001Uh thank you uh Superintendent Glover uh board members uh public welcome to our 26 27 tenative budget presentation. So um tonight we'll go through our budget and where we are projecting for next year uh the revenue and expenses that are going to make the budget work and um some of the challenge challenges that we'll face. So, I know this presentation is is usually not uh celebratory and fun and and uh sometimes dry, but I did want to start the presentation on a good positive note, kind of send a reminder to everybody here and the community of uh what's going on at Piscatoaway. These are the days. Oh, these are days you remember. Never before and never since I will the whole world be warm as this. And as you feel it, you know it's true
002that you are blessed. It's true that you are touched by something that go and you are days you Remember when rushing over you desire to be part of the mir see in every hour you know it's true that you that you are blessed and love It's true that you are touched by something that'll grow in you. Yeah. >> Uh thank you. >> Yeah. Again, the budget's dry and it's about numbers, but uh I the video was helpful for me to keep perspective and remember the amazing things we have going on in the district and the great things we do here and the great focus of the board, our great teachers, our great administrators, and everything that's going on. Uh financial challenges are going to come. They're here in many ways. They're here across the state.
003and everyone here is committed to doing what we can to making sure we continue delivering for our students. So, um I hope you enjoyed that video. Start on a positive note. All right. >> So, what what drives our budget? A lot of regulations, a lot of things we have to factor in here. State mandates, federal mandates, learning standards, uh curricular related stuff, specialized student populations, staffing needs, salaries and benefits. And we have to prioritize all these things and do what we consider most important based on the revenue that's available to us in the district. So this budget climate, what you're going to hear today is not unique to Piscatoaway. And and I wanted to grab a few kind of headlines to demonstrate that to you. I know it's hard. I'll read the headlines. It might
004be hard to read. Bridgewater Maritan budget would cut 29 jobs as taxes rise 3.23%. 23%. School districts say historic aid little help in fiscal perfect storm. Six, seven different articles there. The last one that came up, Cherry Hill schools weighing a 14.5 million in cuts and layoffs to close the budget gap for 2627. So, this is a problem across the state. Hopefully, the presentation will shed some light and and will inform the community about the solutions we've come up with for next school year. Here's a breakdown of our revenue. Okay, 75% of our budget is funded by the taxpayers of Piscatoaway. 16% comes from state aid and the other 9% come from various sources you see listed there. I'll talk about a few of them as we go through the next few slides. State aid,
005we'll start there. the second largest category of revenue that we get for the budget. Um, in the current budget year we're in, last year's budget cycle, the formula was tweaked a little bit, and those that watched that presentation recall that it really um, hit the skateway hard. A lot of those same measures that were put in place were kept in place for this budget year with the most significant being the cap the cap in the amount of state aid districts could lose. It was capped at 3% of your state aid total. That was kept in place thankfully and that limited the amount of state aid that we lost which was helpful to us. Governor Sharon kept these changes in place which you know I think was a was the right thing to do for a
006new governor and for a formula that just implemented these tweaks last year. You'd have to give it more than one year. The question is I've been harping on this. Is the formula stable? Is it predictable? We'll see. Here's our history of state aid over the last five years. We had a loss of 530,000, an increase of 4.8 million, and then backto-back years of losses. These the current year we're in and next year. Again, thankfully those losses were capped at 3%. We lost roughly 800,000 each year. So uncapped sfa this this column here is if the state just ran the formula this is how much aid we should receive. And if you recall two slides ago I talked about stability and unpredictability unpredictability. Look at the swing in this number over a 2-year period. 26.6 million
007down to 13 million, back up to 23.5 million. That's not very stable. Okay. Um, two years ago the state said we were fully funded. Last year they said we were overfunded by $12.7 million. Now we're only overfunded by $1.5 million. Again, those types of swings, is that stability? Not to me. Okay. So, the the formula is still unpredictable. Makes it hard when we're budgeting for a year and year and to plan two to three years in advance. State aid is is factored uh based on enrollment, the characteristics of your enrollment in terms of the students that you're serving, property valuations, and district income. So, our total enrollment has been stable the past five years, but our projections show that that enrollment will start to decrease. What we're seeing now in the current year we're in,
008the seniors who graduated last year were over 500 students. Let's call it about 515. The kindergarten class is 435. That's an 80 student swing. And our highest grade levels are currently in the high school. I think there's one exception might be in fifth grade, but they're mostly in the high school. So, we're going to continue to see larger grade levels graduating. Smaller grade levels coming in. Our special education students within those smaller numbers though have been increasing. You'll see a chart in a second that illustrates that. Um, our LAP students have been stable the last two years. Our free and reduced lunch rate is also stable, 44% last year, 44% this year. Charter school enrollment. For many years, that number was around 38, 40, 42 students. We're now up to a projected 79 students attending
009charter school next year. Now, we are we are far from the worst district. Some of our neighboring districts such as Franklin and East Brunswick get really hard with this number. Um, but you know, ours is on the upward trajectory. And why that's important is because when a student a Piscataway resident student goes to a charter school, we have to pay money to the charter school. It comes out of our budget and there's not it's not like oh well one student goes and you can cut a teacher or you can cut this. It's it's not it's not correlated like that. So it can become a challenge to weigh to balance students you're losing with the staffing that you have. So you can see the enrollment in this chart. It's you know it's fairly stable. You can
010see that our total enrollment. I'll draw your attention to the special education numbers though which are in blue. So 5 years ago is 776 or 6 years ago I should say. Our projection for next year is 9006. Our current number is 917. So you know you can see it was a steady increase for about 5 years. Looks like we'll be you know just over 900 for backtoback years. this chart is more uh concerning or more illustrative of of what we're going to be facing. Our projected enrollment for next year, you can see this drop off. So, this graph, the legend, the scale, if you will, on this graph is a little bit more compact. So, the the drop off is more significant. It's it's more visual here. And our student count is going to decrease
011from where we are this year to what our projection is next year. And the reason this is important is a couple slides ago I mentioned enrollment is used in calculating state aid. Okay. So we have to keep this in mind as as we try to think forward two to three years. Couple terms you'll you'll hear uh that come up in the next couple slides. The adequacy budget. That's basically the state's formula. They calculate how much they think we should be spending on educating children adequately in Piscatoa. The local fair share is what the state's formula says the taxpayers of Piscato should be paying towards that education and equalization aid is the difference. Okay. So they say your your budget should be 100 million the township should pay 90 million the residents of Scatterawway the 10
012million is the difference. That would be the equalization. That's a simplified example but that's the concept. one of the factors in the equalization aid formula. This is kind of a catch 22 here. If you're a home earner in Piscatoaway, you're doing great according to the numbers anyway. Uh and if you're uh your income is doing great. Piscataway is the fifth highest median household income in the entire county. So this this particular table is sorted by median household income. Piscataway is fifth in the county. that factors into the calculation of local fair share and equalization. That's why I put that figure right there. So in my example, I talked about adequacy budget. That's this the amount the state calculates is how much we should be spending on the education of our children. 156 million for next
013year. According to the state's calculation, taxpayers of Piscataway should be contributing 146 million towards that, which would mean we'd get just under 10 million in aid. Okay, we're and we're getting a little bit over the 10 million. So, they're they're currently overfunding us in this equalization aid. But key thing to note is you'll see when we get to the proposed tax levy revenue for next year, we are going to be $28 million below. Even after we do the tax increase that we're proposing for next year, even after you factor that in, we will be $28 million below what the state of New Jersey says the residents of T of Piscatoaway should be paying. It's not David Olivera saying it. It's not Superintendent Glover saying it. It's not the board members. It's the state of New
014Jerseyy's own formula that they use to calculate what our budget should be and how much the residents of Piscato should be paying towards it. Homeowners in in Piscatoaway again uh it's a it's a strong market in Piscatoaway which again if you're a homeowner that's good news. The bad news is that impacts the state aid population. you know, the the wealthier the community is, the lower the state aid and the more the state expects the community to pay towards that education. >> Uh ratables went up in Piscatoaway. We're up to 12.5 billion. Here's probably the one of the key numbers folks are interested in. The average assessed home in Piscataway went up from 520,317 to $567,318. That's the average assessed home. It's a sixth highest in Middle Sex County. Goes back to the old, you know,
015saying, strong schools equals strong home values. People move to a town because of the schools. They don't move there because they have a nice municipal building. They don't move there because um I don't know, they got a lot of Dunkin Donuts. They move there for the schools. >> Yes. and that drives the the popularity of the community and the home values in that community. So the sixth highest average assessed home value in Piscataway that's saying something positive about the schools that we have offered here for our students. Again, here's that list if you're interested. Property value. I will note here this number is different than the number on the previous slide because these are what they call equalized values. In simple terms, not every town has their home values updated. So the county, the state,
016they have to put that all that information into a formula and make them comparable. And when they do that, when they make the home values comparable across all the towns in the county, Piscatoaway has the sixth highest average residential value at 533,000. From 2024 to 2025, Piscatoway moved up one slot from 7th to sixth place in those rankings. So the tax levy Tax levy is what the homeowners of Piscatoaway contribute towards the education of students in Piscatoaway. It's the primary source of the budget funding. It accounts for 75%. In our budget, there are rules and limitations set in the tax levy. Uh the the base tax levy can only go up 2% per year. There are some exceptions though when uh healthcare costs are above a certain threshold. if you have enrollment large spikes in
017enrollment or large dips and if you're going to use what's called bank cap, which we'll get to, there was a healthcare cost waiver available this year and that's because the state of New Jerseyy's school employees health benefit plan increased 31.9%. So there was a healthcare cost waiver available and the district went into this budget cycle with bank cap available $266,371. I'll talk about bank cap in its own slide. We're allowed to go above the 2% tax levy increase for the healthcare cost waiver. So if our health care costs are higher than 2%. And the states are also higher, we have this waiver available to us. As I said, the state plan went up 31.9% back on January 1st. I'm sorry to say our projected healthcare cost increase is 30%. Um, we're experiencing an extremely difficult
018healthcare cost year this year during the current budget cycle. Uh, those on the fiscal committee are aware. I've kept them a breast of how far over budget we are. Um, it's been a significant challenge this year and we will be limping to the finish line at June 30th. >> That obviously impacts what the brokers project for us for next year. So, a significant increase to 30%. So based on the formula that's in the budget software, our healthcare cost waiver, the amount that we could go over the 2% tax levy is $7 million. Okay, that's the the maximum for the healthcare cost waiver this year. Bank cap, I mentioned that earlier. When a district doesn't use all of their when they don't raise taxes to the highest amount posed possible in a given year, they're able
019to save that money. They're able to bank it on the side and save it for a future year. And that's what they call bank cap. So the $266,371 I mentioned earlier, two years ago, the board only raised taxes on the residents of Piscatoaway by 1%. They could have gone higher, but they didn't. So, the money that was left over from then gets to carry over a couple years to use in the tax levy. Okay. So, that that's what bank cap is. And the district does have a little bit of bank cap available. You can only use bank cap if you've used all the waiverss that are available. And on a on an upcoming site, I'll point that out. With our current budget that we're presenting to the board and to the public today, we will
020have bank cap available going forward of just over a million dollars. So again, the proposed tax levy increase this year is not even the maximum increase that uh the board could recommend for the township. They are coming in a little bit below that. always keeping in mind the residents of the scatter. So, here's where we are. Here's our recommendation. This is our current tax levy. The standard 2% increase is just under 2.2 million. The recommended use of the healthcare cost waiver 6,266,371. We had talked we had considered using a healthcare cost waiver of 6 million. The reason why it's if if you're keeping track of the numbers, it's another 266,371 because that's the amount of our bank cap which we were going to use but we can't use because we have not used all our
021healthcare cost waiver. It's just which bucket they let you pick the money out of is all that is. >> Okay. So instead of using bank cap, we're using the healthcare cost waiver. And we're not even using all of it. So our proposed tax levy, it's a big percentage increase. There's no doubt about it. Nobody takes it lightly. $118 million. $118,276,96. I'm going to bring back a number from another slide, from a previous slide. Again, the local fair share is 146 million. So even after this increase, I said it earlier, we're $28 million below where the state said we should be for the residents of Miscato to be contributing to the education of the children. I also mentioned this earlier. Um we are not even going to the full amount allowed by the law. We're leaving
022uh a million dollars on the table because we are balancing the needs of the district versus the taxpayers of Piscatoaway. That money could be spent. Okay. There's a lot of great programs, a lot of great things that we could continue to do and grow and expand, but it's a balance between the residents and trying to be as efficient as possible. David, if I could just make one comment clarification, you mentioned 75% tax. That's 75% of our budget because often the residents are seeing a pie chart where 51% go, you know, goes to the schools, but that's from the total taxes collected between municipality, us, and for all the others. So 75% for here 118 is 75% of our total budget. >> Right. Correct. So just again some perspective on a year-to-year basis any tax increase
023is difficult to handle. Okay? No doubt about it. Um, my job is to present the facts and the information and try and take a longer term view, a perspective on what we're doing here in the district. I've had the good graces to work here for quite a few years now with all these board members. Over a 10-year period, the last 10 years from 2017 to our proposal for next year, the average tax increase, including this factors in the 7.7% we're proposing for next year, is 2.5%. Okay, so over a 10-year period, the average is 2.5%. Only three out of the last 10 years have we been over the average. This orange line is the average. Unfortunately, it's been the year we're in now and the proposal for next year. So, it hurts now. We get
024it. >> We get it. But all these other years, we were well below. And a lot of data in this presentation. That's why I started with the good stuff. I know it's already been dragged down. Um this is just a chart of again the average tax levy increase versus some comparative factors. Um the orange line is inflation. Okay. The blue line is our contractually agreed salary increase. And you can see the yellow and the yellow line is our total tax levy. And you can see many years the tax levy, the yellow line is below both the rate of inflation and our um contractually agreed percentage salary increase. So we've been efficient for many years. Unfortunately, some years you're on the the higher side of that equation. Again, some more comparative data for Middle Sex County.
025On a 4-year basis, we're middle of the pack in terms of our tax levy increase, 2.7%. This information is only through the current year. It does not include the projection for next year. Okay? So again, a lot of mixed numbers, but I I try and label all the numbers here so we we know what we're talking about. The four-year period, middle of the pack, 2.7. When you take a longer lens view, an 8-year period, 181 19 through 25, 26, you know, we're down in the bottom third, 2.1%. And here's a good one, too. This is a multi-year comparison of the state's calculation of the local fair share, how much the state says the residents should be contributing towards the education of our students. And the orange line is what our local tax levy actually is.
026And you can see we were right on it in 1718 and 1819. We were right on the formula. But since then, our expected our residents expected contribution has gone up, but the local tax levy has been a much more gradual increase. And for next year, here's that number again, 28 million gap between the local fair share and the tax. So, I keep harping on this to make sure the community understands that we aren't even taxing at a level that the state of New Jersey says we should be for our education. So, um yes, last year's budget cycle certainly was um there was a tax increase above the average and this year the recommendation is for one as well. The longer term view, we're below. according to the state of New Jersey, we're below. So that
027that is a model of efficiency when you have a longer lens than a one or a two-year budget cycle. >> And David, is it true that the two major factors used to calculate the local share are the property valuations and the district annual? >> That's correct. So earlier I talked about the state aid decrease as we try to efficiently build the budget. Balancing the state aid decrease balancing tax levy uh limitations imposed on us as well as the uh our desire to to balance the needs of the residents in retire in regards to the tax levy. Just important to note the burden of funding the budget continues to transfer from state via state aid towards the residents of Piscatoaway via the tax record. Okay. The state formula saying residents should be contributing more. So in
028the current budget or the proposed budget for next year fund balance uh is being used to fund what what I call some recurring items over the long term. This is not a a great budgeting practice. It's done particularly in more difficult years. Um fund balance should ideally only be used for one-time expenditures, things that we could walk away from in a heartbeat if we wanted to. Yeah, it might be nice to buy, you know, five more maintenance vehicles, but we don't have to. Those are the type of things you typically want to use fund balance for. Okay. and we have some of that fund balance allocated for some of those one-time items. Um, but some of it is used to pay for recurring expenses. Okay? So, it's a it's a balancing game. We also this
029year are going to be using $2 million of maintenance reserve to fund the budget. So, we have a reserve for maintenance reserve. Some of you are aware of it. It's been it's been talked about. Um the maintenance reserve can help us to pay for maintenance expenses to maintain our buildings in the district and we will be using $2 million of that money uh for next year's budget. Again, a measure taken to try and mitigate the tax increase. This is also not a bottomless pit. Okay, we are at the maximum allowed of 6.5 million because we've done a good job of saving funds over the years. We're recommending to use 2 million of it. That takes it down to 4.5 million. Unless we replenish it, it will stay at 4.5 unless we use it for other
030maintenance items and it will continue to decrease. So, it is not a long-term viable funding solution for the budget. Again, ideally, it's for one-time items. So, in summary, recommended tax levy increase is 7.7%. But our average over the last 10 years has been 2 and a.5%. State aid continues to be unpredictable. Right? The swings we talked about earlier in a slide. There is a lot of uh talk in the state. Many of us in Piscataway are involved at the state level. Myself, Connors, Mr. DMA. Um there's a lot of conversations with the governor and some some key senators about revisiting the formula and taking a look at it because of that unpredictability. So it would not surprise me if it was examined this year and possible recommendations for changes might help us might hurt us.
031We don't know. All right. I will continue to keep the fiscal committee informed and the full board as we get better information. um >> just finish my last point and then it's all yours. Bank cap again uh we have a million dollars available to be used during next year's budget cycles >> in this bank cap bucket if you will. >> Okay. So with that, I was going to comment to that this board and the recommendations um with your help and superintendent, we could have actually gone up a whole 1 million2,550, but we did not. >> Correct. >> Okay, just want to illustrate that. Number one. And number two, the reason that we are finding ourselves um in this situation similar to many uh individuals all over the state, not just in education, is because of
032healthcare costs. Is that the largest driver >> the number one reason the largest charge uh you know driver here is healthcare costs? >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. >> And if I can make a comment about you said maintenance reserve. There are different types of reserves such as capital reserves, maintenance reserves. Often people confuse them as savings where the capital reserve are restricted funds that we cannot transfer over to balance the budget. I want to make that clear. >> They are savings, but they're savings that are restricted. Right. >> Yes. So, um, and the next couple I think it's the next slides, um, touch on the capital reserve a little bit. >> Oh, not not quite yet. >> Not yet. This begins my my um the portion of the the presentation where we highlight again
033negativity dominates in the news on social media. Negativity negativity and we that's why I started with the video I did. We lose sight of the positive. Um preschool piscato is a positive. >> Okay. We are expanding up to 800 students next year. 707 statef funded students. My research uh I don't know what other districts are doing next year but based on current enrollment and if we project ourselves forward we'll be the 18th largest preschool program in the state and we'll be the fourth largest non-abbid. So non-abbid is a is a historical term. It identified some of our highest need districts, roughly 32 of them. Um they get a lot of state funding. They were uh early to the table for preschool programs. Um so they had a lot of funding and they were ahead of
034the race in in getting into the preschool program. And if you exclude those of all the other districts in the state, all of the other districts, we have the fourth largest preschool program. Why is this important? Early childhood development is critical for long-term student success. Free preschool is money saved for the taxpayers of Piscatoaway. Preschool is funded by the state. So instead of parent one and parent two having to pony up my girls are older 6,000 a year 8,000 a year whatever preschool costs these days more >> those families I save money >> because we offer a free preschool program here in Piscato >> very important to remember that >> I want to make one comment about innovative way in which we have gotten facilities in Piscato over the years for preschool. Two parochial schools
035have gone down, Our Lady Fanama and Cababrini. But it's a win-win situation where the school board could lease those those classrooms and put kids there. That gives us more capacity. You get more money based on the number of seats you have available. So that's a win-win for our community. those schools would go without students in them because the dasis of Matuchen closed those so those those schools now just to make that clear so it's a win so preschool in Piscataway it's very desirable for people to move here and board of education did it in a innovative way to get those seats and everybody wins >> free preschool >> free yes um this is just for information uh because it also illustrates the efficiency with which we operate the general fund budget with what I talked
036about the increase I talked about earlier. The free preschool seats are only free to the Piscatoway Board of Education for our regular education students. The funding formula says that each town must pay to educate their special education children for preschool. And it's just worth noting that those costs pri 5 years ago were 925,000. They're 2.275 million now. So they went up 1.35 million in 5 years. That money we didn't come with an extra question or or looking we built that into our budget. Okay. That was part of the 2 and 12% tax levy. Okay. Same with the transportation related to preschool. For many years, up until this year, pre transportation costs had to be paid by the district uh budget, not by the preschool line. That's another 825,000. So you're talking about over $2 million
037over the last five years that is in our budget and is being funded by, you know, tax levy and state aid all within that 2 and 12% that the residents have experienced these last 10 years. Again, important to remember that. Okay. So what else has been through efficiencies through great management of administrators and and our staff and the district. What else has kind of been in that budget over the last eight years of significance that is nobody came looking for extra money or asked extra questions. This was within the 2 and a half% of the of the annual tax levy increase. We've added school safety officers to the tune of almost an $800,000 increase in costs. We've had some of our special needs students, we've seen an increase in our most needy students. They require
038additional services. Okay, $500,000 increase in those type of expenditures. Our bus routes, buses that we pay other companies to do for us, the routes, those costs have gone up by $1.4 million over the last 8 years. Substitutes, $800,000 increase. We added middle school sports, expanded it significantly. We're up to a $470,000 budget line item for middle school sports. the charter schools. I talked about how the numbers have been increasing. That number has increased 660,000 over the last 8 years. So again, all of these items are paid for within the the budget for 2 and 12% average tax. This table again, Middle Sex County, 23 towns. This is actual expenditure data from 2023, 2024. Okay. We rank 20th out of 23 districts in the county and what we spend per student. The average is $18,298 per
039student. In Middle Sex County, we spend $16,424 per student. Yeah. and think back to my video. All those amazing things for all that lower cost. Um I challenge anybody to to tell us how as a district, an entire school community, we're not running efficiently. Um you see the amazing things we're doing for these dollar amounts. If we wanted to bring our spend from 16,424 to 18,298 per student, is that um $1,800 increase? $1,870 increase. >> Mhm. >> We would need 13.8 million more revenue. >> Wow. >> Just to get to the average in Middle Sex County. Okay. I don't think state's going to give it to us. If we want to get there, it's going to be a gradual increase in the tax money just to get to the average. >> So, we're one of
040the wealthiest, but we utilize the one of the least per pupil cost, meaning like we are the wealth one, we're in the top five, six, whatever it was. Yep. >> And then we are also though down um among among the most efficient in use of dollars per student in in the county. Correct. >> Just illustrating the dichotomy there. >> These next couple of slides will just Tom mentioned earlier about capital reserve. these will talk about some of the projects we've done. Um, we've done $33 million in projects the last 10 years. We have 11 million that should be completed this year. That's $44 million in projects. We have no bonded debt. We don't make debt service payments. We don't pay interest on our debt because we don't have any debt. We have some leases, but
041that's not bonded debt. That's different. those that have been around in town for a while and remember five years ago, uh, we assessed a referendum, the possibility of a referendum. We came up with a list of projects. My team, meaning our fantastic in-house maintenance team, along with some work from outside contractors, we've chipped away at 12.3 million of those that $80 million worth of projects we identified and we did it for 9.2 million. So, we did it for $3.1 million less than what the budgeted amount was in that initial referendum study. So kudos to uh again our our great maintenance staff. The school district's made up of so many different worthy components. Obviously teachers, frontline, administrators managing the operations, but we've got maintenance, we've got grounds, which is a component of maintenance. Our custodial staff,
042again in my uh mindset, that's a component of maintenance. transportation, all our great aids, our secretarial staff, they all play an important role in in what we do here. We completed a $15 million ESIP project. Okay. So, that's a uh a bunch of efficient energy efficiency upgrades that will be financed by the savings that we recognize in those upgrades over the next got about 12 more years left on that. Yeah, it stands for the energy savings improvement program of the state. Correct. >> I'm not going to recite these this list, but this is a list of 33 heading towards $44 million worth of projects that have been funded through capital reserve, which many in the community might hear about and might be misunderstood about. >> Um the and the capital reserve is funds saved by
043the district to use to improve our facilities. Can't tell you how many times we get visitors here to the district and they're impressed by our buildings. These are some of the current year projects we're doing. This was in a previous presentation. I won't spend too much time on it. Again, just summary information about capital reserve and maintenance reserve because again board members here in the community, they ask me, we talk about it all the time. Okay, we have no bonded debt. Our facility upgrades and improvements are relying upon the capital reserve and the maintenance reserve to maintain those buildings. Our capital reserve is currently about $15 million. It's restricted to building additions, renovations, and upgrades. Let me repeat. It's restricted to building additions, renovations, and upgrades. So, we have some projects in the pipeline. Soon
044enough, that 15 million will be spent. It's not, you know, again, a never- ending well of money. Um, but we're keeping our facilities in the best possible shape. Maintenance reserve, again, I talked about that. that is restricted to required maintenance of school facilities. We had 6.5 million subject to withdrawal that we're recommending for next year of $2 million. Okay? And that 2 million must be spent on the maintenance of our buildings and specific accounts that that relates to. If we take out 2 million in the budget and we only spend 1.8 million on maintenance of our buildings, that 200,000 has to go back into maintenance reserve. You can't use it to give the taxpayers an extra break. It's not how it works. Okay, I'll just show this pie chart and then superintendent's going to take
045over for a few slides. This is a distribution of our expenditures for next year. The largest slice of the pie, no surprise to anybody, are our salaries for all our staff. Again, I've said this before, I think back in February, we are a people driven business. We interact with students. We educate students. That's man power. Man, woman power. People power. Sorry. People power. Bad word. Right. >> The next biggest piece. >> 24.6% is benefits. Okay. Benefits. You combine those two together, you're at 76.1% of our budget, salaries and benefits. And you can see all those other categories there. Okay. Superintendent Glover is going to take over for a few slides and talk you through some of our expenditures. >> Thank you, sir. So, with that, we understand the importance of growing your district. The district
046grows by continuing to have innovative initiatives. Now, despite what has been presented thus far, we still understand that the residents, students, the staff, the families want to conceive and continue to have a well-rounded excellent education. And that's what our role is as leaders in this district. So, I want to spend time on talking about what our plans are even though we are talking about having to make some fiscal adjustments where we are reducing some areas. the science of reading. We talk about making sure our students are prepared for 2030 and beyond. There are some initiatives that were put in place two years two years ago took full steam this year. There's some right sides we need to do to make sure that our teachers and our students are prepared to deliver good content to our
047students in the area of language arts literacy. Over a decade ago, the district turned to the use of iPads. We have been in conversations with our current vendor of Apple and enhancing that partnership and understanding that we maximize our iPad initiative. Our iPad initiative will continue to go between grades 2 through 12, but we're going to make sure that we utilize it in our early childhood grades equally. But this is an initiative where we're talking about as technology changes rapidly and we all know that because folks change their iPhones the Samsung phones every 6 months in some cases when we talk to our business partners they are telling that they are making adjustments in their technology every 3 to 6 months. no >> 3 to 6 months. That means the iPad that we buy today,
048we have to get it maximum use out of it because we understand that the technology behind that is already changing by the time we finally receive it in our our classroom. But we want our students to be prepared for postsecary college and career. One of the things that I assessed relatively quickly when I came in here is are our human resources and our physical resources getting to those students who are most need and need could be our gifted and talented students and it could be those students are struggling a little bit. It could be our first our newcomers to our community who are arriving from another country. So we're going to assess how our tutorial services have been delivered to make sure that it's getting to our students quicker and more efficiently. We all have
049heard the term artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence intelligence is more than just chat GBT. It's more than co-pilot claude and all the other terms that people think. It's not about just creating papers for our students to go and copy and cheat. Artificial intelligence when done correctly can actually revolutionize the way the district. >> It can revolutionize the way we look at our purchasing product, the way we also to provide professional development and create learning plans for our students. The biggest area that I want to make sure we look at is how do we create individual learning plans for all students so that every pathway that a child has takes them to that ultimate goal of graduating college and career ready. Our in-house curriculum design we don't pay for other folks to develop the curriculum in our
050district. Professionally develop our teachers and we allow our teachers to develop. It's a cost savings but it also builds better capacity in our teachers. And then when we talk about, you saw an activity tonight from our students from Eisenhower and he talks about inclusive and inclusive education, inclusive curriculum. You think about how we talk about our diversity, but we also talk about making sure all of our students are included in the teaching and learning environment. We are not going to stop making sure that all students feel welcome and have a well-rounded educational experience. We talked about the preschool expansion and the preschool initiative. I want to harp on this as someone who early childhood is near and dear to me. I'm a believer that the more seats we have, the greater opportunity we have to
051increase our enrollment. So I think about that if we have 800 seats, if we can get that up to a,000 seats and we know the private providers that are currently in the Skyway, parents are going to want to save. And I and I know David said he hasn't had children in the district, I mean in the early childhood space in a while. It's about $2,000 a month. >> Yep. >> Do the math. That's $24,000 a year that you're saving a parent >> for one kid, >> for one child. And the discounts don't come just because you have more children. >> So, what I'm looking at is if we can get up to a,000, that gets our numbers back up to 500 students entering into our kindergarten ecosystem >> and continue to build that. >> So,
052our goal is to really build our preschool space and make our students and our families love being in Wisconsin. They won't leave. >> Mhm. Trust me, I have a feeling that in this in my tenure as superintendent, we're going to see that that trend go back up. I can't control housing the housing market, but I can control what the schools look like. And I can tell you with our neighboring districts in those towns in Bergen County, parents will pay taxes if they have great schools, >> you know, and just check out what they pay in Bergen County taxes. I don't want to read each slide, but I just want to just harp that our preschool budget and our initiative is essential to making sure we grow our our students, grow our enrollments, excuse me, David's
053uh our BA has truly talked about personnel and what it taught 75 to 76% of every every district, but in some areas could be a little more is all wrapped. personnel and we understand we don't shy away from that. But I want to harp on what that means. That means us going back to our strategic goals of recruitment, retention, and profession developing teachers that want to come and work here. I've had the pleasure of learning that a significant number of our educators started off in the Seattle or have chosen to stay here. And trust me, they could probably leave and get a little more money in another district. Our professional educators want to be here. And it behooves us to try to compensate them as best we can. You want the best, you got to
054pay for the best. That's what we're trying to do. We're not the I'm not going to lie, sitting here and I'm saying this in front of our union president. They may come back and bite me sometime. We don't pay the highest salaries, but we try to be fair and we also try to make sure our teachers are happy here. Our staff members are happy here and that's why they come to work here. We talked about healthc care costs. I don't have to necessarily go through that again, but it's a it's a significant cost and I think all of us understand no matter where we work, we want good healthcare benefit. Bless you. Good healthcare benefits allows us to feel comfortable in taking our children, our family members to the doctor. Let me understand the variable
055cost in that. I'm a big believer artificial intelligence and other technologies can allow us to be more efficient. That's part of the space where we hope over the next few years we can see some savings, but that also means training people up. That takes time. Some folks adapt a lot quicker to technology and change. >> However, we want to make sure we do it the right way. But we want to be more efficient. We're trying to be more efficient in transportation. David didn't mention this, but I want our Priscatoaway families to be reminded that we pay for transportation. Transportation is an option just for every student in our district. Some it's a minor cost, but you think about what it costs to feel safe. Your child is on a bus back and forth on a
056regular basis. Staff additions. I know there's there's there's language going out there about what we may cut. I wanted to just show that we're still trying to grow. Our ESL students deserve to be given the same accommodations and outcomes as any other student. We're currently operating under a waiver. Let me say that again. We're currently operating under a waiver by the New Jersey Department of Education. We actually should be funding much more and building. we don't have the space. So the fact that we're trying to bring our students, make them feel comfortable and educate them the same way as we educating any other student speaks volumes that we've been able to do things with on our waiver, but we need to add them. >> Special education teachers are our folks who are wellrounded just like
057all of our teachers, but they're wellrounded with another trait. But it's so hard in this in this environment right now to find special education teachers, special education certified teachers. We have to add David mentioned about the related service costs that go over educating our students. Some our students who may have a little more challenges, a little more need occupational therapist, speech therapists, speech pathologists are part of that increase in our portfolio. the assistant principal there because it's it's my philosophical belief and research based belief that in order to have instructional leaders in your school, you need to make sure you have leaders in all those schools. >> And that assistant principal will be supporting all of our schools so that we have an assistant principal in all of our K through eight spaces. >> PreK,
058excuse me, I'm sorry, prek through eight spaces. With the preschool edition, we're talking about 15 full-time employees. 10 prek teachers, one administrator, four support positions. >> Yes, m president. >> With the preschool expansion, those funds are coming from a separate pot of money, correct, than the general fund. >> Preschool funding is Yes. A fund 20. It comes from federal aid. However, when it comes to sex education in preschool, we act upon that. >> Correct? >> So, this is the part where folks say, "Okay, well, we're doing this. There's some there's some adjustments." Our goal is to not have these adjustments impact the class size, impact the teaching and learning environment. and dust far. And we've been working on this even prior to my arrival in November, but since November, we've been looking at where can
059we be more efficient and still not impact class size, the teaching staff, and I do not want our teachers to feel like they have to run away from our district. There's there's some strategies we have, but this is the impact across our district. We understand that there will be instructional positions that we have to make some adjustments in support staff positions that we have to make adjustments. Secretarial operational and administrative as you note you see 38 and a half FTE full-time employees. That's what we proposed. You'll see another slide that talks about what the net impact will be in the district. six preschool positions. You're saying, "Well, we're adding, but what do you mean you're adding leading?" You'll understand in a minute when I explain that positions are being collapsed, combined based on enrollment in
060department needs. Data BA has explained our enrollment has taken a dip over the last several years. And in some spaces, we've had to rightsize classroom, but not so that our numbers jump to where you're seeing 30 students, I don't even want to see 28 students in our K to 5 ecosystem. High school's a little different. We understand our courses or middle school could be a little different depending on the course, but that's not our goal to have class sizes that go beyond the current policy of 25 outside. And wherever possible, and this is key, there are vacancies within your district that come about. When those vacancies can either be eliminated or we can make adjustments so that we don't fill them right now, that's what we're going to do. That's how we plan on reducing
061I don't want to see people lose their jobs. I don't want to see the impact in our class sizes and on our staff, >> right? >> And I also understand it's an impact on our community. So, we're balancing both sides, being very transparent to the community. Our goal is for a parent not to feel the impact, a student not to feel the impact of saying, "Hey, I noticed that this teacher was missing." That's not what we're trying to do. The net reduction of staff members would be 23 positions. I can go back real quick additions that are essential. Reductions in order to balance the budget. Net staff reductions be 23 positions. other expenditure reductions. We didn't just look at staff. We looked at other states. I made the decision in talking with my team about
062what's the effectiveness of some of our programs. So parents, you can hear me say that the superintendent came in and said if it doesn't show impact and we cannot justify it in the work over several years. I look at cohort analysis anywhere from 3 to 5 years. Then why are we doing the jump ahead summer program this year will be eliminated? It's going to be replaced with other things that will be supported by community education foundation but that jump ahead program we are eliminated. I'm sure that there will be parents who want to have a conversation with me about these two sports will be elimination of field hockey and gymnastics. Listen, I'm a big believer in extracurricular activities. I'm an athlete at heart. However, combined those programs have approximately 20 student athletes. Combined between middle
063school and high school combined, the cost was pretty significant. I would love to bring them back. However, at this point in time, those are two and the only two sports programs that we are eliminating. Going back to that slide that David presented a while back ago, when you think about the sports programs that are being cut by other districts just to eliminate two that had a participation that was declining and less than approximately 20 students, student athletes, we can understand why that may have to be eliminated this time. assistant coach reductions. This one I'm going frame it this way for you. It's the postponement of technology enhancement equipment from our general budget. However, as recent as today, we are looking at grant options that may be available for us to increase it. And in talking
064with our partner Apple, we may be able to do some creative things to also offset the cost so we still increase technology options in our district. Again, I say opportunities. We've already started looking and we have some promising grants on the horizon that may be able to help us enhance our technology. Transportation routes will be consolidated. Our goal is not to have students get up and get on the bus at 5:30 in the morning just to say they get to high school on time at 7:00. That's not what's going to happen. But we do have some spaces where there's one family living on the street that takes us off the route and we may have to consolidate and bring that family back in. And as students graduate, routes can change and that's something that the
065team has been looking for. Projected savings from all this is $1 million. other operate other operating expenditures. This is our summary. I want to just make inference to this last slide here. Parents, notice on here we did not say we're reducing the course offerings. We're not reducing AP courses, gifted and talented courses. We're not reducing special education supports. We're not reducing. You don't see that coming across where we're saying we're touching teaching and learning. In fact, you'll be happy to say we're going to we're going to be very innovative on how we grow our teaching and learning spaces for our teachers and our students. And this class size, we have to be committed to that. I do not believe that students learn best when there's 30 students crammed into it. I I will not have
066that. the board and I will have different conversation about what we can do before we have students especially in the K to3 space K to five actually but they're just showing up that's not a space safe space or a healthy space ongoing challenges and I don't know if the word is always challenges for everything but it's just a reality of where we're at in this current economy salaries and and and expenses aren't going to change and I'm going to say this We're about a year away from negotiations with one of our unions and two years away from negotiations with another union. And let's be fair again, we want to keep those great educators that we have. We're going to have to think about that. That's going to be an impact on our budget as we
067forecast the future. I don't think that's a challenge. I think that's is a necessary outcome of keeping great talent >> and recruiting great talent. And if our strategic plan we follow it, you'll see which goal that is for members. Healthcare cost across the state of New Jersey. I think the governor is going to be faced with this challenge is in all aspects. Higher ed is facing even more than we are being hit. Preschool cost. I said we're going to grow preschool. I would love to be able to There's a couple buildings we have our eyes on. If we get to 1,000 students in our ecosystem, trust me, I I'll feel much better about our long-term goals of growing our enrollment. Supports for our families, interventions for underperforming students, and technology are continuing to change. I
068will turn it back over to BA as we get ready to close out with a couple more slides. >> Before I get to that tax analysis slide, um I just want to make a couple more points kind of related to health benefits. Um this is the most challenging health benefit cost year in my career. It's having a significant impact on the current budget and I think you see the evidence here of the impact on next year's budget. Um, I pray at night that next year's a better day. Actually, better year, I should say, more than just a day. Um, >> because that will continue to have an impact on our our budget development and our allocation of revenue. And I talked about how preschool is funded with state funding for our reg regular education students.
069Dr. Connor has brought up, we have a couple of rented buildings. The overall scope of our preschool program is amazing, but um the increase in health benefit costs is actually pushing that program where the state funding will not cover all of the costs. That becomes a budgetary item that the taxpayers, the general fund budget will have to sustain if we want to maintain the robust program that we have. So um nothing to quote worry about for 2627's budget but that is something when we try to plan forward we have to keep in mind um and I wanted all the board members to hear about it. Um we will discuss it more at fiscal committee meetings and we'll monitor it. Uh but that that is a trickle down effect of the health benefit costs. It impacts
070our overall budget and it's so pervasive that it um will start moving into our preschool budget. >> Okay. Now, the the tax levy uh chart I got to change the colors for next year. Um the white's not coming through great. This last year is the uh the column for next year. There's our proposed tax levy. You can see this beautiful row here. Four years in a row at no debt service payment and total tax levy. There is our average assessed value of a home. This is how much the average assessed homeowner pays in school taxes next year based on our proposed levy. It is a $453 impact on the average assessed homeowner. Again, everyone on this board and this administration is is fully aware. Uh we don't take it lightly, but we do think it's
071important to as efficiently as possible maintain school programs and operation that we have in place. I want to go back to one more thing because I I was remissed in saying this on the health benefit expenses. I also want to acknowledge um the board support, administration support, and the support of our our two unions. Um our HR director and myself have spoken with the unions. They're fully aware of the issues that exist, and this kind of honest conversation is what is most for me appreciated uh in this Piscatoaway school community. the honest conversations between the board, administration, and our two associations. So, I did want to acknowledge that >> 453 is a big number for one year. No doubt. >> Mhm. >> Again, when you look over a longer horizon over eight years, the average
072is $152 a year. >> Much more reason. We had years and we had one year a few years back $2. >> Oh, yeah. We had two backto-back years where it was in the 30s. 36 and 30. >> 34 and 36. >> Oh yeah, there they are. >> 2023, 2024. >> If you have a longer term perspective, nobody likes tax increases. $154, $152 a year, I think, is much more reasonable over a longer term horizon. We're just in a rough patch now, but we're going to come out the other side. Okay, last bit calendar. >> The board is super focused on transparency. We had two of our board members gave a presentation on it last week. >> Yes. >> Okay. Um we have been we did a presentation with a lot of these slides a month
073ago. Okay. But even before that, when I came to Scoutway 11 years ago and they told me we were going to have a committee meeting for finance with Dr. Connors and they told me they invite the public to it. I'm like, what? What is that? We're one of the unique districts in the state that has the public involved in committee meetings of the board of education. Okay. The budget is reviewed in fiscal committee meetings. It's talked about both on an ongoing basis and when we get into the planning stage. So when we talk about transparency, let's talk about the fact the fiscal planning and operations committee. All our committees, but I'm I'm most focused on fiscal are open to the public. >> Yep. >> Information is on the website. >> There's been discussions about the
074budget for several months in that committee. >> Correct. >> Okay. And these slides have been online since February 12th. Oh, no. February 13th, 2026, the day after the board meeting. >> Here we have right here, February 12th. And this is somewhat new for us because until last year, >> we had pretty good run >> with the budget. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Last year, not so great. Uh, and again this year, but this year we said, you know what? Okay. Last year wasn't just an anomaly. Unfortunately, we upped our game. So on February 12th, we did a budget preview presentation. Did >> as board president pointed out that was posted on the website the day after the meeting, >> February 13th, 2026. >> Here we are tonight going through the tentative budget. This presentation will be
075posted on the website tomorrow, >> 26. >> Okay. The budget is due to the Department of Education County Superintendent on Friday. Okay. So after the vote tonight, I will wrap up all the the paperwork and and the software submission and that will go in by Friday. This is a tentative budget. We do not advertise the budget until the county approves it and says, "Advertise the budget." Mhm. >> I don't know what municipalities do. I don't know what counties do. I don't work there. Okay. I know what we do and that's what we do. Okay. After the county, excuse me, after the county superintendent approves our budget, we generate the ad what they call the advertised budget. It will be advertised in our newspaper of record, the whole news tribune. Guess what? It has been for
076the last I'll talk about the 11 years I've been here. It has been advertised prior to the b final budget vote every single year in the newspaper. Okay. This year we will also post it on our website. Okay. I expect the county will approve it. It's submitted by Friday within two weeks would be my guess. There are statutory guidelines on the minimum amount of days you must advertise the budget prior to the budget vote. We're always in compliance with that. Usually, we're ahead of that that game, that deadline, the public hearing. And this is the actual budget vote. So, when people talk about, oh, you didn't present information prior to the vote. The vote tonight is to give the tentative budget to the county for the county to say it's okay for us to advertise.
077Then we have what's called a public hearing. Public can come and speak about the budget. We have public comment tonight. Members of the public wish to speak at the public hearing on April 30th. Members of the public can speak. That is when the final budget vote occurs. After that vote, the what's called the user friendly budget, state statutory requirement, that is posted on the website the day after that meeting. That'll be posted on May 1st. So that is the school district calendar, the school district timeline for the budget, the school district transparency and openness for the budget process. And David, thank you. Thank you for that clarification. And then when the budget book does go out in the first paragraph you always put but I think a lot of people in the in the Piscatoi
078don't understand this is that Piscatoway Municipal Township and the Piscatoiway board of education are co-terminus which means that we share the same boundaries but the school district is an independent legal entity operating under title 18A education of the New Jersey statutes and is subject to the rules and supervision of the state board of education and commissioner of the State Department of Education. We are not your municipal government. And these are these are why these are different. >> That I will close with another reminder of why we do what we do. >> Best day >> graduation day >> from prek through 12th grade and sometimes beyond working towards uh graduation day for our students. So with that, that's our 26 27th END OF PRESENTATION. >> DAVID, fantastic job, David. >> Thank you. Thank you so much.
079Thank you to both um David Oliver, our business administrator, and a huge thank you to our um superintendent, um Mr. Glover who came in and really had to work tirelessly from the moment he got here in November on uh this uh current uh tentative uh proposed budget. And as a board president, as a as a board, we uh even fiscal plannings and operations, we really did push back quite a bit uh to see um what what uh could be done in terms of trying to get more uh cost savings. So, I do appreciate uh the fact that you guys were really really diligent in trying to continue the service of being fiscally responsible with the funds that we are allocated um or needing from the the township. Thank you. Okay.