001you can stand for the pledge of allegiance 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 the king and justice for all mustafa thank you mr roman gene i'd like to read a quick statement if i may the new jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the rights of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meeting of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provision of this act the cliffside park board of ed has caused notice of this meeting to be published by having the date time in place there are posted in the offices of the borough clerk by the library
002for a wreck department the office of the board of ed and the offices of school number 3456 in high school on march 10 2022 and the notice reported to reporters at the record march 10th 2022 this is an official meeting i'd like to take the role if i may mr roman gina sure mrs abreu here mr kapana mrs freda here mr garciga dr pantaliano mr raincourt here mr russo mr shelley here mr bakia here and mr ninozi will be here shortly okay mr romajian okay i'd like to welcome everyone to our meeting tonight you know we are streaming it uh to the community tonight before i give my report uh mr pinto our principal of the high school is here tonight to speak on behalf of two of our high school staff members who are
003being recognized tonight for their contributions yeah we won't hear anyone here no no speaking you're not going to hear anything okay i'd like to recognize two individuals for their performance and recognition in close eye park high school this is the first year we've participated in the governor's teacher of the year and governor's educational support professional of the year and it's a committee of staff in the high school and also stakeholders in the community mr shelley served on the committee so we thank you mr shelly for serving on the committee the two individuals that were selected for the teacher of the year recognition and the educational support professional of the year i'm going to introduce you in a second before that i'd like to just say a few words about them mr salvatore aiello who was
004recognized as the governor educator of the of the year for the teacher program at the high school he's an assistant football coach he's also instrumental in putting together cptv a few years ago we wanted a television production class i worked with mr mr ayala in order to put that into place and he's done a tremendous job of recruiting retaining and really facilitating the program additionally mr aiello is instrumental in the his report with the students the senior class he's the senior class advisor and he's also the facilitator for the the lgbtq club at the high school so i thank you mr aiello for all that you do your community and community of educators and stakeholders have recognized you with this prestigious award but he's not the first in his family to receive it i believe
005his wife received it the year prior yes congratulations [Applause] good job the second person i like to recognize is a member of the guidance department at cliffside park she's being recognized as the governor's teacher of the year or not the teacher of the year but the governor's education program for the educational support professional of the year in the high school and her name is marissa romano ms romano is the current varsity track coach she's an assistant with the spring track team she's also instrumental in a number of our wellness activities at high school she really drives our wellness campaigns and our mindfulness campaigns at the high school she's also what we she also i guess takes on the responsibility of dealing with some of our most at risk kids on the on campus a number
006of students seek her guidance they seek her counseling even though they are not on her role and she always finds time to to meet the needs of those students many of them are our most at-risk students so ms romano thank you for all that you do at cleveland high school congratulations thank you thank you thank you congratulations i also i noticed a resolution uh for the retirement of miss barbour kennedy ms kennedy has been with us for 17 years i'd like to just formally recognize ms kennedy for her dedication and adaptability over the course of her career mrs kennedy has been fundamental in really promoting career and college exploration classes at the high school and she's done a tremendous job and laid a tremendous groundwork for whoever is going to replace her in that capacity
007so i'd like to just recognize ms kennedy and thank you for your for your service mr pinto thank you good job just once again on behalf of the board congratulations to uh mr aiello miss romano great job keep up the good work thank you very much so i just want to spend a couple of minutes just going over a couple of items in my report and mr alfano is going to present the uh budget for the 2022-23 school year uh just a reminder to uh parents uh we do have updated covert guidelines on our website as a reminder as per the governor march 7th masks are optional across the district in classrooms and in school offices for those parents who will be registering students new students to the district for pre-k in kindergarten this coming
008september we do have posted to our website uh registration dates and registration instructions for uh new pre-k uh that's four-year-olds by october 1st and new kindergarten students five years of age by october 1st so if we do have parents that are watching tonight or you know of someone who has a child that age please have them check the website for registration information uh and also i believe in most cases or in both cases uh an appointment has to be made to register your child we are going through a re-registration of residency in cliffside park school district uh information will be going out to our parents in grades 3 6 and 10 initially a letter will be hand carried home by our third graders and our sixth graders in tenth grade we will post the information
009to the website um i'll be sending out a swift reach to parents but essentially what we're asking parents to do in those three grades three six and ten is to show two proofs of residency to reestablish residency within the cliffside park school district that has to be completed by july 31st for all parents who may be listening now uh once we finish grades 3 6 and 10 we will be we will be moving on to other grades such as 2 5 and 11 and then continuing until we've gone through essentially grades 1 through 11. so there will be information coming home there is information currently posted on our website we are also as i just said presenting the budget tonight on the website and the board has in your folders a copy of our budget
010newsletter which just kind of briefly outlines um a thank you for the support that our parents and community members have given us in the past what we've been able to do with a successful budget such as purchasing chromebooks textbooks uh providing students with things that they need to be successful in the classroom so the budget the passing of the budget obviously is very important mr alfama is going to speak to that a little bit later but we do have a copy of the newsletter posted to the website um for uh for your reading at your leisure um [Music] just a reminder to the board uh your self-evaluation if you could go to new jerseyschoolboards.org finish the self-evaluation as quickly as possible uh we'll compile that information and it'll be shared with the public and with
011the board at one of our june meetings okay at this point any questions from the public okay anything no so i'm going to turn it over to mr alfano at this time who's going to speak a little bit about our update up upcoming school budget uh thank you mr roman gino uh first of all i'd like to thank the board and yourself mr roman gino all our staff including the business office for everyone's support this budget doesn't get through to fruition to get approval by the county and the state without everyone's support so i want to personally thank everyone for their continued and ongoing support greatly appreciated to the taxpayers and the public april 19th is a big date we will be voting on the budget and the tax levy so please come out and
012vote and please vote yes obviously it's extremely important that we get a yes vote as mr romagino stated to provide a robust and efficient use of taxpayer dollars for our 2223 budget just like to go over now just a quick overview of the budget some of the key line items some of the key trends and ultimately the impact of this budget to to our taxpayers which is which is extremely important our our total budget this year is about 61.2 million for the upcoming 2223 budget that's up from about 59 million um this in 2122 the majority of the increase really comes from that we're moving forward with some additional capital projects above and beyond what we did this coming year versus last year a couple of rooms we're putting in potentially as long as the
013bids come in we're going to be uh updating some of our administrative offices in the high school and a variety of other capital projects we're going to be doing so that really was the bulk of the incremental increase from one year over the other our total tax levy went up from about 37 million to 37.7 million that 700 000 about is about 2 increase that's the allowable maximum increase in regard to state budget guidelines to two percent and what does that seven hundred thousand really mean what does it mean to the taxpayer in regard to the ones because that levy will be supported by our taxpayers uh it means on an average assessed home value of about 368 000 it's going to be about a 68 increase in uh per annum taxes which is about
0145050 per month again any increase is onerous on certain individuals we're not trying to minimize it but for five dollars and fifty cents a month in regard to getting the 61.2 million dollar budget approved we think it's a fine and equitable uh trade-off but again if your house is valued higher than the 368 000 or lower than the 368 thousand dollars the impact will move one way or the other but on average the house assessed that 368 000 will cost taxpayer approximately 68 incremental dollars on a per on them basis i mentioned the capital projects that will hopefully be engaging in the summer of 2022 we have a bid opening for all these projects on april 26th and that will tell us if we can do some or all of these projects we have a
015bucket of money but in like any public bid process uh sometimes certain projects come in higher than what we assessed so at the end of the day on april 26 we'll have an idea if we can do some or all of these projects i will bring the board up to speed in regard to the outcome of that just specific line items that i just like to discuss quickly in regards to the revenues and the appropriations appropriations in another word for expenses on our revenue side as we spoke about are a tax levy i went up approximately seven hundred thousand dollars year over year that's two percent cap allowable cap increase that is allowed by the state uh our income we call miscellaneous income and the real driver of the miscellaneous income is transportation uh as
016folks know over the last several years we have been not only transporting our own students we're our 22 or 23 buses but we also transport other districts to out-of-district uh schools such as uh fairview palisades park in fort lee we transport our students and their students and net net uh we're gonna earn about a million dollars in revenue this year and we forecasted about a million dollars uh for next year that really helps offset salaries expenses fuel liability insurance everything it's a real win for the district and we've been fortunate that the board has been very open and transparent and really an advocate for the transportation department so to speak because now we've migrated much of our part-time drivers and uh bus drivers to a full-time where obviously it averts attrition more likely to keep
017folks on board with us because they are in demand if we didn't move from a part-time platform to a full-time platform we would have had significant amount of attrition we've been holding our own knockwood we've been actually gained a couple of drivers over the last six months versus the previous six months so the the movement from part-time to full-time has really helped our attrition you know net net you're paying more out but really on a on a long-term basis you're actually saving money from the drivers that you lose we won't be able to cover routes these are special needs routes there's downstream effects in regard to soft dollars so again i'd like to thank the board for their support in regard to really migrating our transportation staff from a part-time to a full-time vehicle so
018appreciate that uh our tuition revenue was down a tick simply for the reason we get tuition from our fairview students we have about 530 fairview students year over year we have less fair high school fairview students than we had the previous year so thusly we have slightly less tuition revenue in regard to that our state aid went down a bit this year but what we call our extraordinary aid we believe will be going up our extraordinary aid is really for our special needs population so even though our enrollment has ticked down year over year our special needs population has ticked up so even though we've got slightly less state aid our extraordinary aid which is piggybacks on our special needs population has gone up so net net is it's almost it's almost a wash we
019can we are fortunate enough to continue to get grants idea which is for our special needs helps us offset our outer district tuition expenses for our special needs population so we continue to get grants from not only the state and the federal government so that helps us offset things such as salaries and tuition which really helps us you know balance our budget without that it would be a real challenge to balance the budget on the expense side obviously our instructional expenses continue to go up simply for the reason is special needs population as it grows you need more resources you need more otp you need more teachers which increases salaries which increases benefits so i mean that doesn't show any signs of slowing we're up to now with special needs of what they call ieps
020students who are classified nearly 586 students so again that continues to be a challenge but jenna russo heads that group uh does a fine job each and every year and and her staff so we appreciate all their support uh benefits uh good news that stayed relatively flat our prescription and our medical year year-over-year stay relatively flat uh our consultant is telling us that the second half of 2223 they do project a five to potential seven percent increase in our medical and our prescription again that's a forecast but we have we factored that into our into our budget and again we talked about transportation there's a yin and yang our transportation revenue has gone up significantly and our expenses have gone up at a lesser rate than our revenues but our spencer still have gone up
021year over year because again as i spoke about is if you go from a part-time platform for our drivers to a full-time platform your salaries go up but net-net our salary percent increase versus our revenue increase our revenues are going up at a greater rate than our expenses which is which is always a good thing so like i said net net we had a our total budget is about 61.2 million our total tax levy is about 37.7 million and like i said to our taxpayers and our public we're going to come out and vote on april 19th uh please vote yes obviously this is really the lifeblood of the district that's getting the uh getting the budget approved and like i said i want to thank the board again the staff and our business office
022staff for all that for all their support that's pretty much it mr romagino on the budget side okay any questions from the board uh the public mr founder i'm just not no questions okay so at this time i'd like to um point out a couple of items in our consent agenda before we vote on it uh on page two um we are again as i've always mentioned each month uh approving staff members who are requesting professional development uh some of it now is in person some of it is still virtual uh we have three staff members this this week this month uh requesting reimbursement for professional development uh one of the resolutions on this page mackenzie doughty who's been serving as a substitute for us uh has finally received her um no fault of hers
023but received her official certification from department of ed so we are appointing mckenzie who's doing a nice job with us as a part-time title one teacher who's currently assigned to school number five uh top of page three um you know as i've emailed our personnel committee and as i mentioned at our last meeting we i am beginning to interview and fill positions for september 2022 uh we are approving our first resolution uh page three at the top olivia toma is serving as an interim physical physical education teacher she's currently doing that with the hope that uh we can keep olivia on for september 2022 a little further down we are um appointing sweden movani as a new high school mathematics teacher she's completing her student teaching as we speak and she will be um beginning
024with us in september uh 2022 as a high school math teacher uh we are also replacing you know mr jerry d'alessio who's retiring uh miranda and glacey um will be filling his spot as an elementary school music teacher doing both uh elementary school classes and instrumental music across the district uh she will begin with us in september of 2022 also um below that uh we have no noel uh stogluzio who will be a phys ed health teacher with us uh beginning in september she will be replacing amy mctestic who will be on maternity for all of next year at the middle school we are appointing uh janie hernandez as a new school psychologist she will begin actually the end of june working the last five days of the year with the child study team and
025then we'll begin uh in an official capacity with us as a school psychologist and a member of the child study team beginning september over to page four uh as mr pinto uh mentioned uh third resolution down this is barbara kennedy uh who has actually been with us over 27 years in the district is retiring effective june 30th barbara's done a great job for us in the high school in the business department she's developed many different courses over the years so we wish barbara the best uh donna murtagh who's been a secretary with us uh also for a number of years she's currently serving as a secretary for our middle school will be retiring effective september 1st 2022. uh theresa andres siglio who is a teacher aide at school number four teresa's also served as a
026teacher aide a health aide uh during her many years i believe she's completing her 25th year with the klitschko park school district so i wish barbara donner and teresa good health and the best of luck in their uh upcoming retirements uh the last resolution on page four uh wanda parent who is currently a teacher aide at the high school uh we're transferring to a 12-month secretary position initially wanda will be taking over for claudia and my office will be going on a maternity leave at the end of may on page five i'm not going to read through all of them but we have a number of teachers that are requesting maternity leave uh aliki at school number four will be uh leaving in may coming back in december or january i believe no i'm sorry
027december amy mctestic will be out all of the next year maternity leave yvette molinado will be out beginning in june returning in january daniela vino special ed teacher at school 6 middle school will be leaving september 1st returning april 3rd leotoro at the high school social studies teacher will be leaving this april and returning in september and joanna carnell esl teacher number three will be leaving or has left and she'll be returning september 1st 2023. a lot of baby showers going on across the district uh krystal merkovic who's been on a maternity leave is asking that her maternity be extended until january 3rd 2023 and we have amy again and we just have some cash waivers for staff members who are opted out of our health prescription benefits page seven i gave you a copy
028of our homework policy some minor revisions uh in the policy it's now posted to the website uh we are approving our nurses report for the month we are approving our custodial calendar for next year we're also approving the school calendar for next year 2022-23 which i had shared with you previously and if the public is watching tonight uh it will be posted to our website uh sometime tomorrow during the day so parents who are interested in the calendar for next year can can look that up we're also uh recommending the confirmation of two bullying incidents uh that took place over the last uh month on page seven and uh requests for buildings and grounds you know those are mostly due to fundraiser drama club practices pto meetings talent show at the high school battle of
029the bands at the high school a number of activities that we're now seeing come back after uh we're coming out of the darkness of colvin so it's nice to see that uh our students are now having the opportunity to do a lot of things in person that they haven't been able to do uh for the last two years so uh that that's a positive for the whole district uh mr i found or anything additional on finance we're approving obviously the question tonight okay and then i reiterated before that on april 26th that i could have the big opening for multiple capital projects and keep everyone posted on those results that's pretty much it online okay uh before i call for a motion on the to accept the consent agenda as mr uh alfano uh mentioned
030just a reminder to the public that on tuesday april 19th that's actually our first day back from the spring break uh spring break begins on friday april 8th and it runs through monday april 18th and on april 19th the polls will be open to the public to vote for our budget and support our budget between the hours of 2 and 8. reminders will be going out uh through a swift reach call instagram and other social media uh outlets um okay so at this time i'd like to call for a motion to accept i'll make them off that was mr shelley and then the second was mr tabakia yeah sure okay very good thank you okay i'd like to take the vote now for may uh mrs abreu yes mrs fredo yes mr raincourt yes mr
031shelley yes mr tarabaki yes mr yanuzzi yes okay mr okay just before i call for a motion to close just to remind you that our next open board meeting will be wednesday april 27th that's our reorganization and our regular board meeting as you know each year we we do the both board meetings the same night but 7 pm stop time so that's april 27th and i'm sure mr alfano will be sending out some reminders once again to the board just a reminder to do your self-evaluation um so i wish everyone and the students uh we're looking forward to a spring break with great weather motion to close okay thank you mr marine corps thank you very much okay thank you