001things that this board gets to do. So, I appreciate all of you that have come out this evening. Um and with that, I'm going to uh we have a couple of board members that are going to be filing back in, but we're going to start. So, I'm going to turn this over to the administration. Okay. Good evening, everybody. We're going to start with our student recognition, so we can get you out of here if you'd like to get home and enjoy the Yeah. I was going to say enjoy enjoy the nice the nice night instead of doing homework. Um so, we're going to start with um the Great Reading Games. And who do we have? Do we have anybody from I can't see Kaden. Is he out there? I thought so. Mrs. Hoppy, come on
002up. Supervisor from the Laura Donovan School. Just to give you an overview of the Great Reading Games. It is a um contest that all of uh district schools engage in. It's an annual reading competition designed to inspire students reading and improving their literacy skills. For the first time since we've been engaged in the Great Reading Games, a Freehold Township School District student has been named as a national student winner. The third grade student from Laura Donovan Elementary School scored 88,261 minutes and read 8,326 pages. And I'd like to recognize third grader Isabella Padilla. Congratulations. Okay. All right. Yeah. It's okay. Yeah. Next we'll be recognizing students from the Barkalow Middle School debate team, the Jersey Shore Debate League tournament. I'd like to invite up our administrators from Barkalow Middle School. I can't see who's here
003tonight because and the debate uh the debate team advisor, Mr. Tansey. Can you bring to our attention Uh oh oh, sorry. Oh, shoot. And oh oh. Right home. Uh so, uh yeah, I just wanted to say um it's really nice to see uh I not only really have Barkalow debaters here, but uh some of the the siblings, the older siblings that are in high school, uh who've come back to support. Uh and it's wonderful to see um you know, the program grow through the years and have those students come back and and they have helped out. Um so, are we just reading the certificate Oh, thank Thank you. Oh, thanks. Okay. Uh so, uh we'd like to bring up first place team. Uh members on that first place team were Vihaan Shah, uh Dutch Harish,
004Sorry, Dutch. Dutch, I get nervous at these things. There you go. Okay. Uh uh Tejas Veas, uh and uh we had a fourth because we were subbing in some students. We had a fourth member of this team, Shawn Tucker, uh who couldn't make it tonight. He's got a good reason. He is at a Knicks playoff basketball game tonight. I said Shawn, bring something. Um uh yes, please. Thank you. Uh all right, we also had uh uh our other team came in third place. Uh and by the way, the these topics students are debating are are high-level topics uh about should the United States provide uh universal basic income for all citizens, right? Or, you know, what's more beneficial to society, space exploration or ocean exploration? And And we're really proud of all the research that
005our students did uh and preparation. Uh so, the third-place team, uh Russell Sesinsky, uh sixth-grader Jackson Madioli. Jackson. And last but not least, Alex Miller. Uh if I could say just one more thing, uh debate uh competitive debate is uh debated in teams. Uh however, we do recognize individual excellence as well. Uh and uh our own Vihan Shah was the top debater in the entire tournament, so he won a gavel. Uh uh We're not debating whether this is >> Next we'll be recognizing the Barkalow winners of the geography bee. Thank you. Thank you. Uh so geography my my partner and friend and colleague Mr. Krup, who runs the geography bee at at Eisenhower. This is something you've probably all heard before, but after when the pandemic happened Nat Geo National Geographic stopped doing the national
006bee. Social studies teachers started to get to get together and talk about how wonderful an event it was. And Mr. Krup and I said, "Let's start writing some questions." So this could not happen in Barkalow and in Eisenhower without that partnership and all the time we spend together Mr. Krup. So I appreciate you so much and everything social studies department over at Eisenhower does for our students. We had top three winners top three winners. Thank you, Michelle. So in third place, by the way, these students went through seven rounds of preliminary questions. At Barkalow we had a 20 question written tiebreaker and the three gentlemen that made it to the finals answered 40 total questions about a week ago. So, in third place, Gavin Allen. All right. In second place, Timothy Garrison. And in first
007place, Henry Calder. Except to say that they all came from the same elementary school, too, right? West Freehold. Next, we'll be moving to Eisenhower Middle School, and let's keep the geography bee recognition going. I'd like to invite up our administrators from Eisenhower Middle School, and Mr. Crupp. Start with geography bee. Good evening. So, the geography bee what Mr. Tanza and I are going to do at both Park Avenue and Eisenhower is have as Mr. Tanza said, go through seven different rounds of questions. The first three rounds of questions, there is one and three choices. And after that, we really start to increase the rigor of the last four rounds, so rounds four, five, six, and seven, there are no choices. So, for a student to be able to get into the next round after preliminaries,
008he or she must score a minimum of six out of seven. If you do the math, that means if you got one wrong in the first three rounds, your chance of moving forward is not likely. And so, some of these students are actually did something that we don't typically see much, right Mr. Tan as educators, in rounds four, five, six, and seven in some cases being able to answer three out of four correct or in a few of circumstances or instances, four out of four in the rounds that have no choices. That's how you really know you have a high proficiency level. So, at our school, we had 18 students total in grade sixth, seventh, and eighth who had scored seven out of seven and or six out of seven. So, out of the 18,
009we were able to narrow it down to the final three students. Our third overall, by the way, they were all eighth grade students this year, and they were all male students this year at Eisenhower. Congratulations to third place overall from the Dwight D. Eisenhower Middle School, Charles Morgan. He should be listed as third. Right? Here's the second. Yeah. Yeah, second. I'm going to correct that. I should say second place for Charles. All right. And third place, Lucas Bynoe. And the 2025-2026 Dwight D. Eisenhower Middle School Geography Bee champion, congratulations to Mr. Michael Wood. Big smiles. Big smiles. Good. I'm not used to this. Thank you. My pleasure. Good. Thanks. Thank you. Perfect. Next, we have a really good rapport with some of our local organizations in Freehold. And one of that is the American Legion.
010Our group of retired men and women from the US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, US Marines, US Coast Guard. And now we can add the sixth division, the Space Force. And so each year they ask for students in our history class to take part in what's called the Safety Essay Contest. And we've had incredible success. I think this year I stopped counting cuz we try to focus more on the process than we do on the results. Cuz we learned in life that if we focus more on the process, the result normally does ensue. So, I want to say this year it's something like 17 of 18 or 18 of 19 years we've won, which is pretty special. And this young lady was one of seven students in my eighth grade and seventh grade classes
011combined that decided to take on work on writing what safety means to me. This topic does not change. If your essay wins at the local level, which this student did, then your essay automatically moves up to the county competition where this year Marina Fanuele, if you're here, could you please come forward? So, so Marina won at the local level, the lodge level, which was $25 she received. You're welcome. She also received a beautiful neck piece that shows right away that she won from the logo of the American Legion. That essay went up to the county competition. Obviously, the county competition is even harder. And Marina did it again. She took first place again at the Monmouth County competition. And then and if my memory's right, I think that might be I think Marina might be
012something like maybe the 12th or 13th student that I've had in my teaching career win the county championship. So, I'm lucky I get to teach a lot of really hard working and bright students. And then her essay went to the state finals where Marina took second in the state of New Jersey. Thank you, Mr. Wicklund. Next, we have the Elks Lodge essay competition, another local group who have a really good rapport with over the years in Freehold. And so, they also host an annual essay competition. Their topic changes or fluctuates from year to year. But last year we entered, we had a student win the local level, and then from there it goes to the regions, and then at the regions there's no such thing really as winning the regions. They just decide if they
013have any candidates in the regions in terms of the essays that are worthy of going to state finals. So, last year we did something never done in the history of this entire town. Never happened at Eisenhower Barkalow Freehold Intermediate. There were two students last year in 2025 their essay made the state finals. So, while we didn't place last year, we can say we made the state finals. So, one of our big challenges in the off season was asking ourselves the question, well, how can we do better than what we did last year? And so, this year the students did it. This year we had three state finalists, so we broke our record from last year. We didn't have anybody place in the state finals, but we did have three Freehold students again making the state
014finals, pretty awesome. So, first I want to recognize Elise Quinn. And Elise is not here. Elise actually won the regional level. She won the north and south central division level, which is pretty difficult to complete. I didn't get the numbers this year from the Elks Lodge, but last year, just to give you an idea, last year there was one over 1,000 essay entries, over 1,000. And so last year 21 entries made the state finals. Eisenhower had two of the 21. I did not get the totals yet cuz the lady who runs it, unfortunately nobody knew that she was sick. She didn't know she was sick and she died a couple days after the competition. So that was shocking news in Monmouth County. Uh next I want to recognize another student. So Elise is my seventh
015grade student and I had two eighth grade students also make the state finals. Congratulations to eighth grader Shayna Kaplan. And congratulations to eighth grader Mason Buller. Congratulations Mason. Thanks Mr. Dickstein. And finally we had academic team competition at Cedar Drive. And we have we were able to send a couple of different teams. So we thank the Board of Education for being willing to pay for us to go. Something conversation we have at both schools is how lucky we are in our district. Some schools require students in their activities to have to pay a certain fee to be part of activity. And in Freehold Township schools that's something that is not happening. So I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, thank you for being willing to fund that. Because when you multiply
016that times all the schools activities both middle school and elementary schools, that's a tremendous cost. Not just to enter but what it costs for gasoline and transportation costs. So thank you. And again, parents, that's where lucky that we don't have to do that. So, Eisenhower academic team one did an amazing job. They were able to have a perfect score in one category. The perfect category they had a perfect score in was history and geography. They had the highest score also in the categories of science and mathematics. We'll call up the following students. Congratulations, Eisenhower team number one. Kian John Lin. Kian John is our captain. Congratulations to Juliana Lopes. Congratulations to Rayan Siddiqui. And congratulations to Aiden Merino. And the second and last academic team competition is 2 days away, Thursday, back at Cedar Drive
017in Colts Neck. So, good luck. >> It's two two final things. I promise to keep it short, but I want to thank two. I want to thank Mr. Dickstein. Mr. Dickstein, whenever he's doing his walk-throughs at Eisenhower, he's always asking how students are not only what they're doing academically in the class, but he's asking about how they're doing in their co-curricular activities. And as a teacher and advisor, that's a beautiful thing to have an administrator do. I've always said as a teacher, you can tell when somebody goes from being a teacher to administrator if they never forget what it's like to be on the other side of the desk. In this case, the desk of the teacher. That's something we as educators really appreciate. And I want to thank our two school administrators who do
018so much work. Our school principal, Mrs. Lechner, and our school assistant principal, Mr. Askewis, you should see how early they arrive to school each day, and you should see how late they stay at school, even on Fridays. In a lot of schools, Fridays, people can't wait to get out. That's not true of Eisenhower administrators. Thanks for caring. Congratulations to all the students that were recognized tonight. It's quite an honor to uh uh what you've done this um this grade in all of your activities and in the job preview. Let's see if everybody got their one that's fine. We're going to give parents and students uh 2 minutes to escape the rest of this meeting if you so choose. Everybody in. >> All right, we're going to resume um open session. Mr. Dickstein? Uh in the
019month of May, we have several activities that are happening at our schools. I don't have all of them written down, but they are all in the newsletters. Um we have most of our elementary schools doing uh their annual evening of the arts. Uh usually includes an art show and a chorus and/or band concert, depending on the school. Um They are spread throughout the month. Unfortunately, some are on the same night and um you can try to get to multiple ones, but it would be a little challenging, but you can try. Um so, those are all coming up. On the 14th, we have our um bilingual parents evening at Laura Donovan School. Um May 7th is the second year of the um eighth grade performance group at Barcola Middle School. Um at 6:00, it is the
020um what was for years instituted Eisenhower Back in Black, the equivalent at Barcola this year is Free Bird and their group is Uncaged. And uh they will be performing along with sixth and seventh grade chorus, um one song by the eighth grade vocal group, um and there's dancers also. Um so, that's May 7th at 6:00 and it's the uh second time we're doing it. We're did a pretty good job of building the program over there with Mr. Ryan. The Eisenhower annual Back in Black concert is the 21st. Yes, May 21st. Two weeks after? Yep, two weeks after. Uh May 21st. So, um again, you should be getting I think you confirmed you're getting all the newsletters from the school, so just check those elementary school newsletters for all of the dates of the um art
021and um well, evening of the arts. Uh Cindy soon in May will be sending you a Google Doc of all of the back um the graduation ceremonies and also the um moving up ceremonies for fifth grade. As you might remember, most of the fifth grade moving up ceremonies are on the same day. So, if you're available, um kind of be mindful if you don't have a specific rationale for attending a specific one to spread spread across the schools if possible. Uh you can always go back in and change them right up until the day of or the day before would be better. Um the administrators do go in there so they make sure they recognize everybody that's in attendance. Um and since our last meeting, we've had four cases of harassment, intimidation, and bullying. Out
022of those four cases, three were founded and one was unfounded. Each year, uh school safety teams, that is a representation across each of our elementary and middle schools and the ECLC, have um different staff members and a parent representative on their school safety teams. The school safety team is responsible um for meeting and doing a self-assessment and to determine grades under the anti-bullying bill of rights. I'm required to read the scores at a meeting. Um to remind you, the grades are based upon compliance. So, it's compliance to the HIB processes that are in place by law. Um and uh practices that we have. So, they include programs, approaches, or other initiatives, training on the policy, other staff instruction and training programs, curriculum and instruction on HIB and related information and skills, HIB personnel, school level
023HIB incident reporting procedure, investigation procedure, reporting to give an overall grade with a maximum of 78 points. Applegate School has 77 out of 78. Barkalow has 76 out of 78. Eisenhower 76 out of 78. ECLC 76 out of 78, Catena 77 out of 78. Donovan 77 out of 78. Erickson 77 out of 78. West Freehold 77 out of 78 for a district grade of 77 out of 78. Next we'll be moving into our budget our final budget presentation. Thank you. All right, good evening. Um this is our final budget presentation for the year. It's required by code. Um For those of you who've been on the board last few years, you know the final presentation I try to do a little bit quicker and and the data's a little bit more concise and condensed. Um
024I will tell you that we will start off the state or the county did request that we make one change in the budget. Up. Can you hear me now? Okay. So they did request that we make one change. It does not impact the budget overall in terms of we can't spend more money. Um So what they want us to do is you'll see here and you'll see on the budget resolution for both the revenue accounts and the appropriation lines, we had it in the tentative budget, we have for capital reserve interest a $5,000 figure, for maintenance reserve interest a $5,000 figure, for emergency reserve interest a $1,000 figure for a total of 11,000. They said they want to reflect closer to accurate and again, it doesn't make any difference budgetary, just just want the numbers
025change. So the final budget reflects in the motion this as well, capital reserve interest at $50,000 for a $45,000 change, maintenance reserve interest is a $25,000 figure for a $20,000 change and then emergency reserve at 5,000 for a $4,000 change. Overall, it just increases the revenue picture by 69,000. Can't spend this money on a teacher or books or anything like that. It's just something that they requested that we do. So, that makes sense everybody? Okay. So, I'm going to go through this real quick. These are the things we've talked about in case there's anybody new in the audience here or anyone watches this video and haven't hasn't seen the other ones. As we know our significant cost drivers for the upcoming year was health care where we're anticipating or taking a 20% increase for medical
026and for prescription, zero for dental. That figure allowed us to put into the budget a $3.4 million tax levy health care adjustment for the year. We also discussed at the previous meetings that our we have increased costs for special education which impacts our head count for staff and also the severity of the student needs impacts our support costs. So, overall there's an $800,000 increase in support costs and out of district tuition combined. Estimated increase for property casualty liability workers compensation is 20%. Those final figures won't come out until the end of May, beginning of June. And we're anticipating almost a 12% increase in energy. So, health care and energy are are big across the state, across the country. So, it's nothing new to Freehold. We also discussed that prior to even presenting the first budget
027we had about $1.5 million of cuts to make. Just to review the staffing was one instructional coach, a custodial supervisor, seven teachers, one pre-K class. That was a teacher and then the TAs associated with it. That's due to declining enrollment or need. And four part-time TAs. And then we also had $450,000 of other non-mandated items which you can see Chromebooks, PD, curriculum writing. And it was approximately a 1.5 million dollar gap. And as I said the last few times, we allowed back during the beginning of COVID 1.25 million to lapse in bank cap. That seems to be the number we're walking in the door every year with in terms of uh a a hole that we have, our budget deficit in which we are fixing every year through a combination of staff reductions and other
028cuts from the budget. Um, just real quick, the general fund revenue. I uh condensed this. So, tax levy as as we can see and we all know, it's 88% of our total revenue. Um, the tax increase is 5 million dollars, 6.4% that is our 2% plus that tax levy adjustment for the health care increase. State aid and next aid, it shows that it's up 3.7% or 272,000 dollars. It's actually, if you remember from the last two uh conversations, the state gave us for 25-26 a 100,000 dollar additional allotment of state aid for a one-time purpose. So, it kind of skews the numbers. We're really up 372,000 or 6%. 6% was the maximum amount of an increase or decrease that you could receive in state aid this year. Um, and state aid accounts for 8% of
029our total revenue. Fund balance is down 362,000 or 19%. That accounts for 2% of our revenue. As we discussed before, um, as budgets are getting tighter and we have less money to lapse at the end of the year, um, that fund balance number is harder to maintain. Uh at 1.9, we're down to 1.5. Next year we anticipate probably having come down a little bit more again. Um, it's just the nature of how the budgets operate right now. Uh reserve accounts, we are estimating to use 423,000 additional dollars and that is uh from maintenance reserve for that goes to all of our school maintenance and then uh 42,000 of that 900 is from emergency reserve and that will go towards uh security projects. We have a new security server that we're purchasing and it will also
030go to help us improve our visitor manager protocol. Um so, it shows an up in 81% uh from change year to year, it's only 1% of the budget. And lastly, all those other revenues we talk about, uh tuition from other LEAs for special education students that we receive, tuition from the preschool, interest, any assets that we sell, um that's up 155,000 or 13 and 1/2% Most of that increase is from the additional pre-K uh students that we are um anticipating to receive revenue from those parents, and then about $50,000 in uh additional earned interest. So, again, if you look at those last three categories, they don't amount That's 4% of the total budget. And yet, it's 8% state aid and 88% for the tax levy. That has been We've been between 88 and 89% now
031for the last decade that I've been here making these presentations. So, how the money is spent? Instead of going through all the you know, the different lines here again, you can see on the pie chart we go from we go clockwise, instruct from classroom instruction, it's 33.6% that is special education, regular education, um or English as a second language, as well as our basic skills classes. Co-curricular and athletics is a very small piece, 0.4%. Added district tuition, we did identify that there it's part of the big increase this year um with some additional students, but it still amounts to about 2%, 1.9% of the total budget. Support costs, this is everything from the nurses office, guidance, child study team, the curriculum office, um our one-to-one aides. Uh that is 14.3%. Administration is seven, facilities, grounds,
032security is 9.1, transportation is 4.9, benefits 28.4, and capital outlay equipment is very small at 0.4. Now, if I would have gone back and we started doing this little uh pie chart back in 2022, um what you would see here is as our enrollment has gone down over the last seven It's over the last decade it's gone down. Um you know, our classroom instruction goes down because we need less teachers and less staffing there. That number's come down. Um but the pieces that have grown is well, take a step back. If you thought your class your number of staff numbers going down, you would assume your benefits going down. It's not working that way. The level of benefits, especially health benefits, is going up. That That piece of the pie continues to get bigger every
033year. Same thing with support staff. Um a lot of it has to do again with what we talked about, the severity of the needs of our students, whether they require a one-to-one aide. Some We have a couple students that require uh one-to-one nurses. So, that all adds up into the budget picture here. Fund 20, which is our special revenue fund. We've discussed this before, too. It's a small amount of money we have budgeted in the resolution, $844,000. That is money from our IDEA grants for students with disabilities. It's for the SA grants, which is title 1, 2, 3, and 4. Um and as we've discussed before, we budgeted 75% of the 25 26 allocations as per state guidance. Um we hopefully anticipate getting 100%, so we're flat from year to year. Um but again, this
034is the guidance that we um have from the state. Debt service. This number has increased, as we know, because of the referendum that we patch passed in March of 2025. Um the first debt service payments will come due in 26 27. So, the tax levy necessary to make those payments has gone up by $5.2 million, which is a 128% increase. But as we also knew, our uh debt service aid, the amount of money that the state is supporting us, went from $43,000 to $2.7 million. So, it's a $2.7 million million dollar increase. Um we have one-time amount of $72,000 left over from uh surplus from refunding of the bonds that we did from another issuance um back in November. So, overall the debt service is up 8 million or almost 200%. Now, when we look
035at the estimated tax impact, I've said this a few times now. When we back in 2025 when we were discussing referendum, we had anticipated that the the debt service alone would be a 6% increase. Um and that was because the Phoenix advisors who provided the data for us, they took a very conservative approach. They had a slightly higher interest rate than what we actually earned and they do cannot assume there's any increase in the assessed value of the township. Well, we had a slight smaller interest rate that we accepted on the bonds and the assessed value went up over 10% last year and up 4.3% this year. So, it all plays a factor. So, overall, we're looking at a home the average home at $711,000 of assessed value would see about a $270 increase. It's
036a 6.7 cent increase overall for both the general fund and debt service fund combined and then we also have that small amount of money called the Verizon tax that the state sends to the municipality that they reduce our overall tax levy. So, we're up 12.5%. But in terms of a tax increase, it's 6.7 cents and again for the average homeowner, for our portion of Freehold's taxes, it's a $270 increase year-over-year. And that is all I have. We've gone through the presentation a lot. I tried to do this last one quick and concise. Does anyone have any questions about this, anything that we're doing? To your point, you went through very quickly at the beginning. It was kind of processing. That very first slide you had said that there was a change but that I don't
037know why I see guidance they weren't to see those numbers but that they can't be spent. Can you explain that just a little bit more slowly? So, these are balance sheet items. They're not budgetary items. So, what will have Let's say regardless of what number we budget, it does So, say I put a dollar into all three of those categories. If we got $5 in interest, that interest would go to those reserve accounts. It's not money that you could take and say, all right, "Hey Neil, I've got all this extra interest here. Go hire another staff member. Go buy more textbooks." It goes to those reserve lines, and then the board has the ability to use those dollars for the statutory items they're allowed to be withdrawn from. So, again, they wanted to reflect a
038little bit closer. We are earning more interest than that. It's the same number we had used for the last I don't know. It's got to be 7 or 8 years. And then, so that they said, "Can you please change it?" So, we are. So, that's what I mean. Like, we will we might actually if we earned less, it doesn't impact the budget. If interest rates were all of a sudden to decline drastically, and we didn't earn $50,000, it does not impact our ability um for our staffing levels or anything else that we've budgeted. It's re- It's It's very strange that they have us do this because um if I were to show you the spreadsheets of how I make sure the budget's balanced, on one side of the equation, those numbers don't show up. We
039don't budget the appropriations for that, but the state does in the DOE software. And then on the revenue side, we do It's whatever. It's just how they want us to balance the budget. It is So, I'd pick your brain about that one day. Yeah, it's it's it's not a big deal. It's just, you know, again, we can't hire more staff with this money. It has to be used in It doesn't impact everything else that we talked about in the budget with budget cuts and all that stuff. Yeah. Anyone else? Not. Thank you. >> I submit my certification. Yes. All right, I'll do the BA certification now. I, Robert Devita, the school business administrator {slash} board secretary, certifies that as of March 31st, 2026, no line item has been over-expended in violation of N.J.A.C. 6A:23A-16.10(c)3, and
040that sufficient funds are available to meet the district's financial obligations for the remainder of the fiscal year. Thank you. And thank you for your presentation and great job on the budget, as always. We really appreciate all the hard work that went into that. This is now the first opportunity for public participation. This would be just on items on our agenda this evening. There'll be a second opportunity for public participation on any item pertaining to the school district. If anyone wishes to address the board, please write your name and address on our sign-in sheet, state your name for the record. Statements are limited to 3 minutes and should not be abusive, obscene, or defamatory in nature. Do we have any body that would like to approach? Okay. Seeing none, they will go to personnel, policy, and
041communications. I'm Ms. Crosby. Good evening, everyone. Um the personnel policy and communications committee did not meet this evening. Um so, I'd like to move the following items. Two, memorandum of agreement FTAA as listed. Um three, retirement. Can everyone hear me okay? Um retirement, we'd like to congratulate and thank Catherine Borchert and Stacy Collins for their work with us. Um four, resignation as listed. Five, adjusted leave of absence as listed. Six, revised job descriptions as listed. Seven, unpaid days as listed. Eight, ESY 2026 staff as listed. Nine, ESY 2026 transportation staff as listed. 10, student teacher practical observation placement update as listed. 11, affirm bullying investigation findings as listed. 12, family engagement nights as listed. 13, certified substitutes as listed. And 14, non-certified substitutes as listed. Thank you. Do we have a second on that? Second.
042Thank you. Any questions? No, seeing none. Can I get a roll call? Ms. Brand? Yes. Mr. Conforti? Yes. Ms. Crosby? Yes. Mr. Gargiulo? Yes. Ms. Lambert? Yes. >> Ms. Wheeler? Yes. Ms. O'Sullivan? Yes. >> Mr. Amuroso? Yes. Motion carries. >> Thank you. Curriculum Committee? The Curriculum Committee did not meet this evening and I just want to move item number two, home instruction, and as listed in an item number three, adoption of envision math textbooks and digital resources as listed. Thank you. Do we have a second? Second. Do you have any questions for Curriculum? Okay, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Awesome. Finance, facilities, transportation, Mr. Gargiulo. Good evening. Uh, Finance, Facilities, Transportation Committee uh, did meet tonight. Uh, all members included myself, Mike Amuroso, Renata Brand, and Bob DeVito. Uh, we discussed,
043um, in the in the meeting the referendum the committee reviewed the contracts on the agenda tonight for approval. The contracts came in under the budgeted a projected budget. Additional funds can be used for unseen circumstances or other projects allowed as per the question passed by the public. Then we talked about the budget. The committee reviewed the budget that is on this evening's agenda. Number three, purchasing. The committee reviewed a new law limiting the use of certain co-op contracts for maintenance and construction. And then we reviewed uh the agenda items pertaining to us or in general. Um I'd like to move um the following items. Uh first number three, the secretary-treasurer's report as listed. Um bills and claims as listed. We had uh a grand total of $4,706,890.53. We had travel and related expenses as listed.
044Oh, and the bills. Thank you, Michelle. Got that. Transfers as listed. Out of district contract update as listed. Eight, out of district transportation contracts. MOESC as listed. Tuition contracts for received students as listed. 10, transportation uh jointure as listed. 11, IDA IDEA basic and preschool of of fiscal year 2026 grant as listed. Um 12, cooperative purchasing group Equal Assist Group as listed. 13, renewal of competitive contract for Sedesco as listed. 14, acceptance of bids for project 25K 027, additions and alterations of multiple schools as listed. Awards for of bids for project 25K027, additions and alterations at multiple schools as listed. 16, acceptance of bids for project 25K026 HVAC upgrades, additions, and alterations at multiple schools as listed. 17, award of bid for project 25K026 HVAC upgrades, additions, and alterations at multiple schools as listed. 18
045Focus Grant submission as listed. 19, school led Filters Program Grant submission. 20, adopt final budget 26 to 27 as listed. 21, health insurance rates 26 to 27 as listed. Thank you. I know that was a lot. Thank you. >> Do you have any questions for finance? First of all, do I have a second on that motion? Thank you. Do we have questions for finance facilities? Yes. Um for the renewal of this Sedesco contract, were the fixed or these prices have they changed from the last contract, the fixed meal? Have they gone In your footnotes that you received is a 2.9% increase from the prior year. The guarantee stayed the same and it's It's within the uh it was slightly less than what the maximum renewal rate that is allowed by the state and which is
046currently in this quarter 3%. Thank you. Quick question for 11 for IDA. That final 10% administrative reading um both That's the percentage of their salary. Yeah. Percentage of each of the salaries here not together. >> That's administrative is that an administrative cost that's the grant like It's being charged to the general fund. Whatever whatever's not covered by the grant we we had a couple of people that were being charged there either they're out on a leave or they retired resigned and so we had additional funds left in the grant and so now we're trying to get into that number that we have left. So that's where we the percentage is there. I understand. Thank you. Do you have any other questions for finance facilities? Okay. Um all those in favor say I. I. Do we
047have any opposed? Excellent. Old business. Do we have any old business? New business. Uh be it resolved that student number be placed on long-term suspension and in an alternative alternate education program through June 30th, 2026. Do we have a second on that motion? Second. Okay. All those in favor say I. Oh roll call. Okay. Okay. Mrs. Bryan? Recording. Yes. Mrs. Crosby? Yes. Mr. Rogero? Yes. Mr. Lambert? Mrs. Spiller? Yes. Mrs. Sullivan? Yes. Mr. Amoroso? Yes. Thank you. Okay. Do we have any other new business? Okay. I have no further remarks. This is the second opportunity for public participation. If anyone wishes to address the board, please write your name and address on the sign-in sheet and state your name for the record. Statements are limited to 3 minutes and should not be abusive, obscene, or
048defamatory in nature. Do we have anybody that would like to approach? Okay. And we are going to move back into executive session. So, whereas pursuant to NJSA 10:4-12b, the Board of Education may exclude the public from that portion of a public meeting at which the board discusses any of the matters described at NJSA 10:4-12b1-9. Now, therefore, be it resolved that in accordance with the provisions of the Open Public Meeting Act, the Board of Education shall conduct a closed session pursuant to the personnel and legal exceptions prescribed by NJSA 10:4-12 for the purpose of discussing the following matters: superintendent contract and pending or anticipated litigation and TWU contract. It is anticipated that the length of time of this executive session will be 120 minutes and that action may be taken in public after the executive session.
049Be it further resolved that said discussion may be disclosed to the public when reasons for discussing and acting upon it in closed session no longer exist. Yeah, probably no action will be taken. That time in BoardDocs BoardDocs had, as you know, some issues. So, no time and there's no action after. Okay. Okay. Well, all right. Our first event was supposed to be in the second half, so No action. Yep. Uh do we have a second on that motion? Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Thanks for coming out, folks.