001but it's meeting good 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 had a meeting you to may we have a roll call Mr Gorski Mrs kapano here Mr tesler here miss antelis here Mr Braverman Mr Chella here Mr calman here Mr Masters here Mr Po here Mr proso here Mr zareski here Madame board president you have a quarum thank you in accordance with the provisions of the New Jersey open public meetings law the Monroe Township Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting to be published by having the date time
002and place thereof posted September 19th 2013 one at all schools two home News Tribune three cranberry press four file with the clerk of the municipality at this time we will go to our reports from our student board [Music] members good evening ladies and gentlemen events coming up late September and early October are September 26th there is a senior parent information session at 6:30 p.m. in the Monro Township High School Performing Arts Center the Monro Township High School College Fair will take place on October 3rd at 6:30 p.m. in the media center um the homecoming football game for our very own Monroe Falcons is on Friday October 4th and there are SATs at the high school on October 5th thank you thank you at this time we will go to number six on our agenda a
003video distribution proposal and I'm going to turn this over to miss an Tellis as the chair of the finance committee okay um I believe we're going to show a PowerPoint on this so um we were going to come back for question further discussion and open board discussion on the video server that got tabled at that first video because there was a two to two vote and we said we would move it to the to the board but then we would have a discussion Reggie Bob mey and Boris ladic could not make it but they are here today and answer any questions um why don't you give a recap of what the Yeah Reggie why don't you come on up um and help us out here so can you re recap the the whole um process
004with the video server at the high school um this was brought to the finance committee uh many months ago um they had some initial questions uh we then provided some educational background to the curriculum committee the curriculum committee supported the decision and said please bring it back to finance now that we understand the educational value of it we then brought it back to um building grounds and finance had further discussion but you but we w't unable to have you there as a resource for some possible questions um we had said that this was part of the initial Bond referendum and that we were proposing to move forward with this video server at the high school so if you could just give us a quick recap of um the components of it and then uh the
005board said they wanted to have an open discussion possibly ask you Mr M and Mr ladic for some supporting questions or Clarity first of all the video distribution and storage system it would provide the capability for Productions that are produced Main in the TV studio but actually anywhere throughout the building to be distributed in the building currently the videos that are produced in the TV studio excuse me are uploaded to YouTube and then they're played at a later date and time we can we do not have the capability to Pro to distribute live productions in this particular School although in the old building we had that capability and a lot of that is due to when we designed this building a lot of the techn technology components we put off to the end because the
006technology changes so rapidly well we're now at the point in time where we need to get those Productions which are produced either in the TV studio or throughout this building uh get that distrib distributed throughout the building so this this system would allow us to do that right now we don't have that capability that's an overview of the system and what it would do okay is there any uh questions for Mr Washington from any members of the board Mr Po uh when I listened to the earlier presentation it appeared to me that this you would you please use your microphone uh when I was listening to the earlier presentation uh that was done for the committee uh it appeared to me that this uh distribution system uh had multiple capabilities uh and I was wondering
007uh is it possible to uh eliminate some of those capabilities that are not as uh badly needed or or or that are needed as much and therefore uh reduce the cost of this well the system as designed is actually has been watered down some uh mainly in that I think the biggest concern that you generally have with technology especially in an educational environment is its ease of use it has to be something simple that a classroom teacher can get started and go on real quickly otherwise you you lose that momentum and that that opportunity to present it uh this system has been scaled back uh we wanted a system that was flexible enough to grow so that we don't get it locked into a piece of technology that's going to be dead in a year
008or two but also be modular so that should some other new technology come two three years from now we can easily adjust this this system too see I I I I really believe that there's a lot of value in being able to do the the live uh video broadcasting uh I I've had experience with that and and we have found it to be very very valuable in an educational setting but it seemed to me that that the proposal contained as I said additional uh capabilities that I did not see were such a pressing need and I didn't know how much they actually added to the final cost well most of the the cost of the system one is is certainly the the uh live portion but also contained within that system is the ability to
009uh let me just paint a scenario for you when Comcast comes out to uh bring video to the school they give you three cable boxes if you think about your home uh let's just assume you have four sets you need a cable box for each set think about this building here it's 95 classrooms you got three cable boxes if you want to create a ride real quick who's going to use these three cable boxes so what this system allow allows us to do is take those three boxes put them on the network and now all classrooms have whatever it's broadcast over the the TV the Comcast channel so those kinds of things kind of like add up the d uh drive up the cost as well but I think it was it's a necessary component
010otherwise unlike the other seven schools this particular school doesn't even have cable TV in it thank you anyone else Mr cherella can you explain what the the technological requirements would be for for instance like Wi-Fi I'm not a technology guy so I really I don't even know the proper words to use but the proper ter or the proper terminology but from a Wi-Fi perspective or how much bandwidth we would need and do we have that capacity right now well it it will be looked at just as another device on the network so uh most of the devices here are Wireless we are running the latest standard in Wireless in this building so uh and I hate to start the whole techno babble thing going with you but uh we currently can get about 300 Meg
011shared over the wireless network now if you're hardwired obviously that's going to be even faster you're talking about gigabit speeds then so it's it is the most robust Network design there is out there today thank you anyone Mr proso when you say Wireless uh are we going to wire any rooms up or everything's going to be Wireless uh it will tie into our Network which is both wired and wireless so the the video distribution server itself will be hardwired but you can access it wirelessly anyone else Mr Masters just bear with me I'm gon to ask some of the same questions I asked at the finance meeting because you weren't there and I'm going to check the answers um so what's the bandwidth in the building then from this to a classroom what would that
012be the bandwidth from from the the video bution server to the class what the max bandwith if you're looking at a hard wire connection you're looking at either where anywhere from 1 gig to 10 if you're looking at Wireless again it's about 300 shared 300 Meg shared shared routers because it's is wireless wireless is a is a shared medium and what would be the end point in the classroom then for this the classroom teacher they have several ways they can do it they can play it wirelessly over the network either from their IP ad or their computer or they can plug in a cable into the laptop and and into the hardwire Network it'll work either way and we have enough bandwidth in the building then if if we distribute something something big happens a
013space shuttle launch from our generation yeah we'll we'll be fine we'll be fine now I I know there was talk about I I mentioned storage area an sa in um could we use something like that or is it just not applicable to this situation again uh with a lot of these Technologies you could certainly go out and buy a ton of hard drives and just start storing video there the problem and the challenge with that is is it easy to use this gives the classroom teacher an interface that is very simple very much like YouTube something that most people find easy to use if we start just throwing storage out there and and make it hard and difficult for teachers to use it it simply won't get used now I know you mentioned cable boxes
014have we talk to Comcast about just getting more cable boxes yes I uh called Comcast and they told me sure we can give you additional cable boxes for $4.99 per box per month onto Infinity you I'm going to do I'm sure you did that already Yes was it cheaper it's absolutely not cheaper and there there's no end to that cost now I know we also talked about coral concerts from building to building so we can we can stream live events in addition to caching stuff on the server absolutely uh because when we built this building here we ran our own fiber in between what's now the middle school and the current high school so we have pairs of cable fiber running from those two location so theoretically you could have some lecture going on in
015this building and then someone on only at the middle school also viewing that video or that lecture that's dual strand between the schools it is dual strand somebody else can jump in I'm sorry Mr preso did you have a question yeah Reggie we would need cable boxes to get a signal from the TV studio absolutely because you got to tune into a specific channel to see whatever's coming out of the TV studio so the TV studio right now we can't use it at all f part of the school that's correct like I said what the TV studio is doing now they make a recording and upload it to YouTube well we could host our own video server not using regular technology I'm just trying to look at the Alternatives I I'm sorry I didn't hear
016we could host our own video server our own mini YouTube if we really wanted to yes just it wouldn't be you're saying is convenient correct anyone else while we're waiting for Mr Masters thank you I forgot what he was gonna say okay and I don't want to put Mr Po on the spot but I remember after a previous discussion at one of the committee meetings that uh Mr Po brought up some good points because in the beginning when we were talking about this we're talking about being able to do Pledge of Allegiance over the you know over the as a school and stuff like that but I remember being able to do that over a PA system when I was a kid so that's why I was just I didn't understand it and then he
017helped clarify some of the some of the other things that could be done with it I don't know if you if you remember that or if you want to bring that up but there were there were some good points well the uh certainly doing the morning announcements uh that's a daily type of activity but uh there's also other times when you want when the either the guidance department or the administration uh may want to share information with the entire student body uh and it's impractical to bring students into an auditorium setting for that type of thing uh and really have their full attention uh auditoriums are more performance-based as opposed to informational uh transmission based um but if the presentation is being done by let's say the head of guidance or uh Mr Goodall and
018it's being broadcast live to all the various classrooms simultaneously you have much more uh attention being given by the students because one there there's a smaller number of them in a smaller set they're being supervised by a teacher so the the conveying of the information is much more effective uh also uh some uses I've seen of it is you bring in a a speaker on some topic uh I don't know maybe the school is doing some kind of fundraising for uh cystic fibrosis let's say uh and you may have students in the school that have cystic fibrosis uh and I've seen parents come in and somewhat share with the the entire student body uh what it's like for their child you know to get up each morning uh and deal with that condition and when
019the students once again are in a classroom setting seeing that uh you get much more uh information valuable information to the students uh because they're they're just much more attentive than than they would be in any other setting and our society is so video uh you know oriented these days that whenever you're doing it that way you've got a much better chance as opposed to just hearing something over a PA system thank you I appreciate that Mr tesler thank you uh just a few things on the Comcast boxes we already own I think three Comcast boxes that they they donated well they didn't donate it it's part of the franchise AG part of the franchise what we get and um also I think a clarification if correct me if I'm wrong is uh the difference
020between having uh shared files and playing you know uh uh a wave file or an MP3 file on your computer and the video system is also the video system has does compression absolutely so that means you know if everybody streaming the same video it saves bandwidth because you're doing compression so it's you know so it's like you're streaming Netflix they're not streaming the same movie they're just setting the bits and pieces so that's a diff that's an advantage that this would give us in just using a shared file system that is correct it does compression and multicast again I didn't want to get into all the right I don't want to get to to too Technical and the thing that happens now is when everybody uploads their video the morning announcements to YouTube and everybody
021tries to watch it that goes out on the net and you know everybody has tried to watch a video on YouTube and it stutters and buffers and you give up so I guess that's pretty much what's happening in the classroom now and uh this this system will move the the video right in the building as opposed to having to go out on the net and using our bandwidth that is correct okay thank you I do disagree with your compression but I'm not going to it I mean J boss does the compression J Tomcat does compression Jetty does compression aache web seros compression that's not a big point the issue I'm having is I I I I'm still with this are are we it just sounds like we there are other Solutions um that are significantly
022cheaper um and and it it sounds great and I hear what what Doug's saying about all this cool stuff we can stream all kinds of like I know we've talked about moving graduation back into the school we can stream graduation where's he's not here um or the coral concerts for overflow um the other issue I is is are we going to run into bandwidth issues a year or two from now when because what's going to happen is everybody's going to start putting everything on This Server right um so we're going to have and it's all HD because everybody's going to want to run HD nobody's going to run a standard definition um and if you're saying you have 300 megabit right unless you upgrade those routers cuz they're what they're G's they're NS you go
023to AC or something right you'd have to go to something like that we'd have to upgrade of a router in the school I just don't want this also to be a stepping stone to saying all right now we need new routers um and now we're going to need other stuff okay I'll never say we'll we won't need any more bandwidth I won't ever say that because as I described it before bandwidth is like a dog's chasing his tail you'll never catch it you'll never catch it as much bandwidth as we give they will use Mr Kaufman on the non-geek front um sorry I guess I wanted just clarify for everybody here and for folks that have been uh sitting at Board of Ed meetings for a long time and and for the Legacy people that
024have been here for a while Jeff and and Reggie a lot of the functionality that we're looking to approve here is stuff that we want to be able to carry over from our capacity that we had at the old high school into this High School which means the functionality or the core directives of this technology were in the original edpc for this school correct that's correct so when questions had come up about well how are you going to fund this why are you using Bond money you know to fund this new technology well the solution may be new but the ask or the requirement is old it was part of the original edpe for this building so don't consider this as a new thing coming along that we didn't plan for we plan for it
025we're just looking to adopt it now because technology is growing space is becoming cheaper technology is becoming better we have the onetoone initiative going here at the high school so I think we consciously decided to delay the imple uh the implementation of the solution until we had a really good definable uh requirement from the curriculum level which is really why we're here today so I know that I I'm sorry wasn't at the finance meeting that might have been a concern about why we're using Bond money to fund this that that's clearly why it was or being considered because it's part of the original edpc when this building was built it's not new it's just being done now anyone else do we need to we need to have a motion to accept this you have the
026cost you know the cost you want to make a motion Miss anelis will make the motion oh sorry i' like to make a motion that the board adopt the video distrib distribution proposal is there a second second second by Mr caufman comments or questions seeing none we'll have a Mr proso this this Bond money that we're using how much is it it's approximately $133,000 that's part of the 2,500,000 we have left over correct from last year that's correct it's part of the remaining Surplus in the bond account how much is left in the um the total left in the bond approximately $2.9 million okay but we have a set price of this is going to cost us correct yes as it was presented to the finance committee I think it was about $113,000 okay then
027we will have a roll call Miss anelis yes Mr Chella yes Mr zareski yes Mr calman yes Mr Masters yes Mr Po yes Mr proso yes Mr tesler yes Mrs Kap Pano yes madame board president motion for video distribution system with Bond referendum funds passes okay thank you uh at this time we will have a presentation of student achievement by Dr Hamilton but before he does that he has a special res recognition this evening yes um before I get into my uh the student achievement um presentation this evening I'd like to ask our boys from our soccer team if they would just come over and stand before the board if you will I asked them to come out tonight because I received an email um that I wanted to share with all of you and
028to take this opportunity exit um that I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you uh I'm G to read this email and then I have a couple of things I'd like to say to to our boys the email says Dear Dr Hamilton I realize that every student athlete represents their school every time they put on the school uniform but rarely do you witness such a display of sportsmanship sportsmanship that occurred on Saturday morning at the South Brunswick versus Monroe boys varsity soccer match as team photographer I was priv privileged to capture what transpired so that I could share it with you and the parents of our players the Viking player suffered a head and neck injury in a collision with his own player and remained on the field for a lengthy period of
029time while medical attention was provided after about a 40-minute delay the player was stretched off the field was stretched off the field to a waiting ambulance what you see in the attached photo should be should make your Administration and your school very proud the entire Varsity squad took a knee on the field as a sign of respect and concern for the Fallen player from the opposing side upon seeing their actions the South Brunswick coach also went out of his way to stop by the boys and acknowledge their actions and today's often competitive environment these actions are a welcome site indeed more importantly they speak volumes for the leadership and moral character that is the Monroe soccer program and starts with the coaching staff these boys acted out of respect and with no thoughts of recognition
030but I believe their actions are exactly the kind of behavior that need to be brought to your attention Monroe Township Falcon so soccer was victorious in more than just the score on Saturday these players took representing their School coaches team family and their sport to a whole new level and I am sure you will swell with pride when you see the photo and I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you how proud I am to received that kind of email from someone who took the time to acknowledge the Poise the dignity and the character you displayed as you represented our team and I wanted to say that publicly to you because you are representatives of the school district and pillars examples of the kind of pillars of character education that we want to instill
031in all of our students and I wanted to say that to you before this board and before this camera and before this audience so thank you so much [Applause] um in our uh next edition of the school story which we uh will be presenting uh and distributing to all of our residents I will be sharing the picture with the public as well so gentlemen thank you very much and before you sit down um we see this happen all the time on the fields and on the ice when there's a Pro Sport and it and somebody gets hurt and the respect that's shown from our um pro teams and to have somebody from Monroe a team from Monroe to emulate that is is just outstanding and and we respect you for doing that and showing your
032respect to somebody else who's been injured on a different team so again we thank you and appreciate what you do to represent mon Township thank you and kudos to the coach as well for instilling those principles in you so parents and the parents thank you thank you thank you gentlemen have a good evening thank you so tonight we are presenting our student achievement report um our presentation tonight is actually twofold one is we have an obligation to share these results with you but the other part of it is tonight we get to see the fruit of our labor the fruit of our labor um all of the work that has been underway uh since the current Administration and the results that uh we are sharing this evening are reflective of the commitment of our staff
033who have followed the district vision and mission statement those folks who have worked diligently to make sure that our goals are successful and more importantly are students who who sit in our seats every day and come before us looking for knowledge and information and then to be able to articulate and express those examples of success in standardized testing now this data is not data that we created this comes from the New Jersey Department of Education measure Inc um and and uh the AP college board which provides the AP data we've only taken the data and put it together in a format that is easy to view um and Jeff is going to facilitate this presentation tonight okay good evening everyone um so as Dr Hamilton mentioned how are we doing is our work based work
034in balanced literacy Mathematics Curriculum instruction technology teacher and principal evaluation is it all paying off what are the results and and um so we wanted to take some time here to Showcase and highlight some of our data and uh to use it both as um a celebration of our efforts and and over the last five years and also some areas where we think we could continue to grow from first thing I want to present to you is a New Jersey ask data and language arts literacy from 2009 to 2013 and um what you'll see here is a chart on total proficiency that's um Regular proficiency plus Advanced proficiency and you see these lines here these vertical lines you have to keep in mind that the third grade class of 2009 became the fourth grade class
035of 2010 the fifth grade class of 2011 the sixth grade class of 2012 and the eighth grade seventh grade class of 2013 and you could see along these paths from the fourth grade um significant gains from where they started out in total proficiency um not just minimal gains that might be um you know just some slight variation but these are significant areas 70 to 87 75 to 81 all these are are I believe significant gains Jeff oh you tell me where you want me to go it's okay no problem no worries I could do it anywhere all right good better is that good I'm trying to lose some weight um all right so um and again A visual representation uh from the grades of advanced proficiency of total proficiency so as kids get ready for
036their High School experience um I'm very you know pleased to say that 91.6 of all of our students are achieving uh Proficiency in both um either proficiency or Advanced Proficiency in language arts literacy and that is significant data in mathematics uh oh then I wanted to break this down to um Advanced proficiency by itself and so how do we take the good kids and get them to great um and again there is some pretty good movement here on all areas in advanced proficiency so our in getting kids ready for college and Workforce career ready literacy is the foundation of the common course standards and what's coming ahead um and how well you present read write articulate synthesize your thoughts and I do believe this is a very good indication of that um as evident by
037our student growth and again just a CH to represent it okay so we looked at our math squares and I I'll highlight um a different piece here in 2009 you could see our our kids in total Proficiency in mathematics and then you could see the changes over the five years and there have been some fluttering here and there so the total proficiency has not been as impressive as the literacy proficiency but I do want to show you that there were gains in each area um and there's here's some big jumps here again the the this column is higher significantly every year from 2009 but the advanced proficiency is really where we saw um in Monroe mathematics and I will tell you that we've had it's not in this presentation but we had 127 kids that
038scored a perfect 300 a 294 or a 285 in the math portion of the njs this year 82 perfect 300 squares in mathematics um and that is something to be very very proud of those numbers are extremely high um in in the county and in the state and you could see growing all the way through 35 to 61 24 to 5 2 all very significant jumps in advanced proficiency a look at science is only tested in the fourth and eth grade um and at the high school and I'll show you the biology results in a little while at the the high school but again um solid growth from 2009 to 2013 in both um the fourth and eth grade in advanced proficiency uh we wanted to include um our special education students in this analysis
039and it's not um I want to take a little bit of a look first you need to know that I did not take out the special education students in the data that I just showed you that was inclusive of them because we believe all our kids are all of our kids so I thought that was significant to tell you if I were to pull them out the general students those numbers would have been higher but we did feel that the right indication was to include all of our students I will show you some um some growth from 2012 and 2013 and these are areas that we're always looking at so you see in the green the green are the areas where it's it moved in in an upward Motion in literacy and Mathematics and over
040here it didn't as much where it declined a little bit so as we were discussing and analyzing the data part of it is that we start to classify our kids down here and so the services don't necessarily take hold right away but it looks like significantly without faou only there's only one equal uh we are right there in in improving instruction as we tip over and we get to the middle school and our special education students I'll tell you also um Jeff before you move on I want to I want to comment on this slide um you've heard me talk before about early interventions and frontload approach and what we've been doing is looking looking at identifying our youngsters as early as possible so that by the time they begin their middle and high school
041middle school experience in preparation for high school we've begun to remediate those deficiencies because we know that if we don't address them adequately certainly by the time they reach Middle School those youngsters will not be prepared for the HSPA and this data shows that those that frontload approach or those early interventions are manifesting themselves and of course each year we will begin that process earlier so that the data continues to hopefully show that kind of pattern and those Trends toward Improvement um you you could also um as I as I was doing this data analysis the special education numbers are are smaller than the regular education numbers so percentages move more significantly when you're talking about a data set of 100 versus a data set of 500 um in a class so I did want
042to point that out as part of the mathematical analysis it's just a couple of visuals that represent the same data High School um student achievement results there's some major highlights that we wanted to um emphasize this year from last year uh because they weren't minimal in gains they were significant our SAT scores our average SAT scores in Reading mathematics and writing went up 19 points in reading 14 points in mathematics and 10 points in writing we thought that was incredibly um strong um achievements it wasn't a couple points here or there there's uh over 10 over 10 points on the average in all of them they are all above the average by the way in the state um and and nationally our number of advancement placement tests just statistically our kids even if they're the
043same kids are taking more advanced placement um tests so we are definitely kids are definitely raising the bar towards really high levels of achievement um and then our percentage of Threes fours and five on the AP exams combination of 70% of the kids that take these exams Square to three four and five which means they're eligible for college credit Advanced Credit while they're in high school um now you should know that we as part of being in an AP class we mandate that they do take the test so this is everybody that took the test not just the the elite or the people that felt that they wanted to this is everyone and 70% of our kids achieve there and again some visuals that will'll put up on the website um and we'll post this
044up there for you to do some further looking at the numbers and the graphs our end of the year biology test again a very significant increase in our Advanced proficiency from 12.8% to 2.5% from last year to this year and overall proficiency Rose 3% over a two year period and lastly I wanted to just highlight some HSPA results grade 11 from 2009 to 2012 13 powerful in language arts literacy getting close to perfect Advanced proficiency numbers have gone way up in this fiveyear process mathematics again a significant climb Advanced Proficiency in mathematics again very high so what does it mean it means we really believe that our work is paying off that um everything that we fight for so passionately um has an impact on our students in this community and uh we really believe
045that the work is is you know paying off and I can't thank enough the administration the teachers the Board of Education the public for supporting our efforts to high expectations for every one of our kids here are the data sources for your reference all so that you could do a little more research on your own uh and Jeff before we conclude um some other data I'd like to share with you as you know we've um the board has invested a lot into supporting Avid the Avid initiative that we started several years ago and the goal of avid of course is to encourage those youngsters who would normally not not be your honors and AP level students but to provide them with the kinds of supports that would of course prepare them and give them the
046prerequisites so our current Avid numbers at the high school almost 40% of all Avid students are now enrolled in an AP or honors levels course that's extraordinary news there are 161 Avid students in the high school and 60 of them are enrolled in an AP or honors level honor levels course so of course this is an opportunity to toot our horn but if not for the work of our principles and our teachers these results would not be possible any question yeah I have a qu and this and this is great I think I think the results are laudable so I'm not trying to take away from any of this I'm just really asking this for my own edification that I maybe I read this improperly but there seemed to me to be a a dip
047between 8th and nth grade is that just moving in the school from school to school because I see the same thing with my my kid you know they they're doing well and then they there is there is a dip nationally um generally around fourth grade and then again around seventh grade we see those those dips um in New Jersey and particularly the test changes sometimes so from year to year you may have students who who do very well but the next year that same group of students may have a decline and that could be the result of either problems with the curriculum that we need to remediate or problems with the the barometer in which kids are measured this the standard on the test that is that is has changed but there are some opportunities
048for growth here as well there are some dips and we have to identify what those dips represent um we also have to look at how do we continue to close the gap between our special ed and our general ed students um the numbers at the high school are incredibly impressive in terms of the amount of work that we've been able to do with accomplishing closing the gap between those those two populations these results in that regard are extraordinary no I agree thank you and another piece um just as a as a forethought so next year comes these Park assessments these Park assessments will be every school year so right now right there's no ninth and 10th grade standardized testing there's just the 11th grade HSPA so in place coming will be a ninth grade test
049a 10th grade test 11th and 12th grade so these Park assessments were will it'll be interesting to see how they compare to the current New Jersey ask and the hespa testing um and how it ties to the new comic cor standard and on that we've actually been selected to be a pilot district for the park so we will actually our our teachers will be able to participate in sampling uh the park assessment so they will get some exposure to what the new assessment is going to look like our students will get some exposure and we'll be able to be part of a national study it's just it's a field test only for a couple of sections so we get to be get a view of what they look like no I think this is a
050good opportunity um the people moving the parents moving into Monroe are doing so because of how well our school district is doing and um we as board have been raising the bar for all our students and supporting them with the resources and the programs they need so that all of them are successful and I think this is a a good um presentation tonight um Mr Po uh I would like to request that uh the board members receive at least I'd like to have a paper copy of this because if I attempt to view it from the website sometimes I can't read the data it's it's blurred yeah we're we're actually going to send it home to you on Friday okay and um I was curious you you you did disaggregate the data on the special
051ed students but uh do we have a sufficient number of Hispanics or African-American students in the system that we also get the disaggregated results there yeah any subgroup and I would provide that information to you in further analysis it it was so big sure um presentation could have been so big um and and I wanted to keep it um simple for a board presentation uh but I would be happy to show you all of those results for all of our subgroups um including economically disadvantaged Hispanics black you know uh just from from what you recall is there a significant uh gap between let's say our uh our Hispanic students and our uh Caucasian students or our black students African-American students do we have some gaps there that I wouldn't be comfortable talking about it without
052the data in front of me okay all right I understand that previous Trends though I can I can speak to that previous Trends um our gaps really don't are not that significant between our African-American um and white students or our Hispanic and white students there are some significant gaps between our white and Asian students that we have to look at Mr Coffman um thanks Jeff for all this incredible detail and I know it's a lot of work to put this all together but um in years past we used to get breakdowns of the uh test results school by school and um I think that's a piece of information that's very valuable for us to evaluate I mean it's easy to know grade levels at certain things because the middle school have certain grades high school
053has certain grades but the aggregated data for the elementary school we want to be able to highlight schools that are doing exceptionally well because the numbers could be being brought up a high performing school and a school which may need to have a little bit extra attention given to it um maybe kind of getting lost in the aggregated data so I can't speak for everybody else here but I would like to be able to see this level of data at the school level so we can see where things are working super well and where we need to improve you want to talk on that I know Dr Hamilton has been working individually with each principal on disaggregating their own School data with the onset of our um student growth objectives this year as part of
054the teacher evaluation process that's going to be an important piece and also we sort of anticipated questions coming out of this and we wanted feedback and questions like you're giving us Mr C mrpl so I could give you further information towards your specific interests so I'll be happy to to put that together for you and and get back to you by the next board meeting actually miss anelis oh sorry microphone gued I hear you Shar he's got his own down there um just want to make a comment um when I see numbers like this this is our pay we don't get paid for doing this this is our pay watching these numbers go up seeing our students do better and better this is a great collaboration to me between the administration and all of the
055staff and I'd also like to thank our parents because without the parent support these numbers would not be going up I think every study has shown that when parents are involved with the staff and we have a great staff um this is when our children do good so I thank you Dr Hamilton for these numbers from Dr Gorman and to all of our staff um teachers Paris bus drivers everybody makes it all possible so thank you Mr Tessler when I was thinking about the data you know which pretty impressive data and our scores have gone up what occurred to me also is that over the past so many years five years or so we did this while open opening a new high school renovating schools shuffling buildings and all that as well so to do
056all that and you know increase these scores I think it was quite a feat um another quick question is next year when or the year after whenever the park starts to kick in is there going to be some a way to uh compare the park data between the old data or something like we don't have a clue yet because you know I could speculate based on different tests that I've seen well the park assessment are formative in nature so for example there's a reading program called achieve New Jersey you take that determines Lexile levels where you read at if you get a question right it takes you to a different question if you get it wrong it takes you to a different question and then it gives you a determined piece that's how the park
057works okay so it there might be there will be different test questions for different students based on their individual needs and that'll that'll be instantly given back to teachers and us so we could use that information to improve upon um I don't know how they can possibly compare the two but I'm sure there that is a question that's been asked many times and um and I can't wait for the answer right and the park assessments are all computer-based everything is computer-based um and I could do a followup with you on the complexity of the park assessments which are very very significant it would really um you'd say holy cow um these are this is really high level critical thinking and problem solving all um online a lot of video based a lot of manipulation um
058so yes it it is very different than the way we're testing now which would be consistent with how educational Trends are moving it is I know I know back in the day when I used to uh um take a take tests for my own work and and going for Microsoft certified engineering everything was on the computer and you did exactly what you just said if you got something wrong it would take you on to a different p PA and well at the end it would say a big screen you pass or fail but that's not the goal here but and that's even in when uh our children go to college and things like that I know for my own daughter a lot of this these assessments and tests are all computer based too thanks Mr
059Masters great news not to Amy said it perfectly but I mean what a finally some really positive slides with some really great stuff to make us feel good about why we're here um and again the administrators and the teachers they're they're really putting them when we were over at Barkley Brooks back to school night and that room was packed an oak tree back it's packed with parents and teachers and administrators and everybody's kind of they're sitting there they're late they're they're they're standing there late with parents and they're answering questions the parents are involved and this is what happens you know when everybody gets involved and the teachers are involved and they're you know we got some of the best teachers here and the best administrators this this is awesome it's it's definite proof that
060we're moving we're moving the right way you I don't know how anybody could say we're not moving the right direction anyone else okay thank you Mr G Dr Gorman I at this time we will go to number eight on the agenda the 201425 budget philosophy development and board discussion I will give this to Dr Hamilton and Mr Gorski uh yes in preparation for our meeting this evening um Mike and I have prepared a very short is it on or you just working off the Pod com coming U Mike and I have prepared a very brief PowerPoint presentation that we' like to share uh with the board and the public this morning um it is reflective you you can control tonight it is reflective of um previous conversations with with the finance committee um with with
061our during our board retreat and some of the previous conversations um so we're prepared this evening to go through some of the uh elements of what the 1415 budget will entail and then our recommendations to you as a board regarding budget philosophy and Nancy I just realized what you were saying to me thank you Mike you ready yes sir um these are the current Monroe Township Board of Education members Mrs Kathy kapano board president Mr Ira tesler board vice president miss amen Tellis Finance chair Mr Braverman Marvin Braverman who's not with us this evening Mr Ken Chella Mr Lou cman Mr Lou Masters Mr Doug poy Mr Anthony precioso and the Jamesburg representative Mr Robert zareski one of the most important considerations in determining the tax rate is the ratables and the increase or decrease
062in ratables in the 1213 um budget $100 of the $145 average tax increase was due to a $78 million decrease in ratables so you see how impactful the rateable base which shares the tax levy is and previously uh my predecessor enjoyed tremendous years of growth in the district which helped keep Monroe's taxes at the lowest levels in the county we still are amongst those levels um and preliminary conversations with the township officials indicate that this year we may have a a slightly higher than last year rable base it's too premature to talk about that yet last year the numbers were flat which was a relief after the previous two years but we might actually get some tax and budget relief this year with the growth in the ratables and Mrs Kap Pano asked before there's
063approximately $2.9 million remaining of high school bond Surplus as of September 25th 2013 this Surplus is a result of the effective management of the construction of the school limiting change orders um which efficiently managed the construction project and had monies left over while completing the project ahead of schedule state aid this District is grossly underfunded in terms of state aid last year we received $2.6 million that's less than $400 per pupil in state aid um with with State headlines recently about revenues not not meet meeting state budget figures and some other tragedies occurring down the shore which may require investment we're not very optimistic in the 145 budget that we're going to have an increase in state aid we have some uh legislation that was uh partially prepared in District that's still very much live
064and could afford US uh a few million dollars of extra money and we're going to continue to push that but we're basing it's our recommendation to base the 1415 Budget on the same state aid figures as the previous year $2.6 million Dr Hamilton is engaged currently in the review of all extracurricular co-curricular and athletic programs um he's he's already looked at enrollment um numbers and participation numbers and we're getting a little more in- depth now with cost reviews and value analysis uh to determine if if uh we're getting the most bang for a bucks in these programs additionally in the next year we're going to look at Revenue generation through perhaps advertising using our athletic programs and also cost sharing and another resource consideration is other proprietary funds the district has um currently a daycare
065program called Mecca we have 31 students enrolled in that program as of today and an early childhood enrichment program with 41 students enrolled both those enrollment numbers are indicating that we're in a profitable situation now and we're eagerly awaiting the September financial information to confirm that this has a long-term positive outlook on the district because if this can become profitable which it we it appears to be now it can address the loan quickly and then even May perhaps make a contribution back to the budget and the taxpayers the next page shows the calculation of how much we can grow the 1415 budget based upon current guidelines this is a projected schedule of cap and how it's calculated the details are there if you're interested but the bottom line is going to cap if the board
066should be so inclined would grow the 1415 budget tax levy by 3,372 352 as compared to the previous year now although that sounds like a very large number and it seems like it may be uh a lot of growth the next slide shows one of our major constraints and that is in the area of increased enrollment we're eagerly awaiting for the October 15th Assa data that's where we go and count every child in the district in every school and we have an exact enrollment number which is audited by our um independent Auditors um but in lie of not having that information tonight I prepared a three-year trend line which predicts 200 new students for next year conservatively 200 new students costs this District $3.1 million that as you can see eats up just about all
067of the growth in the budget that you're allowed with the cap increase other considerations are the district are facilities we have dire needs for repairs throughout the district we have about six facilities that need roof address many without outdated boiler HVAC systems all of these are on our radar but certainly we can't fit these all in the budget like we've tried over the last few years by doing uh the Performing Art Center roof at the middle school the Brookside roof and so on but as as recommended by the building grounds Transportation committee we have some stop Gap measures at the Monroe Township Middle School which is over capacity currently the stop Gap measures include internal construction renovations to make an additional 10 classrooms within the existing building these costs are estimated to be $2.2 million
068and included in these costs are design costs for doing the instructional roof also at the Monroe Township middle school for $200,000 now the beauty of doing this now is the state has offered a rod Grant regular operating District Grant whereas districts like Monroe regardless of affluence or perceived affluence can receive a 40% rebate on our costs that almost $900,000 will get back from the state on this project so the district obligation would be $1,500,000 to to have that cost put in and Incorporated in a School District budget with the cap considerations that we have is very aggressive but the cost of not doing it and including it in the budget and forgiving the states offer on the money could even be more so to rent 14 additional classroom port affordable units with toilet rooms and
069health rooms would and and utilities would cost annually $462,000 if you do the division you could see that renting these classroom units equals the amount of the renovations in only three years it's an incredible um waste of money as our student enrollment has been growing um so has our special ed po population um unfortunately each year um we've received a request to add support to our special ed department and that has not come to fruition in our budgets consequently our current child study team members are overworked their workloads are tremendous and it is beginning to become an inefficient way to operate a district of this size with students with the kinds of needs that they have in fact I suspect that if we continue to Kick the Can down the road and not provide the
070support that our special ed department needs it will manifest itself in increasing the number of children who are falling through the cracks not being addressed appropriately through case management Andor potential to increase the number of students who may ultimately be placed out of District which costs more money because ineffective uh case management so our recommendation is that we strongly consider adding another team to our district to support those need students with special needs another budget consideration is the matter pertaining to the Jamesburg Board of Education and I'm going to limit this discussion to say that we are including in our budget again in 1415 as we did in 1314 what the district in Monroe calculates to be the um tuition rate including passing to Jamesburg a cost of the bond interest on this school annually
071um hardships exist with that partially which have been created by the state and that's yet to be um resolved but that could be a potential unrecognized and this matter not concluded another very important budget consideration is negotiations forthcoming we have negotiations with the Monroe Township Education Association and the Monroe Township School administrators Association uh lined up this will be an additional uh assumed significant cost to be contained within the 1415 budget but nothing is more organizationally important impacting Student Success and achievement than the retention of our existing quality teachers and administrators and attracting the very best new Talent um and this will have to be a financial consideration within the preparation of the 1415 budget and uh some additional budget considerations relate to Transportation the state is mandating that we retire 2 54 passenger buses
072and 254 passenger vans because of age that cost to replace them will be 324,000 additionally Transportation director and Dr Hamilton and I are recommending some other Fleet replacements for safety and enrollment growth reasons we have two 54 passenger buses with early 2000 model year and 324 passenger vans with early 2000 model year in excess of 200,000 miles with enough rust that you could fit a hand in certain sections to replace those Vehicles would cost an additional $387,000 and its administration's recommendation to budget for the $711,000 for all the vehicles so the total State mandated and student growth response of additions considered within this presentation exceed the cap growth by approximately $4 million which will mandate that Administration create new efficiencies seek Community Partners ownerships and evaluate existing programs and services with a with a special
073cost benefit consideration to conclude it is in Dr Hamilton and my administr uh recommendation to dedicate 2.5 million of the remaining Bond Surplus which is the Lion Share of what's left towards tax relief directly reducing the tax levy to create as a budget priority the construction projects at the Monroe Township Middle School stop Gap measures and design costs to continue to service special education with expansion of child study teams and to stay within the very constrictive state budget cap and not consider going above the cap with an election okay thank you so be before I I just want to ask ask a question um if it's assumed that the additional students will take us to the cap and all this other information that you would like to put into the budget exceeds $4 million and
074we have no other sources of income from the state we would have to cut our budget $4 million in order to include these this pieces in this exactly exactly um based on the projected student enrollment um and the limitations of the cap we would be obligated to identify approximately $4 million in our budget that uh through efficiencies reductions Etc um that would bring us down to cap and our budget I believe Mike is um like 85 86% fixed where you can't remove certain pieces from that or that's correct fixed fixed in the context that we have contractual obligations or state mandates driving those costs okay um questions from the board Amy well m board president at this time I would like to make a motion I move that the members of the Monro Board of
075Education accept the administration's recommendations as dedicating 2.5 million of bond Surplus to tax relief the construction projects continuing to serve as special education with expansion of child study team and staying within the constructive state budget cap for the 1415 fiscal year second by Mr Masters okay comments and questions Mr Tesla probably have an answer this yet but we how are you going to cut $4 million and maintain still maintain our programs and services or and that's going to be a to challenge um that's the way we'll be spending our weekends for the next few weeks all of us we could do that every Friday and Saturday uh we'll be looking at um the again the co-curricular and extracurricular activities uh some of the sections that we are currently operating uh the district has a longstanding
076history of providing students with their first choice when they select courses um for the high school that may not be a luxury we can continue to to afford um so we'll be looking at those kinds of things are there any opportunities I know it's here too for us to make uh more income I know you talked about it you know I think that's one thing we should continue to look at other ways uh to make more money like now we're profitable in the meca program and other things like that things we would have to look at yes yeah yes keep on keep on looking anyone else Mr caufman here just real quick I don't know whether or not Reggie has left the building or not but um one of the things to talk to Iris
077point point when we were originally designing the high school one of the things that we had talked about back in the day was to be able to provide for uh the ability to uh produce or offer uh technology services to other parts of the community to hopefully bring some of that you know Enterprise fund related material uh we consciously decided to have a fairly sophisticated Data Center built here which was far and above what we had at the old high school so I think we need to re-engage those conversations in both curriculum and finance committees to see what opportunities might be out there I know in some of the of the other committees that we have met with including our curriculum we've been looking at um providing services to the community for things like um
078producing big um signage and other types of materials uh producing plaques uh which all the stuff we can do inhouse uh these are also great opportunities I know we have a lot of PTO that look for companies to do a lot of this work we could bring that work inh house we can again develop Enterprise funds so that the money that uh our PTO are spending to go to outside organizations can be literally used right back here at the school and I think a few weeks ago we even spoke about offering catering services here at the high school uh when we have our teacher the year dinners at the end of the year they're fabulously run and we have an incredible facility here with two professional grade kitchens uh for our curriculum uh students who
079are looking for uh culinary arts so we have an incredible capacity here at this building to be able to do a lot of these things for the community we just need to hear from the community members on the types of services or the types of needs that would best suit your groups or organizations over and above you know just renting out out the or or giving access to the auditoriums and stuff like that so we would always welcome you know coming to Mike and talking to the administration on what we can do for the community as well Mr proso did you have a comment no I thought you had your hand up okay about the motion what is this motion for it's to accept the recommendations um the administration's recommendations that are on the last
080page of your handout of the of the presentation is this just a consideration or are we voting on a budget are we we're not voting on the budget we're voting on the philosophy that that we would keep these things in the budget just the philosophy then there's a discussion coming on here this is not the budget okay because I was a little curious that if we're going to evaluate the curriculum and the athletic programs maybe we should have that before we make a decision but if it's just a philosophy that's that's fine right because we we we um one of our goals for this year is to have Dr Hamilton look at the co-curricular activities and and the sports programs but it we can't we can't vote on that today because that that goal has
081not been completed so the philosophy is just to look at these pieces Mr cheer so the but the motion is to ensure that the 2.5 $5 million left over from the bond referendum goes back to the taxpayers Mike Mr Gorski um that's correct as a as a budget philosophy concept obviously we still have to have we still have to have a preliminary budget hearing where the where the public has to come and participate and be heard in the in the budget process and there's there's going to be numerous deliberations at the principal and school levels uh with the defense rounds and um we don't know what our State aidid's going to be we we still are don't have to focus what the ratables are there's a lot yet to be considered but this is just
082as a general philosophy considering all of the responsibilities that we're facing coming up in the next year um how the board should generally address it and and I and I do appreciate that and I appreciate everything that everyone's done including the board members here on the retreat and everything else to come up with this philosophy and but I think the important thing to remember is and I know that it's going to put a burden on on us and on the administration to come up with this stuff but there has to be a clear recognition I think that times are tough that this that this money exists and that tax abatement is probably the best way to go with this point with this because uh we need to recognize that this is this is the Public's
083money you know this is this is not ours and I think that it's it's also good faith effort too to show the public that we understand what's going on and and you know we we we're we have to do something about it also Mr Masters it's easy to support I mean if just to summarize we're going to give money back to the hopefully give money back to the taxpayers we're going to expand the middle school which we've already decided we're going to do because it's pretty crowded right uh and we're we're going to help out the special education which three things we all want to do so I don't that's why I was so quick to jump on it I have no problem supporting this and stay within the cap so we make sure that
084we're not going to go over the cap this year madam Mr one of the most important factors that we mentioned is the enrollment growth it would be um possible to put forth a budget that's flat with perhaps a no tax increase um if you didn't have to Service 200 additional students every year or almost a small school every two years that puts an incredible Financial Demand on this district and I I just want to emphasize that again anyone else Mr Po uh just a question u under the administration's recommendations in the last slide or the last page of what I'm looking at uh it doesn't include the transportation issues the buses and the Vans I is that not part of the recommendations or is that simply something that has to happen Madam sure well certainly
085two of them have the buses and the vans that are uh being mandated to by the state to be replaced um is mandated so we don't have a choice in that matter but um the board should also include in the philosophy the the replacement of the two extra Vans with the early 2000 model year and also the three vans from that same time period if they would uh be so considerate and as we as we flush this out we may need to amend that um based on how we identify other efficiencies because keep in mind there's $4 million that we have to uh identify in order to comply with the 2% cap I I I think I know the answer to this but I still want to ask uh be because the transportation is such
086a a big item and these buses have to be replaced from time to time I'm assuming that uh quite a bit of uh thought and Analysis goes into the development of the Transportation Route so that we maximize the number of students on the buses and therefore minimize the number of buses that we need that's absolutely correct we have a very sophisticated routing software called versatrans and for about the the month preceding the start of school once we have uh some better enrollment information all the routes are designed with uh careful consideration of timing to make sure students get picked up and dropped off at school on time delivered home and a reasonable an hour you don't want a kindergartener on the bus for more than 45 minutes um but yet to still maintain an efficiency
087with the routing so that we're not having a bus with two students run throughout town and sit in the park idle for the rest of the day our transportation department as you know has the highest transport Transportation efficiency rating in the state um and um of course that requires some uh human manipulation uh once we recognize some routes are running a little late and um so on anyone else Miss anelis Madam um I failed to mention also you know to create efficiencies we also through our transportation director solicit joint ches with uh neighboring school districts that who's routing software may have routes that uh go through some of ours so that we could share costs and right now we have over a dozen contract joint with other school districts sharing routes sharing costs tell us
088yeah I just wanted to um actually Dr Hamilton you said it um I think the reason that the transportation some other things didn't go in here is because we don't always know if we can do it the the two extra buses are really just to bring us back to full in-house buses and get rid of this outside Contracting which has been a problem um I think the reason that we went with you know that the administration went with these four are there really big items and they are big items for the public to hear that we are going to make the commitment to dedicate the 2.5 million um to let the parents know that we're going to address the um issue of overcrowding in the school you know again special services has been so these
089are Big I think ticket items and that's why really what a starting point that we want and we even haven't we haven't talked about negotiations other than that is something that we are looking to do this year their contracts are up and we don't know how that will affect the budget and um Mr tesler just a thought that popped in my head do they make school buses run on natural gas and would it be if they do would it be cheaper in the long run to purchase buses for to reduce fuel costs I'll be happy to look into that but I'm unaware of any school districts with buses running on natural gas but it it could certainly be a clean uh cheaper alternative we we'll look into it all cuz you see the the uh
090regular buses you know it runs on natural gas so I was just curious anyone else Mr Po well I I I do know what the philosophy of the board has been and I know what many parents are requesting but as push comes to shove I'm just I would be interested in knowing um what what uh if if we contracted out the transportation as many districts have done and I know you know that's a whole ball of wax and that's a very controversial thing but uh it would be interesting to know uh what the savings might be if we contracted it out uh uh that service since many other districts have done that and I know they've done that with a little bit of angst but uh some of those districts have continued to contract out
091their bus service and I'm just simply saying I I don't think that should be totally off the table not necessarily for next year but in the future if it gets harder and harder to find the revenues to actually run the instructional program then uh then I think we have to look at other ways to to to cut cost miss you I said um being here for 20 years at one time that was the philosophy of the board contract everything out let's save all this money and we did the first year the second year and then the third year it started going up and then it started going up again and also there's safety issues we've had issues with we know that we're fingerprinting our bus drivers we have cameras in our buses every bus has
092a radio that is connected not just to the school district but to the police department okay so if there's an emergency just like that they're calling them um and I think that that's the reason that this board went over so it's not a cost saving it it's safety and it will they'll always come back because once a bus company knows you got rid of your whole Fleet that's when the prices start going up Mr Masters and I was going to say that's probably the reason you see them sticking with it because once you have no more Fleet you know that's a huge capital expenditure to start bringing all that back you have no more employees now you got to hire all those employee bus drivers again and you're kind of stuck um what you were
093saying before Dr Hamil about the additional when you said modifications you mean down right not up of those extra ones yes okay thank you Mr cofman yeah just one more point to add on to what Amy said being on the board for a few years um I can tell you that I've had personal discussion with board members of other districts who have gone that route to save some Shekel in the beginning to uh uh try and cut cost and and in 100% of the cas is every one of them said whatever you do do not give up control of your bus fleet for the reasons that were stated before once you do that and you cross that bridge you have to blow it up behind you because you could never afford to buy all that
094Fleet back and undo for a couple of $1,000 savings over time considering where we are today with cameras that are in the buses that have saved us litigation issues which that's a lot of money litigation issues are a lot of money uh so there are a lot of unseen soft costes that costs that come along with Outsourcing stuff like this which is why I know in the past we've looked at it and we would have to give up too much in this community and I I have to tell you we move what 5 6,000 student how many students 5,111 twice a day five days a week for the whole school year knock onone wood great job never wanted to Outsource it ever correction 6,111 we just dided a couple new buses um Mr Gorski I
095know that we've been going in the direction of shared services and I'm sure that we'll be looking at more shared services could you give us an idea what we have shared services agreements with besides the transportation yes um the all the shared service Agreements are disclosed in the budget statement and just off the top of my head I know we have shared service agreements with the township for uh the video um Channel we have shared service agreements with numerous other school districts to share joint chur and to reduce route costs uh we have shared service agreements with the middle sex Regional ed Service Commission whereas our food service director um provides meals to the academy Learning Center Center at a profit through our cafeteria fund um purchasing Consortium purchasing Consortium through the middle sex Regional
096ed Service Commission which we just disclosed to the board in a recent substantiated letter from the organization that has had cumulative Savings of 700 and a little over $700,000 in the year and a half that we've been engaged in the Consortium and there's many more and we're always looking for new thank you anyone else from Mr proso Michael when will we find out about the general fund tax levy the amounts well the the budget guidelines will be released in the uh the early um uh January time frame and um you'll have to you'll have to look at the entire budget revenues in a hole and get the uh State software to determine how much of uh tax levy you're going to need and what that exact number is that'll be disclosed to the finance committee
097uh at the preliminary budget hearing and also at the the final budget adoption meeting meeting we're going to vote on going to cap before that though correct yeah and what's important is the the cap figure that's represented here in this PowerPoint slide is based upon last year's guidelines and it's it's really um projected it could it's subject to change with State guidelines and new budget law anyone else okay seeing none we will have a roll call on the motion uh to accept the administrator's recommendations as the budget philosophy Miss anelis yes Mr Chella yes Mr zareski yes Mr calman yes Mr Masters yes Mr Po yes Mr proso yes Mr tesler yes Mrs kapano yes madame board president motion unanimously passes thank you thank you before you go to the public forum I just want
098to point out um one of our policies about public participation at board meetings um item number four is all statement shall be directed to the presiding officer no participant May address or question board members individually at our last board meeting um a member of the public did stand up and tried to pull board members about their votes and so I just ask that if that should happen again please you know reference back to this policy thank you Miss SEL he at this time we will go to the public forum and anyone from the public wishing to speak to the agenda please come to the microphone and state your name and address for the record you're speaking to the agenda I just wanted to thank you uh Dr Hamilton Dr Gorman on leave your name and
099address I apologize Karen castaldo U I'm the mtea president for Monroe Township and I live in Jackson do you need that for Cypress Point Lane um I want to personally thank Dr Hamilton and Dr Gorman for the excellent presentation and mik Gorski uh and on behalf of our soccer team coach McKenzie coach Ross and Coach yanon if I got got that correct uh for their support with those fabulous student role models it takes all of us to educate the whole child not just one excellent math teacher or not just one excellent excuse me language arts teacher so if you could kindly Dr Hamilton send an email blast out with that wonderful presentation along with some balloons etc etc I know our staff would appreciate it very much because they don't know just how good they
100are uh and I think that would uh also help so thank you very much everybody appreciate the good job that you're doing thank you thank you Ken anyone else from the public de Schneider 8 Regal Court in Monroe um on page 10 it says it's recommended that the board approve the attached list of requests for field trips can you tell me what the most expensive field trip is going to be drilon do you have we'll look that information up yes ma'am okay we will be looking that information up does that go against my three minutes CU I have another question no the clock stop okay do you have another question while he's looking that information of uh yes page 12 uh pertaining to the yoga class that's in addition to the regular um fizzed that
101they get I know it's only $600 but why an additional cost class what page is that I'm sorry Mr uh page 12 page 12 Madam Mr Gorski okay good um number two on page 12 uh it is recommended that members of the Board of Education approve Mary Flynn of peaceful Pathways LLC to give yoga classes to special education students at the high school at a fee of $150 per 90-minute class that's part of the special education curriculum obviously this yoga is is a therapeutic value to these students and it would be an additional cost to their per pupil expenditure okay and also on page 12 um could you please explain what the employee assistance program plan is for almost $25,000 yes the employee assistance plan um was started many years ago with uh when Dennis
102ventrillo was the affirmative action officer at the time and assistant to the superintendent and the program allows 247365 uh days access for staff to call a counselor um and get a referral for perhaps psychological uh counseling or Psychological Services um previously there's been instances where Administration has had I'll give you an example two employees with some kind of conflict and um as a preventative uh prophylactic measure Administration sent these two students uh two two staff members and required them to call the employee assistance plan they spoke to counselors for psychological um dispute resolution and what that does is save on litigation costs because if not these events can get quite costly um it also helps uh staff Health to deal with stress family issues drug dependence um all of these are reported quarterly from the
103organization as they service our staff and um it also has a benefit on our regular insurance rates to offer these Services going to ask you isn't any of this covered by the health insurance that they already have no most of these services are in addition to uh The Horizon Health Benefit services that they receive okay uh and these are an important administrative tool often to help employees who are in obviously uh bad time s and emotionally or through drug dependence and so on and have them speak to appropriate uh medical professionals and get help okay uh 247 when we may not in be in session and and so on okay we're going to continue to look and I'll just share that answer with you if you don't mind all right thank you anyone else from
104the public hi Robert zagari Z is and zebra EG l r ski uh 162 Tournament Drive my remarks tonight uh directly relate to your discussion of budget development philosophy uh tonight I'd like to talk to you about an idea that I have which would help alleviate in my estimation some of the financial burden of the influx of new students coming from new housing developments and also help taxpayers mayor and Council will receive the benefit at as it has done in the past the sewer connection fees associated with these developments over the past six years the mayor and Council have used millions of dollars of Monroe township utilities department Surplus to help fund the municipal budget Township business administrator Wayne Hamilton and Council President Gerald T tambura have both stated that the Surplus accured in the
105utilities department is the result of sewer connection fees paid by developers and I believe them developers pay for water and sewer lines and the sewer connection fees once these fees build up as utility Surplus the township uses the money to help fund the municipal operation and only the municipal operation the school district as you well know gets nothing even though it must eventually build new schools or classrooms as you've just discussed to house additional students generated by these same developments therefore I propose that the Board of Education be allowed to share with mayor and councel and I know it's not your call uh the Surplus accumulated by these fees for two very specific purposes one funding capital projects necessary to accommodate new students resulting from new housing developments and paying a portion of the school
106district property tax associated with Debt Service I believe it is reasonable and fair as well as fiscally responsible to give the board access to at least some of those millions of dollars for the very limited purposes I mentioned as a former School business administrator and mayor familiar with public budgets and public law I'm sure this proposal could be implemented it may of course take a little bit of doing but it can be done just beware of those who say it can't be done especially those who wish to maintain the status quo of Dipping into a sewer and water utility budget to help fund Municipal operations it is time for mayor and councel to reduce its heavy Reliance on the Water and Sewer utility department Surplus and share some of it School District budget thank you
107for your comments to keep School District property taxes from Raising excessively thank you very much school deserve their fair share and so do our taxpayers thank you um while I next speaker is approaching the M mic Mrs Snyder the most expensive trip on the field trip list is $831 192 uh Mike Bono um I'm just a little confused uh may we have your address what may we have your address oh 38 crunch your court I'm sorry thank you uh I'm a little confused tomorrow night there's a meeting of the planning board which is an extension of last month's meeting of the planning board now at Mount Mills in 613 they're building tow houses condos whatever and there's 500 families moving in 400 affordable 100 lowincome on 63 uh Pineville and 33 the proposal for tomorrow
108night is 750 condos houses or whatever to go up now if everybody in these houses has one child that's 1250 kids coming into the system if half of them have one child there's 600 kids coming into the system now based on the 200 if you're talking of $3 million with that theoretical figure you're up in the $ n $9 million range now when we ask them how is this going to impact the school system on 613 and mount excuse me Mount Mills they said 500 houses 94 kids now how they came up with this magic number of 94 kids out of 500 houses my question is if this really happens and if there is a half a kid uh her househ or half of them don't have kids and we are talking about 600 kids
109besides the fact that this goes to 9 million assuming that the transportation department is using the buses now to their fullest and their maximum they can't put another kid on the bus so now you got 600 kids who need transportation to the school you're looking at approximately 50 kids per bus you're looking at 12 buses you're looking at approximately $100,000 a bus you're looking at a million2 in addition to the 9 million you're looking at over $10 million not three now where this magic number of 200 came from I don't know but there are going and I'm sure that that Pineville and 33 is going to be approved like the other one was now think about this guys somebody someplace has got a yell Uncle because if they keep building build the way they're building
110people have a nasty habit of having children and if you're going to have them you got to put them someplace and where they going to put them in the school and how we going to house them and how we going to pay for them so I think the board should consider this and maybe you guys come to planning board and say take it easy guys we don't have the room the buses or the budget for it thank you thank you Robert roach 18 new Yorkfield Boulevard uh I just want to piggyback a little bit on what Bob scari said before I get into what I really wanted to talk about uh the um Township has used in the last four years40 million from the municipal Utility Authority uh Surplus and if we got a portion
111of that that would certainly go a long way to reducing the taxpayers burden on the uh the budget and the T it's it's interesting when you look at the Township's um budget they gave they used most of the water utility when there was election year and they really used very little and had high taxes in non-election years so I mean it's it's a game they're playing and I think you guys ought to think about how you can maybe uh get a share of that that Utility Authority Surplus and there's more Construction in the town there's going to be be more uh connection fees uh the thing that I wanted one of the questions I had is on the projected schedule of cap use of budget uh it says 201314 I may have missed it but
112is this is this just last year's cap computation or is this projected for uh 1415 Mr Gorski it's a projection of cap specifically for 1415 which is based upon the levy and a lot of factors from 13 14 all right um but one of the factors in here as enrollment increase is a is an exception to the cap as you as you well know as you well know and just go ahead Mike I'm sorry I have no comment it's an exception to the cap and uh your schedule here that shows budget considerations increase enrollment of 200 children at the 15 5 we all know that the actual cost increase is not your average cost per pupil because of overheads and things of that nature that don't change when you have a new student come in
113so it's it's substantially less so I think you're giving some misinformation by uh using the uh the average cost for the pupil that's my two comments okay thank you did you want to respond okay thank you very much do you want to respond Mr Ro only if you want to all right um the enrollment that we used here was just a three-year trend line and if you looked at the Assa data from the last three years on average it's gone up about 200 a year so using round numbers we're estimating 200 additional and that's a conservative number I realize that but it I I think it's it's reasonable um the 800 ,000 just as a point of clarification is an automatic adjustment to the cap the state recognizes that you have some cap wiggle room
114and you should be afforded some if you have increasing enrollment um I'm estimating conservatively that we'll have 3.1 million of additional costs associated with those 200 students the state gives you an adjustment for about $ 800,000 and uh to your point about the the the calculation and the projection of that number keep in mind it is an average you might have overhead enough to absorb 200 kids in one year but over time that average is going to catch up with you and and just by its very definition that average is based over time and that's a realistic number yeah but it may not be a realistic number for one year Fair comment thank you anyone else from the public Steven Ryback 23 Riviera Drive Mr Gorski uh your report on the facilities was uh certainly
115Right On Target and and highlights a problem that we're really having here in our town uh I'm going to follow up on some of the comments that Mr Bono uh who uh preceded me just uh uh uh spoke about um you know we're being underfunded grossly in state aid and um we need that money to provide the kind of education we all want for our students here but there's another part of this fight and that's the amount of construction high density construction that's coming into our Township tomorrow night um the planning board is meeting to decide whether to Grant PR prelim preliminary I can't say that word for the life of me approval to a development uh on Route 33 and Pineville Road that you that development is is slated to 749 units 575 3bedroom
116units 144 two-bedroom units the developer says that will only generate students you do the math you'll get almost 1,300 from just that one development when it's finished so your job as I see it is going to be not concentrating on education but where we going to put these kids and and I think that we need to draw a line someplace and I think we need to join forces and this goes for everyone sitting in the audience as well we need to go down to that planning board meeting tomorrow and we need to explain to this planning board that what they're really doing is robbing our schools of providing the kind of education that we want for our students as well as robbing the taxpayers because we can't afford this any longer thank you and I
117hope that people will come down and I would love to see a representation from this board there tomorrow night thank you thank you Michelle armeno 9 Nathaniel stet and I'm candidate for the Board of Education um the rod Grant is that a a grant that's readily available we have to apply for and can we be denied Mr Gorski um yes the grant is readily available yes we've applied for it and it's highly unlikely that this particular one that I referenced at the middle school will be denied I think from all the rod grants that Mr Masters outlined at the last meeting I think we may only have one that's in Jeopardy and that's perhaps the tennis courts because we were given guidance that's synthetic fields and tennis courts are not um eligible for Rod grants
118however as Dr Hamilton argued our tennis program is intricately involved in our curriculum and therefore we we have asked for an exception okay so we think that we're GNA it's it's likely but it is possible that we don't we don't qualify for some reason all the guidance that we have is this one in the Middle School presentation is is most highly probable that it'll be approved okay and what are the uh you had some of the ages of the buses what are the ages of the two buses that you said were mandatory to be re replaced the the ones that there were two on yeah they uh they preceded 2001 and um I don't have the exact model year with me but the I went over the schedule with our transportation director and they've aged
119out at the end of this year they have to go at what year at 1 is it 13 or 12 15 it is now 15 okay that's what I understood that there was an uptick from what 12 to 15 yes so they okay so we're aware of that yes okay um I would also uh I was at the township uh last night at the zoning board so I can assure you that they they granted uh approvals for 150 tow houses in the 33 area uh with three bedrooms each so that's another 150 that are already on the books their tow houses we're starting to get high density development in this town it's time for everybody we talk about shared services with the town Township we talk about shared services with other communities it's time we
120share our concerns together as a whole Community not just the Board of Education separate from the township I know you're all elected officials and it's it's our mandated uh responsibility to educate our children but part of that I think is to learn how to try to get everybody to understand and be informed of what's going on in the whole community so we can serve the children in the best way and that might be just to try to curtail or at least show our concern about what kind of development is going on the town and I think it's part of our responsibility as as as board members um I'd also like to thank everyone who has done a great job all the good teachers that we have in this community about uh the job that they've
121done with our students and congratulations to the soccer fellas uh that did such a good job and I failed the last meeting to congratulate those lovely vocal uh car the vocal chorus that was here and I think um you know Sports and music and all those things are very essential so I I appreciate everyone that works but I also would like to say that I think the job of concerned citizens also should be recognized and there are a lot there's been a lot more participation in the last few years by the public the public is there are people get coming here getting themselves informed and I think that's helping the board make decisions and push the board into being more responsible ible so I think we should all again as a community um congratulate ourselves
122as to public participation and encouraging our board members and elected officials in transparency and responsibility because it's not a closed system it's a it's an open system and we should all be heard we should all be considered and and I congratulate the people behind me who have been coming on a regular basis or people for the first time and being concerned about their commun cuz we're going to need everybody all hands on deck to make this community sustainable okay thank you thank you good evening Tom notein 15 Nathaniel Street just a quick question to clarify um on one page you show the uh the bond Surplus is 2.9 Million and you're dedicating 2.5 for the tax relief does that mean that there's still uh 400,000 left or is that just are we just round um
123the we have approximately $2.9 million as of uh today um as of an action of tonight that could reduce it by 113,000 so that's proximately 2.8 million remaining uh it's Dr Hamilton and my recommendation to to appropriate 2.5 million for tax for Relief that would leave now 300,000 for any unforeseen circumstances that could arise with still Rel relatively new school or any claims that could be brought against it or even any enrollment increases that could require uh Capital Furnishing of the school during that time there's nothing planned in that regard um and another important factor is the graduation out of the stimulus of applying the bond money if you were to throw all that remaining Bond money years ago at the tax levy you would have had a really nice reduction in taxes that one
124year but the subsequent year you would have had a massive Spike the way we've designed this intentionally is to wean it off and it's correlating with an increase in rateable which should absorb um the stimulus going away on the tax levy and the taxpayers what's left in the bond Supple so that can only be used for the high school is that accurate that is 100% accurate it has to be uh used in accordance with the project that the voters approved and then basically uh I guess the intent if that's not used in how long when will that go back into uh general fund years from the sale of the bonds unless if there's any contingencies requiring it to be left open longer excellent thank you is there anyone else from the public wishing to speak
125to the agenda please come up Maran Lester 44 Avenue Y at the finance meeting you said you um saved 1.7 million on the opt down insurance so I was wondering um if you have a minimum minimum projection of the new Union contract cost we we're not allowed to speak about negotiations but you don't have a a minimum of what that new contract cost we are not allowed to talk about negotiations okay and um they were talking also about the planning board meeting last night um how many people can we count on showing up so that you can make this presentation to the planning board and the developers tomorrow evening M because they give us projection with student CoStar and um I think uh a presentation like this would be um quite weighty for the developers
126I see Mr proso there sometimes Mr Po but I don't see it as a whole group I have no comment no no thank you anyone else from the public hey seeing none we'll go to the approval of the minute the approval of the I'm sorry I didn't see you coming is this in regard to the agenda okay good evening uh Chrissy scurby 8 semal Court under board action to The Residency contract um I just was wondering how many um children do we currently have that um are not residents I don't know that number off the top of my head um but it's I would say less than 10 okay do you expect it to be higher with all of the new developments or how long how long could they be under contract before they can
127move in that they can come to our we have a policy which governs that actually and I believe it it has to be within the calendar year um and if they are a senior they get a little more time because they have the option to complete their senior year in the in this build in the high school I okay thank you anyone else then I will close the public forum and go to the approval of the minutes for our special public Board of Education meeting of August 21st 24th 2013 Motion in a second M Mr Chella second second by Mr Masters all in favor I I opposed abstentions abstain Mr Kaufman miss an Ellis uh approval of the minutes for the public Board of Education meeting for September 11th 2013 Mr Chella second Mr Masters
128all in favor I opposed extensions ready was here the closed session meeting of September 11 2013 Mr Chella second Mr Masters all in favor opposed extensions okay at this time we'll go to committee reports are there any committees that need to report this evening okay seeing none we will we will go to the superintendent's reports Dr Hamilton okay uh before I get into my report I'd just like to share with the board um I have been invited to be a guest speaker at the synagogue in Concordia um this Sunday um I will be speaking on exploring violence in our American culture so I could appreciate some moral support um the administrators also completed another two full days of training on the coaching for results through the learning forward Grant uh it's been a huge commitment
129on our time particularly given the time of year um but the value of the training has been immeasurable and I want to again acknowledge and thank the administrators for uh being so diligent and giving their time to be a part of that endeavor which is only going to make us stronger as a uh as an administrative body um and moving on to the superintendent report Madame board president and members of the board it is recommended by the superintendent that Personnel items a through o be approved by roll call vote Please Mr cherella second Mr Masters are there any comments or questions for Dr Hamilton he seeing none we'll have a roll call Miss antelis yes Mr Chella yes Mr zareski yes Mr calman yes Mr Masters yes Mr Po yes Mr proso yes Mr T
130yes Mrs kapano yes madame board president personal items eighth row passes thank you and moving on to board action items Madame board president and members of the board as recommended by the superintendent that board action items a through H be approved by roll call vote Mr cherella second Mr Masters again comments or questions for Dr Hamilton seeing none we'll have a roll call Miss anelis yes and recuse myself on item C like Charlie so noted thank you Mr cherella yes Mr zareski yes Mr calman yes Mr Masters yes Mr Po yes Mr proso yes Mr tesler yes Mrs kapano yes Madam board president board action items a through H passes thank you that concludes the superintendent's report okay and we will go to the business administrator's report Mr Gorski Madam board president and members of
131the Monroe Township Board of Education it is recommended that board action items a through f be approved by consent roll call Mr Chella I'll second Mr Masters comments or questions for Mr Gorski Mr chera um just on number F the food food service truck award what is the what is that for um we shuttle Food Services from where they're prepared um in in two hubs to the the other six schools and uh we have a very old aluminum sided food delivery truck uh where the body is literally rusting off the frame and is in danger of coming off so it was recommended to the building grounds Transportation committee and finance committee to replace this vehicle it will be financed through the Food Service Enterprise fund so it will not have any effect on uh taxpayers
132and uh as part of the requirement in procuring this truck we had to put it out the public bid and we had one bid that fell within our uh budget and parameters thank you anyone else Mr proso yes item e employee assistance program what is that um employee assistance plan is um psychological Counseling Service can we go through this wasn't it explained um I believe a member of the public asked that question yes and I was in the badom I'm sorry it's a psychological counseling service that's available 24 uh 7 365 days a week for employee issues pertaining to uh spousal matters drug addiction stress uh could be a whole host of things that have an immediate health impact or uh could lead to even something as egregious as a suicide it also helps the
133district in that uh administratively Dr Hamilton and I could require an employee to call and participate in this program where otherwise they may not be eligible to and that saves the district in legal litigation it also saves the district money in insurance rates and um uh IT staff appreciates it also thank you anyone else then we will have a roll call Miss anelis yes Mr Chella yes Mr zareski yes Mr calman yes Mr Masters yes Mr Po yes Mr proso Mr tesler yes Mrs kapano yes madame board president board action items a through F passes that concludes my report thank you uh board president's report um the board of education has recently received a preliminary demographers report the report was prepared by whiteall Associates using the cohort survival method and projects the enrollment figures out
1345 years to the 2017 2018 school year the district has to report enrollment figures to the state every year on October 15th the Assa data and since the figures have not yet been reported to the state for this year the demography report included the enrollment figures from October 15 2012 it was felt that this report would not be as accurate as possible with the outdated figures so the demographer report will not be approved by the board until the current figures are Incorporated in it into it after the October 15th enrollment report to the board to the state after the report after the report is approved by the board the ad hoc committee on growth and Facilities will be reconvened to continue their work on looking at the long range facilities plan our current School population
135and how we will make sure that every student coming into our district in the next few years will have a seat in the classroom in a classroom the ad hoc committee has always has already recommended doing a demographers report which we have done and renovating Monroe Township Middle School to add much needed classrooms to that school which we talked about before with our budget philosophy I'm asking any member of the public who would like to be a part of this important committee to contact the board office with your name and phone number so that you will be contacted when the committee gets back together the purpose of this committee is to give the community the opportunity to voice their opinion as to the direction the district will go in meeting the facility needs of all
136our students which we know will at be continue to grow for at least the next few years proba longer so I urge you to join the ad hoc committee and help make that decision so that concludes a board president's report and we will go to Other Board of Education business Mr cha yes I just have a I just have a couple things this this uh this weekend on September 28th the uh historic preservation commission is going to be hosting a oldtime baseball game at the die farm and that's open to the public and it's free and it's an 1800s era game there there are two games but the first game is at noon and it's a lot of fun and it's a good way to see how baseball used to be played so I would
137ask that you know if there are any students baseball players or just people that are interested in seeing it to come out we always have a good time and then the other thing is on October 5th the environmental commission is going to host a green fair at Oak Tree and that starts at 10:00 a.m. so that's another uh I think you know another good program that uh it's good to take part in and you know great for our students thank you anyone else Miss anelis sorry thank you um like to go back to a comment or a statement that Mr Po made um at the last board meeting about filming the um candidates and when you first suggested well you know it's really the candidates jobs to get their names out there and it's really
138up to the public to inform themselves about the voters about the candidates but unfortunately as we saw in the numbers last year and moving the election to November I think people are confused I think a lot of people went into the voting booth and really didn't know what was going on so today I called New Jersey school boards I spoke to Gwen Thorton and asked her um because it would involve board money um about filming a candidates night and she told me that boards all over this state do it and the way they do it is it's run by the League of Women Voters there is no endorsing of any candidate it's informational only um and I I think it's a good idea with 13 candidates that people have uh the knowledge of what they're
139voting for when they go to the booths and and just the fact that they're is a Board of Education election in November so I would hope that um and I believe I asked Ira if the League of Women Voters was they they are doing one I believe it's the 13th the 13th and and I really 23rd oh the 23rd I'm sorry I got my number WR the 23rd and um 23rd I I think it's a good idea really to film it and and put it on Channel 28 and inform the voters let them see um even if you don't put on the the part where people are asking questions let them read their statements about what they're all about and let the voters be informed about 13 candidates so I I hope that you know
140we'll consider that thank you anyone else Mr Coffman sure uh a couple months ago uh when I believe Mr cherel and Mr Masters came to the board and reported on the new developments that were going up on mounts Millis and on 33 uh it was noted that there was going to be some type of focus group or committee set up of which a board member of the uh Board of Education was going to sit on and they were going to talk about you know how they're possibly coming up with these numbers and whatever happened with that Mr Po is sitting on that committee Okay so what happened in those meetings I I I'd never heard anything uh I did report on it at one of the board meetings because they've only had one meeting one
141meeting they had one meeting uh and um I reported on essentially that uh because the developer for the mount Mills project was the same developer for the Route 33 project uh the planning board was going to request that the developer pay for a separate an independent demographer study um and uh that would be paid for by that developer uh and that would then be uh a second set of data for them to compare to what the uh developer uh presented in their report uh they they did send out request to uh three demographers uh I have not been updated on essentially uh what what has come of that yet uh I do know though that the developer uh said that they would not pay for the second study the second project uh so I did
142ask when we were going to meet again and they said uh essentially tomorrow night which is the planning board meeting so I'm I'm a little bit confused but that's where that stands uh they they are aware uh I made I I sent emails to some of those to some of those members and I said it's not just the number of kids coming into the Township from these new communities but it's also the need for the space for those kids uh and so all the members of that uh of that subcommittee they're quite aware that it's not simply the daily cost of educ educating the students that they need to be concerned about but also the space needs for those students but that's essentially where that stands presently so let me just so like because it's
143late and I may have gotten a little foggy so clear the the when the first meeting came up a demographer that was paid by the developer came and reported to the planning board that there were going to be X number of units and X number of kids then we had this meeting that you attended and it was mandated that the Builder pay for they would be the client and pay for another independent demographers report and basically have to find pass those findings back to the same group and that's what they said they would not pay for they said they would pay for the project on Mount Mills for that study to be done only the one project not both not both projects that's right and we don't know if those the second study was ever
144done or the the developers in making the uh the uh application for approval of that project they have to submit an impact study and the impact study is the impact on the roads the impact on the uh municipality in terms of uh sewer water what have you uh and the impact on the schools but they deal with the impact on the schools strictly in terms of the number of students and that is in the original application for the Route 33 project it is a relatively and I don't recall it because I haven't looked at it lately it's a relatively low number of students for the number of units that are there uh and and and for that same reason uh for the relatively low number of students at the mount Mills project that's why the
145planning board said we're not so confident in this data that you've given us that's what they said to the to the developer and that's why we now want our own uh study to be done and they did request that that the developer pay for it and he agreed to pay for it for the mount Mills project but then when he got hit with also paying for it for the route 3 project uh the developer says no we won't pay for that one you can't make it up that's the only thing I can say you just literally can't make it up um I know it was brought up in one of the other board meetings I I'm pretty sure that neither development has a are are marketing one-bedroom units they're not I'm pretty sure none of
146them are so unless unless Society has changed recently that they're going to be two and three bedroom units husband in one room wife in the other and uh in the case of a three bedroom unit you're going to have husband in one room wife in the other unit and maybe a pet room for the third room um sorry I I just don't mathematic the math doesn't work and I'm not a demographer somebody help me I'm just not clear on how this works well if you watch HGTV the third bedroom is always the office yes oh sorry yes I I watch a lot ofen these weren't the some of this supposed to be lowincome they are yes okay so are we talking about lowincome work atome people I think some of them are also set aside
147for uh for uh uh senior citizens if I'm not mistaken okay it's quite a mixture of housing it really is and it's also included in both of those projects though is a commercial uh space as well what time is this meeting 7 7 o'clock I believe at the municipal building yes I go ahead well this is on something else be because uh Miss lordy is here I believe she was going to research this this thing about the videotaping of the candidates uh you know if if they got together and it was some kind of a neutral grounds uh I appreciate her sharing with us whatever she can we we did have a conversation about this at the last meeting and I did indicate that I would look into it uh actually Mrs antelis uh hits
148the button right on on the head so to speak uh to mix my metaphors uh the reality is if if the if um a an outside entity such as the the highly respected um League of Women Voters who uh done has done this uh frankly all over the country at every level uh that would be the entity that would rent the facility for purposes of undertaking uh the uh uh the debate and uh that would be the better way to go in my and not not particular specifically only with that entity whatever the appropriate entity is that seeks to uh undertake the debate or oversee or coordinate the debate uh and have that facility uh fill out the appropriate paperwork and pay the appropriate fee for using board facilities anyone else Mr Masters excuse me
149to follow up to what L said before what Mr Po said I was at that mount Mills meeting when they got that 70 85 students and when they were pushed on it the answer is it's proprietary it's they build it themselves and they they compute it themselves one of the things we hit on the head is the the home office which they seem to use a lot so if you have two bedrooms upstairs in a home office that just happens to have the exact same layout as your other bedrooms it's not calculated in so just by naming it separate on those plans that you give out you know when you go to look at the house no children this was also the development where they said people in apartments tend not to have any children
150so they didn't want to count those they weren't going to count the apartments into the calculation because people in apartments don't have children don't have children right okay and I've stated this before I'm probably one of the few people in a Monro Manor condominium that don't have children sorry G Mr tiella yes I just want to I just want to uh just piggy back on Mr anel's point but then Mr Po's point because he made it at the last meeting and I thought it was a good idea then I wanted to see where we where uh we landed with legal and you know what the what the precedent was but I think it's a great idea I think it's in the spirit of openness and transparency which we all seem to love that it would
151be great to be able to to have the whole town be able to see all the candidates and make a decision based upon being informed and being and based upon what they see so I think that I think it's a great idea okay I I I'm well I I have a question in terms of the the school seems to have the videotaping uh you know the machinery and all of that and and I'm not certain you know how how that piece of it works do do we support that do do they have to have their own videographer given where we are uh given that this is America and I I heard discussions earlier about appropriate uh raising of funds through uh appropriate mechanisms this may be something that can be worked out through contract unless
152missan tell us you had a comment well I was just going to say when I when I spoke to GW Thorton basically what she was telling me that I guess school districts were allowing um it as a public service because they weren't endorsing anybody they were really just getting the information out there I understand that I think we need to have a legal discussion about that out of Open Session frankly I I have have a bit of a stricter view with respect to it that doesn't mean it can't be done Mr Po but I I think we have to have a conversation about how it would be structured I would request because of this this date that's coming up what someone said October that that only gives us a few weeks so what we can
153have that discussion and I don't mean how the debate would be structured because that's not my business but rather how the how the arrangement uh would be would be structured and we can talk about that yeah yeah I would I would appreciate that uh I I did want to say that U Miss anellus and I uh both attended a meeting with Senator Greenstein along with a board member from cranberry and also a board member from Jamesburg uh this meeting was sponsored by the New Jersey school boards Association it was not sponsored by Greenstein and uh my own assessment of it was that I thought it was a valuable thing to do uh because my sense was that we did provide uh some information to uh a state legislator uh that I don't think the the
154senator Greenstein was completely aware of uh relative to mandates and all of the mandates that schools face from the state uh without the funding uh the the latest uh school performance report and the inaccuracies in that report and the way that they don't go out and first uh verify that the information in the report is correct with the indiv ual districts before they publicize it uh and and various other things uh so I thought it was an informative hour hour and a half meeting with her uh and I hope that the New Jersey School Board Association will continue to do that in the future because it was a good dialogue a good opportunity for uh Board of Education members to uh to to talk in small groups with the state legislators thank you just to
155add to that uh Senator Greenstein talked about getting a committee together to go possibly testify down in Trenton about you know the issues because one of the saddest things I heard was from Jamesburg the Jamesburg rap where you guys cut every Every After School activity that is the saddest thing I ever heard you know and I know that you had no choice I'm not saying blame it was just it's sad to hear that it really is when we know what we're offering and um all of it was presented to you know Senator Greenstein and and hopefully we'll move ahead with this Mr zareski yeah I'd like to make comment on that also uh I didn't attend the meeting with Senator Greenstein I had wanted to my work schedule didn't allow but New Jersey school boards
156had set up two prior meetings with assemblyman Benson and D'Angelo that I did attend and one of my biggest focuses wasn't on just issues in Jamesburg that was brought up it was also brought up issues that I've been hearing tonight about the buildings going up and underfunding of schools and I pushed the issue several times with them on the formula for State funding that it's unfair not just to Jamesburg but to Monroe and every other school district in the state and on October 2nd which is next Wednesday the middle sex County and Union County School Board associations is getting together three uh legislators senator lesak assemblymen I'm bad with names to two other assembly men from other legislative districts I plan on attending that and I'm going to take several questions or issues that were
157brought up here tonight to them along with my fight to get better State funding and fair funding throughout the state thank you thanks anyone else Mr tesler just real quick I would like to you encourage some of the board members to stop by the planning board meeting I'm I'm going to try to do two things tomorrow my daughter's back to school night is tomorrow so I'm going to stop by that and I'm also going to try to scoot over there as soon as that's done Mr Masters I'm not done um just in case the senator green Stein will be with Dr Hamilton on Sunday I know he kind of said it nobody really said anything she'll also be attending uh it's a very high honor this panel that you're going to be part of so
158everybody that can try to make it it's Sunday at 1 p.m. uh and it's free and maybe ref freshman um I don't know now they have to the other thing um somebody came up to the public before and I'll paraphrase but this is almost a quote we should stop concentrating on education that was actually said and I would have to 100% disagree with that the whole reason we're here is for education and I can't believe somebody actually said that uh and I think once we stop concent on education we're done that's it anyone else okay seeing none Clos session resolution be it resolved that the Board of Education 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
159col 4-6 through 10 col 4-21 to discuss the following subjects Personnel level three grievances Personnel Employee number 00 2715 Personnel Employee number 01060 student matters harassment intimidation and bullying incident one the discussion conducted in closed session can be disclosed to the public as such time as the matters have been resolved I need a motion second second Mr cherella Mr Kaufman all in favor I uh oppose oppose abstentions and do we have an idea how long this will take I'm going to say 45 uh 45 minutes approximately and at this time the board will go into close session okay at this time the board will reconvene into public session and we will go to uh Dr Hamilton I believe you have some motions to read uh yes under board action item board action enter the record
160as item I it is recommended that the Board of Education hereby deny the level three griev grievance regarding Monroe Township High School staff dated September 11th 2013 the superintendent of schools and the board's business administrative board secretary authorized to take all necessary steps to implement this action of the Board of Education Mr Mr cherella Miss anelis roll call Mr Gorski Miss anelis yes Mr Chella Mr zareski yes Mr calman Mr Masters Mr Po yes Mr proso Mr tesler Mrs kapovich yes Madam Bo president motion pass item j under board action it is recommended that the Board of Education hereby deny the level three grievance regarding employee number 1 1909 dated September 11 2013 the superintendent of schools and the business boards business administrative board secretary are authorized to take all necessary steps to implement this
161this action of the Board of Education Mr Chella second second by Mr seski roll call Mr Gorski yes Mr cherella yes Mr zareski yes Mr calman yes Mr Masters yes Mr poy yes Mr tesler abstain yes m board president motion passes item K under board action it is recommended that the Board of Education approve the termination of employee 2715 effective immediately based on job abandonment second Mr cherella Miss anelis roll call Mr gorsi Miss anelis yes Mr Chella yes Mr zareski yes Mr calman yes Mr Master yes Mr yes Mr tesler yes Mard president and finally item L under board action it is recommended that the Board of Education approve the previously discussed agreement between the board the Monroe Township Education Association and employee number 1060 the board president the superintendent of schools and the
162business administrative board secretary are hereby authorized and directed to take all necessary steps to implement the afor agreement Mr Chella Miss sellis roll call Miss anelis yes Mr Chella yes Mr Zares yes Mr Cal yes Mr Masters yes Mr Po yes Mr tesler yes Mrs yes board president motion passes that concludes board action items okay at this time we will go to the public forum anyone from the public wishing to speak please come to the microphone state your name and address for the record hi Stephen Ryback 23 Riviera Drive I just want to um clear up something uh from my uh statements before where I might misspoken when I was referring to the uh high density construction that we're all seeing in our town and the numbers of students that will actually be generated by
163uh these developments I was referring to the negative impact they will have on the school where they'll actually undermine all the things incentives that you uh uh hope to achieve and all the good things that uh we're all doing here in our schools um in no way what I mean that you should not be focusing on education I'm a retired School principal I would never say that so if I Mis misspoke on that I certainly apologize but I think most of you here at least would have uh understood what I meant thank you thank you anyone else marann Lester 44 Avenue I I have a request concerning uh future agendas uh lots of times in this second public forum we ask questions I asked Mr Gorski last week uh What uh legal fees we've accumulated
164for the Jamesburg lawsuit and I never got an answer for that so therefore I have to wait until the second public forum to get my answer to my questions so I think it's only fair that um in the future on the agenda the first item be listed as unfinished business and we get our questions answered as the first agenda item and so from now on the first agenda item would be called unfinished business and that would be for the unanswered questions from the previous meetings if I can just say something of course that's the the discretion of the board but another way that you could get some of that information that you're asking for that may wait from one meeting to the next you can always come in an Oprah that kind of information for
165example and you would get it before the next month's meeting if that's not always with Oprah not always sometimes it takes a while with that you have to submit a special form Etc do you have the answer to my last week's question you you have the answer for the legal accumulated legal fees for the Jamesburg logs certainly as of August 31st total legal fees paid and charged in the Jamesburg matter are 66,0 so we're up from the last time I asked about over $40,000 correct I I think it was 24 the last time I I did O that one so we're up another 40,000 I don't remember the number that I provided you before but as of August 31st at 66210 all right so what about my proposal are we going to do number one
166agenda item from now on his unfinished business for questions from the previous meeting well we have a format that we have to follow it's in our policy and we would have to look at the policy and decide but I know that the first public forum is always in regard to theend agenda but I I just don't think it's fair to us that we have to wait when it's been you know a whole month's time and you you you don't have the information available to us it's not our fault well I understand that but there's no way that we can carry all the information for the district at a at a board meeting so you either have to wait for the next time or you can call up and and ask um if if well sometimes
167you want questions for answered to the general public as opposed to Oprah so more people are aware of and I understand that but it's it's sometimes it's just impossible to give you that answer and I know that none of us want to give you an inaccurate answer so instead of doing that we would rather wait and give you the the right answer because once we give you the inaccurate that goes around the whole public and then when we give you the accurate information then people don't believe us so we would rather give you nothing and wait and get the accurate information especially when it comes to numbers anyone else voicey Sweeney 18 Tanglewood place for the next few days at least those of you board members that I have worked with over the course of
168the last 10 years I want to tell you it was a pleasure working with you those that I've known that long the newest members it's been nice meeting you and I know you met my brother at a uh a board related meeting down in South Jersey um I would like to say that for the most part until the last four or five months of working within the district it has been a pleasure um from the beginning working with Sharon vogle to working with Dr ferry to working with Wayne holiday there was always a wonderful Rapport um I will send to each board member individually a note or a group email to to the group um I don't know what issues or items may have been discussed with you regarding myself prior to my leaving um
169however I just want to qualify and clarify things from my perspective and I'll do it in a personal email rather than making it a public forum um and VI it's been a pleasure working with you over the years through with Wayne with Mike Dr Hamilton Jeff I've known since my son was in school um and I wish you all well and um I'm out of here so where you going and we wish you luck in your future Endeavor anyone else from the public uh good evening Chrissy scurby 8 seminal Court uh I wanted to know in close session if it was discussed more about the candidates night um just to give some background the October 23rd event that was discussed earlier is being sponsored by all of the parent groups uh within Monroe Township the
170oak tree PTA the middle school PTO the high school PTO and it's being moderated by the League of Women Voters um I've mailed out this week invitations to all of the candidates um requesting in them to RSVP back if they'd like to participate the format will be um what we always do we hold this event every year uh before the Board of Ed elections um each candidate gets a certain amount of time moderated by the League of Women Voters to make a statement and then questions are taken from the audience um last year we did request to have it videotaped so maybe that's where the question came from this year um but I would like to know if the district if we could videotape that and put it on Channel 28 you can have a
171proper discussions about it okay uh at this time the board in the next couple of weeks will be having a discussion on the videotaping and uh we will have an answer for you probably at our next board meeting when is that the next board meeting is October 16th okay all right thank you thanks for doing that anyone else sh our min9 eel Street could you please explain um you resolutions all the Clos session items that have been resolved please in detail Dr Hamilton Mr Dr Hamilton minutes first before you can talk about you actually talk board ruled on a couple of grievances okay you want to take that question in by Sir uh M ma'am uh the uh board ruled on uh two of the Grievances that were heard in closed sessions as to the
172remaining items that were uh discussed uh the board uh minutes will be prepared with respect to the closed session and when the need for confidentiality no longer exists or the matters have been resolved as they indicate in their motion uh the information can be released but not at this time okay and you could also redact confidential information in in a minute well the answer is of course confidential information can be redacted or or blocked out for for members of the public who might not be familiar with with that term uh but you know sometimes when we even when we redact the substance is still apparent so the key will be the key under the open public meetings act as I'm sure you know is that when the need for confidentiality no longer exists then the
173matter can be made public okay so the the resolutions that have been um satisfied and resolved tonight can be discussed correct well they were discussed by virtue of the board acting on uh two motions with respect to the two uh grievances yeah but they can be discussed in Greater detail now that that you you have you put a resolution out so the resolution could be discussed in detail it's been resolved perhaps you could explain what you're asking me well you that you made there were two motions two resolutions after the closed session meeting and they were voted on there were four that four resolutions that were actually vot okay so all of that should now be in the public forum well it it I'm sorry go ahead no no I mean my understanding is once
174you resolve them and you put you put them on the table and vote on them they are now public and should be discussed the with respect to Personnel matters that are addressed in public session by virt of a motion being voted on doesn't mean however that the substance of the Personnel matter for example will be discussed the the the two grievances that were acted upon uh those grievances were acted upon the board made a determination to the extent there are questions the board can entertain the questions but likely will not be in a position to answer those questions well what were the Grievances you don't have to tell me the the Personnel or the people involved what were the Grievances one of the Grievances had to do with uh a Personnel matter so to speak
175ma'am you know what I'm giving you what you're entitled to and no more because I've got a duty to represent the Board of Education and frankly the public uh I if you will uh and uh the other grievance uh involved a matter regarding um School governance actually and that's all that I'm going to tell you this evening because that's all I'm entitled to tell you okay thank you very much anyone else you're back I'm back the 3 minutes Joyce Sweeny 18 Tanglewood place this is on a totally different area there's two things I'm just curious because I'm still paying taxes here I know there's a new food Mets culinary management that has replaced pomptonian I know in the past there was always a um I do believe Nancy mitrus Act was like split between pomptonian
176and Monroe and is that still an agreement with Mets now which saves money for the district Mr gy Miss mitac is an employee solely by the district uh she is not an employee at all of Mets well I know she's not an employee but wasn't there in the past a um service agreement no ma'am there is a sharing agreement with Miss mitac and the middle sex Regional ed Service Commission where she provides meals to the academy Learning Center previously Miss mitx Services were shared with Jamesburg School District as a food service director but not with the Food Service management company so we never re the district never received a portion of her salary back not from the Food Service management company we did from Jamesburg school district and we're paid by meal agreement with Academy
177Learning Center okay so I mean that's something I guess that can be oprate not by me but by someone else and the other thing I just like to point out that back when Dr Ferry was here and the closed session used to occur prior prior to personnel and board Personnel Board action and ba um information being voted upon it was decided that there should be that Clause put in that says Personnel items what did it go Personnel items superintendent will recommend board approved Personnel report following discussion and executive session that has really if you look at it a moot point because close session is now following voting on everything so why can't the Personnel items be part of the agenda that the public gets ahead of time just a question thank you anyone else seeing
178no one our next scheduled public Board of Education meeting will be Wednesday October 16th 2013 7:00 p.m. at the mon Township High School motion to adjourn oh Mr Mr Coffman and who was Mr Masters all in favor opposed abstentions meeting adjourned