001meeting to order at 602. Can I have a moment of silence, please? Please stand for the flag salute. I pledge 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. Roll call. Mr. Kenny >> here. >> Mr. Bramhole. >> Miss Falcinero >> here. >> Msiah Con >> here. >> Mr. McGuff >> here. >> Mr. Mer >> here, >> Mrs. Tadley >> here, >> Miss Trump, Miss Fitzwater here. >> Statement is hereby made that adequate notice of this meeting was given by submission of said notice to the Burlington County Times, Courier Times, Cinnamonson Township Clerk, and the district website on the following dates: January 8th, 2025, January 7, 2026, January 12th, 2026. Uh, moving on to section
002two, we have budget presentation. Mr. Hello, I'm Mrs. Wilki. >> Thank you, Mrs. Fitzwwater. Mrs. Wilky, if you would join me at the podium, thank you members of the board, members of the public, those watching at home. Uh this is our annual public hearing on the proposed 2026 2027 school budget. Uh for many of our veteran members of the board, they understand the process that's involved in generating this budget in the many months that it took to get to this point. Uh for our newer members or for members of the public who may not be familiar, this budget process actually starts as early as October. But seemingly anytime we're talking about budgets, we're talking about a continuum. Uh, and what I mean by that is any monies that are left over and unspent or reallocated
003for future budgets. Uh, we set goals for budget meeting in October. Mrs. Wilkey and her office begin to set priorities as early as November. Our board finance committee is involved in discussions early days that ultimately lead us to the preliminary budget that we approved back in March and finally this required public hearing on the budget. Uh, this budget has already been submitted to the county office and approved to move forward to get us here this evening. Uh this budget does reflect our investments uh that will pay dividends into the future. Uh by that we mean that um as we look towards our educational programs, our staffing, our facilities, uh this budget reflects the standards that we have in Cinnamonson in our classrooms and our extracurriculars and as I mentioned in our facilities as well. The
004district continues to be one that focuses on academic success for all of our students. dedicates resources to educating the whole child, giving them exactly what they need to succeed both in the general education setting and the special education setting. This budget provides for experiences for students to create a well-rounded and well- educated student body in academics, athletics, and the arts and even including experiential learning. Uh that said, we have had some challenges moving into the budget season. Uh Mrs. Wilkey will highlight some of those challenges. uh the board, the members that are sitting here at the table are certainly well apprised of what those challenges were uh getting us to this point. Uh so moving along to the next slide. Oh, I have a clicker. I knew that. Uh back in October, as I mentioned,
005the board approves the 2026 2027 budget objectives. And rather than read off a slide, I will just try to summarize that this budget does call for quality education and uh juxtaposing the quality education we provide for our students against financial efficiencies for the district and the taxpayers. Uh this budget supports our curriculum. Dr. Goldberg will uh attest to the fact that our curriculum uh certainly a dynamic curriculum that meets and exceeds the standards of the New Jersey state learning standards. Um uh under financial needs, this budget uh realistically assesses the financial needs of our district which are significant. And we have some model target class sizes which over the last couple years uh this board has been supportive of keeping our class sizes uh in a range uh that certainly promotes uh learning at the
006highest level. Uh continuing on with our budget objectives, uh the budget will provide for the training and professional development. As the board is aware, we provide robust professional development opportunities for our staff in the uh six required staff professional learning days. Uh this budget certainly uh contributes to the technology of our district. Our students have access to uh not only devices in their classrooms but instructional tools, learning tools, curriculum supplements as well as the technology tools that support the infrastructure of the building as well as the security of our buildings. Uh this budget provides for the safety busing to the extent that it doesn't interfere with the educational program. And as this board is aware, uh we are required to provide busing only outside an envelope of two uh miles for our elementary students and
0072 and a half miles for our high school students. Certainly, uh in an 8 square mile town, uh there are there are pockets of the town uh where we provide courtesy busing uh for the safety of our students, especially considering the fact that our town uh is divided almost in half by Route 130. Um certainly a road that we wouldn't want our students accessing. So um this this budget certainly supports us maintaining our own transportation program uh which not only transports our students but also serves as a revenue generator uh for some of the runs and the maintenance that we provide for additional districts. Uh this budget will provide for the funding and maintenance and upkeep of the district facilities. These facilities are certainly a point of pride uh for this board past and ultimately
008future boards uh that we are making investments in now for the students and the community. And this budget will provide the necessary funds to meet the school's safety and security needs as we will talk about in a little bit. All right, we'll go through some of the highlights of this budget. Um, in terms of programming, right, I mentioned that we have some challenges related uh to state funding, some challenges related to our expenses, and also some challenges related to uh the financial obligations of the district. Uh so under programming, we're seeking to maintain our student staff ratios and our class sizes. We are identifying some efficiencies in our staff, and I'll talk about that uh by way of uh some very subtle reductions in terms of uh some staffing attrition. Um this budget does also
009call for additional prek expansion, something that has been a point of pride uh for this district. Just to be clear, that uh silo of money for prek comes separately than our general operating budget. Mr. Wilki will certainly touch on that later in the presentation. uh we are proud it's going to maintain all of our athlet athletic programs. So certainly as we talk about challenges and I know our board members certainly follow what's happening uh in our neighboring districts in the media all throughout the state of New Jersey where many districts are facing some pretty deep and some pretty significant cuts that impact not only programs but people and students. Uh we're very proud that we're able to maintain all the wonderful programs that we have including those on the extracurricular side. And there are some
010subtle little ads here and there by reallocating some money uh within that pie that we slice up. And one of the new things we're looking to bring at the high school level is the addition of a fall drama as a more like officially recognized school activity. Uh staffing. We're looking to maintain our staffing levels as I mentioned as they relate to student uh staff to student ratios. Um we are looking to bring on some additional prek staffing as would be warranted by the expansion uh through some of our partnership programs and uh we are looking to bring a new special education program to the high school. Uh in terms of technology, uh in years past, these have been some uh longer list as we highlight some of the additions that the budgets are bringing. Again,
011this this budget is more about maintaining than additions. Uh but that said, we've made a significant investment into our student Chromebooks. So, uh we are continuing uh with the cycle and really this next budget year is just supporting uh that replacement cycle. Those were done with a lease purchase, so we're making our next uh installment payment on that purchase. Uh we are continuing a a uh Mr. Dr. Krillin and his department are doing a multi-year roll out of interactive whiteboard uh solutions and this summer is time for the high school to receive their upgrade. Uh there's some minor printer upgrades throughout the district and we will be entering into year two of our new communications platform which many of you are aware of as parent square and we're very excited to expand uh our usage
012of that platform. Uh under facilities again this is usually an area um that we make some pretty significant investments in. Uh, as a part of this budget cycle, we're going to put a pause on some of the upgrades that we've been doing year-over-year. Um, in in our classrooms right now, we're about two years into the rush classroom upgrades. We've been doing four to five classrooms a year. Uh, given our discussions related to referendum and related to this budget, uh, we made the uh, purposeful decision to take a pause in our upgrade process and try to address some of those upgrades uh, through different funding avenues. Uh we are still continuing a project to uh add some canopies for some uh safety to our students and also some rain coverage by uh upgrading the cottage uh
013canopies at the new Albony school and the Rush School. Uh we are installing a new divider right across the hall in the gymnasium. And again that is for instructional purposes and for student safety issues and uh some upgrades to the new Albony school learning cottage bathrooms uh as needed to ensure that uh the plumbing and electric is up to speed in those. And of course, we always have emergent repairs year-over-year, things that we need to budget for, um, by way of some, uh, HVAC upgrades, um, cement work, and the occasional down tree that we need to address. Uh, in terms of transportation, our fleet is, uh, in great shape. Uh, we've we've purchased, lease purchased as many as five buses in the past. Uh, our fleet replacement cycle this year calls for two new 54
014passenger school buses and one new 24 passenger bus. As the board is well aware, the cost of acquiring new buses has gone up significantly, certainly outpacing the rate of inflation. Um, so the these are significant investments for us and Mr. Wilki does a good job uh and going out to bid for the financing for these uh utilizing the lease purchase program. Uh so with that, we're going to transition into the budget process a little bit. And with that, this book, would you like me to move on? >> Yes. >> Thank you, Mr. Capello. Good evening everybody. Uh moving on to the exciting part, the numbers. Um some key budget facts to take note of. The total proposed budget for the 2627 school year is 81,955656. This amount is a combination of the general fund, special
015revenue fund, and debt service. The general fund is the primary operating budget and it's used for salaries, benefits, supplies, student support services, textbooks, maintenance and operations, transportation, tuition, security, capital projects, and all other expenses deemed necessary to the district. Special revenue is made up of only grant funds and the budget is 6,348 355 and it's a projection based on a percentage of our current year grant allocations which we know that we're eligible to receive next year. These numbers are subject to change based on the actual allocation which we will receive prior to the start of the 2627 school year. The projection also includes the actual grant allocation for our preschool expansion program which is 5,93,565. The debt service fund is the annual payment owed for the financing of the 2014 bond referendum. State aid is
016increasing by 6% which is $1.2 million which is the maximum allowable increase. The overall proposed tax levy is increasing by 4.04%. And for the average assessed home in Cinnamonson, the proposed tax levy will result in an approximate annual increase of 238.98, which is $19.92 per month. This slide illustrates what the district is allowed to use in tax levy versus the proposed increase. Um, New Jersey public school districts are able to increase their tax levy by 2% which is equivalent to 769,814. Cinnamonson also qualifies for a healthcare adjustment of $2.2 million. This adjustment is based off of our current health care costs versus increases that are projected for next year. The final allowable adjustment is banked cap. If the district doesn't raise the tax levy to 2%, that difference is what's generated for future use. Also
017included in banks cap is any unused enrollment or healthcare adjustments during the last 3 years. If the funds are not used within 3 years, they will expire. The right column shows which adjustments the district is using. We're going to use the 2% tax levy increase and about 40% of the healthcare adjustment. The district is not using any of the bank cap, so the $1.6 million will expire and not be available for future use. Here we see our current year state aid versus the 2627 state aid allocation. The general fund receives equalization aid, categorical special education aid, categorical security aid, and transportation aid. The 2627 state aid allocation is 21,691879. Equalization is the primary aid that a school district receives. The change in equalization aid is determined by the calculation of the district's adequacy budget less
018the state determined local share value. The state determines our adequacy budget based on enrollment numbers and per pupil cost. And the adequacy budget is essentially what the state says the district's total should be. Then they determine the local share, which is the tax levy. The difference between these two numbers is the state aid that we receive. Categorical special education aid is based off of enrollment numbers as well. The state's funding formula uses our enrollment numbers from our ASSA report. We are receiving a slight decrease in security aid which is based off of resident enrollment and lowincome enrolled students. Transportation aid is determined from our DRTRS report and based off of the actual numbers of students that are eligible for transportation. Currently, the state of New Jersey has guard rails in place to ensure that the
019maximum a district can lose is 3% and the maximum they can gain is 6%. Cinnamonson has received the maximum increase of 6% if the guard rails were not in place. Based on the funding formula, Cinnamonson would be eligible to receive an additional $937,58 in funding. During the budget planning process, first we have to determine the total revenue that the district will generate. Once the revenue is determined, then we know how much we'll have to spend. This slide shows what makes up our revenue for the 2627 school year. Local tax levy is the highest revenue of $40.1 million followed by state aid at $21.6 million. Budgeted fund balance is a designated surplus from our audit report which the district must use. Miscellaneous revenue is made up of tuition payments received, Medicaid reimbursement, -ate reimbursement, interest earned,
020and any other miscellaneous payment received throughout the year. A large part of the projected miscellaneous revenue for next year is $1 million in healthcare dividends. Dividends were earned in prior years when there has been a surplus in the shift at year end. Unfortunately, the district doesn't anticipate additional dividends being raised in the near future due to the current healthcare market. Transportation revenue is made up of joints and shared services that we provide to other school districts. Extraordinary aid is projected to be $1 million. School districts are able to submit costs associated with students that have significant needs. The aid calculation is done by the state of New Jersey and is generally a percentage of the total submission. Maintenance reserve withdrawal is in the amount of $869,500. These funds are being allocated to support salaries of
021our required maintenance staff, maintenance of classrooms, facility upgrades and repairs, and all other required maintenance throughout the district. This brings our total general revenue for the 2627 school year budget to 73,19,0801. The next slide shows the appropriation of funds, which is the money which is how the money will be spent. Salaries and instruction make up the majority of the budget at $28.8 million. Employee benefits are the second highest expenditure at $14.2 million. These costs are for health benefits, insurance, social security contribution, and the PERS employer pension contribution. The overall increase is based off the projection from our providers. We are seeing a very large increase in health insurance costs. Cinnamonson school district is a member of the school health insurance fund and the projected increase for next year is 22%. This equates to about $2
022million. For reference, other school districts that are members of the state health benefits program are seeing an increase of upwards of 31%. Support services are made up of social work, attendance, nursing services, related services, child study team, curriculum, and media services for students. Operations and maintenance contain all maintenance and custodial staff salaries, repairs, and general maintenance costs to the district. And part of this appropriation is is the maintenance reserve withdrawal of the 8695. The next line contains all the district administrative and technology costs. This budget also supports our onetoone technology initiative. Transportation includes salaries, benefits, supplies and repairs, jointers when needed, fuel, and aid and loot payments. Tuition funds for our students placed out of tuition funds are used for students placed out of district. This allocation is based on enrollment projections and individual student
023needs. Co-curricular and athletics include all funds related to student athletics, clubs, and any additional non-instructional activities. Capital outlay funds are allocated for technology equipment to include server replacements and network infrastructure upgrades. All the appropriations bring the general fund budget total to 73,19,0801 which equals the revenue projection. Here is a quick overview of the special revenue funds. The preschool expansion program totals 5,32415. Of that 5,93,565 is the state aid allocation. The balance of 230,650 is a transfer from the general fund to support inclusion classrooms. Non-public funds, ESA funds, idea funds are all projections of the grant allocations which we are eligible for and these numbers will change once the allocations are released. Here is a look at the tax rate analysis. The proposed increase on the local tax levy is 4.04%. The average assessed value of
024a home in Cinnamonson is 236,496 which will have an approximate annual tax increase of 238.98 which is a monthly total of 1992. The final slide provides a breakdown of how one budget dollar is spent. 54 cents. The majority is spent towards salaries, instruction, co-curricular athletics, and sport services for students, followed up by 17% for employee benefits, 11 cents for operation and maintenance, 7 cents for administration and technology, 6 cents for transportation, 4 cents for transport for tuition, and one penny for capital outlay. And that makes up how a taxpayer dollar is spent. This concludes our budget presentation and a copy of tonight's presentation will be available on the district website. Mr. Cabello. Thank you, Mrs. Wilkkey. Uh members of the board, I yield some time for some questions if they are related, though I do
025understand that this is not the first time the board has been privy to this information. Uh the board is certainly aware of the challenges uh that the district faced related to uh increased healthcare costs. as we see that additional $2 million has certainly created uh an additional burden on this budget. That coupled with the fact that Cinnamonson would have been entitled to an additional nearly $1 million if the guard rails were not in place. Uh that said, the guardrails um you know certainly help to ensure that uh the opposite effect doesn't happen. So in that regard um we we could live in that world. So uh members of the board, are there any questions that Mrs. Wilker or I can answer uh about the budget process? All right. Uh thank you for your continued support.
026I know no one um is excited whenever we're talking about anything that is related to a tax increase and I appreciate uh your commitment to ensuring that our people and programs remain in place while doing so in the most fiscally responsible manner possible. So thank you for your support board members and good job Miss Wilki. Thank you. >> Thank you. Okay, we're going to move on to section three, public comment. Uh during the public comment section of the meeting, the board will seek public comment on any item. Obviously, there's only one tonight. Uh members of the public are reminded that if they wish to speak when called upon, participants should state their first and last name and address clearly for the record. In accordance with the Cinnamon and Board of Education policy, comments will be
027limited to a maximum of four minutes per person and the comment period will not exceed 30 minutes. With that said, anyone like to speak none. Okay. Then we are going on to section four uh adoption of the 20 26 2027 budget. We have uh Mr. Miy. >> Okay. There you go. >> Thank you, Mrs. Fitzwwater. Under item A that the board approves the adoption of the 2627 final budget. Under item B, item number one, that the B board approves the healthcare adjustment in the amount of $94,531. Item number two, that the board approves the maintenance reserve withdrawal in the amount of 86 $869,500. Item number three, that the board approves the annual maximum travel limit. And item number four, that the board approves the travel and related expense reimbursement for the 2627 budget. Thank you,
028Mrs. Fitzwwater. Thank you, Mr. Wilkkey. Mr. Kenny, can I have a motion uh for section 4 adoption of 2627 budget items A through B. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Mer. Comments or questions from the board? >> Hearing none, we'll take a vote. Miss Tadley. >> I motion approved. Uh we have no executive session tonight, right? So we are going to uh ask Mrs. Zakum for a motion to adjurnn. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Kenny. All in favor? >> I >> opposed. We are one one final um comment, Mr. Fer, before we do officially adjourn. Our next meeting will be on May 12th. And I do want the public to note that we did have to adjust the start time uh because we have a conflicting meeting with
029the planning board. So that meeting will begin at 7:30 as opposed to our normal start time of 7:00. So we look forward to seeing everyone then and more information is available on the district website. >> Thank you Mr. Fellow. Good night all.