MSD BOE Meeting March 11, 2025

001to the of the United States of America and to the it stands Nation um just quickly before we go into our exciting uh versions of the superintendent report we're going to hear from our student rep so that she can get going after so um hi good evening everyone um I'm is Master Dom meno and I'm the senior student rep for the Board of Ed so I'm going to be giving since my colleague Garrett isn't here I'm going to be giving both the sgo and student updates so for the sgo update um we have our pick tournament coming up like I kind of said last time except this time we had more interest set out and we' gathered enough information to figure out what people's teams are doing so right now we're kind of working on

002planning the event and like discussing potential dates and actually like setting up the logistics of it and we've also been working on planning the colonial crown and that's a senior kind of like a Talon Show and it's a fun way to raise money for the school and the winner gets two senior prom tickets and the date is being decided upon for after spring break and we also are planning to make forms to gather senior interests and sj's also been working on planning our June pep rally and spirit week so even though it is a while away like things get kind of crazy in like March April with Colonial crown and pickle ball so we kind of started some early planning for our June pep rally plus spirit week and um lastly we've been working on

003uh actually putting into place the focus groups that I kind of talked a little bit about last time and they're basically groups where we're going to be gathering information from teachers students and we're trying to get a holistic survey of MHS kind of to know like how we're doing as s leaders and stuff like that and our incentive is probably gonna we're probably going to provide the people with like pizza or cookies or something to get people to come and we can get good feedback on what SJ has been doing so for the soon update um the spring musical as many people know has been like working on uh their production of lay is which is coming up and um winter sports have been finishing strong with both individuals and teams advancing to States counties

004bots of big impressing um impressive achievements and um spring starts have or spring Sports have just started and I know that a lot of people are really excited to be starting like track um baseball like all sports um and lastly students are getting ready for the AP exams in May and I know the AP collaboration Hub has been a really helpful tool for a lot of students as they've been able to take anage of it to help study for both their exams and their classes because a lot of classes have finals coming up too and um lastly as a senior I know that the seniors are really excited for lots of fun and of the activities like prom and the Project Graduation fashion show which I was able to attend last week and it was

005a really big head I know a lot of seniors were super excited about that thank you thank you so much thank you so much so and thanks for repping both of you okay and I will turn it over to Dr muchi so tonight is an exciting evening to review some of the work that we have done on our current goal areas as well as to celebrate the work of the strategic planning initiative in the fall so it is our pleasure for our lead off to welcome Miss Charlene Peterson from New Jersey school boards and Miss Peterson uh was a wonderful facilitator for all of our strategic planning meetings and tonight she has a presentation which uh I hope everybody was able to get a copy of on the way in that highlights the final report

006of our strategic planning session the board will consider it this evening and then at our next board meeting there will be a formal motion to um accept this plan so we hope you enjoy the presentation and for board members sitting on this side if you want to sit on the long side or take one of the chairs in the front since we're using the projector whatever you're more comfortable with so thank you Miss Peterson thank youate the opportunity to be here tonight to to talk to the to the board and everyone that's here tonight really many of you have been a part of this process so to just to thank everyone um and I have to say of the things that I do for New Jersey school boards strategic planning is one of my favorite

007things because I just think it's so powerful to be able to bring your stakeholders together to bring your community in to bring your students in to bring the the staff and the board and everyone together and so all of those things are what helps Make This Be an Effective process so I'm just going to kind of walk you through the steps of what that process looked like recognizing that many of you there saw live right you're part of it so if you want to just go ahead and Advance please um so again just wanted to start out just saying thank you and really that is what makes this plan you know we um explained to everyone from the beginning that this plan is developed from the bottom up so without everyone's voices and everyone being

008there we wouldn't have this plan and it wouldn't look like this plan and wanted to thank the the district and Renee in particular all the support that she provided you know throughout the process and everyone who helped because it really was a a joint effort from wonderful food and wonderful setup and it was just um an amazing experience so um so as we talk about strategic planning sometimes there's different ideas or thoughts about what strategic planning is so we just kind of try and kind of explain it from these terms of it being we're essentially developing a road map that's going to guide The District in the next five years moving forward recognizing that it's based on the input of the whole school Community about what it is that you want to see for your

009students helping to advance student achievement you know a lot of the as a board a lot of times we say that we want to make sure that we're meeting the expectations of our community a lot of times it's hard to know what that is so the best way to know is to bring them in and hear it directly from them and have them be part of the plan kind of described it at the the strategic planning meeting is almost like giving them the keys to the car right and saying you're going to drive us in the direction that we need to go in in the next five years so that together as a group we develop the what what is the direction that the district is going to go in in the next five years

010so This truly is the district's plan so as as we look you know look at strategic planning we know then that we started an opportunity right it allowed us to bring people together but now we kind of have an ongoing cycle right that that in the next five years the next plan will build from this one and will just continue to keep moving forward so we know that we have that Baseline and we also know how um you know scarce our resources are and the importance of optimizing them by putting a long-term plan together so this was a process and so the process kind of took us through three meetings so the first meeting started out answering the question where are we now and we identified that through the superintendent giving a state of the

011the district report to give us some basic information about the district and then we helped fill in that information by going into small groups and identifying the strengths of the district and challenges in Opportunities um and then everyone reported out to the large group we put that information on the district website so that people could attend one or all three meetings but any part you know their participation whenever they could was welcome then the second meeting then we answer the question if we know where we are now then the second question was where do we want to be five years from now and we did a visioning exercise and during that exercise we weren't in 2025 anymore we were in 2030 right and that's where our conversations took place um and then then that third

012piece then is is we said okay if we know where we are now we've identified where we want to be five years from now then the third meeting was developing then that road map those goal statements and objectives essentially saying how are we going to get there so in the first two meetings all of the groups essentially did the same work answered the same questions where do we want to be where do we think we are now but in the third meeting then we separated um by the area of Interest we had identified five different goal areas and then each group worked on their particular goal area than using the strengths and the challenges and the visions and then that's how we developed then that what or that plan and then we turned it over

013to this the administration the staff to say okay here you go here's the what now we're you know tasking you then with developing the how how are you going to carry out the what that we help determine so we always looked at The District's mission statement and that was always on the agenda so that the participants always had that in front of them to make sure that the conversations that we were having helped align with the district's mission statement so this is just kind of an excerpt or just kind of an example of like the the superintendent state of the district we're going to kind of go through what each one of the meetings look like so just like you said some information it says the district at a glance right we wanted to provide

014the participants enough information so they could have meaningful conversations in your small groups without swaying or P you know persuading them one way or the other but wanted you to just have some basic information so then like I said their groups then were tasked then they went into um smaller groups and identified what their group believed to be the top 10 strengths and the top 10 challenges and opportunities of the district so it was funny I just did the Strategic plan a couple days ago for a small district and we only had three groups and they're like Charlene what does it look like when you go to a bigger District I'm like well I have a perfect example for you that the more School District like we had 18 girls like 18 yes we did

015so so just to kind of you know show show the the level of commitment the level of support that we had and you know some of the students kept coming back every time like it really was a great group that really did come together and um kind of demonstrate their commitment toward the education of your student so these are some of the excerpts of what the the strengths and the the challenges and opportunities that were identified in those fall groups um the full listing them is on the district website and it is also behind appendix a on um in your booklet there too or maybe it's yeah I think no maybe it's appendix B but it's in there somewhere you have that the whole listing of it okay so then like I said so then

016the the second time we came back then was that visioning exercise so this is the exercise that we um asked everyone and said that essentially your District was being recognized as the model District in New Jersey for advancing student achievement and said that you were the guest speaker sharing the story about how this remarkable success was accomplished and then you know wanted you to Vision kind of all of the the different aspects of what could be taking place in the district and said dream big don't let kind of the budget stop you don't let any of the state standards any of those things really just have a conversation about what it is that you want for the district students so then this is kind of some of the outcomes we ask them to give their

017speech a title and then to identify kind of what those Visions what the district could look like in the year 2030 or what what would be your expectations so you can kind of see just by some of the titles um the types of conversation that that the small groups were having and I have to say that to me that's really kind of the most powerful part of this whole process is while this plan is great and the the goals are great sometimes just bringing your community together and your stakeholders together to be able to just sit and talk about your school district to me is one of the you know the really great benefits of this process so you can see here some of the Visions then that were identified um by the district or

018by all the the stakeholders and then again you have the the full outcome of that both on the website and in the booklet as well so then we said okay if we took all the strengths the challenges and the visions and we had to put them in five buckets what would those buckets be recognizing that they would have to be big enough broad enough um so the buckets then were identified as academic programming teaching and learning learning beyond the classroom building optimal environments for learning communication to Foster community and Partnerships and career Readiness skills so you can really see how much of this plan focused on student achievement right and focused on the students you see almost every goal area has you know a very tight connection to that so that was really kind of

019one of the to me again really an exciting outcome of this so like I said they in between kind of the second meeting after we now had the strengths the challenges and the Visions We resorted Them based on the goal areas so that when the participants came in for meeting three they had for their goal area the strength the challenges and the visions and so that's how we say then that we used the you know the feedback that we got and that that is truly what drove this plan and truly what drove then the development of the goal statements so then each group was tasked with writing one big broad goal statement if you think about the fact that this plan is going to be effective for a fiveyear period and then said okay and

020then you need to break it down in a little bit kind of smaller more meaningful parts so that the staff can write those action plans forward so then those were the objectives then the objectives still needed to stay in the what um just to make sure then that we were helping again breaking it down into smaller parts okay so these are then this is essentially your plan then so these are then the goal statements and the objectives then that go with each one of those areas so like I said the first one was academic programming teaching and learning and that's always the most challenging group to work with which it should be right this is the work that we do and so that group always has the most kind of feedback to work with so

021in this case the group gave a comprehensive goal statement that said to Foster academic Excellence through inclusive and culturally responsive teaching practices ensuring that all students regardless of background or ability receive Equitable access to a r rigorous curriculum and diverse learning objectives that prepare them for success in a global Society so really kind of encapsulated what the expectations were what the hopes were that to be able to provide your students um from an AC memic level and then the group took it and broke it down into some objectives um talked about an environment where highly qualified teachers are supported and given the time and flexibility making sure that we had structures in place for vertical and horizontal alignment both with academics and SEMO providing students opportunities um for their potential and you know and again

022targeted to each students's level creating comprehensive flexible Pathways that support your ESL students um develop flexible Pathways that allow each student to maximize their individual potential and developing their executive functioning skills and then talked about creating kind of magnets and specialized programs so now we're starting to kind of see what this can look like or you know where we're seeing where we're heading in the next five years okay the next one then talked about learning beyond the classroom and said um the goal statement that the group came up with was to create a cohesive community that builds Upon Our combined strengths to offer more opportunities to learn within and beyond our curriculum resulting in more well-rounded experiences and students again it talked about that that aligning the extracurricular activities with the community and other organizations

023and businesses and corporations um adding extra unstructured time throughout the day talked about more free play more social time and that that really was a lot of conversation throughout much of this process um talked about exposing the students um the younger students to kind of the the older students and the importance of kind of doing it you know retaining your younger students as much as possible and providing them opportunities to really understand what is offered to them and the next one is building optimal environments for learning so that group probably had the sure diso statement right she said make facility investment but it says everything it needs to right that um that improve our academic Roi return on investment um and then talked about the um infrastructure upgrades um the the Innovative learning spaces including

024flexible classrooms and outdoor spaces air quality energy sources preserving in historical architecture and then state-ofthe-art music and theater spaces so again we're looking at that future right five years the next one talked about um the communication to Foster community and Partnerships and the importance of you know the the community and the partners in the work that we do those say strengthening and Foster meaningful Pathways within the mor school district and the Greater Community to create informed and intentional Partnerships and talked about you know communicating clearly consistently broadly about the success and happening throughout the Greater Community of leveraging developing and increasing Partnerships with local businesses alumni and organizations um implementing purposeful communication strategies so that we have uniform messaging that's both accessible and inclusive and then as aspiring to serve as the core of your

025diverse community so again um really important ways to bring the community and be part of this work that we do um then the last one of us career Readiness skills so looking at um exploring career pathways through self-discovery and real life experiences so all students and you again that was another Focus that we saw throughout this was the importance of all students um are prepared for the transition from high school talked about more opportunities for internships um establishing mentoring opportunities providing opportunities for students to kind of figure out what they want right identifying their strengths and interest and said all students will create a transition so again the important um way you know preparing our students for their in so then we now have this what right we now have this plan so you can

026really get a sense of where the district is going to be headed what the direction is that the community and the stakeholders gave us so then now we take that and we develop then the how from it said that would do the work um of the Administration and staff and so it's essentially a list of steps um to accomplish each one of the goals and the corresponding objectives and it's usually a process you go through of saying okay some things are high cost and you know maybe high like low benefit or a low cost High benefit so you kind of have to look at kind of what that relationship is between the cost and the benefit consider what's already in progress what kind of resources we have what kind of funding what needs are a

027higher priority and then some things have to be sequenced that we have to finish this before we can do that and kind of looking at so all of those things are taken into consideration when the how the action plans are put together so this is just kind of a example of what that template could look like so it essentially lays out those major activities and steps who's responsible what kind of resources do we need what are the benchmarks how are we going to you know what are we aiming for and then what are the success indicators how will we know both from the board's perspective from the community and staff's perspective that we have been successful in accomplishing what we set out to do recognizing that this needs to be a living breathing plan right

028that is always going to be changing and evolving particularly where the um actions so and then you know kind of it's always asked okay so how do we make sure that this is a living breathing plan and not just something that sits on the shelf and the way we do that is essentially it now becomes the basis of the annual goals when the board and and the superintendent um meet in the summary typically to talk about what those say four or five things that we're going to focus on this year that we think are so important to move the district forward we now have a base line to start with and that would be the Strategic plan to help drive those and then I ideally we're all working in alignment right and then that should

029help inform what the administrative goals are what the goals are that are in the classrooms and have an impact on student outcomes so that as a district and as a community we're all working together in align to help Advance you know the achievement for the students based on this plan that has been developed so just kind of the last piece of saying thanking everyone for for your time and um help again making a such a meable impact on your student like we can accomplish everything that's in that plan right it's just going to be amazing so um I just wanted to again thank everyone that's here thank the board for you know the support in you know bringing everyone together to be able to have this opportunity and it just is like you said just

030a great experience so I just it was my pleasure to be part of it with you just really wanted to thank you um and we also want to thank you because um in addition to being just an extraordinary facilitator and support to this board over many many years um we did want to thank you and Charlene is actually going to be retiring so we were very grateful to have um snagged her for this process um and to have so many people involved and um to appreciate your extraordinary work so we just have a little thing to say thank you for all that you have done for our make me sad I don't know if anybody else had thanks please Charlene is leaving uh big shoes to fill we she's been working with this district for

031as long as I've been on the board and has always been so thoughtful in her leadership and helping us come to some of the right decisions and actions so we're going to miss you tremendously we hope you enjoy your retirement and have some wonderful things planned for yourself um we actually were thinking maybe we could try to select our njsba replacement so that we make sure that we have another youu but I don't know that we're going to be given that opportunity so uh anyway we're goingon yeah so we're we're really gonna miss you thank so much so as uh Charlene pointed out once we gathered all of the input from the stakeholders over 20 who attended those meetings in October we also set a record in terms of community participation it was the responsibility

032of the administration to start developing action plans based on what we learned from Community input um I'm so grateful this evening to have so many of our administrators here to support this effort you heard Charlene mention that there were 18 groups of the public and what was so impressive of course was the Public Presentation uh and representation but also that every one of those 18 groups have one or two administrators at the table the same people who are here before you tonight they lead their schools daily they take care of students providing a safe environment and they're on The Cutting Edge of research and educational development at leading leading Future Ready schools our central office administration um is always busy keeping up to support um the great work that goes on in our buildings and

033a huge part of our long range strategic planning is buildings and grounds and we are most most delighted for Al Raa and Glenn Miller who were instrumental and helping us bring out priorities and where we can be moving um with our Capital Improvement goals over the next couple of years so I want to thank all of our administrators for being here tonight for the effort that you put into the plan you help develop all of the action plans that we are presenting with your school-based and District level teams and Mr kyley and I are here this evening to present your work um but we wanted to acknowledge your great role in it and thank you for your dedication to our district um Mr kyley is going to begin and I'd like to introduce him by

034saying what a win uh this has been for our district Mr kyy came to us with many years of successful practice as an elementary principal he has risen um to the occasion of the directorship of Elementary education and in that role he is visible in every school uh constantly working to support and see uh our classrooms in action and he had a number of exciting initiatives to launch um which he has started off beautifully we're thrilled to have him leave off this presentation so welcome Mr kryy thank you uh good evening everybody so I I do want to Echo some of the things that you've heard here this evening already about the work that our administrators have done we all know what a long day it can be uh many of us all of us

035are in schools before students arrive planning coverage covering each other supporting each other and then for administrators to come to the strategic planning meetings that happened in October um just shows how dedicated everybody is as a new administrator to the district I didn't know what I was getting into right so and that's not I'm not trying to be funny but I I didn't I didn't know what I was getting into and the strategic planning meetings in October were really a great way for me to get to know the community and what I was blown away by was the same the number of people that showed up the number of people that participated the number of respectful conversations that people were having you know you had teachers administrators community members uh people who had children in

036the district people who no longer have children in the district uh and it was really just wonderful to see and it taught me a lot about how to move forward in my room um so what we did after after the strategic planning meeting was we divided in common so uh Dr muchi and I divided uh the administrators district and building administrators into teams they picked a specific area that they wanted to focus on and then those individuals without any uh intervening met together uh and and came up with action plans so that's what you're going to see today now the the important thing to note is that these are not necessarily finite you know we these these may need to be edited they may need to be enhanced or maybe they may be no longer

037relevant because we've already addressed them in in a different way um slow um so I'm not going to read this out loud we talked about the mission statement before in the previous presentation I think it's important to highlight as we go into these uh specific goals and action plans because you will certainly see that they are all related to this mission statement thank you all right right so the first one is academic programming teaching and learning so you'll notice that some of the goals are divided into Elementary and secondary others are 3K through 12th grade so the goal here is to Foster academic Excellence through inclusive and culturally responsive teaching practice ensuring that all students regardless of background or ability receive Equitable access to a rigorous curriculum and diverse learning objectives that prepare them for

038success in a global society that is a lot of words right so we take a take a step back and we divide that or or come up with three overarching themes we see academic excellence in equity so maybe that's culturally responsive teaching practices or Equitable access to the curriculum to teacher support and development so providing time and support to teachers to design creative lessons that are aligned with uh State Standards you've heard me say a lot work smart not hard so sharing resources having consistency across the grade levels so that um we're not burning ourselves out we're working smart and we're providing consistent education through all of our elementary schools um and then three creating diverse Pathways and specialized education opportunities so an example of that may be enhancing avenues that support bilingual students that

039transition from the bilingual classroom to the General Ed classroom um a simple way that we've been successful with that this year so far is having CK La in both monolingual and bilingual classrooms so we're removing one barrier for those students when they do become eligible to move into the monolingual classrooms um next SL thank you Mr Kylie and Mr kyley hit on the themes of what makes good academic programming in this slide we look at some examples of how we're going to implement that on the 61 12 basis if I had to divide it into three themes the first and most important one is how will we maximize instructional time and expand the curriculum offerings that we offer our students which is what the first couple of bullets speak to by introducing a new FMS

040master schedule next year we will ensure that every student has mathematics each day uh which is a critical change we're also looking to expand offerings in computer science at the middle school as well as a variety of elective what is different um about the way that we have approached the instructional time and the expansion of curriculum options is the great level of intensity and intentionality that we have used for our bilingual Learners and our Learners with special education needs that would not be possible if not for the support of Dr Diana Pinto Gomez Dr Pinto Gomez serves as the assistant superintendent we say for those two areas but her work really touches so much within the district and I want to thank Dr Gomez Pinto Gomez and her team for being at all of the

041ccul meetings for looking at the selection of the elementary social studies curriculum as well as some of the changes that we're making at the middle and the high school and making sure that the inclusion of our multilingual Learners and our those with neurod Divergent learning needs are well met in these schedules so thank you Diana for your leadership and for making that um um another theme Here is how do we fully light up the paast to the most rigorous courses that our students can take how do we prepare them for extreme academic challenges make sure that their brains are working as hard as their bodies do when they're out on the athletic fields and that they are ready to accept this challenge um one of the ways that we've done that and I'd like to

042acknowledge the work of Miss Duma Dr Duma excuse me Dr Duma has led the pre preap initiative at the uh High School introducing preap English and now next year we will have preap social studies at the high school level these critical skills uh learning how to take apart a problem come up with Solutions right creative uh Solutions be able to think about things across disciplines and the Very skills and tools that students need to be accessible in the workplace and in colleges and universities are explored in those preap programs which we've introduced um this budget uh with the full support of the Board of Education who has been leading the charge to look at all of the aspects of what influences our district ranking and performance has consistently risen to the challenge of putting the

043financial back in they are the epitome of putting their money where our mouths are right we need to get more students involved in AP and the budget presentation that we will have tonight will evidence that every student who's enrolled in a marown high school AP course will have their exam funded through the district um that will surely increase participation and commitment to the exams which in turn will allow us to put forth our best effort in AP exam performance which is one of the key indicators for a High School's ranking and how they're considered in the college application process the final theme is supporting teachers um one of the things that made me come here was in the interview process the ward said to me what about your professional development we get it you've already

044had a doctorate but how can we support you to learn more that will our district that is the final area that you will see here on this slide taking our teachers and bringing them to a National Conference helping them interact with colleagues again I call out I can call out all of you but uh I'm going through this by area a big shout out to Mr Chris Miller who orchestrated bringing a number of social studies teachers to the National Conference and I think when we came back after we had all of these teachers that spent multiple days together with the most uh sought after historians and Scholars the authors of the textbooks that were using in the classroom the designers of lesson their enthusiasm in the hallways in the classrooms could not be tamed they

045had really gotten a new level of invigoration for their work and we should be doing more of that certainly New Jersey is a premier public education uh system but there is no substitute for exposure to National level thinking seeing how other colleagues across the country are accepting and adopting to different curriculum standards also being thoughtful about the revision process um and the teacher evaluation rubric this year we have spent a lot of time updating the uh evaluation rubric which hadn't been touched in over 12 years so a big thank you was it 12 14 a big thank you um to miss Laura Clark who is our director of HR but always make sure that the work that she does is has the Forefront of not just caring for our teachers but also making sure that

046we have the best learning environments for our students Miss Clark LED this process and every administrator in this room as well as scores of our teachers were involved in the revision of the teacher evaluation process and all of the conversations focused on the same things how do we increase student engagement how do we make sure that classrooms are learner active and are driven by students ideas facilitated by gifted knowledgeable teacher so our goal areas moving forward again are going to be how do we maximize instructional time and increase our curricular options what can we do to light up the path as easily as possible for students to see how to gain access to the most rigorous courses and then how do we support our teachers in that environment to ensure that they can deliver the

047highest quality of instruction with the best resources all right so for goal number two we have learning beyond the classroom to create a cohesive community that builds Upon Our combined strengths to offer more opportunities to learn within and beyond our curriculum resulting in more well-rounded experiences for students so if we're looking at this goal what can we do it's it's pretty when you read the top it's pretty simple what can we do that's beyond the classroom what experiences can we give our students and the themes here are number one Community engagement and Partnerships so let's look at our community events we already have several community events um that go through Dr Pinto Gomez's office and some of our our building principles they do a lot of different events but what else can we do let's

048take a look at those events and are we reaching everybody and um and are they are they um addressing the needs of the of the community in the best way possible um should we be partnering with local businesses and libraries you know we do a lot of work and and um with those agencies but is there something else that we can do and assessing our means of communication so taking a look at our website our social media and are we reaching all of the people in our community in the best way possible um secondly student enrichment and Real World Learning so um at the elementary level we've talked about field trips we've talked about them in curriculum committee are we capitalizing on all of the wonderful areas with in morest toown that are directly related

049to the curriculum and will be engaging an exciting for our students um after school programs and community events and providing real world experiences for our students um something that comes to mind is recently I went to Career Day at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School it was incredible to see all of the um different Community Partnerships all the parents that came in and did presentations about um becoming a veterinarian becoming a marine biologist um there was a representative from Verizon all of these wonderful things that those children may not have had the opportunity to see to see had the school not created that event um and then also uh looking at social emotional learning and inclusivity ensuring that our students have a deep understanding of empathy of teamwork giving them peer mentoring opportunities uh Dr Pino Gomez

050and I have been looking at uh social thinking curriculum and there's Pilots within the school uh and then looking at in the future how we expand those into the other schools um with resources and professional Dev so what is learning beyond the classroom look like in the 6127 but we have to be very thankful to Mr Brian Young uh for all the work that he's done with the STEM Academy facilitating dual enrollment as well as uh concentrating on those Career and Technical education initiatives beyond the world of stth so Mr Young has done a great job leading the way for us to have more internship opportunities for our students and also leveraging Partnerships within the community and for those of you who attended Morristown on stage this week or have ever gone to an MEF

051event uh you certainly would be amazed at how the Ed Foundation supports our schools and those gaps in budgeting but the latest initiative that we are working on with them is how we can develop mentorships um between community members and our middle and high school students to facilitate and really build upon that career opportunity that we might explore as Matthew mentioned in um a career day um the second thing is uh collected learning connected learning so our Community Partnerships and also how we can have greater experiential learning opportunities not just receiving information passively through a book but engaging in the learning and I would like to thank and recognize uh Miss Alicia carabal who is our director of the community school who has really been working to have those experience and inquiry based learning opportunities

052so that when students are spending time elongating their school day with sunrise or sunset or they want to participate in a summer school activity that it feels very vibrant and alive and out in the community and outw working um on experience-based tasks rather than passive learning so I appreciate um all of the enthusiasm and student centered directed learning you appro that the third area is speaking more about building optimal learning environments that was a huge topic of conversation in the fall at all of our strategic planning meetings and the board members before you have spent hours and hours and hours they have toured our facilities they have poured over budget sheets and our buildings as gorgeous as they are um are over 100 years old in many cases and we are fortunate to have people

053like Mr ala on our staff who know every corner of the building um his institutional memory his knowledge of you know when you ask oh gosh could we improve something this way or what are your thoughts I can always tell you uh all of the pieces of the building structure that might be an obstacle but then he comes with a solution as to how to work around them so those first couple of bullets on learning beyond the classroom are about the buildings themselves um how how are we maintaining these B buildings how are we making sure that they're safe and they're appealing I think all of you have been at that point unless you had the luxury of always living in new construction that there comes that point where you know you just can't vacuum

054that rug anymore it's bare thin or you just can't P paint that wall again without it really starting to look you know uneven and and and not sharp and that's kind of the process that we're through what where are the things that we fixed one too many times that need to be replaced and also what are the physical setups of our room so the space that we're in now we often talk about as a wonderful flexible learning space there is group for small group instruction there is casual areas where students can think and collaborate we can set this area up like a traditional classroom or we can set it up like a hollow Square where people can participate in discussion groups these types of learning environments should be accessible to our students at every level

055so that a teacher's creativity is not limited by the physical limitations of the room um so the second group of bullets deal with the physical space and the setup of our classroom and it was great to hear at the sessions in the fall and also constantly brought up by our board members you know what are we doing for athletics what are we doing to enhance the theater and the creative arts uh you know we saw the teaser of the show we saw the wonderful musical at the middle school um last weekend we're ready for amazing spring series of Arts but they're not in the most impressive venues our auditoriums are worn our sound systems are not cutting edge and there's nothing worse than having students put for all of this effort to perform in a

056space that doesn't showcase all of the hard work that we do so making those spaces um for athletics and the creative arts reflect the level of commitment of our students and the pride that our community has in those spaces is essential we have two more bow areas to go through uh they are about communication and uh there is a little bit of connection for the fifth one and some overlap but um Mr will speak about communication at the elementary level first so communication to Foster community and partnership strengthen and Foster meaningful Pathways within the mor school district and the Greater Community to create informed and intentional Partnerships so this as Dr muchi said has connections to some of the other goals but if we're looking at the the shorter bulleted list here um the first

057one establish a clean and userfriendly architecture for the district's website so when we have families new community members that come in although websites may seem Antiquated right because we have social media we have Instagram and whatnot when you when you are a new member to a school Community the very first place that you go is the school website right um and so we can find a lot of our information on there but it can also be overwhelming for for new families um so working with the techn ology department and establishing something that's relevant accessible simplistic efficient um and to ensure that our parents and families have all of the information that they need um secondly um establishing again community and District Partnerships so Dr Mo you mentioned the MEF a wonderful organization I mean I've

058it was my first time at Morris Talent stage I was blown away I felt like I was watching like a professionally edited performance it was incredible um so you know capitalizing on on that energy um and then thirdly digital engagement in social media so something else that can be very overwhelming is which school's text me messaging you how many Instagram pages does a particular school have so streamlining that information and having it readily available um to to parents and fam so that they can see all the wonderful things that are happening within the school Community because a lot of times even myself I'm like oh I didn't know that happened right because there's so many Instagram pages that I'm trying to follow so it's just trying to keep that all together and connected so that

059we can all celebrate all the wonderful things that are done in the district thank you very much uh good communication extends and need grade level but if we were thinking specifically across uh grades 6 through 12 and how we can improve communication and Foster better Partnerships the one thing that we were discussing that was highlighted here is and ambassadors to serve as leaon between the schools and the families so how can we leverage those home and School Association groups that we have that meet regularly with the principal to message items out um to the community we've done an exceptional job with that um with cpeg and the bilingual Outreach and it would be wonderful to replicate the success of how those Community groups have been working to get the message out across our schools as

060as well so how can all of our strengths uh build partnership and a connection within our community is the general uh theme that we' be looking on as we try to improve communication and I thank Mr kryy for pointing out the very practical points of managing social media and the importance of giving a facelift and greater utility to our district uh website which is a a priority and uh have one of the people we here tonight we can also welcome uh Mr Adrien saero who is our director of Technology we're excited to have him here he's been here for a few weeks and has already um just made some wonderful changes to assist us with our seamless integration of technology and we look forward to seeing what he and his team will be able to

061do um with our website the final area is a little bit of an overlap uh on the next slide will see career Readiness skills and that comes from Partnerships with the community comes with creating internships knowing how we can um speak to our students about where they see themselves and really that's something that anecdotally and with our counseling departments we've noticed has been an area of weakness in terms of our students preparation they have a set of skills or course of study that they're following and then they have an idea for a career aspiration but they don't fit together well so we need to start out more basically by saying our students need to know who they are what their strengths are and how they can get into the position that they visualize for themselves

062because we have had a bit of a disconnect between Career aspirations and courses of study so this is an area of tremendous Focus for us and we have to also ensure that our students are well supported on their journey of trying to develop their own interests and talents making sure that the courses that are afforded to them um offer opportunities for that we're going to pause get up the budget presentation which also continues a conversation on goals as we do with every budget presentation but it's probably a good time after this much information to see if there's any questions from the board members on our first two presentations I just I mean again thanking all of the input and obviously how much work went into collecting all of those voices um and certainly we all

063have the opportunity to sort of absorb all of this but I'm very grateful for all of the insights that we got from the community and how they are aligned to these goals and I think it's something and just how aligned it is to what we've all been working towards so I'm just I'm very grateful for that thank you um so our first two presentations the first presentation was what happened in October what did everybody say what were some of the Big Ideas then Matthew and I kind of walk through what this group created for the board so this group of Administrators created action plans ideas but now it comes from maybe more of a theoretical to Let's measure exactly what we've done this year and let's really be sharp and about what we know we

064can do next year because when you have these fiveyear goals there's always this tendency to be like oh we're not there yet and you're pushing goal after goal and then it's in year four and you've got all of this work to recap how do we get these things that we didn't come to so the first part of our budget presentation takes our current three District goals and I'm going to take a few minutes just to walk you through each of the goals so in the first slide there's always three areas that Things fall into what are students learning where are they and how do they feel about their Lear social emotional so the first first is always how do we increase um the rigor how are we being accountable for the scores that we are

065placing out and how are we intervening to assist those students who are not meeting the benchmarks this is our first goal area this year and very similar to the first goal that you just heard for 25 through 30 so we have some select accomplishments to highlight um that have been completed you'll see see those on the left side of the slide we noticed that we needed greater articulation between preschool and kindergarten to ease our students transition into kindergarten and we have taken direct efforts to make sure that our kindergarten teachers have the opportunity to visit preschool classrooms and see what the students are doing in preschool and then also our preschool teachers can observe what a kindergarten classroom looks like and how the students are have certain expectations for the beginning of the day um

066we also have a great opportunity to recognize our kindergarten teachers for the Readiness assessment that they developed um we often hear a lot about postco or covid babies we're seeing this nationally in kindergarten which is why we took up this initiative so what happens when students didn't have the opportunity to go to library um Circle time uh in their toddler years what happens when toddlers can't go to playgrounds because they're closed what happens when toddlers are indoors more than they have been at other times they have more devices and access to more devices than they have what we saw was a stunting of social emotional skills among our kindergarten students in terms of negotiating friendships and relationships solving problems and and being um advocates for what they think and feel while still following rules um

067so it was kind of a a big order and we developed a kindergarten screener with the assistance again led by Dr Pino Gomez uh Mr kryy and perfect attendance by our K2 principles here who can speak to this just to highlight so you all know Mr Brad Rani from a Miss ktina fck from Woodland and Miss Lisa Fishman from Hillcrest um I've been very inspired by hearing the way that they have rethought kindergarten in each of their buildings oh my goodness I can't forget Mr Miller iing I'm sorry I didn't see you right away I so busy had you in my social studies brain of course Normandy Park with our K1 students as well so um these principles have given a lot of time to kindergarten teachers this year help them develop a screener help

068them understand the language so we don't have a screener that just says practice empathy it provides examples of what empathy looks like for kindergarteners and how we can assess it each of our kindergarten teachers have used that screener at the beginning of the year to identify these skills and they'll be assessing the students at the end of the year books that they have used to teach the skills have been added to classroom libraries lessons that they've been used to identify Aries of weakness have been tailored to building up those skills so that the students will make up some of the things that they missed uh before arriving at kindergarten and will be well equipped for first grade so thank you to all of our kindergarten principles or wh and thank you to the work that

069you've done to assist our kindergarten students um we could fill many many books and there are many of them for the CK which is a science-based uh science of based program that is focusing on Phonics on spelling that is aligned to the New Jersey um student learning assessment standards we also at the middle school have had the introduction of the sixth grade academy which has improve transition and receive R reviews um and then the enthusiastic did you not love Isabella here tonight telling you that she's going to extra study sessions for AP classes that she's excited to get prepared for the exam that she's using the AP Hub to prepare these are resources that were there but were underutilized and were not clearly communicated to students so under the guidance of Mr Kevin Rooney um

070we have had a fantastic increase in the connectedness between the AP curriculum online study platforms and inperson review sessions really raising kind kind of like it's cool to be in a lot of AP classes right and you get the pizza party and you get to sit with your teacher and go through um those review sessions so if I had to summarize what we did in goal one this year we had a hard look at the curriculum we started making sure that all conversations were standard aligned and we made sure that we had some consistent procedures so all of the principles and administrators here before you today have iron or teams that help um struggling Learners by identifying suitable interventions but we weren't sharing the practices across the district we weren't making sure that they were

071consistent so I want to thank them for digging into that work um for sharing what H who has had the most success with those interventions and how we can replicate it across the schools because the great thing about our district is all students are going to the same middle school the same high school so we need to know um that we've been using the same strategies to invest in our struggling Learners we had to summarize um what we plan to do for next year I think as a parent I would know all right an like out of all of these selected planned actions how's my child's education going to look different I hear you're talking about curriculum and revision well let's start off with we will have current textbooks and online resources avail aailable in

072all of our curriculum areas so we have some areas particularly in World Language um kind of where we're falling behind the bark on the most um recent textbooks that should be used uh we also had some areas within mathematics where are we have wonderful resources but they were not aligned to the state standards and I'd like to thank Vis gentle who's here tonight our 6 to2 math supervisor who took on the initiative of making sure that the roll out of the savath program for grade six through eight math was aligned to the standards and we can't wait to see how the students perform when they are working from a textbook which is closely matched to the state standards and the assessment that was a big shift and a heavy lift um also we're looking um

073for next year to have consistent Elementary Master schedules that um maximize time again Mr kryy has worked with all of our elementary principles to kind of Envision how can we have those concentrated blocks with limited interruptions next year you know how can we know that elementary students are most excited and ready to learn when they walk in the door so how can we make sure that we're starting learning right away as opposed to 20 or 30 minutes after they walk in the door how can we tighten up the morning and make sure that students when they're coming in and they've had their breakfast and they're ready to go that we're not taking too long to get to important content so streamlining the elementary experience where we make sure we're not wasting any time uh adopting

074a clear textbook review cycle we're all very excited as I mentioned before to see math every day at FMS and uh thank you to miss Kenny and the high school team for the MHS program of studies adjustments which will be in place next year um which include a new science sequence uh grades 9 through 12 that are more aligned with our students abilities in mathematics and preparation for advanced study the bilingual course offerings and college and Technical education programming the expansion of preap when you open up that program of studies for the high school when you're working with your high school student and selecting the courses and opportunities that you have next year you will see world of difference um in the changes and I just want to thank all of our supervisors and administrators

075for really digging in investing in their curricular area and making sure that the curriculum presented is um the best available for our students our second goal is really considering how students feel about it you know we talked about kindergarteners before and how life is different for a kindergartener than it was you know 15 years ago Ed week recently published an article that the incurrence of kids uh kindergarten students swiping their books to try and make a physical book um turn pages in the same way that an iPad would or a computer screen is a new phenomenon so imagine the gap of the teacher who wasn't raised with iPads who was a skilled Elementary educator how do you approach a child who is swiping books and has never had the opportunity to maybe have a book

076read to them or they're just not used to that because everything has been um on an iPad so the first kind of column over on the left is saying how do we protect and engage our students in positive social act um interactions with peers and adults thank you to the board again for the generous support of the director of mental health and services who has focused her attention squarely on her prek 5 student um Dr gardano has done a series of positive parenting workshops she's highly visible she has offered great support to all of our elementary G guidance counselors and we have also increased uh the number of bilingual Outreach programs that are available to our parents offering them online uh when requested on the weekends and um talking to teachers about Blended and instruction

077less time with the computer more time engaging with the uh adult uh in the room and I'll just say it because we all feel it we have this in every program every year digital citizenship being a responsible consumer of social media it's not tired we don't just keep saying it we just get a new prop every year right and this is the hardest part of being in education this lesson is never learned because we always have new students finding new ways to make bad choices on social media and uh it's it's a Target that we're striving to hit but we can't keep up with the challenge we can't keep up with all of the tools that they know how to work around us with um the level of knowledge that they have at a young

078age but we are still fighting the fight and how do we fight it with something called digital citizenship which is really just being a good citizen you know is your decision to use this device or this app in this way acting for your good for the good of all around you are you causing harm are you being thoughtful are you being reflective um so you will see this in our long range Ed plans our strategic plans for as long as children still make childish decisions and as adults around them we're trying to guide them through that process so when we say embedding digital citizen lessons throughout the K12 curriculum sequence sometimes we are reacting so sometimes we are seeing a phenomena with the way students are using something and that would be when we would

079embed that lesson and say this is something that seems to be going on with seventh graders how can we tackle that this is something that we've seen in some of our courses at the high school that are requiring this type of research and they seem to be you know unsure about how to use AI so a good example of what we did this year our media Specialists here at the high school visited every high school English class walked them through the process of how to use AI responsibly um what it means to be honest in your research how you can effective L use those resources to make your writing better while still conforming with standards of academic Integrity sound research and go original um on the other side you know what do we plan to

080do to continue to care for our students um one of the ways that we can make our students feel well cared for is belonging so we monitor all of our programs um our JV girls ice hockey team had a great record this year they were seven and three they were 20 players and they're ready to play at the varsity level they have a commitment and we're going to launch a girls ice Hawking program so we know that we have some of those students who are playing on the boys team but we also have a strong committed group who want to play in a varsity level in an all girls league so when we see that when we find those students who are excelling and they need to find a place to belong we create it

081and we create it in athletics as well as creating it in some of our co-curricular programs which are identified here about speaking to our our guidance counselors about breaking out of the boundary of like I give this ninth grade presentation I give this 10th grade presentation no what does it mean to just sit with a group of ninth graders how can we have small guidance directed activities that become more engaging um for our students and um we also had um we're introducing a pilot program actually this year that we hope we can monitor next year how do you connect all of these wonderful Partnerships with a school so one of our faith-based organizations has said you know let us adopt Lafayette Learning Center and let our uh Community assist and become connected to that school

082and what does it look like well when you have a great director of buildings and grounds like Mr Glenn Miller it looks like yes we'll do whatever you request so this group came and said can we do some Landscaping at the spring can we beautify the front of the school can we bring all of our volunteers and Glenn you know always comes from a place of yes and got everything there lined up organized and we're going to have a community volunteer day for this group that wants to um adopt Lafayette and then they said you know what are some of the things that are hard for young students it's always a break from school it's always that I mean I love this too how come everybody else is going to chks and caos and D

083worlds and I'm GNA be here you know how can we make spring break fun for everyone um so this group is um making spring break survivable kits with bubbles with sidewalk shock um with a snacks so that every child can walk home with a care package from the district and this Community Partnership so we'll run the pilot um and then we're hopeful that we can build out even more Community Partnerships where they take ownership of a school and maybe we have a different organization every month doing the grab and go for our busy high school students who are running to a job or to a practice right at the the end of the day they get their protein bars they get their energy um drinks and then they're able to go and finally you know

084why do we say service above self well there's tons of research to prove that when you serve others your mental health increases you feel better you have a more positive outlook and you're more connected to your community um so throughout the year our planned actions will continue to focus on how we can encourage students to Value service um over self and then our next goal area is what we've been spending so much time talking about how do we take our long range plan um and facility needs assessment to inform a capital Improvement schedule it's all this board has been doing I want to thank them for all the additional hours both in retreats in interviews and conversations with architects in touring the schools and improving into all of our needs so we have a tenative

085uh planning process for the referendum and this will be it's discussed in this slide um but really more details to come from the board just on the possibility of this and the timeline in the coming months um but we know that we need to make some improve improvements and we're looking forward to doing that that's the goal piece of when you look at all of the numbers which I know is the most exciting part of it the question we always ask ourselves is well what does the number translate into the connection to our goals so the board had asked that the budget presentation really reflect kind of a statement of where we are with our goals and does the money follow that so now Mr Borgo our business administrator is going to walk us through

086the budget process so that you can see how we're acending the lines with our goal good evening uh for those of you who don't know me my name's Dan Borgo I've been doing this for about 40 years started at age 10 so math all right and uh at first I want to thank uh Mr lafranco who has out on a health issue he really pass baton in really really good condition and it made this Sprint to the Finish Line much easier with the help of Joan who's present tonight Michelle who's also present that the institutional knowledge that you gather from people that have been there is priceless and without that it would have been very very difficult I also remember because an and I Dr muchi and I have worked together why I always did

087the agenda I would always put myself on first because I would never want to follow but uh going on with the budget process uh March 10th which is tonight we'll be approving our preliminary budget it's due to the county superintendent March 20th we're going to be transmitting tomorrow so once it gets approved uh we flip the numbers in about seven days we're ready to go and that's again attribute to Mr lafranco and our office staff uh upon County approval we'll advertise the budget our userfriendly budget will be on the website our presentation tonight will be on the website with any Q&A that a Community member may have we'll publish those and put those back on our website we'll have another finance committee meeting again thank you to the finance committee Mr Smith Dr Rodriguez Mrs

088Davidson Mr lyd who's not here our chairperson Miss Murphy so thank you for all your help in this process and then finally on April 28th we will have our uh public hearing and final adoption of our spending plan for 2526 so that is our game plan of where we're going our enrollment over the past 10 11 years as you can see has been plus or minus 3% we are currently up 24 students from 2324 to 2425 it's really tough to tell in the line graph and you could see we've been pretty constant with our resident enrollment throughout the 11-year period getting to our expenditure portion of our budget salary increases alone our $3.2 million we're adding a culinary arts teacher at the high school this will enable us to have 30 workstations in our newly

089renovated home classroom this year we're also getting an air condition which will offer an opportunity of 50% more flow through of students that take a highly popular class at or course in the high school so that's a great thing going on we've added a a computer tech which is cost effective that our Tech could do some light repair on that as opposed to going out to a third party for all our Chromebook repairs we're negotiating currently with our health benefit broker we're currently at 12% you know industry standard here is 10 to 15% so it's not as if we're on the high side we're not on the low side and it's all based off your claims experience and in in school districts and probably private companies about 10% of your employees make up 33% of

090your claims so although you may have 90% of healthy individuals and families a small portion of those that are more sickly really generate a lot of your claims experience our dental plan kudos to uh Anthony uh for saving us $100,000 it's called a self-insured plan but I don't want people say oh my goodness self-insured it's more less a maximum premium so what we pay is our claims every month plus 3% for admin fee if you don't hit your target of what you would have paid in 12 months you really haven't paid that claim and that money stays with the district so we have a ceiling that's finite you don't pay it you keep it and we've we are seeing around $100,000 in savings from this new Premium plan as stated before investment in textbooks I

091I thought I had to comment the wrong place and instructional materials over a million dollars that is in our spending plan for next year this coincides with the presentations that were presented before me and it's you know I I get excited about this stuff you know if you didn't have that fire in your belly I would never do what I'm doing and I've been doing it a long time so my goal is to make it a little bit better than when it before I came here and I think we're going to obtain that goal our finance our Chromebooks again going to be doing a lease so we'll be able to get $500,000 worth of equipment immediately pay it over time the interest rates are very very competitive so that's a another good thing to support

092our our strategic plan we're maintaining class size we're still maintaining the one for one Chrome Brook uh initiative uh $1 million in maintenance projects and kudos to our transportation department we transport over 5,000 students daily so it's it's a really great job I've that number I've 40 years never seen something half that size L on 5,000 students and we do it pretty well so that's uh our our Capital outlay since we will be looking at a referendum down the road we really scaled this back in an effort to spend those dollars we're needed but look at a longer range plan of how we're going and not just put a bandaid on it but really make it better we're going to be purchasing some technology equipment some non-instructional equipment which is a lot of Maintenance snow

093blowers plows floor machines Etc will be the turfing harder field that'll be the baseball field that'll have a dual purpose and we'll be playing soccer in the Outfield of that field so it would run from parallel to 287 out to left Center for a a soccer field regulations 360 we may be at 347 or 350 but it's still a nice size field to use it for two seasons both spring and fall and turf fields really don't age from usage it's from the sunlight so the more activity we could have on a turf field the better for the students of the mar School District so our goal is to schedule schedule schedule no rain play and you know lightning detector another nice thing but that's not in yet but we'll be we'll be looking to get

094a system like that uh debt service assessment is one of the state assessments of which we have to pay them back $37 for them giving us giving us uh that service Aid so they take it in one hand and they take it back in the other hand High School athletic equipment for 2526 that's targeted to rewrap the old Scoreboard on The Stadium Field right now it's not in use we want to wrap it we're having the uh the students design it with Mr Booth be on what they like to see up there maybe all the sports played on The Stadium Field really get it done nicely so it's not just an old scoreboard but it's a presentation of student activities that are played there that you'll be able to see from the parking lot and

095also from the field and we have a quote for uh $30,000 for that uh wrapping in upgrade as with any spending plan in public education 80 to 85% are salaries and health benefits that's the driving force course what we do in public education and you'll see our instruction piece is 66.5 but all those other pieces have embedded in it with the exception of tuition salary and wages for those specific areas and our transportation cost for over 5,000 students so when you really look at what's going on with the budget and how much discretionary spending we have you know it's maybe 8 to 12% when you plug in everything that we have to plug in you're at 8 5 to 88% so I guess kudos to our team collectively to get all of those initiatives through

096a strategic plan into our 2526 spending plan so it's it's really uh admirable some of our Revenue highlights obviously when you have $150 million spending plan you have to have renovate revenues to generate what you're spending and we are using a lot of our you'll see reserves and reserves are monies or buckets of money I call them that we put or Anthony has put in those specific buckets at year end to fund future endeavors such as maintenance such as our capital reserve such as a tuition Reserve so we're going to be utilizing $1 million in our maintenance Reserve to fund maintenance projects and a lot of those maintenance projects are I guess preventive maintenance to let univ ventilators run another extra three years change our filters look at our moves look at everything that we

097do in the dis as a preventive maintenance issue as opposed to you know repairing X and just kicking the can down the road so uh it's a good thing that we're doing we budget $450,000 of interest income we have a lot of those buckets that have monies in it and New Jersey arm is a an investment mechanism used by a lot of public schools that is liquid by 12:00 and we're getting 4.4 as of today so you could really be aggressive in your invest Ms because it could turn liquid to you tomorrow you could wire back and forth into those accounts they're fully insured and I would say more than half of the public schools in New Jersey probably utilize the uh New Jersey F we've seen a reduction in our semi which is our

098medic component of our budget to help those families on Medicaid that was reduced $165,000 they went I think these are maybe from 200,000 to 35,000 so it's not Millions to less Millions it's hundreds of thousands it's a a $30,000 program of which we're going to subsidize pleasantly surprised to see our Mars PLS tuition is up 12 students from the prior year so that generates us 3.9 million in revenue and we have to reconcile that with the ba at Mars Plains to make sure what they're pay what they're sending is what we're receiving has to be approved by the county office we were fortunate enough to receive an additional state $155,000 and our preschool Aid increased by $365,000 we've run a massive preschool program here which is a great thing for the community of which moms

099and dads free of charge I'm sure you know I'm shocked by it and it's just a great a great thing that we do here and excess Surplus and that's funds that were unexpended through I would say tighter spending of 9.5 million so we're taking $9.5 million that was in one of our buckets like our maintenance Reserve our capital reserve and using that as a revenue moving forward to fund the rest of our budget it's a lot of districts do it it really can't get to 2% when your salary increases are over three and your health benefits are at 10 or 12 on a $20 million premium our increase in the mar School District if we went to 2% cap would be utilized just by our health benefit increase so that is why you utilize a

100lot of these surpluses to think of different ways on how you're going to fund your annual school budget because it's very very difficult to come in at 2% and the trend is moving towards utilizing all of your excess Surplus your bank cap which is another mechanism in public schools to go over your 2% without going out to the taxpayer and you have health care adjustments so the state is giving you a provision to spend more money in those components we have enrollments if your enrollments are increasing you have another component and then if you don't spend in Prior years three years back to your maximum cap you're allowed to go over that and that's Bank cap and it's good for three years so we're positioned with our bank cap in future years moving forward and

101we're utilizing a strategic amount in the current year to make sure we don't create false revenues that we can't Fund in the future I think that's a a big mistake that some other districts may make they'll stand up here and say no tax increase they're funding all of their buckets with Surplus and then future years there's nothing there and then they're going to have a 5% increase so we're looking to really keep the incline at you know 2.8 3.2% tax increases but on a steady increase Therefore your minimum tax levy rows and you're not really choking yourself by not going up to the maximum amount of your tax ly I'm talking too fast I get on a roll here uh our Revenue sources as we discussed 80% is local tax levy you could see our

102reserves that we spoke about fund 1.2% tuition from our our in-house tuition uh tuition classes that we take students in uh tax relief is 7.1 and our state and federal funding is 7.8 again you know to really simplify SCH budget is once we approve our final budget in April it's almost a checkbook to spend $150 million with all the bills and whistles but that's you know when you really peel it back that's what people in our industry get paid to do and if and you have one of the best Anthony I can't speak highly enough about them and again with Laura Clark helping me Dr P was helping me and and it's made this transition really really really really easy so I'd like to thank the three of you for all your help throughout the

103three weeks we tax levy everything really trickles down to the tax levy and and what is it going to cost we're currently looking at a 3.69% increase and you can see our 25 26 tax levies 107 million our bank cap available for future years almost $2 million gives us the tool to grow if we need to grow with a referendum on the horizon you know the referendum has a total cost of ownership we could build it but now how are we going to add the teachers how are we going to add the equipment how are we going to clean it how are we going to light it so it's good that we have that that bank cap that we could use in future years and the equalized value is a state formula that values property

104across this different municipalities and what that means in the instance of our community is we have our tax rates split between two communities Mars Township and Mars toown we get those numbers from the state of New Jersey has nothing to do with the local boards and then what we do is take those two percentages and multiply them against the tax rate so it's quite possible in one year such as this year one district one municipality will be decreasing and the other one will be increasing and your equalized valuation you know it's a formula that includes Elementary enrollment equalized valuation of the community housing property of that community and wealth in that community so they take all of these numbers and then give us the number that we would uh apply to the tax levy and

105it's actually cut off on the bottom and Mars town was 40 going to 41.7 and Mars Township was 60 going down to 58.3 so it's just simple math when you see our next screen where it's going to show you what that actually means you could see if you go to our third column under 25 they're actual numbers based on our tax increase but then we put a memo out to the far right that if the tax levy remained at zero% increase marst toown would have still seen a $714 increase because it's redistributing the dollars for the extra 1.8% and in Mars Township it's decreasing those uh dollars by whatever it was the same 1.8% so you could see that with no increase it was a $714 increase in Marist toown a $396 decrease in Mars

106Township slide one to the left with actual numbers Mars townships decrease actually decrease because they have to fund more but they're still in Brackets and Mars t has an $821 increase and that's based on an average home price of $635,000 in Mars toown and 560,000 in the township we then further went along to break it down with nice Graphics it says basically the same thing here with our tax rate our average home and you could see the price and if your house is higher than that you could just multiply the 9008 by 100K if it's a million then you're looking at $987 uh so on and so forth again just to let the community know school districts make up between 62 and 68% of your tax levy in the community so someone may look at

107this and say oh not bad why am I paying X because you have open space tax you have your Municipal tax you have some County tax and you have school tax so this is one component of many taxes in your tax bill but the component strictly for school district for our school district are the numbers as we have stated and this is just more informational about communities surrounding us and where they're at with their increases and there's not many there that are anticipating the 2% you see 2.9 to four you have some examples where someone went up two now they're going up another four so that gives you a broad view of communities through Mars County Somerset County that uh are showing tax increases so we're not an outlier we're probably with the majority of

108public schools in our area for our size that's probably coming in between 35 and 45 as a tax levy increase again uh I can't thank everyone enough for all their help uh again this is a this is a helicopter what we're doing we have hundreds of pages of detail on every line account so if anyone would like to come in if we do a one-on-one of familiar with where you could just email me and we'll answer any question that you have same thing with anyone in the community and I think for some of our administrators who really don't know me I'll try to get around to see you but if I could really summarize My Philosophy in like two sentences I don't find the nine ways to say no we find one way say yes

109and I think that really hyp ofies who I am and I think that's a little different type of view from you know being counter but you know it's all about kids and that's what you pay your taxes for and you know working with Dr mie I got that message loud and clear so uh it's been a pleasure to get reunited again working here I thank all of you again any questions comments concerns can I can I just make one comment could you go back to the household impact slide sure I just wanted to make sure that if you look at the average home price in both both that one yeah average home price so the 2425 numbers for moristown are significantly higher than they were in 23 I just wanted you to know that that's

110because they did a revaluation of the properties in moristown so we didn't have anything to do with that that was something that was that they were mandated to do and because they hadn't done it for you know number of years um it had a pretty significant shift in terms of the way the properties were valuated and therefore tax so you'll notice that the moris Township Line of average home prices stayed the same because they did a Ral more recently than mors toown did so that's the reason that you're seeing the 1.7 shift in both 2024 and 2025 so in case anybody asks you or you're wondering for yourself what happened here um that's why I thank you than oh I'll make sure they get them darling gave extras so make sure anybody who is absent

111gets Darlene gave me so I'll make sure anybody who get is I thinkk you yeah it late [Music] okay um I think I would be silly to add anything to that very robust report um and um I did just want to uh we had our student report um see if anybody Beth is not here tonight um but did ask just to share there are just a few policies um that are on the agenda tonight and several were moved to the next meeting for discussion and share that um so Susan did you before before the committee can I just um so Dr I think what we saw was excellent so first thank you for that um I it's comprehensive it's through your whole staff which I think is great um my ask because I thought it

112was really great but the only note I wrote is and I think many of us have talked about it this reconnecting with the student the teacher reconnecting with the parent reconnecting to the student that level of Engagement um I think we've talked before technology is phenomenal absolutely phenomenal but there's in some instances it's a go look at Power scoop before they re-engage with the the young person re-engage with the parent and and I know that's the core of what our Educators want to do um and I know the absence of not seeing it doesn't mean they're not concerned about it but I would ask that we just make sure that that all of the other Comm connections you talked about with the community etc etc I think are phenomenal but there's a old school Behavior

113that I don't think should ever go out of style which is picking up the phone and talking to the parent if they see something arve with the student pulling the student aside to say hey I can see you're struggling um this is a challenge for you that's that connection to the young person that I think sometimes gets missing and and I know there's volume there's a lot of kids there's a lot going on but I just ask that we don't forget that and and maybe it's an additional call out in our strategic imperatives as we go forward 100% thank you um I was looking uh because uh Susan had made a very similar Point recently in it oh you move I was just smiling to say sound familiar um so know that this yeah know

114that this is something that we brought up in committee so um I hear you loud and clear I made an additional note U 100% and uh you know that just feeling like the grades are there is not the same as having a meaningful conversation about those grades and how parents and teachers can partner so much appreciated and stay tuned for more measurables I just add something um that's okay I'm sorry I missed it I'll have to catch up um thank you uh I wanted to Echo I think Katie said it but I appreciate all the work that went into tonight there a lot of a lot of planning visioning uh execution to get all those presentations um together of course all the community support um I just wanted to be clear on what are our

115next steps for the strategic planning because it is a lot that um that you all have uh uh set out for action plans so I know we meet um March 31st for a retreat um and then I'm assuming through committee we'll also be have the opportunity ask questions and um such before we see it again uh at the meeting in end of April correct so we certainly can reserve time at all of our upcoming committee meetings to address some of the broad areas but the board should take time to read through the report and the uh from Charlene as well as the slide deck because um we want to be able to answer any questions or offer further detail if it's needed before the board feels comfortable voting on it uh the one thing I'm

116noticing too is you know when we were trying to draft the plan there is a lot of overlap between goal three and five so that might be an area for further refinement whether it be building off of Allen's comments or some other things that we notice you know it's not just communication and Community how can we make those more distinct because I felt like they sort of melded a bit so does that mean we have four goals or that we just have to have a sharper go focus on the five that we have so that work um can be done and amendments can be made before we present it to vote and of course the great thing about the wonderful Head Start that we had there is we don't have to feel tremendous pressure that

117it has to be by April 28th because we have spring break in there I would but as long as we could do it by the May meeting or at the very lat as the June meeting this plan doesn't go into effect until July 1 so we have kind of the final report of what happened at those three meetings the administrators took a crack at what do action plans look like now each of the Committees will have a few minutes uh to kind of discuss and amplify those ideas and then any revisions can be presented to the full board whether it be April 28th or one of the May meetings right and I noticed that charene had provided the action action plan template so I'm assuming we're going to be putting success indicators in there so

118we already have those yeah okay um but they're an internal document so when we do a slide deck we just talk about the action steps we don't add you know who's doing each one but we we shared those already with the board okay I must miss that yeah you got a and I think it's hard too when we send out there's so many things to click on but I believe we shared those already okay yeah because I think it it's important that we you know make the goals smart goals so we know what are the student outcomes we're looking for and what a student achievement going to look like after five years of all of this hard work so the only um to ask a a couple of questions about the process too because um

119we have a action plans that been created from Community uh the community spoke and said what they felt uh and then the uh based on that action plans were created through your leadership now the board comes in and we need to in my I'm I'm want to clar clarification of my role so I'm going to come in now look at the Strategic plan based on what the community said what the administrator is saying and I get to give an input as a board member as to what what if uh anything here maybe I I don't agree with or my you know I I'm an elected official and I get give to give my input too uh correct yeah so what she was just sharing as well is that we will be um going over in

120committee you'll have an opportunity to ask questions or clarify anything also keep in mind that we're still um one of the pieces that Charlene was indicating tonight is that each of the annual goals are subsets of this strategic plan so not all of it will be we don't talk about this until five years later it's figuring out the the time bound pieces of it and part of why I think it's really important to get all of this information together is to be able to sit with it and review it and ask questions and so that is the intention of timing committee right so that's the thing with me committee I'm not in all the Committees and some of the things that I've discussed here I won't even have input into if you do it by

121committee I know it's a lot of work but this is a for five years this is a fiveyear thing that we need to in my opin stop and look at together and before we move forward because yes then from there comes the annual goals for the superintendent and the district and all and all everything comes out of this this is big this has never been done in our district I think for me as a board member I want to be in every conversation with regards to this and just my feeling about itat yeah that and and I think that's also why there's that Runway of saying which was always anticipated that it doesn't have to just be approved by April if there are things that need more time and conversation then that gives us an

122additional component and we do have a retreat as well to be able to address those I would like to request time for that conversation of all of us together regarding all of the the goals that are uh mentioned and and the outcome of this strategic uh event which was yeah right I'm presidented for the district so we I think we need to stop and really look at this carefully because then we'll and yes we can adjust to it as we go because life is like that right but um that's just my my feeling about it thank you okay anything else that topic about that govern okay um then Susan could you share a curriculum committee sure and I just wanted to Echo what everyone else was saying I just want to thank all of our

123speakers tonight and all of our administrators for coming as well um it was really great to see everybody and I think your presentations were just so so thorough and informative and I really appreciate you taking the time uh to present to us tonight's but uh with curriculum um moving on the curcum committee met on February 26th and we approved the following items the February 12th meeting minutes various field trips across the district a complete list is linked under educational matters motion number two a summer coordinator for bi for bilingual all programs and weda testing was approved this is educational matters motion number three and we also approved the source student Outreach and academic reinforcement summerbridge program this will benefit a cohort of fourth through eth grade students and is under educational matters motion number four

124Matt kryy director of Elementary education shared an updated 2025 summer Academic Program chart and schedule the summer programs include esy extended school year the bilingual 6th through 8th grade program prek transition program summer Plus for students in kindergarten through 8th grade summer Music Academy for 4th through 12th grade summer Learning Academy for kindergarten through 8th grade Advanced geometry Advanced Algebra 1 Advan um I'm sorry Algebra 1 boot camp Algebra 2 boot camp honors pre-calculus introduction to preap English 1 and two for Rising 9th and 10th grade students and STEM Academy for Rising 9th grade grade students information about these programs and dates will be going out to families soon the curriculum committee welcomed deah Welter first grade teacher at Alfred Bale Bridget Clark first grade teacher at Hillcrest Kayla Schnabel special education teacher at Hillcrest

125Katherine tapino ESL teacher at Normandy Park and Sarah Jacobs panetti second grade teacher at Woodland they shared information on the new amplify ckla program we enjoy learning more about the different components to this reading program for kindergarten through second grade and I truly appreciate them taking the time to meet with us and answer our questions and that was about it our next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday April 9th awesome thank you um I know we've had a lot of information but do you have anything to add Linda well it should be no surprise that when we met on March 3rd we talked a lot about the budget which you've already heard about so I don't have to spend a lot of time on that but I will also note uh first to say thank you

126to Dan Borgo Dan has stepped in um to assist us at a challenging time of year this is the this is where the rubber meets the road and has done admirably um working for us uh while Anthony is away uh and I also want to thank uh Joan and Michelle for helping uh fill the breach as well you you've always been there for us and uh thank you for helping Dan and uh I think where we're at is a is a good place so in addition to the presentation that you saw tonight we also had an opportunity to talk about a year-over-year budget comparison which I found very informative um and there are several preliminary budget motions on the agenda for this evening they are under business matters uh and I think they started at

127motion 16 anyway you can peruse that on your own um we did have a full discussion uh in the March 3rd meeting and we got some very specific information from Dr pent Gomez talking about special education costs uh and um uh you heard more about that also in the presentation so again not to dwell on that uh we discussed the increases in state aid and preschool Aid which we were very pleased to see um also talked about the uh renewal of an agreement with Menan where we're going to have the graduation exercises for uh the middle school on June 17th and the high school on June 18th uh the cost of the lease of that um venue are $3,500 each for each graduation exercise so it's actually quite a bargain that we get access to

128the whole facility for that that's under business matters motion six um we had a discussion about uh we've put out an RP for a new architect record and I think last time I heard the count there were architectural firms that have responded um and many of them are quite eager to work with us um so we'll be going through a process where the 11 candidates will be reviewed first by the administrative staff and then they'll narrow it down to a smaller number and um perhaps have some additional staff or board members involved in the final interviews before what the selection is made so that more to follow on that um the bid opening is actually not until the 13th for all of these so we won't have all the specificity um until then but I'm

129expecting that the interview process will go rapidly and smoothly because we would like not to lose a lot of time in our plan for Capital and referend and planning for the schedule that you saw in the presentation this evening um we have an extensive list of uh Surplus assets we see that just about every month these are items that are are either um inoperable or just Antiquated and old in this case most of the Surplus items are various Furniture old furniture from the payroll and County departments to be disposed of these items will be listed on go deals for auction and uh C Business matters motion 11 um when uh Dr pen Goan has talked to us she gave us quite a a bit of specificity on the semi correction action plan which led to

130the decrease that um was shown in the presentation earlier um and um the corrective action plan is related primarily to uh obtaining says correction action plan for obtaining parental consent forms and that's under business matters motion 8 um good news on the Food Service front we had a new serving line installation uh at Thomas Jefferson during spring break we're waiting for a new point of Sal system system to allow the Morris High School um Library serving line to open um we talked last time about uh us moving one of our employees to Palm tonian as their employee versus ours that new driver started on the 18th of February with the with pomptonian um and we're looking to um reopen a third serving line at um the middle school for breakfast that that was supposed to

131take place on the 26th so I assume it's up and running um as usually we looked at the district and individual School counts as of the end of February we also take a look now at our K5 section counts um across every school and we uh did a little bit of update about the long range facilities plan and a preview of the demographic report which is I think still to be finalized I'm not mistaken our next Finance meeting is going to be April 21st okay thank you um and just for personnel um it was a quick meeting and each of those items are were covered in executive so there's no update there uh Meredith did you have an update for governance sure um uh we met on couple weeks ago the 26th February usually we

132went over uh board agendas and upcoming celebrations um and recognitions and we had a good discussion on making sure that we um balance out our recognition of uh sports teams and uh vid uh students who participate in Visual and Performing Arts uh we also made our next steps plan for reviewing uh each committee's functions and duties so the the um committee chairs will be bringing that back to each committee um for discussion we reviewed our board goals to um measure uh well discuss progress um on our board goals and we're we're on track there uh and then we talked about next steps for strategic planning um we will be meeting next on April 9th very good thank you did you have a more exp Plains update no update we meet tomorrow oh oh okay great

133I hope it's a fantastic meeting um and um we have um obviously heard a lot about the MEF tonight um and they are coming off a fantastic evening of Morris down on stage um with an extraordinary fundraising effort and a matching gift which um put them at around $40,000 for just the donations in that evening so a huge celebration there um and thank you to the board members that attended the event and um also a plug for um the colonial Nation trivia night which um the MEF is partnering um and with alumni and trying to expand that and that will be at glennbrook Brewery on Monday March 24th March 24th um and that is all I have for that um they meet tomorrow or Thursday um and with that we will move in to public

134comment before we open the meeting to public comment we wish to remind you that our meeting is now video recorded and publicly aired while the board welcomes and encourages public comment we ask that you be respectful including any comments that you might make about staff the board does not endorse any comments made by a speaker nor will the board be held liable for any comments made by members of the public the law prevents the board from speaking about specific students and about Personnel matters for this reason the board will not answer any questions on these subjects finally the board's policy limits each speaker to three minutes we ask that you respect this policy and the time of your fellow community members by concluding your comments once you reach three minutes public comment is open for

135an hour or until public comments are complete whichever comes first at this point I would like to invite any members of the public to come forward and please provide your full name and address good evening Nancy sa Burns b RNs 18 Brandy wi Terrace Morris Township um I see the late hour and I also see Mr Borgo has set his uh timer for three minutes I was going to hold off until the next meeting however um I see that my question actually ties in with a couple of notes from this evening's presentation so within the high school and for application to the National Honor Society a student is required to accumulate 45 hours of community service recorded signed Etc now with the discussion of volunteerism and community service and um service over self above self

136over self excuse me has anyone considered perhaps a requirement of all students to attain that by their graduation time frame 45 hours Over a four-year period 11 hours which might includes some summertime that's less than an hour a month and being a volunteer locally for the Interfaith Food Pantry for example we could use a lot of sour uh excuse me sorters to get a lot more items out into the community so I I put that forth as something to be considered for the future because there are a lot of kids with the capability to do that and I do understand timing with studies and academic rigor and sports and theater and music and all the great things that are happening within the high school so I I wanted to put that forth as a question

137I also wanted to thank whoever worked on increasing the accelerated program for the summer to have pre-calculus offered this summer so that we don't have to go into a private school system that is a great thing so thank you for that and thank you for your time okay thank you thank you and thank you for the great suggestion Miss Burns I noted it and I know that we have had conversations about service hours connected to a graduation requirement but the way you broke it down connection to NHS makes a lot of sense so I certainly will bring this back for discussion with the high school team and keep you updated appreciate the input and your participation and active involvement in in what we do it's greatly appreciated okay if there's no one else you're good

138okay um then we will close uh public comment um and before moving to business matters if you could read your as appointed representative of the sending Morris PL School District to the Morris School District Board of Education I would like to clarify that my votes on tonight's business agenda items will relate only to those items that are identified as applicable districtwide to grades prek to 12 or to the high school grades 9 to 12 I am abstaining from voting on any agenda items pertaining solely to the elementary and middle schools grades prek to 8 thank you all right okay moving minutes motions one and two I'll second you any discussion okay please call the Miss Murphy yes Mr pedalino yes Mrs Perry yes Dr Rodriguez yes Mr Smith yes Mrs Davidson yes Mrs call yes

139moving policy motions one through three with revised motion number two I'll second second thank you any discussion okay please call the RO Miss Murphy yes Mrs pedalino yes Mrs Perry yes Dr Rodriguez yes Mr Smith yes Mrs Davidson yes Mrs Cole yes moving educational matters motions one through four second thank you any discussion okay please call the RO Mrs Murphy yes Mrs pedalino yes Mrs Purry yes Dr Rodriguez yes Mr Smith yes Mr Davidson Mrs Davidson yes Mrs Cole yes mov people Services motion number one I'll second thank you any discussion okay please call the rooll Miss Murphy yes Mrs pedalino yes Mrs Perry yes Dr Rodriguez yes Mr Smith yes Mrs Davidson yes Mrs Cole abstain I'm moving human resource versus motions 1 through 20 with new motions 19 and 20 second thank you

140any discussion okay please call and roll M Murphy yes Mrs pedalino yes Mrs Perry yes doc Dr Rodriguez yes Mr Smith yes Mrs Davidson yes Mrs Cole yes moving business matters motions 1 through 20 can I get a second a second thank you any discussion okay please call the RO Murphy yes Mrs pedalino yes Mrs Perry yes Dr Rodriguez yes Mr Smith yes Mrs Davidson yes Mrs Cole abstain on number five and yes to all others okay uh any new business awesome could I get a motion to adjourn I'll move it thank you second thank you all in favor I thank you we are ad Jered