001Angie, Maria, or Angela will have to drive. I'm hoping that now as it seems like things are returning a little bit more to normal that people want to be substitute drivers again. I think COVID had a lot to do with the mentality of people wanting to get on the bus with kids. There's also, I guess, there's a shortage of drivers. We're not only competing with Jackson and Seaman Tubb and Jay's Bus Service. We're also competing with Walmart, Amazon, and I have Sirius XM Radio. And almost every commercial in the morning is from the national trucking companies looking for drivers. You know, it's the same CDL that you need to drive that truck that you need to drive our bus, which is a shame. They really should create a national school bus endorsement that only allows
002you to drive a van or a 54 passenger bus, not a truck. But there's no conversation that I'm aware of to do that. The other thing that I wanted to bring up that maybe either Neil or you can. Can explain is I've heard complaints that well, there's so many buses that we see that aren't full so you might want to you know Yes, so the reason why you see buses that are sometimes not full is because of the distance they have to travel especially on the West Freehold side There is quite a distance. It's it's right. It's not as densely populated as a neighborhood. So it's very spread out So sometimes when you're looking at those runs You have to you pick up less kids in order to pick up the time So we would
003have the bus coming upwards of an hour before school started to get all, you know, fill the bus to 54. Yeah. There's also, too, you get a number of parents who don't put their kids on the bus. They have a bus pass. Yeah, that's why they're so crowded. Yeah. And so you have to route that student whether they actually step foot on the bus or not. They might get on the bus once or twice a year. You have to offer them a bus pass. So, you know, you can ask Ms. Patton, at the high school level, what are they routing, 65 kids on the bus? Because they know they're not going to. Now, if we have a driver out, they're putting multiple buses together. You know, they fit. They make sure that the numbers work.
004But I know that some parents have had to check. And that day, that bus is not going to either be the same bus or it's not, the time's going to change. Or sometimes there's not even, it's just canceled. Yeah, exactly. And we are, and they outsource a variety of different bus companies too. That's the one thing we have not done this year. We've had some, especially in the fall, we had a number of buses that were, because we were trying to catch up with all the people that left or were sick or for whatever reason, you know, were knocked out because of being a close contact. We never canceled the route. We had some routes extremely late, as Mr. Dixit said, up to an hour. But, you know, it has gotten better. But so we
005are, I think the staff is burnt out, just like the teachers are burnt and everyone else is burnt from what's going on the last two years. I think our drivers are, you know, it's every day. I was down there two weeks ago. And as everyone's walking in and saying, oh, by the way, you're doing this on Monday, you're doing that on Monday. And every day is a different story down there for what they're, you know, anticipating for who they're picking up, who they're doubling up. So, you know, I want to thank everyone down there. Angie, the drivers, the attendants, it's been a lot of change this year and they've done a great job of getting our kids to school in the best possible way. So you guys have any more questions on transportation? I'll roll
006into this. I'm not going to go through the whole presentation. Neil's part that he did last time, this is... The same as what it was two weeks ago with a change, a couple of numbers based on state aid figures. But this is a very collaborative process, as Mr. Dix said last time. I want to thank, again, everyone who's been involved from central office to the building administrators, the other budget managers on the board. We start this process in October, and it takes a lot of time and effort to get to this point that we're at tonight. I'll just go through a couple of budget basics. Some might be new to our budget. If you have never taken the accounting class, the way it works here, our projected revenue plus our fund balance will equal our
007appropriations. Simple as that. When we refer to the current year, 21-22 year budget, it's as of February 1st. So it's not the budget that started off July 1. What the state does is they know there's going to be transfers during the year. So up through February 1st, any transfers that occurred between the appropriation lines, that will be presented tonight. They also put in the carryover purchase rooms from the prior year, and I'll address that as we talk about the appropriation lines. The three major budget funds that we talk about are Fund 10. This is what we're going to speak about for 99% of this evening's presentation. That is our general operating fund. That's where all the salaries are. That's where transportation, property services comes from. Our teachers are there. Our special education costs are there.
008This is the meat and potatoes of what we do when we design our budget. Fund 20, the only time we discuss it at budget time is on the budget resolution you see tonight. This is for the federal grants that we receive. In a typical year, it would only be IDEA and the title grants, titles 1 through 4. And what we would typically do for those, we would budget 85% of the current year appropriation for the future year because we will not find out those numbers until... June or July earliest. What's different this year is that over the last two years, the federal government has provided COVID relief in the form of ESSER grants. So if you look at the resolution, you'll see a pretty large number for the current year. It's about $5 million. That's
009because we have ESSER I, II, and III flowing through that. Next year, that number drops off significantly because the only thing that's left that we know of is the second half of the ARP ESSER III grant. Like I said, it's only part of the resolution. It's really not part of our discussion tonight. And lastly is Fund 40, the Debt Service Fund. This represents the tax levy that was approved by the voters in Freehold Township back, the last referendum was in 2001. So that debt's over 20 years old now, and it's all that's been refinanced, and that's why we still have a balance to pay, but we're paying less overall. But that'll show up when we talk about the tax consequence for our budget. As I said last time, school districts are not immune from global
010events. You've gone to the store. You've gone to the pump. You know, you've looked at your home energy bill. You're paying more. We're paying more as well. As we just discussed, there's a labor shortage out there, not just for bus drivers. Teacher shortage. There's a lot of people, for whatever reason, whatever jobs that are being posted, there's not a lot of applicants that want to come and work for the board's ed right now, as I said, for fuel prices. The example I gave at the last meeting was that if you looked at our energy bill for natural gas and heating between Thanksgiving and the end of January last year, we spent $35,000. This year for that same period of time, we spent $75,000. So that's function of two things. One, the commodity price of natural
011gas has gone up a tremendous amount. And number two, as we've gone through and we're almost complete now with our ESIP, our Energy Savings Improvement Plan, we've converted a number of our HVAC units and our hot water heaters from electric to natural gas. So we anticipated using more commodity. What we didn't anticipate three years ago was that the price would spike up so much over such a short period of time. So that'll be reflected in the budget. There is no longer any real works in progress. I just want to update the board on what we had said the last time. State aid, we received an additional $241,000 worth of 5%. What we're looking to do with this money is add one additional teaching staff member. We're not sure what the placement will be. We're also
012looking to put some money into the transportation world, whether it's to fix the contract for salaries or to apply to some of our increased costs for fuel that we're seeing here. But that would encompass the majority of that $241,000. Now, I'm going to use two words that I never thought I would use since I've been doing this for 19 years. It's full funding. Based upon our current enrollment, we are $200,000 away from our full funding from the state funding formula. So that's a good thing, but it's also a bad thing because our enrollment has been going down each and every year. I think it peaked back in 2008, 2009. So what will happen next year, depending on what the state's budget is, we'll probably get to that full funding. And if our enrollment doesn't start
013to go up, if it continues to go down, our state A will then start to go down. So, you know, we're at the top of the roller coaster hill and we'll start to go down unless our enrollment does start to increase. Benefits, we are self-insured for medical, prescription, and dental. We're projecting a 4% increase for medical and Rx, which is very good. For those of you who remember the budget presentations from four or five years ago, we were talking 20s and 30% increases. Since we went to self-insurance, we've had a 2, a 0, a 3, and a 4% increase. Our dental insurance has been self-insured since Brian Boyle was here, and I think for the last decade we've not had an increase in those rates. So we're doing well in that aspect of our budget.
014Transportation, we discussed this. We know there's a national bus driver shortage, and we're in competition with a lot of people, including surrounding districts. One of the surrounding districts, who we just lost two drivers to, is paying $30 an hour, which is about $4.50 more than what we start at. um and is guaranteeing them six hours or six and a half hours of time whether they're working or not which gets them not only health benefits but also gets them into the pension system what a lot of people don't know is that back in 2010 2011 when they added two new tiers to the pension system you now have to work 32 hours a week to qualify for pension none of our new drivers over those last decades done that so it's you know there are people
015other districts of this competition out there This is something as I said we're going to have to address whether it's next year or the year after we're going to have to fix this to help at least make us competitive and keep our existing drivers that we have. We said before we're expecting a shortfall if we keep our current tiering structure of four or five drivers. If we go to the four tiers we'll start at even for next year. Items to note, we talked about this last time we've got three more buses that we need to purchase. They are more expensive. New Jersey's added some new California standards for emissions. Our bus this year was $96,000. A 54-passenger bus next year will be $113,000. And we also spoke about we need a new radio system. This
016had been budgeted for 2021, but then because of COVID and there was uncertainty what the state was going to do when they reset their budget in July of that year, if we would lose state aid, we decided to forego it that year. But if you speak to anyone who's been down in the transportation department this year, it's time for it to go. There's certain parts of the town it's very hard to hear. So we did put back in a new radio system that we will at least purchase along with three new buses. We have increased funding for cybersecurity. We have done a lot of work the last three or four years in improving in this area There are some prerequisites now that we have to have in place before June 30th of this year First
017even keep our cyber insurance what's happening now that schools and municipalities are our big targets right now what's happening out there with the hackers and so, you know our I think our policy next year is projected to be $22,000. That's a 100% increase. But they're also talking about if you don't do a couple other things and have them in place in time, your deductible will go up to $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 or if not higher. So we've got a couple things we need to do in next year's budget to continue improving our cybersecurity. We're also returning about $25,000 to the elementary schools for co-curricular stipends that were a part of the 2021 budget before COVID. So we're putting those stipends back in. We're also putting in... About $25,000 for a uniform refresh for athletics. Other than
018the stipends for salaries for athletics and co-curriculars, the budgets haven't increased since I've been here for six years. So there's some equity issue out there in terms of which teams are getting their uniforms redone every year. So we're going to, for at least one year, put some additional funds to that to help resolve that issue. And we've also put aside some additional funds for the transportation staff for our fuel costs for both the buses and to heat and cool our schools and contract routes. Well, I've said this a number of times, we keep 99% of our students in district. We currently only project to have nine students out of district next year. The cost of those contracted routes, because they too are looking for CDL drivers, has gone up astronomically. We have a student right
019now who started middle of the year at a district. The cost, because there's no one wants to take it, so they put up these rates like $700 a day. That's what you have to pay. So we put an initial $50,000 into there. Can I ask you a question about that? Sure. I know, like, if you're sending your kid to a private school and you're entitled to busing, you get busing. Do we ever say to parents, I know the high school does this sometimes. we can't provide a bus route for you here's a stipend instead non-public is run through the regional high school district by code so they handle that for us and they what's happening in that realm is because of the private carriers want to tier their buses as well they make more money
020if they work for let's say middletown has a lot of outsourced buses They want to run that bus three or four tiers a day. If they're doing a non-public run, it's typically one tier, and it's not worth their time. So currently there is nobody receiving transportation for the non-public schools the second year in a row for our district. Like I said, the high school handles it for us, and then we pay them for what they have to pay. So all those parents have received aid and leave over the last two years. It works out for us, a little bit less work. we've got to pay the regional to do the work for us so as i said before we're going to increase uh one teacher we're not sure where it's going to go but this
021is due to the increase in state aid And then lastly, I mentioned this last time, the assessed value of the township is projected to increase 9.4%. This is huge. This is important because when we talk about what the tax rate is projected to be next year, you use that number, you divide that into the tax that will be raised, and as we said last time, we're going to project a tax rate decrease. I'm not sure what's going to happen with your personal taxes because we're only one portion of this, but... our portion of the tax rate will decrease for the fourth or fifth year in a row. I'll run through the numbers real quick. The only thing that really changed on this is the state aid, and I did tweak the tuition fees because now
022that the full budget's in, I had the budgeted numbers charged the outside districts for special education students that we take in. But as you see here, tax levy is our primary source of revenue. We're projecting to go up 2%. It's about $1.4 million. Fund balance, we strive to keep this, at least I have the last few years, keep it around $2 million. It's down slightly by $22,000. That's because we had a little bit of an excess surplus that had to be appropriated for 21-22. We didn't have any for this year. The goal is for as long as we can to keep it at $2 million. State A's, we said, that's up 5.1%. Hopefully next year we'll get another small increase and then hopefully enrollment will go up because then future budgets will probably be talking
023about some slight decreases in state aid. But for now, we'll take the $241,000 and call it a day. Extraordinary aid. This is the funding the state provides us. for our most needy special education students. We did receive over a million dollars last year, but my concern is that the state up until last year had never fully funded Extraordinary Aid. They were funding us at a 50 to a 59% rate. So we are projecting to a little bit more revenue and let's see if they can repeat that act for a second and a third year and we will continue to increase that number if it's warranted. But I just, you know, I want to see them, I don't want to get fooled and bump the number up to a million dollars and have them say, oh,
024by the way, we can only bump 50% again. That creates a problem list for our future surplus numbers. Tuition fees are down slightly, about $50,000, and that is primarily because we have one less student that we're accepting next year. I don't remember if they graduated or if the district took them back. Otherwise, it's the fees that we collect from the other districts for special education students and for the typical preschool students that attend the ECLC. transportation fees we don't have this is for the students that come to the ECLC we used to if you remember each transport the borough that number was several hundred thousand dollars but we are no longer in that business semi is a number provided to us by the state this is revenue that the federal government gives to the state
025who then gives to us for our special education students that are also Medicaid eligible We do all the work, or I should say Ms. Williams does all the work, and I think we get 40% of the funds, and the state keeps 60%. So, yeah, this is the number we have to put in, and it's the number they're projecting for us to have next year. miscellaneous revenue is down about $249,000. Miscellaneous revenue is everything from the interest that we earn to the buses that we sell to the facility rentals that we have. The reason that it's down, as I stated last time, is because last year, or the current year we're in now, was the last year projected ESIP pay for performance rebates. So that cycle's done. we haven't received the money yet. So what will
026happen is I don't want to double budget again because it impacts our surplus. When the money comes in, when you look at our audit for 22-23, I'm pretty sure that we'll see is that they'll show a budget number for miscellaneous revenue at $265, but you'll see an actual revenue of $3,350. So if we budget it again and they're delayed again for whatever reason, BPU was delayed because of COVID or because we had to refile our final application because of change of the equipment we're going to purchase, they're just behind in getting some money. But I have started to get the letters that they're going to start sending phase one funds soon. I know this is causing a lot of questions about that. yeah do you so do we have any anticipation like is this going
027to be something that happens within the next couple months is this something that's going to so phase one should all be paid out before the end of the year i believe i've gotten at least seven of the eight letters i anticipate getting through one each school's own project um i have to follow up on where the last one is and i have to call the engineer to find out um it's typically Although we're done with phase one and phase two for more than a year, he should be able to file for phase two for the first two phases that we have done soon. So I'll get an update from him and then I'll present it to the finance committee as soon as I have it. But over the next couple of years, we will collect
028those funds that we anticipated. Plus what the architect did at the time was we used a number much lower than what we potentially could get, just to be conservative. for our cash flow analysis. So we might actually get more than we had thought when we started this process three and a half years ago. Maintenance reserve is flat. We're taking the same dollar amount out year after year. Capital reserve, right now, we don't project to take anything out. Same thing for emergency reserve. We use that $362,000 for security equipment. The only reason I'm mentioning that is because, as you know, I sent that email today. We added a motion to the agenda for to actually buy the equipment now. And then the last thing the state makes us do is they make us put in the
029prior year encumbrances, which I hate to do, but we have to, because if you look at the ad in the paper a few weeks from now, they'll say, Bob, you said the current year's budget was $79 million. Why is it, say, $81 million? It's because we have to put the rollover POs from the prior year. So if you look at year over year, it looks like we're down almost 2% or $1.5 million. If you pulled out that $2.2 million of encumbrances, we're actually up $750,000 or 0.9%. For the appropriations, regular instruction is up 2.1%. Part of that salary increases. Part of that is also we added one FTE. Regular instruction is your teacher salaries, some TAs, and all of our instructional supplies, including the Chromebooks that we buy. Special education is up 1.6% or $182,000.
030I also roll into this line basic skills and ESL just to not have too many numbers on the page here. Co-curriculum athletics, that's up 10%. As I said before, we added back in the co-curricular stipends at the elementary school that were part of the 2021 budget but never happened because of COVID. And we also added some dollars to help with the athletic uniform refresh cycle. Added district tuition, again, I always like to say that we do a very good job of keeping our students in the least restrictive environment. Next year, we're projecting nine students to go out of district. We have a couple of contingencies built in in those nine. This year, there's one or two more. So that $80,000 that we're down is just the difference of one student year over year. That's how
031much it costs to go out of district just for the tuition alone. Support staff, this is everything from the nurse's office, the OTPT speech department, guidance, child study team, curriculum, and the media center. That is up 2.8% or $246,000. As I mentioned at the last meeting, a lot of that increases because we have two administrative personnel that those jobs are being reallocated back to the support staff function for 22-23. And you'll see the administrative line is down 4.9%. This includes Mr. Dickstein's office, human resources, the business office, the admin side of technology. It also includes the front office of all the schools, the principal, vice principal, the secretary and office assistant. It also includes things like our telephone, postage, the attorney, some architect's fees. This is down, and once again, a big chunk of this
032is because we moved 2FT out. I also was able to reduce costs in a couple of areas. I saw that based upon trend, we weren't spending as many dollars as we had been projecting the last couple of years. So that line is, that group of lines is down about $300,000. Facility ground security, it shows it's down here. That's because there's a carryover PO in there for energy costs from the prior year. It's really up 3% or 4%. Transportation is up 82,000 or 1.8. As I said before, we've had to put some additional appropriation funds here for fuel for out of district transportation and some set aside funds to hopefully be able to retain our staff that we currently have and in the future attract more staff for busing. benefits. This number is not only medical
033benefits, it's also the board share of FICA, the board share of pension contributions, tuition reimbursement, unemployment insurance, and workers comp insurance. This is up 3.6% or $665,000. The majority of this comes from two areas. One is health benefits, as we discussed, up 4% next year. And then our pension contribution. has gone up about 300 000 the state is starting to push more of that back on the local uh districts and municipalities and what they had done in the past capital and equipment that's down significantly because in 2021 there was some construction purchase orders that carried over and we don't have that uh projected for 2223 and so again you'll see you know one that minus 1.9 but when you pull out the carryover pos we're really up 750 000 or 0.9 percent So taxes, you
034take the general fund tax levy as we set up 2%. The debt service tax levy is also up 2%. This is, you know, our, excuse me, our professionals do a very good job of trying to maintain a consistent increase year over year about that 2% range when it comes to the debt service tax levy. Subtract from what we call the Verizon tax, business personal property tax. And it's funny, I was talking with the township administrator the other day, and the last time that the Verizon of the world actually paid it was 2011. The state is still maintaining these funds they sent to the township on our behalf to reduce our tax levy. That number actually went down slightly, $6,500, about 0.9%. You subtract that from your tax levy amounts in lines 1 and line 2.
035and you get the increase for next year projected at two percent and then as i said at the beginning of the presentation i gave away the uh the best part is that from a tax rate standpoint i'm not saying what's happening to your personal tax to your home because of the pilot program it's no longer a pilot program anymore but um your health homes being reassessed once every five years in the township We're projecting a seven cent decrease or six point seven percent drop and the average home as of about a month ago was assessed at almost five hundred thousand dollars those folks would see a three hundred dollar decrease from our portion of the tax I've been in for those you've never looked at our audit in the J section or have looked at
036your tax bill closely You've got the county there. You've got the regional school district. You've got us. You've got all kinds of stuff there. We're just probably one portion of that. What I also want to give the people that are around is that when you look at our advertised budget, we can't plug in our projected assessed value because it's not final until after the budget's done. If you use the current assessed value, it would show an increase of 2.1 cents or 2%. So if we didn't have any of that increase in assessed value, the average homeowner would see a $91 increase. It's not going to happen. I can't see losing 9.4% of the assessed value to appeals in the next month, month and a half. The number I was given by the tax was pretty
037conservative. So that's what we're looking at. Probably the fourth or fifth year that we are now decreased on our tax rate. So our next steps. We won't talk about budget unless you guys want to talk about it the first meeting in April and then we'll adopt I'm sorry, we'll adopt tenant budget tonight and the final budget will be on the 26th of April. Hopefully my plane comes back from London the day before. Any questions? Pension contribution increase. How much was that roughly? About $300,000. So you're saying that we had to pay $300,000 more. The state gave us $200,000, so they gave us less money, basically. New Jersey Asheville gives us – they're in contact with the Department of Treasury, and they're trying to get a better handle for us on what the formula is that
038we should use to do that calculation. And what's changed is – In the past, the majority of our, we don't pay for our certificated staff members. The state makes that contribution on behalf of the board for our TPATH members, that would be the teachers and the administrators. For everybody else, our secretaries, bus drivers, custodians, those folks are in PERS, and we have to pay our portion. So what happened was... There's only one tier in the system. Now there's five. For tiers one through three, we're paying 16% of their salary. We're rejecting to pay 60% of the salary into the pension system. For anybody who's tiers four and five, the number we were given was 27%. So ASBO is still having some conversations, but from a budgetary standpoint, they would rather have us project slightly higher.
039Then having to come back to the board when we get our we won't get the actual pension notification bills until October, November next year. So, you know, that's what's happening with the pension. What did you? Sorry, did you have another question? When you said Verizon has not paid since. Can you explain that? Yeah, the state doesn't collect from the utility companies anymore, but the state has been maintaining paying us. I think at one point in time, didn't it go away? Didn't it just rumor of it going away? We used to collect over a million dollars. So when Pete Valesky sent out the number to myself and to Sean Boyce at the regional, he put a comment. He goes, you do know that the state's not collected from the utility companies since 2011, but they're finding
040money somehow. I don't know the exact number of townships that receive that. But we still get it. We still get it. So why do we care? We only care that if at some point in time the state can't fund it or wherever the state's magically getting the money from. Then all of a sudden the money will go away. Then the amount of taxes actually that we have to collect from the township goes up. Because that's an offset. So we should probably look into that. Yeah, we're going to. He just told me that the other day. They get their state aid notices a week later than we do. Okay. So he made that comment. Okay, so they were probably looking into it. So you mentioned one FT, FT? One body, and that's full-time equivalent. Full-time equivalent.
041Got it. From a budgetary standpoint, we have to show in our position control roster how many FTEs every person's worth that you put on the roster. So if someone only worked part time, they'd be 0.5. The majority of our people, they show up as a one FTE, full-time equivalent. That's what it is. Okay. That's awesome. Stupid budget talk. That's all right. I'm learning. Still learning. And what was that need for you? We're close in a couple of spots for sections. We're close in several spots for sections and the registration information that, if you remember, for preschool, we added a class this year using grant funds. Anything we used grant funds for, the expectation was that we wouldn't fund it out of the district budget. We know that... benefit of providing students early intervention and when
042ms montgomery transitioned she shared the registration data for eclc and we have 35 either income eligible or tuition students interested starting we have a number of returning students and we need to keep seats for preschool to see so preschool classes will go up to 16 and we'll be starting which is not typical when in with seven sections if everybody registers once they're uh contacted will be starting between 13 and 14 in every class with the seventh section so at this point it's in our best interest to add the preschool section and finalize that yet but that's most likely where that ftv is going to go anybody else have any questions all right thank you again for everyone who's participating like i said it's it's a long process and uh everyone puts a lot of time
043and energy into it so i really appreciate everyone's you know looking into this and asking some good questions keeping us on our toes Thank you Bob and business office for that arduous process and our presentation much appreciated um this is going to be our first opportunity for public participation as you know this board offers two opportunities first is four items that are on the agenda this evening and the second is for any item that you'd wish to address the board with So if anyone wishes to address the board, please write your name and address on the sign-in sheet and state your name for the record. Statements are limited to three minutes and should not be abusive, obscene, or defamatory. Would anyone like to address the board on any item on the agenda this evening? The
044other. That's the other, the second opportunity. any any questions on the agenda items that are getting voted on that i guess that could be the difference okay none um okay then i'll move on to uh personnel uh since we have two members of our personnel committee uh not here um mr amarosa will move the personnel portion of the personnel agenda thank you madam president they discussed the agenda the requests for use of doc days and finalized rate of pay for long-term substitutes i'd like to move the following items Item three, the retirement of Ronald Burke. I don't know if Ronald's here, but he has 14 years of service with the district. I'd like to thank him for that service. Wish him well. Item four, resignations as listed in the agenda. Item five, the adjustment to
045resignation date as listed. Item six, the change of assignments and salary adjustments for Joe Diver, Andrew. item 10 receding an offer of employment as listed item 11 the PTO honoraria as listed item 12 the track official as listed item 13 the elementary task team as listed item 14 certified substitutes as listed item 15 the non-certified substitutes as listed and I believe that's everything does anybody have any questions second roll call yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
046yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
047yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes Item 2, course reimbursement as listed. Item 3, the first reading of policies and related regulations as listed. Item 4, the second reading of policies and related, no there's no regulation there. Second reading of policies as listed. Item 5, home instruction. Item 6, field trip approval for Ivy League day camp. Item 7, student-teacher practicum observation placements as listed. Can I have a second? Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any abstentions or no's on all of it or any specific? What? 24-1505 policy student surveys analysis evaluations exam okay 32-33 political activities 84-65 bias crimes and bias related acts 95-60 okay administration of school surveys 84-65 regulation yeah that's the regulation for bias crimes and bias related act and 1648 safety plan
048for healthcare services okay that's in the second meeting okay thank you got it okay and moving on to finance facilities and transportation mr o'sullivan okay well we did not meet as a committee I'd like to move the certifications of number two. Number three, secretary treasurer report as listed. Number four, bills and claims for $1,556,165.58. And thank you, Ms. Lambert, for doing them. Number five, travel and related expenses as listed. Number six. Travel and related expenses updated as listed. Number seven, transfers as listed. Number eight, honoraria for Dwight D. Eisenhower Middle School as listed. Number nine, school bus emergency evacuation and safety drills as listed. Number 10, specialized evaluations as listed. Number 11, resolution to adopt tentative budget as listed. number 12 contract was core BTS incorporated as listed and that's it any questions can have
049a second second all in favor say aye aye motion carries Mary, you had a question regarding putting this on. Did you get that answered? The last one? Yeah. The core DTM thing? Well, I got it answered with respect to what it was. I still, you know, to put it on, I think Bob acknowledged that maybe next time he would. Yeah, I didn't want to. That's my fault. It's my fault. It's something that we've been working on and finally got the votes. and the prices keep going up, to be quite honest. And the lead time, we're about a year out from getting technology. So I asked Bob to add it so that I could cut the POs tomorrow so I could start our timing stock again. So that's my call. Without the motion, I have two
050more weeks to do the PO. So as I said, that's why I made sure I mentioned when we gave the budget presentation, I had funds set aside that came out of emergency reserve. for a big chunk of this project and because of the change in the leadership and technology you know the department was kind of person's here person's gone so i didn't want to put we didn't want to put more on you know the incoming people yeah yeah we had a fixer yeah yeah that was what the issue was otherwise we would have uh done this back in you know had these pos done in the fall I'm just afraid to wait for two weeks. Just seeing that things are escalating and getting worse. Switches that we ordered in September and July won't be here
051until June 30th? Later. Later? End of July now. Okay. It's over a year. It's over a year. Can I ask a question about that? So part of this funding was for the network switches initially. Mm-hmm. But now the number's higher and we've already paid for the network switching. We haven't paid for them yet. They're not here. Oh, we only pay when they arrive. Yes, we're only encumbering the funds. It seems like every day we go by, the prices go up. in this school year we have to income funds security yeah we'll get some of this money back okay can can you just explain because i know we know what we're talking about but can you just kind of just give like a quick so if you sit in the restaurant you might hear a phone
052from the analog system all of our schools started with analog communication systems right and so that's how we speak to each other that's how classrooms are called you know time is on on an old school clock um so what we're moving to is a digital with so lines have to be run and the middle schools have this set up right now in donovan And so if you've been in Donovan or either of the middle schools, they have these gigantic blocks in the hallway. The times are always accurate. And then if there's a security drill or a lockdown or some sort of event, it scrolls on each of those locations. We have that at Applegate. We have it right out. We have it right out here. There's a couple here and there. It's not fully done.
053So it just brings us back to the century we're in. And the analog is really unreliable. Sorry, I don't have my thing on. I apologize. So analog to digital is the reason why we have to do that. And like I said, the urgency is really because we're going to get some of this money back. And so it's grant funded. So with the change in leadership in the last six months, we didn't really prioritize it. We were trying to just keep us where we need to be. And now we're ready to take it on. But what's happening is... Things in the world are impacting. We thought we were out of COVID, but now we have other things happening that are impacting our supply chain. And while we're putting this order in, we most likely won't be
054able to get this done. Hopefully by next year is the goal. But then this secures the money. So in other words, we have to defend this money. Yes, it's encumbered so it's done in the budget year it needs to be done in. You'll probably see it as a carryover PO on next year's slide presentation. So again, I apologize. It was me. I asked Bob. I'm just afraid to wait two weeks because I don't want the price. honestly to go up another hundred thousand dollars it's a little shocking to see what's happening right now and um i had to find the 65 to do it anyway so i was afraid to wait the two weeks but i do we did say we weren't going to do that apology okay yeah it's like when i when ally
055posted it she was do you want the emergency notification yes tell them if they change it i'll send an email out as soon as we have a chance Okay, with regard to old business, new business, President's remarks, I just want to platform off Mr. Dickstein's administrative report regarding transportation, because each of us board members have received various emails, some from staff, some from families, who feel negatively impacted by the decision that is being made. And I'm not sure if... most people realize and I will say this on behalf of the administration each member of this board has watched this administration over a period of probably five months or longer labor over this decision and play out scenarios 17 ways to Sunday to try to avoid negatively impacting anybody while at the same time trying to
056guarantee that every student would have transportation going to school next. Each member of this Board of Education challenged administration on any given day with questions that they probably had to answer again and again and again. You know, did you think of this? Did you think of that? And they truly, for months, have labored over this. So while I understand and I empathize with those that are negatively impacted, as does every member of this board. This is the decision as it stands now barring some significant change That just isn't happening as quick I spoke to a parent yesterday who's willing to reach out to the Department of Transportation and and Push forward perhaps an agenda as like mr. DeVita mentioned that there should be some special CDL certification for school bus drivers And I did do
057that as well. Right. Well, yes, administration has done that. But I did speak with a parent who's willing to reach out to them. And we're grateful for that because this administration has done that. So I would urge you all to do that as well. If I speak with him again, perhaps there can be a concerted movement. There hasn't been much activity on that front. I don't know that they're willing to hear that, but they need to. as well as other items that are going on in our school. So I just want to ask for your continued patience while everybody tries to work out this problem across the board. I do want to give Angie and her transportation staff a shout out because I spoke to many parents who were unhappy about a lot of things.
058One child on a doubled up run got bus sick. And we also sympathize with that, as does Angie. And she was very responsive to the parent. And from the feedback I'm getting, she's been responsive to all parents. She's doing the best that she can with a very, very difficult situation. So shout out to Angie. And I ask that if you do have to reach out to transportation, be kind, regardless of your frustration. She knows. She knows you're frustrated. But again, thank you for your continued patience and support in that area. We watched Angie, Becky and I, we watched Angie. You know, we had an emergency at Barcalow and a driver had, could not do their run at all, any of the three runs. And our transportation, our van drivers actually determined how best to cover
059that run. They took it upon themselves to double and split kids. um because angie was on a bus and couldn't address it and that's that's a safety issue um angie drove the bus the eisenhower run luckily it was the strickland run coming to this side of town she drove the bus from strickland after the last drop off to barcalow parked the bus took the van and then did the van run like when i say it's not good it's not it's not good and it's not efficient and with angie not being there it's just not safe Right. And I also do want to bring out one parent reached out to me and was under the impression that on any given day, if there was a doubled up run, driving his students to school would be frowned
060upon. And that's just not the case by any member of this administration. Everybody understands if your child's run is doubled up and you don't want your child on a bus for that long, you have every right to drive your child to school. The cars going in and out of the parking, lots of all our buildings are numerous. That's also not a great situation, but that does not mean it is frowned upon to ever drive your own student, you know, your own child to school in lieu of having them on a long bus. in on any given day so we just want to make that clear to everybody with that i will move into the second opportunity for public participation if anyone wishes to address the board please write your name and address on the sign-in
061sheet and state your name for the record statements are limited to three minutes and should not be abusive obscene or defamatory in nature All right, so I was. My name is Sal Soluccio. I was listening to past meetings and it's been said that the students are behind because of what's been going on with the pandemic and things. So I just was interested to know, instead of like adding all this new curriculum, why don't we just like. Stick to the basics and get these kids back on track You know we're adding this you know LGBT curriculum CRT we're adding gender stuff I think It'd be well worth the students that we just focus on the basics and I know I know Michelle the president is against that curriculum. So I would like to know what You
062have done to prevent that from being infested into the curriculum. I'm not against any curriculum. We don't have any new curriculum. I'm not sure what you're referring to. Oh, I heard that you're possibly against. Putting this new curriculum into I've been asked about critical race theory. Okay, critical race theory, but what about the LGBT curriculum or the gender curriculum? I think that it's a state mandated curriculum. You're asking my personal opinion. No, I was asking what you're... Where appropriate at an age appropriate level. So what has been done so far? I can't answer that because I don't write the curriculum. No, I'm saying, but you are in charge of implementing it into the curriculum. Now, who is? We have an assistant superintendent of the curriculum and our superintendent. So you're for this curriculum then? I
063did not say that. So what are you saying? You're for or against? But you're the president. You don't see what goes on in the school system as far as what's going to be implemented in the curriculum? When there's new curriculum implemented, the curriculum committee gets a presentation. So what have you been presented with so far? We have not been presented with any new curriculum. Oh, no? No. So when, you know, it's said that, you know, that. So then why was this individual hired? This is new curriculum, correct? We used to have an assistant superintendent curriculum, and we went back to that model. She is responsible for all the curriculum through eight buildings, all our grades from pre-K through eighth grade. So you're saying this is not new curriculum? I have not seen any new curriculum.
064I will have. When are we going to be presented with new curriculum? When the curriculum is written. Okay, and when will that be? We're working on it currently. So you're in charge of writing the curriculum? No, I facilitate curriculum committees that consist of teachers and building level administrators. Okay. And our goal is to implement the mandates that are given to school districts from the state regarding revised standards. Okay. So when they mandate putting LGBT curriculum in the school, I guess you're going to be implementing it because it's state mandated, correct? Correct. Hmm. just like with the masks he you know wants you to do it so you do it you don't i thought you know really like what is sleeping with a very broad back Because then what is the point of the board? If
065the state implements everything, what are you doing on the board? That's what I want to know. The state ensures that the policy of the district is being upheld and that the students are receiving the education that they deserve. Part of that is following a state mandate. The Board of Education is responsible to make sure that the state, the curriculum that we implement follows all the Department of Education mandated requirements so that our students are certified. It could be like crazy gender curriculum, and just as long as the state mandates it, we're going to make sure it's implemented correctly. What you need to include in your curricula. Oh, I know. How it is included, how it is implemented is typically left up to the district. There's a difference there. One town may not look the same
066as the other. What this will look like here has not been determined. Mr. Dickstein did a presentation. I know. I believe you are here. I am. I'm always here. So what I'm saying is when the curriculum does get presented, you're for it then. Robert Belusio. I have two children that go to Donovan. This change in hours is definitely a hardship that we're going to face. Going to 9 o'clock with two working parents. I don't know many businesses that allow you to adjust your schedule to do things like that. Has there been any thought given to maybe a care in the morning care, like a morning care type of situation where we can drop the kids off at 8 o'clock still and actually be able to work? Obviously, with COVID and everything, there's a lot of
067hardships that are going around. one of the main concerns because i don't have the ability to to have one parent that's working we need both parents and that nine o'clock start is gonna put a damper on it and uh you know just to comment on a couple things that were said earlier uh it's because of the bussing situation how many bus drivers do we need in order to maintain the normal schedule number right in front of me but i think it's it's 40. We will offer the YMCA will offer before care. And that's another thing that I understand. The cost is astronomical. You're talking about an after school care for five days a week for two kids. It's like six hundred dollars. It's like, why are you even going to send someone to work when
068you're spending six hundred dollars on aftercare? If you do before care, how much is that going to be for an hour? Is it going to be four hundred dollars for a week to send my kids to before care? What's the point of us even working at that point? Like there should be something that's. that's thought about that we could be doing at the schools that's not going to be going through the why that's not going to be costing these parents this amount of money. You know, I know you said that it's going to be more expensive to do it this way, rather than having the buses that you've been doing. But, you know, when you run a business, and you've realized that you're having issues, especially with maintaining employees, that should have been the first
069part, the priority shouldn't have been that, you know, The business administrator, you mentioned that you just now have to have a discussion on how we could start retaining people. I think that should have been one of the first discussions that were had. You know, if you're saying that these towns are outside of this district and they're paying $4 more an hour. We are down two or three right now. And we have no subs. But that was my that's part of my point is like when you start realizing that you're gonna have these issues coming up Why has no discussion been about increase in salaries trying to attract more people? Until now because that's what you said there was an issue to start that year Need longer longer runs longer time working to qualify for those
070benefits Most bus drivers don't work 32 hours a week. It runs in the morning, runs in the afternoon. So this started off as a benefits issue, but as we got deeper into the discussion with the transportation coordinator and we started seeing all these people say, oh, I'm retiring, I'm resigning, I'm retiring, I'm resigning, we realized that just by trying to fix somehow the benefit piece, if we kept the current tiering system, like I said at the last two meetings, we will start next year off four to five drivers short. and we will be continuing to double and triple up runs and to you know it's not an ideal situation it's that there's that labor shortage and the cdl problems of federal issue and the state had to adopt these the federal cdl standards for loose
071transportation funding i think our state is late to implement someone had told me and then finally the state court of the feds said hey no no no if you don't do this all that transportation funding you're gonna start losing something so this has been last couple of years they've made it very difficult to get a cbl as i said a lot of competition whether it's walmart target or other school systems it's like this is more of this problem over the year we started discussing this i think october we had a closed session meeting where we brought this up and looking at options we're looking at the tdb contract uh that's the bus drivers kind of closed session topic at that time and you know it's morphed over the last five months it's gotten worse and
072so the parameters have changed as mr dixon said you know we've looked at this five ways to do this and not that it matters to you in my own hometown we were told in july oh by the way um yeah all the schools times have changed And I understand as a parent, and you have to make do what you have to make do. It's not only happening here. Brick Township is also going to an extra tier, I believe, and doing something. I haven't heard about other districts, but it is a region. Everyone has the same issues. Some of the districts, this is where they're starting end times for the schools are. It leads them to a five or six hour day for the drivers already. Ours does not. And that's the benefit issue. But it's
073more into that now. Jackson's offering $30 an hour to a driver and a sub the last two weeks. He said, we're out of here. We're going there. And I don't blame him. I understand. So we're trying. The problem's gotten worse as time has gone on. to attract there are a lot of people who would like to stay where they live and want to work in the district and if they were offered benefits for their family and could potentially um have a pension they have already said like i would come back in a heartbeat so we're hoping that this sort of is not just a retention issue but it'll bring us back up to even and even in a better place than what we were but we hear What you're saying in the morning. The morning
074is definitely the hardest day. Maybe there could be some discussion on either reducing significantly or eliminating the cost in the morning if it's only going to be for an hour to have it even have it done at the school with the teachers volunteering for an extra stipend, something that can allow to offset some of the burden that's going on to the parents. I'll pursue what I can look into. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Marguerite Santoro, and I just want to apologize in advance. I may use a few extra minutes than the allotted time, so I appreciate if you just bear with me for just a couple extra minutes. Thank you. And I'm not as great at public speaking as the gentleman before me, so I'm going to read some of my
075thoughts here. So my husband and I have been proud Freehold residents for the past 14 and a half years. We were drawn to this wonderful family town for many reasons. One of the biggest reasons influencing our decision to buy a home here was the excellent school system. We have three children who currently attend both Laura Donovan Elementary and Barcalow Middle School. For the past seven years since our son started kindergarten at LDS, whether we agreed or disagreed, my husband and I have never openly questioned or opposed any decision that the school board has ever made. This time, however, we cannot remain silent. I, along with dozens and dozens of other parents and teachers, have emailed our opposition over the newly proposed school hours that are proposed to be implemented for next year. I sent two
076letters to Mr. Dixie invoicing my concerns and outlining the impacts of this change, followed by a lengthy phone conversation. But in all honesty, I feel like my concerns were dismissed. I'm not standing before you today as a belligerent, complaining taxpayer, but instead I'm here as a desperate parent, wholeheartedly pleading with you to not make this drastic change. It not only negatively impacts my children and my family, but hundreds of other children, educators, and families in our community. There's a multitude of reasons why our families are opposed to this change. With Barco starting at 7.15 a.m. and LDS starting at 9 a.m., this is a two-hour gap. for school drop-off in the morning and a two-hour gap for pickup in the afternoon. This is unmanageable for working families. It gives LDS and Barcalow families with kids
077in both schools the short end of the stick. My kids do not have any busing options, which has never been an issue, but if they ever had to walk, it would take them 30 minutes, meaning they would need to leave before sunrise to make the 1.4-mile trek to Barcalow. Even bus students would need to be at their bus stops as early as 6.30 a.m. This is dangerous and unreasonable to ask of any child. Also, preteens and teens require more sleep. Multiple studies from various sources such as Psychology Today, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Centers for Disease Control, amongst others, have shown that an earlier start time for this age group is counterproductive and damaging to their health and education. A lack of sleep creates hardships for students,
078they lose focus, tardiness and absences increase, school productivity decreases, test scoring decreases, quality of education degrades, and health issues such as depression and obesity rise. A later start time is proven to be more beneficial for better academic performance, fewer absences, increased focus, less stress, and overall improved health. An earlier school start time means needing to unfairly sacrifice sports and other evening extracurricular activities that are extremely beneficial to our children's physical, social, and emotional well-being. In addition, at LDS, the majority of students are considered walkers or car riders. With the late start of 9 a.m., it is the worst possible time for hundreds of working parents to be able to drive their kids to school and try to get to work at the traditional 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. start time. I also want to present
079to you a petition here that was initiated about seven days ago on change.org in opposition to this. We have 448 signatures from impacted families and teachers within the Freehold Township community. Thank you. It outlined a lot of the details I wanted to say that I didn't get to. Okay. Thank you. Would anybody else like to address the board? Hi, I'm Cindy Kuna. Don't start my time yet. Can I write my name, please? As I sit and listen to the concerns of these parents, I can see and feel that their concerns are fear-based. Understandably so because of how our government is overstepping into our lives and our children's lives. Unfortunately, our board members are taking the hit for what our government has slowly implemented into our school systems. What I have learned in my journey of
080life is that fear turns to anger and nothing can be resolved when coming from a place of anger. Nothing can be resolved until we all decide to come from a place of love and our board is truthful as to why these issues have to be put into the curriculum. I ask the board to be truthful with these parents and tell them how the districts have taken these federal grant monies. stipulations must be made public and explained why and who the schools are answering to. If the parents decide that this is not what they want then the monies must be returned. The board needs to be transparent with the public to why by accepting these federal grant monies the school districts have to teach critical race theory or any other name it has changed to to
081slip it in past people who aren't paying attention which i was one of those people i ask you to put this on your agenda every meeting until every grant dollar is explained and every grant that was ever accepted be explained to we the people please do not sell our children out for the money if we all come to come from a place of love we can figure this out without the federal government's money please give the money back for the sake of the children If they're giving you guys stipulations with this grant money and you have to do X, Y, and D and jump through hoops. I have to tell you, we don't have any stipulations with our grant money. Okay, so you don't have to fill out anything about what you're doing with the
082PPE. You don't have to, you know, you took this grant money, so you have to put in anything through the critical race? There's a qualification for the grant money. Mr. Dickstein recently met. Yeah, I do. So for each of the grants, I always give an overview of what we're spending the money on. And there's a misunderstanding I've heard over and over again, and I don't fault anybody for the misunderstanding. You wouldn't know, honestly. There's no stipulations. So when you're talking about curriculum and what we have to implement for curriculum, that has nothing to do with grant money. That's the state. We're a state agency, and the State Department of Education and the State Board of Education dictates. what we have to do as local school districts. So that's one thing connected to curriculum. Grant funds,
083and I think you're talking specifically about ESSER, part of what I think the confusion is, is they require this safe return to school component. It didn't say we had to do anything. So the masking and those things, that was from executive order from our governor. And each one of our state school return to school plans, if you look at them, even the masking says as per executive order. We never had a policy once that expired to maintain masks and keep them required. So there's some confusion about. What is required from these grants? We did a lot of great things with that grant money, but they didn't tie our hands for stipulations I think you're mixing and again, it's understandably so a whole bunch of different things Under this federal grant umbrella and it's not tied
084under there if that makes sense COVID-19 related issues in education and curriculum. So what was done with that grant money was to set up summer school last year. And there was a SPAR program that was run. There were two sessions of all that grant money went toward. to the teachers to writing the curriculum. No. It's not even allowable use to write curriculum. So we have some after school support. We hired additional interventionists. We hired additional teachers. Is there a way to make, because I've never seen any, like any, when you guys take the grant money. Like how you just explained it to me. Why can't... It's usually in our... Yeah, anytime we're paying any of our staff or anything, it all has to be board approved to be paid for the grant. That's where a
085majority of our grant money did go to pay staff salaries to provide students extra support. So not only summer school, we do two years now. We're going on two years of after school support. years of additional teacher in each of our buildings to provide intervention to our students so a lot of the money when it says copenhagen related that related part majority of it went to our staff to support our student learning and the key federal grants is you're allowed to supplement your budget not supplant So we're doing extra things with the funds. We're not doing things that we normally would have done anyway. So part of it, I think what you're referring to is what we had to post on our page was that safe return to schools plan. If you look at it
086carefully, it just outlined what we were doing. It didn't mandate that you must do this in order to get these funds. It required us to put in what we're doing. And because New Jersey had a mandate for masking, that is what bound us. to the governor's mandate is what bound us to masking not an esser grant okay did the district or the school take any money from the cares act or from the new that's what it is you know it cares is esser funds okay how about the freedom act i don't know anything that okay so you guys didn't take any money from i don't know what it is so i don't think so okay all right but cares is esser that's part of esser okay all right thank you you're welcome would anybody else
087like to address the board I probably won't be long. My name is Renata Brand. And basically I have questions about this policy. You have, I looked at some of the policies, the first one actually, 2415.05, student surveys, analysis, evaluations, examination, testing or treatment. It seems like a lot of it is... is about questioning students over their emotional levels and concerns. Why are we doing all these policies regarding emotions when we can just go back to basic things like teaching math, civics? so this is a mandated policy meaning we're required to have it we have a policy like this already this is a revision to that policy which actually cites I believe federal let me go down federal regulations that change it actually made it a little more restrictive to do surveys so to be the
088policy exists and I think I'll just reiterate again what mrs. Lambert said is sometimes we have we were required to have the policy as it exists it doesn't mean we we do the surveys It restricts what, it outlines what we can do. So it comes back to taking the money from the federal government. No. We're required by law in New Jersey, two separate things. In New Jersey, it's not federal, it's state. The state, because I said federal, I'm sorry. The federal, I'm sorry. It is federal. The federal, there's a, no, no, no. It is federal. This is a state mandated policy to have. What updated was the. pupil protection, protection of pupil rights amendment, and then it cites two, it cites two pieces of federal that makes it more restrictive, but the state requires us
089to have that policy. Is that part of the New Jersey standard learning? No. No. Neal, can you just? Correct me if I'm wrong here. This policy in and of itself strengthened the requirement to notify parents if there was a... It makes it more restrictive to do surveys. Yeah, we have the notification to parents and what you can and can't do is actually tighter than what it was prior. But like I said, a policy exists. It doesn't mean in practice that we're administering surveys on a regular basis. Yeah, because it seems like that would take more time from the day. for learning rather than teaching, which is the first goal. I'll tell you, by practice, I'm not aware of surveys that we do during the school day, if that helps. We have to have the policy
090by law. But speaking broadly, I'm not familiar with many surveys that we do, especially from the outside, that we do in our schools. I'll read more of the others and come back. Yeah, if you have any questions, you can always email, too, if it's before a meeting or a call. Would anybody else like to address the board on any item? Seeing none, before I move the next item, I'd like to thank everybody who came out tonight. I'd like a motion to move into executive session. So moved. Second. Second. Whereas pursuant to NJSA 10-412 B, the Board of Education may exclude the public from that portion of a public meeting which the Board discusses any of the matters described at NJSA 10-412 B, items 1 through 9. Now, therefore, be it resolved that in accordance with
091the provision of the Open Public Meeting Act, the Board of Education shall conduct a closed session pursuant to the personnel and legal exceptions prescribed by NJSA. 10-4-12 for the purposes of discussing pending or anticipated litigation, discussion of claims against the Board of Education, pending or anticipated contract negotiations with the FTEA and the TWU contract. It is anticipated that the length of time for this executive session will be 90 minutes and that action will not be taken in public when the executive session concludes. Be it further resolved that said discussion may be disclosing and acting upon it in executive session no longer exists. So I want to thank all of you who came out this evening. We'll take a quick three to five minute recess and then... Yes.