001of education. Thank you. To order pursuant to the open public meetings act, adequate public notice has been given by the secretary of EAM township board of education in the following manner. Posting written notice on the official bulletin board at the board of education office. Emailing written notice to the Burlington County Times and the Courier Post. Filing written notice with the municipal clerk of East Township. May I have a roll call, please? Mr. Yates. >> Roll call. Mr. Dearcy. >> Mr. Fischer. >> Mrs. here. >> Mr. Mass >> here. >> Mr. Fman here. >> Mrs. Mitz >> here. >> Mrs. N >> here. >> Excuse me. Mr. Brown was notified. >> Thank you. Okay. At this time, I will ask for a motion to go into executive session and a motion to approve items 2.1 through
0022.4. Whereas in NJSA 10-4-12 allows for a public body to go into close session during a public public meeting and whereas the board of education of Eastim Township has deemed it necessary to go into session to discuss certain matters which are exempted from the public. And whereas the regular meeting of the board will reconvene following the end of the closed session at approximately 7 p.m. Is that right? >> It says seven. I'm so sorry. I got I got to edit that. 7:30 p.m. Now therefore, be it resolved that the board of education will go into session for the following reasons as outlined in NJSA 10-412 items 2.2. through 2.4. Do I have a motion? >> Motion by M. Mr. Mass. Second. Second by Mr. Dearcy. Mr. Yates. May I have a roll call, please? >>
003Yes, ma'am. On executive session, Mr. >> Yes. Mr. >> Yes. >> Mr. and Mrs. >> Carries. >> Thank you. We'll see you all at 7:30. I would like to resume the meeting of the Esham Township Board of Education. I'm so sorry. We will now read the pledge of allegiance. Would you please rise for the pledge? At this time, I will ask Mrs. Ionelli to read the mission statement. The mission of the Esham Township School District is to promote excellence in an environment that engages students in meaningful learning experiences in partnership with students, dedicated staff, families, and community. The district provides a strong educational foundation that will empower our students to achieve their unique potential, embrace self-directed lifelong learning, develop the skills necessary for appropriate risktaking and responsible decisionmaking, respect themselves and others, problem solve individually
004and collaboratively. Become contributing members of a diverse global society. Thank you. At this time, we're going to turn it over to Dr. Smith for a few presentations. Yes. For the the Cooper Lew kind of speaks for itself, but the uh Well, can I say I love it? I mean, just for one thing, if you look at the snow, you can see the light from the house street. I think I would add. That's so cool. I saw it. I saw Star Night. So, mission accomplished. That's incredible. If you don't know that painting, you should what you need to do and this will be this image will be in tomorrow's. So what you should do is Google Star Night by Van Go. Pull it up and look from Leon here to present you with Miss Gormley is
005here. Miss Gormley, come on. So, Miss Gormley. Miss So, Mi Miss Gormley whenever having Miss Gormley come up is like having I think it was was it um the coach of the Celtics that won like 10 years in a row. I think his last name was Arbach and that was like back in the 60s. But I always feel like because how many years in a row now is this? um 11 total years of your students winning the art contest. That's amazing. And not for nothing, just saying we got principal Gary Hoffman here who is gonna wave. But um it's it's a a mustang for 11 years. So fantastic. Um and uh Miss Gormley, is there is there any chance that Evelyn may have uh encountered that star night painting in your class possibly. I think
006so. I think so. I think I see it there actually. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Um yeah. So Get All right, let's get together. Stick with it. All right. So, we're going to pivot from an amazing accomplishment in art to an amazing accomplishment in generosity. We have uh representatives from the Marlton United Methodist Church. if you don't mind coming up briefly. Anyone anyone who would like to come up the uh so the story here and it's on our agenda and we're doing this recognition uh now before uh oh yeah yes you're doing exactly what I hope which is enjoying the night. So so uh yes yes thank you thank you thank you so much. Not that this this is enjoyable, too, but there's other ways to enjoy the night, too. So, um the uh but
007we put this on the agenda as a as a recognition because following this, we have a a a very um informative uh mid-year budget presentation from Mr. Yates. This way, a person has the choice to stay through that or not um after the donation recognition. But um so the Moralton United Methodist Church uh well I don't here Jesse you want to tell it. >> Sure. [clears throat] So for a few years now uh Marlton United Methodist we've been able to donate away our Christmas Eve offering and this year we decided to donate it to the school district uh specifically for school lunch debt. And so we collected $32,50 uh for school lunch set the uh I I think and this is unprecedented. So um it's it's uh I mean we we there's no other example
008of this. Um, and I think when at least on our part when um the idea first was shared with us, we thought, oh, you know, maybe um this could lead to a conversation with with with one of our schools, you know, with with the principal that the amount might be enough for a school or some portion of our student body and that it resulted in um something that going to help not just students now, but it's large enough students in the future and be a living legacy in that way of um caring about people we don't even know, you know, and that's I mean uh which the world needs a ton of, right? And uh and for that to come um out of our local community uh like love from strangers and like we all
009we know each other in a in a sense, but it's also um you know, the families being helped, you don't you won't you won't know, you know, and uh that's like just an act of love. We are deeply grateful. So, um Mr. Yates for our midyear budget presentation. All right, good evening everybody. So, tonight we will uh we'll go through the midyear budget report for the board of education. Um for us in the business office, we are past the midway point. So, we run uh July 1 through June 30th of every year. So, December is our sixth month. So, we're at the midway point. We're not at the midway point for students, but we are in the midway point for the bud. So, tonight we're going to talk about our enrollment a little bit. We'll
010look at our teaching and non-eing staff population, our district revenues briefly, and we'll take a deep dive into some particular areas of our expenditures, and then we will just talk about kind of where we are budget forecast for the remainder of the year and some of those major categories. So, executive summary, I will read this verbatim. So, the district's budget is stable, but growing cost pressures continue to emerge. Several major expenses are increasing faster than anticipated and will significantly impact future budget planning. I put this in here because I think it really summarizes where we are in our budget at this current time. All right. On roll, so student enrollment as of December 15th. So the numbers that I'm going to present tonight in terms of staff population student enrollment are going to be as
011of December 15th. So these numbers are not static numbers for us. But as of that date, we had 4,736 students. I broke it out by grade here. So you can see the distribution amongst our grades. To take that a step further, we can look at the distribution on the left side at our school level. This also includes our MPC. So down at the bottom, MPC MPC stands for the Marlton Preschool Center. That's the wing here that houses 75 preschool students through our preschool expansion. And this also includes our private providers where we have um 89 preschool students through preschool expansion. Private providers are um independent preschool that are located inside Eve Sham that have a classroom or maybe multiple classrooms with our preschool students in it with teachers teaching our preschool curriculum. And then we
012have 51 students out of district. On the right you can see the distribution as a percentage broken out by general education, special education, and out of district placements. Out of district students, those 51 represent only 1% of our total student population. So while it's a big number or a big expense for us, tuition related services and transportation costs, it still is only 1% of our total student population. And then our staff population as of 12:1525 we had 884 staff on that day. That number is constantly changing. The power professionals in particular is a number that's constantly changing for us. That is our highest turnover position. So don't hold me to that number today, but you can see it broken out at the top as certificated staff and then non-certificated staff down at the bottom. Um
013there what you can see that one where it says CFM that stands for certified educational facilities manager. So that is our um our our operations and facilities team manager Tom Donahghue. All right. So district revenues our budget this year is 100186,119. Um, I didn't break out every category, but our major categories for that tax levy makes up the majority of our revenue, followed then by state aids. That's all of the state aids that we receive. Capital reserve, we did use $283,000 withdrawal from capital reserve this year to balance this budget towards capital projects. And then our kind of catchall revenue account would be our miscellaneous revenues. That's where we account for everything that doesn't fall under one of those other state categories. And that would be things like the rent we receive from our lease
014agreements, our solar uh generation that we might have or our cell tower revenues or any other revenues that we get that were unanticipated that don't fall in those categories would be captured under miscellaneous revenue as you know. So that number the 100 million number we are required to produce a balanced budget. So it should be no surprise that our expenditures would be the same number 100,186,119. This is broken out in distribution. Salaries in black make up 54% of our total budget spend followed by benefits which make up another 28%. So salaries and benefits account for roughly over 82% of every dollar that we collect. So 82 cents of every dollar would go towards salaries and the related benefits of um our staff. The different categories special education makes up 6% of our budget. CP and
015tech would be curriculum personnel and technology make up 2% of our budget. Transportation operations would make up 9% and then our schools level budget. So really our only discretionary spend in the district is at our school level which makes up 1% of our budget. Everything else could be considered or would be considered a mandatory expense. So we're going to talk about next our largest and our least controllable expenditures. We're going to not, this is not in order, but we will talk about our health benefit premium increases that we experienced at Jan 1 of 2026. Our total staffing dollars, utility inflation that we're experiencing, building envelope and major mechanical failures that we've experienced over the course of this uh school year so far and our out of district tuition increases and those related expenses. Let's dive
016into it. So, out of district tuition trends, what you're looking at here is a um that that line there, that line chart is for Burlington County APSSDs. That stands for approved private schools for students with disabilities. So, this represents the average PDM rate that we get charged when we look at for sending our students out of district to one of these APSSDs going back to 1920 to 2025. One thing that should stand out for you is it's not a straight line. So, it's an unpredictable expense for us year-toear. That's what that means. It's a 26% total increase since 2019 or a 4% average annual increase. But if you were to look at the increase from 2425 to 2526, it's a little less than 4% there, I believe. Not a significant increase, but when you look
017at the increase we experienced from 2324 to 2425, it was over 6%. So this is an these are mandatory costs for us. We have to send our students at to out of district placements. If they get placed in an APSSD or an approved private school, we have to pay the a the PDM rate of that private school. They're not all the same. This is just the average of Burlington County. And it is unpredictable. We don't know what that cost is going to be for us year-toear. One of the other challenges that we have with our out of district placements is the out of district or the APSSDs are allowed by law to increase their tuition by 10% in the year in which we're sending students. So, we've already gotten some of those notifications from uh
018some of these schools already this year. But what that means for us is we can try and predict or budget for these out of district placements only to then in the middle of the year be hit with a 10% increase. That money is due by the end of this school year or by the end of next school year. But it is absolutely payable by the end of next school year. So we have to budget for it. Further note is to look at 2425. We had 43 students out of district at one of these APSSDs accounting for $3.5 million in tuition costs only. This is not accounting for their related services or the transportation costs because it's our responsibility to transport them to and from school. This year we have 51 students as of the date
019of this presentation and that may already have changed that Dr. Bland's here but 51 students. That's kind of atypical for us. What we typically see in a given year would be um Dr. Bland and her team, they work tirelessly to bring these students back to district. Out of district placements are considered the most restrictive environment. They according to the IP want to bring those kids back to the least restrictive environment. That would be getting them back into school with their peers. And in this case though, we've seen an eight student increase from year to year. Typically, we might see, you know, we brought back three and we gained four because these students do they qualify mid year or they might move in mid year and require an out of district placement. So, it's for us
020what we typically experience would be we're bringing back just as many as we end up having to place out. This was an atypical year for us to see an eight student increase. But a bigger note would be if you dive into those numbers, that's a $1.2 million increase yearover. So adding only eight students, but we experienced an increase of $1.2 million in our total tuition cost only. Again, this is a these are mandatory costs for the district. We do not have a choice. We have to pay for the tuition. We have to pay for the transportation of these students. We have to pay for any other services they might receive. So these are mandatory costs borne by the district. All right. So, let's talk about some of our major mechanical and building envelope uh failures
021that we experienced this year. This list here by project on the right, it's going to show you whether that project was complete or whether that project's pending. But everything that you see here is a project or was a failure that was unanticipated. So in any given year we experience many sorts of mechanical failures of infrastructure failures of plumbing failures of life safety failures. Um to highlight just a couple of them WSHP stands for water source heat pumps. These are the delivery system for heating and cooling in all of our buildings. We have about 3,000 of them across the district. A a auditorium like this would have large scale water source heat pumps whereas a classroom would have a smaller scale but they are very expensive to replace and they do are located in every room
022that we have across the district. We've had many of them fail. Um we've had some cooling towers fail. We've had uh fresh make fresh air makeup controls fail. Fresh air makeup is the system that brings in the fresh air so that uh it I guess circulates out the carbon dioxide from the buildings. A big one for us is the sewer line replacement at Jagger. So that's pending. We had a sewer line that that takes the sew the sewage out of the building that backed up. We had to have that repaired. That the big thing about this the challenge for us is we're going to repair that pipe. the pipe is located underneath of the parking lot where the staff parks. So, if the company is unable to replace the entire line underneath the parking lot,
023we would have to go around the parking lot, which would double the cost of the project. Unexpected expenditures totaling roughly $300,000 year to date. We're six months in. All right. So, the next couple slides we're going to talk about the school employee health benefits program, the S or otherwise known as the SEBP. Um, and they are facing unpreced financial unprecedented financial pressure. We'll talk about why. Um, but the state's actuaries, so the state does have actuaries that will try and determine the premium rates for that program. The actuaries have um they've recommended premium or substantial premium increases for 2026. They're trying to restore the long-term stability of the program. Let's talk about that. So on the next slide, how did we get here? So a few reasons. One, claims and expenses were greater than premiums.
024Premiums would be considered like the revenue of the program. said they collect premiums from districts like ours and then staff go and they make claims. They go to the doctor, they get ill, they need whatever, they need to seek medical treatment. That's a claim or the program just has expenses. So, when the claims and the expenses are greater than the premiums, the program is going to run at a deficit for that year. They're going to have to dive into their reserves. they had rising medical costs and prescription costs or just inflation on the medical and the prescription side, particularly on the prescription formulary, we're just seeing more and more medications like GLP1s that are driving up costs of the prescriptions. So, when these things happen, those two things, when your claims and your expenses are
025greater than your premiums, and you're experiencing inflation on your medical and on your prescription, they have to go into the reserves. So, they've depleted their reserves. The state employee health benefit plan or the school employee health benefit plan that we're in is mandated by the state to maintain two and a half months worth of total premiums in reserve. They were down to two weeks. Additionally, they experienced anti- selection. What is anti- selection? Anti- selection is it is the plan of last resort. That means the state employ or the school employees health benefit plan has to accept anybody who's willing to join the plan. So if you're a district that has experienced high claims and expenses, private insurers don't want to offer you or don't want to keep you on their plan or you might not
026be able to enter into a health insurance fund, which is a self-insured way of offering benefits to your employees. You're going to go to the state plan because it's the plan of last resort. So they've experienced anti- selection meaning the districts who are running healthy every dollar in there may be only pulling out 80 cents in premium those districts leave. So who's left in the state plan are only the districts who can't get out which is going to further drive up claims and expenses and prescription costs and furthering this cycle of the school employees health benefit plan experiencing large and substantial premium increases every year. So, what's that impact for the district? Well, at the top, our monthly premium costs, what we were paying prior to January was about $1.3 million each month. Projected 2026,
027we saw a over 30% increase in our premiums. For us, that's $ 1.7 million. When you look at that and you annualize that, that's a projected increase of $2.42 million annually. Now, we do budget for this, right? So, one of the challenges that we face as a district in being in the school employees health benefit plan is their premium increases hit January 1. So, that presents multiple challenges for us. One, a big one would be we balance a budget the year before in March. So, we're just trying to predict what we think the state plan is going to increase its premiums by. Now, we run an analysis. We talk to our brokers, but the truth is nobody knows. The state doesn't release this to anybody and they don't release it until the late fall. So
028late fall, we're already many months into the school year and our budget. So we planned on a budgeted increase of 10%. We experienced the budget increase of 30%. For us, that's an unanticipated difference in this current year of $1.6 million. That's for six months only. That's from January to June of this school year. And what that means is our employees, all of our teachers and all of our admin and everybody else won't have to pay any they won't have to pay a single dollar more in premium because premium for most of our employees is based on salary. They don't experience salary increases until July 1. So for six months, that increase, that delta is 100% the cost borne by the district. Make no mistake about it, $1.6 million is a crippling number. If we had
029not had the tax levy incentive that this board went for last year, we would be in the middle of the school year halting all operations and trying to find cuts worth $1.6 million. We don't have a single line item in the budget that has an extra $1.6 $6 million in it. Let's dive further. So, we don't sit on our hands with this. I have in my tenure as the business administrator went to market our plan three separate times. I've only been here for two years. Every time we've received the same response, an unequivocal no. And here's why. Our medical claims. So, when claims for us, they take a claims experience. So they'll look at a a time period and they'll say, "What was your claims experience?" Meaning for every dollar you put in, how much
030money did you pull out of the plan? A good district, a district that's is attractive to leave the state plan runs below one. So if we put in a dollar and we only utilize 80 cents, our experience rating would be an 80 and we would be very attractive. during our period that we looked at our claims experience which they go back a year. It was June 23 to May of 2025. Um on the left side, our loss ratio this the school year 2324 was 100%. Meaning every dollar we put in we pulled out of the plan. Most insurers don't like that. Additionally, in the last 12 months we ran at 119%. So for every dollar we put in, we pulled out or we had claims and expenses valued at a $119. Our But the bigger
031problem is during the last 12 months, our enrollment declined by 25%. Not our student enrollment, our enrollment in the plan declined by 25%, but our claims only dropped by 5%. That's problematic. We have high-cost claimants. 33 to 34 of our claimants account for over $50,000 each. That doesn't mean that they it's count up 30 people and they all were $50,000 in claims. It just means they've all reached the threshold of $50,000. Our number one claimant pulls a million dollars out of the plan every single year. That's five to$5.7 million in claims that can be attributed just to those 33 to 34 individuals. By the way, and for the record, we don't know who they are. We'll never know who they are, nor do we want to know who they are, right? That is protected. But
032these are just facts that we're presenting tonight that is driving up our costs. Those 33 to 34 people are account for 52% of all paid claims of this district. I'll go back and remind you, we have 884 staff on hired as of December 15th. 33 to 34 of them account for 52% of all medical claims. So a healthy benchmark in any district is roughly 30%. Now prescription drugs too, they they don't just look at your medical side, they'll also look at your prescription side. Our prescription loss ratio was 145% during this period. That's a statewide trend. Again, medications like GLP-1s are really driving up those costs. But our our loss ratio for prescription alone in May of 2025 was 200%. That means for every dollar we put into the plan, we pulled out 100% more
033or $2. So we're experiencing claims concentration amongst the 33 to 34 claimants and enrollment decline. We have an adverse risk profile, meaning our experience ratings north of one. No carrier was willing to quote for us equal or better coverage in all three of my attempts to pull our district out of the state health plan. So, all comparable carriers declined to quote. Another tidbit is there's 200 districts that are left in the state health plan. 160 of them went out to market this year and only 27 of them were able to find savings outside of the school plan. That means only 27 of them were attractive enough that that another carrier was willing to quote them because trust me, if we had any alternative, I would [snorts] have taken it. And finally, let's just kind of
034look at and wrap it all up with our mid-year status and our burn rate summary. Um, burn rate would be defined as a percentage of the budget line, what percentage of that budget line has been expended at this point in time in the year. So, if I'm going to caveat this, but if you're six months into a 12-month school year and you've burned at 50%, you're kind of on target. But in our case, in certain cases, that's not always good. So, if you look at salaries at the top, you see we're burning at 50%, but our risk outlook's high. That's because our core instructional salaries are tracking normally, but our special education salaries are and staffing and substitutes and overtime, they're burning faster than the calendar. So again, the pressure from special education on costs
035on a district. And these are mandated student driven costs. So they aren't discretionary. We don't have a choice. Health benefits, same thing. We just went into a few slides on that. Midyear spend is stable, but we have high claims. We have enrollment decline and large premium increases. So, we have significant futureyear pressures on this district from the health benefit premium increases. And if you think that it was a one-year fix, think again because 160 districts went out, 27 found savings, that means we're stuck in the state health plan with all the other districts that are running at a poor experience rating, which is going to continue to drive up the costs. utilities. We had done a presentation in January on how we all were going to see a significant increase in our electric on our
036utility bill. We're seeing the same thing. Electric's pacing faster than gas. So, our burn rate right now 74% on utilities. It's a risk outlook of moderate because we are going to enter the warm months where we'll spend less in utilities, but I anticipate that we will fully expand that budget line by the end of the year. Um, a thing about utilities to understand is that we do go out and seek savings through purchasing cooperatives in utilities through we're in a program called the ACES. The problem with utility supply or utility purchasing, it's the same thing that you all experience is we we all receive energy in our homes in two ways. It's supply and it's delivery. Supply is what we can go out to market for. We can go out to bid and we can
037work with third parties and we can try and lock in rates. That's what ASES does for us. ACES will guide us and ACES will say, "Hey, we we we're trending high in the market outlook for the next three to six months. We think now is a good time to lock in your energy rates, whether it be natural gas or electric or what have you. What they can't control and what is controlled by the BP BPU, which is out of anybody's control, and you can't go out to bid for it. you can't lock it in is the delivery. So, we've yes, we've locked in our electric rates, but we can't control delivery and delivery is driving up our prices. and when delivery or what we've experienced here in New Jersey and again go back to January
038last year and you'll see the presentation on it is that uh New Jersey has shut down major electrical generation nuclear generational facilities and now we have to seek delivery outside of New Jersey from uh significant distance which is driving up our delivery costs here in where we live. Um and then finally I put on instructional supplies. It is not a significant part of our budget, right? It's the but it's the piece we can control control the controllables and you can see that on instructional supplies we've only burned 23%. So what we can control our discretionary spend we do a good job on everything else those big ticket items the majority of our budget is out of our control. questions, comments from the board. >> Mr. Pman. Oh, I'm sorry. I had one com or question
039on the capital projects driven by end of life slide. Um, the Thanks. the project's total year to date is that for [music] the pending and complete is does do the pending have any costs that are included in that or they all still have to be realized? >> Uh some of them yes some of them no. So like the uh the water source heat pumps the three replacements at Deacy are not included in that number. We anticipate that to be a significant expense. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. Thank you >> Mr. Yates. Uh so quick question I have is in reference to these capital projects etc. A lot of these are done in-house by our own staff or is a sublet to other vendors. >> Yeah. So we we have a really good staff on
040in maintenance um what they can we handle. So water source heat pumps in a classroom typically right we will install those but those water source heat pumps cost us5 to $6,000 on delivery. And then our team because we do have certified um HVAC HVAC technicians and electricians on staff and plumbers. So our team can handle most projects, but there's some we're not roofers, so we always out, you know, we'll we'll contract out roofing. The sewer line replacement at Jagard is a project that we uh contract out. So if it's there's there would be two reasons. If our staff can handle most, but if it's beyond their scope, Yeah. or we're underst staffed and a lot of times they're chasing they're chasing their tails. They're they're reactive right now and not proactive due to the significant
041age of our infrastructure and our major mechanical items that they're constantly just trying to fix things. So I might have staff in every building and not have enough to put on one significant job. So it becomes a manpower issue and a scope issue. I guess the point is for something similar you said a moment ago. We try to control what we can controlact what we can handle and what we can't then we go to the outside. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Miss >> I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this but I'm assuming the sewer line at Jagger because it's on our property. It's 100% our problem. The district or the township doesn't account for any of that. >> No. So, it is the it's the sewage line, the outgoing sewage line from
042Jagger School that connects into the main um and it travels underneath the parking lot. Um, luckily for us, it didn't back up in the building. It backed up in the parking lot. And that's just because of the location of the blockage. So, we dug it up. We had it temporarily repaired. But that same company said, "This is a this is a band-aid, and we need to replace this entire line all the way up to the building for a proper fix." So, they're they quoted us one number, which is about $18,000. If they can get underneath of the parking lot to get it done, but by chance that they can't, that number balloons to 42,000 because it's just more work. They have to go around the parking lot. >> Mr. Does that include um remediation for
043the parking lot afterwards or is that just to tear up and fix the line? >> No. So if they go under the parking lot, there would be no remediation in the parking lot at all. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> What else? >> All right. Thank you. >> Thank you. Mr. Yates, I had one question. This is very loud. >> Are you going to email this to the board or put it online so we can look at it at home? >> Yeah, >> you'll do that. Y >> Thank you. >> It'll it'll go on um the board agenda. We add the presentation afterwards and then >> we'll put it on the uh >> there's a a web page on our website where we post all of our budget presentations. Yeah, >> good. Thank you. A lot
044of information there that some might want to review later. >> So, now we are going to public comment. Just in case anyone is not aware, we have two public comment periods. The first public comment is for what is on the agenda and the second public comment which happens later in the evening is for anything that you wish to discuss. This meeting will now be open to the public referencing agenda items only. However, if your question pertains to student or personnel items or negotiations, we ask that you see the superintendent after the meeting. Since we do not discuss these matters in public, we ask that you please limit your comments to three minutes per person and please state your name before you speak at the mic. Is there anyone who wishes to speak? Public comment on
045agenda items only. Seeing no one, we're going to close that portion of the meeting. There will be another public comment section at the end of the meeting. So, at this point, we're going to move forward with the approval of the minutes. I need a motion for approval of 6.1 and 6.2. Do I have a motion? Mr. Pelman second, Mr. Dearcy on the minutes 6.1 6.2. Are there any questions or comments from the board members? Seeing none, Mr. Yates. Roll call. >> Roll call on the approval of minutes. Mr. Dearcy. >> Yes, >> Mr. Fisher. >> And approve 6.2. >> Your extension to 6.1 is noted. I know >> abstain from 6.1 yes to 6.2 and 6.3 >> your extension to 6.1 as noted Mr. >> Yes. >> abstension to 6.1 yes to 6.2 >> your
046extension is no to Mr. Mrs. >> Yes, >> Mrs. >> Yes. Motion carries. >> Thank you. And at this point, we're going to move to item seven, the superintendence report. Do I give it floor to you? >> Thank you, Mrs. Null. Uh that is loud. Um I will lean back a bit. Uh this week is the great kindness challenge in our schools and in schools across our state, country, and even the world. And kindness counts and matters. In fact, every week in ETSD, all of us together, students, staff, families, community members have a common stake in spreading kindness. Truly, schools through children, teachers, and staff may well be the best pollinators of peace and kindness and patience on the planet. I'd like to thank all our staff and counselors for their passion, dedication, and creativity
047when it comes to helping our students learn and show kindness. Each school is celebrating kindness this week in various ways from theme days to sharing ways to be kind over the announcements and ways to promote kindness and cooperation at school and at home. In fact, that is where I got this great list of ideas for kind acts. Um, and one of them says there are 50, but one of them says volunteer in your community. And as this month is also schoolboard recognition month in New Jersey, on behalf of our district and personally, I'd like to express deepest thanks to our board of education as they are truly volunteers in our community, giving countless hours and tireless work, all voluntary and dedication to the best paths forward for our children whose education and growth is nothing
048less than the most important responsibility human beings So, thank you to our board. Thank you to our staff and families. That ends my comments. >> Thank you, Dr. Smith. At this time, I'm going to look for a motion to approve item 7.1 through 7.8. Do I have a motion? >> Mr. Fisher. Second, Mr. Mass. Thank you. So, on item 7.1 through 7.8. Are there any questions or comments from the board? Anything in 7.1 through 7.8? I wanted to Am I in the right one? No, I'm sorry. The field trips are later, but as far as the the first reading of the calendar. This is under 7.3 and I know Dr. Smith had been working with the union leadership for the sidebar agreement and we are all thankful that they were able to collaborate with us
049to start the school year before Labor Day which is sad for parents. However, it's not cutting the summer short. As others have said, it's still the first school day is September 2, which is the same as this year. It just is going to feel as though your summer is cut short, but in reality, it's 10 weeks as it always has been 10 weeks. So, um, again, it's a draft first reading and it will be up on the agenda again next month. Okay. So, Mr. Yates, do I have a roll call for uh superintendent item 7.1 to 7.8 >> on administrative items? Mr. >> Mr. Fischer, >> yes. >> Mrs. >> Yes. >> Thank you. Moving to item eight, curriculum and instruction. I need a motion to approve items 8.1 through 8.5. Do I have a
050motion? Second. Any questions or comments from the board on curriculum instruction? Go ahead. >> I just wanted to comment that for anyone that wasn't aware, one of the field trips and special events. Um, we are starting to bring back field trips and there's a number of them included on here. I know that my kids are very very excited about it. Kids in schools are very excited about it. I'm very excited about it. It's something that, you know, we've all been missing for a long time and we're able to bring it back. So I was gonna say something similar completely. We're all very excited about that. Something to note it's not an exhaustive list. It is the product of work that worked across buildings across administrators across classroom teachers who agree as to what was doing.
051So it was the result of a lot of collaboration and work over some time. So the list that you see is not exhaustive. it ends up on the agenda as it gets approved by the district as they decide as the classroom decides. So as time goes on, they'll be more populated with ideas for every grade in every building to those. Um and also in regards to the audit that's been approving that tonight, uh you may recall it was kind of pushed back a little bit because we wanted to wait to be seated. So appropriate like input can be had by the new members but we are excited that we've chosen five audit that we feel has best scope and you know breath of work um for price that we received. So we're excited to get
052that started for this person to start the work start with an end date in June for to happen at this meeting. Well, it'll happen first, but also it will be reported with us tonight. Anyone else comments or questions? >> I just wanted to kind of echo what Miss Buchoz was reporting back for curriculum. Um, I was able to sit in the first curriculum meeting and thought it was an extremely thorough overview given by Miss Mulik. Um, and excited to move forward with the ELA audit. I think it's really going to be beneficial and highlighting what our district is doing well as well as kind of going off of strategic planning, identifying areas of of improvement. So, I'm excited for that. And also, it was awesome to see the field trips on there. I think that's
053a wonderful educational opportunity for our students. >> Anyone else comments? >> Okay, Mr. Yates, roll call instruction. >> Yes. >> Mr. Fisher. >> Yes. Yes. >> 8.3 and yes. >> Oh, 8.2 and 8.3, excuse me. >> To clarify, you are abaining A2 and A3. Yes, >> that's correct. >> Mr. Mrs. >> Yes. Okay, moving to finance and operations. I need a motion to approve items 9.1 through 9.12. Do I have a motion to approve those items? Mr. Pen and Mr. Fiser second. Thank you. Do any board members have any questions or comments pertaining to finance and operations? N >> yes, >> I'd like to give a comment. Um I just want to, you know, put it out there and I know they were here today and we obviously had the ceremony, but I mean, how
054great is it that we have such great partnerships in our community, uh who are willing to donate such large, sizable amounts of money to support the mission of the EIP Township School District. I mean, I'm humbled to to know that we live in that type of town, um where we have such great uh community groups who help us out. Um, and it's particular this uh month because of the amount of the donation, but to anybody and everybody um who supports the many charitable efforts that go on in this district um who support our schools. Uh seriously, thank you. So, um I just wanted to make that mention. Thanks. >> Anyone else with questions or comments on finance and operations? Seeing none. >> Yes. >> Mr. Fisher. >> Yes. >> Mrs. >> Mr. >> Yes. >>
055Okay. Moving on to 10 personnel. I need a motion to approve items 10.1 through 1010. Do I have a motion to approve 10.1 to 1010? Much first and Mr. Mass second. At this time, do any board members have any questions or comments on personnel items? Seeing none, may I have a roll call, please? Mr. Yates. >> Call Mr. >> Yes. Yes, >> carries. >> On item 12, committee reports. I believe that comes next. Uh, do we have any chair person who wants to report out on any committee meetings that happened? But thank you. >> We have no policy. >> Thank you. >> No committee reports. Now we'll move into old business. We do not have any old business. This says but we do have new business which we do not >> know. Okay. Um and
056new business. We have no new business this evening. Now we're going to move into open public comment. The meeting will now be open to the public referencing any items of interest. However, if your questions or comments pertain to litigation, student or personnel items or negotiations, we ask that you see the superintendent after the meeting. Since we do not discuss these matters in public, we ask that you Limit your comments to three minutes per person. And also when you approach the mic, state your name, please. Anyone wishing to comment on anything? No. Okay, seeing none, we'll close the open public comment. And We have board member announcements. Item 16. Do any board members have an announcement to make? >> Just a just a couple quick things. Um, in the effort of transparency, I just wanted to
057explain uh my abstensions are due to a family member that works for the district. Obviously, I fully encourage field trips and support them. But just uh for that for that notion there. Um, number two, I wanted to again thank Mrs. for their help with the ELA audit and obviously the support and working with the vendor to be able to stretch our taxpayer dollars as far as possible. Um so we appreciate you contacting working through that. Um and then third and final is next Friday night is going to be our double down with the EM Education Foundation. Um which is one of the biggest events of the year at the mansion. I probably stole a little bit of your thunder, Dr. Smith. I was honestly the first thought I had when I was like I was
058so glad you were saying that because >> it's it's so important and also uh >> it's part of your new role and it is you're embracing it. I love it. >> I'm embracing it. I'll be there and uh with bells on and ready to go. But uh it's a great event. The forecast is a cold cold evening, but we're warming up inside with uh some food and entertainment. So uh please take a look at Eastam Education Foundation for any information regarding Double Down, but it's a great event and a a great supporter of the district. >> I have on that if you don't mind because my role as PTA through the leadership at EDF they've generously offered discount codes for families like it's traditionally like a business type of event but they're really trying to
059push families to go and make it a little more economical so every PTA district has pushed out in various ways different coupon codes for an individual ticket or like a bundle um I've gone the last couple years it's a really good time highly I'll just add because I I'm so glad you shared about the codes. They were in last week's ETSD update. They'll be in there tomorrow. So, if you are unaffiliated with a school, if you're just a general supporter of the district, you can pick. They're all there. Um >> we are in competition though. >> That's true. That's true. >> But that's okay. It's all for the greater good. the school that has the most representation donated donating they're donating money for DC if they have the most representation. So not to say you
060can't but >> well actually what I'm thinking is if someone is unaffiliated with a school and they can what they should probably best do is find seven buddies and then each of the eight can pick one of the schools and that way it will still still keep it even. Um so we're going to by factors of eight we want to see people signing up. So thank you I just wanted to congratulate because it's um the only time we'll be able to congratulate all of our fifth graders who will be graduating from Officer Kenner's lead program. Uh we have three next week which a lot of the board members are going to be able to attend which is wonderful. I love these events. They're the highlight for me. The children are just so thoughtful on on
061the whole program and the letters that they write. So, I I just want to congratulate all of them. I know the fifth graders always work very very hard and you get to see Officer Ker do a cartwheel and that's well worth it. >> Price. >> If that's everything, I'd like a motion to adjourn, please. So, >> do I need a second? Second, Mr. Dearcy. >> All those in favor? >> I