East Brunswick Board of Education - March 4, 2021

001and i see susanna coming on great okay i'd like to call this meeting to order due to the covet 19 health emergency and in order for the board of education to conduct its business this board meeting is being held a video conference and streamed live on youtube website at www.eva in addition members of the public may provide comment at this meeting through zoom by entering the url meeting id and password you see before you on the screen upon joining the meeting your participation will be muted to ensure that there is no disruption to the business being conducted by the board of education those of you who are viewing at home i'm just going to ask that everybody please mute that we have a slight uh echo in the background thank you very much will the

002secretary please call the role mr carangelo mrs chu here mr sismar here mrs guass here mr hang here this is lex here this is reese here mr winston here president becker here we have a choir and please rise to salute the flag i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states [Music] new jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend meetings of public bodies in which any business affecting their interests is discussed in accordance with the provisions of this act the east brunswick board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be published at the board of education office written notice was also provided to the sentinel of the newark star ledger the home news and tribune and the

003municipal clerk of east brunswick all board of education meetings with the exception of executive sessions are videotaped for later broadcast individuals who speak at the board's public meetings should be aware of these videotaping rules good evening and thank you for joining us tonight we will start off with the superintendent's report dr volesky thank you president becker and good evening everyone join the hammerschool middle school drama club in their production of the wizard of oz adapted by john jory this tale takes us to a bizarre new world that shows flashes of the familiar as we follow a young girl named dorothy longing for a way back home tickets are available at hmsnj.bookticks that's b-o-o-k-t-i-x dot com for the live stream production of the wizard of oz on wednesday march 10th and thursday march 11th both at

0047 pm children who will be 5 years of age on or before october 31st 2021 are eligible for the east brunswick public school full day kindergarten program for the 2021-2022 school year please visit ebnet.org register to schedule your virtual appointment all required forms and additional information can be found on the website to assist us in planning for the upcoming school year please register by april 30th 2021. students will be invited to participate in an informal screening process in the summer just a reminder for everyone schools will be closed for spring break starting monday march 29th through friday april 2nd this is also information that's very important for our staff and our community as spring great approaches if we travel overnight to any u.s state or territory beyond the immediate region an immediate region is defined

005as the state of new york the state of pennsylvania the state of delaware and the state of connecticut you will be required to quarantine from school for 10 calendar days after your return evidence of a negative cova test proof of a vaccine or proof of a positive coveted test result and recovery within the last 90 days cannot be accepted as a substitute for the mandatory 10-day quarantine for our staff if you plan to travel you must contact human resources in advance of your departure with dates destination and travel documents human resources will advise those staff who have voluntarily elected to travel over spring break compliance with a 10-day calendar quarantine is mandatory to prevent the spread of covet 19 in east brunswick public schools if you travel to any state outside of new jersey and

006return the same day with no overnight stay you do not need to quarantine if you are symptom-free again that's if you don't travel overnight you do not need to quarantine as long as you remain symptom-free and for our students students who elect to travel under the aforementioned conditions will be required to participate virtually and cannot come into their school building before they fulfill the mandatory 10-day required quarantine thank you thank you dr valesky so first up on this evening's agenda we have several budget presentations bernie yes good evening everyone um we are continuing our budget uh presentations and the first up this evening is facilities management we have mr gerald skank the director of facilities management to review his area's budget good evening everyone tonight i'm pleased to present the facilities management department's budget for

007the 2021-2022 school year slide please as you know the facilities management department is comprised of three sections maintenance custodial and grounds slide please for the maintenance section the budget supports maintenance and repairs in the licensed trades such as electrical heating and air conditioning and plumbing as well as the general maintenance trades such as general construction and painting slide please the budget also supports acquiring professional environmental services to ensure the district maintains compliance with federal state and local law programs for the custodial section the budget supports daily cleaning sanitation and disinfecting operations to provide a healthy work and learning environment for district employees students and the community slide please and finally the ground section the budget supports grounds maintenance tasks and services to maintain athletic fields playgrounds natural and synthetic turf fields courtyards as well as

008paved and hard surfaces slide please the following pie chart provides a nice breakdown of how financial resources are dispersed in several operational categories to provide some perspective let's briefly discuss some of the tasks associated with each of these items or in each of these areas the building and system maintenance and repairs section comprises 16 of the allocated budget and enables technicians to maintain domestic hot water heater systems interior and exterior light fixtures intercom systems within our schools doors and lock mechanisms and also replace air filters in hvac systems four times a year the custodial section of the pie chart makes up 65 percent of the department's budget and most of these costs ensure each building has enough manpower to properly clean sanitize and disinfect facilities on a daily basis finally the care and upkeep of

009the ground section comprises 16 percent of the department's budget the largest allocations for this portion of the budget go towards maintaining exteriors of properties and to include general purpose or which include general purpose and athletic fields while the primary focus of the department is maintenance and repair the department is heavily involved in identifying and planning capital improvement projects that said the next two slides are to inform the board and the community of major infrastructure items or components that need significant funding to maintain but are not funded slide this slide highlights eight of 13 facilities that require significant investment to repair or replace replace their roofing infrastructure while the high school's roof is the largest concerns concern due to the significant amount of funding required a larger discussion to determine the future disposition of that building

010needs to be had slide please and the final slide highlights major repairs needed to improve payment and hard surfacing areas at each district property again at 34 percent the high school requires the most work but after the mon after making a monumental investment to replace the roof and repair pave pavement and other hard surfaces the question the board must answer is is the current infrastructure and design capable of supporting the educational needs of the 21st century student so with that that concludes the buzzing presentation for facilities management and i'll now attempt to answer any questions that you might have bernie can you put us back on gallery view please certainly thank you okay anybody have any questions for jerry lou lee woo garrett thank you very much for your good presentation you're welcome sir so

011uh i realized that the high school roof and the pavement cost quite good money yes do you have any idea how much uh was spent last year and uh two years ago for a comparison um would that be for roof repairs um or or in conjunction all repairs associated with the high school injunction for entire high school oh no i don't have that number present with me at this time okay but we can research that and find out for you yeah that number will help us to to decide and how much money we're pumped in every year to keep facility in your usable condition thank you mark yeah jerry again uh great presentation hammer shoulder looked like had some significant needs on the roof and the paving and curving one of our newer buildings i

012would say how do those two things match up um match-up is match up as far as as far as how mr winston it like i said hammershow is one of our newer buildings it looked like there was a lot of money needed for roof repairs and paving and curbing than some of the older buildings so how uh i think it was 13 years ago right that hammer shield was built is that correct correct perhaps i can jump in on this if you don't mind sure um so uh yes in terms of the roof um the roof on that building is definitely going to need to be replaced in the not too distant future that roof is a 15-year roof so um it's not a um uh a hot roof as we've done on our other

013buildings uh as we've been replacing them the hot roofs have 30-year warranties hammer sold is what's called an epdm roof correct correct um so uh as such they have a shorter time frame a shorter lifespan so a matter of fact it's one of the things that mr skenk and i have been talking about the need to uh plan for hammer shoulders roof replacement it's something we're definitely going to have to do and then in terms of the paving while um you know while the the facility is not that old uh when we have uh blacktop surfaces they do need to be maintained and so what has to happen is they need uh occasional resealing sometimes they need to be re-ground so that an initial surface is taken down off the top and then resurfaced so

014there's constant work that's necessary on all paved areas all blacktop areas they don't last in perpetuity and when they're not regularly sealed and resurfaced uh it has a drastic impact upon the their longevity so um it's just it's what i call pride of ownership when you have properties and improvements on them you have to constantly make sure that you're keeping on top of it to maintain the investment otherwise the investment that's put into it can be diminished if they're not maintained in accordance with uh what the standards are i hope that helps yeah and definitely the roof thing being a 15-year roof as opposed to i think churchill we're talking much longer so thank you very much mr giuliana just a point of clarification so the eb for the public epdm roofs are cheaper to

015install than the uh the other roofs correct yes they are yes they are and also have a shorter lifespan so you know it's um you get what you pay for thank you yes uh actually jerry i had a question um very very good report very well researched uh thank you so much um we talked about in other areas other budget managers about a replacement cycle that they work out for instance in the area of athletics there's a rotation cycle for equipment and especially uniforms where they're replaced for this spreadsheet rotation if you will every year there's a number of replacements on the facilities and maintenance and grounds budget in terms of vehicles or major equipments and are we do you also go by a specific rotation uh or is it more driven by need and

016wear and tear i would say i would say originally it's been driven by need and wear and tear however the department has been striving to identify areas you know mr juliana talks about establishing a balance not a balanced budget but a level or a flat budget one that doesn't have peaks and valleys and everything it makes it very hard to plan so we've been working with different administrators uh in in every area to try to identify things uh that need to be replaced so that we can establish some type of cycle um you know we we will research the component you know we'll um will determine the what should be the useful life of that equipment you know make sure that it has the proper maintenance and repair um on a periodic basis and then

017at the end of that life cycle hopefully before that budget year make a request to replace that equipment so that um so that things can be anticipated and and not just um a knee-jerk reaction to say that we you know we have to buy something right now that affects uh you know the curriculum or student development or something like that so we've been we've been trying very hard um you know to identify those every year it's it's a few few more items um and it's uh the budget right now is is pretty comprehensive as you've seen in the report and we're striving to get better i'd like to just jump in also on that because um you know when we're talking about those last two slides um where we have um roofs and uh paving

018uh we've been we've been ticking off the roofs one you know one at a time uh the last several years we've uh managed to uh re-roof um oh let me see we did uh warren storfer we did frost um we just um have come to completion on the entire churchill junior high school roof um am i missing any jerry on that lawrence brooke or lawrenceburg that's right we just did brook this past summer so we've been we've been tackling them about one a year or so one every two years roughly but it's a costly endeavor and we tried to do that through our revolving debt we don't have enough debt expiring to be able to undertake another roof at this time so the items that are listed under the roofing aspect will need to wait

019another year or so in terms of the paving aspect however we've really not been able to set aside funds to do that that will need its own um uh its own debt issuance and our debt issuances are are typically um of a short term of five years or less so we've been doing things on a rotation when one one uh debt expires we reissue and do some additional work we're in a much better place than where we used to be many years ago we did not have any kind of a plan in place and we were you know basically patching things quite a bit but we're doing a lot more capital improvement to really maintain the buildings in a much better way and the board's been really super about that in allowing us to establish

020this revolving debt and jerry mentioned in terms of the peaks and valleys what we've tried to do is maintain a level debt structure so that we're not having to um deal with um those those amounts undulating uh from year to year uh we can we can pretty much plan um a year two three uh in advance when it comes to that thank you bernie um yeah i i'm sorry if i didn't um articulate that clearly i my my referral to a rotation was more about um pieces of equipment vehicles the things we'll see um not necessarily something like a roof although i did appreciate your explanation and certainly it's it's all important information and jerry to your point about doing things in in somewhat of a uh proactive manner it's it's always going to be

021more efficient and more fiscally efficient rather than as you put it the knee jerk reaction which is great that we're looking at it that way thank you um jeff jeff and lee woo hi bernie nice to see you and uh thank you for the presentation jeff you're waking i have up questions for you all right one second can you hear me now is that better yes that's a lot better that's a lot better all right well you won't be able to see me speaking but trust me i am uh with um i have two questions for you uh the first one and a lot of a lot in what bernie was just talking about and talking about the replacement uh and specifically surrounding the paving let's just use the high school for an example and

022i know there are some maintenance things i have to do on my driveway and i would imagine they're not so dissimilar to what has to be done in an asphalt parking lot what has been the resealing schedule uh over the years how often has that lot been uh proactively maintained um you're smiling all right and uh i can see you uh so so you know can give me give me some insight on that and then i have a follow-up question i you know i can i can tell you i'm smiling because um you know as mr juliana said there's a lot of discussion that happens around in the background of what has not been taking place and what we've been striving to get towards uh i can tell you to be honest uh you know

023the the high school property as well as all of our properties have not the pavement surfaces have not been seal coated have not been crack sealed um in um on a regular basis and that's because you know there's always a balance in priorities you know do we do we spend and i'll just do we spend x number amount receiving the resealing the pavement even though that needs to be done or do we buy the curriculum department books for to you know to put this new program in place so it's always it's always a you know a battle to try to prioritize these things and that's exactly the slide that you saw the board commissioned our architects to evaluate all the properties and to uh prioritize them by repair and then and then give us a

024dollar amount of what that would take um but as mr juno liam had stated we just have not been able to get there to be able to uh find the resources to to start that process and that report now that slide um is probably a couple years old now um you know but we just haven't had the opportunity to pull the trigger on on on a lot of these um maintenance um type of activities all right so so if i'm hearing correctly we really haven't been maintaining it which accelerated the decay a slight different interpretation of what you said but i appreciate that jeff you're you're um yeah is this better yeah it is uh you are you are correct in that um we we have not had the resources to be able to uh

025maintain the um asphalt surfaces uh as they should be um that's been forever um and uh i do want to make one i do want to make one and and it doesn't make it right it absolutely is not right um yeah but we're dealing with limited resources and trying to figure out how to how to bridge that gap one thing i want to clarify though that that we we never um we don't we don't pit um the curricular area against facilities okay that example i'm sorry that doesn't happen um we we really try to deal with those areas uh individually because they're both important and they both have needs and uh we want to keep both moving forward so i think that's important to note but you know the reason it's a matter of you

026know um establishing an initial uh fund to be able to do that and have that dedicated uh toward uh the paving purposes and and we haven't gotten there no i appreciate that and so to date that really hasn't been established and i understand that uh the follow-up question is really resonating off of the last thing that you said jerry in your presentation and that's something will probably stay with me for the rest of the night uh you would said that our school is equipped to handle 21st century uh students and learning and that's a question i ask myself constantly in all aspects including in your area so with that said and you said that you've spoken to experts such as architects and so on um and you you and those two slides you hung up

027there in very bold print on top did state that these are unfunded areas of need totaling of about 18 million dollars so uh between the two slides so with that said let me ask you are facilities up to par to handling 21st century education based on what you see and and uh as a part of that where's where's our failure when where's the massive failure in in the most vulnerable area in this town that we need to be overly concerned about at this time that that that's that's a a tough one and i don't i'm not really clear about what you mean by what the massive failure unfortunately so facility a facility facility which facility which roof will fail miserably if not addressed quickly talking about facilities now you had said that you have 18

028million dollars worth of need and i honed it on the roofs because i know if the roofs go that definitely does not make a 21st century learning experience and that's been evident already in some of the classrooms so that said my question is from what you've gotten back from the experts which of the buildings should we be most concerned about failure so let let me jump in on that and and jerry feel free to piggyback as well um i would say that the uh and i'm going you need to hear everything i'm going to say about this i'm going to say that the the high school roof is the one that would probably rise to the surface but it's not in such a shape that we're talking about a roof that is going to completely

029fail uh so i think that's important uh we um jerry's team and and his through his resources and his budget um they are constantly addressing problem areas and maintaining it so that we do have uh a watertight roof but there com there will come a point where that's not going to be sustainable we're not there at this point but we're going to be there we will be there so you know this is where important decisions have to be made in terms of what we're going to do facility wise we have been very fortunate that uh none of our roofs have ever gotten to that point where they they are in such failure that we would not be able to uh educate our kids uh and safely keep them uh in the buildings we've had certain

030problem areas i know i can tell you at churchill there were numerous problem areas in that facility and that was a big nut to have to undertake in terms of funding a roof replacement we got there we did it it's in great shape now we won't have to think about that roof for another 30 years will there need to be repairs and patching from time to time absolutely that happens it's the nature of the business and it goes to what i said before it's pride of ownership when you own a building you own all the issues that come with it whether you like them or not so um that's what i have to say in terms of you know the the failure we don't have a failure but we do have issues that we absolutely

031are going to need to address uh in the not too distant future mr juliana that the high school is probably our in terms of age it has the oldest components of all of our facilities currently right absolutely and and you know if i can i just want to expand for a moment because i you know we've we talked a lot about the roof but when we look at the high school um i think it's been a hodgepodge that building is a massive building and it has been a hodgepodge over the years from the time that um it was uh initially constructed back around 1960. so um you know it's it was originally a california style campus individual buildings then the buildings were tied together and joined and we added more more parts and more components

032and and you know that's an evolution of a building in many in many ways but um you know we still have the same rough infrastructure the windows are are the same the the electrical systems are the same the uh the size of the rooms are the same we're talking about a building for the most part where the rooms are more or less based on what a 1960s education would be which is not a 21st century uh facility so lots of things to do at the high school well mr winston you and mr sismar actually went to that school when it was a california style building right yes it was great yesterday was phenomenal yes it was yep okay uh leewoo i believe you had a question yes i do uh so bernie so i know

033you are really good at uh we're financing so i have question for you but you don't have to answer me now if the financial market is not in our favor we just cannot get some resources through the boundary refinancing can we still find the resource to do the roof once a at least one roof a year keep up the other roofs from leaking so what you think about this one i believe finance market is in our faithful now but i don't know but who nobody know what will be in future well this is where this is where um you know i also give uh the township a great deal of credit because uh they've been very cooperative with the board with the school district in terms of being our our financial branch if you will

034we have entered into agreements pretty much every year where the township exercises it's about borrowing power on our behalf and we pay the township the township doesn't incur the cost the the district pays for the cost of issuance on the loans and um the repayment and so forth and the township has enjoyed very very very favorable rates um through their borrowing power and through uh the rating that the township has so we'll continue to do that we've we've followed this process for many many years and will continue to do that uh it is beneficial to um to both the township the board and to the community as a whole because ultimately it saves money thank you good luck is there anybody else who had any questions okay see none thank you so much jerry again

035greatly appreciate the work and all the hard work of your entire team thank you we appreciate just the board support okay bernie what's up next next we have um transportation department and we have joyce forsberg manager of transportation uh to talk about her area's budget good evening um first of all i'd like to thank the board of education for helping to support the transportation department and everything that you do do for us um start off my budget presentation i'd like to explain a little bit about transportation that we provide a safe high quality transportation for students of the community by following the federal state local laws as well as the board of education's policies and procedures we greet the students every morning going to provide them with a good experience so that they can have

036a positive attitude for learning for the rest of the day this also is translated in the afternoon when we bring them home we try to keep upbeat and give them a welcoming so they understand that you know their day is good our day is good um we also this also helps to provide the parents with the confidence in their bus drivers knowing that the bus driver welcomes their students that they care about their safety and feel safe that we will transport their students to and from school safely next slide please okay i'm just going to go over a little bit on this pie chart regarding how our transportation is basically how we do our transportation okay um 51 percent of our students that are transported are students that we call regular transportation needs which are

037students who reside remotely from the school that they attend and their residence 39 of our students that we transport are due to hazardous conditions which for example we don't allow students to cross route 18 from the old bridge turnpike side to go to irwin elementary okay if there was a need for that or to the high school for that matter it's actually the high school hammershoven churchill where the hazardous routes are more of a need and the third largest portion that we transport are special needs students which is about six percent of the student population next slide please as you can see this is a pie chart of how we try to allocate the transportation budget you will notice that transporting the students is the largest allocation between sixty percent of it going for the

038special needs students because of the equipment or personnel that they may need due to their ieps the next largest portion would be the students that live remotely from the school and then we have the charter and the hazardous routing that falls into those categories at a smaller percentage the bus maintenance and repairs that we handle for the fleets takes about 10 of our budget for the bus lead alone we spend five percent of the budget maintaining and re making repairs to help to maintain a safe vehicle on the road to get students to and from school preventing breakdowns at this time at this year i also am handling the fleet maintenance on the maintenance and grounds vehicles which we have included in our schedule of regular maintenance on the vehicles and any repairs that are

039needed due to breakdowns basically the fuel for our budget is a small percentage too because of the fact that you know we basically all in district in town so it it's allocated for a small percentage because we don't run all over and go unnecessarily driving out of the district um let's see uh the cost that you don't see here in my transportation budget would be any staff or benefits the staff salaries or the benefits because i don't manage that within my budget that is managed elsewhere so um pretty much that explains transportation uh does anybody have any questions i'll wait till we're up in the gallery view okay uh does any board member have any questions for joyce um mark just to comment if i may um i've seen up close the transportation working with

040all the moving pieces and stuff joyce and your crew i just wanted to uh give you thanks for keeping the kids safe because there's so many moving parts on a daily basis i don't know how you do it sometimes but uh just a comment of thank you thank you well said mark thank you very much else have any questions for joyce um the board members who i can't see uh heather laurie uh if you have any questions um text or shout it out or okay joyce it was an excellent report and as mark said um what you you are doing can never be trivialized the the transportation of our students the safety factors is one of our greatest responsibilities and um i like mark's use of the word the phrase moving parts because no pun

041intended but the wheels on the bus are just part of the story here and um i i i don't i sometimes think that uh people need to see not that we're going to have guided tours don't get nervous but um your staff on when at some point in the future when everyone is back in the building the software that's involved in running the business of transporting the amount of students we do it's it's a business within itself just all the coordinating and scheduling and considering all the factors of we have transportation to the charter school transportation to out-of-district placements to non-public schools you do a fantastic job you and your staff really to be commended thank you very much anyone else before we um ask for the next budget manager's presentation okay thank you so

042much again joyce thank you okay bernie what community programs is next yes so um i um i will ask amri gilbert manager of community programs to um speak about her areas budget okay thank you so much good evening everyone um i'm very excited to present my second budget in this position so i want to share with you some changes some improvements in our programs um so let me start by saying that the community program's budget we prepared it of course with the thought that we're back in person learning in september at full capacity so the numbers you're looking at are where we were at in february of 2020 before we had to shut down and that is a really good estimate of where we typically are throughout the school year so that's what you're looking

043at here for each of our programs you know you see here we're about 1200 students in after school uh over a thousand early morning about 180 in early learning academy and then our enrichment programs are various so what i'd like to do if we can is go on to the next slide and kind of go through briefly each of the programs and you're looking at our estimated revenue here our aftercare program is always our largest kind of piece of the pie if you will so at usual capacity as we mentioned we're about 1200 students 785 attending every day and the rest are typically our occasional youth students um we're located at all eight elementary schools as well as in hammershould our typical hours are right from dismissal through to 6 p.m parents can pick up

044any time in between but we do have our doors open until 6 p.m um a typical afternoon and after care we have homework time with certified teachers to assist in their daily work every student gets a snack and a drink and there's lots of play time after being in school all day long these kids need a break and they need to blow off some steam so we definitely make sure their homework's done we definitely make sure we give them a snack and a drink but then it's all about play it's organized games sports crafts board games various other fun activities we want to give our students a voice to choose what they want to do not every student wants to play a sport not every student likes to do a craft we make sure there's

045multiple activities so they have a great time the biggest compliment we get is when a parent comes and picks up their child they say not yet mom can i stay longer it's tremendous and and that's what we strive for moving to the next piece of the pie our early learning academy preschool i am so excited to say that in september we'll be entering our 10th year of the early learning academy preschool we are going to be again located at hammershow middle school we have our own portion of the building with our own entrance and exit as well as security we typically have as we mentioned in the previous slide about 180 students and that is our maximum capacity uh we have eight classrooms in our larger classrooms we usually have 20 to 24 students we

046have a couple of small classrooms that were previously small group instructions so we limit there to about 11 students with regards to curriculum about back in we purchased and implemented the creative curriculum so we were very excited about that it's basically learning through play which is ideal for early childhood education another piece of that that we started was fundations foundations has extensive program materials that we use it's to give structured reading and spelling using engaging multi-sensory techniques this is something that's also used in kindergarten so these kids move on from with such a transparent transition from preschool into kindergarten so you know it's such a great variety of curriculum that we use that these kids really um do so well in our program we provide half day morning half day afternoon and full day options

047in addition we offer early morning and after care so some of our students are with us from 6 50 in the morning until six o'clock at night it's a long day but we love having the little ones and we love giving parents those options parents can order hot lunch that gets delivered right to the classroom and as well as those students that are in our early morning program they can order hot breakfast that also gets delivered right to the classroom for them next i'll move on to our early morning program also known as morning start in our hammer sold school we typically have a little bit over a thousand students in our early morning program 650 of which extend ever attend every day and otherwise it's our occasional youth students again we're located at all

048eight elementary schools as well as hammershould we start at 7am until school begins in the elementary schools and we start at 6 50 a.m at hammersold in the morning program our focus is on fun in the morning you know if a child definitely didn't finish their homework we of course give them the opportunity um they the child nutrition department is nice enough they open their breakfast line a little early so our early morning students can enjoy breakfast but it's all about fun we want to focus on giving them just like joyce had stated in transportation on the buses we want to start them off with a positive fun start to their day so they walk into their classrooms ready to learn the other programs the smallest piece that you're looking at here that usually includes

049our enrichment programs now you know if we have to say if we you know want to say there was a a silver lining to all of this we really branched out and did a number of virtual programs we weren't sure how it would be received because these students are virtual all day long or many of them are but that being said we had such success and we were able to reach students that previously couldn't be in our programs you know they have to take the bus home parents are working they don't have a ride to stay after school in our enrichment programs this gave all students in our district the opportunity to participate so we plan next year on not only offering it to our in-school students but continue to offer virtual programming as well

050that being said we not only expanded our programming but the ages we're offering programs to besides our traditional programs we always have coding and stem and sat prep robotics and sports we expanded to include world languages for our elementary students so they get a flavor for what the language was will be in their curriculum later on um and our own i'm very happy to say we have our own district teachers teaching this so they're so familiar with the curriculum um chess i think queen's gambit may have kind of trickled down to our students we never expected to have over 65 children participate so we're going to offer another round in the spring we were so excited about that we branched into piano lessons we sold out four classes cooking we expanded to as young as

051our elementaries of our kindergarten students uh we just offered songwriting and harmonizing for our sixth to twelfth grade students we even started to to dabble back with our adults offering enrichment program we just had the french experience learning language and culture we're offering now adult cooking classes as well as adult italian so we've really taken it to the next level and we're excited to offer all of this programming and more for the upcoming school year quickly i wanted to mention there's a big part of community programs that you don't see here it's not part of the budget and that is our adult school we offer english as a second language citizenship as well as high school equivalency all of these classes are free for all adults in east brunswick as well as surrounding towns it's

052funded by a title ii grant from the new jersey department of labor and we typically service 185 students we get rated every year based on enrollment and the state requires us to have a specific as percentage of students not only level up but we have to maintain a certain number of students that they um allocate us for the funds it's all kind of relative to each other last year part of the pandemic shutting down we were on target for the first time to level up a complete grade which we're so proud of um due to that good standing the department of labor increased our funding for the 2021 school year allowing us to increase to 18 additional students from where we were up to 203 in the consortium that is led by new brunswick as

053an average in the consortium which has multiple school districts everyone's only about 40 percent of their target and required numbers again i'm very proud to say in our program we've just reached over 80 percent of our target on a recent call with the department of labor and our consortium due to the success that we've had in our program they've said that next year they'll be reallocating additional funds to us to allow additional students so just a shout out to our amazing teachers and support staff half of our teachers are east brunswick teachers that after a long day in school are so dedicated to our adults at night so thank you for indulging me in that piece even though it's not part of the budget but i thought it was very important to share with everybody

054um if we can go to the next slide um very quickly our expense budget you know as always expected salaries and benefits are the largest part of what we do um everything works in ratios as our enrollment increases we need to have more staff so so this is all very um usual and proportionate to what we do that being said um the fees that we've recommended for the 2021 to 2022 school year are attached to the packet and that concludes my presentation unless there are questions okay anybody uh that was a terrific presentation anne-marie thank you so much so comprehensive anybody have any questions for emery so i see susannah then barbara then lee woo okay susanna hi um thank you henry and we heard about this in the finance committee earlier this week as

055well and and it occurred to me when you talked about the success of the adult education program and the fact that it's free to the students and it is free to up to the district because it's covered by by federal grant and just what amazing service it is to have you know to have this available to our community and um you know just want to emphasize that like how do we get the word out to make sure that our community knows about it to be able to go back and get your ged or you know esl or whatever it is that you know that you're looking for that this is free of charge and it's um available right in your community and it doesn't cost their taxpayers anything yeah it's an amazing program we um

056we do a press release every year uh we definitely i do blackboards out to our entire district so this way faculty staff parents if they know people relatives neighbors we get the word out and there is always so much interest and again being in the virtual piece i think it's allowed students that previously had child care issues as adults they're able to do it their children are running around behind them and that's okay so again where i was speaking earlier about the enrichment programs next year we're planning again to have a virtual piece almost like a hybrid type program where we can offer to students to be in person they can be fully virtual or a combination thereof and we're hoping that that will even be able to reach additional students and and that's another

057example of you know how you know despite the challenges of the pandemic how we've learned and grown right so now the program can be offered in ways that can reach parents that could not otherwise come parents with young children who want to go back and get their high school diploma can now do that that's that's just really great so i you know to the extent we have capacity it should not go unused and we should really look for more ways to get the word out thank you absolutely thank you okay barbara then libra i it's more of a thank you a comment than a question i just wanted to thank anne-marie and her entire team because they've pivoted so much you know in this uh similar to what susanna said the the silver lining of

058this is that there's opportunities that we may not have had before to reach out to folks that couldn't come or weren't able to come and the variety of programming that she's expanding to the as young as kindergarten and then all the way up to the high school is an exciting opportunity for a lot of her kids and and uh even from the range of things that that her depart you know area offers and her teachers and staff and so forth anything from chess to cooking and languages and using our own teachers is wonderful as well so thank you thank you so much for saying that and for your support libra so emery thank you very much when i heard your presentation i've i'm excited i can sense your excitement so i just cannot wait to

059send my voice to the programs so part of my question already are asked about susanna so my concern is oh my mike is how you spread out the world to to let people know you and your team are doing great job we have the capacity we have the program and what so we can attract more students into the programs so maybe you should do something at back to school night or parent university or whatever just let people know you are here and you are doing great job and you are willing to help and you have the capacity to help absolutely thank you great recommendation we typically do come to back to school nights and things of that nature we used to always give a community programs brochure but to your point we've never included the

060adult school with that as well so great suggestion and we'll continue to look for more ways thank you and thank you so much as well for your words and and your support thank you so much any other board members comments questions jeff jeff hi yeah marie uh just a real quick question i just did uh i wasn't looking at your fee schedule when was the last time you did a fee increase so what we've been traditionally doing is a very small increase each year since i've started just to cover the cost of the increase of salaries and benefits okay thank you of course anyone else seeing none again emory thank you and as everyone has been saying um you and your entire team your entire staff are to be commended for a terrific job whether

061it's the before care program the aftercare program the work you're doing with adults through grant programs it's it's truly engaging our community and our district and you and your entire staff are to be commended thank you and i truly appreciate everybody's i know i said it before but the support of the board has been tremendous so thank you okay um bernie that's a tough act to follow what do you have for us insurance and we have such an exciting topic next insurance gee who put the order of these topics together all right must have been jeff so and before before i proceed with this um i i do want to um express um my my thanks and appreciation to uh each of the individuals uh that preceded me here um you know to uh jerry

062and joyce and ann marie um they they absolutely uh love their jobs they love what they do for the district they are passionate about what they do for the district and um it's certainly appreciated those are those are folks that um into areas that you know we can have a high degree of confidence in um insurance uh this is uh certainly not an exciting uh area but it is one of the building blocks in terms of the budget and uh important that the board and the community know where our resources uh go so the first uh slide i'm going to show provides a comparative of the various lines of insurance uh workers compensation multi peril which includes property and electronic data processing general liability automobile coverage then there's a school board legal liability student accident

063insurance supplemental indemnity on workers comp supplemental liability insurance there's builders risk environmental liability and then the fidelity bond of these packages uh when we look at all the the lines with the exception of workers compensation these are preliminary estimates uh it's pretty right now it's projected at approximately a 9.5 percent increase in the um in the premium uh that's not that's not final at this point we won't have a final for probably uh two perhaps three months because we are engaging in the process of um securing an appropriate market uh through our broker and this is an annual process that we go through i do want to speak for a moment regardless workers compensation which is the first set of bars on the left and that is um a very substantial drop in the workers

064compensation costs from seven hundred and seven thousand dollar budget in the current year 200 to 451 thousand dollars budgeted for the next year uh that is the result of a very uh substantial improvement in our claims experience people being safer incurring less injuries on the job and less time lost from work so certainly a a very significant improvement and a direct impact and significant impact upon the budget next uh health benefits so um the first set of bars is for medical and prescription and that repre and medical prescription which is uh representative of a three percent uh projected increase in rates uh the next set is for dental dental rates are not changing from the current year and then the next set is for vision coverage that also is remaining flat so the composite rate

065is 2.8 percent uh which is um really an exceptional uh exceptional rate uh compared to uh what i would say other school districts have experienced and certainly much better than what we uh experienced last year i believe last year our rate increase was at eight point seven percent so this is uh very uh very much improved the last set of um of bars there shows employee contributions and those are the legally required uh contributions pursuant to uh chapter and chapter four and now chapter 44. uh you'll see here that um for employee contributions it's actually going down and i will say that as a result of recent legislation where school districts were required to implement a new plan called the new jersey educators health plan uh it also had its own set of employee contribution

066rates that has had a direct impact upon employee contributions to the district it was supposed to save money it's actually not saving money on the whole so we're seeing a reduction on employee contributions we don't have a choice uh in that plan it is uh mandated plan by uh by law uh so um you know but that this is uh currently what the uh what the outlook is overall for health benefits and employee contributions related to that to that and that is it on insurance any board members have any questions to bernie about what he just presented uh insurance okay i don't see anyone uh thank you bernie so uh just a couple follow-ups then uh with regard to um uh with regard to what's coming up uh after this uh quickly uh march 18th

067we will have the budget presentation and the board will be adopting a tentative budget as a reminder the tentative budget is just that it is tentative it's not final and in the uh weeks that follow uh the board will have opportunity to discuss and potentially make revisions as may be necessary public hearing on the budget will be held on may 7th that will be the last point in time at which any changes to the budget may be made and then the final budget adoption is slated for may 13th so bernie too just to to reiterate um the tentative board of the tentative budget adopts adoption is part of the formal budget process is defined by the state but um it is certainly still a work in progress until we do the final adoption in may

068that is correct yes okay great so um lots of finance committee meetings to look forward to okay next we come to the good of the cause for the public members of the public may provide comments at this meeting through zoom by entering the url meeting id and password you will see before you on the screen in order to be recognized use the chat feature select the zoom meeting host then enter and send your name to the host you will be recognized to speak when your name is called and individuals will be invited to speak in the order in which we have received your request the board of education recognizes the value of public common and educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on school matters of community interest

069to protect the privacy of all students and staff concerns regarding individual students and staff members should generally be addressed by first meeting with the appropriate administrative staff participants will be limited to speak to three minutes each and i wanted to remind the public that this is your time to come and speak to the board it isn't a time to engage in dialogue with us it's not a time for you to worry about what we're going to say this is a time for you to come and speak so if we are are quiet it is because we are listening to you and if there is um an administrative responsibility for a particular question one will absolutely be provided by dr volesky's office so again this is your time and we're here to listen so bernie is

070there anyone wishing to address the board tonight there are no requests to speak okay seeing none i close the public portion and we move on first item is the board of education agenda can i please have a motion to combine items one through four move by jeff second second by leewoo is there any discussion mark yeah last meeting we tabled uh policies once 152 and 165 for for full board discussion but i don't see them anywhere bernie yes um those though because they were tabled they would not be part of uh these um these resolutions that are currently before you um i believe that those uh policies um well there was one that um i believe was tabled and would not be coming back um following a discussion um and then there was another of

071the laws that is being remanded uh to the policy committee meeting or to the policy committee which which one was voted to not come back because i thought they were both tabled just to have full board discussion they were both tabled but uh the one had to do with the order of um uh of the call for vote so um i forget the number on that mark i apologize um it was the recommended change was for seniority alphabetical order and i don't believe that is coming back uh for further consideration but the second bylaw which is um uh had various changes in terms of the form of the vote uh it addressed um the voting for officers and there was a question i believe that you had raised on that so that paul that bylaw

072is going back to the policy committee for discussion okay yeah that's 152. so 165 when it's tabled for full board discussion it can just be removed outside of a meeting and then it just disappears i guess that's my question yeah i don't uh i don't i we can bring that back if there's uh uh you know a discussion to be had but i had heard that there really wasn't a desire to uh make a change on that that was the one if you recall that was the one where there was a recommendation to to do it kind of uh in seniority order and alphabetically and if you look at robert's rules of order it says it's supposed to be done alphabetically with the chair going last that's what robert rules said so if that's something

073that the that the board or the paul screen wants to revisit the policy committee should then make that recommendation to the board but the other one that mr sismar had mentioned under the board bylaws that goes back to the policy committee for review and consideration i didn't think that there was any interest in changing the voting from alphabetical to seniority mark did you i guess my question would be where did it come from then someone wouldn't i don't i someone would have had to put it through policy and put it on the agenda which i think due diligence would have been to check to see if it's a violations of robert's rules before it's brought before the full board and then it just after we said we tabled it to discuss it it just disappeared

074so i guess that's my question how did it get to how did it get to an agenda and then disappear so let me let me address that please because um mr sismar and i think i had uh mentioned this at the prior meeting when that uh that one policy was brought up uh i presented those uh those uh recommendations over to the policy committee because one on the voting order there had been some question regarding new board members and their comfort with voting first in the order when they've had no experience on being on the board and so that was put forth as a suggestion it was discussed at policy committee the policy committee board members on policy committee um found that to be favorable and so it then it made its way to the

075full board then following the discussion uh the very brief discussion that took place at the prior meeting uh it was tabled and my sense was that there really wasn't any interest in having that move forward and so a tabled item remains tabled with no further action necessary uh that's pursuant to robert's rules the second um the second by-law which addressed the manner of voting for officers uh that bylaw also was brought to the policy committee i put that forth to the policy committee because there were recommended changes that came from uh strauss esme to uh further tighten uh how the uh the balloting should take place and i believe those changes were a result of a legal case that had occurred um and so it it gave some clarifying language there there was also some

076additional language that had been presented to policy the policy committee had a discussion uh there was a recommendation to make minor change to that and eliminate some of the language that had been there that additional language was to have a basically a bifurcated process where there was a segment of a voting uh which would be a uh voice vote uh voice roll call vote uh in cases where there was not a contested uh candidacy for an officer's position and a paper ballot for when there was a contested uh position uh uh candidacy i believe it was mr winston who suggested that we should do them all in paper ballot and there was a consensus that policy uh to proceed in that manner and that's what was presented to the board so subsequently at the last

077meeting i believe you had raised a question uh regarding another aspect on that um and adding another segment so that is now being remanded to the policy committee for further review and discussion i think that summarizes um the bylaws those two by-laws i hope that helps yes we'll see we'll see 152 at some point after the committee and 165 seniority voting is is not going to float that's fine it's going to it's going to it's not illegal to deviate from robert's rules but the recommendation if you look at robert's rules in the absence of of a rule they say you do it in alphabetical order with the chair going last so and that's what your policy had reflected the roberts rule so based on the fact that it was tabled there didn't seem to be

078any interest to deviate from that that table unless the board says we'd like to reconsider it then it goes back to policy committee and you can bring it forward but i think right now the only one that's back is the bylaw 152. night i just wanted to make sure 165 was gone because i don't think we should ever vote in seniority order so that answers my question thank you and mark i i think that um what bernie was trying to say is that that didn't come from a board member that he brought that to the policy committee and i think he saw that there wasn't any interest in it um and particularly once um did the due diligence and so it was against um but i i nobody indicated to me myself included that we

079should do anything but alphabetical absolutely in agreement with you i'm satisfied thank you and we'll see we'll revisit the other policy once the policy committee has had a chance to look at language okay yes thank you okay thank you mark following up okay so um i had a motion and a second is there any more discussion on items one through four which is a roll call vote seeing none will the secretary please call the roll uh mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mrs guass yes mr hong yes this is lacks yes this is reese yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries moving on to the community programs agenda can i please have a motion to combine items one through three move by leewoo second by jeff is there any discussion okay all those

080in favor aye aye opposed obscene motion carries curriculum instruction there is one item can i please have a motion for the east brunswick flex school enrollment so moved by leewoo second by heather is there any discussion all those in favor aye aye aye opposed abstain motion carries moving on to the facility agenda can i please have a motion for items one and two second by jeff is there any discussion i actually had a question more of um bernie if you could please speak for a minute about this power purchase agreement and the impact it will have on us and what this is going to do so the board had um previously approved a power purchase agreement which deals with the installation of solar panels at several of our facilities that project has been moving forward

081for a number of months we did have some uh questions and concerns with some of the installations uh on rooftops which were resolved through a couple of meetings with the company and those those issues have been addressed through the addendum to the power purchase agreement and this resolution formalizes that addendum to the agreement um that addresses the concerns that we had expressed to the company so it puts us on track to be able to continue uh the solar project uh in fact we we had um our first um uh restart of the project meetings yesterday in anticipation of being able to move forward so um we will be seeing uh solar panels uh installations beginning on some of our facilities great thank you very much for that explanation i thought it would be of interest

082to the public if there's uh jeff just real quick on top of that and with that change can you hear me yes can you hear me okay yeah yeah it's much better i'll i'll just keep going mr with that change that that had no impact on the cost of the program uh no i don't see anything okay that's good to know also excellent thank you you're welcome so bernie so is this only impact the uh warrants over and the central office building no it does not but this is the uh there is uh talk about the including the good to the right so so um let me let me just uh talk about that it mentions those those two facilities for a reason so first of all the scope of the um the scope of

083the solar project uh encompasses churchill junior high school uh lawrencebrook central i believe that's it churchill lawrence brooke and central now from there their original design on churchill had to be modified because they were designing a system that was going to be installed on the standing seam roofs we did not want the standing seam roofs to be impacted by any solar panels so they wanted to make up the um uh the amount of electricity generated by solar so um we had suggested that they might consider warren store for which has a brand new roof so we don't have any issues that might be faced at that location and we also suggested perhaps looking at the administration building if they would do a new roof for us so um so that part where you see warren

084storefront the administration building addressed is to be able to have that ability we're still looking at that they're they're looking at the feasibility and if it does proceed particularly with the administration building it will be with a new roof going on the administration building without cost to us but it's going it will be the roof that we want it won't be something that we don't want thank you you're welcome okay any other questions oh the secretary uh mr has her hand up oh this is true i was just gonna make a comment that that's actually a nice side benefit to get a new roof out of it if that works out so you know we're going to try that would be a real nice side benefit it is okay i see smiling widely there uh

085i believe this is rokovo yes mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mrs guast yes mr hong yes this is lax yes mrs reese yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries moving out to financial services can i please have a motion for items one and two don't move mark mark move by mark second by jeff is there any discussion all those in favor no i'm sorry this is a roll call mrs reese uh has her hand up i believe she's sorry thank you uh i have a question but maybe bernie you could explain to us number two a little more the shared service agreement between east brunswick and the brunswick board of ed uh regarding custodial services certainly um new brunswick uh has approached us for assistance they are in need of supplementing their

086custodial services their custodial staff and they've asked if they could utilize our contract for custodial services we have um engaged with aramark and validated that they would be able to provide the additional staffing required by new brunswick um and so um we've uh composed the costs associated with that based on what the hour mark costs would be the monitoring costs and it also has included a three percent fee that would ignore to uh east brunswick uh public schools so that's basically a um a service chart uh that new brunswick would be paying to east brunswick um and this does not impact our services whatsoever uh it is um one of the things that at the state level uh uh has been uh really promoted for a number of years and that's to enter into shared

087services agreements where you know governing bodies can facilitate services with each other and for each other so this really is uh right in line with what the state likes to see happen so the most important aspect in my view is that it does not adversely impact our services so and we're able to help out a neighboring school district sounds like a good partnership thank you you're welcome and we can do a roll call mrs becker that's fine we can't i don't see uh actually it's not a real quote vote um i i think uh i didn't note it on the agenda but since we do have the shared services agreement i would recommend that sure go for it mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mrs gwas yes mr hong yes this is lex yes this

088is reese yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries moving on to our human resources agenda can i please have a motion to combine items one and two so moved move by leewoo second by jeff is there any discussion will the secretary please call the role mrs chu yes is it mr sismar yes this is gloss yes mr hong yes this is lex yes this is rhys yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries moving on to student services can i please have a motion to combine items one and two so move mark move by mark second generation begun by jeff is there any discussion okay um well the secretary please call the roll this is true yes mr sismar yes this is gloss yes mr han yes this is lex yes this

089is rhys yes mr winston president becker yes motion carries and our final item on tonight's agenda is a transportation item can i please have a motion for quoted contract award student transportation services still moved move by label second by mark is there any discussion all those in favor right opposed obscene motion carries uh lou uh confirming that our student rep is not with us tonight okay uh committee reports information items and the good of the cause of the board anybody have anything uh suzanna um just wanna mention that next week on march 9th at 7 30 pm human relations council is putting on a facebook live event for the lunar new year and again they're partnering with various organizations um a lot of organizations from within the town as well as from our high school

090so we have um we have something from from our mandarin class uh explaining and explaining you know the program and and how you progress through the levels uh in in the mandarin classes so there's an educational aspect of just learning about uh part of our program and the high school asian club also contributed several pieces uh to provide some uh educational as well as um uh you know interesting information for for that event so i hope you guys will be able to join okay anyone else jeff then mark i just want to point out as i'm sure mr figueroa is anxiously awaiting tomorrow's big game uh with my favorite sports team in any sponsor the girls basketball team are uh advancing in their pod a watered-down version of this year's tournament but uh if you

091haven't watched one of the games they do stream them live and boy they are playing some basketball so um check them out tomorrow's their last game right right am i right what what's the record jeff what's your record for the season uh we try not to talk about that every every it starts all over again tournament time okay and uh tournament time says they're doing great they're doing great that i was just i was just curious but um it's uh great to give a shout out to our teams mark yeah it's march women's history month uh i think we should thank all the great women in our lives and uh this is your month so let's uh i just i just wanted to make mention of that and thank you very much all the great

092women in the district and in our personal lives so thank you thank you mark anyone else okay uh we do have a meeting for a closed session and a need for a closed session the board of education must discuss matters which are not appropriate for discussion in a public meeting the board of education tends to discuss the following matters those that are listed in tonight's agenda the length of the closed session is estimated to be one hour after which the public meeting of the board shall reconvene and action will not be taken can i please have a motion to go into closed session don't move mark move by mark second by jeff is there any discussion all those in favor aye opposed obscene motion carries members please log out of this session and log into

093the closed session for those of you who joined us tonight thank you and be safe you