hoops for heart event they were number 10 in the nation last year and their grand total this year is $24 million with 8237 three we had a great day and the physical education teachers were amazing in organizing
013and running this event this students of mtms were wonderful in supporting such a worthy cause and lastly the seventh and eighth grade play Moana will take place on April 3rd and 4th at 700 p.m. that's a Thursday and Friday and April 5th a Sunday at 2 p.m. their students have been working very hard on this production and we all hope to see you in the audience that weekend and now we'll be moving on to the last school in our lovely School District the Monro Township High School all 11th grade students in the previous week completed their NJ GPA graduation testing congratulations to all the junior class on finishing a full week of testing congratulations to our speech and debate team as well who performed incredibly on last Saturday earning four trophies at their competition first
014place was awarded to chish Kris kria second place to sahiti pakira and third place to Simon Singh and Rika Pancham morti over again sorry if I butchered those names [laughter] another congratulations to the sophomore nil t the founder of recycle my battery who now has has had his nonprofit published in a renowned educational textbook in Germany published by Westerman we thank you for allowing us to share with you all the incredible accomplishments that our peers at Monro Township have appreciated this last month thank you [applause] thank you both very much for your comprehensive reports as always our next item on our agenda is our section of presentations so our first presentation is our student and staff recognition so this is one of the best opportunities for us to Showcase why we're really here and we're
015here for the kids so um I do notice that it does say December 2024 but what this actually is is it's a compilation of the Fall Sports fall activities co-curricular clubs so it's all the way from the fall through December and like to acknowledge now there will be additional acknowledgements in May and or June um to acknowledge those children depending upon what time of year their activity is and what we're going to ask is we're going to get up in front president Fabiano and vice president Alvarez if you'd like to join us Dr Layman as well we're going to acknowledge our children and we learn to do something smarter so after they walk through and we acknowledge them we shake their hand and you get to take pictures of your kids they then get to
016go into the commons area outside where they get the appropriate certificate because we're good but sometimes we're not that good and sometimes you get the wrong names this way after we get do all of the acknowledgements because we know that you're so excited and you want to take pictures as you should they then can go into the hallway and Miss morala um with the helps of Mr Snider will then be handing out the appropriate certificate so it's just a matter of um acknowledging them to come fromont so at this time we're going to begin um our acknowledgement of our fabulous Falcons thank you oh over there [applause] [applause] one change in go this way and and are going to accomodate here stay right there right that's so Mr moraldo gave me the fine opportunity of
017acknowledge my very own student Raj deep Saha who is the winner of our script spelling beat our dinner we'll have that St [applause] [cheering] [applause] congratulations good evening I'm proud to present some our college students who made it into the cjmea intermediate Regional chus through the hard work of Miss Nina schmeda and Lisa Constantino if we could have Parisa ahed [applause] Isani palagi [applause] CK gajam [applause] [applause] joa Ryan talii [applause] [applause] so you may have heard a little while ago from our student Representatives a little bit about our about our robotics team we had a really great weekend we made it to the worlds in Dallas in May so thank you [applause] so I would like to acknowledge our incredible teachers uh Miss Courtney kiwi if you could stand up and come on up
018[applause] Alysa schnorbus Jessica Sano and Kayla biano you can come up [cheering] [applause] I I have to move a little closer because I'm in between my glasses so if we could start calling up S bab and I apologize for that one [applause] shatan baji oh looks like they all out together perfect arav pendana [applause] tommen catwell aier dager [applause] Fant dager isan G [applause] evina dakowski Jo Nilla [applause] Jared nor [applause] Lami pamana sahana remesh [applause] Arian Taria ail Co [applause] and Ana Burma we look forward to what tonight [applause] so we we were able to participate in a gr opportunity uh history happens here and this was led by our very own Miss Bak chrisy Baki are you in the room Mr [applause] [cheering] explain it and I really hope they back to the
019name have to memorize [applause] thank you so much I just wanted to give a brief explanation of what the history happened to your program was Dr CH said I I could be very brief um U well I would like to introduce myself as the very proud teacher and adviser to the students involved in the hist history happen here pilot program you saw their projects in the lobby as you came in um for those who are unaware history happened here is a local history research curriculum developed by the New Jersey historical society which is an agency of the New Jersey Department of State the history happened here curriculum was one of many initiatives that have been developed to celebrate the upcoming 250th anniversary of the United States which will be celebrated on July 4th 2026 uh
020this program asks teachers and students students to become Tre true researchers of their own Town's history in an effort to demonstrate that history does in fact happen everywhere mtms was chosen as one of two middle schools in the state of New Jersey to Pilot the program which we will be shared with all districts in the state coming this fall a TR a group of truly remarkable seventh and eighth grade students have been working with me since September on this program some of them before school some of them after school and sometimes both in order to IM themselves in the understanding of our nation's foundational document the Declaration of Independence and to become the next Generation who will share the history and War of our most dynamic diverse and unique Community mono Township as my students
021conducted their research which included many interviews and use of archived newspapers and other primary sources they settled on three events in the history of Monro Township which they believe reflect our Township's pursuit of the Revolutionary ideal of self termination the splitting apart of Jamesburg from Monroe the construction of the original Monroe Township High School and the development of the Monroe Township Public Library the results of their work were on display in the library and you'll be able to see them at the Monroe Township Public Library in June of 26 June of 2026 as we prepare for our nation's birthday their projects will be loaned uh starting next week to the New Jersey historical commission who will be using them as exemplars throughout the state to show other schools what kinds of projects students are capable
022of among the many highlights of this experience for us was a visit from New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy and the New Jersey State education commissioner Kevin damer who came and visited Us in December and saw the students work and took a lot of time to talk with all of them it was a thrilling experience for all of us this coming September they've been invited to meet with filmmaker historical filmmaker Ken Burns and sharing a pre-screening of his newest film the American Revolution I want to thank the Board of Education Dr Chanley Dr Higgins and my supervisor mistrust for their support of all of our efforts this year it was truly one of the highlights of my teaching career to work with these incredible students and to learn more about my home of the last
023five decades mon Township at this time I'll turn the mic over to M Dr Higgins who's going to introduce this incredible group of students [applause] Okay so we have Dak akula [applause] darwi Kendall [applause] Sophia Essa [applause] mark burges Z golden bound pan py [applause] AR G congratulations [applause] ran congrats canala [applause] Kari s Kian [applause] Kali Matthew L [applause] Madison llo [applause] Lee right the Deep l poish [applause] aana [applause] Logan shul M frun and na p [applause] Aiden O'Neal [applause] Christin Rodriguez [applause] [applause] and ch [applause] [applause] I thank all my wonderful staff and students for coming out tonight this Cong [applause] [applause] here good evening everyone a couple of recognitions for appleg Guard School the first one goes to uh a group of young ladies under the direction of Simon sing who
024decided that children in elementary school needed to have instruction with public speaking Simon got a bunch of her friends together and taught the children all kinds of information about how to speak in public with eye contact and hand gestures um they did this on their own time and they also created the entire program from scratch so this was four weeks of volunteering their time with a group of over 25 students at Abarth school so my gratitude and congratulations to sim s the initiator [applause] and her team is [applause] caret congratulations shenali meta s meta [applause] sah pap [applause] and Sh thank you ladies for a great programul at the high school level Applegarth wanted to recognize sake dorti he organized a battery recycling initiative at our school all of our classes are busy recycling batteries
025[applause] in a contest designed by sck thank you sck [applause] we're just about to wrap up the contest at the end of March [applause] and I have a couple of Boy Scouts that I just wanted to shout out at the meeting today we have Arab Modi who for his Eagle Scout project painted an entire United States map in the play area at hgar school with members of his to [applause] the students are enjoying it AR they're practicing all the time at recess and also Pam Gia who handbuilt a Gaga pit for aard school as part of [applause] his EV so thank you as well as [applause] meone hear me our first Slide the high school recognition is the speech and debate Club so this team by Miss Tara rder and this is our only our
026first year doing it and we did very well this year so we we were we placed in all three positions third place in the public forum of debate category we have Rica Pon marthy [applause] I'm so sorry for butcher second place in the original story category we have a HEI peekaru [applause] and it was kind of cool cuz all the kids were up on stage and all of our kids were there and we all knew we were kind of placed and second and first but we didn't know who was who and it was really neat seeing the kids clap to one another so there was a lot of support so I'm just know shout out to you guys great job [applause] place in the original oror category which qualifies this young man for a Tournament
027of Champions this spring in Missouri is chrish kasaria [applause] next slide should be the economics and finance team so economics and finance team is advised by Mr Mark Pierce following students Place second in the 2025 middlex County Consumer Bowl we have shanov abalo [applause] AIA alvatar [applause] Shon Byron a dunga [applause] bavi Maka let's he for these guys great job guys next slide we have a special honor that was uh from a member of our Spanish Honor Society now this is a a really big achievement um not many of these are given in the country um we are we have a winner of year in the high school Zane jabber who's the winner of the prestigious 2025 [applause] AA CS great job [applause] [applause] at the high school we have a club called lights camera
028action it's for all of our aspiring filmmakers um it is advised by Miss Lissa Miller and Mr Boris lck um these are results from the count Bas SE Film Festival um both of these young men won honorable mention in the Breakthrough filmmaker category first up we have Zachary prell for Director of Photography [applause] and recognized at for the lead actor category we have Russell bosowski [applause] not to upstage the middle school but we to have a high school robotics team who does very well um it is advised by Mr Mark Pierce and M Marissa MC Ain [applause] the following students were on the team which was named the Lions then high stakes tournament Champions at Franklin High School they are toosh Silva [applause] the yanii LST sunu [applause] San guardan [applause] andette sh Anna ranin
029DEA is one of our larger groups at the high school they are basically focused on economics and students who want to go into into the world of finance and such it is advised by Miss Alana side as well as Miss Alexa Marshall these are results from the recent Deca State Conference in Atlantic City they just got back this week um f was last week sorry finalists in the financial services team decision making category are Raj Bora and Von B [applause] finalist in the entrepreneurship team decision making category we have DJ Nali and surra S [applause] awarded fourth place in the hospitality and tours and professional selling category and ICDC National qualifier I believe they're going to Florida for that this year chrisha Patel [applause] finalist will the principles of hospitality and tourism category and the
030IC and ICBC National winner we have I'm sorry qualifier Soni tanap Papu [applause] and last on the slide seventh place in the international business plan category and ICBC National qualifiers abanov tati andle [applause] [applause] I believe we have one more Deca slide all right uh finalist in the integrated marketing campaign category we have robab Dixit Risha theu s and Alan Sher [applause] fourth place in the marketing Communications category and ICBC National qualifier saki kale [applause] seventh place in the project management financial literacy project category and ICDC National qualifiers Raj Bora [applause] andon Bend [applause] last but not least in the depit category we have finalists in the sports and entertainment marketing category and ICDC National qualifier Danica Zale [applause] I'll be right back but I want to introduce you to miss Bena ganker who is
031one of our engineering teachers at the high school she's going to be reading the names of a p for students who were in a recent uh competition thank you [applause] good evening everybody um it gives me great great pleasure uh to say that four mdhs student teams from my AP Computer Science principal classes competed in the code Quest competition conducted on March 1st at the locked Martin mown facility for a grueling 2 and 1/2 hours of competition based on problem sets given to them created by the locki Martin professionals code Quest is the annual competition computer programming competition hosted by Loy Martin for high school students teams work together to solve problems programming problems using Java python C and or C++ our students typically work on using python because that's what we teach them in
032the curriculum about 20 schools participated in the novice and advanced categories two of our teams Quantum queens and binary Bros came in second and third place respectively in the novice category so without further Ado I'm going to follow out [applause] the names g sh3 m [applause] ni Su BR Krish Swami [applause] and [applause] so this next slide uh has to do with one of our teachers at the high school Miss Lauren stab who's been recognized by the American Red Cross as a recognized um distinguished Service uh provider in terms of what she's done at the high school it's it's been amazing we have over 300 students who belong to this club the Red Cross has uh identified and has recognized us as a an ideal like one ofing outstanding chapters uh through our work in
033terms of disaster relief as as well as blood drives and the like so I'm hoping she's here tonight Miss Lauren St if not let's give her a round of applause [applause] I want to introduce you to uh Mr I mean Dr Kevin Higgins our principal thank you thank you very much uh Mr May de could not be here tonight so I was a last minute reliever coming in from the bullpen uh I'm going to introduce you to some of our very successful teams and individuals that had a great winter season uh as I go through this I'm going to call out students names in uh in teams if you wait until the end you can hear everybody everybody's name if you clap while I call out the names you can not hear me mess up
034their names so you can do what you please uh our first slide uh is recognizing our greater middle sex Champion ice hockey team uh the team is represented by Dakota benti Benjamin BNC you can clap I was just [applause] Evan bursh Christian Cala Anthony D'Angelo Michael del PRI Matthew theama Nicholas Diaz Christian Fama Nico Anan R [applause] eigor aen mamal Christan MZ Albert Stato Brian Schwarz [applause] and Ryan Weiss additionally we have some individual recognitions douas [applause] Jordon was named All Conference pton million was named all conference and Cam Cameron Schwarz was named all conference and became mts's alltime assist leader this [applause] congratulations to our ice we had a very successful basketball season as well we have two Representatives that from our boys team uh all red division Braden hyberg and all red division
035second team yod [applause] for our girls basketball team we have allc conference all Division and became mths alltime girls leading scorer in basketball this year Evangelina Francisco [applause] all R division here Longo and Zoe Wilshire [applause] a grown basketball team made it for the finals of the state sexual championships this year but did come up a game short um but our girls basketball coach in his first season Brian Hines was named the greater middle six conference girls FAS [applause] coach of the we have our uh bowling teams individual Awards uh third place in njs AA all conference and all division Aiden wowski seventh place in the state [applause] all conference and all division Aiden Hy all conference and all [applause] division GRE Cy and Annette Costco and our GMC Champion all conference and all division
036[applause] m b [applause] for track this year we had um successful season with our GMC champion in the 1600 James gordano [applause] and we had our GMC champion in the 3200 fifth place in the group four championships and qualified for the meet of Champions Steven Barbara [applause] for our very young swim team here at Monroe Township High School we've only had a swim team for two years now um we had individual honors for our girls and boys Team all conference and all division Genevie Warner [applause] all conference and all division in the 100 meter butterfly and the meat of [applause] Champions qualifier aen Lou all CER and all Division and the 500 [applause] freestyle and meet of Chief meet of Champions qualifier also had the new GMC record in the individual medal [applause] Brandon Anan
037and all division School record and 100 m backstroke Jordan SWS Barnett [applause] for the first time ever our Monroe Township wrestling team has become the Central Jersey group four state sectional Champions congratulations to our boy [applause] jeno aru K Cannon Anthony cabro Kyle capano Nick cavalo Aman Sheila [applause] Joel Chula Daniel gas Daniel Marino Garcia Alexander hat off [applause] muille K kakar John Wallace Bry [applause] Lucy Lance Lucy Anthony Marcos Robert McGuire to py Justin palasak Luke pachak Jafar Reby Andrew Aro [applause] joshu shumsky Matthew shumsky ishar sing James heri Brian [applause] we have some individual honors for our wrestlers conference and District Champion Region 5 third place and state qualifier Anthony caponegro conference Champion region five [applause] fifth place Kyle capano District Champion region five fifth place Joshua shumsky and our conference champion and
038njsia qualifier Aman Chila [applause] and it was with great pleasure to announce that our wrestling coach uh Mr Joe urel has been named district 18 and region five coach of [applause] at this time I would like to introduce our uh purple Squad intermediate Cheerleading Coach coach Kim Aon who's fresh off of planing from Florida uh she's got a lot of Hardware with her apparently they won a lot [applause] of championships down there um to just give a little update on um everything they' W [applause] um apparently um I could probably uh do well taking that public speaking the young lady at Applegarth I'm great in front of students but adults I ask for your forgiveness because I get nervous so I apologize um I just wanted to take a moment um to acknowledge um the
039board Administration um Mr baranda especially I wrote this really quickly on the plane on the way home because um I wanted to make sure I didn't leave anyone out um you know we started this program two years ago um you were so gracious to provide us with this opportunity for more athletes in our district to participate in cheerleading um we didn't we came with no uniforms um just only asked and provided um for us as a team um we came out our first year um eight out of nine uh first places so pretty proud of that we were state champions [applause] at first year and moving into this year um it is with great pleasure and great honor I get to announce that um in our second year we were also um NJ cdca state
040champions [applause] yesterday and over the weekend uh we participated for the first time in Orlando Florida um as an intermed a varsity intermediate um cheerleading team and you know we weren't sure how that would go we got down there we realized we didn't have any direct competition I'm not reading off this at all anymore um we didn't have any direct competition so I challenged our athletes with high point because we didn't go there for participation Turing um we went to win so if we're winning we're winning big and there was a little discrepancy in our score our athletes didn't get announced as High Point Champions but as any good coach would do you go and when you know something isn't right with go back and you ask so um not only did they come home
041with um they're they're first place [applause] that [applause] challenge that I gave them um that we don't get participation trophies that when we go we go bigger we go home they got it [applause] if we wanted to uh continue competing with [applause] Ohio but more importantly I applied for a scholarship for our team um from reel Athletics they put it out there and if you know me if there's a scholarship out there I'll apply for for my athletes um and for our district and it is with Incredible honor that um we received an $1,500 [applause] brand new uniforms for our program so um got this nice piece of Hardware too and we have some medals and a bigger trophy um coming with us I'd like to take a moment and thank um my my coaches
042that coach right along with me Miss Dorian Pagano and Miss Carrie FAL because it [applause] all right there's only four athletes here because as I said we're cres off the plane from Florida and there was delays and people's flights got canceled and I'm going to do my best to get through this really quickly um so if you're here my four lovely dolls if you can make your way down um so we'll start with Kayla Alex Alexi [applause] bacon Bennett Emily Bo Riley boam Valentina Jacqueline [applause] sis Sophia Dalia mine Doran [applause] AA F Victoria Theo [cheering] Alexandria gria [applause] Emily and my K Lyra luo Alexa Marquez Juliana morera Alissa Julia Tor Shiner [applause and cheering] Bella roas Elana Rin Addison Shay [applause] Francesca Victoria Avery Stern and Allison Z [applause] [cheering] [applause] finally and
043certainly not least from the high school um every year parents and students and staff have the opportunity to nominate teachers of the year and educational Professionals of the year and support Professionals of the year once those are announced your school you may not realize that there are other opportunities for those people as well um and it is with great pleasure uh and pride to tell you that this year the New Jersey school Counselors Association has named uh Casey buffalino our school counselor [applause] as middle sex County counselor of the year she will be honored this Friday at [applause] a recognition Awards function at the College of New Jersey [applause] thank you the auditor on okay uh the next item on our agenda is the presentation of the annual comprehensive financial report M over here yeah
044okay by La Hi how are you that's is that okay yeah okay good evening uh my name is Jerry stankowitz uh I'm a partner in the public accounting firm of Samuel kle and Company we are the uh appointed uh independent Auditors for the school district uh that is appointed by the board to audit the records Financial records of the district for the fiscal year in at June 30th 2024 um I'm here tonight to uh briefly present the audit to the board um there are no uh comments or recommendations within the audit that require the board to take action a corrective action plan you are required to acknowledge acceptance of the audit okay but there's no findings that we had had and I just want to briefly indicate first of all we're responsible to the board
045we're appointed by the board we're answerable to the board okay management which would be Laura the business office superintendent office and all the other departments that feed in to the uh to the audit report itself as well as to the our audit testing um we we present and we we go through the different departments okay and management presents us with the information they present us with financial reports General ledgers Bank reconciliations receipts dispersements journals payroll reports quarterly payroll reports payroll taxes um Financial reports regarding the operation of your food service fund your Early Childhood fund and um from all that we then prepare and analyze and prepare samples that we want to look at um all based on random numbers okay to basically test the transactions of the district for the year okay uh we
046test payroll transactions and we test those to uh determine that everyone is being paid properly and in accordance with board authorization Andor collective bargaining agreement or management contract we test to make sure that the payroll taxes are paid on time we test to see that uh people who employees who are not who are getting extra pay for example like this evening coaches Student Activity advisers for the various clubs um part-time employees part-time hourly people extra pay class coverage all everything that is is involving extra in in that department in the in the in the business office we found that to be operating uh very nicely um we got good audit results um so we're happy report that the payroll and again it's a lot of hard work by people in the building to make sure
047that everything was paid everyone was paid properly And Timely and also too that when we asked for something okay it it surfaced rather quickly we didn't have to wait and say oh I got to find this and that's a good sign that's a good audit environment okay the other thing we test for obviously is expenditures um so we get random we get check registers and budget reports and we run a random sample of the uh expenditures uh and what we test for uh amongst several things we test for but here's the key thing that the board members really need to know about the testing that we do expenditures are in addition properly documented charge to the correct budget code okay charge to the correct fiscal year and you're in compliance with the public school contracts
048law those are the four most important things sure other forms have to be on file but in my mind from what I know those are those are the most important okay we also Al um audit the enrollment count the Assa we audited that as of October 15th of 23 which is includable in the 24 23 24 audit we found that to be in proper order and in fact what we do and and yeah I I do we kind of over audit that we want to make sure that that that is all proper we check every single kit and we also check the drrs which is the reported transported uh resident students we check that and we also uh verify the um the IEPs the for the special kids okay make sure those are all properly
049uh not necessarily filled out properly but that that there is a an IEP and that if you claim let's say you claim a thousand well there's a that there's a th000 we don't necessarily look at everything in there but we just make sure that that's all proper so we do testing we we touch on a lot of different areas other areas that we touch on um would be compensated absences which is unused sick and vacation p uh that has become a very popular topic recently in New Jersey amongst all government agencies so uh we kind of did a deeper dive into that to make sure that that that's all all proper what else oh and the key thing is and you hear these terms and this is kind of technical um and if you're on
050a board or if any of you board members work in an entity where you have some Financial oversight or someone answers to you the key thing too is here that your bank reconciliations agreed to the general ledger on a monthly basis to the penny it's technical but it's important to know and that tells us initially that the um the general Ledges and the records presented are inbalance okay and that we can rely on them we still test them okay and and from those records we then flow that information through to the audit exhibits which are contained in the rather thick document that you've all been provided okay and that thick document is really um information that is representations of the business office we merely put it into report format but we also audit it as
051we go along okay um then there's a there's that that's important because really records get presented for audit and the only thing inside this bigger document that belongs to me and to us and my firm is our opinion our audit opinion is such that um it's what's called an unmodified opinion meaning that the records as presented by the business office present properly the statement of financial condition of the district as of June 30th now our job is to really verify the numbers as provided our job is not to say you're in unbelievable Financial condition that's just not our job but our job is to verify numbers okay so the other document that you receive at the thinner of the two is actually my representation to the board about the operation of the business office inclusive
052of everything that I've mentioned previously Okay so so in that document there's wording in there that that talks about different things that occur within the finance office and again we found nothing that required us to disclose it to the board um we were very happy with our audit results um the other thing we did do and I didn't mention this the other day at the exit conference was that we also we do look into your food services records even though it's really their records we do check those out make sure that you know like I know understand there's two there's two two or three month rows in New Jersey we want to make sure we don't get charged for for the other two month rows and also to we verify the um the meal claims
053you you have a $3 million operation in your food service fund um for that size of an operation although compared to other districts your free and reduced applications aren't as many we still verify the claims that you make to the government for reimbursement for for the meals so that that all worked out very nicely and we do spend time we do spend a little time at the Early Childhood Program and just not snooped around there but we just did a double check we we did some testing there I I think it's important that that people in the different departments know that you know every now and then someone's going to show up and you know to honestly keep everybody honest and and uh we take a look and see you know because sometimes you never
054know what's going to happen it it it does happen um lapses do happen lapses in judgment um haven't had that problem here this year hopefully it doesn't happen happen anywhere but so in the end we have two documents the thicker of the two is our document that is a joint venture with the board it's the annual comprehensive financial report and then there's the other document which is my representation to the board so there's nothing that requires the board to take action for the record the uh audit was filed on time okay um under the wire and also too there's an electronic version of the report that got filed uh I believe in December way before the January 1 deadline and like I said uh you know January 1 deadline is kind of interesting because I
055don't know what they're going to do with it on the second but we file that all in in accordance with those deadlines and another thing too is We There was an exit Conference held with the business and financial if I get it right the finance and operation committee last Monday no last Wednesday I lost track of everything and um uh there we discussed in a little more details the findings of of the audit so uh that that audit exit conference took place there um do want to mention though the support staff in the buildings were all very helpful um just they were very helpful and when something was needed it was produced quickly again which is a good audit environment um and in the end we end up with a an excuse my language unmodified
056opinion which in the old days was known as a clean opinion and it's not modified okay because the records presented were properly presented in accordance with accounting principles related to school districts the financial statements have a lot of different numbers in them okay and um it's not it's not intended to be presented as if it was a corporation okay there's but there is something in there that that includes your long-term debt includes sick pay vacation pay depreciation they tried to move it towards a more corporate model I don't know why but um it it was we have we're required to follow it the audit is done there's two different components there's the audit piece and there's the accounting piece the accounting piece is in conformance which is really what we give an opinion on is
057in conformance with the requirements of the What's called the governmental Accounting Standards Board and the order requirements are done in accordance with auditing standards that the whole profession follows auditing standards at the GAO at the federal level requires and auditing standards that the NJ dooe require so again we we're covering three different bases there three different types of accounting um one thing I want to point out and that is on exhibit C1 it discusses U it doesn't discuss there's numbers okay um there's different Surplus there's different components to your fund balance okay and although it may look like a big number in total okay when we opened the door for business on July 1 of 205 let's 24 okay some of those numbers they disappear because you needed them to balance your budget and some
058of it's carryover money from from the prior Year's budget for example you have an unemployment reserve of 115,000 incumbrances of 99,000 which is a small number you have excess Surplus left over from the 202 23 school year of a million4 you have excess Surplus left over from the 23 24 school year which is 2.9 Million you have capital reserve of 23,000 you have a I'm sorry designated for subsequent years expenditures which when added to the excess Surplus a million is a is a million 7 that was used along with the excess Surplus to balance the budget it gets confusing and then you have your U What's called the unassigned it's a 2% you're allowed to keep maximum of 2% and again I talk about the old days but it it used to be your free
059balance okay now it's just it's the it's all everything you do now is Formula driven okay you do have some discretion though during the year if you find out you have maybe excessive amounts of money you can earmark that money between June 1 and June 30th into a maintenance Reserve or a capital reserve and my my remembrance here is that you didn't really have ever had the necessary the necessity to do that because I think most of the money here always acred into excess fund balance okay or reserved for excess fund balance designated so although it may seem like a lot of money it approximates 9.6 million it's kind of disappears as soon as you adopt your budget okay and really the only thing left in reserve is the 2.9 Million that you don't know
060about until you finalize the audit for that fiscal year as well as the 3.2 million I'm s yeah 3.2 million of of your 2% money so in the end um we're very happy with the results of the audit and for the record I'm very happy to be the auditor here um and again the business office was very very supportive and gave us all the information we needed on a timely basis and we want to thank them as well thank you [applause] actually if I went on before all the crowd they could hear all the good news you [laughter] know thank you very much and congratulations Miss Ellen on a great report thank you the next item on our agenda is the present do we have oh sorry we have to am I dismissed there's a
061you are my wife [laughter] I can't yet um do I read that this one no this um it is recommended that the members of the Monro Township Board of Education accept and approve the annual comprehensive financial report and the auditor management report on administrative findings Financial compliance and performance and hereby approve and authorize the submission of the Gen of the required corrective action plan to the county office indicating that there are no recommendations for the fiscal year ending June 30th 2024 second motion by Mr tufano second by Miss Bora coulder roll call please yes Miss Alvarez yes Miss Bora yes Miss depay yes Dr P yes Mr Piro yes Miss Ratner yes Mr tufano yes Mr ziker oh he's virtu okay okay good yes um uh Miss Fabiano yes yes motion passes and congratulations again
062thank you the next item on our report is the presentation of the preliminary 2526 school budget okay congratulations again and um before we continue with this segment of it I just want to say how outstanding we are as a district in the celebration of our children in many different facets of their accomplishments it's truly a wonderful um a wonderful evening when you get to celebrate what really counts in that's the kids so I just wanted to take a quick moment before we continue at this time we are now presenting our preliminary budget and I don't have the clicker so somebody's clicking for me thank you um so as you know um we work diligently and we're very excited to be able to have this the support of our members of the Board of Education let's
063sit there for you our finance committee members our chairperson is U Miss gazala Bora on the finance committee is Usha shama Amanda peek Pete Pio and Peter Pio and Katy Fabiano of course we always like to adhere people don't realize but you need a vision and then a mission statement because it helps you know where you want to be and where you're going so Mar Township Board of Education commits itself to children by preparing them to reach their full potential and to function in a GL Society through a preeminent education and a mission statement is momroe Township Public Schools in collaboration with the members of the community shall ensure that all children receive an exemplary education by well- trained committed staff in a safe and orderly environment and the executive summary and I know that
064I'm not going to continue reading to you because you can read yourself so basically what has occurred is we have been on an upward trajectory for many many years I myself have been here since 2003 so approximately 22 years and we have seen incredible growth that has really pushed us into an environment of what we need and we always one of the comments I had said when we had gone out on looking at the time for referendum is you know we always go by wants needs and must haves that being said we are finally and I don't know how long it's going to last and we do are we are in the midst of completing our uh demographers report which will be presented at the bg& on April 30th we we are finally starting to
065just level out so I can remember being in apple got schools an assistant principal in 2003 2004 with two grades seventh and eighth grade and we had maybe 500 600 children and then by the time we moved into this building we started at 1200 1300 and before you knew we were almost at 1900 children we are finally at a point where we are leveling out the reason why I share this with you because I think it's imperative to understand that we are very fortunate in this district and I'm going to make this statement because I know there's been some questions we are cutting and or removing no programs for our children we are keeping the programs that we currently have we are able to grow certain programs that sometimes are at course to our parents
066but other than that all of our programs are remaining and we have really worked very diligently as a team and I want to thank Dr Layman I would like to thank Miss Allen Mr T all of our supervisors and directors our principles and assistant principles because we truly have worked collaboratively to say what is it want what does it need and what does it must have and that is something that's done through rigorous defense rounds that occur and back and forth and back and forth never touching the programs for our children but also living in the real world where enrollment has to drive Staffing so we are very proud that we are able to present a budget for approval for this evening a preliminary budget and we want to let our community know inclusive of
067our staff our students our parents and those that may not even have children that District that we worked diligently to make sure that we stayed within our 2% cap we did not go out for an additional question and we were able to not remove any programs or courses from our children [applause] some of our Fe budgetary considerations because we live in the real world and we know when something is aging our aging facilities we' like to give a shout out we're very very excited that we are in the process of working on Apple God school um we do have various different updates if not every bgns meeting but at least every other we are very excited that we able able to get the $10 million through Rod grants through a million dollars from the state
068as well as partnering in a sha service agreement with the township so we are very excited that we are able to that was my very first home so it's a little fun as in my heart uh we are able to bring Apple go to the uh 21st century so um full little clap [applause] so as far as our aging facilities um one of the things that's on for approval this evening is our EAS project so one of the things that we'd like to be able to do is utilize monies that we will be able to have from that to look at the Aging facilities we sit down we have meetings after meeting and we say what is a priority because we cannot we do not have the money to do it all we want to
069make sure that we take care of what our first priority is and then of course you go in succession of whatever is needed we always worry about our New Jersey student learning standards one thing I'm very proud to say and Dr Layman and I have this conversation quite often we will never be adequate we have no desire to be adequate the word adequate to me is not a good word and we are proud to say that in Monroe we are over adequate so therefore we surpass any requirements as per the New Jersey Department of Education and our goal is to continue to be not adequate student teacher ratio we hear many different things by all means if you have a question please email us Facebook is not accurate the information you receive is not accurate
070ask and we shall provide an answer we are now looking at our numbers what does that mean if you have 680 children in a grade and you're now going to have 465 children in a Grade does that mean that we're going to make class size larger if we move around staff no that means that our enrollment drives are Staffing and that's what you just call good business and I most certainly not an account but that is what you call doing what you need to do so we are still very proud of our student teacher ratio for those of you that do not understand scheduling the bottom line is this is how it works you cannot just take a group of children and divide by how many classes are occurring why certain children go into a
071special needs class if they need it it could be resource certain children go into a classroom with there's two teachers so perhaps there's a couple of more children certain children go into accelerated programs when you do that you could have the anomaly of a of a class of 18 could happen where another one has 28 well why can't you just move the 18 to 28 it doesn't work that way so I I want you to know that when you hear misinformation please ask because factual information is very very important as we continue to navigate our district maintain programs I could say that without even I don't have to look at anything we have cut we have removed we have lessons no programs and of course we continue to look at Transportation transportation for a while
072was really a difficult a difficult challenge why because we had a shortage not just in Monroe but across the state of New Jersey and that shortage truly was an area of buz drivers we continue to try and Embrace some of those employees that want to go and take the proper classes get their CDL license we have now something that's actually in here that's a siphon position it's not a separate position where we have training inhouse because our goal whenever possible is to have our Fleet drive your children our contracted routes are just as safe as any other routes but we like when they are our own because the communication is always the best it's just common sense they belong to us they answer to us immediately and that is why one of the things that
073we'd like to bring in house Additionally the cost is a great savings I've been working directly with Miss Allen myself and Miss Mar who is a director of transportation to really see can we think out of the box can we look at routing which she does not me but I I always give my two cents or three cents can we do something a little differently can we see what we do and can we make as many buses of ours our own Fleet not only for Quest savings but making an opportunity to have better communication within our own District so timeline key dates I'm going to allow I'm going to stop at February 20 I'm going to stop in December 2024 and give this over to Miss Allen so one of the things I mentioned earlier
074in my presentation is we are um we are very steadfast and true we provided a budget philosophy discussion in September we were extremely early our intent if possible was not to have to go out for a another question if it did not affect the children's programs and we worked very diligently kind of backwards to make that happened between November and December of this past year our budget defense meetings with District staff didn't happen once didn't happen twice but probably happened four to five times or six times a lot of it was preliminary with Dr Layman and then was meetings with myself meetings with Miss Allen then we called them back in meetings again looking for areas in which we can just be financially and fiscally appropriate conservative and answerable to the community and making sure
075that we were looking at auditing programs auditing Staffing doing everything we needed to do so that we came down to the budget we'd be proud of the budget that we presented and fiscally responsible and on that note I thank you very very much for your attention Miss Allen you're on okay okay so um we did receive our anticipated um the the state aid release on um February 7th um on March 17th tonight we are doing the tentative budget presentation um May 5th is the um budget hearing and adoption so there's quite a bit of time between tonight and May 5th for um questions or changes or um any more information that needs to be um gathered um May 7th is the deadline to um file the adopted budget with the executive County super intendent and
076May 19th is when we have to certify to the board of Taxation the amount that will be raised for taxation so um the next slide so where does the money come from so as you can see from the pie chart the majority of our Revenue 85% comes from the local tax levy this includes both general fund tax levy and Debt Service tax levy our second largest source of Revenue state aid represents merely 8% of our total budget and federal aid is only .9% 2.8% is derived from tuition Revenue which includes tuition from both Jamesburg and our enrichment programs fund balance at 1.9% is the excess Surplus from the 2324 school year as certified by the auditor which is statutorily required to be included as a revenue Source in the 2526 budget the balance of the
077revenues consists of miscellaneous Revenue transfer from other funds and transportation fees um at very you know less than 1% so the next slide shows the general fund tax levy for 2526 we are allowed to grower general fund tax levy by 2% each year plus any allowable adjustments the 2425 general tax fund Levy inflated by 2% is 122.6mi we have an allowable [clears throat] adjustment to the general fund tax levy for an increase in health care costs of 2.5 million the health care adjustment applies to districts with a projected increase in health care costs that exceed 2% of the pre budget year the allowable adjustment cannot exceed the average percentage increase of the State Health Benefit Plan that is determined annually by the division of pensions and benefits um and that amount is 14% for for
0782526 so simply put the increase above 2% up to 14% repres results in an adjustment for health care costs um and this is calculated by the state budget program so the the general fund tax levy cap with the health care adjustment is25 million for 2526 the next slide shows the general fund state aid comparison between the two years we received our 2526 state aid amounts on February 27th reflecting some changes the doe had made to the state aid [clears throat] formula calculations so I just want to give a brief explanation a general explanation of how the state aid is arrived at because I think it's important to understand and you know we talk about State a a lot but we don't always go into how it's um it's arrived at so on our total toal
079categorical state aid increased $ 33,6 to 12.3 million and while this is a small increase we were fortunate to not lose any state aid as many other districts did we were initially informed by the county to plan on a 10% reduction and then we were told to plan on a 3% reduction so we fared better than expected so Transportation Aid increased by 15 ,000 to 4.1 million although we have a lesser number of transported students in total this year the cost coefficients for the per pupil base amounts and mileage amounts used in state formulas increased 3.9% so transportation is comprised of two calculations basically one is for regular Ed and the other is for special ed and it takes into account the number of students being transported multiplied by a base amount per pupil as
080well as a base mile Mage rate multiplied by the number of students transport multiplied by the average distance so that number um again is 4.1 million security Aid increased by 283,000 to 964 th000 security Aid is based on a projected enrollment which is calculated by the doe multiplied by a per pupil amount the per pupil amount as determined by the doe increased 45% for there's [snorts] an additional amount added for lwi income enrollment um and it should be noted that our projected enrollment shows a decrease which affects this calculation special education Aid which is our largest amount actually decreased by 400,000 for a total of 7.1 million why did it decrease because of a change in how special education enrollment is determined prior to 2526 this number was based on a Statewide average in other
081words if Statewide the special education enrollment was 15.9% of total enrollment then each district would use that same percentage multiplied by their total enrollment to determine their special ed enrollment for this calculation and that amount is then multiply by a base per pupil amount as determined by the state which has increased by 5.9% for 2526 the calculation has been revised to use the district's actual special education enrollment number numbers unfortunately this did not work in our favor Additionally the total special ed amount [clears throat] calculated um which is the total is 21.5 million it's then split so 2/3 goes into Equalization Aid of which we do not get um leaving the one the remaining oneir for special education this equates to 14.3 million which is allocated to Equalization Aid and 7.2 million which is allocated
082to special education Aid that we do get um the just to note the equalization Aid formula has changed to a 3year average but does not apply to us the um calculated local fair share which is based on District property values and income is 189 million versus our adequacy budget of 122 million um so there is a wide Gap there um next is the schedule a sources of revenues comb B um and this so this is a separate schedule which is um a onepage schedule which is not on the PowerPoint but there were handouts um this schedule details revenues sources of revenues for both the budgeted 2526 school year as well as the current 2425 school year as adjusted for comparison purposes so looking at fund balance we have a greater excess Surplus in the amount
083of 2.9 9 million to include as a revenue source and will not need to appropriate any additional Surplus to balance our budget it's our goal to build our fund balance back up to be able to grow our capital reserve fund or establish a maintenance Reserve fund um and in order to do so we need to continue to look for ways to reduce spending transfers from other funds represents the anticipated Falcon care ECE access in the conservative amount of 2 $75,000 which is 125,000 less than the 2425 budgeted amount um and we've already discussed general fund tax levy um other Revenue consists of tuition transportation fees and miscellaneous Revenue tuition from Jamesburg is budgeted at a flat amount of 4.2 million enrichment programs are budgeted at 176,000 and include our summer programs as well as after
084school programs transportation fees from Jamesburg are budgeted at 239,000 um and miscellaneous revenues consist of interest income use of building fees integrated prek tuition athletic admissions Etc and are conservatively budgeted to remain flat at 850,000 um we have discuss State age we did receive an additional 300,000 for 2425 at allocated from the state budget that we cannot anticipate for 2526 extraordinary Aid is conservatively budgeted as a flat amount as there is no guarantee to the amount we will be awarded um federal aid consists of semi- reimbursements and that has decreased from 16,000 from 80 83,000 um so total general fund revenues for 2526 total4 46.6 million which is an increase of 4.1 million over the 2425 budgeted revenues or 2.87% special Revenue fund consists of federal and state Grants awarded we conservatively budget 85% of
085the current year award this amounts to 1.4 million the majority of our grant funding is for idea which we use for out of District tuition the grants we receive every year are the title funds um Debt Service funds consists of Debt Service tax levy in the amount of 10.9 million and Debt Service state aid in the amount of 280,000 um and these funds are used strictly for the payment of bond principle and interest from previous Bond referendums and refundings so total revenue including general fund special Revenue fund and Debt Service fund is budgeted at 1593 3 million for 2526 which is a 2.21% increase in the amount of 3.4 million so the next slide is where does the money go as you can see from the pie chart 49% of the budget is for direct
086instructional costs regular education special education related services and tuition not including benefits allocated to the instructional staff benefits for all staff are shown separately and amount to 21% of the budget benefits include Health dental and vision insurance PRS employer contributions Social Security contributions Workers Compensation Insurance tuition reimbursements opt out payments stick payments um Etc facilities comprises 8% of the budget and includes required maintenance for school facilities custodial Services care and up keep of grounds and security um Debt Service at 7% represents payments of interest and principle and our bonds Transportation costs represent 6% Athletics and co-curricular 1% Etc um and next is schedule B which shows the comparison of Appropriations and that's a separate detailed schedule that um that you have and I'm just going to go through some of the highlights um so under
087the first section regular programs instructions you'll note that there's a 16% in instructional supplies the principles have done an outstanding job of reducing their budgets to what is necessary there's also a continued effort thanks to Mr Feldman to use less toner which saves a great deal of money included in the other purchase Services line item is the first payment of a new 4-year iPad refresh for the high school in the past the refresh was a three-year payment plan by stretching it to four years there's lesser impact each year to the budget thanks again to Mr Feldman for for negotiating this deal we where we are paying a lower per unit price than we have in the past offsetting the first year payment is an anticipated amount to be realized from the sale of the old
088iPads also within the same line is the proposed lease purchase for 25 26 so we typically include equipment items in a 5year lease purchase in order to align the cost of the equipment to the life of the equipment some of the items we would include this year are technology equipment textbooks copers musical instruments and custodial equipment um the next sections special education basic skills bilingual are fairly consistent and and are driven by student needs um out of District tuition costs are increasing by 25% and it's actually higher because we do use the idea Grant to pay for out of District cost as well um moving to operations and maintenance of Plant Services we are looking at a 20% increase in electricity costs um and insurance costs are expected to increase um 15 to 20% as
089well Transportation shows some changes between budget lines the transportation director director has as Dr tley has mentioned provided a budget where she plans to revamp some of the roots bringing some of contractor Roots back inhouse hiring new bus drivers to run those routes as well as putting some routs out to bid with other than this es andj um we discussed employee benefits um essentially 2 the 2.5 million of the increase shown is offset by the healthcare adjustment um and then regarding Capital outlay 2425 budget includes amounts appropriated for the refurbishment of the special services parking lot the designed study for roof replacement at mil Lake um we had an additional 300 state th000 in state a for Capital Improvements um Debt Service for SDA funding as well as some small equipment um for 2526 we
090are budgeting for The Debt Service of the SDA funding only um and we can do this because we did get the $10 million in the rod Grant [clears throat] projects at Applegarth which are accounted for outside of the budget and are thereby having um no effect and providing room for other necessary items um and also the EA program that the board has approved will provide approximately $12 million in energy improvements without increasing our budget and thanks to Mr T for all his work with these projects um I know it's been very cumbersome um so in summary total Appropriations are budgeted to increase 2.21% or 3.4 million to 159.3max: slide shows the tax impact of the 2526 Budget on an average assessed home [clears throat] valued at 336,000 the tax increase for the year would be
091$1 or $48 for every $100,000 this represents a 3.3 or 3.23 increase over the prior year tax rate um tax increase is based on ratables and tax levy the ratables have increased 91% this year last year the ratables increased 3.4% the smaller increase in ratables by 70% add to the increased tax rate and further affecting the tax rate is the permanent tax levy increase approved by the voters last year as well as the increase due to the healthc care adjustment um so that concludes um my presentation [applause] thank you um I I do want to say thank you to everybody because it's been it has definitely been teamwork with the principls and supervisors and the administration everybody the directors have all really worked hard to put this together so we could um get a budget
092that we didn't have to go over um so thank you to everybody and and the staff of course our staff thank you Miss alen I know that the day the state aid was released I think I spoke to you and I said I think I'm gonna break the website because I keep hitting refresh to wait to see our amount come in but um thank you very much uh Dr chany Dr lman and Miss Allen for putting this presentation together um board members would do you have any questions or up for discussion Miss Ratner be [laughter] surprised um thank you and I appreciate the um I know I've shared this with Administration but I appreciate the budget information sessions that were held for us to get a greater understanding um I do have just a couple
093of questions um my first question is regarding the Jamesburg tuition um you had mentioned that it's a flat rate of $4.2 million and I was curious if that has been consistent because I do know that our Jamesburg enrollment has increased I had just looked over the last several years um is that 4.2 million per student or because you had mentioned flat so I was curious about that yeah we we've basically been budgeting the same amount I think 275 students [clears throat] at the same tuition rate um years ago um Jamesburg was an able to pay us the full amount and there was this agreement and every year we kind of we're keeping a schedule of when of um how much kind of they still owe on that agreement and it's now it's down to not
094too much not not much left over so that's why we've kind of kept it the same and once that point you know we're at that point we can um maybe revisit that okay um my second question was um the special Revenue fund yep um you had mentioned that you budget 85% for that um and I might be missing something but on our uh the revenue schedule a and looks shows a 32% reduction which um so I just wanted to get confirmation but I I might be missing if I'm missing something um you're looking at but yeah 32% so okay in the The First Column the 2425 budget that includes not only what we were awarded for that year but it includes carryovers from other years so if we don't spend all the money in the
095first in that year we Carri it over so we don't budget so we only budget 85% of the total award amount not the carryovers so that that's why there would be a difference okay and then just my last and this is just more of a a request um if you can just explain ratables a bit how they factor in because like you saw my face when we were having the budget information um presentation so just to explain to the public how that factors into the tax rate well I'm I'm not a tax accessor but um [laughter] I would say the more you know the the higher um they the rate ratables go up the the less tax we pay that affects us so um because it it did go up the increase is much less
096than it was last year it did make have an impact on our tax rate oh miss Bora thank you um I would like permission to first ask on behalf of our Junior board member who did could didn't stay but did have a question I and I really appreciate and I'm impressed and so if I have the permission to read on her behalf thank you um I am Patel one of the student Representatives on the board I had a question for when there was an opportunity to ask for the budget specifically and was wondering if you'd be I'm reading everything web him if you'd be willing to ask it for me if I can't stay until then here's the question will the Monroe Township Board of Education be taking the monetary incentive given by the New
097Jersey government in return for fully Banning phones in school here is the facts in case you need it in um in the New Jersey budget proposed by government Mur Governor Murphy he announced the 3 million in Grants for schools that go phonefree the financial year 2026 budget which This falls under will not be voted until or signed till June 30th will it still be able to be incorporated into our budget I'm impressed by the question and I will ask mine after you answer this thank you um I don't know who can can can we we can me I mean well do are we have to talk about the cell phone sure all right so at this is mic on at this point the district hasn't made any decision about cell phone Banning or use um
098we have our current policies in place if there's a financial incentive my guess is it would parallel the guidance that the governor has been directed to develop a committee and work with the commissioner of Education to develop you know whatever this potential would look like so I would say at this point it's not something we have definitely not something we've included in the budget it's not something we have discussed because we don't know what the ban potentially could look like but in the future when we're directed and when we have to address this and we already kind of have some policies that have cell phones embedded in them um and we've taken some of these proactive steps specifically at the high school in terms of um having places for students to place their cell phones
099if they're not in their backpacks they can put them in a safe place in the classroom so we have some of the things that they've already been suggesting but again we need to see how this plays out but to answer the budget specific question at this point we didn't include any of the the funds embedded in this year's budget I think that does give the clarity thank you so much um I'm going to now start talking as gazala Bora [laughter] thank you so much uh to everybody that has worked on this we made the ask early really early last year um literally in the summer because uh we were in the unique situation we went out to a question and we wanted to understand our financial situation as a district whether or not we will
100need to go out for another question this year there were a lot of legislative changes that helped with that but primarily the superintendent had started working with the business office and her team to gauge if the money that they had in the budget with the expected Aid and the tax levy would be enough to continue bu business as usual and we were given that indication back in November and so we decided that we would not be going out for uh question and thankfully when we were presented with these documents uh the board members were all presented with these documents last week like always uh but this year what the administration did um slightly differently where they held three different sessions accommodating our various schedules and did like a pre-presentation to the board in the uh
101business business office or virtually and so most of my questions have already been answered but I'm still speaking into the microphone to speak to my constituents and explain to them what my role has been in this budget before I vote on it today um I did ask all the questions but there are a few that I want to highlight here because there has been a lot of chatter in the community about us cutting programs and I want to assure you that I will be the last board member uh to vote on cutting programs that would be the absolute Last Resort if we couldn't find the money anywhere then we would cut programs but thankfully fortunately given that our state aid did not decrease even though it was almost flat we did not have to make
102that difficult Choice also because our enrollment as a district has reduced so it when I got these numbers last week uh with Laura uh in the room the way I look at these numbers is I look at the big changes the big Deltas those could be reduction from the previous year or they could be an increase from the previous year and that's where I start asking questions I'm not from the financial industry but I have basic acent based on the work I do um and I did asked all of those questions and got very satisfactory answers none of them pointed to a program being cut there was reduction in Staffing due to reduction in enrollment as a public fiduciary that is a way to go though I agree with it we cannot afford to hire
103more teachers when we don't have that kind of enrollment in the district are we supporting increases in class sizes I can speak for myself I would never support that but does that mean that if our enrollment reduces our class sizes should become smaller more better comfortable better education environment yes in an Ideal World it should but Monroe has its own budget challenges we do not get the state aid we should be getting so at this point we are a status quo we not improving our class sizes but we are not hurting it by the budget that you're looking at today so I don't have any questions but I do have a few comments on this budget a lot of our aging infrastructure needs if anybody has been following the esub conversation we have a lot
104of infr boilers chillers in across all of our eight buildings that have reached their lifespan and would probably need replacement or heavy repair in the near future you will not find any Appropriations for that because we have we are very close to tonight we will be signing the final contract with um Honeywell for the esa program and that is going to help us address those infrastructure needs without spending any money in the next year school budget and I think that is kose to the administration and the board that is here for making sure that that happened in time so I did wanted to put it out there that our there has our need to appropriate money towards infrastructure needs was reduced this year and it really did help in balancing this budget I want to
105give a shout out for some of the Creative Solutions that I observed one of the flags was there was a almost a quarter million less appropriated to instructional supplies and so that was one of the first questions I asked because well you know that that hurts our programs um I would welcome Dr Chanley to share what one of them I think Laura already mentioned the toners uh Mr falman has been working year last year also there was a reduction in that I will let Dr Chanley explain the other creative solution which I felt was a great idea um one of the big increases in our budget this year almost a million dollars that stood out is beyond our control it is out of District placement yes we do get some idea grants that doesn't really
106cover it so our operating budget did go up by a million for out of District placement nothing that can be done about I there's no solution to that well there is a solution which was also in this budget we have uh increased Appropriations toward I think if I'm saying it right assigning a new classroom for special need and hiring some extra staff there to ensure that we can through our mtss programs you know start to you know send lesser kids out of District but those that have to go out of District have to go out of district and we have to spend that money so that's a whole million dollarss more and lastly I just want to make a comment on the on that number $161 it looks so bizarre because last year we went
107out to a question and yes yet the tax impact was only $24 this year we are not going out to the for a question we are within the tax levy but yet we're going to have a tax impact of $161 that has nothing to do with us we cannot control it that is ratables and the tax rate which is at a municipal state level not something that any one of us here can do the only thing we could do is reduce our budget further more but really that's not our responsibility we have to use a 2% Levy because if you all know with inflation with our teacher contract that increased almost by 4% year-over-year we cannot it's hard to balance within the 2% Levy it is really a hard act if you look at neighboring
108districts everybody is struggling everybody's having to make Cuts we don't want to be responsible for that $161 we are well within our limits so those were my comments Dr chle if you would care to comment on the creative solution on instructional supplies that you explained to me thank you it wasn't really that creative but but I'll take any compliment I can get that is a quarter million dollar in savings so so what what we did is there's a couple different ways when the principles come to us and supervisors come to us with budget the supervisors work um in conort with Dr Layman regarding uh textbooks and and how we do a textbook adoption and we're able to separate it through lease purchase so that's a big savings when it comes to supplies what we started
109to do was we normally would have allocated an actual dollar amount to every teacher in the district and before the teachers got upset we told them we're going to take carea them what we did say was rather than say to each teacher you get $385 or $355 prek through eight we stopped and said how about we cut that in less than half however whatever you need for your children you tell your princi principles and we will get it and this was all logic and it's I me it's really not that creative but we as human beings were all like that someone says to you he has $400 you have $400 to spend I don't know about anybody else but I'm going to spend that $400 it's not because they're doing anything wrong it's not about
110not being for the kids it's for the children but they look for ways to spend the $400 because that's the amount of money you get if I and that wasn't the exact amount by the way and if I say he has $150 spend it for your must has what are your must what are your needs and then if there's something that you truly need for your children go to your principal provide the rationale the principal provides to me my famous line is Sherry always says yes when possible which is absolutely true something as simplistic as that way of doing things saved us a quarter of a million dollars and why do we do that because we can't help it as educated as I was a teacher to we have so much but we always get
111nervous that we don't have enough and if I say to someone almost like a ration go to your neighbor do they have paper do they have crayons do they have pencils in the middle school if we need to replace microscopes or refurbish things or do things we're are not and I want to make the statement so it goes on Facebook correctly we are not going to say no what we're going to say is let's be mindful because every penny adds up to every dollar that adds up to 10,000 100,000 and could be a million dollars that is how we did this entire budget in every way shape and form and I must give a shout out to not only the principles and the supervisors but I have to to the staff I got no negative
112feedback the staff really understood where we stood and they know if you need something we're going to give it to you so same thing with a freeze one of the things that we do every year we provide where we say we putting a freeze on spending in the past there was some negative that came out on that on Facebook there's no reason for any negativity what we say is it's December it's January it's February we would assume you're teaching since September you have what you need does that mean that if you do need something even though there's a freeze you're not going to get it absolutely not it means you need it provide your rationale you're going to get it so if we have this mindset constantly it took tremendous savings quarter of a million
113dollars is a lot of money and what that helped is we didn't remove cut any programs so I wasn't really that creative but thank you and just the the quarter million included the savings and toners as well oh toners absolutely and and Mr somebody will startop doing the math and say all right this is our staff this is the money gave him a quar million doll [laughter] are any other board members have any questions or comments okay um thank you again Miss Allen do you have read the resolution be it resolved by the Monroe Township Board of Education that the 2526 tenative general fund budget be adopted in the amount of 146 m64 ,000 and a t tentative general fund local tax levy in the amount of 125,1 and a tentative special Revenue fund budget
114in the amount of 1,439 and a tentative Debt Service budget in the amount of 11 million 221 264 and a tentative Debt Service local tax levy in the amount of 10 million 940 814 whereby the tentative 2526 budget totals 159 milon 31059 and be it further resolved by the Monroe Township Board of Education includes in the budget the appropriation of surplus in the amount of 2.9 million6 2, 96422 it is be further resolved that the Monroe Township Board of Education includes in the budget the adjustment for increased cost of health benefits benefits in the amount of 2,537 the additional funds will be used to pay for the additional increases and health benefit premiums whereas the monre Township Board of Education has been notified of state aid amounts and whereas such State a Aid amounts are
115for 2526 the categorical special education Aid is 7,1 19385 and for 2526 the categorical security Aid is 96 4,518 and for 2025 26 the categorical Transportation Aid is 4,1 15596 and for 2526 The Debt Service Aid is 28,45 and whereas the Monro Township Board of Education has estimated a state aid amount pursuant to application and for 2526 the estimated extraordinary Aid amount is 39748 and whereas policy number 6471 and njac 6A col 23 A- 7.3 provides that the Board of Education shall establish in the annual school budget a maximum expenditure amount that may be allotted for travel and expense reimbursement for the 2526 school year now therefore be it resolved that the monre Township Board of Education hereby establishes School District travel maximum for the 2526 school year at the tentative sum of 65,500 and
116be it further resolved the school business administrator shall track and record these costs to ensure that the maximum amount is not exceeded and be it further resolved that the members of the Monroe Township Board of Education authorize and approve a transfer of $275,000 of anticipated retained earnings from the proprietary Falcon care fund Early Childhood enrichment program as a revenue Source in the 2526 general fund budget and whereas due to the priorities of student and staff safety maintenance of current programs and staff and capital Improvement needs as set forth in the board's the board's budget philosophy resolution the board is budgeting to maximum spending Authority now therefore let it be resolved that the superintendent of schools and the business administrator slbo secretary file the required documents with the executive County Superintendent second motion by Mr tufano
117by Miss Bora um can we have a roll call please yes okay uh Miss Alvarez yes Miss Bora yes Miss depan yes Dr Puck yes Mr pero yes Miss Ratner yes Mr tufano yes Mr ziker maybe louder Mr zeer okay um Miss Fabiano yes motion passes thank you the next item on our agenda is our committee reports are there Miss B your hand is already up thank you I'm going to read both committee reports I'm going to start with Finance share Services committee report uh we met on March 12th uh the board members in attendance were myself Mr Puro M Sharma uh Dr pek and Mrs Fabiano administrators in attendance were Dr Chanley Dr Layman and uh Miss Alan the first item on the agenda was a presentation of the annual comprehensive financial report Mr
118Jerry than to his of Samuel Klein and Company shared the findings of the annual audit report with the committee members answering any questions we had he informed us that all the audit audits yielded satisfactory results and like always business office was very responsive and cooperative for any ask by the Auditors there were no recommendation from the Auditors and no corrective action plan was needed next on the agenda was a discussion on the f care tution increase uh Miss genini Coro shared that before and after care services were not charging enough to break even as an operation there was a need to raise the tution for the upcoming school year Miss Allan shared that there was a loss of $55,000 in the 2324 school year uh in the Falcon care operations approximately 12% hike in the
119tution last year would have helped us avoid that this is an additional service we are providing to our parents it should always be a source of additional revenue and never a break even or a loss making operation the committee agreed with the proposed numbers for the tution increase for Falcon care and it is up for a board vote tonight next Miss Allen shared a budget timeline with the committee uh there will be a public hearing for this budget presented tonight on May 5th following which the budget will be adopted through a board War the public has a chance to give their inputs and comments on the budget tonight and all through the next month through emails to Administration and board members Miss Allen also shared the details of the school aid numbers for MTSD with
120the committee overall we received appr approximately 33,000 more in State this year totaling to 12.3 million there was a reduction in special education aid while the transportation and security Aid increased I wanted to note here that myself and Mrs Ratner will be representing monre on wednessday at the Legislative Assembly budget hearing advocating for fair funding the committee then reviewed the attorney bills for Poria Law Firm for the months of December and January and Bush Law Firm for the months of December January and February last on the agenda was the bill list there was a discussion on the bond payment of $2.9 million done between meetings which has a predefined payment schedule and amount so Dr Chandy suggested that we can avoid the issue of payment before approval by getting a one-time approval with the schedules
121and amount shared with the board once a year this concludes the finance committee report any questions any questions for Miss Bora for finance I will move on to the curriculum committee report the committee met on March 11th the first item on the agenda was a curriculum document for Algebra 2 presented by Mrs Gasco the standards change in 2023 and this update aligned the curriculum to the new standards next on the agenda was some very exciting update by Mrs drust about the launch of an advanced science program in middle school this will be offered to select the students in 8th grade the criteria for selection is a two-phase process with the initial phase being open to all students to apply a pray and communication with all the information will be sent soon and this information will
122also be present on the school website in the last decade middle school has come a long way from offering stem and Humanities tag after school to offering advanced math Advanced Ela and now advanc Advanced science to our gifted students as part of their school day without requiring them to choose between after school sports and clubs and advanced enrichment next on the agenda was the yearly Club approval for the high school Dr kalela presented a brief history of the old process and how it evolved to the current anual Club approval the committee then learned about the variety of applications that came in for new club approvals the administration explained that the current process of approval which involved comparison to any existing clubs that had or could achieve the same goal this year the Administration has approved
123three new clubs to add to the existing list of almost 60 clubs four clubs were being retired either due to lack of advisor interest or merger with a similar club today on the agenda for approval are three new proposed clubs the Filipino American cultural Club the Hindu Student Association club and the mths Coptic Club the committee then received an update from Mr morala on summer programming the summer advance in math class is almost at capacity the Falcons net summer program is also at 70% capacity all new programs have been received well by the community so far following this Miss Ren and Miss Roa shared the plans shared that the plans are in place for the extended school year offering this summer at high school and Oak Elementary School lastly the committee re visited the discussion
124on honoring student achievement policy the regulation 5440 Dr Higgins presented his recommendations to the committee along with some insights and explanations on the current processes which in his words has been the way it has been done for the last 17 years in our schools he highlighted that the Gap in regulation and the processes is present not just in the way principal list is determined but also in the way weighted average is being calculated for a variety of honors classes which are not listed in regulations 5340 he recommended that those honor classes be added to the regulation and the principal list not make any concessions for honors or AP classes as per Dr Higgins the standard of achievement for principal's list or distinguished honor role like it is called in some schools is set at unweighted
12590 or higher allowing grades less than that in Monroe to make principles list will reflect poorly on Monroe standards the high school administration then shared the need to change the requirement for National Honor Society which is currently a weighted GPA of 90 or higher to the new recommendation of unweighted 90 or higher they inform the committee that due to the easier criteria more than 50% of the graduating class is making it into the National Honor Society next year count is approximately 375 students the committee ran out of time to conclude this discussion but Dr Higgins continued this in the policy committee and the policy with the recommendation is up for a First Rate tonight that concludes the curriculum committee of dat Miss rner uh yes I just have uh one comment and one quick question
126um so first I just wanted to um give a compliment to the administration for getting the summer programs out early this year um I know that was something we had asked for when parents are making their plans in the summer to have that those options available um regarding the um policy regarding the honorable and National Honor Society which I know was also discussed in policy um I just wanted to um and I shared this feedback with um M Alvarez and Miss Bora as well to take a closer look at the Honor Society requirements both at the high school um and as well as the middle school I know we had this discussion briefly in policy um I fully understand that we need to make the requirement stricter at the high school because there is a
127very high number of students that are being accepted um but if there are ways to reduce that without eliminating that weighted grade there as well whether it's the percentage being higher or things like that just other possible means of doing that as well as taking a deeper um dive into the um the Middle School requirements for before we bring it back for a second read are there any other questions comments okay any other committees that just I'm going to hold my comment till the policy update because I I do want to piggyback on Miss ratner's but from policy perspective on the National Honor soci I can go next hold on Miss Ratner did you want to report oh okay so M who wants to go whatever do you want me to go next so we
128can just finish the conversation yeah go all right the policy committee met on Tuesday March 11th 2025 present at the meeting were Dr Chanley Dr lemman Dr Higgins Mrs Fabiano Dr peek Mr ziker Mrs Ratner there were three policies on the agenda for discussion policy 2452 Community Education was brought forth by the committee for review at this time it is not feasible for the district to create this program it was suggested that the word shall be replaced with May therefore the district can move forward with this program when appropriate regulation 5440 which is honoring pupil achievement was moved to the policy committee following a discussion and curriculum to be clear the district has been following the policy it is only the regulation that needs updating Dr Higgins prepared a presentation regarding the proposed changes if
129approved the updated regulation would read and I have it here from his presentation honoral students in grades 9 to 12 must achieve an average of an overall 85% only one grade can fall between 75% and 79% principal list students in Grade 9 to 12 must achieve an average of an overall 90% all grades must be 90% or higher based on marking period grades which are not weighted this is the current practice at the high school and in step with other school districts in the area that honors pupil achievement in this way [snorts] there was also a discussion on updating the National Honor Society portion of the regulation and the recommendation is among other requirements Juniors must attain a weight of cumulative average of 90 by the end of the second semester seniors must attain a
130weighted average of 90 by the end of their first marking period this differs from the National Honor Society standards and most other high schools in the area standards are a flat 3.75 not weighted or 92.5 not weighted discussions with High School advisers and administration over the years recommend a nonweighted 90 average for Monroe Township High School if agreed this would begin with the class of 2029 okay additionally Dr Higgins noted that regulation 5430 class rank will also need to be updated to match current practices the currently the regulation reads that courses that receive extra points all honor level courses in language arts World Language mathematics Science and History receive eight points French 4 and five and Spanish 4 and five also receive the additional eight points all advanced placement courses receive 10 extra points however
131there's nothing in the current regulation regarding business Visual and Performing Arts what the high school administration is recommending is that hold on the recommendation of the high school for class rang and weighted grades students in honors level classes receive eight points for calculations of class rank student in advancement places courses receive 10 points for calculations of class rank then finally the bus portion of the code of conduct was reviewed a discussion ensued as to the consequences issued at thee Elementary Middle School and High School levels parents can access the respective codes of conduct through the district website this concludes my report Miss Bora so um just to um piggyback and what um M Ratner were saying I first want to go back to the principal list so given what we understood after multiple discussions is
132that we've been doing it a certain way so if the policy now reflects that the students are not going to feel a change so only those that were getting 90 or over in every sub in every marking period will make the principal list it's the regulation I just want to correct you you said the policy uh resolution regulation regulation yes sorry the regulation is going to be changed to reflect what is being done and the students will not feel the change the other recommendation for the National Honor Society uh while I am in agreement that that does need to be tightened to uh challenge our students more and also you know the value of the the recognition should not get diluted we do need to make a change but I would like to um say
133that we should continue to um uh to acknowledge a weighted GPA so instead of an unweighted 90 I would suggest that we do a weighted higher than 90 which is which Dr Higgins could or Dr Layman Dr Chanley you could come up with a number that is weighted but higher because this is a change that we bringing and I do not want this change to impact students um and I'm speaking now as a mother of CH three children there is always even though the child has the ability to do it there is always an hesitation to go and do something that is more challenging and this could become an excuse to not do that so I've always had to push my children when they were taking trying to get out of a higher level class
134and I said no you capable of it just do it and now this increased and no no acknowledgement of weighted so they're going to the the the tendency the human tendency is going to be to back away from it so I would say that for the National Honor Society since we're bringing a change we raise the standard but we keep the the we we allow the students to use their weighted averages for it so when we when this goes for a second read for National Honors Society we should give away to for principal list I understand there's no change in processes so it's not going to impact our students but for this it is going to impact our students and the other thing that I wanted to speak about that we wanted to discuss in
135curriculum but we ran out of time and I believe there was some discussion policy but uh it didn't it didn't come to any conclusion Middle School Honor Society should also be part of the policy we should whatever is the process should be you know proposed by the administr aters and put in the regulation or uh you know the uh 5430 regulation or 544 whichever one I think 5440 talks about it because it's just a way of ensuring that tomorrow if that process changes the board is aware of it because it it will require a policy change so it it just it just gives us a little better oversight on these changes that are impacting student achievement um I'm not saying that the administration shouldn't change the requirements two years down the lane as per the
136need I'm just saying that if we put it in a regulation the administration when they're making the change they will bring it to the board and we will get to uh deliberate on it and you always take your recommendations we may argue but in the end it is we find what is the right solution for our students so I believe if it is if there is a process in place for honoring schools uh students in middle school for uh and you know awarding them an Junior Honor Society um award it should be part of our regulation so those were my comments thank you any Mr rner I I don't know if anyone else has questions I oh you're oh does anybody else have questions for policy okay go ahead Miss rner okay um so I
137have the uh legislative advocacy and Community engagement committee the committee met on March 12th Board of Education members present were myself Miss deine Dr peek Miss Sharma and Miss Fabiano administrators in attendance for Dr Chanley Dr Layman and Mr morala our first item on the agenda was a review of the recent and upcoming legislative items we first reviewed the agendas for the upcoming Senate and assembly education committees after this the committee worked on finalizing the revisions to our advocacy letter while we are all still in agreement that the funding formula must always be a concern that needs to be addressed based on feedback from the citizens advisor committee as well as our Administration the letter will now focus more on specific Appropriations that are needed in Monroe Mr moral do shared that he would finalize
138the revisions and update the letter on our advocacy page which I had just confirmed will be done shortly um we also discussed the New Jersey Schoolboard Association certification requirements njsba has two types of certifications individual and board in order to achieve the first level of board certification a board must complete 16 credits of group training which must be done within a 4-year span one full day retreat a policy wellness check submission of the most recently ratified teachers contract and completion of the teacher contract settlement survey completion of the njsba board self-evaluation compliance with mandatory training requirements for each current board member and satisfying the governance portion of the New Jersey Department of Education monitoring process which we believe is known as cusac um next we briefly discussed the school regionalization efficiency program grants the committee
139plans to reach out to the contacts who provide these programs to see if we can get a presentation on the books hopefully soon as the deadline for this grant is May 31st finally we went over the information for the budget hearings that are coming up in Trenton the assembly budget committee will be holding their hearings this Wednesday March 19th and next Tuesday March 25th which will do both take place in Trenton and the Senate budget committee will also have two hearings one in New York on March 20 Wednesday March 26th and another hearing on April 10th that will be held remotely for those who are unable to drive somewhere um the link maybe Pro of work or any other reason uh the link to register for these hearings um can be found on our MTSD
140advocacy page which you can find under District information on the homepage uh I know Miss Bora had shared that we were both um selected um when we submitted our application to um share our testimony this Wednesday um if anyone else um has applied just make sure you check your email because they send it from um an email address that you may not be aware of um is sending this information um and so I will look forward to reporting back on that the next meeting thank you Mr Ratner does anybody have any questions or comments for Kate no okay any other committees that would like to give a report Mr Pay yes on um Tuesday March 12th the citizens advisory committee met in attendance were myself Dr Chanley Dr Layman Mr moraldo board members Miss Ratner
141Miss um Fabiano and Miss Alvarez uh two of our students actually one of our students that sits up here and um we actually have three on the committee now and it's really nice to have them there and get their input from the student perspective and we did give her an assignment if if you can clarify that go back and explain uh get student involvement more with regarding the letter to the legislators and put it from a student perspective and we've also worked on the letter and one of the participants that night suggested that the letter was a little bit too busy which most of us were and for Mr Moralo he must have changed it about 10 times but she suggested to put in small graphs so that when they look at that letter and
142we highlighted Monroe they'll see how much money we have not gotten over the years compared to other districts and then also our uh student population growth so that is not um on the website yet but if you happen to go in a couple of days and look at it you can the legislator's names are there you can send that letter to them on behalf of Monroe and it will help to just keep sending and sending so they know that we have enough people in this town that really care about our district um Dr Layman spoke about advoc advocacy um that evening and um and also about the letter and we also have something on our website which everyone can go to and ask questions of board members and it's mtbo monroe. k12nj us and um
143if there's questions on that site we would be glad to answer them and as soon as possible as soon as we um receive them or when we can get the appropriate information to answer your questions um also I mentioned to the committee that we're looking for Partnerships and co-sponsors they knew anybody in the district and I know one of the women that was there went up to Mr moraldo afterwards and mentioned um a sponsorship or a partnership so he's working on that so if anybody in the community has any sponsorships or Partnerships with different uh organizations businesses and things that would help um the district and help the committee to bring more more income into the district so we can do more for the children it would be um really accepted by the committee and
144Mr Moralo who puts all that together and works very hard at it so thank you very much does anybody have any questions or comments for Mr Pay citizens advisory also did you talk about the bot on the website there's a so there is the the little oh guy bot thing in the corner I guess we can call it where if you are looking for something on the website but you can't find the link you can put in some keywords or ask it a question and they're working on it side on the page to the bottom you can check that and what does it say it's a little Falcon a little Falcon and then um you can go and check that and then go immediately put in what you want like schedule for uh Applegarth for
145March or April if you need that and you can go on and it'll come right up so each school is represented on that little Falcon in the right hand Falcon bot in the right hand corner it would be easier for everyone I mean not just parents but for people that live in the community to see what play is going on here um what you know what the robotics team did everything that was reported tonight people can see how well this district is running and how well the children are doing so a lot of new changes on our website Miss Ratner if I can just piggy back on what Miss deine was sharing um from what was told to us this is like an AI bot that will learn as we ask it questions so one
146of the things that I personally been trying to do instead of looking up the information where I might find it is typing that information in and that way if the information is not already being able to be provided by this the AI bot then it is sent to our technology department who will then um route this so that way in the future that information can then be found I I think Mr morala called that I have it right here AI chatbot so I want to make sure we have the right U presentation of the words and like M Ratner said you know if we don't have it from repetition of questions it should pop up right away so it's it's really fascinating so take a look at it when you spare time thank you okay
147um Mr P bdts uh building grounds and transportation we had our committee meeting on uh March 12th at 700 p.m. at the town high school media center president was myself uh Miss Fabiano Miss Ratner and Miss Bora uh staff was Dr Chanley Dr Layman Mr tag Mr Selby Mr morala and Dr Kevin Higgins we also had a guest Mr Raj Janda from right spot uh first off was the baseball booster donation the committee reviewed a list of items to be donated by the baseball boosters organization and they are appreciative of the group sep the board will recognize the group members at an upcoming public meeting our Scout second was the Scout Troop request for storage shed at milake and wiland School uh the committee notes that they support the organization maintaining the storage shed however
148uh we are working with central office administration to move all um events during the week instead of using the elementary schools we would be using the high school since we have security there till 10 p.m. so we're working on a schedule where uh instead of using the elementary schools at night uh groups would use the high school we talked about the middle middle school classroom trailer review Administration gave us an overview of the projected student population based upon demographic work ongoing by Dr Ross habber based on the decreased enrollment at the middle school administration's recommending and the committee supports not renewing the a classroom trailer lease for school year 2526 uh the first year savings will be near neutral as will save uh lease payments but pay to tear down and remove and removal costs
149however there will be savings for reduction of custodial staff and reassignment of a security staff member from the trailer uh next off we talked about the esep solar PPA uh pro project updates the committee reviewed the final resolution prepared by legal council for Award of the solar power purchase agreement which will be presented to the board at this meeting uh Administration also gave an overview of ongoing contract negotiations with Honeywell and indicate the negotiations are near complete and this contract should be available for tonight's meeting uh for approval we discussed a uh a bus app for students Mr Raj uh chonda president of right spot gave an overview of his students bus monra he's working with Mr morala on implementing a pilot program at mil Lake School the committee will receive an update in the
150future following the pilot program so they can consider whether or not to move forward to use the app they're supposed to start this program uh hopefully right after spring break and continue to the end of the school year and then we will review it and see if it if it's good for us uh we did we then spoke about the uh high school student parking lot Dr Higgins gave an overview of how the high school administration manages the St lot and the progressive discipline program that is in place for students who violate the terms of the parking agreement uh after that we went in a a closed meeting to speak about security uh overview with schools uh that's my report are there any questions for Mr Pi Miss Bora just a comment um Mr Pur
151mentioned about the trailers and that did help with some of the budget savings this year there were concerns in the public about the two trailers that will be removed if the if the class sizes are going to go up and I have been following up with the administration and I just want to share some numbers to put things in perspective in 2018 when the when the trailers were being put in um Middle School enrollment was 1687 students with a demographic projection at that time that it would exceed 1,800 students the preliminary projection for the next school year is 1555 students in middle school so that's significantly less than 2018 already and there is a de preliminary demographic projection that it would dip below 1500 students so um the there there is enough reasoning for us
152to take to take the action of removing the trailers without impacting our um Student Success um another comment that I had was on the a Community member corrected this uh after listening to the committee for a committee meeting video it was not the baseball booster club it was the mths booster club there's only one uh but yes this donation of the cage field was possible because of the baseball appearance uh we are very grateful uh you know this is going to definitely have a positive impact on the sport in in the school district thank you thank you Miss B are there any other questions or comments okay Miss Alvarez last one okay this one is not that long Personnel committee the Personnel committee met on Wednesday March 12th 2025 present at the meeting were Dr
153Chanley Dr Layman Mrs Fabiano Mr Pio and Mrs depan there were updates to several job descriptions which are on tonight's agenda for approval also for approval this evening there are contracts for the members of the mtsa and non-affiliates the business administrator and assistant superintendent contracts are also on the agenda for approval this evening this concludes my report any question questions or comments for Miss alz okay then we're going to move on to our next item which is our public forum for agenda items only any member of the public wishing to speak you have four minutes to do so please state your name and municipality for the record even everyone my name is Doug D the 653 spots with toown Road I'm here tonight to join the many who are also here and the many Woodland
154staff members who couldn't make it but feel the same way to support Dr L cheda for whatever reason she was on the board's agenda tonight regarding her employment a long long time ago I was in a position like I think she is in as a speech therapist at the high school I had a student who was a child of a Monroe board member it was my tenure year the board voted around on the table to approve giving me tenure this one board better said no that simple and very easy to give answer was almost a career altering moment for me and tonight I think the same for Dr CH we have all heard the rumors of why she is being discussed here personally as a resident father of a student in The District staff member
155and acquaintance of some of you I hope that is not true because an elected board should always act professionally for the greater good of all and put personal business business aside but we are here because of something my purpose for speaking tonight is that when that one board member said no to giving me tenure the superintendent looked at my supervisor and asked him what was going on he asked do you want this guy but with no more than a yes I'm here in Monroe now for my 25th year owing my entire career to that minute as a union member and a consultant for nja on the side it's not often I'm speaking to a school board about to advocate for an administrator but in 3 years of knowing and working with Dr cheda I feel
156it's important to stand up for what I know is right like something stood up for me or someone stood up for me when someone else was trying to wrong me for personal reasons while the discussions are taking place about her keep in mind that all you really need to know is that she's good for Woodland and Monroe and she fits the similar mold of all previous wood and principles that I have ever worked with she's good with the staff she understands the student body and the population of Monroe she's honest and professional and tonight for whatever it's worth she has my entire support as I hope she would from this board for whatever is going on here tonight I appreciate your time and Goby [applause] [cheering] do you want to go you want to go
157yes I thank you this is prash from 33 very disappointed that the principal list is not using normalized data what other districts say don't forget it do it right when you're running a track also the runners are normalized when they are running the same way I'll be looking at each Board of Education members how you all vote on it I request you all let us do best for our students AP cannot be compared with reg honors cannot be these are the students have to work hard to get that 90 I seen my son getting 77 okay so they work hard they come crying home when they get 77 in AP class so are you going to energize this there are going to be future engineers scientist administrator whatever politicians or what they're going to be
158there for our country so please normalize the data unless or until you show me there a guidelines from the new new Department of Education okay otherwise I'll tell you it will not be good now coming to the budget and today so many students received Awards and so proud of all of you and the school administration everyone that represents our students are doing the best they're going to national competition state competition and everywhere okay now coming to the budget lot of houses are being built for million dollars all rich people are moving in and if anyone says they cannot pay taxes our school systems have to be the best they deserve it okay and whever they are seniors with restricted income the state is giving money but all these rich people I request them they can
159give money for the school and I have the best school Equalization Aid we have to fight and you know the impact Fe on the builders we are to fight and we should get full day kindergarten in our here today in Monro Township because [clears throat] it's important if these milliones cannot pay taxes let them pay it okay so that is my request thank you for a good budget I'm not happy $48 per 100K so millionaires have can pay 480 that's okay they can deserve it but I will support best schools best education in mon thank you very much thank you [applause] make sure it's actually on Christina wacky Monro Township can you hear me good James Monroe once said in a representative Republic the education of our children must be of the utmost importance today
160in a town that bears his name we must reflect on the profound contributions of two remarkable leaders Dr cheda and Mrs Garcia whose unwavering dedication is shaping the future of our children as a parent of three children in this district and an educator who deeply values the transformative power of Education I have witnessed the extraordinary impact of these two principles Dr ched's meticulous attention to detail strategic leadership and steadfast commitment to fostering inclusive academic environments set an unparalleled standard her dedication is personal she knows every student by name and ensures each child feels seen and valued she does the same for her staff as well this is more than leadership it is an investment in every child's future Woodland Elementary School could not ask for a better leader [applause] Mr G has been Rel an
161advocate for Student Success at mil Lake from the very first day known for her Hands-On problem solving support for parents teachers and staff and an active participant in Student Activities she embodies what it means to put children first her presence strengthens the bond within the school community and reinforces a culture of care and Excellence their dedication goes beyond expectations these strong compassionate women lead with their hearts prioritizing children in every decision while simultaneously drawing from Deep Wells of experience and knowledge they are not just administrators they are champions of Student Success look at the data look at their evaluations look at student Improvement and growth scores they put children first isn't that what each of you as board members have taken an oath to do the tireless efforts of Dr cheda and Mrs Garcia Have
162Been instrumental in fostering a culture of inclusion and growth and their leadership is marked by Integrity courage and a commitment to Student Success again look at the data numbers don't lie you just presented a ton to us leadership is not easy and decisions are complex but it is vital to protect the individuals who have consistently prioritized the well-being of our students and our school Community not to penalize them Dr cheda and Mrs Garcia examplify the highest standards of educational leadership and as a parent and a former District employee brief that it was I have seen firsthand how their compassion dedication and vision Inspire progress and let's not forget who the true stakeholders are it's the Educators it is the parents and most importantly it is our kids every choice made here shapes the future of
163our community and we need to be champions of the leaders who embody trust integrity and dedication to Student Success and as board members you are meant to be the voice of the community so I urge you to listen to our voices read our emails listen to our voicemails look at the crowd we value both of these women they give us confidence and peace of mind when we send our children to school and seeing their names on the agenda tonight absolutely threatens that safety that we feel not renewing contracts would strip our schools of progress safety experience and excellence and I pray that you may the right decision this evening because our children's future depends on it and we hope you are both here for many years to come please do the right thing renew their
164contracts don't take them away from us do not punish our children our children deserve to have Champions and our children deserve Mrs Garcia and Dr ched thank you [cheering] [applause] good evening members of the board administrators fellow parents and teachers that are here my name is Tiffany Rivera and I am here tonight as a concerned parent and an advocate for exceptional leadership in our schools I am speaking on behalf of principles who have had a profound impact on my family and many others in this District my first grade son struggles with severe School anxiety it is school-based anxiety our lives have changed for 3 to 4 months a challenge like this that can make even the simplest school day feel overwhelming but thanks to the dedication compassion and unwavering support of Mrs Pamela Garcia my
165son has found a way to not just attend school but to grow and suc seed Mrs Garcia went above and beyond not because she had to but because she genuinely cares about the well-being of the students under her leadership as well as their families she took the time to understand my son's needs to implement strategies that made School a safe and welcoming place for him and to ensure that he felt heard and supported she worked closely with teachers counselors and even my family to create an environment where he could Thrive and I know my family is not alone in this there are countless stories from parents and students who have benefited from her leadership empathy and commitment to Excellence my sixth grade son was a former student in Woodland Elementary School he he has enjoyed
166his time there and have grown to be an excellent student and individual under Dr chatt Administration Dr cheda is committed to making Woodland Elementary School a place where students will learn grow and be prepared as they enter middle school she has done everything and will continue to give her very best to support each and every student in that school leaders like them are not just administrators they are mentors problem solvers and advocates for every child in the Monroe Township School losing principles of their caliber would be a a significant loss to our students staff and Community I urge you board members to not to reconsider the decision to not renew contract great leadership is rare and when we find it we must do everything to keep it please listen to the voices of the families
167they have touched and recognize the lasting impact they have had done on this school thank you [applause] good evening I want wanted to come up and speak and express my unwavering support for Dr cheda and her continued leadership at Woodland Elementary School as a teacher at Woodland for over 25 years I have had the privilege of working closely with numerous administrators during my tenure Dr Layman being one of them and I must admit Dr cheda is by far one of the best I have witnessed firsthand Dr ched's dedication effectiv and positive impact on our school Community Dr cheda has consistently demonstrated exceptional leadership in several key areas first her commitment to fostering a positive and supportive learning environment is evident in her daily interactions with students staff and parents she is always approachable responsive and
168genuinely invested in the wellbeing of everyone within our school community in addition Dr has been instrumental in implementing and supporting Innovative educational initiatives that have significantly benefited our students for example the implementation of our new literacy program has led to noticeable Improvement in student reading scores in addition she has spearheaded wonderful activities from the team and Avid team at Woodland her ability to identify and address the evolving needs of our student population is truly commendable Dr cheda has consistently demonstrated strong administrative skills she's organized efficient and transparent in her decision-making processes she maintains open lines of communication with staff providing regular updates and actively seeking out our input this collaborative approach has fostered a sense of unity and shared purpose among our faculty furthermore Dr ched has been a strong advocate for teachers provid providing
169us with the resources and support we need to excel in our roles she's always willing to listen to our concerns and work collaboratively to find solutions for instance her support in providing professional development opportunities have allowed ours St to enhance their teaching skills in a time of numerous challenges facing educator Educators Dr cheda steady leadership has been invaluable she has navigated these challenges with great and resilience always prioritizing the best interests of our students I believe that Dr cheda is an exceptional leader who has had a significant and positive impact on W's SCH her dedication her vision and collaborative Spirit are essential to our continued success therefore I strongly urge the Board of Education tonight to continue their support of Dr cheda and her [clears throat] future here in mon Ro Township [applause] [applause] hi
170Su huchi Lakewood New Jersey and I teach at mil Lake School I share this letter on behalf of the third grade team at mil Lake the third grade team at M Lake School has respect and gratitude for our principal Mrs Garcia her energy creativity and enthusiasm for education has added positivity and F to the learning environment at mil Lake and boosted staff morale as an administrator Mrs Garcia is approachable caring and helpful she has made mil Lake a more invited place with inspirational sayings colorful displays Etc on a regular basis she goes above and beyond in her efforts to be kind to the staff with special treats and activities she is empathetic to staff members who have had to cope with ag parents and sick family members Mrs Garcia is supportive of the staff in
171their efforts to better meet the needs of the students whenever we've asked for additional trainings resources and or collaboration time she has been an advocate for us making midle Lake great is at the core of Mrs Garcia's vision and actions inclusivity and kindness are at the heart of the activities that she plans for the students and staff she is visible in our school by participating in all of the school's activities and visiting our classrooms it is evident when Mrs Garcia Pops in that the students has made a connection and bonded with their principal the staff and students are very lucky to have Mrs Garcia as the principal at mil Lake School we hope that she has given the opport Unity to continue her leadership and vision for many years to come thank you [cheering] [applause]
172terce I want to share with you tonight an experience that I had with Miss Garcia early this school year my grandson who was entering in first grade became very anxious suddenly about going to school his first three days were great he couldn't say enough or share enough with us but then all of a sudden he did not even want to enter the school grounds let alone the school building Miss gcia intervened and I cannot tell you the lengths that this woman went to and getting his child into the classroom I am sure that if it had not been for her stamina and determination this child would be being homeschooled as we speak not only did her deter ation prevailed but her compassion communication skills knowledge of children her ability to assess and deal with an
173everyday changing situation shown through she truly exhibited an understanding and pulled out every trick and skill that she had learned and assured us that he would be fine even though we had our doubts Miss Garcia could not have been more sensitive to my grandson and his family through her kindness understanding she bed our respect and we knew that she knew what she was doing we are so grateful that Miss Barcia did not give up on her child her stamina was Exemplar she wore out my grandson he did not wear her out Not only was she kind to my grandson but every morning she was outside the school door reading and interacting with all of the children as they entered the school do you have any idea how awesome it is to see someone who works
174with our young children creates such a nurturing and caring experience for them you would have to see it to believe it so many times our Educators get a bad rap and sometimes it is deserved and maybe even misunderstood but in the case of mgarcia she could not have extended herself any more than she did for my grandson he has developed a very good relationship and Trust for her and speaks of her often so you see she knew full well that it would take what it would take to get him in that school and into the classroom and she was successful Miss G is an asset to longroad Township School District and represents it well she is deserving of our utmost respect thank you [applause] I'm a little tall it's nice to see so many familiar
175faces and that's because I've been here since before you get the hook out I'm still good and I'm here to talk about Mrs Garcia because she's great being here since 1984 you can imagine how many administrators I have reported to I would not be standing here for many of them and that's the truth don't wish anybody not to have their contract renewed but I would not be standing in front of the Board of Education as a teacher to advocate for my principal if I didn't believe in her she believes in us I was close to retirement I wasn't that happy anymore she changed everything she makes me happy every day whether you like it or not she's happy every day even if your back hurts and you're having an off day she is like a
176cheerleader for staff and stent students I hope you were watching before when she went over to help the mom with the children she does that when no one is looking and that is the definition of good character isn't it when you do the right thing when nobody's even looking she's on the floor all the time she has the patience of a saint I don't know how she does it I've watched a lot of principles do it but she does it very well she's colorful in her personality in the school with the children and I'm there enjoying my job and when I enjoy my job and they enjoy their jobs the children enjoy their school day [applause] my granddaughters will be going to M school I moved an hour away they moved to Monroe 2 years
177from now I want Mrs Garcia to be the Principal there because I'm sure and I'm saying this from my heart we have teachers that are great maybe some teachers not as great as others Mrs Garcia brings out the best in every teacher that's what I want for my grandchildren so please when you make decisions that I don't understand and I have the utmost respect for you please consider how we feel as her employees we like it there we didn't like it there that much a few years ago and that's the truth thank you for the consideration [applause] uh I'm very impressed with uh the teachers and the parents and grandparents who have spoken up tonight I wasn't expecting this but I can tell you that I was in education for over 41 years as a
178teacher a supervisor and a high school principal and I've attended many many board meetings and this is one of the few board meetings where I've heard so many teachers Speak Up In Praise of their principles so I hope the board [applause] I hope the board open mind to what they have said I'm going to change the uh tone of the meeting because I want to address some items on the agenda which I found a little confusing and I think your answers to this might be enlightening to the public under your personnel items MN and O and this may refer to these these principles I don't know but you are placing employees on paid administrative leave three employees are being placed on paid administrative lead for the remainder of the year can you disclose disclose the
179reasons excuse me the reasons without discussing the particular individuals item v under Personnel you have you're listing uh many principal supervisors and directors and they are their salaries are there plus longevity I'm curious as to what the rationale is for giving those people longevity when they are not capped the way they are on a teacher's pay scale with the teacher's guide so if you could shed some light on white uh directors principles Etc are given a longevity uh I think that would be appreciated item z uh you have one one person listed as a replacement for a teacher and being placed on a salary guide and yet you have a second person also replacing a teacher but they're being uh placed on a perdum rate uh that that I found a little confusing item AE
180I'm confused because uh why is the assistant superintendent making that recommendation instead of the superintendent uh some explanations of that of of that would be beneficial under board action item n you're approving several clubs two of them is is the Hindu uh the Hindu uh Student Association and the other is a Copic Club both of those clubs have a a religious connotation my my concern is what are the guidelines uh in reference to those clubs and there is the organizational chart is being approved tonight but the organizational chart was not part was not visible on the on the uh agenda itself so it's not clear what the changes are if any uh and under the Ba's report the business administrator's report there is a settlement and item G there's a settlement being made what is
181the nature of that settlement if that can be disclosed to the public and finally item L where is the there's a piece of property that you're transfering to the township for a dollar I'd like to know where is that property um and why is it being transferred what's the reason and how large is that property as I said these are very mundane concerns compared to what these other people in the public have spoken of but i' would appreciate answers to that sometime this evening thank you sure Dr tany do you want to I didn't write that down we'll see how good'll see I think I wrote most of them but see how good my mind is regarding the Personnel unfortunately and that is personnel and at this time even with utilizing uh no names I
182would not be able to disclose the reasons why those people are put on administrative leave I apologize but that's just a fact under a Personnel the second thing is under longevity longevity is something that's given to the staff mtea as well as given to the administrators it's part of their contract um the rationale might be hoping people stay I don't know but um it's contractual it has always been contractual so when something's contractual it's there well well then I would suggest that the next time that there the uh contract for those people is negotiated that you consider removing longevity because those people they're annually given raises I don't see the point of longevity I can see it with the teachers because they reach Step 11 or step 12 whatever it is and then they remain
183there even though they're getting increases the longevity makes some sense it does not make sense in my mind for these others well I appreciate your input thank you next question um letter z um the pro with her the teacher with salary and the other ones oh um salary the way it works we can't put a a teacher on step and guide if they're going to only be approved for less than 40 days so then because they might have a teacher certificate don't quote me but I want to say it's like 2456 $246 so that's why there's a difference there that was the three boxes um AE why is it under the assistant superintendent um so we're still waiting because we might have to go out for an opinion to the ex ethics board there um
184and there an abundance of question our no disrespect to you Miss Blackburn but our primary attorney has stated that anyone who oversees Mr Chanley because he's married to me Dr Chanley would then be approved through the assistant superintendent we don't know if that's really necessary but in an abundance of question it's something that we started doing so that is why you see it separated out the clubs oh the clubs so the clubs um and and I'll speak to this and um because I I wouldn't want to put dror on the spot but there is it is very appropriate as per the guidelines to allow a club whether it be cultural or religious to occur within the school the club is not centered around people coming in and praying the purpose of the club and I
185mean disrespect but the purpose of the club is to allow people of all different Faith because you do not have to be that Faith to be part of the club to have an understanding of the values of either that religion or that culture and that's what makes it a club so it's not that we're forming a religious Club where people are coming to pray because we believe in separation of church and state but it allows people of all different states to join that club and have an understanding of the basis of that religion have an understanding of the basis of the cultures um the legal the transfer of the land I'm going to allow Miss Allen or I don't know Miss transfer the land I mean I basically can tell you what transfer the land
186is and then yeah I mean I mean the location of the land is right across the street from the board office behind the fire so there's a a track of lands as far as the size I'm not sure of it someone else will answer that there's a track of land around directly across from the board office which is part of the uh the back part of the fire department the fire department cannot get their permanent Co CFO signtific of occupancy because they need to be able to you say that that land is part of their facility in order to pull the trucks out through the back so we had a meeting and it was requested um and it was confirmed to the attorneys that um this piece of land that was originally given to the
187district and I know Mr T is here so I'm trying to channel Mr T when it was evaluated whether or not that piece of land could be utilized for any of our facilities we found that the issues that it would bring us would be more costly than it would be um beneficial for us to use it to build on and therefore it doesn't have any benefit to us and that is why we're comfortable in giving it back doc Mr T did I do good okay um as far as the actual size of the land I'm not that good I [clears throat] yeah I don't that I don't know either um and then the last one was the legal settlement the legal settl I'm going to I'm going to acquest to our attorney we are in
188the process we actually have confirmed a legal sett settlement um and I don't know if we're allowed to disclose what that is I don't know either I would simply say that it is to um address a commissioner's decision so I'm that wasn't a commissioner's decision that was a different settlement I'm not their president yeah one I thought it was so there was a legal settlement that um I I the one statement I will make comes from the 70s which makes me very happy that I am not involved um comes from the 70s in which um we came to a decision financially what would be what monies would be compensated to the individuals that were the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is that enough information and it wasn't covered under the and it wasn't covered under it
189wasn't covered under insurance at the time and none of us were I was a little girl I don't think you were so none of us were available to to comment on the specificity of that particular lawsuit all right thank you you're very welcome I think we got everything thank thank you for being my my [laughter] that's okay good evening paulio 40 Avenue H thank you for hearing me Dr Chanley members of the board administrators friends as I said my name is Paula DeBlasio I've been a teacher at mil Lake School uh since September of 2009 I've also been a resident in Monroe for 25 years now uh the majority of my tenure at mil lake has been as a teacher of the preschool integrated program I have the great privilege of teaching our youngest in
190District and what a joy my days are I'm writing to express my strong support for the approval of Mrs Garcia's contract as principal of middle Lake School I've had the priv privilege of observing her dedication Effectiveness firsthand and I believe her continued leadership is crucial for the success of all of our students at no Lake School Mrs Garcia is an exceptional leader who consistently demonstrates a deep commitment to the well-being and academic growth of all of our students she Fosters a positive and inclusive learning environment where every child feels valued and supported Mrs Garcia's Mrs Garcia's leadership is characterized by her dedication to both students and staff she's a collaborative and supportive leader who embod embodies teachers empowers teachers excuse me to excel in their roles her dedication to creating a happy engaging atmosphere is
191evident in the vibrant energy that Perman permeates M Lake School as my colleague Denise said she is an energy that you need to grab hold of and go as a teacher of the preschool special education students I have had the opportunity to witness Mrs Garcia's interactions with our youngest Learners she takes the time to connect with all of them on a personal level creating a sense of comfort and belonging my students genuinely enjoy her visits to our classroom and her presence always brings smiles and positive energy furthermore Mrs Garcia is a strong advocate for early childhood education and the unique needs of our youngest students she understands the importance of providing a solid foundation for their future academic success uccess and she consistently Champions their needs within our district her unwavering support for inclusive practices
192ensures that all children regardless of their abilities have access to high quality education Mrs Garcia's commitment to professional development and open communication creates a positive and productive work environment in conclusion I wholeheartedly recommend the approval of pamelo Garcia's contract our dedication compassion and unwavering commitment to our students makes her [snorts] an invaluable asset to mil mil Lake School and our district I am confident that our continued leadership will ensure the continued success and growth of all of our students I thank you for your time [applause] uh good evening sabito mon Township I'm the leader of the special education parent Advisory Group which is a state mandated group and I wanted to come and speak in favor of Mrs Garcia and Dr cheda I've long advocated for about a decade for special education in this district
193and we've come a very long way I will say that these two administrators are incredibly inclusive fostering an inclusive environment also providing equity for all of our students which is something that was lacking um for a long time in this district and I'm a little perplexed to see that that this this is even an issue it's such a difficult time in education to get quality Educators that really care about our students so I'm imploring each one of you really consider your vote um I think it's time to make this board of education about students and staff not about personal vendettas and about nonsense and just like a little note to self some of you sitting up there if you could look a little bit interested when the public is up here speaking that would probably
194be in your favor the board of education does report to the residents um so I'm just saying and I really I I want to thank you both because you've done an incredible job in both of those schools like I said I've been advocating for special education for over a decade and it's wonderful to see the work that you're doing providing Equity supporting the teachers holding teachers accountable so thank you both and I really hope all of you think about your vote [applause] good evening all this is Sita GOI talking about principal's list and any other kind of people honoring it would be fair to take ad uh weighted averages otherwise it will be demeaning to the students to take challenging courses that take challenging courses I do agree with gazala where you can raise the
195bar and use weighted averages like 92 or 93 and up for example principal list is a recognition and an accomplishment if you don't take rigor into account School itself might end up encouraging students to take more regular classes I hear that other schools around us following same current criteria why can't we be the first school doing the right thing encouraging the regard students in Honors Academy Take 6 Plus APS in a year which proves that they are pushing themselves as hard as they can just because one class they got 80 plus don't forget this is equivalent to 90 Plus in regard they don't get into principal's list but a student who takes all normal classes gets into principal list what is school learning from this think about it also I also want to talk about
196the district calendar and start date for the school year I feel that we should revisit school start date keeping in mind that the number of students taking AP classes is growing every year currently students have less than 7 months to prepare for a exam before April April being when uh AP exams start there is hardly any time to prepare for the exams in some cases they may not even have time to cover the syllabus in the class the schools in Chicago and Atlanta and some other states start in early August this gives students a whole uh extra one month and gives advantage in getting better grades in a exams some school schools in NJ recently switched and switching from September to August start dat for these same reasons if our school district can move to
197August start this can cover uh this can give our students extra month to cover the syllabus and prepare for the AP exam an extra month is is a lot of time to prepare for AP exam and help boost their GPA at school and also contribute to better grades in a exams also this may encourage more students to take AP exams too hope all hope all of you consider this fact and make decisions accordingly when you are when you are uh doing this uh District calendar this year thank you allk9 [applause] Nathaniel Street okay well um I I don't know what's going on I hope it is personal vandetta that's happening here but I appraise the the teachers the parents and everybody who's come here so I think uh based on public participation which I'm a
198big fan of you might really want to consider what's going on with your vote so I congratulations [applause] and and anytime you get that percentage of Goodwill from people I think it should be considered as as honor is true and um do the [clears throat] right thing okay uh this and I hate to always come up here and complain but I'm going to the size of the [laughter] it's my apparently I was born for this um the size of the presentation F you couldn't breathe oh it was really a disgrace because we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars that that the public should be able to view we we we we couldn't see it there wasn't enough documentation to go through and it's just not fair I mean goodness knows you're asking us
199to pay what no I'm agreeing with you I'm saying it's not a problem we hearing this we can make it much big a problem because you went through the you went through the presentation that was we couldn't see it so what kind of presentation is that how do we assess what's going on you're asking the public to pay every month more money we should be respected we should know what the the details are and we should know how to um you know move forward maybe you should have the presentation again at the hearing the full presentation and I hope it is on the website now is it on the is it going to be on the website the whole yeso it should be on it should go on the second will there be a closed
200session again tonight no there's no other session okay and uh can you give me an idea of what the average teacher salary is in monre I can't do now I come on we have a business administrator here can we throw out a number maybe these guys can tell you okay here's my point my point is there's always been some controversy about uh administrative salaries and I can tell from here that they're very fond of Administrators and I'm happy that the administrators are getting high salaries but though the administrators are at least two times or three times the salaries of our teachers so we need to start considering that now I was in to be fair transpar [laughter] I was in negotiations with the teachers when I was a board member I have come to the
201conclusion that we really are not paying our teachers well enough especially when you see 50 125,000 almost 200,000 for administrators and non-affiliated staffs for God's sakes let's again respect our teachers a little bit more can I make a comment about that is she [applause] because the Board of Education approves the salary recommendations they don't set the salaries and there's always been a controversy about being topheavy on administrated salaries I don't need to comment right now I have one more thing um and going uh and there seems to be in this and you know when I was on the board as well there are people who use their personal issues personal vendettas um against parents against the public against staff it's really this has been going on for decades it's not right people should be judged
202on their merits on the quality and please vote properly [applause] good evening Dr James Higgins principal of M Township Middle School president of the monal township supervisors and administrators Association that represents 29 of your school leaders as an administrator in the district since 2009 I have been witnessed to our system of evaluations and reappointment of principles through six superintendents and several iterations of the board the system works as a powerful tool to identify through superintendent evaluation and recommendations strong School leaders Dr cheda and Miss Garcia have been identified as excuse me school leaders through the process and has been in place many years while respect board role in oversight these two administrators have been given no prior indication or concerns now [clears throat] about their leadership and receive highly effective evaluations during their time in
203R Township School District we ask that you vote in the affirmative for Dr Chan's recommendations tonight thank you [applause] hi R Township um first and foremost I do hope you listen to our community and their heart folk words for Dr cheda and Mrs Garcia um I think you all know it's rare to have so many folks here at a board meeting um it it says something it it speaks volumes um and me personally I I heard nothing but great things about these two amazing leaders so I do really hope you um you make your vote count and and you think about these hard words that these great people have spoken um I do have some questions on the budget I'm going to apologize and say that my list is long so K you might want
204to start um okay so here are my questions um the revenue from Falcon care went down from 400,000 to 275,000 I'd like to understand why um my other question is about grants I so it went down 32% um do we take advantage of every Grant possible is there someone that regularly monitors the grants I know during covid we took advantage of a ton um I just hope there's someone in place that regularly monitors what's possible obviously a student brought up something that we could have done um I just hope this is something that we regularly do so that's another question of mine uh Dr Chanley you mentioned no programs being removed um while I understand that are there any programs being scaled down um and are there any programs being added right so that's another
205question I have um do we take advantage of every oh sorry I said I said that question right um the salaries went down from 1.59 million to 1. 1422 million for the regular program instruction so does that mean we're reducing the number of Staff or can you provide more insight there um I was curious as to what other object meant it's a very non-descriptive term uh from 36,000 to 80,000 if you can explain that that'd be great um can you explain the unused vacation pay which has been zeroed out at every turn um for this year compared to last year is the Honeywell project incorporated into this budget if so can you explain where um and then within student transportation services I noticed that uh contracted services for regular students went from my handwritings awful
2069.90 to 782 um and the lease purchase payments went from 2.29 to 1.65 um and this is what I could analyze while I'm sitting here for 30 minutes during the presentation um in the future it would be appreciated if it was posted in advance so we could do a little bit of analysis and come prepared with questions so that's just my feedback here but thank you okay [applause] so your first question was about Falcon care and the decrease in Revenue 475 so that's not really um the revenue it's what we are transferring from the profit from Falcon care and ECE into the budget so they might the profit might be more that's not necessarily The Profit just the amount we're going to take in we're being very conservative with that amount because um we don't
207know how the year is going to go okay okay if this Revenue that's why it it is a revenue into the general fund because we're taking we're transferring it from Falcon care into the general fund so it's considered a revenue Source in the general fund okay your next question was grants grants so we did mention that before um we only we budget 85% of the grant award so whatever we got this year awarded to us 85% would [clears throat] be budgeted for next year um there's also additionally in this year we have carryovers from prior year so that that's why it's a higher amount this year we don't budget for carryovers I can a question about the person yes may I ask why though you're budgeting 32% less this year than last year it's it's
208really not 32 be this year we have carryovers from the prior years okay as well as new Grant Awards the only amount that we're going to budget for next year is based on the new Grant Awards we don't know that we'll be carrying anything over okay um oh did you we have an individuals so um and and they work in compilation so we have uh Miss chrisy who is our director here resources who had came who had come to us before I was superintendent and I found that she had a lot of Grant experience for many many years in cette in her previous District so she takes advantage um constantly going online I send her a lot of stuff I find it's really people trying to sell stuff but I I you never know so
209I just voted everything and she works in compilation with Mr T who for those of you that have been here for many many years know that he takes advantage of every single available grant that you could ever find so we do have people consistently looking to make sure that money that's out there that we can get awarded we try for it thank you programs being scaled down or added no as far as programs being added there are some programs that you'll see through the summer programs through the before school um you know summer of stem or spring of stem or whatever the terminology is we have different activities that we do like I said some of it is fee based to our parents but we have scaled down no programs um salary decrease in salaries
210oh that's talking about the positions well I don't know if you mean no it's in regular program instruction there's like different breakouts and in regular that because Reon is that related to staff because then I can speak on that but it's oh okay so what we did was as people retire and they notify us that they're retiring as we take this I use the word audit as we take a staff audit looking at the programs that we have the grades that we have teams that we have what we need to sustain an appropriate we try to be very consistent with our um class size that is why we were able to save that amount of money um other objects other objects yeah that is actually a um you know the state account name for this
211we didn't make it up so that for this budget line um and it's just uh certain miscellaneous things it could be membership dues it could be um you know just things that don't fall into the other categories is there a reason it went down so much which one are you looking at exactly the um 306,000 to 80,000 which Pro which Pro what line item or which category because there's I don't know I mean I can I can look it up and and email you but I know it's in the that three page document that was given out okay um under General funds under General funds regular program first one first one books EMA text books or which is that what you mean regular program instruction regular regular program construction that's page one at the top
212900 it's 8,500 compared to 9,000 yes other objects I know that's not the one she's talking appears in many um accounts so I don't know which one you're referring to I'll send an email don't worry okay and then you asked if honey well was included in the budget for next year yes no before that my question was about uned vacation pay yes oh I missed that one so um for the for this current year um you know a lot of people have retired and that is their payout so we don't budget anything for next year because we don't we don't know if somebody's going to retire if we knew we could do it but we don't know so we can't budget anything for 25 26 but we did have a lot of retirements this year
213that there were payouts but there's going to be retirements every year correct so shouldn't we budget for them like we don't know who's retiring if they're going to get a payout so dep it's depends on who retires if they're entitled [clears throat] to a payout understood it's something that happens any we cannot no we I mean we can't just throw something in the budget that we don't know it would depend on who's retiring and how much time they have ACR so I guess the amount would vary depending on how much time they have oh we said yes it was included in the budget uh can you specify where oh well honey Actually honey well it's not included in the budget because we haven't started the program yet um it's going to be instituted by next
214year right yes well we won't have payments until the following school year so there will be nothing in 25 26 it will start in I think September 26 it would be the following school year that there'll be payments student transportation services contracted service and leas purchas payment yeah and we talked about that because we did um we are our transportation director is revamping the program where she's trying to bring in back some of those contractor [clears throat] Roots back in house so that's why there's a difference in the um amounts of contracted Services between two years um and there'll also be more salaries next year because she'll have to hire some more bus drivers thank you and I'd like to thank you all I know this is a lot of work um and so it
215does not go unnoticed um so really would like to thank you to work on this and answering all the questions I appreciate it thank you hi Pam Garcia M principal right now [applause] I want to um say thank you for hearing everybody and and listening to us and from Dr ched and myself we thank our staff for coming out so I'm going to trust you because you're going to make the right decision and because you do what's right your children I have to send my staff home because they have to get up with your children tomorrow morning in a few hours and and it's not right you have done amazing thank you I trust you they'll do the right thing please [applause] [cheering] I want to say one thing um because I feel like I
216know each of you somehow whether you're a teacher or whether I work with your daughter or whether you've been you know to my building for the rock um Garden when we first set it up and um rarely do you get to be in this position and it's not a good one I'm not going to lie but to hear the amazing things that people say about you before you're dead or your retire um and and I and so if there's a silver lining that is it if if this year is my last year which I will I will be very sad because when you're lucky enough to find the job that you love so much and the children and the staff I mean who would love this you want it to go on and I I
217I'm relatively young I have some good years left in me and um but if if this is it I respect what's going on um but I got to hear a lot of really positivity and I know that I have not done something wrong and that um that I'm getting my best [applause] [cheering] I want to thank you boy that hired me because it's been a privilege and I and I I say thank you and I know Dr cheda wants us all to go home too as well and she wants to say Thank you so could you just tired thank you [applause] [applause] good evening uh chrisy scurby mroe I want to comment on um the fact that you had a preliminary budget hearing but you did not have a public forum for it we've never
218done that in Monroe here every single year I there for the last 2 hours thr for every agenda every time the preliminary agenda was given to the public there was a time or minutes dedicated to questions from the public it's really not okay this was not a hearing it's a preliminary budget hearing no this is not a hearing this was the presentation this was the preliminary budget presentation you can finish you can go back in every single agenda and I'll send you an email with screenshots from the preliminary agenda meeting where budget meeting where there was a public for it's been going on for decades um I do want to ask a couple questions about the budget um one Dr Chanley you mentioned about or the previous speaker asked about staff Cuts can you tell
219us where staff is being not renewed what buildings and how many at this juncture we aren't able because it's Personnel to disclose the specific staff because what we're doing is we're very fortunate that many of our staff will be moved around so if we just for example in one particular grade no longer have the need let's say for five teachers those five teachers won't necessarily un unless we don't want to renew them which could happen um will not necessarily be not will not be here next year they could be allocated based on certification to an elementary position it can be allocated to the high school we have many teachers with dual certification special education regular education um and our staff is not being reapproved until May so at this time I cannot give you specifics
220of those positions okay well it looks pretty significant from the budget numbers that are presented um and just on our principles I I'd like to say as board members you take an oath that ends with this quote and that I will faithfully impartially and justly perform all the duties of that office according to the best of my ability end quote tonight as you vote remember that you took an oath to leave your personal opinions at the door you are here as board members not as a parent not as a community member you are or a board of education member who must impartially and justly cast a vote on the recommendations of the superintendent to renew two principles who have been serving in our school district for years now two principles who are beloved by their
221students their parents staff and Community remember rumors are not facts and should not weigh into your decision if you cast a no Vote or choose to be a coward and abstain you are not only firing two beloved princip but you are also saying that you do not trust the District administration because that is their recommendation for the Personnel that they want to run those schools a board member does not have to vote Yes to every recommendation but a board member must have a solid reason for why they are casting a vote against the recommendation of the superintendent because you can be sure you will cause lawsuits to be filed against this district is that how you want to be remembered is that what you want your legacy on the board to be destroying careers and
222ruining lives vote for what is right for our kids for our community and our schools I ask you to please approve all of the staff on the agenda tonight thank you [applause] [applause] good evening George Gman 5 C my R I don't know if old medicine kicking in but I'm a little overwhelmed um I have some confusion about uh the um Falcon care uh business that on the staff count there are 10 full-time and part-time people how many children are in rolled if someone could tell me um or do you want me to just keep going and you're going to remember God bless um I'm writing go ahead okay it's all good um and and I'm trying to rationalize that with the transfer of funds and an earlier statement that it lost money last year
223how do you transfer a loss and come up with surplus funds that somehow confused me but that may be the cold um I can find in the transfers in the income but on schedule B under the Appropriations I don't fun find where Falcon care uh where all those staff people are budgeted I don't find that line item uh that's fine print and maybe that's I maybe I just missed it the earlier statement about the presentation what's up on the screen was not readable from the audience and that's the part that we need to have improved so either the the the font that's being used or the projection itself might fill the screen so we'll be able to see that alternatively it would be really nice if it was included in the handout or even better
224available ahead of time online so we' have time to review it budget stuff is hard for all of us it's not unique to you um the the hobby horse of mine is one that uh would I was reminded of in the meeting here by staff and and the board that we don't have fulltime kindergarten in Monroe and when we're talking about having reductions of a couple hundred students and we're talking about giving up uh some of the temporary uh space for one thing or another and maybe even if when we're talking about uh are we going to continue to lose money on Falcon care part of what I would view in the first statement of our objectives of of uh learning standards and our concerns about not being adequate but being above adequate that full
225full day kindergarten in Monro Township should be one of those goals and it hasn't been mentioned tonight thank you [applause] um the Falcon care children I think it was all kind of together FAL trans unlean I'm going to just Define for you so we have Falcon care and when we have early childhood education the Falcon care is before and after care that assists parents used to be called wraparound many years ago here in Monroe wrap around program which allows the children have somewhere to go before school starts and somewhere to go after that is what loses money early childhood education which is ECE and I know you don't like acronyms early childhood education is the program that compensates and I will talk on KAG that compensates the second half or the beginning half of the
226school day for those parents that want to pay for it to allow you to have the concept of full day kindergarten that when the money is transferred it is because we are fortunate that our early childhood education makes money and our Falcon care was losing money so that was the transfer funds that you saw without me knowing exactly how many employees in front of me I will let you know that the way it works is depending upon the need whether it be half day in the morning or half day in the afternoon whether the before care or after care that is why you have part-time employees there are literally some teach teachers that work for either Falcon care or early childhood education program that literally will come in 9 to 11 1 to 3 12
227to2 literally so that's why you'll see so many part- timers that's exactly how it works and the schedule is written by our director of those two programs so I think I answered those questions uh to say where it is in the budget where it is in the budget yeah okay so Falcon oh she'll tell you Falcon care is considered it's not um part of the budget it's not um it's an Enterprise fund it's not considered the general fund or the special Revenue fund or The Debt Service it's not required to be in the budget so that's why you don't see it on here as salaries going out that's why we're transferring money from that fund into the general fund and that's a source of Revenue I understand the point it makes no sense however that
228the school is paying and it's not in the budget because it pay it's not supposed to be in the budget it pays salaries from its own Enterprise so its own organization it's it's not like um I'm trying to see how I would it's tuition yeah tuition based tuition based does it pay rent Falcon no no no so it gets the space for free and yet it's a separate Ed I'm going to assume Miss Allen you do it legally and correctly the way it's supposed to be done yes it's not I was going the board meetings when Falcon ter started and that's not how it was described then that's maybe how what it's become but nevertheless my objective in that is not to diminish Falcon care or the GCE it's to see if we can find
229some way to have full okay so let me let you know that the reason why was not discuss because it is not going to be placed in this budget but we have already worked we have very preliminary plans of how we're going to implement kindergarten for September of 2026 our goal is to try to implement a f day kindergarten program with the least amount of cost to the taxpayers so when you do that you start looking at you do a referendum that's the most course that takes time trailers for housing temporary classroom units the TCU units that's another cost salaries so what we've started to do is we started just like we do with staff allocation and auditing we started to audit and look at classroom usage in all of the buildings the reason why
230we haven't shared it yet is because we don't want to share anything without having definitive plans and the first thing that we need to do which is going to happen on April 30th is our presentation at the bg& meeting to discuss the demographer final report once we have those final numbers and we've started to have the conversation about what that looks like for us we are starting to implement a program excuse me a plan to to move forward it is my goal as the superintendent along with the assistant superintendent and our business administrator to have full day kindergarten it is goal September 2026 the key is how little we can put the responsibility on the taxpayer and that is what we're currently working on right now I answer question I think so well we don't
231have it yet but finish yes absolutely hi um my name is Kelly and I am the President of the Woodland and M PTO and this is the rest of our board um [applause] nervous that we had to come out and support our um our principles um both of these dedicated leaders have shown exceptional commitment to our students faculty and the entire School Community as a parent and active U member of the school Community I have seen firsthand their passion for creating a positive inclus incl inclusive and educationally enriching environment for our children Mrs Garcia's leadership at malake has fostered a sense of collaboration inclusion and growth she has worked tirelessly to ensure the students needs are being met and has been instrumental in fostering our thriving relationships with parents and staff alone Dr ched's leadership
232at Woodland has been equally impactful her efforts to engage the student Community improve student outcom and create nurturing learning atmosphere are deeply appreciated both principles have been tremendous assets to their respective schools and it is clear that they are highly regarded by staff students and parents I strongly believe that their leadership has been vital to the success of our schools and their potential removal would be a significant loss to us as someone who has had the privilege of working closely with both Mrs Garcia and Dr cheda I can confidently say that what they that they have worked diligently to create a positive and productive education experience for our children their commitment to our community is unmatched and their leadership deserves to be recognized and continued we respectfully ask the Board of Ed um to consider
233these points when making any decisions regarding the future of Mrs Garcia and Dr cheda both are highly capable and dedicated individuals who have demonstrated the qualities we want in our school years I hope that their contracts will be renewed and they will continue to support and serve our schools to also mention both schools have gone through multiple admin positions over the years which in my opinion is a disservice to both our staff and our students thank you for the time and consideration [applause] are there any other members of the public who are wishing to speak okay seeing none then we'll move on in the agenda where our next item is Fabiano could you just make sure that Mr zner on he was having an issue before and I wanted to see if tech cleared it
234up I am here he can hear you okay [laughter] okay um the assistant superintendent report thank you so to make it brief and typically my role is to highlight the achievements Athletics uh Arts academic achievements of our students well tonight was a display of uh wide range of the successes of our students everything from our winter athletes um and things are happening in real time literally yesterday was when the uh Middle School robotics team was uh awarded their championship and notified they were going to be able to go to Worlds today the cheerleading team got off the plane with all their Hardware so um no matter what we talk about today there's going to be new news tomorrow um but I just wanted to kind of cycle back and say between the student board report
235and all those amazing students we had and staffed here today um congratulations and we look forward to a tremendous into spring and revisiting this again towards the end of the school year and that's really my report for tonight [applause] Dr chy I will try which is not easy for me to keep it brief um however I will Echo Dr Layman we were very fortunate tonight to hear so much went on a lot of the things that I like to um speak about in my superintendent I'm in my superintendent report is really having the opportunity to go and visit so many schools and so many activities the his history happens here is something that they had another activity within the middle school I went to I was invited to read in all of the schools I
236had an opportunity to read I think in four of the five four or five schools incredible opportunities the kids are incredible um during this month we celebrated various different holidays one was that I was invited through the um Muslim Association to join in um and uh with many people many of the board members were there the president the vice president miss Bora Miss Ratner Mr Zager um it was a great opportunity um to really see coming together of many many different cultures and many many different um groups of people as they celebrated Ramadan with the lighting of the Crescent it was fantastic and I had an opportunity to end my week last week at the evening of um reading at mil Lake um I said 250 parents but there probably was 300 parents I handed
237out I got to hand out maps and kind of just hang out it was a great activity about finding Freddy and I think everybody has really embodied in their conversations and their statements and all the things we said that we really are an incredible Community we truly off Falcons so we had all these great things going on and I also had a wonderful opportunity to welcome Dr volani and her supervisor to come and meet with us we try and do this on a regular basis um to talk about programming preparation activities we're very excited that the music program at the middle school is going to welcome some jebur students to play with them so um working together with all of our the meeting was with all of our supervisors and principal of the middle school
238and high school our goal is to really treat Jamesburg children as they should be as our um as our family that they become Falcons even before they get to the ninth grade so that's something we're going to continue that I did felt feel was worth mentioning okay let me get myself organized here so i' like to start out with retirements we have two retirements this evening one is Karen lson a driver here for 30 years there are no words to say what for a driver of 30 years except thank you for your dedication thank you for transporting our children to and from school safely we thank you for all the time that you've given us and we we wish you a happy Falcon flight as I always say incredible there are no words because I
239know as hard as our jobs are whether your Administration or your employees staff secretaries custodians Lunch Ladies parents their jobs harder that's all I have to say additionally we have a par who I had the pleasure of working with for many many years at Mar T middle school she has been in the district for 20 years Mary V she will be leaving us to retire I guess you all know her [applause] we also wish her well on her next experience in life where wherever her Falcon flight may take her okay it was pretty short to me yeah yeah okay let's see where I am let me get my bearings start with 10 member vote okay under a 10 member vote it is recommended the board approve the attached Personnel items a through a d second
240motion by Mr tuano second by Miss Bora any questions or comments Miss Ratner I just had one quick um clarification and I know we have a substitute attorney here so if information cannot be provided that's fine um on the business administrator's contract of which it's nothing to do person wise I just I know that there is an additional increase for an additional position I and I just wasn't under I couldn't understand the why that position itself couldn't be on the contract if that makes sense my pleasure so we have a we have a substitute attorney not to say she isn't wonderful but I'm I'm aware of this so um as the organizational chart which we will make sure we post um one of the things is we have a custodian of Records we have a
241secretary of Oprah that secretary does all of the work Works in consultation when necessary with the bush and Bush Law Firm regarding any needs however prior to us having a secretary we had a custodian of Records which was my secretary Miss Linsky so when there was movement and changes around now we are going to make the business administrator which was many many years ago the custodian of Records according to Mr Weiss who's not here but I will speak for him because I am speaking factually he said that once the business administrator becomes the custodian of Records it is not a separate job it is not a separate position it is to be placed within her contracts it is to be then presented to the county superintendant the additional monies that she would be paid that
242were paid to previous people and now the money is just changing hands as you use that terminology in your in your question and now that'll be part of a contract so we followed legal opinion of how it should be done so it's one contract and an additional responsibility for Miss Allen is the custodian of Records it will then begin with her new contract which starts on July 1st we are then appointing the current Oprah secretary as the custodial records for the additional 6075 days for the remainder of the year and then that change will take place I hope that answers your question any other questions okay Miss alen can we have a roll call please yes um Miss Alvarez yes Miss Bora yes Miss depine yes but I'm going to abstain on ad um I
243have it circled but he's pointing it to me ad number nine uh and number nine uh as um she is a member of my family oh well she's my sister-in-law okay um Dr PE yes um Mr pero yes to all no on V8 V8 um which one miss rner uh yes to all abstains you to conflict on letter V number nine for Mr Snyder um Mr Tano yes Mr ziker yes Miss Fabiano yes yes motion passes so for letter AE it is recommended that the assistant superintendent of schools that the board approve the following administrators on the following salary guides for the 25 26 school year second motion by Mr tufano second by Miss Alvarez any questions or comments okay move have a roll call please yes uh Miss Alvarez yes Miss Bora yes Miss
244depan yes Dr peek yes Mr Piro yes um Miss Ratner yes Mr Tano yes Mr zeichner yes Miss Fabiano yes motion passes okay so then the next item under consultation with the attorney um because we have we have provided rice notices as per the law to those members who may have been discussed in Clos session they wrote as per I'm assuming statute that they would like to be discussed in public to that end I am going to instead of reading the recommendations I'm going to first make some comments of my own and then it's up to the board if they want to comment or not I I don't speak for anybody but myself so what I would like to say is well first of all there's not much to say because everybody said it for
245me but I will knowing my personality I'll find something to say so um I sit here before you a 22-year veteran of Monro Township Schools I started out as the assistant principal in apple guard school and it was seventh and eighth grade with approximately 500 kids I said I'm only going to be here a year or two because I have five years as an administrator in Florida and I'm not staying I fell in love with the community eight years later I live here so I live here I am my husband is a teacher here for over 20 years in the high school and then the middle school and he was one of the very first teachers to start the AVID program and a reason why I share that is because it talks about dedication and
246the only way that you can truly understand dedication is to be dedicated yourself so as now the superintendent going on my fourth year I have be the responsibility to make decisions for the whole District my recommendations and of course non- reccommendations are based upon my professionalism my moral compass my ethical values my experience and I totally respect the vote my famous line even we're going out for referendum and I say it all the time even when they don't vote for something I want your vote is your voice and I respect the concept of what it means to be an American and be sitting here to have a vote but I also believe that we must make decisions and what's best for the total Community the reason why I share the decision-making process is because I
247do not take my recommendations lightly I have sat here many times in the last couple of years been harassed abused and told that I'm doing things for the wrong reason when I did not reappoint someone and I had to go back once again to my moral compass my ethical value and my experience of what was best for children and when I made those decisions and was abused it would have been a lot easier to just renew them I knew that every decision I make and every recommendation is not taken lightly although it may say board action i f through whatever these are all my recommendations I have to stand behind them as a as an educator an administrator and most important as a mommy and my my barometer for whether or not someone should be
248renewed retained is very simple with Jordan and Joshua Chanley go in their school or be in their class or be on their team or be in their club or whatever it might be and if Jordan and Joshua chandley would not be placed in that room building facility activity then I'm sorry they cannot have my recommendation and if I have to be abused for it I'll take it I sit here before you with my recommendation on this document because I hold Dr cheddar and Miss acrian Garcia in the highest highest level of esteem I am in their buildings regularly just like I am in the middle school regularly just like I go to the High School although they could run me down so I was a little less regular I truly see what goes on does
249it mean they're perfect absolutely not does it mean there's room for growth absolutely can I have room for growth absolutely but that does not mean that we do not retain them so in my opinion and I will not say humble because I'm not being humble but in my 30-some years experience and I'm still learning and I'm still growing I sit here before you asking that my recommend be approved and I thank each and every one of you cuz I know you get up very early and I thank all of you for coming out and all I ask is that we have an opportunity to maintain the quality of instruction I'm not one to always talk on data because I am a human I'm the other side of the brain I'm that right side of the
250brain I'm the humanities person but I will tell you I've looked at the growth in Woodland School because she has tested classes I've had this conversation with Dr Layman regarding the growth in Woodland as she's worked in combilation with the new position that was created 3 years ago by May with Miss mlad who sits there behind us and she's actually here I look at the growth of the numbers I see what's going on in the elementary the lower grades she's also brought culture but hers is a little bit easier to speak on not just because of the culture because we have the grades to show the growth in the elementary environment it's about the culture it's about bringing everybody together it's about wanting people not to retire like Miss I'm going to call Quinn Mich
251Mich cuz I know that many years she's married now it is about coming together as a community and what you did here tonight I thank you because you supported my recommendation so that is what I wanted to say on the matter not to mention the ridiculous amount of emails that I received [applause] ridiculous in a positive way by the way like Dr Seuss would say so I thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to speak before I go out and call my roll call but I didn't know I only speak for myself Miss oh just real quick I wanted to uh kind of give you my perspective my office has a responsibility to maintain extremely high standards and rigorous expectations of our students we do that by identifying programs and uh tools to
252push out to our staff and our students and uh the two administrators that we're discussing uh they work right on board with it they have uh embraced our mtss process they embraced the new literacy programs and the rigor uh and the accountability and the Fidelity of uh implementation that we would expect uh across the district uh my team is in many many buildings we see how it's implemented and uh you know these two two administrators certainly meet the expectation of keeping that standard keeping those expectations both towards the staff and the students [applause] thank you I wish you all could hear my heart beating right now um I've been a board member this is my fourth year and um the code of ethics that we are sworn into when we are elected by the community
253um I have tried to live by every one of them in my last four years on the board when I was campaigning to be on the board my um goal that I communicated to the to the community was that my nor star is Student Success in Monroe Township before I ran for the board I had been involved in the community as a parent of three children who go to the school district I was very actively involved in PTA I was on the P Bora hold on we're we're we're out of out of order here only Dr Chanley is allowed to speak right now we will speak about it when we make the motion sorry no that's all right Sor I I will not say what I said again okay so so yeah so now Dr
254Chanley you'll make the motion and then we'll speak [laughter] and I didn't do anything wrong sorry for Facebook I didn't do anything wrong okay thank you very much I'm going to go back now let's just make sure I'm on point under a nine member vote it is recommended the board approve the attached Personnel items AF through BF motion second motion by Mr tufano and second by Miss VOR now I can open up to the board discuss I will continue without repeating what I said I have also been on a PTA board um my children have been in four buildings in this District um I have closely through friends and family been aware of the other full buildings also in the district um is there a perfect principal in this District I'm sorry to say no
255is there such a thing as a perfect principal I am sorry to say no um have I had issues as a parent with building principles yes once twice maybe more than that um as a parent who was not on the board had no say I followed the process that is outlined I would you know bring my concerns up to people who were who had the decision-making ability starting with the chain of command with the superintendent um as a board member the code of ethics teaches me that I have to have my ears to the ground I have to listen to the community when I take a vote it it starts with the superintendent's recommendation and and what I know about the community if I do not agree to the superintendent's recommendation there has to be
256some history before of my conversations with the administration about those concerns um as a board member this is the second time that I have been in a situation where there has been such a huge participation by the community first time that I've seen so many staff members come and speak so that is definitely a first but uh couple years ago uh we were in a similar situation where we had a recommendation from the superintendent the community did not agree to it um but I as a board member was aware of what was going on in that issue what were the reasons for whatever the recommendation was and I made an informed decision based on those reasons a few days ago I was informed by the Personnel Committee of of the challenges with these two principles
257probably not getting the vote from this board it was shocking to say at the least because I had not heard anything before um I spent the last three days speaking to every single board member because I felt I needed to know what was going on that I was not aware of what was the issue that could cause such a big step from the board that I am a part of um I did not find anything specific um I did speak to all the board members either they chose not to share because they have a right to vote whichever they way they want without sharing it with me but the due process for any one of us would have been to bring our concerns even if the public doesn't want to bring it directly if I
258know of a concern I would bring it to the superintendent and see if she addresses it before not listening to her recommendation this is what the courot board board members code of ethics has taught me um in the last 3 days I have received like Mrs Chanley said Dr Chanley said ridiculous amount of emails um I am in my professional life um a customer success leader and one of the things that we say in customer success is that 20 positive reviews has the same weight as one negative review because negative does not it takes a lot to give a negative review so we give it the same weightage I have received over 45 emails I have to say and there was one parent that gave me a negative email about this issue one so it
259in my line of work yes there was a concern but it still did not overrule the other 45 emails that I had received from parents of these two schools and staff members and it was overwhelming it was heart Ing and heart-wrenching all at the same time um my response to that parent was that why was this never ever brought up to Dr Chanley and to that I will end my monologue and I would like to direct a question to Dr Chanley and Dr Layman both in the years that these principles have been in our district and I was one of the board members that voted yes on their employment contracts have there been significant concerns brought to you You by community members or board members for us to be at this position tonight no thank
260you [applause] Mr jaano [clears throat] I i' just like to uh Pig you back off what gazala said if there were no negative reports on these wonderful people who have the support of so many uh staff and parents I I think that's unbelievable how many people came out for you too um I also received many many emails from the public and and I just like to say if there's no negative reports on these two any vote other than yes on their renewals is irresponsible and [applause] and I hope that as a board member my my fellow board members would take into consideration that they are excellent members of our school staff and it would be insane to lose them also I was very moved by Miss Garcia getting up out of her seating help helping
261a parent who had obviously children who were were upset that they were here this late and she stayed here with her three children until one of them just couldn't take it anymore but for a mother to do that with her three children tells you a lot about the character of those two staff members and I appreciate that thank you [applause] I just want to say that the person I have to abstain on is related to an issue with my child and I'm happy to discuss that with the person after if you wish okay uh Miss Ratner I'm I'm I'm going to try to keep this short which you all know is hard for you can do it um but I [snorts] recognize how hard it is to sit up here we's been up here for
262almost four years we've had some tough decisions to make and I I totally get it right I I'm I'm a parent at these schools so I probably heard concerns from other parents more than many people sitting up here so I I get that side of it but at the same time I don't remember other than that situation which I was going to mention you know this type of numbers coming out to to support someone and I can only share my own experience as a parent of two children at M Lake that my second Creator when he goes to school he runs up and gives hugs right like it's you know and I I I just to to miss Garcia and well that is certainly not the reason for me voting certain ways I try to
263consider all things all I will say is if there is not valid concerns make the best decision you can with the information that you have [applause] Mr Fabiano can I say one more thing please can I say one more thing please yes sure um because Miss Ratner just brought up concerns concerns can be brought up and fixed still we don't need to make such a drastic decision on somebody's livelihood as a board member [applause] as a board member our goal is Student Success and solving problems in this district and problems can be solved other ways that this kind of an action should be taken when there is no more methods left to solve a problem when somebody is just not open to criticism or working towards Improvement anybody else okay then we are ready to
264have a roll call Miss Allen okay um Miss Alvarez yes to all abstain on number eight wait BB oh bb8 miss Bora yes to all Miss depay uh yes to all abstain on bb7 and8 and and one second uh no on bg2 [snorts] Oh wrong one never mind no that was right I thought it was s okay I'll take that I'm sorry no she made a mistake it's um Dr Layman Dr Layman to okay not yet okay [snorts] uh Mr pero I am uh abstaining on BB 78 and I am no to uh bg2 and then yes on everything um Miss rner we're not on bg2 yet though excuse me one second bg2 is to the next question it doesn't stand out on the agenda so it's okay well I need to abstain due to
265conflict on letter ay number three for Mr Ratner um but otherwise yes to all Mr chano yes to all Mr ziker uh on on bb7 and8 I stain and on B no yes no it's it's hard to understandable it's hard to differentiate um M Fabiano um yes to all um abstain on bb8 so bb8 does not um bb8 does not pass bb7 is7 passes wowow you ready would you like me to go yeah can we finish a point of order so BG it is recommended by the assistant superintendent of schools that the board approved the following administrators and the following salary guides for the 2025 202 6 school year uh motion second motion by Miss Alvarez second by Miss de is there any questions or comments on the board okay can we have a roll
266call please we're on BG BG BG okay okay so are we okay ready um Miss Alvarez uh I'm a no on number two a yes to one um yes to all no on number two m b just confirming your board action 10 member nine member BG yes yeah it's it's too confusing [snorts] she said yes um so you were just a another one too correct okay and Miss Bora I'm sorry I did yes yes all okay Miss depay yes but no on number two okay um Mr pero yes and no on too Miss Ratner um I need to abstain on on these four people so abstain on numbers one through four okay Mr tufano yes yes Mr ziker so are we just recalculating the vote again or we're on we're on BG on bg2 yes
267just BG and as a whole there's four people on there uh I'm don't have the um I said bg2 I said no right yes he said it earlier because it was confusing is no um and Miss Fabiano yes to all no on bg2 so bg2 does not pass yes now we have to go to board action yeah under a 10 member voted is recommending the board approve the attached board action items a to R second motion second motion by Miss Ratner second by Miss Tain questions or comments I have a comment Miss Alvarez okay it's on the calendar I was one of the people that pushed back a little bit on the calendar specifically for having a full week off in November after being in school less than 40 days my uh we did get
268feedback from the community and and the theme the overall theme seemed to be that airfare and hotels are cheaper in November and it's a good time to go on vacation to me that's not an educationally Sound Decision so I'm not going to be able to I'm not going to be supporting the calendar that was my comment on that Miss Ratner um I just wanted to to clarify for that week um I think it's really important for us to continue speaking with the county um regarding the final two polling places in those upper elementary schools um so that way we you know can be open without that concern whether people have that concern or not it is a fact that that is happening and if I just may may I Madam president sure I just want
269to let you know that the calendar was a very very difficult attempt I revised it with Dr Layman probably seven times trying to take into account what everybody wanted I don't in any way disagree with um Miss Alvarez but at the same time I did get a lot of feedback that people got you and this is not necessarily reason but people got comfortable with that week so I did reach out as per [cough] the directive and I had a formal meeting um and she was lovely with Miss Christine Robbins and she's going to really try but she only can do what she can do because it is above her she delineated specific reasons why everything was and Sh haded it in my in my confidential to everybody so at this juncture I had to make
270a decision like I do with all recommendations the calendar stands as is is with the week of November off um I do believe a break to have school on to be off on Tuesday and have school on Monday Wednesday do not believe it's quality education but at the same time the first calendar that I provided that everybody wants me to redo did not have the week off so I'm trying my very best and I will continue to try my very best and look at all times of options I just wanted to comment about it Miss Bora I'm just going to contribute to that discussion um I appreciate the work that was done on the calendar we've seen an example of of how well-rounded a school district We Are Tonight itself I don't I don't think
271that all the feedback that the community gave and um you know I think even staff members gave on the calendar that was incorporated into what we are seeing today uh is is of any concern I in fact think I was surprised that all of those requests were accommodated and we still have a calendar where where most of the people are happy with we are educationally sound we can do what's being proposed in this calendar and so I want to support um I want to voice my support for it any other questions or comments call please yes Miss Alvarez okay so yes to all no on K and know on the supervisor of Transportation revision that's being proposed on the job descriptions okay um Miss Bora uh yes to all but on item I I am
272voting no on 5430 and 5440 yes [snorts] um Miss depay yes Dr P yes Mr pero yes Miss Ratner um yes to all uh um I need to obain on letter A for staff development for U Mr Snider and Dr Chanley and then um for the um regulation our 544 um I'm going to obstain on that um until our second gr comes um Mr tuano yes Mr ziker yes Miss Fabiano yes motion passes okay last but not least under a nine member vote it is recommended the board approve the attached board action items s through W motion second motion by Miss Boris second by miss depay any questions or comments from the board okay seeing none can we have a roll call please yes Miss Alvarez yes Miss Boro yes Miss depan yes Mr pero
273yes M Ratner yes obain uh du to conflict on letter s from Mr Lorry Mr tufano yes Mr ziker yes Miss Fabiano yes motion passes [snorts] that concludes my superintendent report and thank you very much um for those of you that would have celebrated the holiday if you weren't here happy St P St the next item on our agenda is our business administrator's report okay um it is recommended that board action items a through M be approved by consent roll call under a 10 member vote motion second motion by Miss Boris second by Miss Alvarez any questions or comments from the board seeing n we have a roll call please Miss Alvarez yes to all recuse on items related to The Learning Tree and letter B okay Miss Bora yes Mr depay yes Dr pek
274yes Mr pero yes M Ratner um yes of St [clears throat] on um checks 05954 225 06242 and c6220 Mr Tano he just walked out oh he okay [clears throat and snorts] all right Mr ziker yes Miss Fabiano yes motion passes um it is recommended the board action item n be approved by consent roll call under N9 member vote motion second motion by Miss Forest second by Miss Alvarez any questions or comments I can move a roll call please yes Miss Alvarez yes Miss Bora yes Miss depay yes Mr P yes Miss Ratner yes Mr ziker yes Miss Fabiano yes motion passes and that concludes my report thank you the next item on our agenda is our board president report I think everybody has pretty much covered everything um I want to once again congratulates
275the staff and students that were here for the awards tonight um we have spring break coming up so I wish everybody a restful uh relaxing enjoyable Spring Break um and I think that's it I just want to add I also forgot thank you for reminding me so we call this what you celebrate wishing everybody happy Passover happy Easter because we will not beet again till May 5th and I will take into consideration every body's comments and we'll make the f 24 I did we did have a call today oh we that I forgot about today with Senator gal yes we had a call today with um Senator goal this afternoon um we talked about the full day kindergarten mandate um Senator goal once again expressed that he will not support an unfunded mandate and he
276was um very willing to listen to us and will try hopefully to help us in any way that he can he was very supportive of our conversation um and encourages us to obviously include um Senator Greenstein and him going forward to hopefully um help us in any way that he can and I asked for at least a million dollars and I would be [clears throat] happy we got a million good [laughter] for you and he didn't blink or Flinch and he didn't said we could do a million like one time but not every year he said we need it every year but I will not turn away a million dollars so if you give me a million dollars I will take it that's right take whatever we can okay um next item on our agenda
277is other board business any board members I just you know I never really say a lot but I read uh during Reed Across America on Tuesday at Barkley Brook to the first graders and I have a kindergartner that I'm going to read in his school next next week as a um they call it uh I can't think of the word but they give Clues out who the reader is and the children in the class have to guess who it is so it's a guest reader reader myy mystery thank you okay it's late um so I'm going there but I read and there was a substitute in the class that day the children were wonderful and and the book was great I brought one of my own from home that I just read to my grandchildren
278and she gave me another one and she tells me her name and she asks me if I have a son Kevin who taught in North Brunswick well she taught with my son Kevin at Lynwood Middle School so she's retired and she's a sub here so I have to say that U that was a wonderful experience to know her and then on Thursday I went to um Brookside and I read in Mr toriel's fifth grade class and I was a little nervous because I usually only read to like my little grandchildren because the big ones are too much on their tablets and all that other stuff what a wonderful teacher was so nice to see a male teacher in there well respected by the children the class was wonderful he gave me the best book that
279I have ever read to a class so I I want to say what an experience and it it really made my days to get up and read to the children of Monroe and meet the wonderful teachers that we had in those two classes and nobody's here to hear me but there are a few people but I wanted to say what a great experience and what a day it meant for me thank you anybody else Miss Ratner yeah uh just one quick thing so I know I I briefly mentioned the budget hearings um during my report but if you have not registered to speak at one of them please try to the more people that we can get to speak the louder our voices are and hopefully the more change bu car uh the links are
280on the district website I believe we also discussed sending them out um through Blackboard connect in my getting I don't know if my terminology is right but um please do try to go and and speak um to to fight for whatever we can get Miss Bora I honestly wanted to do what Mr tofano did walk away because I can't normalize what happened here tonight [laughter] Mr talked about read Across America I did the same I read in three schools and what a pleasure it was to walk inside M Lake and find out about finding Freddy or where is Freddy whatever M garia was doing that the whole school was so involved in it it the culture that school was palpable and I read in a second grade classroom and it was a pleasure um I
281want to give a shout out to Mrs Mahone in Barkley Brook who went through Genesis records to see which room my children had been and she put me back in the kindergarten classroom that all three of my kids had gone into and I walked back in that classroom after years and read there but my my highlight of that week of reading was in Oak Tre Elementary where I read in two classrooms and one of them was a self-contained classroom um I think the the leader of seac talked seag was here and she talked about how how we've really improved as a district in inclusion and I I've had a chance as a board member to see that I have immense respect for the individuals the Paras and the teacher that were in that classroom I
282read to four students in that self-contained classroom and and that 30 minutes helped me grow as a human being and it helped me understand what these people go through day in and day out and the amount of patience they have I have so much respect for every staff member and administrator that works with students in Monro we see how successful our programs and our students are we have extremely talented students and today as board members we did a huge disservice to Monro Township School District and for arbitrary reasons if you have a reason you should have followed due process our job is as board members is to solve problems not create more problems today we created More Problems by not renewing two exceptional principles on one side of town that town is shook up today
283all because of the actions of this board and say this is my time I am sorry to say that I am ashamed I've never said this in 4 years I am ashamed to be part of this board tonight [applause] only if I can I I Echo everything you're saying but I did want to let you know that Miss arrian Garcia did have the votes and she was approved oh my God thank you for letting we no we confirmed it yes were four yeses or five yeses there was five yeses on Miss AR okay I think they walked out of here thinking that they were not approved no I think I think Miss AC Garcia was aware that she was approved and I didn't want to interrupt you in any way no but that's fine that's
284fine my my feelings still stand true Dr seta was there was no reason for what happened tonight and an abstain is a no anybody else wishing to speak any other board members wishing to speak okay we seeing none we have our second public forum if there's any member wishing to speak you have four minutes to do so please state your name in municipality for the record hi chur again I just want to go back to the budget as Miss Boris said last year we had to go out to vote for a $24 increase this year the state allowed the Board of Education in New Jersey to take massive adjustments and now you're allowed to increase $161 for an average home of of $300,000 board members on here campaigned to reduce our taxes board members on
285here dragged my name and others through the mud saying that I was increasing taxes me myself when you are quadrupling our taxes for next year you should be ashamed of yourselves what you did here tonight is absolutely appalling it's appalling do you know Dr cheda Mr pain do you know her Carmen do you know her Katie yes I do my child went to it was in her building this isn't about you or your child this is about the good of this district and you are not supposed to take votes as board members on your personal opinions what you did to that woman's career in life do you even care thank you Kate thank you gazala thank you Pano thank you for voting for Dr cheda I cannot believe what I witnessed here tonight it is
286unreal and you really all should take a good look in the mirror when you go home cuz I don't know how you're putting your heads down on the pillows you think that you are good for children what's good for children is Dr cheda you go into our schools and read to our children you should go go there tomorrow and tell them all you've just voted no and ripped their principal out of their school it's unacceptable you don't have children in our school district we do we see the impact that these principles have how dare you sit here and take that away from these children from those staff members it's a disgrace you all should resign who voted no who abstained exstension it's a coward's vote you wanted to vote no you know it was a
287no vote you wanted to vote no be human enough to vote no and give a reason what you did here tonight was a disgrace to our town you're ruining our school district who in God's name would ever want to come work for Monroe who we're going to lose staff our home values are going to drop our taxes are increasing and you're getting rid of great staff members I have never seen such chaos in the almost 15 years I've been coming to board meetings because Al we've seen a lot of things but we never ever saw anything like we saw tonight I am horrified she got five what you guys did here tonight Katie you want to be ashamed of yourself you are a teacher in a school district how could you sit there and do
288that and who's behind it your psychotic husband he is for 3 years been after those principles he sat here and he screamed and yelled for us not to vote for them to begin with he is CA so much discourse in this District you should be ashamed you should resign you should resign and you should resign you people are not here for kids shame on you thank you for your comments Miss Kirby but I want to make one thing very clear I am sick and tired of you and your friends running on social media to say that I am not my own person you're not I am not I am not you I am not you that's for sure and I will sit here every day and I will defend my decisions and I will defend
289the actions that I take and I will never ever treat any member of the public like you have treated people I will never put my H my husband and I are two different people and if you can't see that shame on you as a woman Miss scurby because as a woman you have your own voice I have my own voice you have not used it I have used it I have used it every single time can you keep the time running please to other people in this district is disgusting keep the time running please and time again and you allow him to terrorize people your time is up are nothing like your your time is up is up your time is up thank you your time is up shame on you yeah shame on you
290shame on you miss scurby your time is up Katie shame on you your time is up you're a disgrace security turn the microphone security please can you escort her escort her to the back her time is up I have seconds you don't you just you just used it no I did not yes you did you just used it your time is up have a good evening police here tonight have a good evening Miss scurby does anybody else wish to speak I want to speak again just as much as you want to hear him speaking again uh especially after tonight um but here I am another month gone by I'm here for my children and all the children on the buses my speaking has nothing to do with politics I have nothing against this board I
291barely even know any of you my kids have been in school for nine years um I do need to note that the interaction that I had with principal hien at the middle school regarding the USS last week was excellent he was responsive he was understanding was great um I am appreciative of seeing this being discussed last week at the committee meeting um there's just some things I want to comment on um the accident sorry I'm tired the accident could have been so much worse and the feeling that I get from this board is that the concerned parents are nothing more than a nuisance based on the parent last meeting who detailed about this misbehavior being brought to the attention a month before the accident this could have been prevented um but then something was mentioned
292at the meeting that in order for a child to be removed from the bus it would have to be something heinous and I kind of think that causing a bus to crash is pretty handless um I don't expect the board to parent my children or any children of the district but I do expect their rules and steps to be followed regarding behavior and I expect a child to be removed from the bus following as something as bad as an accident since you failed to remove one or two children you put the other 40 kids in danger next time we might not be that lucky thank you Jessica um I have a few questions but first I want to add what I had to say last month I didn't have time to address it um administration
293at the Middle School threatened one of my children with suspension if they didn't delete phone evidence behavior on the bus when they were interviewed on November 21st as a result of my email my child did not record any video of people on the bus only clips of background noise but you could really get a sense of how out of control it was the recordings were only shared with myself and administrators with the intent to help get the behavior under control if a child is compelled to advocate for themselves by reporting ongoing dangerous behaviors that are they are forced to endure and which directly threatens their Safety and Security they shouldn't be threatened with suspension and coer to delete evidence more importantly they should not be threatened that if they advocate for themselves again in the
294future using this method they will be suspended regardless of whether they were trying to protect themselves or not since this has negatively affected my children and myself um and I received no response when I brought this up via email months ago I'm here to stand up for my child who did nothing wrong and to give them their power back they are not to be intimidated in this way again I also want to note that I do greatly appreciate the increased communication and transparency since the last board meeting now to my questions during the March 11th meeting enhanced bus driver reporting requirements were discussed with the intention of improving recordkeeping this will support Progressive discipline and better hold kids liable for their actions nearly identical requirements were part of the bus company's corrective action plan submitted
295to the state early last month it all sounds good on P paper but what does this look like in practice on district and contracted buses our school administrators regularly reviewing the tapes and how are we ensuring compliance is she done do you want to do you want are there more questions or do you want answer those are my main questions that I have from watching the meeting last week I can't I can't I can't comment on your relationship with a child and an administrator I will tell you that I do agree with you 100% if a child wants to come and advocate for themselves I've advocated for your child in the past myself um I feel that that is very important one of the conversations we do have is about the concept of recording other
296children I do know that there were no faces in your daughter's recording I also have checked in with Dr Higgins on a regular basis to confirm that any child that needed to speak with a guidance counselor or child study team member depending upon if they had that opportunity to make sure the children feel safe I will let you know and I've confirmed with the attorney I can't speak about individual children being held to cannibal I will tell you that individual children are held accountable I will further tell you that the um plan or um fored to meetings is quite exceptional we have direct relationship on the contracted buses because it's a little bit different where we now have if a supervisor assistant principal principal um security guard goes on a bus even if it's not
297written up individual children they go on the bus the children are being Rowdy we need to tell them they need to sit in their seats they're getting up out of their seats or so forth I now have it where at all grade levels because a lot of issues we had were Elementary not just middle school with some of the children what we do now is I've asked the principles and I will repeat this tomorrow at my leadership meeting but I did it at my last leadership meeting they are to then immediately contact Miss Mar and state on such and such a day at such such a time I entered or security guard or whomever it might be entered the bus this was the discussion of the behavior this was our concern additionally they've had two
298additional what are we call expectation assemblies talking about bus not just behavior in the school and that is what we continue to do so even if it's a contracted bus we're now requiring because we've always required but we're following through to make sure that this is what's going on that you have every child in a seat um all seating charts are made available and every child is held accountable however that might be appropriate I am not at Liberty to discuss any individual trials I still can't oh yeah that's not um and I will let you know that I'm actually quite impressed with the record keeping that we've been doing because what we do is we have this form and it the form gets literally oldfashioned way literally gets now only does get placed in Genesis
299but it gets placed in an oldfashioned book that looks like this with each child's name first offense second offense what's happened what parents have been called the other thing that I think is very important to repeat is that there's different levels of what we call consequences and I've had this conversation even with the attorneys sometimes we can't share everybody's different situation but bringing in parents having conversations having expectations is a form of a consequence removing from a child and I was taken out of context by the way I don't I'm not on Facebook because I like my job and I like to come to work but every once in a while someone justes share with me what I was trying to say is and I may have used the word heinous so I'm not going
300to say I didn't I never and that's fine you sure did okay but may I finish sure thank you because I let you finish and I want to be respectful I am letting you know that there are procedures that have to be followed by the administrators we can't just say you're Rowdy you're obnoxious you're you know you you sit from seat to seat to remove child off a bus I will also let you know that a special education child that has an IP may not be removed off a bus so there are guidelines to follow and as far as the way we're handling the rest of it you are welcome and I'm glad you did call and I'm glad you had a positive experience we are not going to be in a formal setting going
301to be talking about any occurrences on that bus as per Council what we will do is if you call individually to have conversations whatever we can say and whatever we can share we will if you have any questions regarding insurance or your particular child Miss Allen has made herself available we will make ourselves available but in this forum you will not get the details that are that may be asked I apologize are you talking to me no I'm talking General if anybody's watching I'm talking General yeah I I don't think anybody was really asking about any individual children just in general so just wanted to make that clear thank you thank you thank you any other members of the public wishing to speak he seeing none we will close the public forum we are not
302going into a second closed session so our next schedule Board of Education meeting is May 5th um can I have a motion to adjourn motion all those in favor I I have a good night everybody good night