001good morning the meeting of the Monro Township Board of Education will come to order please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge of Allegiance to the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God visible liberty and justice for all and I just want to apologize to the board for oversleeping today I set my clock for 5 to 8 instead of 5 to 7 so thank God I have children that get up early sleeping so I apologize to everybody um may we have a roll call Mr Gorski Mrs Co Pano here Mr cherella here miss antelis here Mr Braverman here Mr calman Mr Klein Mr Larry here Mr Masters here Mr tesler here Mrs Fon Madame board president you have a quorum thank you in accordance with the provisions
002of the New Jersey open public meetings law the Monroe Township Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting to be published by having the date time and place thereof posted August 17 2012 one at all schools two home News Tribune three cranberry press and four filed with the clerk of the municipality at this time we'll go to public forum if there's anyone in the public who wishes to speak to the agenda please come to the microphone and state your name and address for the record okay seeing no one we will go to our um topic number six review and set District goals um we need to set measurable District goals for this coming school year and we are happy to have Gwen Thorton from New Jersey school boards with us this morning to help
003us with this process so well thank you good morning it's nice to see all of you um on a Saturday morning the last Saturday in summer God bless you take do this committed seriously I'm not um I appreciate you coming out to do that um one of the things that we routinely do with Boards of education is to come in and work with them on developing goals for moving forward and our Focus um and your focus I know as a board of education has been around looking at data um to determine what those goals need to be and so we just have um a couple of slides that I just wanted to go over I know that your commitment is to making sure um that you are a district that meets the needs of every
004child um and that's no easy challenge okay and we really do believe that looking at your District as a complete system not in Parts um really taking a systematic approach to thinking about um all of the component pieces and how they integrate and work will help you to accomplish um those particular goals um and really what you want to do is it's really when you think about a system there's really a cycle so we're really looking today at where you are that Baseline where are you in terms of student achievement your facilities your enrollment um and looking at those things that impact it to make sure you've aligned your resources um your budgeting your facilities uh to make sure that you can support that um and then of course all of the things that come
005out of that support your programming your curriculum your instruction and then you assess um at the end of the cycle where you are what have you accomplished what do your test scores look like what's your graduation rate um and there are all kinds of softer accountability measures not just your graduation rates not just those really quantifiable pieces are important but there are many others and so um where do you get the data to begin thinking about doing um this kind of goal setting certainly your state run school report cards your classroom assessments looking at your higher education where are kids going off to school what are our um kinds of evaluation that we've done you would look at your qac report you would look at No Child Left Behind although you probably do are aware
006um that New Jersey applied for a waiver to Esa the elementary and second Education Act which is going to change the way we measure um student achievement No Child Left Behind is going to look differently moving forward in New Jersey um from now on qac as well they've streamlined that monitoring process from the state so instead of having five district performance review areas they have streamlined it down to three um finance and Facilities curriculum um and operations I think operations operations which includes everything else um so as a result of that those are all the kinds of places that you would look for data but this is a collaborative process and you really need to have your educational leaders here which you do your business administrator for the finance facilities piece and certainly your superintendent
007as your educational leader for all other component pieces most importantly um student achievement uh I mentioned a little earlier some of those softer kinds of data points that you might look at um we know that second two um the quality of instruction that takes place in the classroom the second most important factor for improving student achievement is school culture and by school culture I don't mean are you cultural what we're talking about is establishing a safe um secure learning environment where students feel supported so for example if you were looking at your school climate there are some softer data points you might look at you might look at your suspension report your um violence and vandalism report your bullying intimidation and harassment statistics on a positive side of those data pieces I would also look
008to see how many students are participating in co-curricular programming in athletics in choir in the Fine Arts because we know that kids who are engaged in the school program beyond the classroom tend to have higher levels of achievement so clearly there are all kinds of pieces of data that you can look at um to determine how you are doing um and this is not really um The Heading is cut off I apologize um but you would look at them in all of these areas to make sure um that you are supporting all pieces your curriculum the instruction um with the roll out of the common cor standards um which have to be fully implemented there have been huge changes to the curriculum um especially in language arts literacy and Mathematics specifically um also as part
009of that waiver I'm sure you have seen there's now a new proposal once again yet once again from the St um that actually in that waiver that the FED approved that we're going to go back to end ofe courses so beginning with this year's fifth grade cohort kids currently in fifth grade when they are freshmen the HSPA the high school proficiency assessment will be replaced by four years of uh end ofe course exams in Mathematics Algebra 1 Algebra 2 geometry and a fourth year of mathematics and all four years of language arts literacy so things are are going to continue to evolve um and change as we move forward um School culture we talked a little bit about student support your guidance Services um special education um it would fall under that as well um
010professional development is going to be key uh moving forward as well I know you know that they're rolling out the new teacher evaluation model this is a pilot year it has to be fully implemented by September of 2013 every sing single teacher and administrator has to be trained on that it is a huge initiative it's a costly initiative as well um so there's going to be I think a need for increased professional development okay so all of these pieces are what really impacts and it's all in your folder I don't want to take a lot of your time to do that um but I do want to talk about how you develop goals and what those goals look like and what the role of the board is in that process um this used to look
011a little bit more like the old Valentine ale commercials and I'm probably dating myself those of you who are from New York and New Jersey Remember The Seven Rings um but what we're going to work on this morning are your District goals and those are the goals that refer to the operation of your overall District Boards of Education typically have goals of their own that refer to their processes and procedures and how they operate those board goals around your processes and procedures generally come out of a self- evaluation we would tell you that best practices after you have evaluated the superintendent that you complete a self-evaluation a self assessment look at how you have operated the past year ask you to rate the board's performance and then ask you to um rate your own individual
012performance as a board member the CSA goals that you see off to the right the personal goals and Leadership those are the goals that belong solely to the superintend it they are not evaluative in nature they are professional development goals that come out of that evaluation um for his or her professional development um now we've added a new ring up on the top right as a result of the cap law on superintendent salaries in New Jersey superintendents with new contracts are now allowed to have Merit goals in their contracts and so those are contractual and they're separate and apart from your District goals although in most superintendent contracts that now have them for merit they obviously support the district goals so that the work all aligns and I would tell you that the board goals
013that are selected by Boards um we encourage boards to select board goals that will support in a broad way the district goals and the whole purpose of all of this process is to make sure that you have communicated your District goals to all of the stakeholders to your staff your principls your educational leaders and your community members so that um it drives the work of the board and your community is aware of what your focuses your District goals should drive the development of your budget you can't establish a goal and then not provide the financial resources to the administration to support it to be able to accomplish it um it should also drive your policym and your decision making as a board um many boards will actually put their District goals on the top of
014every agenda so that as they're sitting at the board table making decisions those decisions are made in light of does this support our district goals and our Focus for the year so it ensures that once you have set the district goals they then are communicated to the school buildings the principals are made aware supervisors and directors and they make their staff aware so that the building goals of each School building align to the district goals and then everyone is rowing in the same direction um and working on the same pieces okay so as you begin thinking about developing District goals what are the kinds of things that you really need to be thinking about um most districts have a mission statement um that generally speaks to the requirement and the need to make sure you're
015providing um the educational um programming Kathy what's your mission statement set please the mission uh statement the Monro public schools and 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 thank you okay so the goals you set need to support your mission statement if you have a strategic plan in place you would look at your strategic planning goals which are generally five year go three to five year goals for those broader goals and determine which of those you're going to focus on in the given year um absent a Strate iic plan um then you look at your data and you look at your previous goals what you achieved in the past year um and what's in progress very
016often in education goals or multi-year goals were standing in the best example of a multi-year goal um this high school was not built in one year it took multiple years of of work and effort to get this facility up and going so if in year one your goal was to get the referendum out there um to to begin designing it in year two it was probably to set out the contracts get the construction going those kinds of things take three or four years so very often the goals that you are setting are going to end up being a multi-year goals we know that making improvements in student achievement don't happen overnight it takes time to implement the common Corps curriculum to implement new programs to purchase new technology that gets integrated um by teachers into
017their classroom use all of those things cost a lot of money and they take a lot of time it doesn't happen overnight so very often districts will have multi-year goals um and I'd like to begin talking about um what your recent strengths and achievements have been what did you accomplish this year um and where are you what's [Music] in yep that works it's so it's like a big poster what are you most proud of we are most proud of the listing on last Sunday's inside Jersey where they were talking about the top 10 schools high schools based on the hispa and advanced performance and we were in that tent and the interesting thing was there was only eight comprehensive schools the top two were magnets they were magnet schools I read it I saw it
018and that that I consider a a very very significant Improvement and uh uh we got into a little bit of a Donnie Brook about that I hope it went out on television and I'll get warm support among older people maybe children won't like it but they will and they'll recognize that we have a lot of boulder dash out there in the audience about the successful opening of our high school and middle school successful negotiations that's I think another important thing is we were $13 million over adequacy and through the efforts of the staff they brought it down by $5.5 million to $7.5 million I think that is a great starting point for maybe a three or a 4E Glide path to get to adequacy reduced by how much think that big number again5 million do
019thank you non- trivial accomplishment what else I just want to go back to um the opening of the high school in the middle school because it's not just the opening it's the whole transition of moving one school to another um um opening it up smoothly and I think um it's really just a little bit more than just opening the school throwing open the doors yeah well that's what the public sees and that's the wonderful piece the doors open kids come in and everything moves forward you all know what it took to get to that place in terms of logistics and planning and development and organization yes uh giving a uh giving the condition of limited funds are Renovations of Applegarth school all all what we did over there and within the context of the agreed
020to general fund budget within the budget within the budget to do what else um successful negotiations with all of our unions so you've completed negotiations with all the Bain wow you guys have had a really busy year tired that's why I slept late today should we do bragging or should we hold our tongue you could brag I'm asking you to brag we the that negotiation resulted in when you combine salary with Benefits a zero increase while we're giving two 2 and a qu and 2 and 1/2% increase to the teachers over a three-year interval through a increase in the budget help me to understand what you mean by I'm talking about zero increase in the general fund budget in the budget that's what I said and but it it also uh through the Innovative use
021of opting out I mean we have a lot of people here in this building who are teaches the husband is a teacher in geometry and the other one is in biology and we say hey we'll give you 4,000 bucks if you walk away I know that saves us $118,000 right there good thing anything else that you can think of yes yeah I think the collaboration between the board and the administration I think that that's been a a big one for us I know that although it might not be visible to the public there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes where there's a lot of communication I get calls from Dr Hamilton or Mr Gorski you know during the week on on various things and there's a lot of talk about openness and transparency
022and how we best convey that to the public and those kind of things so I think that's a good thing it is a very good thing it's essential to a successful district and I think ending up in the top 10 speaks because it's a critical component it doesn't happen in districts where that's not the case it just simply doesn't the other thing is put it in context middle sect is a growing today County we have the the second largest county we have surpassed Essex County so when you're talking about in our County 10 means you got to go quite a bit ways where is if you're down south in glester county or Salem County there are only three high schools excuse me I work to gler County there are more than three high schools are
023there 10 five I rest my case they're they're you know they're growing as well um Swedesboro Woolridge is the fastest growing Township in the state of New Jersey they are growing at more a a cliff of more than 300 students a year been there done that gone to 400 I got one more High School Technology initiative I think that has to be mentioned breaking ground on a brand new technology Leading Edge I get this all back to you and scrible that you can actually read so if you can't read my we're in a one toone iPad learning environment at the high school why'd you Mumble that I didn't because it's early Saturday morning 15:30 anything else come on I had districts that have done seven pages on this you mentioned qac we had another perfect
024audit and and very good qack scores [Applause] be throwing all this stuff on there we hired two new principles [Music] we had seven more pages to go yeah I know only can you write larger I we were a pilot district for E4 NJ and that the staff has bought into that so we're kind of ahead of the curve there are a lot of districts scrambling like crazy because it is a huge initiative huge and a sea change for staff a real SE change Colorado interestingly enough um did their principles first the switch to the new evaluation model so they trained their school leaders and then they moved on to their teachers which would seem to make more sense you make the people who are your school leaders comfortable with the new model by doing it
025with them first and then you roll it out to the teachers but in New Jersey we decided to do it in reverse um but who's C anything else I wanted I was yeah there's more I was trying to say I I wanted to hear my board talk that's that's why I was wasn't saying anything um test scores our test scores are going up we're seeing an increase in advanced proficiency categories um we've also been able to maintain the Integrity of class size issues throughout the district even with stringed budgets um in terms of safe and orderly statistically our schools are very safe and run very smoothly our discipline issues are are relatively minimal in comparison our teacher retention professional development is exceptional we're ready our curriculum's all been Rewritten for the common Corp I'm abbreviating
026because I know what the CC mean yes we have such a good special education program we have people specifically leaving Bay Ridge and Brooklyn and coming directly here because they want their autistic children to be taken care of Transportation mix bless sure is financially disaster but it's also talks about a very highgrade curriculum and a staff I'm just being funny because there are costs yes with assistance from the county we are able to work out a collaborative tuition agreement with Jamesburg schools who uh in the high school take up about 20% of our population I apologize hey don't worry you're pulling a lery I apologize I pulled the lery too transport Transportation efficiency rate okay yeah this coffee over there another strength is we're able to work with the local government on a we have
027a very good rapport with them [Music] collaboration here behind you tech people I'm going to make them czy I didn't get here till after 8 yeah don't feel I think the fact that we have a um a good percentage of our students involved in sports and clubs what is she doing accomplishments what did we doing AP classes courses increase in AP in what increase in courses in advanced proficiency and honors courses our AVID program is catching on like wildfire Avid Aid all caps which is college readiness system it's colle college and it's a college readiness system College and Career Readiness system it's a new one or a new name for no it's a 30-year program nationally and internationally look it up anything else we have a data management system for student achievement the MFR process
028managing for results that has been very instrumental in making sure kids are not falling through the cracks and and truly as this waiver rolls out you're going to have to report more and more data around High School graduation um not rates I mean the rates change so they figure that but where they're going off to school how many are staying how many are taking remedial courses when they leave and and then how many are graduating with him 5 years all of that so having this in place is going to help you to be ready to and to that end I'm on The Advisory Board to etss so we've already started those conversations we have a partnership with etss that helps us manage that data perfect bless yes at the high school we offer a senior
029option program which is a a verse program that uh students can do teacher mentorships and and internships and take College uh classes credits so that when they leave they've already accomplished a great deal and one more thing before you go um not going to let me go the first in the state to open an employee Child Care Academy and something similar the off that's a wow that is a wow staff that's a wow 100 years ago when I thought the biggest distraction I had was child care for my children so had I've been able to have them you know close by that's huge from an employee perspective and teacher retention staff retention I'm sorry the uh special ed classroom that we've started the autistic class here at the high school transitional class continue the extended
030year program extended year a preschool extended school year program you're going to have nothing left to do don't all yes the board also initiated several cost saving strategies saving about $750,000 including refunding over $100 million of bonds saving 400,000 off The Debt Service Levy every year going forward thank you then let's think about now that you've looked at everything you've done and I hope I hope that you've taken the time as a board to think about this and to celebrate all of this because that's really quite an accomplishment in a single year you really should feel good about the kinds of things that you're doing and it's nice to get that Acclaim and an inside New Jersey um magazine but more importantly uh I think you should just feel good about the kinds of things
031you're doing for kids here it's remarkable you know what the truth of the matter is we don't take the time to celebrate um like even this conversation and generating this list is long overdue okay and I mean that I mean that really sincerely because what you do is important and often times you know we don't take the time to sit back and say what did we really accomplish this year look at all that tough those we need cheerleaders well you know what given the The Wider sort of um shifts culturally out there around education um I think it's really important to take the time to sit down and think about what do we doing what have we accomplished and you have accomplished a a great deal so please try to you know do this absent
032anyone here to just sit down and think about all of the kinds of things things that you've done at the end of the year you should have heard what we heard on Wednesday from a bunch of no nothings people standing up and saying I've lived in Monroe for 20 years and this is the first Board of Education meeting and then says you've got a rotten school and your money is out of control you're a bunch of dumbbells well that's and that's another reason why sometimes it's important to take the time to sit down to go through this and to think about everything you've accomplished because it does commun communicate with the community you know while you may only see one aspect with your child in one school they don't necessarily see the broader picture if
033they only have a child let's say at the elementary school or just a child at the middle school they don't see the total picture new or may they understand perhaps all of the component pieces that go into a successful operation of a district the transportation what it takes to open a school facility what it takes to develop a budget refinance the boms you know bite every nickel and and get every bit of value out of it so that it's going to kids and the focus is on education which clearly it is so I think sometimes we forget that we need to really do this on a regular basis so as we think about um all of these things there are certain essential questions and I think you've talked about it um about no child falling
034through the cracks you've talked about some of the programs that are in place um that you have put into place the data systems you need to measure the assessments um and and talk about aligning your financial resources you put into place a number of um pieces to allow you to do that but let's talk a little bit about perhaps what you've started and and not yet had a chance to complete what's in progress what needs some additional attention some additional focus in order to get it that extra way along to really complete it we need to work on better collaboration with the community and um various bargaining units and communication across the district is another area internally externally both both you turn that chart a little bit please yes I'd be happy to I'm sorry
035um that writing is way too light okay I have poor vision I one of my eyes is blind and the other has got about a quar of vision okay I will try to write bigger and right in black sorry um let me just read you what I wrote and it says better collaboration um with the community and bargaining unit and Communications in general both internal among between um building staff as well as external which would be your wider community and I'll write the next in Black s thank you yes facilities we still have facilities that need work to do we need roofs we need to continue to work on Applegarth um let see how to say it we have to we have to respond to um the text the impact of school taxes on our
036community yes stand on that um we've been spending and spending raising property taxes and microphone please microphone can't hear you in order to accomplish what we've accomplished we we've been spending and spending and spending in my uh estimate uh with no consideration to what the impact was on property taxes and finally the bubble burst this year with a large increase now our increase was small compared to past years because we used part of the referendum excess that we had to lower the school taxes but the mun tax has went through the roof so now all of a sudden you get a large group of people that have an organization that and these are parents these aren't the uh the seniors that said enough is enough and yes it's all well and good to put a
037new roof on on one of the schools and another school needs work Apple got they complained about the amount that was spent over budget but in reality which went right over their heads was it was no longer opening up One Wing it's opening up the entire school and to be able to keep it within what we kept it at I thought was phenomenal but any any initiatives that we come up with now and from this time forward we have to start cutting things and and work within I can't say work within concentrate on cutting taxes this 2% cap is phony it's phony at the municipal government and and it's phon at the school board because it's not a 2% cap because it does not count salary um pension and insurance so that 2% cap is
038baloney we should set a figure and when we do the goals we should set a figure that we're going to cut expenses this year 8% just come up with a figure and that's what we have to work towards is get a get rid of the fluff that we don't need and work towards giving these taxpayers true tax relief quen I have to respond to that uh about the third or fourth item I set a a Glide path we've already reduced the adequacy from 13 million down to 7.5 million and over probably a three-year interval maybe four I don't know that that has to be worked out with staff we get to adequacy when we're at adequacy we can go after these people with a tomahawk and really go and say okay we we've chopped a
039lot of skin and we even chopped some bones but now it's time to give us $30 million and quit giving us less than three Finance piece is a very real issue you know stay that's that's that's their that's their back stop every time you ask for it they say hey you're ad adequacy well we've demonstrated we can come down and you know uh Mike Gorski and the superintendent and all the other staff have been doing a financial Houdini act and have squeezed and squeezed and done everything within the confines of a statute and the administrative code and every one of those expenditures that every every body says it's out of control down at Applegarth was reported every month as adjustments and I'm the chairman of the finance committee and I reviewed those things and I'm
040perfectly prepared to take anyone on anywhere anytime any place okay how about Sor I didn't hear you yes watch it on how about dealing with this still the student growth I was ready to say that now even when within within that student growth this community's gone rural to Suburban relatively quickly there's a real increase in diversity of different cultures into the district and I don't know if we've adequately um addressed all their needs or help them assimilate to our community so so in that switch from world to Suburban you've added to the diversity of the student population and if you need any justification just look at the the distribution at Oak Tree School needs something that's oh I'm sorry so if if if we're talking about increased Focus yes and where we're going great I
041think I'd like to see a suspension of new academic programs and tweak what we now have and I think we have to have a concerted effort to do something about our facilities our facilities are getting old case in point our artificial turf is 10 years old and it's now out of warranty it cost us a million5 dollars when they first installed it I can't imagine what the price will be now so so it's not just your facilities it's the whole physical PL AB of of all of the buildings in addition to the roofs it's the broader um so I'm going to add that up here so I think it should be at at the top how much is grass seed H grass seed um the other thing Gwen is it's like $8 it it it
042actually belongs on both lists frankly um we've done a lot of work with closing the achievement gap between special ed and General Ed okay but there's more work to be done those are the only two sub groups currently oh no I'm talking about more um so among among subgroups right okay no I just wanted to clarify just I wasn't asking for data off the top 10 anything else progress want to address well there's one more thing if let them go I'm sorry although although we talked about test scores and they have gone up um uh we've had more uh students move to proficiency and Advance proficiency I need I think we have more progress to go there to get where we want to be you I just want to hear you again you want to
043move still you know moving our test scores keep on keep keeping keeping going up moving our test to cour and student achievement up Tes and Jersey ass another standardized test well New Jersey ask disappears 20 you're saying 1415 to be replaced by Park but it will be the same thing well it will be a different Ser the same purpose it will serve the same purpose it will be a different instrument it will also be given um solely we're told through the use of um iPads and other kinds of computer tablets and so forth so having sufficient backbone um and Hardware software available in order to make that happen it's going to be be critically important to be successful so um that's coming as well but you will still have proficient partially proficiency assessments will be
044different the other good piece will be that we will get that results back they're telling us within about 10 days to two weeks which will then allow teachers to take that data and really use it to inform instruction so they could do an item analysis to see if certain students have missed certain Concepts in almost real time which will allow them then to differentiate instruction you know let's say I miss fractions you know in a as a student the teacher will know that and then can develop some specific work for me to make sure that I do get fractions and I don't leave the third grade without having learned those fractions that's the good news and you know what Gwen it's while you're talking it's it's I said I think it was I know I
045said it yesterday to the principles you're never a profit in your own land what you just described we're really in a very unique position because that's exactly what the MFR process does it gives our teachers the opport opportunity to assess that data before the end of the year and identify where those strengths and weaknesses are and what particular strategies need to be utilized to move kids across the Continuum and that's really how our test scores have been going up and that and that's a wonderful piece to have in place we'll go here and then there yes the education movement seems to be moving away from the cohort results correct okay which makes life easy iier for us because of the technology how do we how do we keep moving ahead in the test scores which
046everybody sees and yet be able to fulfill the needs of an individual student uh that isn't that isn't expressed in the cohort results well one of the pieces that there that New Jersey is going to is looking at a growth model and every student individually every child has a his own or her own student identification number the staff have them so you're going to be able to look at yes but let me respond to that okay how will we a how will we be able to report that when on the other hand the superintendent's Merit increase is based on the big picture of of of the the big results and I think you're going to end up reporting both one one for the broader purposes and hopefully the second the individual student piece for teachers
047that will inform their work do you know what I'm saying in other words I think we're going to use those standardized assessments with cohorts to look at you know this what you're saying is politicians shouldn't be running the school district amen I have no other I I don't disagree I don't disagree but point in time unfortunately we have to live with the reality of what we've got yes uh Gwen I'll make a comment I get very disturbed uh I've spent a lot of time in my life doing financial analysis and I want to have consistent numbers and they keep it's the old switch and bait game they got the three shells up front and they got the pee in their pocket every time you uh come along boom and another whole set of numbers come
048along and so you can't get any kind of consistency you can't understand any Trends and it's a lot of Baler Dash notice that was very carefully on those better than some of the others you use the board's feeling a lot of fatigue and frustration on one big issue of state aid funding we're grossly underfunded in in state aid and um what was not identified in the previous public meeting was that state aid can go two ways yes you could spend it on additional programs and services or you could directly offset the tax levy with it if we received our Fair funding it would be about another $5 million tax that could have a that could have had a decreasing effect on the tax rate this year from the school portion so we need to do
049what we can um on that front and that may be you know an area where you might want to think about about developing a board goal around advocacy um to really work to change the way the funding formula is applied now you know we've been deting New Jersey for as long as I've been alive practically um I know it can be a study of frustration you know they we've never fully funded um the suffer 2008 was never really fully funded um you know still have the the court decision sort of hanging over regarding um the one were once known as Abbotts but are no longer really Abbotts and the disproportionate allocation of funding in that direction so it's going to continue to remain a challenging time State economy you know the the numbers were not
050great this month we had the highest unemployment rate you know one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation so Jersey comeback is coming back but albe it slowly um certainly a lot slower than all the politicians would like us to to think and understand and until that economy really comes back the revenues are down Statewide you know I just was listening to 1015 which I try not to do on my way down in the car because on the weekends they play music it's a lot safer but they had a newscast on and I was talking about Rebel in Atlantic City being in great difficulty now that you know just brand new just open there was a lot of State money I'm going to help them out in October yeah I'm going to personally to
051support in that way then we need to start generating find ways to generate Revenue now that you know some of the regulations have been laxed in ways of pay to play advertising um taking over programs um even if it means you know charging for busing in certain instances but I think that we really need to take a serious look about generating Revenue since the state's not going to give us any right they just they just finished um finally finalizing the regulations around advertising for busing um and there are some districts that are moving toward that again as a way you know it's not going to get to gazillions but anything is a help um so you may want to really think about that I agree with looking at ways to generate more Revenue but I
052also agree with Marv about uh putting a hold on um new programs what he said and I also think think we need to continue looking at uh the budget during the budget cycle and taking a look at maybe some programs or or some things we offer that um you know we we could cut and and and wouldn't impact a lot of students there may be some classes we offer that although it's really nice to have that uh in this econom this economic environment you know we may want to rethink that if if you have a class that has three kids in it you know we'd love to offer it or maybe there's a less expensive way of offering it maybe something online or things like that so I think we start to need to review
053maybe some of our classes and some of our co-curricular programs and not increase any over the next few years and maybe see if there's some things that we could that are not working so well or maybe that a lot of students aren't taking advantage of that we can cut to offset taxes so there's two ways to control the taxing we can make more revenue and cut so I think we have to do a little of both well and and sort of picking packing on that then we really as a board have to start sticking to the budget if if an item is put in the budget and everyone agrees on it just because you're pressured by a couple of parents you can't keep flip-flopping and saying oh let's resend it and and we've done that
054a couple of times on this and that's the kind of thing that needs to stop whatever's in the budget it stays in the budget you can't we can't keep giving into the pressure of the public you know as I were saying when when we cut that class with four or five kids and they show up here you got to stick to it we got to stick to it and say we're really sorry but this was in the budget we had a process where you had a chance to talk about it people come to us and say well I didn't know I wasn't at that meeting everything's advertised we have to stop flip-flopping decisions and and that's a real issue on this board and that deals with communication too because we have to find a way
055to communicate to these people that this is what's happening and once it's finished and we make the decision we're not going to change it so there's there that's a tough part of boards but one of the things about either having a strategic plan or very firm goals is you can point to them when they're here and say you know what we would love to add another you know level of Lacrosse to to to the school district or we'd love to add another Coral singing group but here's our focus and and while we hear you and maybe perhaps in subsequent years we'll be able to look at it we just cannot do it this year it's not within our Focus it's not within the budget and and it's hard sometimes to say no I get that
056you know they show up and they're cute and they're little I went to one board meeting once they brought every little kid under the age of seven in their soccer outfit 300 of them okay it's hard it's really hard and you know half of them right because they're your friends your neighbors your staff it's hard but you have to hold the yes going back to the state funding something that is not said and Michael has the information when they made the original first of all let me start off by saying this District never received their fair share according to the state constitution as the state is responsible for providing free public school education to all children of the state and that is not the case in this District um so let's start off by saying
057it wasn't only Christy's Cuts we never received no I wasn't no I'm I'm not making it political what I'm saying is we've never received what we should have the year that they made the cuts they forced us and Michael not the terminology to spend down our they took your Surplus the Surplus they took your Sur now they're doing the same thing with the municipal government now they want to go after the COA funds so they can balance their budget and the hell with what goes on with the municipal government what goes on with the school board they take that emergency money away and when we have to put roofs on the schools or we have to put a new boiler in where does that money come from they don't give us anything John sorry Mark
058that year when we lost $4.4 million of state aid funding yeah about 4 million of that got pushed into the general fund Levy because the timing was such with that information of that severe of a cut that to to eliminate $4.4 million of the budget at that point in time was almost impossible right so it's it was a shifting of the burden from the state to the local tax levy which hasn't reversed yet and then what about the two when they did shut up there were two years where we have our budget it's approved by the state and then they beat us out of the last payment of $500,000 two years in a row so here you build your budget based on what the state is going to give you and then they Rene they
059say well you don't need the money we're going to go give it back to the in those days the abbots or Title One schools there's a 20th state aid payment that goes back in at least seven years that they took that they never made up I was on my board and they took away the 20th state aid payment they just didn't make it because they needed it for Medicare Medicaid um money so they and they never made it up and I I said to one of my elected officials I said will you talk to my Banks I can only make like 11 mortgage pays and we'll just tell them I I can't make the 12th this month this year just forget about it and I'll pay it you know somewhere down the road when I
060when I get ready so like a lead balloon well it didn't the sheriff will be at the door with a foreclosure notice I made the payment believe me but yes uh I I think we I think I think Dr Hamilton may have mentioned it already but I think we need a better way of of communic ating with the public with regards to what the unfunded mandates do to us what the impact is on our budgets and and on our programs and also what the impact is of of uh new developments and things like that that are going on in town that um you know we're we're looked at as oh well we keep increasing in uh the tax burden but yet we're we're we're really just responding to an influx of children that are coming
061in because of new developments and things like that and I think we have to do a better job of letting the public know where that burden is coming from and and how we have to respond to it and that we can't budget into the future for for that impact we have to deal with it as it's going on and that sometimes makes it look like we don't know what's going on and we're just dealing with things and and and we can't look forward because we can't really budget for a development that we don't even know is coming and then all of a sudden it's approved and and we're getting settled with new children coming into the school district there a couple of pieces around that New Jersey is one of the few states that does
062not permit um or require developers to contribute either open space and or um dollars for the creation of um facilities or um impact impact an impact fee you know because you may now need another ambulance or you need another fire truck or you need another police car or whatever it is and New Jersey doesn't have any allowance for that in fact it's illegal um but one of the things you might want to consider and lot of Fords have done in communities where they are growing like here is is to ask that to to be part of um the planning board so that you have on a real time um information regarding what's on the what's on the drawing table it may not have been approved yet but at least it won't be catching you you
063know completely off guard um and that's very helpful because to have that kind of ongoing dialogue and it's anticipatory you know and even with Municipal Services you don't need a police car for every new development perhaps or a new fire Tru you do need a seat for every child that comes out of that development or that the new housing so you know it it's it's difficult and additionally it's not even necessarily just new housing um when your homes turn over because you do have a good school system I'm sure that in large part some of your growth is coming if people are aging out of their homes and moving on you know whether it's def Florida or just to another development in town that's in over 55 or whatever because they don't need the space
064I'm sure they're selling those homes to people with children so you're not even you know replacing and maybe even growing there as well so I I think that those things are you know um unfunded mandates and the continued growth the enrollment projections are a challenge when there's a an important difference our nextdoor neighbor the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania the school board doesn't look at planning boards or zoning boards they are an active participant they've got the right to say no or here's our requirements in this state where we have to go in on bent knee and ask if we can observe and that's got to be corrected I mean we have seen I mean you know 400 students bang year over-ear for what almost 10 years right Kathy right now it's it's calmed down it's now
065it's going at the rate of about 200 per year but in the high school it's 100 per year and that's directly tied to the economy because fewer and PE fewer people are coming and going there's less ability nobody can their house to move from your townhouse to a regular house or from a small house you know start a home to the next house so people are moving you know they're just there's less Mobility because of the housing market um in some communities if you have a good relationship with your Municipal officials and and if you do it's a wonderful opportunity to see if you can get a board member appointed to the planning board that is not that is not prohibited so you could indeed do that if if your Municipal officials would beable to
066that a board member can sit on the planning board we had a board member on the planning board in my town next door neighbor because of that yes I serve on a zoning board and I've been on a zoning board even before I was on a school board but I also uh I and another uh member of my U Community attend all Council meetings most of the planning board meetings and what I have done and everybody here will attest to it is that I try to keep our board informed as to what plans are as far as homes and um the Salo Act was passed um two years ago and that was only for the builders as the uh the Abbott decision was it was only to protect the builders and what the Salo act
067allowed was if a PRC plan retirement community is approved and bless you bless you whether you serve on the zoning board depending on what's needed to get it approved if it's if it's in the right Zone you know then they can do it on the planning board if you have to get variances they come in front of the Z know and when they would come up with a PRC of course you would pass it there's no impact on your schools so you have more money coming in to pay for your school so of course you would pass it so you had um haban and you had McDade had two one was done by the planning board which was hannanian and the McDade application was gone through the zoning board we'll talk hannanian hannanian original plan
068was 300 and some odd prc's plan retirement communities under Soo it stated that if he did not take a deposit he's entitled to request a conversion to a family community now mind you the man did other than the uh the presentation he made in front of the planning board showing what the homes are going to be and what blah blah blah blah meant nothing he never made any attempt to sell it waited out 2 years 2 and a/2 years this act is approved and he applies for conversion so if it's 30 round figures 325 families at an average of two per there's a school in itself well I testified as a resident in that community in that uh application and I brought up the bit about the impact on the school population the law is
069written where you can't use it as a reason to turn it down the outcome was that with the information I provided it was voted down they came back with a counter offer where only 120 were going to be family homes with McDade it went the other way I had to recuse myself so the people that were on the zoning board approved it that was 130 homes it's going to be minimum 260 kids at buildout where do you put them and the state government that they come up with laws for private interest groups with no consideration as to what what goes on in your communities I know I know yes well in adding to that which is what I wanted to say all along um with our growing population not just facilities maintaining them but where
070are we going to house our students in the next few years going to pay for it exactly you know do we need to build a new elementary school do we need to add on to the high school do we need to add on to other different schools so that's or all of the above exactly now wasn't it also true that when you you were filing for the referendum for the new high school they only allowed you to project five years is that correct um you couldn't project 10 years for po we do have we had we added a piece that we could add on to that high school no but what I'm saying ising to the New Jersey correct state New Jersey you're correct only allows you to look at to build out for five
071years year enrollment even though you know within 10 years that population can more than double you're locked into an a yes inadequate size school right that's why we're reactive rather proactive I really think we need to keep moving forward with the technology initiative and expand that so I think long term that's going to actually help us out as a district really well said how much pay to say you see my new iPad Che I just I can't believe je just he went like oh thank God um I think we we were making progress in the communication piece but I think we need to uh uh increase our progress on communication especially during uh our budget hearings because I think if we put out information next say next year if we decide to make some big
072cuts to some like last year we uh we did the busing and the previously we did the pay to play not got into the situation in August if if we put those things out I know we talk about them in our budget meeting but if we just put them out uh any means possible on the I know we do it on our website send notices out to the school and stuff like that that these are the big things we're looking at cutting or something like that you know like if if we told the students who sent a flyer out or told the parents we sent a flyer out last last March or last February saying this is what we're looking to cut in the buses that we wouldn't be have people yelling in August you
073know I think we need to work especially around the budget time increase the communication if we're looking at big changes uh in the budget to communicate that out out to the parents and I think you need to do that year round yeah yeah it's year round we could we could probably save between 34 of a million and a million dollars if the if the local municipal government that we said gets along so well with us would build sidewalks yeah our transportation could be cut by that much however our local government kisses the behinds of the senior citizens here because they vote an example of that is they just borrowed $20 million to build a senior center in a in a Township where probably 90% of the seniors have their own senior centers a clubhouse within
074their retirement and also to to build an expansion on the library which will someday be a museum because nobody's going to use books that's a very scary not if Jeff has anything to do with it nobody's going to use books we have a not you're right you're right we have a huge we have a huge Challenge and and I I think I probably feel the pressure of this challenge more than anyone and that is the obligation to create an appropriate balance between those things that we've listed here that we're so proud of that pushed our schools into the top 10 in the county and the outcry from the public to reduce the tax impact there's almost an inherent contradiction to create that kind of balance so on the one hand we're so proud of all
075these things that are really really working and then on the other hand we're task with deciding which of these things we have to reconfigure in order to reduce the burden and the truth of the matter is the state is our enemy because if we got our funding we would be able to accomplish both things right and that's so we we have to figure out how do we have that battle how do we create this balance and then how do we respond to our public yeah what's the priority I I agree with the superintendent and and the more important thing is Ira we are caught in a Time trap the a major element in the whole setting of the budget is when does the State give us the nums and they give us two days 3
076days notice and you said hey we got to have a long lead time I mean we can talk generalities but we can't talk specifics until the 11th hour and the 56th minute and here comes midnight banging away and and we have do we have to cut what do we have to cut out of the budet and you know it's a rotten system and we have to go and I uh highlight to the public where the problems are and I think we have actually we have elements where we can go out and demonstrate to the public that we have done a remarkable job of financial stewardship and at the same time made major advances in curriculum and in student performance and we should do that again and again and again let's get aggressive don't be a
077punching bag the I'm going to termin this was going to be wrong but the terminology is going to be wrong the joke is in Private Industry and I was always in sales and management if you were successful and you went over your quot you were rewarded you received a bonus or a promotion but when it comes to education okay and you are reaching you you the whole idea of education is to get a child that's here to reach for here the one who's here to reach to here always reaching especially the way the world economy is today you want top of the top you want the best educated kids you you don't want to leave anybody behind so if a kid is here and you can only get him to here you get to the
078max we being over adequacy we get penalized here we are a successful School District on the backs of our taxpayers probably 97 to 98% of the budget is picked up by the taxpayers and we're being hammered by the state and we're successful and what my true feeling is is like they always say well we're bringing up the level of Education of the low uh performing children to get them closer to the high performing children well why don't we tell the truth we're lowering the high to here to bring these kids up to here and that's baloney you want these kids to be successful whether they go in go continue on to college or they go into the military or they go out into business you want them to have the best education and the best
079chance to succeed and this state is totally against that and you're penalized I can't argue with you I I can't argue with you you districts that spend over adequacy that are doing a remarkable job are penalized believe me I get it and I love hearing that in spite of all of that you still really want to do the right thing because I think trying to maintain that balance between quality and fiscal efficiency and responsible stewardship is always going to be a challenge so yes uh real quick we're on a great role but I'd like to make a motion for a 10-minute P says a second it okay and six cups of coffee everybody's just been getting up and going anywhere I only have one kidney as you well know um you've identified your strengths we've
080talked about all of those pieces that are in progress so when I look at those I I tried to sort of identify um the broader areas that those all of those pieces Encompass and I think they a lot of them sort of fall neatly into a couple of different from buckets um we talked a lot about um communication with your parents with your community with Municipal officials um we talked about alternative Revenue sources and developing Partnerships um I think those Grandma's Here those alternate um are they cute um those I'm sure they're adorable those business Partnerships and Community um Partnerships might lend you some additional Revenue as well as generate some positive interest there's the whole issue around instruction student achievement continue raising and moving every child up um the area of facilities Renovations looking
081at your growing enrollment do we need more facilities different facilities what do we do long term um technology um the one we didn't really mention so much is the Arts and I'm going to ask Dr Hamilton to perhaps comment a little bit on that yeah I I can do it real quick with all the work we're doing it is very easy to lose our fine and Performing Arts in this big picture and I want to make sure that we have a commitment to maintain the those Arts culinary arts graphic arts Performing Arts all those things that create a vehicle for those youngsters who are not going to be our academically gifted and talented students so to speak but those youngsters who may have an aptitude in in some other Arena we don't want to lose
082them and I I think if we don't focus on that as a priority it could be one of those areas that that falls through the cracks and and and it's because with all of the accountability measures there's been so much compacting of the curriculum for expansion of instruction in the area of language arts literacy and Mathematics which are important I'm certainly not um discounting the their premacy but what you do in your schools is so much more than just simply language arts literacy and Mathematics and for large numbers of students it is the fine in performing arts or culinary arts that gets them to come into school to be able to get the language arts literacy and the mathematics or it's the co-curricular program that keeps them engaged in school those are such so important
083one of the things why they're coupled is because we believe that the technology is the vehicle to the output of of the creation of the Arts in a lot of ways um so that so to put not separate them we'll here um I I think that Dr Hamilton makes a great point and that I think the senior option is also something that's very important and um and those living skills but the but the Arts and and we we're living in a different economy now I don't think anyone knows what's coming uh I think that we could very well be in a position in a few years where maybe everyone going to college is not the norm anymore or and we need to be able to gear up to to to satisfy those needs and bring
084our children through whatever Avenue we they need to get through in order to be successful you know successful individuals later on so I think we having those all of those programs still active also helps us to be able to maneuver when we need to maneuver yes exactly what superintendent said absolutely correct um what you have I think I think the failure of many districts uh in failing many of the their children is the fact that they think that they're teaching the children to be College materials in other words everything is leading to every kid's going to go to college well you have a segment of the population that's not going to go to college and if if you're going to key all your subjects to building them for college and not give them the well-rounded
085background of using technology of the Arts and in this case coronary arts or or woodworking or or what have you then we're leaving that segment of student add of the process and I think that's been a failure you elsewhere well and it's interesting too because in large part across the state of New Jersey there's been an evolution in the last decade or maybe slightly longer than a decade and you certainly can speak to this where the vocational technical schools that used to provide that kind of programming um have evolved into academic magnet schools with a focus on either stem or fine and Performing Arts some of them have them yes but they have um closed down a number of what we would consider the vocational kinds of programming that offered Al real alternatives to students
086and I have some districts and some of my counties that can't get kids into those programs The Vocational programs or students who really want to be in vocational programs clearly that's their intent they no longer have the enrollment capacity because so much of their capacity has shifted over to and and that's not true in Middle sex but in some of the other counties across the state it's absolutely true they have shifted over into these magnet academic programs that are sometimes more High performing in quotes than their local high school very high performing so they are creating difficulties with maintaining program at the comprehensive high schools and they're creating problems for students who wish to be in vocational technical programs because they have chop those back in order to provide these other programs so it's really
087very interesting this sort of evolution and I think it's directly tied to No Child Left Behind because vocational technical schools were charged with meeting all of those same requirements of testing as No Child Left Behind and they couldn't so they had to find a way um to make quate yearly progress and so they shifted their focus so I I think that may shift back to your point so that there are those opportunities we'll go here and then we'll go there yeah I think one thing U moving forward expanding upon that a little um when we look at student achievement uh I know we talk about one of the statistics we look at is uh what kind of colleges our students are going to you know the percentage are going to 4E colleges I think we
088have to given our economic environment and and the how costly cost to go to fouryear colleges I know because my daughter's starting next week I think we have to be careful on looking at that that data because a lot of our students um may be able to get in these fouryear schools and these really good schools but they decide to go to the Community College just because they can't afford it not because they're not capable of getting into it and a lot of students go uh to that route and transfer to four-year college so I think we have to I think we're doing that already but that's something we need to track too as part of of of student achievement the county colleges County system is really two years at a County College with an
089Associate Degree saves you a great deal of money you transfer to the other institution and you have saved a bundle so that if you want to go on to go to graduate school you've saved those two years of undergraduate the huge chunk of tuition it's still costly no doubt about it people look at our district I can't I think they have to look at the colleges that our our uh our uh seniors are going to a little more carefully it's not not because they can't get into the these really top colleges because they can't afford to go into that's why there's a lot of kids now who take a year off and work so that they could pay for college because parents are having difficulty doing that you know just because a lot of Monro
090students aren't going to these top colleges may not be because I can't get well and one of the pieces to the New Jersey smart and to the data collection will help I think the district be able to track that so that you can look at those who stay in state to do two years at County colleges and institutions and then transfer so you'll be able to say to your community yes you know these were financial decisions but these children went on exactly and earn degrees from because it really is it makes good sense I said to my kids I wish I thought of that you know save me a bundle yes I have a step-granddaughter uh goes to this school and uh the culinary arts program in this school is remarkable I mean she can
091I mean I'll give you a simple example I I'll stack her up making Terra massu with any restaurant that I've seen in Middle sex County but you didn't bring it okay but Heyday today today is a sweet 16 party okay all right next time the point I want to make is that it's not necessarily the County College it's not necessarily a four-year college she may be going to Johnson Wales right and and hey she's a smart girl and she's got great work work cits I have no doubts that she could be very well as a chef yes and then we're going to move on let's go back again to the failure the failure in this state is the state government just look at Ruckers my daughter when she graduated East Brunswick High School applied and
092was accepted to ruter and other top schools of Penn State University of Michigan so on and so forth do you know that she was able to attend and she wanted Penn State which I at that time I was very happy but she attended Penn State and it cost me less money to send her to pen State being ad of State then sending her to ruter and I'm going back now oh she's got to be out of school 15 years now it's even worse right so your quality students if they were not able to get a scholarship to ruter they were going to other states because it was cheaper and uh exactly what what iris said is that's why a lot of these kids are going to the 2-year schools to save that money just another
093closing thought on the Arts the other reason that um I thought in conversations even with our principles that we needed to make sure we kept the Arts in there is we have this facility that has this incredible Performing Arts um Center in it uh it's centered around the Arts the culinary arts program kids will leave here and really be able to go right into the workforce uh um it it the building and now the middle school that's in the old high school building also has access to those facilities so would actually be irresponsible of us not to maintain the Integrity of the Arts when when kids have these incredible facilities at their disposal that's wonderful to have those available to make use of them okay so what I would ask you to do um and
094I know it's sort of a convex or concave whatever around that column to sort of look at all of those areas you've identified and see if we can't come up um with some meaningful District goals to address those areas that are in progress where you need to and if you look at this um you know the current initiative piece goes to the state aid funding goes to the alternate um method of generating Revenue goes to the budget review of current programs you know to see if we can take something off the plate or shift those dollars somewhere else um the unfunded mandates you know that's a budgetary item but I'd like to tell you something's going to happen with that you know I'm not holding my breath um you know to me in large part
095while you were a pilot district for E4 NJ and received some funding to help Implement that program the cost for doing that for districts that did not receive any pilot money is a going to be a huge chunk um out of their budget and to me it's a huge unfunded mandate not a bad one on not a bad idea necessarily I'm not commenting on that but just the cost to doing it is is a huge piece um so you also have I think under that budget piece the facilities um you know how do you deal with those growing enrollment if that's a finance issue it's also an education issue but you're going to have to sort of solve that the same way um there's to respond to the uh tax impact on your community to
096your piece you know will perceive um and and maintaining that balance between quality education and fiscal accountability and you know you don't want your taxpayers to feel as though they can't afford the education that that they need to provide for their community and for their children and I think the those that fiscal piece is going to be ongoing for quite a long time I don't think that's going to disappear I don't think we're going to be out of this current economic State probably you know I I mean you listen to different forecasters but I think we're looking at five six maybe even a decade worth of years moving forward um and I think you also have a shift um in how the the The Wider Society is viewing education in terms of entitlement and the
097same thing around the Medicare Medicaid piece I mean I think we're you know all of this in sort of the broader picture and education has really sort of been in the last couple of years a huge Target of a lot of um Governor well not just Governors but you know wider but very broad discussion around how best to do it and there's a lot of um angst around the expansion of the charter school movement and the influx of foundation money um not just in Charters but to the Department of Education um and where all of that shakes out and because included in this waiver folks and it doesn't apply to your schools because your schools do well um there are turnaround principles and I think I've included in the packet some information you know their
098focus schools and priority schools that actually allows a um for-profit or not for-profit educational organization to take over a public school um dismiss the staff rehire a different principal so there's a lot of things going on sort of in the broader educational Community outside of Monroe but but they have an impact in in terms of just that General conversation where people are really questioning the value of education and how it's delivered and and everyone seems to be an expert um which is interesting because very few people think they're an expert to tell General Motors how to produce a better car right or tell Bank of America you know how to bank more eff effectively in fact we lent those people money to get out of the hole um so it's sort of an interesting Paradigm
099when you look at it sort of in that broader scope so I I think those things fall under fiscal accountability um and facilities are pretty much tied um the technology um and the Fine Arts I think may go very nicely sort of in that area of instruction and maybe you don't see them that way but I see technology as supportive of instruction I see the Fine Arts as being in that broader sort of bucket um typically when we talk to districts about setting District goals we really urge that you not do or set more than four District goals in a given year they may be multiple year goals you may not achieve all of them um but more than that you're sort of setting yourself up for for spinning your wheels like that little hamster
100on a you know a cage um if you got three you can concentrate if you got six you got a mish mash well and that's what I'm saying three to four goals Dash he gave you a boulder dash no no I said mishmash not me I know I'm going to ask all awesome 20 23 sco you have to turn your head and it's in the Oxford English tip again so if you had to identify and I'm going to ask Administration first because they are your educational experts where would you begin with goals for 2012 and 13 what would be your primary focus what would you like to see the district focus on in terms of each of those priority areas I think the first thing we need to look at is developing a strategic plan
101um that centers around around those one two 3 six key areas and so in my mind the Strategic plan becomes our process for Community engagement and I'm very deliberate about using Community engagement versus Community involvement and the reason I make that distinction is we often assign value when we say community involvement if people aren't physically present we take that to mean they're not interested when the often times we can engage people and it doesn't mean they have to show up with cookies no no brownies are okay too helps her muffins so those are the six goal focus areas I just wrote it this way so you would know when I send it all back to you they'll be written out the sake of Reflections feedback on that well our our facility our strategic plan I
102think we did it in 2001 2002 was a 5-year plan it's very outdated so we need to know where we're going to be going in the next five six seven years so I think this is a very important piece well we should probably review where we are right now and look at that and say what did we do right and where have we uh had some problems and it can give us some guidance as instead of going on a pathway like this we can go on a pathway like this well and and typically when you would do a strategic plan you would look at the last one see what was accomplished see what's what didn't get done in that plan over the those five years even though it's pretty Antiquated and things really I I
103have to say have changed so dramatically since 2006 we're in 2012 it it's almost a dinosaur in terms of really even getting much out of it other than to say here's the process we used was that process effective but I think you're going to have to sort of start from square one I I mean just because there have been so many changes Marvin I think uh I can hit a few of those at one time one doctor Hamilton doesn't agree with probably any of this uh I would eliminate block scheduling that would improve instruction because kids wouldn't be bored after a traditional 45 42 minutes uh by eliminating instruction we wouldn't we would be able to set up the schedule so that we don't need every class every year we can alternate years that would
104affect effect budget and uh scores should go up because by having a traditional schedule every day kids are getting reinforcement instead of losing what they learned one day and skipping a day and then teacher coming back to what they know and going from there so I think block scheduling is not the Panacea that everybody says it is I I I think um I think we're lucky we have iPads because when kids are bored they don't go crazy they play with their their iPads instead of doing what they should be doing um actually he thinks I disagree I actually agree that I disagree I agree that I disagree oh he is a Slicker s let me just I I have a couple of Reflections on that okay um we do District goals you you want to
105look broadly districtwide so if it is to review existing curricular programs and schedules to see if they can be improved that would be a good goal what you're talking about is a specific strategy which is and that's the administration's responsibility yes I know that not yours so you know um and I hear you I I mean I I actually ABS agree with you I I think block scheduling was sold as Panacea sort of like the open school concept um you know had great popularity for a while and then when we reflected on it we went oh wait maybe not so great and there are a whole host of alternate kinds of high school schedules that can be implemented rotating drop periods um that could be looked at that would ensure that you still had sufficient
106double block time for your APS perhaps or for your science labs um that are necessary for some of your upper level High School courses but that's an administrative function understand so I I think if if you want to develop a goal that talks about um assessing particular programs or and I would look to you for the kind of language to that um to determine what stays what goes to your point um Ira about does something need to come off the plate if we're putting something else on the plate um are there better ways to make increasing efficiencies for students and their scheduling so that we can offer the elective programs every other year so kids would be able to it all of that I think probably makes good sense but just for the board's benefit
107it's administration's responsibility to develop an action plan to make these things happen um and you don't get to say yes or no to that you will hold the superintendent accountable at his evaluation next April um for progress toward or the achievement of of these goals yes and that raised the fundamental issue what's the role of a curriculum committee shouldn't that be uh a place where these things would be discussed I mean uh you just present flop a thing or is the curriculum committee hearing reports from the assistant superintendent as to what's progress of of the evaluation and uh so we have a group of people who are interested in curriculum who can participate provide insight and bring their colleagues up to stuff rather than have boom atomic bomb dropped in their head and they got
108two days to decide yes or no well that your District goals should drive the work of your committee so that if you decided for example that developing a strategic plan was one of your District goals if you have a community engagement committee do you have I don't know what no we don't have a Community engagement Comm okay so the board might develop an ad hoc Community engagement committee to work on the strategic planning process helping to determine what that process is going to look like making and then you have to have Community involved we we we have that process uh and that's why we want to probably look back at what we did in the past and that's how provides a template for how to get broad agreement to going forward that's the point to
109doing the Strategic plan okay but how would you frame this instructional um goal Ken perhaps would Encompass I do think we need to have a review re EV review evaluation and assessment of current instructional programs of current programs not just instructional the non-instructional as well some of those were some of the things that we're talking about are structures versus um curriculum and instruction so if I said programs and structures yeah with that the structure the structure really talks to what Mr braan said about block scheduling um like and our learning acmy and all those are structures and then underneath you know is all the instruction and the curriculum that takes place this this is pretty huge I was just getting ready to and I think we need to quantify it a little bit because I
110would not want to be you next May right or April they said next all of that was so exactly while here this is this is a big chunk it is definitely a multi-year piece and it requires the allocation of resources for research and development yes it does so what would you see for example in year one as being your focus cuz I want to help help to to sort of quantify this if this is what you want to do so that perhaps we could think year one year two and maybe even year three just we almost need to identify all the programs that are in place current and and new and old and then identify literally a schedule for what that review would look like so for example let's take one of our biggest initiatives
111right now which is the one-on-one initiative with the iPads we have an obligation to reort report our progress on that to review see how it's going is it successful uh what our benchmarks are how do we determine success what do we mean when we say success are we are the iPads supposed to transform every kit into a Nobel Peace Prize laurat or do we have some other Benchmark along the way can I sign up all right so so in we would Envision that in 1213 we would identify a schedule for review exactly and I would think it would not be too much to expect that at least one or two of those programs or structures would fall here right in 20123 and somehow perhaps the technology at first I I don't know I'm asking I
112don't want to I think that is um because that has been such a focus and such a huge allocation of resources even though it is one of the most recent pieces it is also one of the most controversial well and that's why I sort of said it sort of hesitantly um but I think perhaps technology ought to fall in 2012 and 13 I I mean just for the sake of do we need to continue and expand has it been successful what does that like and you need the data to be able to make those decisions because you can't make them abs of that so um you would look at technology and is there any one other area I mean it would seem like you should be able to I would think look at technology and
113perhaps one other piece that is congruent or concomitant fairly easily I don't know what that is you need to tell me but I would think um all right I think um a review in the structures so standard operating procedures within this within the structures I think is a priority the technology is what the technology I'm hesitant on an assessment because we're Gathering data and and it's going to take at least 3 to 5 years years to measure success rates on technology so I felt that the technology piece would be umbrellaed into part of the Strategic plan okay like an educational technology committee with um with goals within that and that that would as opposed to isolating it um because the his the district has a history of being a technology leader and that's brought out
114lots of different stakeholders um and especially with the one to1 initiative we've seen both extremes and everything in between that um so I'm cautious about um I about making that a priority goal because it is it's what we're doing right now we're collecting and and doing data to look at it I guess is is okay as well um but and then coupling what you said if the technology is an instructional delivery system to isolate it how do you isolate it well I it was a question from me I it's not certainly a direct you know I wasn't trying to direct you in any way I know that when I pick up the newspaper and I read the clips those are the kinds of things that I've been reading about in your community so I I
115knew it was a concern but please whatever it's too important not to not to make it a priority um now we can talk about what that looks like but the initiative is too big too costly um and there are too many it's under too much scrutiny not for us to be a as proactive as possible with reviewing researching and doing some sort of assessment even if it's just identifying our benchmarks for determining one of the things we have to talk about is we keep throwing this word around whether or not it's been successful we haven't defined success exactly exactly which is critical I think along with uh in that review we should be reviewing the uh the way we employ staff um in terms of the extra period and we pay them extra for that
116extra period but but we we fail to think about when they are free for that period they can meet with students and do things that would be normal that would enhance the students day and when when we hire them to fill that that free period they can't do that and theoretically they're not doing lesson plans and other normal things that teachers do so I think we have to look at the way we we fill our uh our uh teachers SCH St and while and while I hear what you're saying I would also think just pause it and perhaps some of you who sat on negotiations can validate this that that's probably a contractual item that that yes you're correct however at the high school if they teach five and you add a six they get
117a stien yes that's the correct the contractual item but in a community like this probably the largest community of retired teachers outside of New York and Florida they can hire somebody for one period of day and not pay benefits I see what you're saying okay so so I think that that goes to the structure and the M you weren't speaking into the microphone um I think that falls under the structures and standard operating procedures of those uh because that was that's a current common practice in a lot of schools you simply assigned somebody a six period I know that yeah and so I think that that's probably taken up in here um for looking at that piece because maybe there's a more fiscally efficient way the the only thing I would say to you and
118this is I in the in the interest of full disclosure I'm a former High School teacher so what I would say to you if if I were paid a sixth period to teach in addition to the five the one advantage that a current staff member has is they know the kids they know the standard operating procedure of the building and so hopefully instruction is at a higher level it's not someone coming in who's only there one period a day who doesn't know the kids who doesn't have any continuity of programs just a thought and just a thought I'm also a former High School teacher and I think that has to do with the level of instruction the level of the class that they're filling into and you know there's an awful lot of intangibles there
119I know I'm just I only throw that up because I didn't know that so I just wanted to point that out as board members just I try to inform them of all these things thank you now Gwen one addition to that um my development has quite a few retired teachers mostly from New York and they come to me and they're willing to volunteer to tutor the students no charge no C to us they have the background they could sit one onone or in some cases uh it need be couple of kids a couple of kids to get added help to get these kids up to par and evidently we're not allowed to do it because I don't believe the union would allow it because you're basically taking a position away from uh from a union
120uh member or Union member yeah well I I I can't speak to that in terms of your structure and your union union agreement but if it's something that takes place after school hours um I'm not so sure that you couldn't in some after school I'm talking during school the school day yes okay that I can't speak to that probably difficult to implement um well like you said you know and I didn't consider that after school if that makes it legal and we can do it these people are willing to do it after after school would seem to not be a union ISS an association issue if it's not done during the school day the the concern then of course is how do you get the kids home the transportation issue I mean all of those
121things can be worked out but it's a perfect piece to come out of your strategic Plan and there's a resource in your community that you really could optimize with some planning and some effort but but again there's a whole host of things that have to happen and a lot of administrative energy to go into that so it's not something that's just you know they have to be fingerprinted and the background check not to say they wouldn't pay you know I get that but you have to do all of those pieces so all right so are you comfortable with these two goals as a board how do you well well for number two I think we need to put a little more like something we can quantify at the end of the year some number so
122when we look at and see whether it was achieved or not you know I agree sometimes those find expression in the action plan the the measures of success um but but if you want to build in some some quantifiable numbers here I don't have a problem I don't know what that would be but you know because like number one it's going to be well yes or no did we do it and number two well no I think the deliverables here are complete a strategic plan you'll have in place perhaps a change to your mission statement you'll have a list of fundamental Community belief I don't I don't want to down don't say that yes change the mission statement No I don't want to change the discuss that do you know what I'm saying but you'll
123have a whole plan with with strategies goals and a timeline for that right where we going to go that's number one you're saying that yes for number one so you'll have some really quantifiable deliverables you'll be able to see and when you do an action plan there'll be a timeline attached to that so you'll be able to see it emerge over the course of the Year okay for this um develop the schedule for review I mean there are all kinds of different deliverables that you could look at you could look at um the agendas from administrative meetings when these kinds of things are on their agendas and are taking place you will actually I would think at the end of the day be able to read a review of the technology program look at the
124data that was collected and all of those items would be outlined in Ken's um Dr Hamilton's action plan with the dates that those things would be happening and available to you so you know it's not a 5% increase or but you will have deliverables with very specific outcomes okay all right I I think we need something that addresses I hate to say this word out loud the Finance Tax piece um and I think that's important because I think that's an ongoing concern uh at least half of the pieces that are on there back behind your two administrators um list that is a a concern so where do you want to go with that in terms of a goal Mr I I think financial piece I think well let's let's talk about that because I think
125that's really a very fruitful conversation to have is our quest to identify a particular number by which we close adequacy and then what are the barriers associated with that uh is our quest to work on creating the balance that we talked about earlier because if we say our goal is to close is to reduce over adequacy spending then we have to also look at what some of those hurdles are that we anticipate a lot of which is unknown at this juncture that may impede our ability to be successful with that or diminish that window to some extent I I would tell you that's I had a board that wanted to write a goal in June that said we would develop a budget that was at least 1 and a half% below the 2% cap when
126they picked me up off the floor um I said I have no idea why you would want to implement a goal that would show hamstring you as a district in being able to provide an education in an area where you don't know what funding is going to look like from the state you don't have your testing scores back to be able to see where your kids are you don't know what enrollment is going to look like but it was too early in the year so and we tried that and we got our head handed to us when we used to have elections right and so I agree with Dr Hamilton we should go and set some broad things and then the interaction between the bean counters and the curriculum guys and step systematically and recognize
127hey this is not going to be a one shot deal it's going to be multi-year and it's going to be hard pick and shovel labor but it's got to be done it's the only way we're ever going to go and go back to yatsi Thomas down in Trenton and say okay lady we're at adequacy now what in the name of hell are you going to do for us we're looking for a $30 million check I I think she's probably still not sitting there I mean because they shifted you know it's a new crew yes um I more or less disagree with when you said that um that District wanted to cut it 1% or 2% that uh handcuffs you I disagree with that um we're now at a point that we can't keep spending the
128way we're spending is it for the betterment of the children absolutely but you're at a point now and and the surprise is is as b as the economy is um between uh Union negotiations and uh and some of these new initiatives there's no accounting as to who's going to pay for it and at what cost what I'm saying is if you said now we' already discussed cutting uh adequacy getting back down to adequacy from over adequacy and cutting that yes that's part of it but there are other areas that can be cut and if we set a limit of we want to see 1% a year for the next three years above and beyond the acacy cut there may be subjects there may be areas that we can cut but we have to work we
129can't keep allowing and this had been said at some of the committee meetings where some members said well now as and I voted against moving the election to November because I personally feel that the the taxpayers have a right to voice their opinion knowing that in some cases it may mean nothing but in some in most cases it does mean something that it forces the township Council to recommend Cuts but at least the res residents have a voice they have no voice now and a couple of the members of the board had said well now as long as we stay below the 2% cap no problem but it's not the 2% cap it's all the other expenditures above and beyond the 2% okay let me let me just Mark let me you and I need
130to sit down and and I'm going to take you through because you're full of BS John that would be that Baler Dash noard okay aw get meeting that's okay I'll take care of it what I would suggest and my problem was not with it this board wanting to reduce by a percent it was being so specific so early on without an analysis of how they were going to get there so I think if you want to write a goal it has to be around looking at where are those areas that will allow you to make good decisions to maintain that balance between quality education and fiscal responsibility that in ways will least damage the programmatic offerings to maintain that balance between quality education and the budget so I I think you need to do that
131systemically to look at your budget but I think trying to say it has to be at 1% or it has to be at least you know $1 million or putting a number around it it really sets you up for failure where you just get to a point where you say all right we're we're at 600,000 we only need another 400,000 let's just make it here without really an analysis of the kind of impact that that has so my my point is not so much not to be doing those things but to do it in a way that makes sense that doesn't tie your hand or make decisions that aren't good couldn't you add to that that you take into account the consideration of the taxpayer without using a specific tax increase or decrease you know
132what I I i' like well let me let Mike talk and then just just real quick and I I'll be brief um and I want I want to clarify U Mark's Mark's Point here because this is important and it's come up a couple times the tax levy cap takes your general fund Levy from the preceding year and it grows it by 2% included in there is salaries and benefits and everything else so they are included and do eat up that growth of the 2% then on top of that you're allowed a very small adjustment for pension health insurance and enrollment but it's only a couple $1,000 at most they limit us on that 2300 I thought it was unlimited no absolutely not count absolutely not it's a very very small almost negligible adjustment to the
1332% cap so we really are living within that 2% environment but number two I I would just caution the board against setting some kind of Benchmark or metric on adequacy or on the tax levy because there's so many variables enrollment state aid ratables Jamesburg all of which are out of our control you could set a tax Benchmark and have any one of those four really blow it out of the water right I think that's perfect segue into what I I think maybe one of the things we want to focus on is developing a budget philosophy so that we have some sense for instance facilities is a big big issue here there is no way we're going to get fac to facilities in the manner in which we should without a referendum which it would be
134suicide without establishing a philosophy around our our budget are we going to because if we say we're going to put a million dollars in facilities that million dollars has to come from someplace else if we're going to also work on not passing that on to taxpayers so that means we can cut all the paper and books we want we're not going to get to a million dollars you're talking about people at that point when you're talking about people you're talking about programs so we need a philosophy Mike and I when we sit down and we start talking about this budget with principles we need to know are we saying okay instead of you having a class with 23 kids you're going to have 25 kids or you're going to have 26 kids in third grade
135or fourth grade and what does that mean in terms of the workforce that will get you a million but you can't turn around and then say when when the association or parents D coming into the microphone we don't want 26 kids in our classroom and then say well you know what we can't do that roof now because we're going to put those teachers back in so that's why we need a philosophy around the a framework for developing our budget process okay I think we're done now no I have we got get cple to public and we have to advertise that and that's why I say let's quit being punching bags let's get out and aggressively State hey we're a superior school system we've got great academics and we have been working with might and Maine
136to get the financial house to where we want to be and quit the BS that's been going around here can I all I have an issue I'm sorry I have an is UN it's killing me here with what you just said this line of this discussion we're having the first thing I have a problem with is we're talking about let's get rid of our over adequacy completely in this perceived uh notion that the state's going to give us more money but if they don't now we have a a generation of children that may not be up to par what we used to have the only that's doing that's not so I think it is but now you're just saying you said in that statement that you're going to have all these great students and great
137programs but you're also saying get rid of all the over adequacy get rid of the AP right that's gone get rid of the busing get rid of everything else I that's the direction we don't want to have a mandate where let's get rid of all of our great programs and maybe the state in four or five years might give us some money and I think that's a problem now that's the first thing I have a pro a major problem with that we're moving in that direction before we even thinking about anything else the second thing is we're we're ignoring a lot of the what Mike was saying these external influences we're having um we've got in my development we got another 400 units going in right and they're putting them in they work seven days
138a week in my development they're putting in several a month so we might by the opening of the school year right over the might have another 6 8 10 kids by Christmas we might have 20 30 40 kids which might mean another class what do we do then do we cut more programs we got to add a new teacher right but where do we get the money from and we're not thinking about a lot of the external how many more develops developments we have we have that another one going in on 130 right 150 units which the guy said like six kids or something going to come from there's no way in hell I mean you're going to have a load of kids and we're not thinking about and I think the philosophy is the
139way to do it we can't cut it by x% or do this or do that when we might have five more developments going in right they're building that that weird turn over there they're put another 10 or 15 houses over there and these aren't one one-bedroom houses they're they're four five six bedroom houses they're huge houses who has those houses people with a lot of kids you're not going to move to development that's over adequacy and not have children right to move into these huge houses and we're missing that point I think by pre-establish what trying to do you know and and to what Mike was saying there's a lot of other variables and we're not really thinking about it the only thing we're really thinking about I'm not going after you is we're thinking
140about let's cut back on all of our programs and you a little bit uh to save some more money but it's the wrong way of thinking let's let's not think let's cut cut cut think no let Mr but that's that's what's it might not be because in your second statement you didn't say that but that's what's coming across to me now maybe because I have four kids going into the school four four and you got how many two I I think the the point is here you as a board need to come to consensus around parameters for the development of the budget that is both reflective of the your Collective priorities and is responsible to the taxpayers and to the community and and I think that's where Ken was going is that he needs clear
141direction from all of you one of the parameters we used to have in my community when in 10 years we had four referendums and we added because we were getting 300 kids every year for 10 years okay one of our parameters for our budget was we would use every single piece of available space before we would ask ask the taxpayers to renovate a building addon or or to build the new facility okay because we needed to do that we didn't feel that was a parameter for us for budget development and for referenda we would not go out and ask until we had used you know every available space so small um group instruction areas had to be fully utilized you know administration had to go into trailers so that we could use another building that
142they were use do you know what I'm saying so having those things allows you to go out and talk to your community and say Here's how we've built this budget we've put into place the following we're not cutting quality programs but we have looked at programs that are not fully utilized or under enrolled we've reduced those that has led us to be able to reduce Staffing in those areas by X we've taken that staff and put them in y so I think you need as a group to really sit down and have a hard discussion around what are what is your philosophy as a board and then provide your ad Administration with support because otherwise they're going to develop a budget bring it to you and you're all going to go in 36 different or
143at least nine different directions on it Gwen I absolutely agree with you and that's what I was saying about the interactions more importantly I think Mr Masters really hit a very vital point we need to get a study going and figure out not the five years but the 10 years and take a medium projection of a mid projection and a Max and say what in the name of hell are we facing we may have to have a Monroe Township South High School just like West Windor had to do and I'm going tell you it's a little more emergent than that because what Lou just described we could conceivably have an issue midye that's a whole school midy year we could have an issue and need more classrooms on at the and and I have a
144you know we we can talk about how that could happen we fortunately with the opening of Applegarth we have the capacity where we can begin to plan for needing to open more instructional space for students but that's why this conversation is so important because we will be in the middle of a budget and may conceivably because of the way the the the closings are occurring on those homes we may have to come up with resources that are not in our budget right now before next year's budget before next year's budget yes one more second yes I as part of a I think I think this budget philosophy is one of the most important things really we ever started talking about because you know going back to reviewing programs and things like that what I was
145talking about before I don't think we should just cut programs just because of over adequacy a lot of people move into Monroe because we provide these Services because my my child uh can do senior options and take culinary classes you know I don't want to just go down a list and say that's over let's just cut that I think we need to re uh going back to number two review the programs and see maybe there are some things that aren't working and things that are you know that we can that we can cut or maybe we can put off things for a few years until you know the ecomic times get gets better but what L said I I personally feel we can cut it to adequacy all we want I think we're we're it's
146boulder dash that the government's going to give us more money just because we cut all these Ade these uh above adequacy programs on that not that formula by April of next year I think it's a wrong Philosophy for this District to take because people move into Monroe I moved into Monroe because of the school system and before all these programs that my kids have an opportunity to take on that on a lot on that list a lot on not on it goes back to that balance that that we have over here that someone spoke about how do we maintain quality programs at the same time be fiscally efficient and good stewards and and pinch every nickel and dime to make sure it's well have and it's a delicate balance we want to address the taxpayers
147issues that we hear and we want to also there for every person that complains about the tax increase I'm sure we're going to get another person saying well you know I want this program don't cut this so it's a it is it's a very delicate balance Amy did you have us did you want to say something because I know you had your hand I cut let me just go here and then I'll get back it'll come around um one of the comments I said earlier was the move from rural to Suburban and the enormous growth in our district along with that I've been here 16 years so I have a just a you know not the whole picture of the mono history but a pretty good piece the amount of subgroups that we now engage
148in in 2012 is more than I've ever felt but exponentially so having a budget philosophy would then guide our decision-making because every subgroup has valid valid concerns and and they really wants and and they're all very valuable but when you have hundred so subgroups and I'm not being um short with that number how do you meet all those needs and what happens is the splintering that we're some splintering we're seeing some splintering because we all are so vested in doing what's right um for everybody for everybody well if you asked the 10 board members on this board we would each have something that we want to see in the budget something that we don't have and I would guarantee that it's all different 10 different opinions so if if we asked what the philosophy is
149now to each person you would get I would assume very different answers I think but you're going to have to come exactly to consensus around at least those big chunk items and and and really live with them for a while and and I would tell you from a governance perspective you know once you come to consensus around that then all of you have an obligation to really support the budget and to communicate I think it's more important now than ever since the vote is no longer available to your community right wrong or otherwise that's the reality I think it's more important now than ever to be communicating um the impact of that budget the good things that are going to happen for the school what the impact is going to be for the uh you
150know the average assessed home and whatever um I think it's more critical than ever because we need the support of our communities to be successful so even while they're not voting I think getting that information out to them is critically important and you are in large part representatives of all of your different you all have different constituencies you know you may be a grand parent you may be you know an Elementary Middle School Parent you may be a high school ban parent so you all know different people in the community in different constituencies you need to be talking to them about the good things that are taking place and the impact of the budget so but you have to be speaking from the same page or you're going to have board meetings where people come
151and say we didn't know you were eliminating this in the board caves and and that can't happen and if you had a firm budget philosophy and a consensus around this is the way we want to go it makes those NOS a lot easier to say to a group of people that you know and like and would love to help but just can't I think we have to I think um one thing that you know one of the things that's very important here to keep in mind is is just a long-term picture and where we've come from my family has been here for a hundred years they were farmers here and and my my uh great-grandparents moved here from Italy my grandmother actually went to went to school in Jamesburg my father went to school in
152Jamesburg we didn't even have a school system in Monroe the one thing that I think we have to be mindful of is that any any deep Cuts anything that we're looking for that's going to really impact the the the uh what our offerings and and our standing uh I think we also have to be able to let the let the homeowners whether they're senior citizens or or new families understand that part of the reason why we haven't experienced the the collapse in housing values that other other parts of the state and Nation have is because we have a good school system and we're still attractive and and and when we get to the point where we're cutting things just for the sake of cutting things we're not going to be as attractive those home values
153are going to are are going to they're going to slide and go in the toilet yes and then I'll get to you and again if we go in and say oh let's just cut two million out of the budget um the impact could um really hurt children I think it's better to do a review of the programs um the entire board and then go out to the public and say look we are being fiscally responsible we've looked at this program this program we know some of you will be impacted but it it's not working for us there's not enough kids it's costing too and I think in that way that we when we present it to the public that way um and I would also like to say the person who stood up and said
154you know you have terrible schools is not a reflection of this community and I was telling Dr Hamilton I just had a meeting with a high level person from Verizon about you know some issue at work and um he said to me oh you said you were on the school board I said yeah he says you know my brother moved here three years ago only for the school district that's all he moved here for and and I think that that person is the people who love the school district don't come out they don't just the so I think we we shouldn't focus on the one person no because it was a personal issue it's not who said this is a bad district and and not focus on it let the comco because if it was
155that bad where's the other 6,000 you know parents of our I agree with where the 39,000 citizens that's that's remember you got to keep that in mind the other thing is this that I think Amy is absolutely right but I would suggest one thing let's identify three or four big big mules that are major programs and what we are doing with the big mules and that we can talk about and it's the public can understand it don't get into the weeds and talk about this 400,000 or or this 200,000 let's talk in blocks of nothing less than 5 million and that way you can go and get the people's attention and don't clutter it up keep it less than a half a dozen better yet maybe three yes Mark sorry something that's been said at
156the meetings and I've said it is I truly believe and I think all of us in the room believe the same thing we can cut everything down to adequacy and the state is still going to put the screws to us and not give us all money yes it hurts to have to cut for instance the bus unknown why should we have to cut forget zero period busing the 4:30 busing the late busing why should we have to cut that it's over adequacy well let me tell you something the state can go scratch I think that where we're over adequate and it is for a good reason whether it be the AP courses special courses and specialed whatever it may be the hell at the state we stick with what we're doing what Amy said which
157is what I really meant to say is the fact that go through all our offerings right see what we don't need don't just every year come out well we're going to offer this this year and this is going to be new so we should go through that as a board as a whole and say look we don't need this we don't need this we do need this and and and tailor it that way and save that way I don't want to see us cut because we're over adequacy because we're never going to get more money from the state anyway all we're showing as the state is that we will over adequacy we're wasting all that money and here we're adequate like they want but you're not getting these kids to reach that's not adequate that's
158way above adequate I hate that word why would you want to be a board member of a school district that was only adequate right exactly why would you want to live here if well be like Oldbridge under adequacy you get 45 here for a reason and you stay here for a reason and one of those major reasons I'm sure for most of you if not all of you is because the quality of the school system you need to maintain that quality but you need to be accountable and right now be fiscally responsible I operate under the premise we operate under the premise that our goal is to maintain an uh a quality School District that exceeds that standard that's my that in my mind that has been my my marching orders but I am now
159sensing different marching orders because the focus has been more on respond to the financial burden on the public which I get but they're like this okay and that's why having this discussion and figuring out where that balance is for this board is so critical and I think looking at your programs your structures and saying you know where are there if there are any left because I think you've probably already put into place as many fiscal deficiencies we financing the bond sharing Services reducing Transportation I mean those things have been happening routinely in school districts because you had no choice for several years you get to a place where there's nothing left or very little to left that's sort of that fluff that begins to cut into the heart and soul or if you want to
160think about it as the bone of the fundamental core of your program and so how do you and where do you make those choices and I think that's what you're talking about you need that guidance and Direction and someone before said talked about committees you know this needs to come out of the curriculum and instruction committee this needs to come out of the facilities committee this needs to come out of the finance committee this alone should drive your work all year long till budget time so that you can provide that clear kind of direct because for the whole board to sit and do the whole budget in every area at one time to really then have a full board discussion with the work done in committee to say here's where we think that balance is
161and to provide those I hate to use the word marching orders but marching orders for development of the budget there's no point in having your administrative team develop a budget that comes back to the board and the board goes no that's not what we mean at all I think if we could if we're successful with that that that number three a lot of the waffling that Amy just described and Kathy just described wouldn't exist I mean because we would we would be on the same page now if I can just add one thing and Michael can tell me if I'm right or wrong is it correct that for every $750,000 that we either spend or save it equates to one cent correct approximately correct so in other words to to make it where it's it's
162viable where it's noticeable you're talking large Cuts large savings you know and I'm I'm not I'm not uh shooting down the one cent because whatever we could save I don't care if they can save $20 a year at least we show we're saving something but we have to keep in mind that for every $750,000 that we spend that's one cent added to your tax levy and then on the other way is every $750,000 we're able to save in in underused programs or or other ways of consolidating that means a one a 1 cent cut and you know it starts to add up and that's that has to be in the back of them that's significant too because penni's worth a lot of money in Monroe in other places a penny worth $50,000 well you can
163knock that out and people would really feel that and see that and that that wouldn't be significant but our challenge in Monroe is the fact that the value of a penny is so much in comparison that it takes a lot to make any significant impact on taxpayers make it in they're actually going to be able to see and feel you know you're talking millions of dollar to get to 15 or 20 bucks okay and that's and I don't really need disrespect that's a large pizza and a 2 L bottle of soda for most parents that's not a lot to ask them to give up to maintain quality programs for their kids I know people on fixed incomes 20 bucks is 20 and it's important I'm not saying it's not but do looking at cutting out
164real program at that level and and for most people it's okay un less grandfather's Pizza you know yeah but that's you're talking parents now I I know remember we have 50% I I that's what I said and they feel all that it's a lot yes right we could begin on on this cut um conversation by really establishing a a critical value assessment for all of the programs that we have here by reviewing the performance and effectiveness of every layer of these different programs that we have is this measuring up to what it was expected to do it's costing X should we reconsider this and take that through the whole spectrum of our offering that's what two is and that's really what two two is about so that you will have the information to be able
165to make Intelligent Decisions I want to I want to be careful about something as we have this conversation number two is going to take a long time number three needs to happen immediately so you're not going to have all the data from number two to be able to in complete completely informed number three so number three this philosophy almost has to happen with part of the data you need in order to make that decision understanding that you won't have the full picture there's no way we could assess and evaluate every program by the time we start our budget season that's why you want to go for the big mules right that's exactly why okay need a fourth Yes actually yeah just to add on what you said Ken going to number two though you can
166you I'm sure guys have a feeling of there may be some programs and things like that to take a look at first and priorities so you know you can maybe start with those things that yeah I'm sure you have an idea of of those are the big mules got the big mules or even smaller mules I was going to say sometimes the smaller mules sometimes smaller mules are uh you know are things that small mule a baby mule what's the under million it's a muette that's what uh we'll let we'll let you guys I don't want that on TV toate late yes wouldn't it be wise I don't know whether Dr Hamilton's done it already and I'm sure he has but pinpointing let's call it a winning program a winning District that seems to be
167doing everything by the Numbers everything properly um and getting getting their background as to product offerings perhaps what they offer versus what we offer are we missing something that we should offer and are we offering something we shouldn't what what gets me is we have a fabulous at the high school a fabulous offering of electives and I complained a lot about these uh high school students 12th graders cutting classes you know and um I really took offense to it because it wasn't once or twice was three times five times eight times 10 times and when I had a meeting with um the principal of the high school and the assistant principles I was told that in order to fill their uh their um periods for the day they had to take electives because my my
168bone of contention was if You' take an elective why are you cutting it you picked it so is it that maybe we don't need all these electives if they're only using it to fill out their schedule and yes there are things that I wish I could take you know Studio camera uh producing I'd give my it for that when I went to high school if they offered that so could we identify a couple of districts that perhaps yourself and Dr Gorman can visit and try to get a background as to what they're offering um I think people are coming to us to see what we're offering we saw that but that's the problem we saw that they come here but yet we're being penalized there's another anomaly in Monroe that we we can't forget the
169district is not that old in terms of its growth that's right there's two new two two mortgages essentially you're carrying for oak tree and this high school that is a big part of what people are feeling publicly that's so right so we can't underestimate that that's not going away so when we look at our over adequacy isn't just because of all this stuff it's a lot of it is just growing pains that happen we we're that have caught up with us 1998 was the the start of the hockey stick and even you know we were growing 1 to 3% and Jeff can verify that then 1998 we Skyrock and growing at 10% per year we live through capacity we the first referendum the second referendum came trailers then we had to start going into trailers
170for because of four years and four days of prosa and armeno and all the rest of those dirt bags we're on TV who who cost us $42 million extra a million dollar a month almost yeah but we can't go backwards no but that's exactly the point that Dr Hamilton's making those are anchors on our neck and we're going to if if Lou Masters is right and I think he is we're going to be facing a couple of more anchors around our neck um well then that comes to a goal that I think is important which would be our facilities um maintaining them because if they start to if we don't start maintaining them it's going to cost us more down the road and where are we going to house our stud plan ahead we have
171to start to think about expansion yeah of the facility yes well and I think I think that will come out of your strategic plan very specific goals around looking at projected demographics and enrollment looking at what are we going to do with our facilities what I I think that encompasses that and I would agree with you and I know that for years especially in these tight economics times a lot of boards have said okay instead of cutting teachers we'll postpone the roof and patch over three spots you know uh we won't rekey the building even though it's not as secure as we'd like because we need busing to somewhere I mean typically it's been the easiest place with the least amount of impact on kids facilities maintenance and UPG you know maintenance pieces and someone
172talked about the turf um that has to be addressed as well and that's a huge chunk of change I'm sure um but it's the FR commercial pay me now or pay me later and you pay a hell of a lot later I don't when I I there's just one piece I want to put in here and I think honestly these three goals are lofty enough that I would be comfortable as a superintendent saying this is this is a plate full right on but this strategic we we can't we can't not have something on these goals that speak to instruction I know so even if we look at that number one for example to uh develop a strategic plan around key areas uh to engage the community and maintain instructional um Integrity yes that's the word
173maintain instructional Integrity or Excellence even I like that word Excell I would say I would prefer Excellence to Integrity yes I like can just behold that doesn't mean it's Excellence Excellence I I and and I would say I don't know how the rest of the board feels but from from my perspective this is enough work to keep and administration yeah I know but the point is you got free and if we if we concentrate our efforts on the big mules those 5 million up packages then we can have talking points to the public we can talk with some degree of specificity but not complete and recognize hey we're living with the the State playing the three card Bounty game and it's always with what two days notice Mike or three days notice days noce and
174uh but hey we can live with that but we can give broad outlines and demonstrate to the people that hey this is an excellent School District we have got good Administration and we're communicating to you and here's things in a broad outline don't ask us for uh Johnny Jones's uh bus route or anything like that that's that's you work it out with the principal or or the or the trans ation department but we want to go out and get the public on our side because right now we got a lot of boulder dash out there and it's going on television and it's dead wrong okay are you comfortable with these as a board I I I do think these are rather ambitious and broadly based enough um to keep your Administration um working very diligently
175Gwen can we just make sure we get a consensus check on this yes I'm I'm just going to go around the room Marvin are you comfortable that these are yeah I think um I think Dr Hamilton is correct I think number three has to be done immediately I'd like to see uh an outline for number two and uh some kind of a timeline okay hello two has me nervous I think that's a little yeah that one's the only one that I think is uh out there but if you guys are up to it I mean it's it's big and if we pick a subset I guess as long as the subset spans different areas really what I was trying to do a little bit here was to give you some idea of the subset and
176maybe what Ken could put together when he has time to to do this not today obviously is to sort of look at the whole piece and say okay for you know 1213 I anticipate this here's what I'm projecting for 14 out years do you know so then you would get a little more of a structure and then the board would be more comfortable because this is huge but it's a multi-year goal you're not going to get it all in one year right I don't think you're ever going to get it because I think you're going to be adding programs and changing programs it's just going to sort of on you know it's ongoing improving student instruction and achievement is ongoing it'll look different continuous improvement process that's what you have to recog it is about
177continuous Improvement and so it'll look differently um every year Ira yeah I agree two two something that has to be ongoing and maybe a timeline a rotating timeline a multi-year timeline a reviewing program so we know you know this year we're going to look at this this year we're going to look at that and then maybe a fiveyear rotating timeline or something something like that I think that has to be ongoing pretty much forever and three is yeah something we definitely have to do uh immediately and start talking about it soon as we soon as we can so but yes I'm comfortable with all these yeah I I do I agree with them I I think it's come time that we do need to U review programs um and you know especially number three about
178a budget philosophy that once we make the budget we have to stick to it live with it and I think that that's really a very key and and promote it you know okay no Ken Ken I'm sorry I'm good I agree I think uh I agree with what everybody's saying about the need to you know we have people that are on uh on on fixed budgets and we have to we and we you know as members you know part of our community and we have to um we have to keep those people in mind but at the same time we're tasked with running a you know or or making policy so that the administrators can run our school district and and our Focus has to be on the children and what's best for the children
179and I know that's become cliche and people use that to to attack us oh yeah it's always for the children it's always for the children and that's just another way for us to to uh make an excuse to spend more money but the truth of the matter is that I think for everyone that I know on this board that it is about the children and and and uh and that's really where we need to focus so I think that to to am's point and you know everyone else's we need to look at where this floing we need to look at where we cut and we have to really be mindful about our spending but at the same time we don't want to gouge our our our our school district to the point where we're not
180adequate anymore or we're not a a top school district and and we don't want to fall behind and I think that that that's a slippery slope then housing values go down and and one thing just leads to another and now we're subpar all the way around I don't disagree Mark few things number one I feel that all three are almost interwined they work along with one another um what we do whatever the plan is should be ongoing which somebody else had said you're not going to do it all in one year the residents don't expect you to do it in one year but if we could work on each aspect of it set a specific goal whether it be an amount whether it be programs for each year I mean you're not going to cut
181everything you're not going to add everything at one time uh number two is very broad I think that we can work on that by subdividing it into specific categories and then setting well whatever the categories are well let's try to do this the first year let's try to do this the second year planning ahead as far as facilities the same way and this is something John brought up at many meetings when he was calmer and that was that with with all the building that's going on and all these planned communities and I let everybody here know you probably have counting the two Salo uh communities the conversion communities you probably have five major communities going in and I'm not talking about uh an area like around the corner it's going to be eight homes or
182it's going to be I'm talking about 200 families 150 families yours is going to be another 400 families and where is the corridor for these buildings Apple goth and oak tree that's where all this building is going on that's where all your development is going to be so this is something that that we must must start to plan where can we expand without having to build a new school um and that's what it's going to come down to is it's going to come down to a new school so that's on that part so number two subdivided and I think we all agree on that number one very very important and and we've discussed this a few times and I discussed it with Dr Hamilton more important now than ever before is let's talk adult communities
183first and then families adult communities again you're talking about probably 50% of Monroe or adult communities all if not most have their own Community newspaper we must whether we have Dr Hamilton do it or we have the president of the board whoever it may be do it is an article written each month about what transpired at a meeting whether it's something we want to add whether it's something we want to subtract nothing about you know problems personel problems or any of that but just what's going on here we saved Michael was able to renegotiate the bonds and saved us $4 million in the life this is what they want to hear and unfortunately it's not getting to them when when parents come here and speak oh I didn't know about the funding issue give me
184a break somebody got up here and spoke and said they live here what was it 18 years 20 years never attended a meeting yet they come out here and they're ready to shoot down everything that's done on the board and you know I walked out of here sometimes and you know jokingly I said next time I come in I'm going to put a Target on my back because everybody here in their own right and their own way want to do the right thing sure you know so even though we may differ on how money is spent in some aspects we all are for the same thing I have no children in the school district my kid my grandkids aren't in the school district but I try to treat this school district as I would do
185in Bethlehem Pennsylvania where one of my uh daughters live and man alipin where my other daughter lives you want what's best for the kids you don't want the kids going out after they graduate high school with their two arms tied behind their back and they can't get a job and and for the state to force us to bring down a level of Education shame on them so I like what we have here I think that we all can work together as a team as a team that's very important as a team we're not looking to give Dr hamlton a hard time Jeff Gorman's a different story we do want to but everybody wants to do the same thing no but you got to do me a favor would somebody start my car before I go
186out but anyway I I go along with what you have there I think we have something really to work on all right thank you John I'm going to be very brief yes thank you awesome this is a first a motion for sending yes I agree too because I think the Strategic plan in itself could take almost a year for us to come up with what we want to do in the next five to 10 years and um I'm not willing and I'm sure nobody else is willing to settle for us just being adequate I think we need to continue what we do here because everybody comes to us because of what we have to offer so I think two and three um three in itself is something we have to start probably in September because
187our budget cycle starts in October so that's something that this board as a whole at at a public meeting needs to have that conversation so I think they're pretty good lofty goals for us good you know then that the next step and all of this is in your packet um is that your superintendent is going to develop action plans um you should um obvious obviously um adopt your goals I would recommend your first meeting in September mostly because then you um Community is back from the beach and I mean that figuratively I know they're not all at the beach but people start paying attention once again to what's going on in education when they may not have been you know given summer I know I don't in summer um oops I'm going the wrong way
188um typically the next piece would be to develop board goals um but you haven't yet done your self- evaluation so my recommendation to your board would be to go online if you would like complete your self- evaluation um and then I would be delighted to come back before a regular meeting for half an hour or so and just review that with you perhaps an identified a board goal for the year um my recommendation obviously to align with this would probably be to continue to engage your community in some fashion because I think that is a really appropriate role for your board I think it's an on going one that boards need to be um cognizant of and continue to work toward but questions you did this yet just a just a quick comment I like
189the idea you have uh to put those goals uh on the agenda of every meeting so uh I guess whoever prints up the agenda we have our vision statement our mission statement it's a good idea for us and then the community to see where we're going to be focused on for the year so they know you know what's going on and I do think that it does help board members as you're going through to just stay focused around your board goals so thank you very much I will get all of this back to you in in a memo um it may take me a little bit of time way you cost us more money now we got to go wash the two tables I thank you very much if you have question I want to
190thank you and again thank you very good conversation and the entire board for my lat thank you so much enjoy the rest of your we still we still meeting we're still sessione thank you for being with us and helping us through this process we get over I'm still we're still in the meeting call this meeting thank you we're still in the meeting you have an agenda you want me can I dism the agenda is very I the rest of the agenda recycle yeah public forum public forum is there anyone from the public who wishes to speak please come on there's five guys ahe here do I need the microphone please state your name and address for the record thank you Robert zareski uh gatore Avenue and Jamesburg I'd like to please speak into speak in
191the microphone okay take it up walk you have three minutes okay what I'd like to do is commend you all on what you did here today I think it's very admirable most of you came out for this meeting and setting forth in your goals I like the fact that you are going to look into gauging public a little bit more I think it's very important in Jamesburg we've been trying to do that and it's a difficult task to overcome also I'd like do I had a brief conversation at this end of the table to Enlighten the board members on this side the housing developments that are going up Spotswood and heleta engaged with the community along with the town councils and push the developers to give their money towards the schools and that I think
192is a big obstacle that has to be overcome and I think it's very easily done by just communicating with the Town Council and the mayor and the zoning boards and planning boards in order to engage your developers and tell them you're not getting this push through as easily as you think without taking in consideration the impact on the school systems which I understand is sitting here today is going to be a big problem for you that's all thank you thank you is there is there anyone else from the public seeing no one our next scheduled public Board of Education meeting Wednesday September 12th 2012 7:00 p.m. at the high school motion to adour motion to yet not yet not yet Kathy if I could if I could just make a comment please before we close
193out I want to thank the board for coming out I I know it was um a bit of an Indulgence on your on your live sashy to come out on a Saturday morning at 8:00 but I really appreciate that I think this was a very very good conversation and I do ask the board as we move forward that you help me focus on these goals and what I mean by that is once we the board formally adopts these goals and we flush them out uh it's really important for us to work in unison to avoid the distractions from these goals and we spent I I think often times Administration gets derailed um by spending a lot of times on things that are not really consistent with our Direction and hopefully this conversation and the development
194of these goals will help help us create some some Harmony around moving the district forward in unison and accomplishing the things that I know we all we all have in mind that is to be responsive to our community work together for the sake of our kids and our staffs and make sure and our staff and make sure that Monroe continues to be the kind of place where people want to live and kids where where kids want to grow and and become productive citizens and that we concentrate on modeling the kinds of behaviors we want from our children by being Democratic and civil at all times Well agree after weour I'd like to make a statement but I don't want to make the statement on tape he Mr tesler you made a motion to motion to
195adjourn yes second by Mr Klein all in favor I opposed extensions okay meeting has been adjourned e e e