001started it. I started it. Michelle finishes. We are live. So, um, at this point, I guess if Brian would you want to call the meeting to call the meeting to order at 7:02. Perfect. Thank you. All right. Do the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Mr. Davis here. Mr. Green here. Mr. Phillips here. Mr. here and Mrs. Oriente here. Perfect. Um, since it is the start of the meeting and it is our public hearing, I'm going to do a public hearing on the 2526 budget and then we'll have meeting open for public comments as per um regulations. So, since I don't have anybody watching, hopefully some people are watching at
002home. Um, but I'm going to present tonight our 2526 uh district budget. Nothing changed from when we submitted it to the county office. There were no changes. So, anything that I sent in our email, just kind of outlining what we had um has all stayed the same. So, this is going to be an overview um of the cost and what they entail. Here's our uh board of education. Um we do have a vacancy that we'll hopefully be filling next month. um budget total and line item percentages. So, as you'll see, we have our uh revenue sources and our expenditures. Our tax levy is a 2% increase, which is what we're permitted to go up. Uh so, that's 10,72712, and $144. We also have tuition and u miscellaneous revenue. We have student activity account, which is
003like they have tons of things under there. eighth grade uh library for book fair things of that nature all fall under uh student activity. It's held in a separate account but it has to be um put into the budget as as like a revenue and then it's also on the expenditure side. The other types of u miscellaneous would be use of facilities when Chuck sells uh scrap metal and and things of that nature to go deals. All of that kind of falls under um miscellaneous. We don't have any tuition right now. We're hoping maybe with with bringing in one of our programs next year that maybe we'll have the ability to do that in a couple years once that's established, but right now we don't have tuition revenue coming in for any of our programs.
004Um, our state aid makes up 42% of our budget um at just over $8 million and that includes like special ed aid, transportation aid, security aid, um extraordinary aid, uh things of that nature. Semi a that's the Medicaid program. um if falls under uh special ed. This is a substantial decrease from prior years and again it just comes from the state. Um these are expenses we have to have anyway. So um so we're getting less but every district in in the state is actually getting less. So it's less than 1% of our budget anyway. Uh surplus is $575,173. that's um excess surplus from prior year as well as money that I can look at a budget and say at the end of this school year we're going to have this much money to fund to
005balance our budget. Um so if we had any shortfalls between state aid and the tax levy, we have the ability to kind of, you know, take a little bit of money that we anticipate having at the end of this year and plugging it into balance next year. And then our federal grants are over $376,000. That's our ESA, which is title one, title two, IDA. Um, that's substantially down from years past, but that's because we're no longer getting all those COVID funds and things of that nature. So, we're back to just our basics that we've gotten um over the year. As you'll see, our revenue and expenditures match. Um, the total budget is 20,857,000 and 30 $857,352. um our budget expenditures, our tuition, this is um I'll get to all these breakdowns when we get further
006into it. So, but we have tuition, we have employee benefits, um regular ed, special ed, administration, maintenance, transportation, and then our grants. Again, you also see down the bottom debt service that's included on both sides. That's a that's for our bonds that we have from many, many years ago. Um and the township is solely responsible for um putting that in. That's over and above the tax levy. and the 2% calculation on our tax levy does not apply to that. That's separate. So, I'll go through the budget expenditures as we move um further. So, here's just a little pie chart of what our budget looks like and the different percentages. Obviously, you can see um tuition and regular education um costs make up the bulk of our um budget. Um regular education, this is our teacher
007salaries for general education. It's our basic skills program, which is RTI. It's our instructional supplies. It's our textbooks and curriculum. It's any co-curricular activities, so all of our clubs and our sports. It's media services, so that's library. Um, it's guidance, it's technology, Chromebooks, it's health services, it's professional development, and it's instructional um improvement. So, that makes up 26% of our budget. Uh, just over $5 million. Tuition makes up 20% of our uh budget and that's our students who attend Overbrook in grades 9 through 12 as well as our students who attend Camden County Technical School um in grades 9 to 12. It's our all of our out of district placements which make up a bulk of that um amount. It is uh charter school placements which we don't have any for 2526. There's a program
008within um our home room which is where we go for all of our uh apps and and um our portal that we use. We don't have any charter school um being reported for 2526. We did have one for 2425. This is also other special ed high school placements um for special ed students that are placed in um high schools as opposed to out of district placements. And that's 20% makes up over four, it's over $4 million. Oopsie. Uh special education. This is um all in-house pretty much special education. Uh 14% of our budget. That's our teacher salaries, their supplies, and all those related services. So occupational therapy, physical therapy, uh speech therapy, all of our child study team members and uh their related services and the extended school year program um all fall fall under
009special education. Our employee benefits are 16% uh over just over $3 million. That's our health insurance. That's the um pension contributions that we have to make annually. Social Security uh contributions, workman's comp uh insurance coverage, and tuition reimbursement all fall under uh employee benefits. And then we have administration and central services which make up 4% of our budget. We have all of our administrator and clerical salaries. And by administrator, it's principles, it's superintendent's office, business administrator's office. Um those are all like your central administration. Uh clerical salaries, so all of our uh secretaries and our administrative secretaries up here, the supplies, the communication system, so all of our phone systems, um administrative services, legal services, auditing services, and anything for the board of education. So if you go to workshop um the annual workshop meeting
010that's in there reimbursement for uh new members for criminal history things of that nature all fall under board of education as well as the amount that we pay for uh New Jersey school boards association annually for their services. Maintenance and transportation takes up 12% of our budget. That's all of our custodial salaries. Their supplies, our utilities are included in there. Our maintenance supplies and services. Uh transportation is included there. That's our in-house transportation as well as our transportation that we contract out with Camden County Ed Services Commission. Uh for some of our out of district placements, we have liability insurance falls in here. Um property insurance, all of the vehicle insurance, all that falls under here. And then capital projects would fall under maintenance and transportation, which we don't have any others for for next
011year, but um that's generally where they that amount falls. And our grants, our federal grants are 7%. Um, it is higher on here because it pulls in our preschool expansion aid. Whereas on that first sheet, you saw that it was less for federal grants. That's because that was just the federal grants. This is all the grants and that preschool expansion aid is a grant. It just is paid to us through the state through our state. Um, so the grants are the, like I said, the ESA, the elementary and secondary education act that includes title one, 2A, three, and four. um IDA um which is for um IDA and then there's a preschool IDA as well and then our preschool expansion is included in there as well. Anybody have any questions on that so far? All
012right, so just some of our budget details. It was approved by the county um superintendent and the county school business administrator on Tuesday, April 15th. At that point, we generated our advertisement. and I put a user friendly budget in the paper that was um posted in the paper on April 20th, 2025. Um the budget has been available in my office for anyone that had wanted to come and take a peek, public included. Um I didn't have anyone come and take a peek, which is fine. Um the district received an additional $286,598 in state aid and an additional $189,262 in preschool expansion aid. And that's to kind of to cover that um fifth classroom for 2526 um which you see there. We're adding a fifth preschool classroom. All five will have a combination of three and
013four year olds. Um tuition in Overbrook has decreased which I informed everybody about approximately $670,000 because they stabilized some of their per pupil costs. Um I'm not sure if that was due to retirements or um if they were using grant funding or whatever that might have been. So, um, at this point, we do have a reduction there. We'll see where that takes us in the future. Uh, special ed tuition in public schools had a slight increase of, uh, $12,000. Our CCTS tuition is down by about 92. Again, that's from a prior year certified tuition amount, tuition adjustment, which every school district gets that every single year. So, their tuition rate came in lower, which means then they owed us a credit. Now, they're they get a lot of their funding through the county. Um, so
014it could have been that they, you know, it went down because of their funding limits and things of that nature. Nonetheless, it resulted in a um $92,000 um decrease. Theirs is not usually that much. I mean, it's less than $4,000 a student over there. So, um, even on a good year, we're maybe about $160,000 if we were fully funding um that amount. So, and then out of district tuition costs have increased by approximately um $30,000. district costs saving measures. We continue to participate in the public employer trust for our health and prescription benefits. We did have an overall package increase of 11.59. It's a little higher than in years past, but it's kind of the trend. Um the state employee uh health benefits package was, I believe, listed to go up around 22 or 23%
015overall. So either way, we're in pretty good shape. Um we do are participating in the Burlington County Insurance Fund. We participate in ASES which gives us electric savings, e-ate which we get a portion of our Comcast bill uh covered and then semi programs which are those Medicaid um programs for those extraordinary services that we submit for uh shared services with ED services commission. They do some of our transportation, CST services, nurses on an as needed basis. Um, we are creating an in-house special ed program to keep some of our students in district placements. Um, and then hopefully a potential creating a potential revenue in the future. And we're going to train some of our instructional assistants in RBT, which is re registered behavior technician in those practices. So, they're not really called RBTs as as
016per what Miss Friedwood has told us, but they're going to be trained in those practices to be able to implement those in the classroom. Um, if you remember, I think we approved that sidebar agreement, um, which will create a stipen for these individuals, but then we'll be able to save money, um, as opposed to contracting out for that. Um, 2526 budget includes that we're maintaining all of our existing positions, including all of our co-curricular. Um, all of our related services for special ed services will increase about $135,000. Um, that's despite having those RBT trained staff in here. There's just a lot of needs right now. Um it's just something we can't avoid. But hopefully in the coming years with getting these programs in district and things that nature, we'll be able to stabilize some of
017those costs. And then there is an increase in school supplies for a math curriculum, which I think we're staying with the same math curriculum. It's just that that it was like a 5-year program and it expired. So now we have to renew, but we're sticking with the same um one. So it's it's a big cost upfront, but it's a multi-year. Um so let's go into the budget property tax impact. And as you'll see the um proposed tax levy from 24 to 25 to 2526 is there. It's just a 2% increase just a 400 $400 increase in that debt service fund. Um so our total tax levy is just over 11 million for 2526. Um not a big difference between the um average assessed home in Berlin Township based on uh their reports. So it went
018from 188288 in 2024 to 188862. And again, that's your average assessed home. And then obviously our local tax rate is just a minor adjustment based on ratables and the average assessed home and things of that nature that all come into that um calculation. So based on all of those numbers, a Berlin Township assessed home at 188862, the property tax increase will be about $510 per month um next year for local school taxes. That's all I have. Any questions? All right. Hearing no questions. At this point, we do have to open it up to the public in case any public wanted to comment. Um, not that they're here, but we'll go ahead and open that formally. Can I have a motion in a second? Second. Get us out of here. I'm getting there. I'm getting No.
019No. You just got here. I know. All right. Um, hearing none. And seeing none, I'm going to have a um motion and second then to close the public portion of the meeting on the public hearing. Motion second. All those in favor? I oppose your I just have one um action meeting item on here that I have to get done so I can upload it to um it's called Smears. It's our uh food service app that we use. Um I need an a motion and a second to approve. Um, we have to approve. Oh, I'm sorry. We're still in the budget. Yes. I was going to stop. Sorry, guys. I was rushing to that doesn't look like neutrerve. Um, all right. So, I need a motion to second then just to approve our budget that we
020just had the public hearing on. Motion second. Was that Michelle was my first Stacey? I started to write an S. All right. Um, any questions? Okay. Can I do a roll call? Um, Mr. Davis? Yes. Mr. Phillips? Yes. Mrs. Reed? Yes. Miss Juliano? Yes. And Mrs. Oriente? Yes. All right. Perfect. And then there we go. Now, I need a motion and a second to approve um to ratify and affirm the renewal of the Neutri Serve Food Management Food Service contract for the 2526 school year. This is uh year three of a five-year agreement. Um cents per meal of $0. That's the fee. They're not charging us fee for that. A management fee of $20,800 and a projected annual loss gain of $12,000. That's gain. Um and no guarantee. So they're anticipating we're going to get
021that, but they're not guaranteeing it because that's obviously the safe place um to be. So the cost of the agreement is $291,47.77. That includes like their anticipated costs for the food and for any supplies and things of that nature that they need for the year. That is a self-supporting program. We do not put money into that. Um we get state reimbursement for free and reduced lunches. They use a lot of um state food, things of that nature. So um that does not run in the red. If you remember when the auditors were here, we actually have too much money in that account. So we need to spend that down. Um, so I just need approval so I can upload that. The motion is second, please. Motion. Second. Any questions? Mr. Davis? Yes. Mr. Phillips? Yes.
022Mrs. Reed? Yes. Miss Juliano? Yes. Mrs. Orient? Yes. All right. Um, I'm not going to open up the meeting for the public again. Mrs. Gray, unless you want to speak to us. She's like, "Nope." All right. So, at this point, then we'll just I need a motion, a second to adjourn the meeting, please. Second. All those in favor? I oppose or abstain. All right. Great. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you everyone. That was quick and painless. Yes. Second.