001all right good evening everybody we're getting ready to call the meeting to order tonight thank you for everybody who's attending around the awesome full audience here excited to honor our students of the month uh before we do that let me just handle a few administrative matters affecting their interests in accordance with the provisions of this act board of education policy zero one six two the board of education of the borough of bound broke has caused notice of this meeting posted in the court office and at bound brook high school and mailed our facts to the courier news boundary clerk south africa board of education and any person who has requested individual notice and paid the required fee at this [Music] lord point [Music] okay at this time we're gonna swear in our new uh board
002member mr dawson please stand up raise your right hand and just read your hi sydney dawson do you solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new jersey and that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and to the [Music] established in government's united states and this state under the authority of the people so it all they have i sydney dawson do solemnly swear that i possess the qualifications prescribed by law for the office of member of a board of education and that i am not disqualified as a voter pursuant to rs 194-1 nor disqualified due to conviction of crime or offense listed in njs 18 a 12-1 that i will faithfully impartially and justly perform all the duties of that
003office according to the best of my ability so help me god sworn and subscribed before all of you this 25th day of april 2022. congratulations [Applause] [Music] okay mr bell here mr fazio here ms casino here mr januzzi here miss lima mr benham here miss mussan mr dawson here okay president's comments sure i'll just try and be brief um we're getting in towards the end of the school year i think everybody's getting excited uh we're down just a few months ago spring sports were kicked off uh and i know that from uh our middle school through our high school everybody is giving their all baseball softball track uh [Music] mr nelson um we're happy to be back at i think full strength that was a board uh which was a bit of a challenge uh
004just finding people who were interested within the community uh and ultimately uh we had to lean on the county executive superintendent to congratulations to emily and lucas torres [Applause] congratulations [Applause] foreign [Applause] is [Applause] [Music] good evening everyone our first recipient is adonis cordano [Applause] contreras our next recipient is antonio [Applause] now [Applause] and our final recipient jonathan valley crew [Applause] good evening everyone the community middle school is proud to recognize us student of the month nicole almost gonzales [Applause] community middle school is happy to recognize melanie garcia bautista [Applause] thank you all right our first recipient that we're pleased to recognize is dennis leilano [Applause] our next recipient ronald alvarez [Applause] our next recipient jaden hoffman [Applause] sorry certainly not least alex [Applause] do our general gonzalez for the month of april we'll start
005again with addicts and dr s congratulations this is from mississippi and miss kenya this planning decision that lamont school goes she's always willing to help as needed which is greatly appreciated she steps into translated assistive registration morning arrivals and more she really is a jack of all trades this venue helps the associated small groups centers and outside time she's always interacting with students making sure they're on task she's also a great mentor to new staff she has great energy and very passionate early childhood education we are very lucky to have a part of our team congratulations [Applause] grosses last year working very closely with her co-teacher to create a center-based classroom that focuses on individual student needs this because of the great relationship that mistreats the co-teacher making sure to create engaged lessons that are
006fun for their students they align views with their frequent planning frequent planning allowing them to make the most of instructional time and provide their students with the best opportunities for growth despite the many stresses this year as well ms patel has remained home allowing her students to see her as a positive role model [Applause] [Music] is a valuable teacher colleague and mentor at smalley school she was awarded specialist of the year in 2019 by her peers and recognized the somerset feature of the year awards luncheon mrs sandes is an advocate not just for her special education students but for all of her students she modifies work she finds new strategies to get her lessons across and she is extremely determined to helping improve students she's always finding ways to strengthen the climate and morale at
007smalley school she came to the administration with tuesday 22 2002 with the idea of wearing ties and hideout she worked with the small business bubba cuz burritos read it to eat challenge project for our students for students to read a certain amount of books to receive a coupon for a burrito meal 80 students completed the challenge and we read a minimum of 400 books for the month of march at soy school she was an advocate for reaching out to the somerset patriots for most improved students at somerset county one of her fifth grade students was awarded this honor and received tickets to a game with his family in june she helped collaborate with the peers to help fundraise mentals and a coin award coming in may to help pay for the cost of class trips
008these are just some of the highlights she does for smalling school thank you mrs saunders for not just caring for our students but also for caring our team at foley school and always thinking of ourselves and personally thank you for me for checking in on my family's well-being so thank you responders [Applause] [Music] hello again the community middle school is proud to recognize miss alyssa de geralimo as a gem award recipient for the month of april mr geraldo is the guidance counselor anti-bullying specialist and intervention and referral service chairperson for cms believe me when i say there's a tremendous amount of work that goes along with those titles mr almost well organized and able to prioritize situations during times of crisis she shares her experience and knowledge with students during counseling sessions and classroom lessons
009and is currently a mentor for a student teacher messenger alamo assists students with the votetech application process and helps to oversee the cms sunshine fund and volunteers for a host of extracurricular activities ms d geraldine is the chaperone for the eighth grade trip to washington dc and in march helped organize our annual adult dodgeball fundraising tournament this event is no small undertaking mr geraldo helped register teams organized the event brackets and secured student and adult volunteers to help with ticket and food sales referees and of course mr bennett as our tournament announcers in all seven hundred 1 was raised for our students also last month miss d geronimo hosted a career day for eighth grade students at the community middle school over 20 vendors were in attendance representing careers in education pharmaceuticals health and science
010mortuary cosmetology insurance firefighting law enforcement athletic training culinary arts and the building trades students have the opportunity to interact with each vendor and discuss a host of career options in addition to cedar allen was the co-advisor for the middle school yearbook which is currently in its final editing phase in preparation for publishing it's worth noting that a significant amount of time was spent during spring break in order to ensure yearbook deadlines were met finally and most deservingly misty geralimo has been selected as the community middle school ed specialist of the year as part of the governor's educator of the year program so on behalf of all members of the cms staff i'd like to thank alyssa detero for her contributions and for always going going above and beyond unfortunately missy couldn't attend tonight so she
011will be presented with her certificate tomorrow [Applause] unfortunately our dan could not be with us tonight as well tennis near the tennis match so um still deserves the recognition all right mr mcdonald has consistently maintained high academic standards in both his ap and college prep courses at bound brook for many years this includes his knowledge and expertise in spearheading the concurrent enrollment program with raritan valley community college which makes it possible for students to take challenging college courses and earn college credits during the regular school day the results of his efforts are reflected in a multitude of ways one being the prestigious colleges and university acceptances for many of his students in addition to his rigorous and challenging work he is also a mentor and coach for many students and his room is seen as
012a safe haven for students who struggle with social issues and anxiety mr mcdonald is an integral part of the faculty especially for the english department which depends on his knowledge and expertise to help facilitate planning and curriculum furthermore mr mcdonald has put on i'm sorry has put many years of hard work and dedication into the district both as a teacher a coach and a mentor he has inspired students and helped them become the best versions of themselves he's also helped the younger english teachers in the department and has currently been working hard to mentor his student teacher mr mcdonald has increased the rigor of the english courses he has taught in order to prepare his students for the future overall overall while it is long overdue paul mcdonald deserves to know how grateful the english
013department is as well as the entire ddhs school community for his guidance and mentorship mr mcdonald thank you for all you do congratulations on being made this month [Applause] [Music] again i'm going to go to the pilots and how that affects us a little bit so calculating the the local fair shares your property value property rates plus income and income rate divided by two okay and as you can see this is our actual stating figures so our local fair share this year as determined by the state is 13 i know you guys can't see it very good it's uh 13. you hit 13 million 0 82 282 and our equalization 8 is supposed to be 25 million 659 thousand 219 dollars however when you com our actual equalization age this year is going to only
014be 22 million 200 232 064 dollars so when you look at the overall overall budget our local fair share expect this number um this is the wrong side okay um was supposed to be 13082 down here at the bottom and that's what our tax rate will be this year so we're right at our local fair share number um our equalization is a negative three million three hundred twenty seven thousand two hundred fifteen dollars so again while we're doing better and we're getting more money from the state the reality is we're still being underfunded by the state and our equalization dan do we know what the year over year that is like last year compared to this year how the state came up with that equalization number i i i tell you what that is the
015the question that um we ask constantly of how how they come up with the numbers yeah they can't give you a straight answer number one and number two they give you these really complex formulas that they they think work yeah where are we sure i guess my question is were we short last year we've been the least short we've been a long time okay three million is pretty close like we've had we've been when 10 12. oh we were fit when when i first started superintendent i think it was 15 16 million before so we've been getting close you know getting closer but still not there and if anybody wants to double check any of these these resources are on new jersey school boards association website so here's our tax history and as you can
016see over the last five years the total total taxes for the last five years has gone down four percent or an average of 0.82 every year now for our budget so these were our strategic planning goals which are still in place i think we're in year three of that um so those have not changed our main goal uh every year seems to be decreased students and and the teacher ratio some of our classes particularly at the high school are very very high i think we're hovering around 30 30 kids per classroom um so that's a little high and i know at the middle school i think we're 29 30. so that's also high we're also going to be uh you know continuing with our health and safety measures we adopted a new math curriculum um
017we're continuing with the district counseling and our mental uh wellness programs we continue to increase our instructional capacity uh we want to continue the district as a high performing district through cusack continue implementing our procedures and policies to support instruction continue our early reading intervention program increase support for learning loss and expand our summer program for learning law pandemic maintaining our progress we want to keep the extended school day program for grades one through eight our summer school reading program for k-1 and k-1 and um additional staffing due to our student growth and again because we are considered a high poverty district there are some legal statutes that we have to try and maintain in terms of class sizes of 21 23 24 etc and we have not been able to do so however this
018year because we did get four million dollars in additional aid here are all the positions that we're going to be adding this year an assistant register a social worker assistant to human resources manager a psychologist an ltdc is not going to be one of them um i think we needed a fifth grade teacher um so we're gonna do a fifth grade special ed special education teacher step at the lgbtc a newcomers teacher there's gonna be three teachers at the middle school that are at new ones um correct me if i'm wrong uh joe uh english no math math uh phys ed and computer science okay so and then uh smallie is a sixth grade teacher and another phys ed teacher high school it's almost one person per department so an english teacher math science bilingual
019guidance a history of specials we're splitting the assistant principle and um athletic director position into two so i'll have a standalone athletic director for the first time we'll have an assistant principal with the growth at the high school we when i was high school principal we were about 500 kids now he's at 8700 i think you're broke in this coming up here so 700 kids and you know he really does need a two full-time assistant principals instead of one that's kind of part-time assistant principal and doing athletic duties on the other side there are no staff reductions in this budget our increased costs obviously are healthcare contractual increases workplace compensation specialized costs new staff and our biggest maintenance project is the replacement of the high school football field which i can tell you happily that
020came in uh pretty under budget we're also going to be able to do the light so we're planning right now i'm doing re replacing our field turf and replacing our lights for next year last year's budget our difference is four and a half million dollars that's the increase in state aid our fund 20 is sitting at right around 380 that's all those special revenues the sr2 extra three those type of things um overall budget from last year was 42 million this year's 43 million and it's up two million dollars okay all totals i know sometimes the demand seems a little complicated so if you ever want to ask a question please feel free our families last year our payment was uh or this year's payments 1.2 million the lease ends in two years so that
021means that we're gonna have an extra one point two million dollars coming back into the budget which i believe at this point in time the the plan is for that edition that we've talked about at la lafayette so keep in mind that money is sitting there and it is earmarked for two years down the road to build that classroom additionally in a lafayette obviously the projects on the horizon are the cafeteria lafayette classroom edition replacement lights we start restoration as a high school second floor bathrooms and i believe the ones at the cafeteria um we have to look really look pretty hard at changing out high school boilers sooner rather than later some led light projects for some classrooms and obviously our hvac projects for the elementary buildings which we are out rebidding right now
022and what we did is we prioritized that with smalley first lafayette second lamont third and the annex fourth so we have alternates so we'll get some of that work done we're obviously not going to get it all done because we had to reject that very high bid that we got any questions on the budget a lot of questions but i think it's just i have to process them yeah and again i think our buds our budget looks really high but there's so much of that esser two and so three money that's sitting in the overall bottom budget numbers so give you an example extra three and i don't think we have it all put in yet but that's gonna be 5.7 million dollars we still have another million in extra two months that's there so
023all total right there you're looking at 6.7 million dollars in the budget um right now the current budget that we're in we look really great to finish the year right on track right where we thought we were going to be so we have no issues finishing out the year the way we had planned um next year's budget's really solid um i don't see anything in there that i i would anticipate hurting us the only thing i do know um that is coming unfortunately and i found this out after the fact and these are the things that when you're developing a budget that you have to be really aware of um we budgeted i think eight hundred thousand dollars for custodial services unfortunately all of the the vendors who do custodial services got unionized and everything
024else so um right now that i'm projecting a 1.2 million dollar number on that so we budgeted 800 000 we got to come up with another half a million dollars for that so we went back through the budget um tried to come up with a half a million dollars there's some some areas i thought we could take away from i found out i can't so we're gonna have to go back and come through there and see where we can come up with some of those funds um you mentioned the high school second floor bathrooms yes what's the deal with the second floor versus first floors well we redid the gym ones not that long ago i think we did a partial restoration of the ones in the basement we have not touched the ones up
025on the second floor and they're they're in some some pretty bad disrepair um and i'm not talking like you know for the kids and the kids don't notice a lot of things but behind the walls and you know we have some piping issues that really need to be taken what we're still i think there's still cast iron pipes up there for for drainage and things like that we always run into a problem with um but to do that i mean you know the issues that you're gonna have the first issue is asbestos because you're gonna be opening up very old walls it's the oldest section of the building so you're gonna have to deal with that um then you know obviously re-piping from the basement up to the second floor you know okay all that
026all that stuff that goes into it you know redoing the floors the walls okay new facilities i think thing okay yeah i was just curious second floor not first floor but yeah but believe it or not in that older section the only bathrooms are on the in the basement level and the second floor in the older section of the building and then the next set of bathrooms are actually here in egypt so for for a high school of this size we only really have three three bathrooms to contend with for the kids [Music] any other questions and this was what we was reviewed last right something simple yeah right okay i think so same presentation okay some of the numbers you know like wait did we do and just trying to figure out where that
027number lands where they come up with the the their own efficient numbers has always been the question and they kind of wait it out so you know you're going to get one number for quote unquote a general ed student then you then then they put a factor number on that if you're an esl kid then they put another factor on that of your esl and special ed and then it gives you a quota right yeah and yeah there's so many factors in there that go on free and reduced income is another fact that it goes on top of it and so on so if you recall this past year we did a lot of things with the free reduce because the the the first year the pandemic because all the food services ended up being
028free nobody filled out the free and reduced lunch form that really hurt us in the last budget cycle so this budget cycle we made sure to get all those forms in because that put us back up to where we needed to be and that's why we got the bigger increase this year is because we have on the on the books more free and reduced lunch kids and that there's a factor to that you know so instead of getting like one whole um say that they're saying the tuition for one kid is ten thousand dollars well for a kid who's low income it might be 1.5 so you get 15 000 for that kid and then you know if you're esl you get another factor on top of that and so on and so forth so
029those things kind of multiply out and really multiply up and then when you talk about a district of our size of being you know when i started here we were 1400 we're now 2 000 probably gonna be 2100 next year you know those things add up and they add up pretty quickly and i think so you feel like the state is the state of watch like they're they're they're well there was a huge there was a huge movement i don't know how many years ago where people started we were up and armed we were we were advocating there were there were so many underfunded districts where we had other districts that were completely over aided okay and once that started to come to light i do think they have started to and i was rescheduled
030like well yeah i was gonna ask if it was a somerset um eight years ago nine years ago whatever it was and part of part of the problem and this is what michelle's talking about is number one um the former abbots were still getting that avid type money that was number one and then number two um they had frozen our enrollment so our enrollment was frozen for like four or five years in a row so while districts were experiencing declines in enrollments they still got a lot of money even though they didn't have that that decline in enrollment while we were the direct opposite we had huge climbs in enrollment and we weren't getting factored into that to getting to getting more funds so that led to a lot of different things when you're talking
031about a small district like us being the third most underfunded district in the entire state there was a major problem there you know and i'm glad that you know we advocated and did make some headway on that and got some things taken care of on that because i don't think if if things stayed the way they were i'm not sure we would be in existence today without absolutely positively crushing the taxpayers because there's just no no way we could we could have maintained what we had back then today yeah okay so okay and i know that we had discussed like the the town with the patent you were saying you were going to mention pilots so yeah unfortunately it influences a lot and i'll give an example so let's just use meridian one right so
032when meridian one finally came up online the actual uh evaluation of town went up say a million dollars but they give it a pilot we get no money from there and the the borough gets a fraction of the taxes because that was the incentive to build right the problem at the time was itself correct me from wrong they gave him like a 30-year pilot which i i know has been redone since because we were kind of up in arms over that number one but number two you know um when you start looking at and they did fast numbers um a month ago with the number of pilots that that are already being built and some that are done and the number that's on the books coming up your loss in revenue for the district until
033the pilots come off come off the books of somewhere i don't want to say lost revenue but the the the the the realization is um you know you're going to be out probably somewhere in the vicinity of one to two million dollars in revenue for the district easily um the problem is that the board is going to have to make future boards are going to have to make the decision um since we're not getting that pilot money but your your state is going to start to fall while your fair share starts to go up are you going to raise taxes and are you going to put that tax burden on taxpayers because of the pilots and i've been very vocal about that um for for many years that you know there is a provision in
034the pilot program that we could get some money from those things i've tried to talk to the borough about it and to know about so to this day we don't get any money from the pilots um i think right now with the again i was just told that um old madeline's or venue five whatever it is that's can now be a four or five star story apartment building and the ones that they have i think all total from start from rooney one to now i think it might be 12 12 pilot programs or projects yeah and the one they're rebuilding downtown what happens are we proving that these that these buildings going up are improving the cost per square foot or the cost like and i'm gonna just use old man lines maybe it was
035five hundred thousand dollars you put a new building there now it's three million dollars so you have that but then you have all the people's income that are going to live there right that tax on a whole nother level of potential income that you lose because they're that there's no you're not getting any benefit from any property tax from that so it's kind of twofold robbie yes i know this has come up i've been here for a little bit i know this has come up several times are we able to i know there's a liaison from the city council that i would like to request because i think there's a lot of these issues that you know they're you're handling this a lot of these questions incredible but i think that there's issues that we
036need to address with the representative from the city council i think we talked about putting together like a community we did we talked about it but i just want to go back to that because you're going to remember there's also a fundamental there's a fundamental um objective way of looking at some of these things so from from a borough perspective they're they're looking at improvement of the overall community right and and raising your the value of your homes and your property taxes and things like that but at the same point in time though the problem that we have here is right our population is exploding so we have you know like i said over the years and i think this year we're going up another 100 pins i mean that that's a lot of kids
037for one year so again you're going up that that those type of numbers and the problem that i see though right now is while we're doing really well because a lot of unfortunate i'd say unfortunately the the the the circumstances are some of them are low income or esl or special education we are getting some some additional funding for that but the reality is at some point in time and i said this michelle you're my witnesses i've been saying this for years we're going to get to this point where we are right now we finally got our local fair share and we're right there the problem is moving forward your local fair share is probably going to go up yeah which is which then the board has to make the decision are we going to
038raise taxes to stay with the local fair share or not right and and i think that's going to become the problem that you're going to see is you know at times it may be two percent because at other times it may be four percent right and if that's the case um you know you're going to be dealing with your constituents here who are going to be screaming that you're raising my taxes and and let's just look at the in environment we're in we're talking about a recession really um and we're talking about stagflation so people are going to be hurting because gas is now four dollars a gallon groceries are more money and yet at this point in time we're lucky as a community we're not raising taxes but if you compounded if we were
039raising taxes this year i'm sure there would be a lot of people who are really hurting um especially in our community um knowing knowing their situations you know raising taxes at that point in time so i think again i think we're lucky this year i think we're in a good spot this year i just think that moving forward you know you have some real concerns that you're going to have to be very very very mindful of yeah um and i think you know i'll go to i'll go to past past issues like when i first became superintendent you have you had a five million dollar deficit in your budget so every year you were rolling over over five million dollars to offset your your your budget so in theory if your budget was 20 million
040dollars well really it was only right so that became an issue when we finally got away from that and got away from from those bad practices the problem that you have is when when you come in and say okay we got to raise taxes and the board goes we're not raising taxes we're not doing this um are there any creative ways of doing it and you fall into some of those traps that really hurt you financially long term short term they're great long term they're terrible right so you always have to be mindful that be be cautious of that um and again i think that's some of the things i've learned over the years is you know some of those pitfalls and have to deal with pitfalls but and then again to my point is
041that we're kicking the can down the road we have a buzz budget presentation here which i i i hate this you know it's like we're going around robin i hear you i hear you and it's nothing and i'm not addressing this to you i my concern is and i don't know if my fellow board members i know that we've talked in the past is that we're doing a budget presentation i don't see anyone from the city council here that concerns me i'm a taxpayer it concerns me that everything we're talking about we're talking about in in a ball and how come there's no representative from the city council here to discuss this that to me is a concern that i have well the only thing that i would say as a counterpoint is i believe
042city council or town council is going to have their budget presentation tomorrow night and i don't know that i mean i wasn't personally planning to attend and i don't know that we further does that so i just want to be careful and mindful and say that that street press both ways we've talked as a group about improving that relationship and making sure that the consequences of decisions on both sides are well understood before people actually make mistakes and i would say this you know over the years we've had a very good relationship with me right and i want that to continue but my point is we're sitting here year after year after year saying the same thing well and again the only reason i say that though roger is like right now we're not sitting
043here saying hey we need to taps or yeah position we're not there but i want to be upfront and transparent about it it's coming that's in common guys and that's all i want to do is make sure you all understand what is coming down the road and you guys know i i always try to plan for five minutes now i know okay yeah i just know i i i've spoken to people on the council and and their viewpoint is that okay this pilot money doesn't you know a percentage doesn't come to us but it's over here and so if we raise taxes they can use that to offset but however that's nice but it's also not true because they can't offset our taxes once you set the tax limit they can't change it the only
044thing they can do is lower their own right if we ask for 13 million we're going to get 13 right whether no you're going to get 13 million from the taxpayers they can't lower the tax rate you approve that's critical to understand the only thing they can do is lower their side of taxes that's all they can do right isn't there a cash because i remember doing a course years ago about the funding isn't uh special services like special ed isn't there like a 16 flat rate for like all special ed so that it doesn't like monetize going like placing kids and special ed to get the extra funding so like where does our district fall as far as special like what percentage of our population is that that number is 18 18 it's right
045around 18 and that's where we are right around 18. i think the benefit for us is that most of our kids are in district and not at the district we've run a lot of our own programs because i know that there's a cap with that so yes and no i mean you do get penalized if you over classify or you or you send too many kids out to make sure that you're not just trying to get money out of kids exactly so and again i think i think we've done a really good job of having our own programs bringing kids back into the district um and all those things like i said i mean you know 2000 i think we're 2086 kids or so anything at a district we're 36 i mean the numbers proportionately
046low because we do run our own programs and another thing i have to say is is the shared services agreement with south bank has helped us tremendously well you know we're getting some of their kids they're taking some of our kids and there's a wash there which is great because you know we're doing a rape by our kids and at the same time both districts are benefiting from not having to pay that response i mean there's got to be a number to me there's got to be a way of figuring out what the value is of the pilot programs increasing the value of the town they absolutely have there has to have there has to be a number yeah it says because of this we're gonna have this and so everyone's property values are gonna
047go up because of this because of this uh value-added building which i agree like there's a value add to not having a downtown that's in disrepair right so like there's value to growth and there's value to building you know but we've got to look at the number and see what does that value bring because we're we're hearing that they're not putting children in like these these residents aren't adding students but and but to me that's not even the argument the argument is if it's increasing the value of founder of property and it's increasing according to trenton everyone's property now becomes more valuable more affluent like we can afford our own tax breaks then there has to be a number there where we can say how do how is a school district do we do we
048get that because we're obviously that's a number that's not translated that's right where where are you looking to get it from the problem is i i really like who are you looking like i can't get those i can't get all those figures i don't have that access i just once we get the number where do you want those funds to to funnel into our district i think i think what this number is because maybe it's not as big as i'm thinking i'm thinking it's big right but maybe it's not as big as what i'm thinking and then two is how do we work collectively as a town you know when people want to move to a town they want to move to a town with a great school district but they're going to pay more
049money per square foot on their house in a bridgewater a little war and then they are in boundaries and i'm sorry to say it's mostly because of the school grade right and the amount of taxes that they're able to collect so with growth comes great things but it also comes you know with a level of knowing where that value is well and i think i think i think what you really want to do is you want to know what that that value is right to explain to people the this is the value increase that we have yet you have to take a look at the evaluation of your house versus where you currently are versus where you're going right and just try to educate people on that end so they kind of understand um you
050know not only what their homes are worth or what the evaluation of the town is worth but also understand that it's and and i'll use michelle because she likes to jerk me or you know she's over taxed and she's over tax burden and and and everything else but when maybe when you explain that it would make somebody like myself feel a little bit better like yeah i'm paying a lot of money in taxes i get what you're saying i'm still paying a lot of money in taxes but i get what you're saying yeah because i don't think you'll ever get to a point where somebody says yeah i'm okay with that all right i don't think you'll ever get there but at least you you might be able to get to i understand where you're
051coming from i don't like my tax numbers but i understand where you're coming from right and again what and just a side note then i'll stop and then we'll move on to the board meeting but if you if you're look if you're looking at the overall housing market in general people are overpaying tremendously right now um i do think from an economic standpoint i think that you know i would be very concerned that there may be a housing bubble again four or five years from now like even 10 years ago the price per square foot for a house and bridgewater was going to be way higher than the house and you have to look at yourself why is that the house is just as beautiful sits in the same type of neighborhood what is the
052difference well and but but i also think some of that may be i'll say it's my fault okay some of that may be my fault because i don't think we've done a good enough job of saying that we're better than bridgewater now i will say that if you look at it it's okay but if if if you look at where our kids are going to school if you look at um our population versus their population and how many kids are going to two or four year colleges if you take a look at um like i said the colleges where they're going um how many kids would rather be here than in other districts um you know we we have a very vibrant choice program and and we do fill those seats so there are it's
053not like one of those things where i don't want to be here in bound but we have we have people who fight to come to bamberg right so um i think we just don't do a good enough job selling that at some point in time and again i absolutely agree with you because i think i think the school has been phenomenal and and again i always going to school and so i always said i'm not a pr person well that's why i've never never never been a pr person so um but yeah i mean i think they're i think there's some low-lying fruit now that we have we have that firm yeah that maybe some of those things can get out and i think part of that is collaborating with the council you know and
054working collaboratively on a way to and like those funds and i have to be honest with you over the years like you know michelle knows this if we go back eight nine years ago i don't think the relationship eight nine years ago is the same relationship we have today i think we have a very good relationship like i can call hector and say hector hey i need some help with this or he call me you know we generally work some of those things out um you know i i just yeah but i think it's just the politics of the town right now but i think i think that going forward if that's an avenue we really want to continue to explore then we need to be the ones to put together something to reach out
055to them to bring them on board you know what i'm saying because if we're going to wait for them that'll never happen okay i mean i i know i've been he's been on council he's been my friend for years he is asked to be the liaison for the education and they just tell him flat out no okay but there's no one sitting here either okay so it's there's there's some infighting that's going on within the council within itself um i know nothing about those things so so ps i think that if that's something we want to do and i know what's spoken about it i'm sure there's a couple of us that wouldn't mind volunteering maybe reaching out and and trying to have a sit down that way okay thank you dan no problem no
056problem and if you have any other questions if they pop up later on feel free to ask and i'll i'll do my best to update you it's all right i'll do my best all right um anything else back i was trying to be good [Music] all right yes we most certainly do so shall we education so um our most recent education commission uh committee meeting was i think this evening um i haven't seen it uh danny i'm not sure i think you were the member of attendance i don't know if you want to share anything from the meetings with the committee or maybe we can do that at the next meeting oh thank you okay so a quick brief about that is um so we discussed the language direction committee where we'll be previewing uh
057some of the possible different uh current resources that are gonna be um focusing on like some period instruction um eol materials and it's all all composting components we were also talking about the summer enrichment with the robotics team i believe it's going to be from grades 3 to 12 and it's going to be a two week uh two-week instruction with one week that um that's going to be split into two different groups and that'll be done over this morning there's going to be a required summer work for both math and language arts so they'll be working the local library for the elementary buildings and then um some there's uh some teachers looking for uh changes in regarding to the pd days um so like for example like martin luther king day or columbus days and
058things like that so that's something that may be coming down the line and so that's a little bit more finalized okay and i think if i'm not mistaken the enrichment program for robotics is actually going to appear later on the agenda tonight for everybody to review right yes that's correct okay although i don't know if we made the changes because i think that in the proposal it says one to twelve [Music] for governance um i think michelle you or i could actually do the empty do you have a preference i mean in governance we pretty much go over all of the things there are some board members that have to make sure that they get your ethics forms so um have you have you gotten in touch with them personally so that they i don't
059want to necessarily announce there's only one i haven't gotten okay so dr gallagher we didn't have a new human resources but we're continuing to look at stamping anticipated openings for next year uh the non-renewable list and then of course our negotiations i think we're are we still on first for wednesday so i have to confirm with mr paxton um exactly what we can schedule i think to your point you know our proposal is ready and [Music] an official uh letter tomorrow is we're moving the half day from friday before monday to thursday we're gonna do friday the following tuesday off so we'll make those changes on the calendar and um and then lisa maybe you want to say a couple of things about the website project yeah so uh there was a meeting today i
060know danny was on mrs fisher was on i was not able to attend but i believe the progress was made as far as getting a sub uh school site uh set up and reviewed i don't know what we wanted to share anything or do we want to just put out some notes for i um i had sent notes to both you and dr gallagher that you can share yeah so we'll have some notes to follow up on that i think um next steps would just be following up with content and um hopefully i can get with um dr gallagher i'll read you the notes that were sent to me and i'll have feel free to go through those go through those any questions concerns comments or anything you have please send them [Music] um we
061talked about having a community focused group also take a look at the sites um before we go live with those just to get some some other feedback from parents and things like that about the new website to make sure we have everything covered and it's user-friendly and everything yes sir so the question i was going to ask is what was that um link or oh the information that you provide well that also includes like a site map so we know what to be on the lookout for and i am not 100 but i would be advanced okay excellent thank you awesome thanks guys um yeah sure i mean i can talk through what we do yeah um so i had my first meeting uh with the county um somerset county educational services commission uh it
062was a great meeting i got to meet some of the representatives from different school districts around somerset county uh it was a general agenda being new to the meeting it was kind of kind of adapting and learning about what they were going through but i was able to listen and get a lot of feedback what i heard from that meeting was that transportation was a major issue among other school districts a lot of districts are struggling with getting busy getting roots kids are calling daily to see if their buses are coming to even pick them up so as a walking district i guess i was feeling pretty thankful that you don't have to go through that um it sounded like a hardship that other districts are really suffering through um getting the buses and getting
063the bus vendors to to show up i was able to also get a tour of the building uh which was pretty uh inspirational they've got a lot of workshop areas they have a complete shoprite store in store training facility there where they're able to train and teach their students how to use cash registers how to scan new pcs how to learn how to communicate with customers how to find product on shelves i was really inspired by that and they work closely with a few of the shoprite stores i believe the one in somerset uh works closely with them so i was really impressed to hear that students could come learn how to basically work within a shoprite environment and then go on to maybe working in a shoprite store so that was really great they
064also do a lot of electrical construction auto they have a full uh auto shop there where they're training kids how to put cars on lifts how to take tires off how to do brakes how to do you know tire rotations uh they also have this is the first time i guess they've done it in a while is uh uh they have a full enclosed uh bathroom that they're roughing in so they have the the full footprint of the bathroom toilet sink all the roughing all the tile they're teaching the kids how to lay all the the masonry how to do the outside flat boards basically everything from outside construction on your house to inside plumbing and inside bathroom refinishing which was really impressive and then they had um some electrical boxes that they were training
065the kids on basic electrical wiring electrical service so a lot of really good things um they did speak to me that we do have students that are enrolled in the program there which i was excited about because i think it's really seems like a very strong program so as i have a i have uh some pictures that i took and some notes from the agenda from the meeting that we can share so that you guys can take a look but yeah it was a really good really good first week so nice great operations were pretty much uh actually uh the budget presentation kind of eclipsed operations um everything that we talked about in the operations committee meeting budget uh was discussed uh as well as the facilities uh one of the things that i wanted
066to bring to light and i wanted to thank dr gallagher and everyone that put all of these ideas into motion is that the lamont field replacement and was it i'm very impressed with what i saw and uh because of it coming under budget as dr gallagher had mentioned we're able to get some nice lights on there um the main gym floor is also going to be repainted and and the lafayette sidewalk will also be aired as well as and my son tells me the high school pa system will be replaced so uh that was about it but uh and you know pretty much everything else in relation to numbers with budget uh you know talking about being in good shape finishing out the year great can can i just say because i know you guys
067um bring up the idea of women having trouble like simply so that you're not [Music] too much on the spot as an individual i think generally speaking we wanted to express that again we want to make sure as many people can exactly the point of having the community meetings is to have as many people at the table as possible so they can be productive discussions and if we need to adjust the schedule we need to change days we need to go virtual we need right so when it comes to the other ones you know if we're doing virtually maybe we could push them back a little bit if there's an issue within that time we should reach out to see if we can rearrange it ahead of time as opposed to this is a definite
068you know and then only have one person show up yeah the most important thing is when i send out those weekend reports so like this weekend's report's going to have everything for me there so if there's a time or a date that's not working if you let me know and then i can at least inform the committee members and say hey this state's not working maybe we can adjust to get a committee virtual consensus whatever but i have to know that to reach out to people and then try to make those those concessions and things like that but that's why i think it's really really important i'm going to stress this out really really important that you look at the weekend report when it comes out don't wait until before we need to look at
069it or anything but if you take a look at it that weekend that it comes out so you know you're informed but b if there is a scheduling issue or conflict that we can resolve it that you know pretty quickly starting in the next week so like again like what i'm saying is you know um i think it's may 9th there's two committee meetings in a board meeting but if there's a if there's a conflict that we know that this weekend it gives me that whole week to make any adjustments so mr minhaus and i did meet over google me yeah that's what i'm saying like i think i i i think you just traditionally thought well this is what it is and and and we're seeing where people you know for conflict reasons or
070whatever you know i get a last minute one but i i'd like more participation so i think maybe if we think of it more fluidly exactly yeah and i think the the the biggest thing is you know when i put out the dates and times if people could say hey that doesn't work for me then i can go to the committee members and start a committee chat and go back and forth because if i keep it within the committee it doesn't violate some time off so and then i can come up with a complex okay so the general takeaway is the committees are arguments the most important thing is that we meet and discuss the issues and however flexible we need to be in order to get there are all things that are for discussion
071and debate so i'm focusing this way so much same goes for you guys too okay but i mean tonight's committee reports compared to i think what we've been hearing in the past fantastic uh the progress that's being made and i know a lot of it's being driven by the administration but you know the sense of ownership about um the subject matter expertise i think is coming from the board and i think that's really important so um positive improvement and great to see any other questions anybody has about any of the reports they've been received tonight okie dokie open to the public yes for agenda items only there are no comments online so shall we move on to 5.1 approval of the minutes resolve that the bomber board of education approves the minutes for the following
072meetings regular and executive meeting minutes march 21st 2022 can i have a motion motion thank you mr powell a second second thank you mr zumko any discussion i need to abstain i was not there as any other comments or questions yep yes mr zorko is abstained so as mr thank you item 6.1 resolve the superintendent recommends for approval the resolutions is outlined in personnel resolutions under district and high school this is 6.2 push through 6.15 have a motion motion thank you mr foster a second second thank you ms guzino any discussion it's nice to see that we'll update because all the new programs that we're using you know to keep up with uh the changing curriculum i'm glad to see that hearing no other questions can we have a role call please mr bail yes
073mr fawzi yes mrs casino yes mr januzzi yes mr minhas yes yes mr thoughts yes and miss lima yes okay we are now up to section seven resolve that the superintendent recommends for approval the resolutions as outlined in personnel resolutions under middle and elementary schools this is through 7.10 i have a motion motion thank you mr fazio a second second thank you mr zumko any discussion okay hearing none can we have a wall call please mr bear yes mr farzio yes mr yes mr januzzi yes miss lima uh mr minhas yes mr zipko yes and mr dawson yes thank you we are up to section eight result that the boundary board of education approves the resolutions as outlined in education resolutions under district and high school this is eight point two through eight point sixteen
074i have a motion promotion i can use the follow you in a second second thank you mrs discussion i'm so thrilled to see these all these trips like i feel like we're back to normal like we haven't seen trips for like two years now yeah um so i'm excited about that and i guess just an overall um you know as far as summer programs like how do our numbers look as far as like do we have a firm number of how many people we think we so we're still at the beginning stages of that right so um our after school program ends this week um and then we'll begin to look at the data and we also have linked form c um we'll be taking so that'll kind of determine a little bit more where
075we're at with those numbers now in the past i know we've been pretty successful for getting the buy-in for people to come to correct well that's good mm-hmm yeah i anticipate that all right good yeah and um that brings you just reminded me something mr januzzi i think we need to follow up with the ref committee um there was some discussion because it might not be an operation this summer that they would like to run some some programs here or you know put a code on some programs for our kids um if we can maybe establish some sort of communication and see what what's available yeah so we have our next recreation commission meeting this week i think our director is going to at that point share some details about broken arrow as soon as
076i have them i just wanted to do a shout out to our incredible robotics team and then i see they're going to the world championships houston and i cannot say how proud [Music] just bursting with pride so congratulations ahead of time i know they're going to win absolutely just one thing on 8.5 um it looks like there's a discrepancy in the numbers and the minutes it has a cost of 700 and on the enclosed slide it says it's 1248. i don't know which number um if you open up the attachment attachment versus the narrative yeah any attachment it has 1248 listed yeah i think the that is a salary discrepancy i would go with the attachment higher number all right okay unless there are any other questions let's go ahead and do a roll call
077mr bale yes mr fazio yes ms kazina yes mr januzzi yes ms up to section 9 resolve the boundary board of education approves the resolutions as outlined in education resolutions under middle and elementary schools this is nine point two through nine point four we have a motion motion thank you fawzio second second thank you mr bob discussion yay trips lesser to a lesser degree but it's still good i'm sorry i second that motion yes mr bear yes mr fazzy yes mrs casino yes mr news you guys it's lima mr minhas yes mr zipko yes mr dos yes up to section 10. resolve the boundary board of education approves the resolutions as outlined in special services resolutions this is 10.2 through 10.4 we have a motion motion thank you mr fazio a second second thank you
078mr bell any discussion hearing none can we have a roll call please mr bale yes mr fatih yes yes mr genevieve yes miss lima mr minnock yes mr zorko yes and mr dawson yes we are up to section 11 resolved that the boundary board of education approves the resolutions is outlined in financial resolutions this is 11.2 11.19 have a motion motion thank you ms defazio ii second thank you mr zumko uh i just want to point out for everybody's benefit that the adoption of the budget that dr gallagher presented is in 11.2 yes and there was an additional leak today of 11.3 which is the preschool uh budget workbook we already approved the um the plan um it's actually in the budget so this is the first year that they're asking us to do it
079separately from the budget overall so there so our our pre-k program is completely funded by the state yes so you know that's completely separate the only other thing is that they use our any facility like when we first did the preschool grant we we set a favorite way that that would be something we would have to discuss whether we were going to keep it or not and that's still the case because that's not mandatory right there are some districts that don't right because they're up to eight classrooms did i say on that that's a lot of that's a lot like when we're looking at like numbers and we're saying like yeah we're like classrooms are getting up to 29 and we have eight classrooms filled with you know your preschool like you're capped at 15.
080right that's what i'm saying yeah so that that's a lot of space then so that has the other side the other unintended consequences is what happens to the other class sizes because you just don't have rooms to put them in and again that's what we've been talking about that's the reason that you know we continue to talk about having you that have here at lafayette and followed by that addition yeah because we're going to need that space how many schools just out of care do you know how many don't actually have a pre-k program or is that or is that do we have them no and it's it's very small now because um they keep going but i was going to say a lot of them most of them aren't full day right they're not
081a full day [Music] there's definitely benefits you know i mean right financially you know it depends on what study you read because they'll say by fourth grade there's like no appreciable difference between kids that went to pre-k i have to so i don't i mean i don't know if that's changed over the years i'll tell you working in pre-k for 10 years there's statistical data that i can look at and say in my district that there is a definite achievement increase on those children and and i am very very happy that we are continuing with ours because you know it made me feel old i had a pre-k student and then he's graduating high school now and i said he goes well you got you know your whole life well i'm old but you're all
082too i'm tired as well but he's going to college and i think that that program uh facilitated something i have a question on 11.18 i don't think we did the motion i'm sorry we didn't we're in discussions [Music] i just wanted to thank the donors choose project for the donation over at smalling thank you yeah the same thing to the chatham foundation and uh new jersey grant yes absolutely and then i just would i have to explain that or just go with the ones that relate has the district historically always use the strong model or is this a change i think [Music] any other comments or questions love it roll call please mr ben yes mr foster yes chris casino yes mr januzzi yes it's lima yeah mr minhas yes mrs yes mr doss yes
083i do not believe we have any other matters to come before the board so we are up to new business is there anything that any of the members wants to raise at this time all right i believe we are up to open to the public for discussion there are no comments online anybody care dr s hi i just said a comment about the preschool program it is so important for our families truly it's the foundation and i am so proud of all the hard work that our teachers do um and there is a huge part of research they provide a lot of research about how important preschool is and the important skills that students are taught especially our esl students who do not have that foundation at home somebody reading to them their way great
084thank you you're welcome okay i believe we are going to move into executive session now uh dr gallagher can you confirm under which numbers one two and three uh sessions um we are at 6.1 pool of hiv [Music] all right so roll call mr bail yes mr fazio yes miss kazena yes mr januzzi yes miss lima yes mr minhaus yes mr zipko yes and mr dawson had seen 17.1 approval of middle and elementary cases it's recommended by the superintendent that is 7.2 a 17.2 17.3 can't i get any motion and second second now it's a competition all right mr mayo yes chris fazio yes miss casino yes mr januzzi yes it's lima mr minhas yes mr zipko yes and mr dawson texting excellent can i get a motion to adjourn motion all right i'll give
085that one to mr dale followed by mr mrs defazio all in favor everybody have a great night