001good evening the meeting of the Monroe Township Board of Education will come to order please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all God sake may we have a roll call Mr Gorski yes ma'am this is K Pono here Mr tesler here miss antelis here Mr Braverman Mr Chella here Mr calman here Mr Masters here Mr poy here Mr proso here Mr zareski here Madame board president you have a quorum thank you in accordance with the provisions of the new Jersey open public meetings law the Monro Township Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting to be published by having the date time and place
002thereof posted April 12th 2000 April 12th 2013 one at all schools two home News Tribune three cranberry press four filed with the clerk of the municipality at this time we will have our reports from our student board member good evening ladies and gentlemen there are sever events taking place in April the spring musical Greece was from April 11th to April 14th the cast did a great job performing each role the third markting period ends tomorrow April 18th class elections will be held April 24th to April 25th thank you thank you at this time number six on the agenda we will have a presentation on the Falcon Life program learning IND dependence through functional experiences Dr Hamilton okay thank you there thank you how are you thank you good evening I'm Su B Marco I'm a
003learning consultant at Monroe tum high school and today I'm here to talk to you about a program we're going to be bringing to the high school next year it's called the Falcon Life program currently the middle school has a self-contained program for develop developmentally disabled students typically these students go out of District once they reach the high school level because we haven't had an appropriate placement for them to meet their needs a number of us at the high school some standing behind me have worked together to research we've visited other local high schools with programs for these students but what I found most important was listening to the parents some of them are here here tonight we listened to them we heard their concerns we listen to their fears and we listen to what their
004needs were for their children and with that we give you Falcon Life Learning Independence through functional experiences as I said they currently have a self-contained program at the middle school Falcon life will expand upon that program we buildt a state-of-the-art high school here in Monroe our goal is to use every aspect of that high school to support these students within our building in the community of Monro these students will not be self-contained they'll be moving throughout the building and doing that they will be getting their academics their prevocational skills their social skills communication as well as their physical education and this is a schedule of what they'll be doing next year currently the middle school has a cafe we are going to expand upon that roughly we have 300 staff members that we can serve
005here in Monroe Township High School the students will be Brewing they will be um organizing the coffee orders and they'll be doing all of that in the apartment that was built here in our high school it's an apartment setting that they'll be working in and they'll have a touch screen that they'll be taking the orders from the teachers will be using their iPads to submit orders it'll be something straight out of a Dunkin Donuts and and that's what it's supposed to be it's supposed to be real life for them during Second block they're going to be having functional academics meeting their individual needs they'll have units of study that will total State graduation requirements and it'll include functional math and reading now these things are going to be cross content throughout their day but during
006Second block this is when we individualize these specific skills for them during block three they'll have adaptive PE and they'll also have an elective called Independent Living we've put together a team here currently in Monroe Township High School of students general education students who are going to be working with our Falcon life students during their PE Time they will get be getting their physical education credit but what they'll do is they will come into their adaptive PE and work as pure mentors for them and we're really excited about that and we're going to be actually starting to train these students on Monday and then we hope for them to turn key and teach underclassmen their skills and how to work with our students and we're going to integrate them then that allows us to have
007them as Lunch Buddies because during third block here in the high school everyone has F Ed and then they have lunch so now we have an opportunity to have our Falcon life students to have General ed students as their buddies during lunch which I I know was one of the concerns that I had heard from many of our parents and during activities throughout the school year during the independent living elective I have a description of this great elective for them and they will be doing things like self-awareness decision- making food preparation clothing repairs but what else we're going to do is we're going to cycle in other teachers that teach electives within the building and they're going to cycle in for five week blocks at a time so this way our Falcon life students are
008going to be exposed to all the great things that we offer here at our high school so they'll be getting industrial Arts they'll get music for a month or five weeks they'll learn photography they'll learn art and our hope is that we can find interest for them and eventually mainstream them out of that elective and go into the mainstream in specific areas that they're strong in but we won't know that unless we explore their interests now I'm going to introduce you the district transition coordinator Mrs Erica fredman hi good evening during the fourth block the students will be having life skills in the apartment in life skills all the lessons will be instruction units and activities to focus on their individual needs as well as the students preferences interests and strengths um during this time
009there will be four three main areas they will focus on daily living skills both basic and complex vocational exploration and communitybased instruction the end goal throughout the direct through direct instruction is to prompt students through verbal and visual cues modeling and repetition to move towards independence in the life skill area the daily living skills very basic areas are grooming whereas more complex areas will be preparing meals within the apartment learning how to use the microwave for some they already know that but just improving upon those skills but before they prepare the meals they'll be able to buy the items for the meals as we go out into the community they will also be setting tables sitting down consuming with proper social skills and interaction and then afterwards cleaning up uh other things that are more
010complex life skills are using telephone whether it's the basic telephone cell phone iPad computers for communication and then they'll be also in the apartment doing house cleaning um we have a bed in the apartment there's a washer and a dryer so for some they'll be sorting the clothes and then they'll be washing the clothes operating the washing machine and the dryer as well as then folding the clothes when they're done I think I'll bring them to my house okay the other area will be covering is vocational exploration vocational exploration covers many areas first job and work Readiness skills and then they'll go on to Career awareness and career exploration first within the apartment setting there will be workstations not only in the apartment but in the classroom where they're having their functional academics to develop
011to practice and master first single repetitive tasks within the classroom by following directions through verbal and visual prompts and then after they've done that they'll be doing job shadowing and job sampling first within the apartment and then they will transfer those skills that they learn in the classroom and the apartment around the school and other areas in the school that some of our students have already worked in and will be working in is the cafeteria they do prep work um the different offices the guidance office the main office the Media Center we've helped out the nurse's office they in the office setting they're doing a lot of clerical skills uh they've helped with signage to advertise school events and then from that point the next tier of um vocational exploration is when a student is
01216 years of age or older they can do a structured learning experience they cannot do that until a formalized process until they're 16 because that involves possible employers and if we're working with employers that could be in an a paid or unpaid work experience it can be community service of some any kind volunteer an internship but because it follows Department of Labor guidelines they must be 16 or above the last area that we'll be covering is community-based instruction community-based inst instruction involves sustained and repeated instructional activities that take place in a variety of settings outside the school these are in their natural Community environment and the idea is to further de develop their skills and generalize the instruction that they've learned into the classroom into real world setting outside in the community this is not
013a field trip of field trip is a one-time event this is repeated sustained instruction because we find that students with multiple disabilities need repeated activities in order to further develop progress and hopefully Master those skills so examples I mentioned there is a lot of overlap in the areas um shopping for the food shopping for clothes maybe going out to buy a gift whether it's holiday gift or a Mother's Day gift uh ordering a drink at a Target or Dunkin Donuts might seem very simple but for some students it takes a long process until they can actually do all the steps it takes and then increasing that to maybe ordering a drink and a snack um another area that you can do in the community is eating out in a restaurant and that involves many different
014academics it goes cross content they have to first know how to do it in the classroom and then you go out to the restaurant you're generalizing this in the community it involves decisionmaking skills ordering verbal communication or visual prompts using their iPad and um expectations when you're out at a restaurant for Behavior proper social skills manners are involved menu math reading the menu seeing how much it costs for the students that are capable counting out their money paying for their own order when they're done and for a higher level student to be able to know tipping if their math skills if they know how to do percent then they would be expected that they can do the Tipping uh figure out the tip for the waiter or waitress so it does go cross content with
015those functional reading math writing skills and also enhances further social ization and communication skills and the last example there I have many but the last example I wanted to share with you because our students this year have already done this um is giving back to the community we live in through community-based instruction we have a Monroe Township food pantry as well as the Deacon cupboard in Jamesburg and this year some of our students that are here tonight designed um Valentine's Day cards and they sold them and with that money we were able to buy food and then donate it to the to people in need in the community and with that I would like to call upon them to share some of what they've done so you can see examples of the types of vocational
016exploration the resume of yimu this is a picture of cafeteria so's doing pineapples and fruits Pam is doing Pizza scooping out C putting the cookies on TR this is a picture of school store I worked at the school store iPhone clothes iPhone sweatshirts and put in cabinet this is a picture of shredding this is picture L paper in the machine thank you [Applause] three things this is my resume of a to carel these are my these are the Val Day cards I drew them and cuted all the pictures thanks I am doing the ordering of the CLA for the sports teams s m the holiday pel first we put the put in the put in the dirt in the pots next we rotate the pants we water them daily finally we W them in a
017red foil thank you so much everyone and have a great [Applause] day hi good evening everyone I'm just here to uh quickly explain our social skills component to the Falcon Life program the social skills uh groups that we run are a related service that the students are provided through their IEPs and they're designed to teach students who have deficits in the social skills area appropriate ways to communicate with not only their same age peers with but with adults in the school community and the community at large the groups involve instruction role playing feedback and a chance to apply the skills in a real life setting in our case we have two group facilitators myself the school psychologist Dana McGee and uh Mr dugdale here who is the speech and language pathologist so it's a multimodal
018approach where we're looking at the whole student not only their communication skills but their social and emotional functioning we meet on a regular basis and uh Mr Dale is going to explain some of the topics that we cover in group but the thing that we're going to do really next year because these have been going on since about 2006 what how we're going to change it for next year for Falcon life is we're going to not only have the small group instruction but we're going to drop into the classrooms and and go over the skills in the classroom setting that we were that we expose to the students in the small group and then we'll also go out into the community so for instance if we teach them the skill uh turn taking then we
019will go into the classroom environment and have them practice taking turns with their peers and teacher and then finally we will go into the community maybe ordering at the deli counter and taking turns in uh in that environment because the main goal with any social skills program is generalization we eventually want the students to take these skills that we expose them to and be able to utilize them in the community and in real life once they leave the high school environment and uh this is Doug Dale our speech and language pathologist thank you in regards to integrating speech therapy into the social skills group and the Falcon Life program um I work with uh the students both with verbal and non-verbal communication skills I provide the situational lessons to promote the student uh cal um
020collaborations Communications and social emotional development it gives the students the opportunities to share interests with each other and to make an and sustain friendships with the the people in their group uh the group provides lessons that include following directions sequencing staying on task which is important communicating wants needs and information to both adults and peers and building listening skills and conversational skills um we like to teach the kids to not only be able to communicate with themselves with the peer with with the peer group and the adults but we try to get them to learn to be assertive so they can make decisions and do things outside of the uh the group and to learn some coping and responsibility and problem solving skills thank you and finally one of the things we're really excited about
021is next year we're going to bring a Special Olympics team here to Monroe Township School District um we're going to start with the middle school and the high school creating a team we hope to participate in bowling and track and field and then expanding it into the elementary schools so that's something that we're very excited about and really I'm very excited about this program we've gone out we've seen other programs around the area I knows I know ours will be above and beyond we're going to keep expanding it based on the individ individual needs of the students here in Monroe Township School District and I just want to take this time to thank the board for giving us this opportunity to have this program come to life and we're really excited to do the right
022thing for our students here in Monroe Township School District thank [Applause] you I can't see no it's not on my agenda okay where did I do with my I need my glasses I just want to thank everybody who was involved with this program um we had an an open house last week to visit the new apartment in um the school that our our students will be utilizing and um we had the honor of having both Antonio and Chi take us on a tour of the school showed us where they worked and explained the apartment to them and it's nice to see in person that where where are we make a lot of decisions as a board and we don't always get to see the end result of those decisions so we had that opportunity to
023see the apartment and what they're going to do and see the the schedule and everything and it I I was completely amazed they made lunch for us they had snacks they they showed us um Antonio I believe had made the bed in the apartment so um yeah so I I think that we should be very proud of what we're doing here for our kids so thank you again do you want me to turn it over to you for the tech plan okay at this time I'm going to turn it's not on the agenda but we're going to have our presentation on the uh technology plan that is going to be adopted by the board this evening um every 3 years we're required to submit a technology plan and while it's not on your agenda um
024for presentation the plan is so volumeless that we thought we would have Mr Washington come and do a brief presentation about what that plan is if anybody wants to view the plan it's 282 Pages you're welcome to come by the central office and and Peru the plan she off maybe Ira could read it commercial you want to add this to the technology plan playing a Jeopardy song it's on good evening everyone for those of you who don't know me my name is Reggie Washington I'm the director of information system for the school district here what I'd like to do is take a few moments of your time tonight to explain the district's proposed technology plan that we're asking the board to approve and write a resolution for accepting this plan this plan like Dr Hamilton
025mentioned is a three-year plan which begins July 1st 2013 and goes through June 30th 2016 there will be a point in time in this presentation where I have to engage you with a little bit of geek speak so just I apologize before we get into that I'll try and Define it in parameters that make sense to you mainly in terms of money cuz there will be some call saing and I think that's a language we all understand we always always want to thank our Board of Education members for the countly hours they put in non paid and a dedication to the Board of Education ever since Dr Hamilton has been here he has drilled in everyone's head everything starts with the vision and the vision is about kids so if there is no correlation between
026whatever you want to do and kids it's not going to happen this is the mission statement that is on everything that we do and then we have in the technology department our own mission statement and I'd like to take a few moments just to read it for you the mission of the information technology department of the Monro Township School District is to provide technical service support training and Leadership related to the use of information Technologies in school management as well as classroom instruction curriculum and assessment that is our charge how did the plan start there were a number of community members Educators administrators and students who became our stakeholders we met and talked about what would we like to see technology wise in at in the school district over the next three years so how
027are we going to employ and deploy technology throughout the school the dates we met in person are January 30th 2013 February 13 2013 March 21st 2013 there was all kinds of emails going back and forth but there were times we are we actually came out and met as a group what is the vision of the technology plan this plan was written specifically to address the state goal of online State Testing during the 2014 2015 school year I'm not sure how many of you know all the NG testing the hesper testing testing as far as the state is concerned 2014 that is going to be conducted online so no more meeting in the room with a bubble sheet to answer your question so kids have to be prepared to engage online testing so this is what
028this plan addresses it is our vision that students learn in a one want technology richened environment before during and after schools what are our basic principles on technology this is what we believe technology is an integral component of school management as well as classroom instruction and assessment technology resources must be available to all users 24/7 as a Global Communication tool technology training and support must be available to all all individuals to improve their Knowledge and Skills to be productive 21st century citizens our students are digital natives what does that mean kids today like to use technology so we're just trying to meet them where they currently are instead of dumbing down when you come to school because you have all these resources at school at home let's use them in the school and perhaps teach
029the kids something technology planning must consider future research Trends and development that can potentially impact the focus of our educational system technology deployments require that the community at large be educated as to the as to the value of this Resource as a tool for learning so that's what we're trying to do all right here comes a little geek speak I need to Define for you some terms that you're going to see coming up in some future slides and what they mean and then I'll draw an analogy to try and put them into terms where if you're not into the tech thing I get it you're not into it I'm going to try and put it in terms that you say okay I know what you're talking about the first one is what we call the
030wide area network well in essence what that is is there are high-speed links that connect one school to another that's what a w link is and what does it allow you to do send email share files send video send voice so these communication leaks are we are what we refer to as a w meab bits per second a meab bit is simply a million bits well what's a bit simple terms it takes eight bit to make one character so you hit the key on the keyboard that say bite which is also 8 Bits so let's think about bandwidth for a moment you're going to hear this term bandwidth if I had a highway and I had X number of cars I can put on there if I had a 100 megabit link that's telling me
031you can put 12, 500,000 cars on that pipe cars again translate to a character at some point in time you have to say I need to expand my highway okay so what's in this plan what we're proposing is the items in blue are what we currently pay for we in Internet currently currently we pay [Music] 9,836 per month every month just to maintain that communication with between all schools what are we proposing by shopping around going with a less expensive expensive vendor we can upgrade the speed to 20 megabits and lower the cost to $3,820 a month we think that's a sign ific savings okay that's for the wi connecting the buildings the other component to communication is the internet speed we currently have 100 megabit per second ethernet to the internet what are we
032paying for it we pay $2500 per month what are we proposing let's increase that speed to 200 megabits so now I can twice as many cars on the highway and it's going to only increase to $3,457 per month now if you add those numbers together although we're going to be we're proposing to pay more for internet if you look at the the amount of money we're saving on the land the overall charge has gone down significantly what else are we proposing Monroe is spread out wide normally when you're Landing infrastructure if you can you want to connect your buildings with fiber that you own there's no reoccurring charges there so what we're proposing is Brookside and barklay Brook they're fairly close together let's invest the money run the fiber to connect those two buildings what
033does that do well now when I bring internet service into one building I don't have to to bring it into the other building we've made that cost one time and now we gained some money there let's do the same thing at Apple maret let's run our own fighter what's happening in the Telecommunications arena is this thing they call Convergence we've been hearing at least in this Arena talking about the convergence of voice video and data for 17 years well now it's at a point point where schools can gain from it if we lay this fiber between these buildings we can not only save in the cost of internet or our land we also can save on the charges we pay for our telephone system because it's going to travel over those same lines those same
034highspeed lines and we're going to save significant money how much money I don't really know as far as theor is concerned but what I can tell you is Monroe is very unique in that we are serviced by three Central offices there's one is Foxwood one in Jamesburg one in Cranberry so if you're out at Woodland school and you need to call over to Applegarth that's is a long-distance charge this goes away with this plan that charge goes away so there will be significant savings there also in the plan purchasing future technologies that are appropriate for digital education why is such a focus on digital education if the kids are going to be assessed online they need to be comfortable they need to be comfortable operating in that environment so what are we saying any devices
035that we intend to put in the hands of kids they need to be internet enabled they need to last a full school day talking about six hours it's got to last that full day for that kid to be expected to use that device naturally we're going to proposing putting together video storage and distribution system if we've got the fiber between the building I only need to do it one time and we can share that throughout the District of course kids are kids you got to protect them from themselves we might have to have a faster filter to keep kids from getting to inappropriate internet sites and we're going to just continue to maintain our current software and our current Hardware to get the biggest bang for the buck we do a fairly good job of
036maintaining our equipment if you would like to discuss any of the stuff we have in the plan like Dr hamon say it's about 280 pages I I welcome the opportunity to discuss cuz most people don't want to talk geek talk right I love it and we can have a conversation thank you thank you [Applause] Reggie and the technology plan um is under the superintendent board action for approval on tonight's agenda so at this time we'll go to the public forum anyone from the public wishing to speak to the agenda please come up to the microphone and state your name and address for the record make sure it's on the agenda M Klein 53 turnbury drive and we're going to adhere to the three minutes now you just used six seconds of mine no we we
037start I just want to compliment Mr Washington on doing a hell of a job along with the board um what concern conerns me is the fact that the way expenses are we see that um this looks like it's going to be more expenditures more technology when you had I believe it was Hamilton Township it was in the newspapers I meant to bring a copy with me uh sent out a survey to all the students to find out whether they wanted more technology or have their sport teams brought back reinstated and textbooks and all the students chose to do away with the new technology go back to textbooks the iPad situation I don't want to talk about now we'll talk about that later but um when I when I see schools like in this case was
038Hamilton Township South brunswood complained when a new budget came out that they were insulted they only got $1 more and a parent who was interviewed said that when christe made his original cuts which were Millions that they cut out sports teams some sports teams clubs uh unneeded art programs music programs and last year they got $21 million this year they got $23 million yet they made Cuts I'm as guilty as everybody else on the board when I was on the board I wasn't looking for cuts but I think we're at a point now and I believe Mr Masters and perhaps Mr Chilla are going to report later on about what's going on in the town but I think at this point as greatest technology is why would a school and if it goes by what
039the state wants and you know what my feeling is with mandates is why are we investing more money in technology when we can't afford it and we don't know how many kids we're going to have versus a place like South Brunswick that was getting tens of millions of dollars more than we we get and I believe if I remember their their student population is close to what we have and they made cuts and we basically have not made serious cuts when we had a cut the late School busing I was against that even though I was forced to vote for it because we had to I was glad to see that Mr Chella made that change at the last budget meeting to bring that back because that's to help the parents but there's got to
040be other things we can cut we got to stop spending as much as technology is important we can't afford it so what I'm asking to do is do what some of these other communities have done and start making serious cut South Brunswick did it to control property taxes that was in the in the article I don't want to spend more time but again Reggie fabulous job thank you anyone else from the public Lisa weinthal T McFarland Circle um Mr Washington can you just go through some of that explanation again on some of those line items you said you're saving $3,800 a month or something cost $3,800 a month um that used to be higher I wasn't able to see it in the back Mr Washington the proposed wi upgrade would be 3822 per month and
041that's for t1s or for that's F that's for fiber and that's a monthly lease cost that's monthly lease so has anyone looked at a 6 gig microwave or 11 gig microwave because that's about $30,000 a site and over one year you pay for a full site you never have to pay for it again we had we had run wireless between Apple and what what ends up happening is over time those Electronics you can no longer get so now you you have to buy them again right now if you go between apple guard and O Tre there's a wireless signal however that wireless signal is for data only now if we're talking about really economy of scale we want to the data the video and voice everything all onto one line thereby gaining significantly in other
042areas as well I'm installing a 6 gig microwave Link in four counties in Massachusetts that has 16 t1s for analog and has about 200 megabits of capacity for digital $30,000 a site and this is for a public safety environment critical critical stuff our stuff is and it's converg data so I'm I'm wondering why we're not pursuing that if in Le of just an annuity well you mentioned T1 the speed T1 microphone Lisa do if you want to have a a technology conversation well no I'm just trying to get to the bottom of why we're leasing something as an annuity versus something that could be a capital in understandably it's a capital investment I understand it's a it's a huge huge outlay and it may not be point to point it may not be out line
043of sight it may not be all these other technical limitations the fact of the matter is I'm asking has my pointto point mic is point or multi-point microwave been investigated as a means of a capital investment versus a horrible perpetuity to Verizon couple of things there you're absolutely right point to point g means line of sight there there is no line of sight for all the schools in Monroe I don't have a tower where I can put a microwave on and see every building not that I own you also mentioned T1 T1 by definition is 1.54 megabits per second comp as compared to our current in Wireless uh wind infrastructure is 10 megabit for we were proposing 20 I'm only referring to that as a as a converged Network it it was an oc3 Network
044that we're putting in so so that is a fiber Network and oc3 well it's an oc3 carrier based capacity I'm just trying to be to to get to you the bandwidth a significant band I absolutely want the band but there was no point we did do investigation of what could we see point to point and there was nothing we even thought about it one time going to the m municipality asking them perhaps we can get on their water tower yeah but it was something that just didn't come to okay all right thank you is there anyone else from the public wishing to speak to the agend agenda Maryann Sullivan 12 shibly Court Monroe Township um I'm just I my question is was there uh the schools that were visited for the Falcon program are they
045receiving any Grant monies are they receiving any grant money the Falcon program no no they're not well was any possibility did anybody look into the possibility of getting some Grant monies for this program Mar would you address um Mrs Rua who is our director of pup Personnel Services good evening basically all our supports and services are being utilized that are in the building okay okay so the staff there's no needed added staff the rooms that are in our high school are being utilized and the staff that you saw today are already on staff and the students are here so we were not in need of let's say monies for that I mean the money is here what's in the building what's utilized we're not spending any extra for so we save the state money while
046well what we did was some of these students would be placed at a district so we saved that at a district cost and their transportation cost okay and we are educating them within district and that's not only a big savings but that is such a great thing for all our families oh I commend that I was just wondering because when I taught all extra programs were funded by the state State especially programs like this where you needed some extra support staff and you needed equipment whatever this was built right within here as this building was built the thought was already there Dr Hamilton and I have been discussing this for years so that's why we were planning ahead and all those pieces were just placed together thank you I have another question but I'll wait
047you later and and the state doesn't fund anything anymore so anything that we want to do for our kids we have to do for by ourselves pretty obvious anyone else from the public Robert roach 18 mfield Boulevard um I wonder who developed the uh plan for the uh this new technology that Mr Wasing discussed it was a collaborative eff between myself I don't know if you can hear me yeah I can hear you okay Jerry I don't know whether the rest people caners uh has anybody thought about having outside Consultants come in to determine whether uh you know we need to make some modifications to this program or whether it is the best program that we can get I I know uh you know when we went through the iPad process that end up not
048being exactly what we thought it was going to be so rather than doing all this in house shouldn't we be getting some outside Consultants to come in and deal with it Mr Gorski Mr R I've worked with Reggie for over 13 years and I could comfortably say Mr Washington is one of the best geeks on the market there's there's there's no outside consultant that can than top Reggie and and everything in that plan I think has been developed with the expertise of a true professional Additionally the state requires that it's a collaborative process of community stakeholder stakeholders who are within um the Monroe Community does that mean you cannot have an outside consultant come in look at look at the proposal make make any recommendations they may say it's the greatest recommendation in the world
049I I don't know but I mean just have a a third party look at it that's all I'm suggesting it wouldn't preclude us from doing that but that's not a part of the process that the state outlines for the development of it uh one final question uh on page 13 D can you tell me what that transfer is all about and how much is involved you're referring to transfer number nine I correct yes those are Interac account transfers that are um excuse me Mike which one are you looking at we're on the business administrator report uh transfer number nine page 13 page the county office allows for Interac account transfers up until 10% of the advertised uh line item and that's to allow for normal variances between what's been budgeted and the actual prices when
050you go to procure the items through the school year plus there may be some changes some items may be Obsolete and you may have to make some substitutions the state sometimes changes the chart of accounts U altering what's a piece of equipment which is in a different fund and a supply so the flexibility to transfer monies like this is is uh permitted by the state and it is normal and customary for uh school districts to transfer money within accounts we have only had to go to the county one time to exceed the 10% transfer and it was regarding tuition where the district actually netted a savings of about $170,000 of monies that we would have had to otherwise reimburse the state yes my question was how much was transferred and what were the accounts the
051accounts are identified on the ACT ual transfer sheet which we do not have well i' be happy to furnish you with a copy if you want to come by and fill out oper request for that can't you tell me what they are there's about 18 different line items or 16 different line items and uh I don't want to I don't want it's not one item then no it's not one item okay thank you good evening Tom not Stein 15 Nathaniel Street um with regard to board action uh under V actually it's a Delta Victor Victor David on page 12 um last meeting or whenever a couple months ago I requested that um in the past we've always listed the student suspension um report excluding the names of the students we would put it in a
052block diagram with the student number um we would say the reason for the suspension and we would say if there was any monetary damage I think it's imperative that we as Citizens know what's happening in our schools are these suspensions all drug related for example um I I totally understand that we're not going to list the child's name um but in the past under previous administrations uh we have done that and I just wondering why are we not doing that and can we in the future this is the second request um if the board uh decides through their their the bylaws that govern the um organization of the board agenda decides to do that that's perfectly acceptable um however you may be referring to the report that actually outlines uh any damages and whether or
053not parents have been required to make restitution for those damages that's the annual report that's related to the violence and vandalism report which districts are required to do once a year and that's done at the end of the year that report is pretty detailed if that's the one you're referring to I mean we used to get it as as a on a in the agendas I mean I can go back and and you know years before you were here and I can show you where they listed that it would say you know suspected drugs um uh damage vandalism uh costs to the district and it was just a little blurb like this typically I mean we didn't have a large every month but maybe three or four different line items every month am I am
054I I mean does anybody remember this it's the vandalism report but it was every it was we we never did that every month I think it was a a certain amount of times a year um this suspense student suspension report is just the suspension report for the board but you're talking about the vandalism report I don't know what's going on other words are these like under d uh can you tell me were these drug related we can't tell you why can't you tell me because it's student related they're confidential but but you're telling me under F that you're doing out of District placements that should be confidential too but yet it's not right but all I need to know is a I don't care about the name how are we going to know what what
055is happening in schools with regard to drug use since you don't tell us is is your request specifically about drug use oh drug use and vandalism I'd like I mean the vandalism I understand we do get a report at the end but it certainly would be nice to see it every every every uh every meeting so that we could be proactive do we have a drug issue developing um do we have a vandalism issue um I mean etc etc I mean I think that's important information uh that we should be able to uh you know have access to and I I don't understand why we're not we're not I mean if you tell me a student suspended for drug use what what where is the the damage in that there's no privacy issues I'm not
056sure that we're La able to give that kind of specificity um and and and if that's something that the board decides that they would like to be see included on the report then we can take that through the through the proper channels and do that but I would rather know that it's okay before I check with the legal author but um I I personally can't see a problem also under under H um what was the details of that settlement I don't have it in my report I don't have it with me either I have a copy of the settlement I'll be happy to um to furnish this to you when we get a break okay it's rather lengthy and there's a lot of different terms in it sure um I I would definitely like to
057look at that but could we just have a quick synopsis so we can you know have the public hear that too or or is it even too involved just to uh maybe give it like a a one minute uh synopsis um in the suit which is public record pcta versus the Board of Education pursuant to attorney advice and the recommendation by the board we uh have entered into a settlement with Miss pla in the amount of $52,500 most of which is covered by the insurance carrier the district is only responsible for their deductible of 15,000 also under those terms Miss pla is uh to remain in her current position and I believe that the suit is then dismissed with prejudice which means that it's over yes um is this the same PKA that's uh on
058the agenda uh for a medical leave this evening yes it is okay thank you good evening everybody um I'm Dr wuku better known as um which is M within this facility I really want to say something I want to thank the board really this is my first time here and this is quite I've seen you guys on TV from time to time and read you on um uh paper but you know this is my first time actually showing up and um I want to thank actually everybody for the time that you put in and decisions that you make I'm trying to keep to my 3 minutes and also I really really want to thank the teachers because two 2005 when we moved into Monro Monro did not have any special um school for my kid
059and um we out of District because this uh place we came from he was out of District as well but when the school started and they notified us the councelor during his case manager we visited the school and um they asked to be given the chance and we did that Chu was one of the two um with Antonio that started the school and and they have worked so hard through Elementary to middle school and now to high school and then you have this um stateof the- art High School which they're making use of um over the years I have actually all I will tell you with the birth of um uch I think I have visited almost every special school in the whole of New Jersey looking for school for him actually even outside New
060Jersey we have done that and I would say that even right now even Institute of Technology in New York we have actually talked with them as well for his evocation Aid and I would say that his teachers are really working very hard and in case the school is putting in a penny or I would say that any money you put in I would like to let you know that um it's being well spent and we are really grateful for that and I'm sure future children will also who have the same problem will be grateful for that thank you very much and thank you so much for everything and secondly I would like to talk about your technology and I listened to all the gigabytes and and the rest of it I don't get it all
061but then like he said what we do understand is money uh when you talked about the savings that we have in terms of the monthly payments and all that what we would like to see is the bottom line and you talked about the new fibers to be installed the connection between the schools these are expenses that you have not really explained to us as to what that would be that will be on top of what you have explained to us already because if we do not know at the end of the day what the bottom line is everybody will be afraid to get into it so if you can just go back to the drawing blood and give us that I'm sure it will be more interesting and also um we have also sell that
062people can meet with you in order to discuss what the 200 and something pages is I don't think you can get any better Consultants done some of our parents who are into that who can meet with you to discuss I don't think we need to pay anybody to come and do that with you and of course you know what you're doing so thank you so much for everything for having us and all that you've done thank you thank you Frank agley AI 18 homes Avenue and I have a question for Mr Washington hi re nice to see you again good uh rej assuming that no changes were made to the current technological configuration that we have this program does not move forward do we have the capacity to meet the state obligation for 14 15
063for the kids to do the tests online it's my opinion that we would we we we would fail we would fail we were not prepared to have online assessments for our kids and the reason being if you can recall from the presentation to me it just makes sense if I'm going to get more bandwidth for cheaper price and and my circle that's called a no-brainer I'm going to go for more bandwidth and a less price okay we have to what the state is saying now what they really want is districts to bring 500 megabits into the district we currently have one and then they want at every school 100 megabit we currently have 10 every kid here come the geek speak again every kid they want to be guaranteed 100K to the device that they're
064using we are not in a position to achieve those goals right now thank you anyone else from the public sh AR min9 Nathaniel Street uh going back to the board action on page 12h um did we pay attorney's fees for the Miss I'm sorry PL fcta FKA we do pay attorney fees and how much were they do you have that yes the attorney fees were um mostly paid by the insurance company the total cost that the district had to pay in relation to the suit for all costs was $155,000 okay but that's not counting what we like sort of what we pay for insurance I mean I know we're going to have insurance regardless but does our does our insurance premium go up because of Suits like this unlikely uh I talked to the insurance
065broker about this and he actually felt that our district was um underrepresented in the amount of employee suits considering the number of Staff we have okay well that's good and how about our own attorneys how much did they get what was their bill uh again all the attorneys that represented the district were paid for by the insurance company I that's not the question how much did they get through the insurance company please I'd have to go back into the files and pull those bills I don't have was it more than the $155,000 the other oh you said $155,000 was the overall cost from our budget yes but you you didn't tell me what the two attorneys bills amounted to you don't have that information I don't know because I have copies of the bills but
066as they were paid by the insurance companies they were filed um the only out- of-pocket expenditure for the district was 15,000 including everything okay I'd still be interested in what the attorneys received um in terms of the technology uh advancements here is this an infrastructure is this the whole system or is this a base for future purchases and other expansions of the system the technology plan yes Mr Washington those are infrastructure upgrades infrastructure upgrad upgrades for the schools so we'll have we'll have software needs and we'll have Hardware needs as well after this the software and Hardware are things that we currently have as part of routine maintenance keeping the stuff going so all of the computers and everything that we already have will will benefits we need new product after this infrastructure goes in
067is my question you will always have to maintain what you have and things get old they have to be replaced just just the life cycle of technology so we're going to need new computers things like that to we won't need them for here in this building for a couple years several years but well in the other buildings so so so in that plan is there a uh you know a near future projection of what the costs will be I mean we're talking about infrastructure only right now so obviously there's something on top of the infrastructure this the tech plan the only requirement is at for and finances are concerned is what is in the next budget year in other words the 13 14 budget year we have to include those numbers in the plan to
068stay fully recognize that I couldn't possibly tell you what's going to happen 1415 what I do know is what's been presented to the board for the 134 school year and that is in the plan okay but when you put infrastructure in there's usually an anticipation of Hardware that goes with it and other software and like I'm sure there's an anticipation of upgrading certain things is that correct or has no one thought about that yet yes that is correct okay so there is a thought to maybe near future purchases replacement of current laptops and things like that that are already in the district they have to be replaced okay so do we have so are we planning on that projection yet 13 14 year that is in the plan yes okay what about after that we're
069looking at one year at a time okay so but when we make when we when we present a plan see one of the things that I think sometimes is a pattern that is not necessarily a good pattern is that when we we we promote a plan we don't know what the near future costs will be and when we're talking about expensive technology which I'm not opposed to we should know maybe an extra year after after that what kinds of cost that's going to be because we don't want one and I'm not a technology so I may be absolutely at align but if things either are going to be obsolete after we put an infrastructure in or you know I can assure you the infrastructure will not be out so well the infr but but what
070goes after that the 13 14 school year we have back for the elementary school in that is in the 13 14 14 15 there's a number laptops I'm sorry for the elementary schools yeah in particular Brookside School how many Michelle your time is up you let other people talk a little longer I no I don't I think I Michelle okay so you're not going to answer the question he can answer the question and he can answer the question how many laptops we have in the budget 30 laptops okay thank you anyone else public forum please come to the microphone good evening Nelson Chen for Ashley Court uh question on that uh on your whole technology uh proposal did you look at other Alternatives and did you cost those out for cost benefit analysis so we're
071picking the best option possible absolutely okay and uh on the agenda page 16 uh letter j the the the bid authorization for paper I just want to ask a general question uh obviously you're looking at putting out bids for paper are we anticipating the use of paper in the district going down since we've got all these iPads and dir new computers going to schools and stuff like that are we looking at the paper use dropping Mr Gorski uh that's a good point paper use has dropped throughout the district there has been initiatives to reduce paper by copying on copy machines instead of local local printers by emailing a lot of documents by posting things on web board agenda gets emailed to the board members that used to be a plethora of paper every month um
072so the answer is yes but this is an authorization uh for the board to permit Administration to go out to bid for paper because the way the state's purchasing laws go if you go over the bid threshold and aggregate at any time of the year um you're required to go out for bid and um it's hard to say when exactly that's going to be we don't have any immediate plans to go out to bid paper but this just gives us the authorization if we have to right so has has uh based on that has our paper usage gone up or gone down paper usage has gone down dramatically especially in this building with all the iPads and everything that's everyone's got an iPad every teacher has an iPad some teachers have iPads and MacBooks I
073I anticipate that the paper usage has dropped tremendously in this building is that correct Mr Washington would you uh like to uh comment on that i' I've seen the paper usage Dro I did quantify it but not only has paper use dropped the use of of toner for printers and copiers has also decreased okay thank you you have already spoken so if there's somebody else who would like to speak before you we'll come back to you last Maran Lester 44 Avenue y I'd like to go back to the uh plal lawsuit according to New Jersey Court's Public Access that was a discrimination lawsuit I was wondering if you could elaborate on that and how many more lawsuits does the township have Board of Ed have pending do Mr Dr Hamilton do you have information there
074I'll take the last question first there are two other lawsuits pending um and this discrimination case is um alleging discrimination based on um disability okay thank you you're welcome anyone else from the public seeing no one we'll go to Mr Klein easy I needs a clarification please leave your name and address for the mar kleim 53 Turnberry Drive uh page 14g on a lease purchase correct me if I'm wrong I thought originally it was supposed to be two buses and one van and now on this we're showing four buses and two Vans am I right or am I wrong the budget has always to my knowledge had four buses and two Vans three of the buses three of the 54 passenger buses are required to be replaced under the state's maturity schedule and the district
075is procuring one extra to bring routes inhouse as opposed to outsourced buses and we're going to do that uh continually over years and the two Vans are also aged out by the state's maturity schedule for um allowable age for Fleet on the road okay that I appreciate and then one fast comment um when they came out when we had the Mandate from the state for uh bullying anti-bullying training and we did it at our cost I think it was $225,000 or so and then all of a sudden I read in the paper that other school districts basically called the state and said hey you mandated you pay for it and they're able to get the money back well if they want to mandate technology and they cut us $336,000 and we don't get a fraction
076of what we should have then it should come to a point that if they want to give us mandates let them pay for it we can no longer pay for it and it's not only the seniors it's the parents too they can mandate all they want give us our fair share thank you anyone else from the public U guy Del re 24 Ashley Court a few meetings ago we had a discussion regarding looking into things that have been that were created years and years ago and see if we can kind of eliminate them and not you know and save that cost of those things um and we I think you all thought it was a good idea has anything been done about that officially we have started um looking at some items some previously negotiated
077items that we may need to um put on the table for the next round of negotiations so yes we have started looking at some of those things so are we can we plan on doing that like aggressively like not just a couple of negotiated items but there's probably line items that may not you know just hit the books but not necessarily being useful or anything like that well one of the board goals is to really review and assess all of our programs do a cost cost benefit analysis technology is the first one that's on that we're working on now we've already generated a list of all the district initiatives and programs that are in place and then we'll associate the cost with those and begin to gnaw away at those things that may not be
078yielding what we hope they would are the other things that are not program oriented that may be falling through the cracks that anybody's looking at I mean when you when I don't know how it works but when you have a budget is it like a line item and you see the cost of every everything that's on that on that uh within the budget yes by account okay so I'm assuming that that number keeps going up but nothing gets deleted that's what was the discussion a few weeks ago actually that's not accurate um the the budget uh sheet shows us which accounts are going up and which accounts are going down from year to year and we look at a justification if an account is going up is it because of new students is it because
079of new sections is it because of new programs and in many instances those accounts have actually gone down all right as long as that's been done I'm happy with that just a a comment on the highway uh since we're expanding the highway if you will um I think some of the concerns is that we're going to be filling in putting more cars in there just because we have that Highway for example I don't know exactly what page we're adding 30 laptops we're adding 15 laptop is it because in other words there's other stuff that goes with that now that we have that big Highway that we're concerned that we're just going to buy things and and and air to the cost just because we have that Highway do you follow what I mean I the
080reason that there there's some cost in there there there's really two reasons driving it one some of the equipment is just oh the laptops at are 12 that's a fact there's no no no argument there the other thing is this park assessment for school year 2014 we know that we're being told by the state you will testing online and the kids will need a device and the device has to meet certain specifications that's what we're trying to meet make sure the kids are prepared to successfully complete the online assessment that's what's driving the about so if even if we weren't widening this sideway some of that equipment would have been going through the cycle anyway life cycle okay not the infrastructure so much more and which which is fine we're just afraid that like in
081these times like for a couple of years Let's Not Just Wind the highway and say okay now we need new cars more cars just because we have that Highway you know that's certainly something that U has been drilled into my head we have to be cost conscious although we got the state telling us and to to your credit the state is mandating and what do what do schools that or or townships that can't afford it what are they doing about that and there's been a number of discussions in this in the directors of your and I'll be one of the things they said we'll bring in the technology at the time of the test now the problem with that is this if the kids have never had it are they going to be successful on
082that test that's a question that's debatable I wouldn't think the kid's going to be if that's the first time I get to experience that I don't think my my results are going to be what I want them to be okay I say the same thing all the time we're going through bad times so let's just think things through before we say yes to it thank you thank you anyone else from the public wishing to speak to the agenda who are we going to be Maran suan address for the record please marann Sullivan 12 sh Court uh at some point in time tonight are we going to be discussing the development of Monroe Township with regard to housing and new students is that going to be addressed at all I believe it's going to be under
083uh other board business okay good thank you anyone else Lester 44 Avenue I I don't know if I'm reading this correctly but on on some of the sheets it looks like uh students are suspended and they're receiving I'm not sure if I'm correct home instruction and are the taxpayers paying for that or the parents Dr Hamilton I'm parents do not pay for it if a youngster is on home instruction it's generally for a medical reason or a a another another matter may be pending um which may restrict their ability to return to school oh I see medical reasons but there's like on number seven Al says is suspended there's no reason for that so I assume it's a uh discipline problem it probably is and the taxpayers are paying for that not the parents thank
084you anyone else wishing to speak to the agenda seeing no one we will close public forum and go to the approval of the minutes for the public Board of Education meeting of March 21st 2013 second Mr Tesla Mr Masters any comments additions or Corrections all in favor opposed extensions and the approval of the minutes for the closed session meeting of March 21st 2013 so moved missis miss Mr tesler additions or corrections to the minutes all in favor I opposed extensions then the minutes have passed we will go to the superintendent Report with Dr Hamilton thank you uh this past weekend was the 75th annual Youth and government Conference held at the New Jersey state house in Trenton um the student participation was out standing and as such the Monroe Township delegation was awarded for outstanding
085delegation and I just want to mention uh some of the students uh Mina Kim one for outstanding legislation a Kinka saathi one for best judicial brief and the Council of national Affairs delegates uh Alex Cashman Caitlyn Dutton and Jamie White so I want to commend our students and their advisors for doing such a great job moving on to the superintendent report um the enrollment for the month of March is in close and it makes a chosen increase of 165 students over this time last year and you see a revision made last year we were off by one number last month I'm sorry we off by one number and that correction is noted on this report we also show the enrollment of those youngsters who are currently placed in outof District placements along with those youngsters
086currently on homebound instruction for various reasons also included in your report are the fire drills and security drills required that have been conducted according to schedule in all of our schools moving on to the Personnel report Madame board president and members of the Board of Education it is recommended by the superintendent that Personnel items a through S be approved by roll call vote is there a motion a second so move second Mr Masters Miss anelis are there any comments or questions for Dr Hamilton seeing none we'll have a roll call Miss antelis yes Mr Chella yes Mr zareski yes Mr calman yes Mr Masters yes Mr poy yes Mr proso yes Mr tesler yes Mrs kapano yes Madam board president Personnel items a through S passes thank you and moving on to board action items
087under the superintendent report Madame board president members of the Board of Education it is recommended by the superintendent that board action items a through I be approved by roll call vote Mr Masters Mr Tesla again any comments or questions for Dr Hamilton Mr Po uh yes uh on item a uh one of our I assume teachers but one of our employees is uh being given approval to attend a gymnastics rules Workshop uh I was curious as to why that is so uh we do not have a gymnastics team and s PD yeah I do believe he is a volunteer coach um and he does work at the he's the person is at a primary school and he works with the high school kids that is my belief but I I I will check up on
088that and double and give you an accurate answer on that you say you you believe he's a volunteer coach working with students at the elementary level let me get let me get you the exactly the way I need to so I don't misspeak is there another question Mr I do have another question uh Item B uh for field trips there's a music performance uh being approved for orando Florida do we have a group of students that are going to Orlando Florida and uh you know what is the nature of that uh trip I have to look it up well that's in the curriculum office as well Dr Gorman will look that up anyone else have a question in the meantime oh you're still asking okay Mr Po you have a question just real quick go
089ahead just to jump in break it up absolutely Tech plan is a separate item it's um it's not in the a through it's g under the under this board action oh that's the okay anyone El Mr poy uh item e uh I was looking at the school calendar the proposed goool calendar for next year um and I was wondering why we needed a uh inservice uh I believe it's a half day on October 25th when we've just had one uh only a couple of weeks before that and when a couple of weeks after that the students are only in school for two days that first week of November uh I was wondering why that that inservice uh session had to be in October as opposed to some other time where it's a little less disruptive
090to uh continuity of the instructional program uh so that's one question related to the calendar and the other question I have is in April and May uh when the elementary students are taking the uh New Jersey ask test uh it seems to be indicated that they have four-hour sessions for testing uh my my question is what are the teachers doing the rest of that day Dr Hamilton some of that time will be PD time some of that time um is negotiated time um and there are half days in the calendar that are part of the teacher contract for inservice Workshop days so and there there there was a recommendation also to change some of the testing days um to consolidate them so that there were fewer half days but but on those half days when
091we do have the testing are are teachers uh being allowed to leave after that testing is done no okay all right anyone else I do have questions on item G but I think Mr caufman does as well no I'm gone oh you don't go ahead I appreciate the information that Mr Washington gave us uh but I I have several questions related to this um one is the online testing can can can that be done on iPads the state the ruling the state has given us so far is that iPads can be used they can be used however what they are saying at this point in time is the virtual keyboard on the iPad cannot be used so what does that LE to you need bluetoo people to use iPad so so tell me what that
092means in terms of what equipment will be needed for example in the high school in order to to conduct the state testing the high school will be all right where they are if we if we plan to use the iPad we would have to purchase them a Bluetooth keyboard however there are laptops in the high school that that the students could also use so what we have to take a look at is how many kids will be taking a test and for what time period we'll have to work out the legistics there to see exactly do we have enough laptop if they're going to use the laptop to take the test and and if it's not and you do iPad you will have to and that's things stand today change tomor I mean I I
093I do understand uh about testing and wanting students to be as comfortable as possible with their testing environment and the testing equipment but it seems like to me we we've got a little bit of a dilemma there that if our high school students have become accustomed to using the iPads uh and they're not using laptops but then they're going to use laptops for the testing uh I I I don't know I don't have a laptop but I but I would think that that physically is different from from working with an with an iPad um it's just it's just a concern I have there um and I do believe that there might be some value uh one one one member of the audience had suggested uh having an outside consultant look at the tech plan I
094do believe that there is some value in that so that the public is assured of some uh level of objectivity uh even though I have no question about your integrity uh I I just think that uh that has some Merit and I would be uh interested in knowing who the stakeholders were that uh work with you uh Mr Washington I don't know all the names by hard but we certainly took attendance at each of the meetings and I can provide you a list of who those individuals are and finally uh I was really interested in knowing the total anticipated cost for the three-year plan but in answering some of the other questions I believe you indicated that that would be impossible to do yeah we work with one budget year time St fully recognizes that
095I think the 13 14 budget uh has already been presented to the board I don't remember the bottom line but I know we only look at one year to is it possible though using today's cost to project with today's cost what that cost might be for year two and year three so that we do know uh you know the bottom line on this three-year Tech plan the danger with with projecting technology cost it's such a fluid thing it changes so rapidly however what I can tell you this is this the infrastructure we put in place we won't have to revisit that over the next 3 years that we won't the thing we have to take another look at is the equipment that's in the kids's hand that could change on a daily basis right now
096the laptop that guaranteeing us 6 to 7 hours of battery Li they're about $1,200 I anticipate that cost going down how much I couldn't tell you I can tell you this there are V understand they're looking at getting those laptops down with 5600 that would be great for us but I don't want to go out on the limb and tell you what's going to be the chart for whatever this technology is two and 3 years from now if we can recall 2010 when we last wrote the tech plan there was no such thing as that's why I don't want to take that LE of Fai and from what I'm hearing this is the reason I'm a little uh a little bit uh conflicted here is what I'm hearing from the news and the newspapers is
097that laptops are also on the way out uh and yet the state is appears to be requiring that all these schools get these laptops in a few more years they're saying that laptops will be pass a uh and I know you have no control over that I I completely understand that it's just that uh it seems like a no- win situation for the local school system it's a tough position to be in because what the state has told us if you're using a laptop these are the specs it must meet if you're using an Android device these are specs it must meet if you're using an iPad these are the specs it must meet so we're trying to gauge as best we can based upon what they're telling us today what we're going to have
098to use in 2014 2015 Dr Gman do you have the answers to not yet but I will oh you don't have them okay does anyone else have any uh comments or question clarification on Mr Po's Point what is what are we doing with the gymnastics thing again cuz that's an out of state one right that's a Gman Dr Gman is looking that up it is I have it should we pull it from the I have no he has it I okay is there any other questions in the meantime I anybody like to make up one can we go back after after you guys do this and I'll just go ahead and get specifics for you you like me to go over the equipment he needs more information order those questions is he going to be
099able to get it for the for yes okay then Mr Mr Gorski would like to um discuss something else while we're waiting on the business administrators report there's a lease purchase for technology equipment uh for the 1314 budget and there was a question before about adding to the highway and adding new technology and what exactly are we buying in 14 so I just want to go through the list just to give a flavor what items are and um particularly for the ones that are being replaced and Reggie feel free to um you know supplement my answer if I don't have the technical uh expertise we need three new Dell servers in the district Reggie what's the purpose of the servers your servers are where they serve two purposes either what the user authenticate with any
100username password that information is stored on the server or where the user saves their files are also stored on the server most of the files that teachers administrators and students have are not stored locally on that device they're stored on the just in case the device that's in the hands of teachers administrators and laptop should go back they still have't work so the server provides storage for some of those type of environments okay in addition to that we're purchasing 30 notebook computers to replace outdated and non-working laptops at Brookside School constantly on the liaison um agenda are laptops and student devices that aren't working or batteries that can't hold the charge so this is 30 replacement computers for notebooks at Brookside these are not new uh additionally there's 30 teacher notebooks being replaced at the
101Monro Township Middle School these replaced items are in excess of 10 years old when you have a notebook that's in excess of 10 years old good luck with it we have three new computers for new staff members we have 125 student iPads for new and increased enrollment in the district we have 25 IBM notebook computers to replace outdated or non-working computers at Oak Tree school we have 15 computers on a mobile cart to support classroom instruction including Rosetta Stone Core Curriculum K2 21st Century Learning and to complete the partial class set purchased in 1213 at Woodland School these items are also in the the age of about 10 years so the majority of the um instructional devices that we're purchasing here are replacement of very Antiquated equipment that's still being used in the classroom okay
102maybe can read something to the C withdraw the motion we have to withdraw the motion yeah yes Mr proso not too long ago we had a leash purchase of $74,000 a month for uh Communications recently uh is that in this budget here for the technology yes is that the end is that the end of your questions yes okay um we can go ahead and do the business administrator's report but we would have to have the whoever made the motion withdraw the motion for for the board action items and then come back to it unless Dr Gorman has the answer that's why I I all right like being here or unless somebody else has more questions okay Mr we'd like Ira to read something the gymnastics volunteer we while we do not have a team we
103do regularly have kids that compete at competitions at National levels and County competitions and we also um send them to Bishop R to practice this person is part of that whole organization and is highly qualified so he goes for a refresher training so he's up to date on all statutes and protocol in order to get our kids available for these programs and County tournaments and recognitions in absence of having an official team and we will probably have a student competing in the Olympic in 2016 cool really Summer Olympics yes in gymnastics yes she actually came to us on a modified schedule I think last year is does that answer your questions Mr Po uh except for the our music group and group yes once every four years our band and chus Mr Goodall both of
104them uh perform at Epcot and we're and we one of the um places down in Disney um they receive um professional development the kids it's a prestigious um piece for the kids to compete the only cost to the district is busing to and from so they fund raise it's part of their fundraising for the Bandon chorus program um and then just teacher overnight stiens uh the teacher listed there only because I happen to know her perley as a coral teacher is that mean our Coral group is going yes that's true okay is that is that good with you now the questions the answers is the the answers you've gotten the answers that you need uh yes okay then we will have a roll call Miss anelis I'm sorry what are we voting on board action
105items 8 through I motion made by Lou Master second by Ira tesler we'll come back to miss antel Mr cherella yes Mr zareski yes Mr Cal yes to all recuse on G recuse on G as in Gary Mr Masters yes sorry Mr Po uh yes on all except item G no that's a no on G as in Gary so noted Mr proso yes on everything but item G no on G Mr tesler yes Mrs kapano yes do we have to wait for Amy to come back before we move on we are we are waiting for Miss antelis to return so that we can continue with the roll call run Amy run call yes or no we are we have had the roll call for items um a through I on the board action items under
106the superintendent's report and that is a yes yes so noted uh Madame board president board action items a through I passes okay thank you and we will go to the business administrator's report Mr Gorski Madame board president and members of the Mona Township Board of Education it is recommended that board action items a through n be approved by consent roll call Miss analis second Mr Masters are there any comments or questions for Mr Gorski none seeing none we will have a roll call the Miss anelis yes Mr cherella yes Mr zareski is a bus thing supposed to be on there no no okay yes Mr calman Mr Masters yes Mr Po yes Mr Mr proso yes on everything abstain on on G abstain on G is in Gary Mr tesler yes Mrs kapano Madame board
107president board action items a through n passes thank you at this time we will go to the board president's report and I just have um two two things um the first is in response to the tragic sensus senseless violence experienced in Boston this past Monday our hearts and prayers go out to everyone in Boston especially those who lost their lives and were hurt in the explosions um I want to reassure everybody that the Safety and Security of all of our students and staff in Monroe will always be the number one priority of this board of education and administration our policies are always being looked at and revised where necessary we work closely with the local authorities in relation to how to make our schools as safe as possible and our staff is well trained in
108safety procedures as you can understand in order to make our schools as safe as possible it is not feasible to share all of our procedures with the public while we know there will always be concerns we want you to be assured that we are doing our best to make sure that your kids and our staff is always safe um and the second thing is um public participation in board meetings as part of a discussion that we had in closed session last month we received some advice from our legal council on how the board and the public should conduct themselves during public forum portion of the board meetings we follow our bylaw 0167 and I'd like to share part of that with you now um the the object of public forum is for the public to
109give comment or ask questions during their portion of the meeting it's for us as a board to get to understand or or know what it is is that you have concerns about or what you have questions about it is not supposed to be a conversation between anybody who is up at the microphone and the board of education so the um bylaw reads the Monro Township Board of Education is supportive of public participation in board meetings however a balance must be achieved between public participation on one hand and the need to conduct a productive school board meeting on the other to that end the Public's particip IP ation in board meetings is governed by bylaw board bylaw 0167 that bylaw is available for review on the district's website and provides in relevant part as follows one
110a participant must be recognized by the presiding officer and must pref preface comments by an announcement of his or her name place of residence and group affiliation if appropriate two each statement made by a participant shall be limited to 3 minutes duration that is part of our board policy and we try to adhere to that as b as best as we can three no participant may speak more than once on the same topic until all others who wish to speak on that topic have been heard four all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer no participant May address or question board members individually the presiding officer may this number five a interrupt warn or terminate a participant statement when the statement is too lengthy abusive obscene or irrelevant B request any individual to leave
111the meeting when that person does not observe reasonable decorum C requests the assistance of law enforcement officers in the removal of a disorderly person when that person's conduct interferes with the orderly progress of the meeting D call for a recess or an adjournment to another time when the lack of public decorum so interferes with the order ly conduct of the meeting as to Warrant such action e wave these rules when necessary for the protection of privacy or the efficient administration of the board's business the Board of Education values public comment on educational issues and school matters of community interest adherence to these guidelines will ensure the fair and orderly expression of such public comment and since the board was advised of this at our last uh Clos session I felt it was important for the
112public to hear the same information so that concludes my report and we will go on to committee reports and before I do that I I know um that in the past uh board member has asked that we move our committee reports to the beginning of our uh agenda instead of the end so that we can discuss things before we vote on them and unfortunately at this point it's not um we're not able to do that because of a another of our board policies 0164 conduct of board meeting which has the order of business lined line by line in the bylaw so in order for that to change we have to send that that policy back to the policy committee for review and um hopefully that part will be removed from it and then it would
113be the prerogative of a board president to make any changes to any future board agendas so at this time if if there are any committees that need to report this evening Mr Tesla we had a Personnel committing the other day um there are five highlights on the meeting one uh we had a curriculum office review the committee reviewed reports submitted by Dr Hamilton on the highlights of a curriculum office we had a a review of the job description of the security coordinator uh we reviewed the job description and wanted some more clarification um for the board attorney before we submitted that job description to the whole board for vote so we table that for the next meeting we also were presented with the um non-affiliate salary review and presented with recommended salary increases for non-affiliates
114for the 131 14 year the committee supported the recommendations but there were a few exceptions Central St central office staff updating um Dr Hamilton updated the committee on the plan to fill current vacancies and leaves in the central office including a temporary stiping position to help def freay costs uh in the interim so we don't have to hire a full-time person and last but not least we wanted an update on the math supervisor search and uh we were waiting for Budget approval for that now that uh budget approval uh has happened uh that process will be starting thank you anyone else Mr Kaufman see we're sleep sure there was a curriculum meeting this evening a couple of items that were covered were a ban program that's come before the committee uh this will be a
115self uh maintained or self uh financed uh opportunity for expanding our ban program this summer uh we ask that the administration go back and take a look at a couple of other cost factors and possibly expanding the program to include other types of things that which might be beneficial uh to our uh Community across the board in addition to the band uh if there's any opportunity for other academic types of things where uh parents might be willing to uh pay some fee to be able to provide additional um Services back to the community for different types of things uh so we're going to have an update probably at the at the next curriculum meeting uh we had a presentation given by uh Boris who's running our TV studio here uh with regard to a video
116distribution system that will uh go before the finance committee to see if we'll be able to uh fund that for the uh Tech technology plan uh that we talked about this evening much of which had to do with uh being able to have a central repository for much of the uh the video systems that we have here we have DVDs VHS tapes in addition to the things that the students are doing here uh to provide a central repository where we don't have to go outside uh and try and find server fors to host this stuff which I believe we do today which is a lot of the stuff is being sent out to YouTube uh so we're looking to be able to bring this stuff in house and and use that to its ultimate capacity
117here within not just the high school but perhaps throughout the entire District um Pam Garcia gave us a great presentation on the summer reading program um no way am I going to try and go over what she went over because it was uh uh very detailed and quite comprehensive so I would recommend folks visit our uh District website to get a complete rundown of the information that was put out uh for the board for review tonight uh and Jeff went over two other things a uh General course of study overview that everything is now posted on the website for review as well as a geometry curriculum update uh which was uh required for us to transition from the New Jersey core standards to now the National Standard um and that's about it thank you Miss
118anelis uh Finance uh we had a request for uh propos food proposal uh Mr gorsi Gorski informed the Comm of the need to go out for an RFP as the 5-year contract will expire on June 30th for the Food Service pomptonian Mr Gorski informed the committee that he and Nancy mitac are incorporating changes to better serve the board in the RFP uh we had a resolution for lease purchasing uh Mr Gorski introduced the resolution and it was discussed the benefit of it and that was for the um financing buses Vans copier or security upgrade and instru computers uh Ed data Savings Mr Gorski updated the committee on the savings can you just briefly tell the committee what the Ed data is yes um two years ago the district entered into a purchasing uh Consortium through
119middle sex County Regional ed Service Commission where we buy in uh bulk through the C's Mass bidding system all of the District supplies throughout the entire district and that covers instructional supplies administrative supplies janitorial supplies if it's if it's described as a supply item it's bid for through the county in such large amounts that really brings down the cost and for the two years that we've been engaged in this purchasing Consortium we have a letter from Ed data indicating that we've saved over a half a million dollars as opposed to buying Under State contract where the state went out and did the bidding so we we're very proud of that uh result thank you um Mecca um it was presented to us a financial information with a loss of $73,500 the uh majority of the
120committee recommended to keep the program going for one more year and to re-evaluate next year citation 6A colon 23 A- 5.7 which is payroll check distribution once every 3 years uh the state mandates that every employee must come to the board office and pick up their paycheck and show um a uh proof uh show identification and that's going to be implemented in April and May uh budget review for consideration of reinstating the lat run courtesy busing um it was presented to us an alter alternative at a cost of4 to $45,000 um and that money would come to from the PA system and oh let me call Peno since she introduced it if you want to speak a little bit about the busing that we're looking to um uh swap I'm going to read a resolution
121and then we can um move it and then we can discuss it that's okay with with Miss anelis it is recommended to the members of the Monroe Township Board of Education that the following 2013 2014 budget amendments be approved a implement implementation of a 430 after school transportation 2 days a week at Monroe Township middle school and Monro Township High School at an approximate cost of $40,000 B eliminate the monot Township High School PA system upgrade approved in the 2013 2014 budget for an amount of $47,500 be it resolved that Administration will seek alternative funding sources via local groups and if such resources are recognized the PA system upgrade will be reopt in the 2013 2014 budget so moved second mov by Miss anelis and uh second by Mr tesler um and I I just
122want to reiterate on that that you know we are looking for alternate funding from two groups I don't want to mention who they are because one we haven't approached yet um to cover the cost of that PA system upgrade um and and Mr preso I'd like to make a comment on that of what are we going to do when the sports teams want their PA system for their sporting events and what about the zero busing when the people want zero busing to come back this was discussed so many times and now we're reinstating it we're only opening up a can of worms I mean down the road we're going to have to face other groups wanting something so well that's my opinion if I if I start at the beginning at the last meeting um
123there was a recommendation that was approved by the majority of the board to look at expenditures in the budget to see if we can come up with something that can be removed and to reinstate the 430 busing um while I I approved that I was having a very difficult time to reinstate the whole 430 busing I do believe that since our children or students at the high school are mandated to stay after school for uh testing or for after school help that we needed to do something for them to make sure that they got home safe and a lot of times you come in after school you take a test you're over in in a short amount of time and then you're waiting three hours to sit here for your parents to come home um
124so I talked to Dr Hamilton and Mr Gorski about doing testing days so that everybody at the high school knew that whether it's Monday and Tuesday or Tuesday Thursday or whatever would be testing days everybody would know that those were testing days we would have as many clubs as possible to meet on testing days or if you wanted your child to have extra help after school um and you could not be available to pick them up we have two days that would have bus service so I I thought it was a good compromise from what um parents were requesting and for what the board could or could not support um so if anybody has a a comment regarding this Miss analis yeah I really am not in favor of taking things out of the budget
125that were already there um the reason that I am supporting this is because children need to stay after school for extra help children need to stay after school for testing not about clubs it's about the testing it's about the extra help and um and I do believe that we can get these other two two groups one one group is already um given me sort of an okay on it and I believe that we could get the money from an outside group and and that's really the things we should also be looking at is going to outside groups for these kind of things anybody else have a comment nobody okay then at this time we will have a roll call Mr Gorski a second yes um Tesla yeah Miss antelis yes Mr Chella yes Mr zareski
126no Mr calman yes Mr Masters yes Mr Po yes Mr proso no Mr tesler yes Mrs K Pano yes madame board president motion passes thank you and I just want to finish the report and let every sorry that our next uh Finance meeting will be on Thursday May 2nd 6:00 at the central office this gives us about a good week before the uh board meeting in May thank you is there any other committees that need to uh speak this evening Mr Masters we had a buildings and we had a buildings and grounds meeting uh this week uh very quickly um we did receive the ad hoc committee's recommendations you want I to read these or it's basically two uh recommendations that was a joke he's not reading it um one was to do a new
127authorize a new Dem graphic study performed by an alternate demographer we're looking we're just like we were saying before the technology plan we're looking to get a fresh set of eyes on it uh the board requested a cost proposal before we move forward with that uh and the second point was to authorize uh I deled a design study about um we're thinking about conf reconfiguring some of the classrooms in the Middle School to create seven new classroom spaces we actually told them to move forward with that we reviewed the roof replacement project update for the Middle School uh we're also going to add a sidewalk due to a safety issue with some of the drainage we're going ahead with the membrane solution and that will be starting next summer uh no yes uh we reviewed
128the annual District IPM program which is the integrated Pest Management the only change was that they have removed uh headlight from the plan it's no longer included in the plan it's a state mandate I believe uh we did discuss the Applegarth and oak tree uh parent drop offs and we're going to be looking into that um there were some issues that were brought to the committee um that's it okay the board would have to vote on accepting the ad hoc committee recommendations can you make that into a motion that we just accept the recommendations of the ad hoc and and just read the two recomendations sure I was try not to read it don't call me Ira Ira read it now call me Ira now the ad committee on growth met on March 19th and
129voted to make two interim recommendations based on all the data and presentations made by Administration during the last three meetings one authorize a new demographic study to be performed by an alternate demographer the new study shall provide growth projections and include a separate report detailing options for redistricting two authorize the architect of record to proceed with a limited design study and educational specification for the renovation and reconfiguration of existing interior spaces at Monroe Township Middle School that could potentially create seven new classroom spaces furthermore that the educational specification development includes input from the special services staff to ensure that all needs are being met the ad hoc committee will reconvene when the study is complete sometime in May or June now can you make that into a motion I move that you move that we
130ac that we accept the recommendation from the ad hoc committee thank you dated April 3rd 2013 thank you is there a second I second it second by Mr Po is there any comments or questions and we will have a roll call Miss antelis yes Mr cherella yes Mr zareski yes Mr calman yes Mr Masters yes Mr Po yes Mr proso yes Mr tesler yes Mrs kapano mam board president motion passes thank you any other committee reports seeing none we'll go to Other Board of Education business is there any new business by any member of the Board of Education Mr Chella yes hello I just want to uh quickly touch base on the planning board meeting that that I was able to attend on April 3rd with uh Mr poy and Mr Masters and um just
131talk about some of the some of the things that happened at that planning board meeting um on April 3rd the planning board uh decide they voted to approve a 522 unit development on the uh at the intersection of Spotswood English toown Road and mount Mills Road the breakdown of those uh of that development is 312 condos 79 of which will be affordable housing 83 80 number three bedroom tow houses 132 bedroom apartments 20 of which will be a low-income housing and the the kicker is that reading and Associates did a fiscal impact study and they determined that 522 units with the multiple bedrooms would generate approximately 94 children so um per year or no no for forever because as we heard it um uh people in condos tow houses and apartments even if they have
132two and three bedrooms decide not to have kids there because they want to wait to have a home with a backyard so the impact to the school system will be negligible and in fact will bring us Millions upon millions of dollars in Revenue tax revenue um the reality of the situation I'm afraid is probably much different than that and um there there the uh I was happy to see though that a number of the uh planning board members even though they ultimately did vote for it did express some concerns with their um with their with with their demographic study and and how they you know with their impact study and how they came out with the uh this the number of 94 children for the whole entire development um they're they're projecting that the units
133will go in at about 100 units per year so I mean you could do the math uh I can tell you that and I know this is a g audience but I have six children you know and and uh I wouldn't have waited for a a house with a yard before I got I got busy so I don't I I just I just think that we you know this is this is just something that we have to be mindful of going forward that that this you know this is this is going to be a potentially large impact on our district that's it thank you and I think the adhoc committee made recommendations before they even knew that this was coming so they might have to that take that information and things might be changing Mr
134master I just wanted to add to that um something that was brought up was I know the mayor had a different take on the number of students the estimate uh CU he was using a different coefficient his which was I think a little more rational was about 400 students um out of those so 8,400 but and if you look at that across 5 years which is what they said usually Is What It Takes because they were experts to put these in at a 1% which is very low uh growth of our costs which are currently 1314 14063 you will see by the fifth year 5 million 7388 34 cost to the district that's if it starts next year um for every year if we at 1% it'll go up now that doesn't that's only the
135mounts Mills one there's another similar one that's going in on 33 in Applegarth which I believe is 180 units now it's not exactly the same but if we apply that same coefficient that one over five years will be 1.9 million for a grand total over five years this is cost to the district which will have to be included in the budget Mike of $7.6 million now those are pretty in my opinion like Mr sh was saying pretty conservative estim and again 1% growth um and does that include that 14,000 that crude Transportation too because they it does include it but they never talk about impact to roads or anything like that which I think also has to be and the busing whether the busing could fit um always have to think about stuff like that
136so I just want to throw out numbers because I know like we like to talk numbers and everybody kind of reacts better to the numbers again that's that's about $7.7 million to The District in five years we're going to have to find that money since we're already expecting 250 students per year and you had another hundred so that's 350 students per year that's like 1,500 students in 5 years a reality check I'm in Monroe Manor there's 11 buildings and I think I'm the only one who doesn't have children in the school everybody there has children uh and they're all condos part yeah yeah Madam president if I may add to that conversation uh as Mr chera mentioned I was also at that meeting and and uh I don't want it to go unmentioned uh the
137fact that uh not only the mayor but several members of the planning board did uh seriously question the developers projection their the attorney's projection based on some expert uh that that knows these things in New Jersey about the 94 students and uh the resolution that they adopted to approve the three-year uh preliminary PL uh is contingent upon uh also an independent uh panel or committee uh appointed by the Town Council um to look into that impact uh and come up with their own assessment of that and they do want a member of the uh Board of Education to be to uh belong to that um and I know that that you know various residents of the of the township have various opinions about the Town Council and and the uh mayor but um in my
138opinion the only way out of our dilemma is is to somehow slow down the growth in housing uh because with housing you get more children and more children add to the school tax and the taxes paid by the homeowners of those homes uh is not at all adequate for the cost of educating those children um I believe that there is another plan board meeting coming up at the end of April and uh I believe that a significant decision will be made uh at that meeting um regarding uh some future uh plans in terms of housing versus uh commercial development uh so I simply bring this to the Public's attention uh so that you might try to identify when that meeting is going to occur uh so that you can be present to express uh your
139opinion in terms of what they are considering uh I would not attempt to suggest one way or the other what you support I just think that it's important for you to know that that is going to happen and my own opinion is we're stuck uh as long as they keep building houses and people keep having children and the state doesn't give us any additional funds uh and the answer is not to build age restricted communities because then the state says you have more wealth uh to provide for your schools so you don't need any more help from us uh it's really point where I think we need to slow down the growth in housing in Monroe and and give uh the taxpayers and the schools a chance to catch up thank you well unfortunately the
140Board of Education our responsibility is to educate any child that comes into this community as a resident and um we have nothing to do with the planning of the of the township we have nothing to do with supporting anything or voting for anything um we have no say on the planning board we have no say in on the council so um whatever they support we have to deal with as as a member as member of the board of education is there any other I just would like to ask Ken where that uh development's going in again on no in the on the intersection of spots with Englishtown Road and Mount smill Road anyone else Mr Masters did you want to speak about the oak tree garden oh thank you you're welcome I I actually have
141a prepared speech want to go first with oh miss I just want to talk about um committee meetings um when we had first uh years ago decided to open our committee meetings up to the PO open to the public it was decided that the public wouldn't be able to speak and one of the reasons for that is it's not fair to the other board members not to be able to hear that discussion whatever the public hears at these meetings whether the public is board members or people from the general public um there really shouldn't be any any comments from that from them it's just really not fair to the other board members they know it'll be brought up at the meeting um the public meeting and and that's really the time for everybody to comment
142so um you know and it happened to finance it really wasn't a big deal but I think we should adhere to that rule just for the fact that other board members are not there to hear that kind of conversation all right I have to read something okay it was written by somebody for me um it last last weekend which is why I'm very burned um I went oak tree had a a um had a program a green thumb program and they actually built a garden I'm going to read the whole spiel about it and so everybody gets the gist uh the oak tree apple PTA has a grant program set up and they funded Mr gleon the second grade teacher at Oak Tree uh to create a community garden uh the PTA wed $1,000 uh
143parents businesses also dated additional funds uh and it started what called a green thumb Garden Club for students and staff to watch the progress of the garden through the blog set up by Mr gleon it's a pretty new thing um the goal of the garden is to teach the respect for the environment providing real world opportunity to enhance the science curriculum provide a calm and peaceful place for students Foster interest in healthy foods and hope students may be more willing to try new foods to enhance the health curriculum mainly my son since he doesn't need anything the garden will allow students to learn and work Outdoors during the school day and to learn how to work together with classmates as a community the G will also allow parents local farmers and business owners the ability
144to participate in our school Community it was a great day parents teachers staff uh principal was there last Saturday parents staff and students came out to build the garden there's an official ribbon cutting at May 22nd at 2 p.m. if you want to come down and see the garden and the kids will take you around it was a great day even though I didn't realize how sunny it was it's a little windy but I think it's a great for the an great opportunity for the kids to give back to the the school the community and the environment it's really nice anyone else have any other board of education business Mr Kaufman I'm just going to make a comment about what Ken brought up about this community going up um I've been on this board for
145a long time and i' I've I've heard a lot of crazy things happen in this District but um I'll just go out on the record and say if if you're looking for a volunteer to sit on this committee uh to evaluate this program um I'll step up and and volunteer myself if the board feels that I could represent them fairly because I dare them to demonstrate to me that 500 homes will net students I dare them so that's all I got to say well they have not asked there there's been no requests to the board to to even about this committee so if Ken didn't say anything I wouldn't know that's all I got to say anyone else okay then we will go to close session resolution be it be it resolved the Board of
146Education of the township of Monroe hereby moves to go into Clos session in accordance with Sunshine Law chapter 231 of the public laws of 1975 njsa 10 col 4-6 through 10 col 4-21 to discuss the following subjects student matters residency hearing Personnel superintendence evaluation update on progress he said student matters harassment intimidation and bullying incidents number 31 through 34 the discussion conducted in closed session can be discussed to the public at such time as the matters have been resolved and they should take us about a half an hour is there a motion to go into close second who was first Mr tiella and miss antelis all in favor opposed abstentions then the board at this time will go into closed session at this time the board will reconvene into public session and I believe Mr
147tesler has a motion yes ma'am it is recommended to the members of the board of Monroe to the members of the Monroe Township Board of Education been a along line to hold a special Board of Education meeting on April 30th 2013 at 7M at the Monroe Township High School for the purpose of the superintendent evaluation is there a second second second by Mr Masters all in favor I opposed abstentions obain abstain Miss anelis and Mr Kaufman so that the board will be meeting on Tuesday April 30th at 7 o'clock p.m. April April 30th shouldn't we tell them that it's mostly a closed session meeting well it yes that that meeting will be um a mostly a closed session meeting in regard to the superintendent evaluation we'll open the meeting we'll go into Clos session we'll
148come out of the meeting and go home so there there will be no um official business at that meeting you can there's no public for there will be okay at this time we'll go to the for public forum anyone from the public wishing to speak please come to the microphone state your name and address for the record Robert roach 18 mfield Boulevard I have some questions regarding Mecca uh I know in fiscal year ending 6312 the 165,000 was transferred from the general fund to the uh proprietary fund of child child care fund uh I'd like to know how much has been transferred to date from the general fund into the uh Child Care fund we're going to ask that you ask all your questions at one time and then that we'll have somebody respond to
149them instead of a back and forth which takes okay um then just as a second there's a lot of questions and because a three minute uh time frame we're going to different people are going to ask him so I'll ask maybe four or five and then uh we can go from there uh I'd like to know also how much you anticipate you'll need to tr uh transfer from the general fund into the proprietary fund for the balance of the year in order to cover the uh the deficit uh of the program which is in the hundreds of thousands I'd also like to know uh the what there's uh assets being depreciated on the um profit and loss statement from March 31st I'd like to know what assets were purchased I'd like to know the total
150cost of those assets I'd like to know um how many uh there's 15 people children 15 and a half children in the program like to know how many employees that represents and what their positions are and that'll that'll be my questions okay you have that information you want to come back okay um number one question about transfers you're absolutely correct the Board of Education initi transferred $165,000 for seed money to get the program started and then subsequently transferred an additional $35,000 for a total of $200,000 that has been transferred into the fund number two how much will we need to transfer to make it through the balance of the year that's difficult to say it's dependent upon revenues that are coming in um but at the current expenditure rate and the current number of um
151students enrolled in the program it's foreseeable that you could probably need another $35,000 transfer um for operating um uh resources number three uh the assets um the financial statement that was presented to the board was on an interim basis for nine months and and had a depreciation figure which took 17th of the asset cost and um I'm looking for that uh statement but if you took that depreciation cost multiplied that by seven that would be the total assets and they include Furniture um uh renovations to the building security system and things of that nature what would be the cost of that money about $37,800 and those assets are being depreciated uh in accordance with IRS regulations for their type of asset so from a go ahead so from a cash flow standpoint um based on
152the the first seven months projections uh plus the expenditures from the uh for the assets the you know the capital assets you're looking at around 9 $300,000 negative cash flow so you you so that would indicate that there's probably more more like $100,000 that will have to go into uh to the um Child Care fund this year to cover the all the expenses I'm not following that math because if you take the $173,000 loss and you add back the cost of all the assets that's just a little above 200,000 and that's that's about the amount of money that was transferred so far so that's why my estimate of 35,000 make it through the rest of the year is probably close um maybe 70,000 based in other words you're having you had a if you look
153at your what you had over the first seven months and I'm assuming you're U you're not you're not an I'm not annualizing this on a 12-month period because school wasn't in for July and August so I did it over 10 month so based on a 10 month you would have a total of Revenue of like 98,000 expenses of 30 346,000 for 247,000 almost 248,000 net loss I had another 38,000 on there but it's it's roughly around 70,000 more I would think you'd have to put in so I mean that's a lot of money that could have been used to fix a roof thank you m Klein 53 turnburry just to fill you in on more of the information about the new development first I want to thank Mr Masters Mr chill and Mr Po for
154being there these are the facts okay the plan will start the building the development will start on um 6113 across from the stone Museum going across Mount Mills what's going to happen with the horse farm I'm not sure I understand they're going to build around it all the way down to where the farm is on 522 it's going to consist of 18 three-story buildings 24 units per plus about 24 tow houses the um the buildings will house apartments and condos so condos we know they're going to pay property taxes Apartments we don't know how that works to pay towards the schools um it consist of 407 two-bedroom apartments or condos 45 3bedroom and 24 tow houses if that is the correct amount the applicant stated 94 students and and they said that they felt that
155about 895,000 would be going and this is only a guesstimate would be going to the school district well if you take 94 students times 15,000 it's 1.4 million so using their numbers we're in the hole as it is um on the intersection of 613 in Mount Mills on the northwest corner will be one large building and parking my thinking is it would be like um a CVS or Walgreens or something like that if they sell that um what they should have done is what what's going to happen with this is it's going to put a lot of traffic on Mount Mills which is one way each way 613 One Way each way so if you want to go to the turnpike to a day you're going to be backed up on five on Mount Mills
156on five 22 and then we have to make the leftand turn in Jamesburg it's bad now it's going to be worse if you're going the other way then you're taking Mount Mills to 627 to Texas Road and that'll be horrendous whereas if they took this development and they put it closer to Route 33 which is three lanes each way which will distribute the traffic to the turnpike at the new Exit 8 which is much larger and if you have to go to nine you got three lanes going to nine that's where it should go um before I get cut off the this vote was for preliminary this is not the final the meeting on April 25th at 7 o'clock is the final you need people to show up and be verbal they have to be
157verbal about the any comments any concerns whether it be the roads whether it be the lights you cannot use the student population because the state does not allow you to use the amount of students family community to go against it all I'm asking no answer right all I'm asking is everybody we understand thank you very much Mr Klein oh whatever you'd like me to call you okay Nelson Chen for Ashley Court uh continuing on the mecca program uh how many families I'm going to ask that you ask all your question and I will how many families represent the fif 15 children the positions of the family members that have the kids there the are they teachers are they administrators uh is that something how many how many employees you have $117,000 here for salaries over
158the course of 9 months how many employees does that represent and are they part-time or fulltime time employees are those employees covered by the current contract for teachers or administrators here are they covered under their own contract uh what benefits do they re receive to Total the 7,000 what does that figure make up and benefits uh and how many children do we need to break even and does the daycare cease when the school year ends a lot of that Mr Gorski is going to have to look up up so he will not be able to give you that information today um so if you'd like to get in touch with him well I think the public has a right to know so if we could address it at some point can I can answer some
159of those um there's 17 kids in the program there're excuse me 17 there's 17 kids in the program there was just 15 the other night we checked after that meeting there are 17 kids in the program okay um it's comprised of mostly teachers there are at least one that I think is a uh child of an administrator um Staffing the Paris are part-time a full-time to director secretary and teacher and they are uh non-affiliate employees they are not covered by any bargaining unit uh none of the three none of them I thought one just went out on maternity leave wasn't that one of the budget items one of the items on the agenda there was a mecha teacher that went out on maternity leave but that's that's not a contractual issue uh contractual benefit that's
160a legal all employees are entitled to that okay all right uh so and what about the employee benefits the expenses what what benefits are covered there's only two full-time staff that have benefit eligibility uh the majority of the staff are par professionals part-time and um as such the elected benefits are reflected on that financial statement okay and what about the daycare does it end is it going to stop at the end of the school year so it'll be closed down we're looking at uh summer programs I'm sorry we're looking at a summer program in addition to the daycare center yes to supplant the daycare center so in other words you're going to close this daycare center and use the facility for we're looking at an additional program that would provide summer services to youngsters that
161are either in the program or other youngsters who may need a summer so it's not really being closed no if if the if there's no demand for it then yeah okay thank you okay um just to reiterate Michelle ar9 Nathaniel Street um just to reiterate what you just said and I know this is sort of out of context but you said if there's no demand for it then you won't have the summer program correct correct okay but there's a limited demand for the program to begin with so why are we perpetuating a program that's really not up and running it's not self- sustaining you have asked for you told the public that it was not it was going to be a loan it was going to pay for itself I in Phil philosophically I believe
162we should have daycare available for parents I have no problem with that but we but we have a pattern that you're not listening to the cries of the the stakeholders and which some people demean as the taxpayers um but you're you're not listening to The People's needs right now there's you're you're perpetuating something that maybe in the future would be a good idea but again it's not thought out it's costing money and we just keep going around and around let me let me qualify please the children that are currently in the program if there is a need for a summer program that will sustain and support itself then we will extend it if not the program is designed to be a 10-month program how many the in the 10-month program how many children does do
163you need to sustain the program to for it to be self- sustaining I don't know that number off the top of my head well see that's really again that's didn't have the number I just don't have it at the at my and I don't want to give a number that turns out not to be an accurate number okay but but we want education for our children we want these programs but not at the cost of doing it improperly and not having things and then we keep perpetuating it and some of the board members while it may be a good idea that you keep voting yes for things that are costing money I mean it's all about the children this is a small number of children albe it may be very important but then the children
164in the wider spectrum of the board's responsibility may be suffering for lack of those funds so it seems not to be a reasonable Pursuit at this time and no one wants to say okay maybe we've made a mistake or maybe not even a mistake it's just not appropriate at the time why can't someone be brave enough to say this is a program that's not working at the this moment and maybe we'll revisit it at a later date why can't someone I mean you are tasked as a board to protect all the children to protect the stakeholders the the the taxpayers it it seems that the cost for a limited amount of benefit doesn't work right now and someone needs to step up and say okay maybe in five or six years or maybe when things
165change and I would also like to talk uh to the gentleman who came to the planning board I'm very grateful that board members are starting to come to the planning board but the mayor and the city council are the ones putting these things together I mean they keep voting for all this high density development thank you in regard to the to the mecca one of the reasons we are where we are today is because the we had planned this out for quite a while but we couldn't find a director that we were happy with by the time we did that and the program and we hired her and she started it wasn't until July and what we found out was that anybody who wanted to put their children in a daycare especially a teacher starts
166in September has to register usually the pre the previous March April May so last year by July most people that we thought would be in our program had already put their their children in another program in fact we had um a couple people who left a deposit with us but went to another program because we had no director and no program at that point so we are in the process of recruiting at this point we don't know how many we will have next year but we're hoping to know in a short time hi uh Bob zagari 1622 Drive uh I would just like a clarification on how that money is actually transferred uh is it done through the transfer report through the bill list does the board just have a general resolution or is it
167done at the end of the year through an audit adjustment sorry both transfers were on the transfer list approved by the board of education at a public meeting anyone else from the public okay seeing no one we will close public forum Miss proso i' like to ask a question I I know we discussed it at Finance uh when is the exact cut off date for this uh Mecca program I think we talked decided to go another year yeah well another year from what April or June or well from September the next September through um June of 2014 and and I was a little confused with some of the figures Mike gave out that first the originally was $200,000 what is the total so far that we invested in Mecca the total loans from the general
168fund to the proprietary fund known as Mecca is again $200,000 that's the total amount that we're down that's the total loan from The General fund to the mecca fund that's the starting capital for the mecca fund 200,000 that money hasn't all been consumed yet but that was the initial loan from One Fund to the mega fund but we had that uh sheet that said 179,000 that's not uh related to the loans that's the actual performance um of the fund on a profit and loss basis two totally separate things first is a loan from the general fund to the mecca fund that's just a resource of money and then the operating F the second one exactly is the operational consequence of the fund we're close to almost $400,000 then no 380 not quite one is a
169balance sheet item it's a loan and the operations of the fund are a loss of approximately 173,000 for the N9 months can can board members get an update every meeting of how many many people have signed up uh Kathy had mentioned that last year they didn't have time in April and Mar March and April well March and April just passed and we still only have 15 uh 17 uh can we get an update like next month how many people sign up or I would like to know by the end of the last meeting that we have in June I would like to know how many people are signed up and who signed up for the summer program do we have any idea it's only a month away I don't have that information available to me
170tonight um okay but we can get it for you thank you oh and thank you for that live program that's that's a great program and maretta and Dr Hamilton thank you okay our next schedule anybody else from the board okay our next schedule public Board of Education meeting will be on Tuesday April 30th 7:00 p.m. at the high school motion to adjourn second Mr Chella miss anelis all in favor opposed extensions meeting is adjourned