001mike is just being ready for the website no install the public the public yeah okay okay we're gonna begin I want to welcome everyone to our meeting when I stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and silence at this time I would like to take a moment of silence for our fourth member Paul Collier who passed away unexpectedly a little over a week ago or was a contributor to our Board of Education is all about the kids and doing the right thing he was a great guy on this fall so I'd like to take a moment of silence thank you I would like to okay miss our panel is going to read a statement and take attendance to attend a meeting of public bodies which any business linking their interest is discussed or acted upon that's
002cause notice that this means how much buying the daytime narrow clerk for the library in the old school number is three four five six in the high school on March 2nd this is an official meeting I will now take the roll mr. Gitano yeah this is freedom yeah yeah yeah okay mr. román Gina okay I would like to welcome everyone to our board meeting and I would like to go over before mr. Albano speaks about the proposed budget just a review before we left school for our remote learning I just want to let the public know that we are registering and we'll get back to registering for pre-k and kindergarten for September of 2020 if our parents that aren't able to register right now I would like them to send me an email to my
003email address which you can find on our website just indicating that they have a child that would either be entering our pre-k program or kindergarten with their name and phone number and as soon as we begin the registration process process we will get back to them again before we left for the remote learning we did do a March 2nd the week of March 2nd we had Read Across America in each of our elementary schools we invited guest speakers in to each of our schools and if you would honor honor our Instagram account you could see that the program was very very accessible access successful of course the did the district April 22nd was going to be our community cleanup and due to the situation that we're in right now we've canceled that date of April
00422nd and we will reschedule it probably for early fall once we get back to to school even if we get back to school I hope we will well we're still gonna put off the pencil until the early pool only because black will have a lot to go just a note to our board members in your packet that was sent to your houses tonight we're going to be approving the calendar for the 2020 2021 school year to the public that will be posted on our website tomorrow for the public to see also in your packet is a copy of a letter that went out to parents was go to the website or our school performance report which is available at the district the popular education website so if parents go to our website and they look
005for school performance reports you'll be able to follow a link that will show you our school performance for 2018-2019 there's a lot of information in that report on each school and for the district so I urge parents to follow that link and read through some of the information also in your packet tonight is a copy of our science scores from - year for grades 5 8 and 11 if you look through some of the information that I sent to you for the most part we are fools before the high school even as far as the state concern with our scores the high school who scored a little bit lower than we thought we would with biology we're addressing that we're looking at our biology curriculum we're looking at materials that we could possibly purchase and
006we're also looking at what grade levels the students are taking biology and mr. Pinto and his staff at the high school improve that score though the grades 5 8 and 11 that report will be posted to all the plug tomorrow is a summary of how our schools did of course the board you know it's called our accountability report it's a print dad high school and basically it's telling you yes he met the benchmark though we didn't meet the benchmark overall I would have to say I'm very pleased we very well in most areas and meeting our benchmarks again this would be posted to the website for the public to view but I would like the board to look through it and we can have a discussion at it about it at our April meeting unless
007anyone has any questions now as I said before for the most part we showed improvement in all areas and I am very very pleased about that okay before I turn it over to mr. alfano do I have any questions from the public at this time make I have one question sure I know what grade do they take bio in you said something about them taking bio what grade are they taken by Owen primarily the majority of the students taken in tension okay but it varies - it depends upon the student but majority wise its tenth grade thank you I don't know why I lost you I can hear you but I lost you did you hear my response to the question yes I did are there any questions from the public there are none okay
008so at this time what I would like to do is turn the meeting over to Alfano our businesses administrator who's going to just discuss our proposed budget for we do have a question from the public okay anyway the question is is there any update regarding the coronavirus in what respect I'm not really sure want to retype that question and send it to me I will respond to it but we aren't we're getting no response we want to now as far as the school pounder is concerned there is nothing definitive from the Department of Education as the governor stated the other day it's indefinite I'm not really sure what that means but there's been nothing as far as the Department of Education regarding when we will return to school when given that information I will present
009that information to the public any other questions okay so I'm going to turn it over to mr. alfono and he's going to talk about the proposed budget for the 2021 school more thank you the overall budget for this year's 57.9 and millions year-over-year the tax levy is approximately about 30 6.2 million and I'll talk a little bit later in regard to the percent increase the taxpayer in fact we have about 1.7 million dollars in what we call capital projects the two main projects are reboiler replacement in schools number three and school number five we are actually going to have a bid opening on April 7th in regard to those two projects so I'll keep everyone posted in regard to have that benchmark to what we're budgeting in regard to some key appropriations and some trend
010lines in regard to over the last three years our instruction is up about a approximately two million dollars a year over year and that includes special education and tuition to other schools tuition to other schools is the main driver in regard to why we're up incrementally year over year and also we've added new staff approximately six to eight staff so those two components tuition paid to other schools and additional staff was the cause of the increase year over year we also seen a decrease which helped us balance our budget this year in regard to poor employee benefits it's down several hundred thousand dollars year over year and that's essentially we are moving to a state prescription plan in 2021 from the current Bennett Card private prescription plan so that's actually good news for everyone not
011only the budget but for individual staff members one of the other items that increased a year over year is our transportation costs and again we have more routes we have more special needs students that need transportation so more routes more students equal more aides and more drivers so our transportation is up about 150 thousand dollars year-over-year our revenues also there correspond with our transportation our up the tick also year-over-year because we get schools like Palisades Park portly and Fairview who pay us revenue for transporting their students to some of the same schools that we transport our Cliffside Park students in regards to revenues I spoke about the local district tax levy it's about thirty six point two million dollars it's up about a million dollars a year over year and that's about a two point
012nine percent increase and on an average assess home value of about three hundred and sixty three thousand dollars that's about a seventy three dollar per annum increase to the taxpayer we have no debt service coming in 2021 because we made our final payment in July of 2019 again that helps us balance the budget our tuition revenues are up several hundred thousand dollars year over year and that's essentially from the tuition receive in regard to the Fairview students that come into our high school both regular students in our resource room students have helped us increase our revenues several hundred thousand dollars a year over year so again net net we're up about a million dollars in the total budget a year over year in regard to revenues and a lot of that has to do with
013the tuition incremental tuition revenue we just spoke about and we also got incremental state aid year-over-year increase which helped us balance the budget for the public's know-how and the board our election has been moved from April 21st to May 12th it'll be a mail order ballot only there will be no site visit will be mail ballot mail order ballot only and that'll be May 12th 2020 and that has been moved from April 21st that's pretty much it mr. román Geno is there any questions from the public any questions from the board on the I have one question you gave a cost for an average home valued at three hundred and something thousand dollars I don't know many homes inside that evaluated three hundred three thousand what about for our home valued at maybe five hundred
014thousand what's the increase can you hear me now I hear you can you hear me or did you hear me okay you said that was the increase for a home valued at approximately three hundred and sixty three thousand what about for a home that's more like five hundred thousand well then you just you do it you take a ratio Christine if the house was doubled at three sixty three three one hundred and forty six dollar a year yep okay so twelve dollars a month yes I think of it if your house is half of that you'll get a thirty seven dollar increase you have some double that average assessed value you'll get right 22 for not 146 dollar increase okay thank you let's make it clear that that's just a board of education portion of
015the tax bill you got to consider the county and you got to consider the borough if the borough goes to have a tax increase that's correct there's also a difference with the assessed value and then the value of the real estate value right correct correct benchmark so you know the public and the board can have an idea of based on what we're looking to approve the impact on the taxpayer it's directional but it's relatively accurate any other questions from the board of the public okay before we look at our consent agenda I just want to say a few words about our virtual learning that's been going on for the last week and a half I have to commend our our teachers and our support staff for the great job that they've been doing in providing
016our students with some great experiences using Google classroom more and more teachers are now beginning to use Google neat so they're seeing their students or they're teaching a lesson with the students being able to view it so you know as we get into this I think teachers coming more proficient in terms of what they what they're able to do and so far it's really going very very well I would like to mention I know we have a lot of support from our parents but it's very important for them for our parents at this time to really hold us and make sure that their children are taking part these learnings every morning it's very learning for them they make sure that the students are interacting with the teachers that they're following up on assignments because we're
017still going to be issuing report cards grades 6 through 12 are in the process of beginning the report report card process now I think the report cards are issued somewhere around April 7th in that range ever have it in front of me and then in June we'll be issuing the 3rd semester of our K through 5 grades so students are still going to be graded they're still going to be assessed on the work that they complete teachers are checking it though the help that we can get from the parents from home is essential to this whole process as I mentioned or the governor talked about it being an indefinite period we really don't know I guess a lot of it depends on what happens in terms of the number of cases and what the governor
018decides to do as far as business is a concern so as I get information I'll share that information with the board and also with the public just a note that every day on our website I do do a daily update to keep parents informed of what's been going on information thing you should know about all the things I mentioned today is that we do give a break and go breakfast and lunch at school number three last Monday the first day we started it we handed out about a hundred and forty lunches today we handed out five the word is getting out there that lunches and breakfasts are available at school three and more and more of our free and reduced student we'll continue to do that in this whole process if any parents who might
019be out there listening right now have any questions they can call my office or they can email me directly and I will get back to you in a timely manner okay at this time I would like to look at the consent agenda page 2 of our consent that Jenny I'm just gonna pick a couple of different items to review bottom of page 2 - sulie is a basic math teacher at school number 2 we're courting her effective March 1st 2020 at Step MA for the remainder of the school year she's taking over for a maternity leave top of page 3 Chris Ventura who's a middle school social studies teacher was on a family leave and he returned west Monday March 16th so he is back working with the students second revolution down and immuno spen
020a part-time guy secretary with us and our child 17 will now be 10 and a half months full-time she'll also have somebody's next-to-last agenda and Simon who's been a bus driver for about 17 years and has done a very good job with us has submitted her letter of retirement we wish her the best and she will retire effective June 30th page 4 on the consent agenda we have a resolution the second resolution down recommended to to suspend without pay employee number five two nine three for two days watch ball for March 13th underneath that we have some volunteer vomit we're going to work with our middle school softball let's hope I'm being very positive that we will have a shortened season but hopefully we'll get back to being able to do some types of high
021school sports before the end of the year page five we are approving the school calendar as I mentioned before that will be posted to our website tomorrow for the community to see we are accepting the science scores for grades 5 8 and 11 you have a couple of bullying incidents that were investigated and as per state guidelines we are stating them in a resolution that they were investigated as per state guidelines and on page six we have a number of policies and regulations that we are proving tonight most of them are revisions and they will be posted to our website sometime tomorrow or Friday the updates will be buildings and grounds as you know a lot of these submissions probably will not take place you left them on the agenda in the event that we
022do get back and some of them are in in May or late April or in June so we're leaving them as is difficulty hearing so the budget will be completely by now carry notified us last week that they moved the date first to May 12 then after moving the date they decided to do bye-bye mail only so the residents will be mailed a ballot and it has to be mailed back prior to May 12th so we should get the results on matron but it'll be valid by mail only receiving those ballots and will they anybody registered to vote will get one everybody registered to vote will get one I'm not really sure the county did not give us that sent out by the Board of Elections right County did not give us any date or
023timeline as to when that will be mailed my budget newsletter will state that is going to be balanced by mail only as I do every year I'll do a swift reach to the community about voting obviously this year the message we'll talk about or it will speak to filling out the ballots mailing them back thank you and if we get any other information from the Board of Elections we'll pass that along [Music] anyone else on the consent agenda so before before I have a motion to accept we have any questions on the consent agenda from the public well what am I want and the question from the public is what am I going to do with the student test scores I guess the question really is what about the test scores if you read my
024update today these New Jersey student learning assessment which is the park has been officially cancelled for this year what they're going to do as far as well there are no results for this year I'm kind of surprised that they completely canceled it because they there'll be no statistic less of a statistical spread than a compare from year to year but the state may decide to do something else but right now we know that the science and the literacy and math assessments are officially canceled tonight yes a question about assessment but not the statewide assessment while students are learning from home we will not be giving the benchmark assessments correct that's correct thank you No okay so at this time I would like a motion to accept the consent agenda I make a motion Thank You
025mr. Coe yes mr. Ito yeah yes yes drink or dad yes Kelly yes yes okay our next scheduled board meeting April 22nd is on work session April 29th is our board meeting to the public again depending upon the circumstances we will notify the public as to whether or not we would be allowed to have a meeting in public or it'll have to be virtual a little early to determine what's going to happen but as I said before before I call for a motion to adjourn please check our website on a daily basis for updated information please download our Co side Park app from the Google Play Store or the Apple Store for also notification and again we ask for you our strong partnership which you've always done in the past to help us to help
026your children with this virtual learning at this time I would like to take a motion to adjourn posting the motion shall we yeah second thank you very much be safe thanks everybody be safe