WHRHS BOE MEETING | 3 - 3 - 20

001I'm gonna open the meeting this is the Board of Education meeting for which adequate notice under the open public meetings act was provided by written notice on January 21st 2022 The Courier News echo Sentinel The star-ledger chap and warrant and the clerks of the borough watch on the township of rebirth long Milton Warren mr. sighs can we have a roll call please dr. chan mr. Fallon yes Mr Hague yes your huntzinger yes Marcin yes this is over yes yes yes in accordance with the provisions of the new jersey open public meetings act be here by result that the floor moves into executive session to discuss confidential personnel and legal matters wh re negotiations and wh BSA negotiations after which action may be taken it is expected that the matters discussed in executive session will be

002made public then chillin no longer exist okay forward with our agenda in terms of board correspondence I really have no correspondence but I just wanted to give a quick update on regionalization and the grant that we've been talking about so the superintendent's been continued contact with the K through 8 so we're still working through talking to them about you know how they can potentially coordinate to apply for the grant in the meantime the do is going to provide us tax information which would be beneficial for us to kind of see what potential tax impact would be some like preliminary information and have a conversation and what I will do even though there's no superintendents report on here just to follow up on the letter that I sent out last week regarding kovin 19 I actually

003was on a call earlier today that the governor hosted with the State Department of Health and they think I'm actually pleased that the information they shared wasn't anything new to us because we have been staying updated with this on a daily basis our County our Somerset County Department of Health is excellent they are excellent with updating us and we actually we had representatives from our district attend a meeting at Warren Township yesterday with the representative from the Somerset County Department of Health our nurse was there best rider rooms there because I was unable to attend and so you know similar updates but the the do-e as well as the Department of Health send us updates on a daily basis and the updates are really just kind of reminders of precautions which are the same precaution

004you take during flu season those are the same precautions to take to take now with the corona virus that is just to sheet clear again where there are no cases in new jersey there they did recently now have a case in new york and that was talked about on the fault and obviously we are in close proximity to New York people commute into New York but they said they have no reason to believe that you know right now there's no impact on New Jersey and again just reminding everyone to take the same precautions with the flu they also reiterated that at the only severe cases that have been so far from the coronavirus are in older people who have compromised immune systems very minimal that the very few children have actually contracted it and it's

005they've been very very mild cases so they did reiterate that on the phone call our custodial staff has been you know increasing some of the frequency which with with which they clean touch points so on a nightly basis they are cleaning touch points with disinfectant so doorknobs light switches handles all of those types of things we purchased additional disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer for classrooms just looking to see if there's any other news and they did say that if they you know if anything changes with regard to New Jersey and the status of any cases here that they will immediately notify the county health department's who immediately notify us that the communication really has been on a daily basis sometimes even multiple times within the day just when they find other resources and they want

006to keep us up-to-date we we were fortunate as well that we you know utilize Google classroom throughout the school throughout the departments so we certainly do not encourage children to come to school if they're not feeling well and that goes for for any illness you know with whether it's the flu whether it's a cold and the same thing for staff learning is able to continue for students when they're not here because we do have so much virtual learning set up and you know one of the things that came up on the call today was if you know what would happen if schools were to close because of this again they don't anticipate that needing to happen but you know they did say that certainly there'd be a lot more conversation around that but schools are

007much better to equip increased absences or even you know the the very slim chance of any kind of school closure related to this because there are so many online platforms for learning so that we utilize now when students are out where if there aren't home instruction so in that worst-case scenario hopefully we don't get there the readiness is about being ready for the hopefully unlikely event exactly clothes exactly are we prepared for continuing education through virtual and that's what we are talking about right now just to formalize some of those details but I'm very confident that that we would be able to do that we have students when they're out for periods of time that are too short for them to be on formal home instruction with a you know where we put them on

008edges here they have a home instructor they're able to to utilize Google classroom and the teacher communicates that we have teachers who are out you know now for their own reasons and they'll be communicating with the students live via Google classroom when there was a sub in the classroom so we've but we are so much better equipped to do that than we were years ago you know h1n1 I was in the late 2000s throughout 2008-2009 I believe and that was much worse than this is and you know we did not certainly did not have the capability to continue instruction virtually as we did that so we didn't have the capability then as we do now so so that's something that we're you know making sure that we're prepared to do should it come to that

009but we're you know we're staying updated every day and the the state is doing a very good job of supporting school districts and making sure that they keep us in the loop everything and we had we had that same issue or the discussion came around I guess when sandy hit and you had so many districts that were out you know schools trying to figure out ways to be able to do virtual learning the difference in the deployment of technology back from 2012 versus today you know is switch to virtual and you know keep things going and then just one other update / reminder / did you have something talked about I know that every students were right well right now in Jersey does not have anything in place for a virtual day actually counting as

010a day of school but it's something that they've been talking about since sandy and you know this may make einde of bring that conversation I know it's every every kids worst nightmare you would right now there's nothing in place for that so no I think this was on with the governor today and they were talking about it didn't shine I got brought up that's a change so many students to wash their hands in the cafeteria before leave we we attacked so that was in the letter that I sent out that is being realized in classes and health classes absolutely yes absolutely wash your hands wash your hands wash yes and don't buy masks I also in addition to commending our maintenance staff and our custodial staff our nursing staff is very on top of this

011and they're on top of this regardless of whether there's some specific virus that that is you know being talked about such as corona virus or just the flu in the pole and cold they monitor the students very closely they communicate with the parents and they keep in close contact with us so Angelo Valerio has been involved in the same cause that we've been involved in we've been inviting her to to the meetings that we've had you know at the township she was on the conference call today so they are very very informed and they make sure to be very on top of what's happening in the school in the student population and who they're seeing and to keep data on that so they're an excellent resource for the students and the staff some students they

012put the pen in their mouths and then just one other update / reminder on the strategic plan we are in the midst of the engagement phase and next week we have several of our forums so on Tuesday night we have the live community forum at 7:00 p.m. that everyone and anyone is welcome to come to that will be facilitated by dr. Ferguson on Thursday night we have our virtual community forum that the information is on the website and on the invitation that was emailed out and I will be sending a reminder about that out this week as well to everyone with the callin information and there is also going to be prior to that at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday we are trying a virtual forum for our lone so I sent out the invitation to

013parents of current students that also have alumni I also send it out to our staff because I know many of them keep in touch with alum so that they can share that with them you know what I didn't ask for RSVPs so we'll see that night if they if they they call in if even if we look if we get five I'd be because that's five more pieces of feedback from alum but this actually what I've gotten feedback from are the staff members I sent the the invitation out to staff asking them and a number of them already responded to me of oh you know I have these students that I keep in touch with that I can send it to so I think that'll be a good way to do it and I'm also

014going to be in the reminder that I send out I will be sending the link to the hya survey that they finalize that is ready to go that will be open for a few weeks so we're in the midst of all of that right now and the board members can attend these things I'm not worried about us being in a meeting correct that's my understanding it's like we can all come to the strategic planning meeting we can all go on the phone call but that would not be considered a meeting I know your pain ID anyone I don't think so but as long as you're not talking about right I just don't want anybody to feel like everybody we can all attend knows next move I don't talk about business yeah business I'm actually yeah

015okay so even so now the things that weren't on the agenda [Laughter] [Music] okay so I'll start off those of you they'd been on the board for a few years or are used to us although we we added we spiced it up a little this year we brought Anthony Beaulieu so our our IT director so he's going to speak a little bit about some of our specific technology inclusions in the agenda Tim and I do want to express our gratitude to the board every year they spend a lot of time going through this process and you know asked us very very good questions to make sure that we are meeting student needs and doing it in the most efficient way possible with regard to use of resources and responsibilities to the taxpayers and we think

016that that's you know certainly what this budget does so we always start off just by highlighting our strategic plan goals because those are the main drivers of the budget and that is what works its way into every conversation we have with all of the various administrators and department heads when they are providing us their rationales for their budget proposals so the timeline we are partway through here so March 3rd on there is the second budget presentation to the board March 17th is which is our next meeting will be the vote on the preliminary a tentative budget March 18th we send that to the county office and then April 24th is when we provide official legal notification of the public hearing on the budget which will be at our April 28th board meeting one of the

017things we start off with our just some of our indicators that we use just these are not our endgame or our target goal but they are just indicators of moving in the right direction and averages you know certainly consistently stay above the state average for AP we continue to open access to our AP courses to encourage more students to to tap into their potential and our performance not only do we increase the percentage of students enrolled in AP courses for our performance has continued to increase in the past seven years that i've been here and that we've been closely tracking that we have 257 students earn recognition or national recognition for AP performance which is impressive in terms of just highlighting some of our accomplishments we were named to the AP honor roll by the

018college board for the third time and if you recall I mentioned we were awarded the AP Computer Science female diversity award and this was the first year they had that award we have four merit National Merit finalists in the class of 2020 just learned that our semi-finalists all became finalists and obviously in athletics and co-curricular as we continue to earn recognition we're in the midst of our wrestling championships and our basketball state championships right now actually I realized what I have up here too I believe that's from last year in terms of the the track and the soccer and boys fencing and in terms of Finance we do very well in that area as well our triple-a bond rating has been for a number of years consecutively and we are continuously looking to expand our

019shared service agreements for transportation staff development purchasing maintenance we are now a member of the ship so that does helps us see savings as well I'll turn it over to Tim so he can talk about some of the drivers in budget development thanks and we're gonna kind of go back and forth with people so I feel like right we're kind of shifting around and keep you waiting but we're working on so just and Liz already talked about some of the drivers obviously enrollments a big driver for us our enrollment you'll see later is dropping and we've talked about that already and I'm the resources we've talked about some of those the state aid we did receive on the 27th we got two hundred and twenty one thousand dollars more than we got last year that's

020that's a good thing if they had funded the formula we would have gotten fully we would have gotten $900,000 more this was part of the commentary that we have every when we do our referendums we say look you know we we constantly are shorter than our state aid and this is an opportunity to get that state aid and in that state aid document we did get 1.3 million dollars for this project here the media center so that was confirmed so our our total a state aid this year for a debt service for 1.7 million 300 from the old and from the old referendum continuing the payments and the 1.3 for this one payment for the note on this project and I'll kind of go through that a little bit later because that has an impact

021on the overall numbers and then salary and benefits when I when we start the budget process the number one financial driver is going to be salary benefits it's most of our budget our health benefits have stabilized and that is helping us on the other areas in the budget that allows us to get more technology it allows us to get more security capital projects those kind of things so the last three or four years you know I'm not going to leave when I say it but it's been very stable and when that's the case same thing with salaries actually salaries have been dropping because of attrition when those two things are stable we can do a lot more in terms of capital projects and with helping the taxpayers at the same time so talked about enrollment

022it is dropping continues to drop and I think in the next couple years you'll see I should see a little bit more as the warran enrollment drops starting to hit us the significant drops they had but next year we're still slightly below 2000 so we still got a significant amount dudes here and like I said it's salary and benefits kind of drives the financial numbers in the budget and that's been stable that's helping us next year will be the second year of our three-year contract this year is our first year second year is next year and can't believe we'll be a bargaining again in a year so that's great but it's said 3.1 percent was the settlement rate and like I said since joining the ship our increases in healthcare premiums have been below or

023at three percent and that's in this day and age that's fantastic if you can kind of keep going like that it just allows us to do a lot more within this budget chapter 78 contributions amount to 1.3 million dollars so that's a significant number I know there's legislation that the governor talked about my understanding is that the Senate President is not supportive that I hope he continues to do that because that 1.3 million dollars is significant for us I'm gonna go back to the superintendent for academic programs and then so just a little highlight on some of the additions to the budget with regard to academic programs so we are adding a special education teacher however we are decreasing a social studies teacher so our net increase in staff is zero we're balancing it out

024it's just with the redistribution of students with the courses we as you recall at abort I believe it's the January board meeting on the agenda approved a number of new course offerings in arts and English and in world language and we also opened up some of our courses to allow freshmen to enroll in them including robotics and sociology we do have a large number of students I believe it's Long Hill that has a very active robotics program so we have a number of students coming in as freshmen that are very interested so we're happy that we're able to open up that to them and our PLL student population is increasing each year and so we are expanding that program as well and able to individualize instruction a little bit better within the schedule by having

025some additional separation of courses so that we can separate the levels and now I'm going to introduce anthony deluso who is our director of technology and he's going to talk about the technological components of the budget good evening so we're going on to a year for our Chromebook initiative so next year every single student will have a Chromebook unlike this year where the seniors were using their own devices so we're hoping that's going to have an impact on instruction we're also looking at using Irae funds this is the fifth year of the funding next year we'll get new funding and we have some available money here to improve our security and management of our network infrastructure which is some of it dates back to 2008 so it's out of support end of life and we're

026hopefully we can renew this for another ten years with that the ten new classroom smart boards before I came here the decision was to put a smart board in every classroom and we're coming to the end of a of that project and we hope that these ten is closer to that goal of completing that support instructional laptops these are four buildings grounds guidance special services their laptops have reached and the support as well and out of warranty they're about five or six years old so we're hopefully gonna get new laptops and that regard desktop replacements for two classrooms I believe one is the robotics room it's a new program and they're using some old of hardware there this will hopefully rejuvenate the program or get into the next level for next year as it gets

027to expand and the number of students are in there and in there is plus the club so the media center project is embedded in the budget that's what makes the budget tricky for a fact this budget is probably one of the more complicated ones that I've worked on we did it a couple of three or four years ago when we did the field the numbers are larger and it it's kind of a weird thing the way it's presented so the books that you have you'll see the numbers are quite high and the unique and I think we're going to go into the details of fund accounting cuz I'll really pick a sleep button just to kind of in a just a brief review just to show you what I'm trying to explain it kind of

028makes it simple when I when I was in college the way I thought of fund accounting was funds in first of all the government's in and of themselves so so so basically your government entities have funds instead of just one set of books each fund has a unique quality so your general fund is for your general operating funds 120 which is special revenue has grants in and out right 30 is capital projects that's for capital projects like a referendum so we spend all our money from that fund and 40 is debt service debt service is for paying bonds so they all act independently so when we do the budget what we have to do is we first got to take the withdraw from our capital reserve think of that as a bank account comes into

029the budget then it goes out so we've got to take it out of fun ten and put it into fund 40 so we're taking two million dollars in taking and then sending it out within one fund and then it goes to fund 40 comes in and then goes out for paying the bonds it looks like it comes in twice and goes out twice so our numbers are doubled for this one transaction that's why I say so when you look at the numbers the total numbers you're like oh man the budget went out fifteen percent no it did not go up fifteen said it's just the unique quality of fund accounting and how we got to account for it that makes it look like that this entire thing is exactly what the board envisioned you know

030this project this media center project we basically have two million dollars coming in from capital reserve a million three or two million and about two million and five coming in from capital reserve a million three from state aid that's paying for the entire project 3.8 million dollars so it's exactly what you asked for it's exactly what you presented to the public it just unfortunately comes in to the budget and in steps which kind of makes it look weird but it really worked out exactly the way you wanted to plan so that's a good thing so anyway so that's that's part of the budget you could see that in the numbers and I'll show you a slide later that kind of plays that out the esup program which is not part of this budget the work

031will be started next year so they're going to start doing some lighting work the financing starts in 21 22 so it's almost like a lease purchase a long-term lease purchase is how it's played out and it's paid for it by the saving your energy savings over time so that's kind of how that works but you won't see anything in next year's budget but the work will start getting done so this kind of learned you to that's I'm pretty cool and one thing we did when we got more we got two hundred thousand dollars more in state aid and when I talked to the operating committee our health care was at seven I think seven and a half percent well that dropped after discussion with the ship and the numbers broke well for them we dropped

032below three percent so what we did was we started out putting five hundred thousand dollars into capital reserve to replenish that we added three more so we came up to eight hundred thousand dollars so what we're trying to do is put more money into capital reserve for a future project just like this one where we can get that state aid like that so the project we're looking for and the one we really are excited about it can save up the money is the steam lab right now you know it as the robotics room and at general area but we're working on with the architect to come up with a plan that's a little more efficient than what we had in the five-year plan I think the five-year plan was like five million dollars or something

033like that it was it was a little bit more than we were looking for so we're just trying to make it a little simpler and try not to move as many classrooms around but anyway that's the reason why we put the money in capital reserve and half of that state aid money that we got I said two hundred does we put 100 into this captors Oh half of it we put into tax savings because we always have a mind for the taxpayers right we're always trying to help them out anyway so that that's part of this budget the rooftop unit in a South cafeteria we've talked about for a couple years now we were we originally were going to replace the coils that are bad in there and then we hired the new architect we

034asked them to look at it and what their thought process was is to add a rooftop unit and make that a separate unit which is better and more efficient for us because what that does is allows us when we're not using that room we can turn it down we can't turn it off but we can turn it down to save energy and it doesn't tax the rest of the the systems the boilers and the chillers when they're heating and air conditioning the other part of the South building see right now those boilers and the chiller have to condition and heat the entire South building Plus that that area which is it's a little taxing on an older system anyway so that's what we did there the track-and-field high jump area is the one area when

035we redid the track and the fields we did not do that was a budget decision at that point in time it lasted three or four years it's now not going to last what's happening is there's too many cracks in the pavement and air is coming up and we got bubbles so it's really not a safe spot for them right now we've tried to repair but it's virtually impossible you repair one and another bubble pops up here it just it's the nature of contra not concrete but macadam it's just kind of that's the way it works unfortunately interior exterior door replacement is a security thing that we've been doing piece by piece one of the things we want to do and a great example is if you leave here and you go to your left there's

036two doors that are closed like this they get opened and shut all day long and they're beat up what we're trying to do is we're trying to tie them into the fire alarm system so that they remain open so when the students are passing during the day that you don't get that constant beating of the doors you know that and if there were to be a fire what happens is there's a little clip that closes the doors that's the only way we can do that to keep them open we can't legally keep them open but you know putting little door stoppers in there that doesn't work for the fire but it's you know I've been fighting Chris on this one for a while but I am understanding what he's saying as I watched the students

037if you watch thousands of students pass through these doors it's it's like a beat down but anyway and then the last thing is a John Deere tractor Chris and I were talking about we have an old case tractor a 1985 case tractor and we have a 450 F 450 Ford truck we're replacing those two things that are going out the pasture with one tractor I just mean John Deere we think it accomplishes this one accomplishes everything those two vehicles do yes it does so yeah because we want to plow with it and grind some meat okay so security and we talk about it every year our budget if we have a resource officer which we entertain and he's he's fantastic we have four full-time and two part-time security guards all retired police officers that's one

038thing that I to me since I've been here I've been amazed on how far ahead we are of most other high schools we do a real good job with this and they do a fantastic job we have a video system of 120 cameras which replaced almost all of them we're putting in thirty five thousand dollars that's about the that's the last piece of it it will be a continual update I can tell you that we could probably easily last for a while but at some point in time we'll have to keep changing cameras some of the new ones are pretty cool they actually you can Zone in really close to things that and get a better picture of what's going on so that's very helpful for our security guys and then the one nice thing

039if the state follows through is that we're listed as a getting a grant of 127 thousand and we want to do that to upgrade our notification system it's we believe will be in compliance with Elissa's law prior to doing that this goes beyond that and it does meet the requirements that are in this grant so far we may have to push this forward I think it opens in April and ends in May so we're already working with the architect to get that into the to the plan if you wanted to talk about these or is it maybe okay so in our academic area besides this this great space here what we're going to do is and one of the big things that our health and PE folks have been talking about this is part of

040our wellness initiative it's the weight room over here by gym five six replacing the equipment in that room and trend sprucing it up a little bit the floors right now are like this old kind of beat-up wooden thing that we're trying to make them almost like the locker room and 7/8 like that soft cushiony type thing but though they want to do a little more cardio type weight exercising and there you know I think that's a good thing and our phys ed teachers are the ones who are driving the equipment bus on this which is great we have some new instruments in our arts program we have a new wrestling mat for our wrestlers that one the original has reached its its max and our second year in our classroom revising our classroom furniture this

041year current year and Spring Break they're finally coming in and we could spend a lot of time planning with the teachers we have five classrooms going in next year we want to put ten and we'll see how that goes and then if people like it the kids like it the teachers like it we'll move forward with more and that maybe at least purchase but I'll cross that bridge when I get there right in our pack our Performing Arts Center we want to put in stage lighting which hasn't worked for a long time and make that LED and improve our wireless communication system that we have there to make it a little better for the stage crew to handle the performances okay this is the real exciting stuff so this is the this is just a

042snapshot of the operating budget and the revenues and then the expenditures so as I had mentioned this is the revenue side if you skip down to the second to the bottom line that's that revenue entry I was talking about and the reason I presented it this Way's you'll see it on both slides you'll see it coming in and going out now prior to putting this in our tote our subtotal is we have an increase of 7.4 percent in our spending budget well I know that's not the case so if you take out that two million dollars our spending budget operating goes up 2.1 percent that number is embedded in that top number that use of surplus reserves that two million dollars so that's impact of the referendum we talked about tuition going up three percent

043I think one of the meetings are state aid it's a twelve percent jump that's I think that's pretty good I'll take it any day that week I would like to get the nine hundred thousand dollars but you know beggars can't be choosers and then the tax levy is going up one point two percent wonderful actually one point two four percent to be precise but one point two percent which is below we're allowed to go to two percent now anything we don't use does generate thanked cap that you can use at a later time again I don't know if the board is usually into that sort of thing here but you know that's something that is available down the road hopefully we won't need it on the expenditure side same thing and I have that same

044entry you could see that you know this is where it goes out so that the actual budget increase is a two point one percent spending increase and that number is embedded in that capital outlay line also in that capital outline line is that deposit the capital reserve eight hundred thousand dollars just so you're aware but most of our numbers are pretty solid special tuition you know I would love to control that even more but that's that's a tough one that's a little bit out of our control at some yeah it's not that's a tough one to control be honest and then I have some per pupil cost comparisons how we do against the compared to schools that are like us overall we're we're second to the bottom on this group I always kind of like

045to mention that you know obviously region and it's kind of a weird thing right we live in a small state but region does make a difference right northern Jersey and southern Jersey and I know that controversial central Jersey all have they yet a different cost per living but again we still stack up pretty well there with instruction and I'd love to have that number a little higher to be honest but we are the kind of falls in line with the total our administrative cost is a little higher but that's actually gotten better from last year I've actually went to the right board so I was real happy about that and then I cook her food which again I would love to be a little higher we're on the low end but you can see we're

046on the low end for most of almost everything and the tax allocation this one's always tricky to explain but you guys have been but most of you been through it enough so you kind of get it so every year that the art piece of our budget gets apportioned differently to each town based on two things the change in elementary enrollment versus high school enrollment and then the values of the homes so in when the state provided the formula to state provide a formula when they provided the formula the one thing that kind of beared out was the worn elementary percentage went down significantly and long hills elementary percentage compared to the high school percentage went up so if their elementary percentage goes down the high school percentage goes up that means you get higher percentage

047of our tax levy that's how it works so that was a factor for certainly for Warren so the percent did the overall percentage for Warren went up primarily because of that because they're the values and the homes went down higher than the other two watch on was kind of in the middle but their values went up compared to the other two towns where it went down so you know it kind of they fell on the wrong side unfortunately last year for them their enrollment went that's you guys then you watch under style so their enrollment when they're in rouen percentage went down so that kind of hurt them last year and their values went up the house values went up so they had a higher percentage so you'll see that in the next slide Warren

048townships the average home about seven or $43,000 the dollar rate increase on the average home is a hundred eleven dollars for watching bar oh oh okay yeah yeah thank you so the the dollar increase for Warren is one hundred eleven dollars the average home in Watchung 719,000 average price increase one hundred ninety nine but practically two hundred dollars long hill the long-held Township will be very happy to see us again so their dollar they have an average decrease decrease in the average home was one hundred and thirty dollars for that average home so I mean again it's it's a weird thing on how this allocation changes every year but you could see why if the enrollment changes in your app the home values change that's going to change the numbers we have some questions yes

049if you look at our I don't know if it was in the fault we do it in the fall presentation when we do the student performance reports okay October um yes it so in the act so it's actually in the board folder in the minutes of any October meeting but it's also posted on our website it you know it's again similar to the slides that I when I presented earlier where we use different indicators it's not something that we you know that's a conclusive piece of data but it's certainly we look at how we compare to our conference you know are comfortable districts and one thing I can say is that what we consider our comparable just has shifted in the past seven years and sorry I'd look at seven years that's how long I've

050been here but you know one of the things that I challenge the staff to do was really have some higher standards for where we think we should be because when you know the initial comparisons we did we were at the top for everything so that means we need to move ourselves into a different group to compare and so you know with with regard to AP we do very well with those indicators with SAT we do very well the state testing we can't really use that as a comparative indicator right now because participation rates vary so so differently across districts but we do use that data for is as a catalyst for discussion so that if we see that in a particular area you know a school district is doing very well and it's an area

051that we're not doing as well we find out okay what programs are you using what you know what is it that you're doing differently so it's it's really good information for conversations for us to dig a little deeper okay so the media center project is something that we was it last year when yes so the board approved the project for this space right here it's it's a significant change to what you see right here what this project you know this is your old style library a media center project you see it a lot I think summer of fact I think the war on K to 8 the the middle school did they did revise all their so it's similar to that sort of project there's a lot more technology there's a lot more interactive workspaces

052for kids it just modernized the space it's it's a significant project so that that's what that is the steam lab is something that right now there's - there's a robotics class it's kind of half robotics and half of a classroom and the idea is to make that more conducive to well via for that and for all of our you know not just for - we would likely we've actually debated to whether we would incorporate the robotic space into that or do a new space for robotics that's what we're in the conversations with right now with the architects but to really have some additional classroom spaces some of them that would be utilized you know by by actual classes on a daily basis but others where teachers can take their classes to utilize the space and

053the equipment in those rooms so that's what we're in the process of doing right now and what we'd be doing is taking some existing classrooms near the robotics room and really making it a kind of a steam suite that you know that all teachers would be able to access and utilize for their classes that's a future project yes that's still that's in its early it's nothing we're learning we we haven't planned that we're testing here we haven't moved we're just putting money aside because that sawdust the project we wouldn't be so and one of the things we talk about if we have newer labs in the building and we have older science labs and that's certainly on the list but with this you know if they're there maybe a more advanced lab that those teachers

054could bring their classes to you know to use it's similar to when schools started putting computer labs in that teachers could sign up to go and use you know for depending on what they were doing in that particular class that day and that's what we're looking for the steam lab that you know if the robotics is in there so that those classes are taking place in there but there are the other spaces as well that teachers could utilize and will do similarly to what we did for the Media Center role would be visiting other schools where there are similar spaces and a comment and a question I know that it's difficult to come up with a slide of district accomplishments but I would love I think we're so much more than academic athletic finance as

055particularly I would love to see athletic and co-curricular zyou did mention that but I thought Arco curriculars I have an entire presentation shared with accomplishments so it's always hard to figure out what to toss in here so you're absolutely right and what we can do is sprinkle some some others even if I just add what I can do with this presentation before I post it because I can put some of those other slides in here because we one of the things that we really do try to do on an ongoing basis is acknowledge you know all that the staff and the students have done so in the opening convocation for staff we have slides upon slides that list the honours and maybe we can include those in here you know it's not like it takes

056extra time to for people to flip through a couple of slides so that's a good suggestion I'll add those in and my question is you mentioned and it just sparked a memory when you were talking about that before the Performing Arts Center you talked about replacing the stage lighting with LED lighting and it reminded me that we had been talking about a overall conversion to LED lights part of that part of that part of me that would be part of that ISA piece I was just wondering what is in the east of effect includes doing what our time frame is for that the esup look it's right now we have to put it out an rfp I think that's one of the things on the agenda to get something get a company called an ESCO

057which is energy savings company that works hand-in-hand with the architects so they kind of run it so what they'll do is the first thing they'll do is we'll come in here and do a very very very detailed product we've already had a state audit done where they came in here and looked at projects we could do there's a number of things that were recommended but they were kind of cursory this this ESCO will come in and they will look they'll do a deeper dive just some of the things I will tell you that they they put on the list the lighting is always a big one because the the turnaround investment there is is it's only a couple years so you can do a project like that it's gonna it's gonna help you do other

058projects we would love to do if we can some of the rooftop units like the one that's over our heads right now or no I mean not this one this one's gonna be part of the media center but there's one over there there's one down there that they're very old and we'd like to get them in they may be cost prohibitive so I may not be able to put them in a zip but those are things we'd like to do we'd like to do a little more controls with our heating and ventilating because some of the controls are a little older and antiquated and it sometimes if you you're standing here and then you're walking over in the South building there's like a 5 degree temper temperature difference the kids will tell you that so

059they know where it's warm they always hang out so so those are some things we would like to do solar is another one that would be on this north roof here it's to me it would be perfect for it but those ooh that that's what the ESCO is gonna decide that's the d3 right we're using correct send out a request for proposals for the ESCO yes and what they do is they do that deep dive it don't come up with these these things but that it's in that kind of realm it's all energy stop but so does the deep dive happened in one year and then actually the Egyptian no the deep dive whoa the deep dive will probably it's gonna take three or four months for them to do that it's not simple because

060they got to get into every little unit everything so it's gonna take them a bit and then they'll start you know then they have the contract with contractors they're essentially the contractor there they like the general contractor in this process but yet from what they were telling me by next year they'll be putting in some of the lighting okay and I could do it after hours they could do it on weekends that sort of thing it depends what we put in the bid okay thank you so one comment in a question regarding I was pleased to see the administrative costs shift over the one slot I would be curious to see how how we sit when we look at all the regional you know kind of the nine 12s in the state just to see

061where we're sitting with those costs and the same thing with co-curricular and I'm not sure why but it seems like we're always it appears that we're always on the low end of co-curricular spending and I don't I don't want to make a judgment based on that I'm just kind of kind of curious as to why that is and it doesn't really mean that we're not investing as others are or is it is there some other factor that makes it appear that way so I think that's worth and again I'd like to see how we compare with the 47 regional districts in the state yeah the state that state website does have all of that I could give that to the board we have there's a a state website that has that's called taxpayers guide to

062such-and-such and has I can give you all the information it does compares to all those districts yeah you'll see you'll see well probably I mean administrative costs I could tell you we're on the higher side of that and then on the co-curricular we are again on the lower it's a little better than this presentation when it comes to co-curricular I can tell you that because you'll you could see that there's other schools that they're larger so they have more students so those numbers are gonna skew a little bit for them some of them like just regionals I believe that have multiple school right that's a freehold has free demos yeah that's gonna skew that that's a different district yeah yeah but that I think that's part of that number so I oh I mean I

063could share that to the board but if I'll give you the website to if you want to look because there's a lot of information on that they have administrative number of administrators per student number of teachers per student so there's a lot of stuff you can dig into on that stuff if you're really interested and then my other just clarifying question is based on the the the tax levy that's been laid out here and the 1.2 percent we're going for this would be the second year in a row that we're going below cap is that correct correct and and as a result that in essence means that some of the funds that we've received from the state instead of using it ourselves we're using that through in essence return to the taxpayer by not going

064to 2% is that correct so what we did Papa so when we got to $200,000 extras so we took a hundred thousand and put it into cap reserve and we decided we should put a hundred thousand dollars back to the taxpayers what we did great thank you to state a no only only debt service aid is you can only use that and that debt service fund that's it but the other aid know that that's just general aid for anything Tim never asked a question during your presentation about the possible typo was he referring to the second line of tax impact yes yes yeah that's not a percentage that is a number yeah I think it is it's not it's not incorrect yeah I was a little confused when you asked me that I didn't know

065what you were looking so but so yeah the tax I put the wording made it excusing tax rate increase almost sounds like a percent since 400 but it's cents per hundred dollars it's evaluation so we can prove we want to add that to the five they may want to change that well it's not it's not a percentage that its outfits how many cents per hundred thousand dollars for hundreds of dollars evaluation crisis yeah I think when I when I wrote it and it looks like a percentage and then it comes out of that but that's but it's actually the numbers around usually that the newspaper guys always ask me for can you give me that for $100,000 households why right hundred dollars no it's not it's not a percentage that's a penny it's about two

066pennies yeah my other question with this additional money in state aid did you get into this budget the money for the buzzer at the entrance to the board office it wasn't a blunder it was a pass we'll get you in the door one way or another I better get it in the budget we're gonna be important indeed spike passes it's the Christmas Orioles white pass [Music] yes we feel we have enough wiggle room to do the right thing to execute the plan should new thoughts and ideas come up that we're not aware of today I think that the way we've approached it in the past with the last one any of you know the media center project is an outgrowth of the strategic plan and we're doing that in your five of the the plan

067as opposed to your one because we knew we needed to budget for that so when we are prioritizing the initiatives and planning them out that certainly factors into it but you know sometimes what happens there are some of the the instructional items that we are you know that we have in the budget for next year that may shift a little bit based on some of the strategic plan work but there certainly won't be all of you know these huge new purchases or additions into the budget for next year based on the strategic plan work this year just because it's not feasible but the things that we want to do more urgently than others you know we would basically be planning those for the the 21 and 22 school year and for that budget next year

068so you know so I think it's fair to say that if there's a very large project that comes out of these strategic plan discussions that it wouldn't likely would be something that would not be feasible for next year but that we would be planning in next year's budget for the following year and then my second question is you know there but the question is do we feel that we've incorporated everything we feel we need to give you know the best education for our students and who we come under the cap or do we feel there are other things that are not included in the budget that we should be surfacing and discussing and perhaps improving should there be room right no I listen I I this we spent a lot of time with the administration

069on on what they were looking for would we love to have more and more and more stuff sure but listen we this is a very solid budget which you're what we're getting in here I mean you know I can't I won't speak for Anthony's new but you know we have a decent amount of tech in this budget and we're accomplishing a lot that's fair to say yeah and then you know some of the capital things we have in here are projects that we have put off and we're able to do them now you know if I could put more money in capital reserve I would but at the same time I you know we would like to present a budget and then maybe in a year or two if we can go back out to

070some sort of referendum almost like the one we've done now and there is a point time when the voters say you know what enough so I think the board and I and I and I think that's administrative we are very conscious for that so we don't want to over play our hand I guess is kind of you know I think the other piece that plays into that too is we try to be very mindful of what we have the capacity to accomplish in a year so that whatever we're doing we want to make sure we're doing it really really well which it you know is why even let's say we had the money for the steam lab and the media center to do at the same time it would not that would not have been

071a good choice on our part because the the media center renovation I mean we have spent so much time on that because we want to make sure that we do it right the first time I've heard some myths about some prior construction projects that still tend to come up so we're trying to not repeat the mistakes of the past and if we make anything up there at least new mistakes so so we really so I think that's another piece that goes into it we're you know are there things are there other things on our list that we would like to do yes but in terms of trying to prioritize and make sure that our focus is on what we feel are the most urgent priorities we want to be very mindful of that yes could

072I answer down to two things one to your question about you know things that come up in the strategic plan you're still relatively new to the board one of the things our business administrator does exceedingly well is have places in the budget where if there are and so that's one of the reasons we're often at the end of the year able to add substantial amounts to capital reserve but in past years when there's been a need for a new program or something you know the board makes a decision and Tim usually finds a way to come up with that money the second thing I'll say is at the Operations Committee meeting before the last weekend we had a fairly robust discussion about this concept of not going for the full two percent that we could

073go for we the the members of the Operations Committee felt that the kind this was the right balance because we were putting in a very substantial $500,000 in into capital reserve now with the extra state aid we can give back even more tax relief and still get over $800,000 in the capital reserve that's a healthy piece it's it's not everything but it's a healthy piece of what we project you know two or three years and we'll have our portion of the steam lamp base basically and something or something else that the board may decide on between now and and then but it's it's a balancing and that's what we the members of the Operations Committee felt we should try to do as well okay I just have one do we have dates for when you're

074gonna go to the towns no good yeah sonar so what happens next is that no at our next meeting you vote on this budget now then it goes to the county and you know just forget there could be changes from wash those hands so have lovi in response so no so we go to the now my lost my trainings things can change okay so in between our next board meeting and April 28th we generally go to three townships we do usually ask to go to Green Grove we do they haven't really said they wanted us to do anything about the things going on I guess so glad anyway so we do go three times in between and we will get dates for you what one other comment I would make is the strategic plan and

075the role it plays and our budget development I can't over emphasize that enough how it helps us administrative ly prepare a budget we you know we can focus in on what the districts the board's administration's needs are and it comes to life through this vehicle there's no doubt this has been a huge change and help for us because in the past you know you I would things would come at us from different angles oh we need this to special interest it's a net and we can kind of push that aside to say look this is our strategic plan we'd like to get to that but this is our plan and when we have time we will and resources but this is our plan and that is a tremendous help it's it's really helped us focus

076on on our mission here and I think that's like I thank the board and the administration for that thank you if I could just the other and it's a big difference before this strategic plan in the last five years before that one each year the board would have goals that would change each year there would be enough change in those goals that you wouldn't have a long-term direction to the budget and it really has not just stabilized but it's focused our budgeting much more in the last five years that I've been here so I just want to echo what Tim said it it's I found them one of the biggest benefits of the strategic plan is the way it translates into how we budget the education committee met on February 25th 2020 last week last

077Tuesday and there were a handful of items that we covered the first was dr. Jewett provided us with an update on discussions with the sending districts regarding math articulation we've been talking about ways that we can work with our sending districts to try to make sure that instruction is aligned in some key areas so the superintendent had a meeting with the regional superintendents and their curriculum directors and they're all committed to moving forward on a strategy to really look at what is the math instruction particularly at the middle school level to see how things may be aligned to review the practices and they're utilizing a company that creates what they call IDI reports and IDI reports goes through to make sure that the texts that you're using or the curriculum that you are using is

078actually in alignment with the standards themselves and the assessment so that you know there's a lot of curricular materials and books that are out there that say that they're aligned that aren't and so unless somebody's done the research and analysis to ensure that everything is you know in alignment all the way through from the standards to the curriculum to the assessment itself you can at find yourself that that students are doing as well as they could be because the curriculums not in alignment with what's happening to the degree that they're going to be assessed so they're working with IDI reports and I believe also with dr. Barry Ellison is she gonna be working I don't believe she's gonna be she was the one who helps connect us with everyone so I don't think she'll be

079directly involved with the consultants for medical report Center and in addition to the really the middle school math up through we're trying to look at a sixth grade math through algebra two articulation yeah so they're looking at professional development and also ways to find the appropriate resources to bring them into alignment so liz is there anything else you wanted to comment on that we also had a discussion around the the diversity equity inclusion initiatives for the district there's been a series of professional development miss Phelan was in the meeting and provided an overview of the training they've had three different sessions that have taken place which is part of the component of the current strategic plan they're specifically looking at issues around ethnicity personal identity and race they have a fourth session that will be

080coming up sometime in March that will be focused on gender the second part of our diversity equity and inclusion discussion was regarding the graduation regalia and principal the Brera joined us to talk about a discussion regarding the fact that our current regalia is assigned based on Jen our females wear white our males wear gold there were looking to move towards a more unified gown for all graduating seniors as they investigated designs and everything else that could be accomplished you know in time for this graduation what they were being presented with just didn't make any sense there was just no way to find a viable solution for a new unified gown in time for this graduation so the administration's been looking at some other options and so where they have kind of landed I don't know

081if you've if it's a you can we're going to be sending out notification to the parents upcoming but feel free to so they'll get now so that what they're gonna do for this year is that the parents and students will be able to pick the color that they choose to wear for this year so it's all driven by student choice and parental choice you know whatever color between white and gold that they want to wear they can wear it it doesn't matter what it looks like on the field because they're all mixed anyway so that way the choice is now students we're not imposing that decision on them and then over the over the next several months they're going to be looking for a vendor and some designs that will be implemented for next year

082and obviously one of the concerns is senior pictures take place over the course of the summer so they're trying to have some things in in in place in time for that but certainly in time for graduation in 2021 thank you and so just to clarify or to add on to that thank you for for sharing that so a notification will be going out to the parents just to let them know that it'll it will be in the next couple of weeks that if they want to switch the you know that this if the student of the parents to switch the color will figure out how to communicate it in the least confusing way so that obviously female students as of now as it's always been in the past are well they would be ordered a

083white gown and the male students would be ordered a yellow gown we'll let the parents know that if if the student wants to change that but they have the ability to do so we talked to the to the gallon distributor about what we need to notify them of that for last night there will be two color for now and for this year we're just going to allow them to choose and then we will make a change for next year thank you know they're purchased they're not heavy expensive gallons I believe it's it's the in the twenties the price range for the gowns so we're looking for something a little bit nicer that perhaps incorporates both colors for the future I've got a white and gold one so the the last item was we had a

084discussion regarding the athletics and co-curricular x' and how we make determinations on spending regarding trips for both athletics and co-curricular clubs mr. size is looking into you know our practices and looking at what the practices are at some other schools and he's going to be pulling that information together for a an ongoing discussion that we'll have at the next Education Committee meeting and we'll continue to update the board based on that work just so I'm clear when we say math articulation we're talking about that the timing and the sequence of the curriculum as its presented is the same in all the sending districts we're looking at what work what we what research has uncovered and what the the consults you know spoke to is that the curriculum that you have on paper generally you know

085it it matches the standards however the implementation of it in the classroom may not be achieving them beef math practice standards because the resources are not as aligned to the curriculum standards as they should be even though the publishers claim they are so it's not just like I'm learning this area of math but I'm learning it maybe in seventh grade instead of eighth grade so by the time we get to ninth grade I forgot it it's really more the implementation of the math practice standards and specifically at the the level of math courses for our most struggling learners so the students who may not be getting to algebra until high school and and so if they're there are a couple of things in Turin and they're part of it certainly will be the articulation to

086make sure that it's sequenced appropriately from sixth grade you know through algebra 2 but a big piece and and I you know I call it the low-hanging fruit or the resources because that is a tangible thing that the teachers can all look at and ten years ago having this conversation would have been frustrating because the resources were not just they weren't great you didn't have a lot of great resources to choose from and so if you wanted to do an effective job in your classroom you really had to supplement them with a lot of other resources and that can be effective however from its it's very difficult from a student perspective when you don't have a core resource to go to you know the teacher may know okay I'm pulling from here I'm pulling from

087here I'm pulling from here but when the student needs additional practice or instructing on the enforcement and they have 20 different resources that things may have come from it makes it much harder from a student perspective so that's why looking at the resources and how those are used to support the implementation of the math practice standards especially you know for our most struggling learners we think that the research shows that that makes a big difference so that's where we're starting with math but certainly articulation goals will be beyond well and the reason we're starting with math is that this seems to be the place where we struggle the most we have done we have made tremendous progress in articulation with the the k-8 districts in all subject areas the challenge with math is that you

088know every student in other subject areas every student comes into taking ninth grade English every student comes into the high school taking world history as a freshman you can come into math and be taking one of five different courses by five different content areas for math so I could be miss speaking but I know it's at least I believe it's at least four i but i think it might even be five or six so when you're coming from four different districts into ninth grade where you may be in for one of four to five different levels of math and when I say levels I mean courses I don't mean CPA or honors I mean math courses be it geometry algebra 1 algebra 2 precalculus there it makes it much more difficult to make sure that

089all the students are coming into ninth grade with the foundation that they need for those classes so that's why math and and that is something that I found in talking to my regional counterparts all Regional High even non regional high school districts have difficulty with that transition from eights and I've grade 4 math but specifically regional and I schools have that challenge so that is one of the reasons that that's our main area focus because that is where we struggle the most with that transition and it's my recollection that one of the things that led us there was looking at the at the state scores each year and not not performing where we thought we should be performing with that level of math on those state tests that was a very helpful indicator a piece

090of data so the personnel committee met on February 25th we received an update on the status update on the search for a Director of Special Services we the the the interview committee has completed its round of interviews I believe interviewing for candidates and they're confident that they will have a candidate for board approval in April we also we re reviewing our policy on our youth possession and/or distribution of substances we had talked about this at our last and we were incorporating some language due to recent regulation changes having to do with employee because employee consent to medical examination but under discussion was whether we should incorporate a last chance agreement and so we reviewed the policy to look to adding that and decided that we were we should have counsel advice on that so we

091referred that to counsel and the suggestion can I say that came back that we not include a last chance agreement in the policy that we could offer a last chance agreement if we ever felt it was appropriate so we're going to be reviewing that policy and that will be on our April April first first reading will be in April and then secondly and then what do you want to ask a question just a point of clarification what is last chance mean what is it what is it that you're referring to it it means not had an employee who was either actually tested positive under the influence while at work or supervising a co-curricular after-school activity or refused to be tested and then it's treated as a positive result so there's an optional paragraph in the

092policy of the board offering a last chance agreement as opposed to heading towards tenure charges for that employee it's optional language not including that language doesn't preclude the board if they felt the circumstances were appropriate to go ahead and offer that last chance agreement but with absent of having that optional language there's not a an expectation that every employee who was out of that circumstance would be offered a last chance agreement thank you and then finally we reviewed the action and preview items on tonight's agenda one of the preview items is a revision of to job descriptions for to supervisor jobs it's to align our job descriptions with what the actual supervisors supervise a year ago we made a change and removed from it used to be the supervisor of arts arts health and phys

093ed and co-curricular and we had moved to the health and phys-ed excuse me a year ago we had a supervisor of arts co-curricular health and phys ed and we had a supervisor of world languages a year ago we took the health and phys ed piece and moved it to the supervisor of world languages and so we have revised the job descriptions for those two supervisory positions those that's a preview of item tonight one thing primarily Tim advised this at the last meeting that we've been we're getting back a credit of approximately 61 thousand dollars from our custodial service that is a result of Chris Chris Beck and his staff keeping close tabs on the people who actually check in and check out from the custodial service to do the work and then and they went

094back and sat down with the Kody custodial services and pointed out where they didn't meet meet the requirements of the contract that they had signed and that's what's resulting in a 61 thousand dollar credit which is approximately the cost of one month of service under a custodial contract there was a discussion that if we held them to the exact letter of the contract that figure might go up a little higher but that also would probably involve us having to engage in legal action to try and get them to a higher therefore the committee felt that that settling for for that number was the the best way to go with thanks to both Chris Beck and his staff and to Tim and his staff for you know watch watching the pennies and watching what should have

095been done and taking action other than that there was a brief discussion concerning the budget and the possibility of a way for people not to have to get up to let people come in the board office doors which Chris Beck offered an alternative that may have to be discussed that was unanimously approved by the operations years ago there had been an issue regarding board board members who like to come and swoop into the building and and confront teachers administrators and other people and and that's one of the reasons we're all asked to come in and report to the superintendent of the boy or the board office we'll come to the building it's for security purposes all right so we have our first opportunity for public comment comment period will be limited to agenda item the

096second public comment period will be open to any topic all comments are limited to five minutes okay seeing none I'll close the first opportunity for public comment and we have our discussion on first the agenda items so does anybody have any questions I won't have any discussions about the agenda items for tonight for the future action I don't actually ask a clarifying question about what we have under board discussion because when we say future discussion items I don't know if we and I just don't remember the intent when we change it to this did we mean if anyone had any items for future board discussion though that would be new new stuff at the end I think that's what we originally that was our first for the last two years we vice president I had

097no idea what these reasons so I think it's really you know it really is our future agenda items and that our action on our agenda items is really how that's how I'm interpreting it so maybe I have future so so we change that on your success because usually I think we put a few discussion items on there it just doesn't opportunity you you still an item they wanted on for future discussion tonight it's the board retreat or this should something like that what he will do that anyway so I don't know that we need that on here okay I always thought that came under other business which it's fine I just I'll change it to make it a little less confusing so that an attraction of you ordered into discussion items and then like you

098know future agenda items and agenda item something like that it yes questions again just a point of clarification so the the calendar is up for the super night but just for to know it's a preview item this evening okay so um and you have a copy a paper copy in your folder please I ask that you don't take this with you I'm so protective of copies of these calendars just because don't like them being out anywhere said it outright until it's approved but I did share it with the Association and reviewed it with them it mimics our calendar for next year but we have the staff coming in those first two days that week prior to Labor Day the holidays fall a little bit differently next year so you can see that the students are

099in for three days then we have Labor Day Off and then the following day is Rosh Hashanah so those first two weeks of school are abbreviated the one thing that may come up in the next month or so on this calendar and on the 2021 calendar in the contract it indicates that the first day of school is a half-day and what we have done the past couple of years we've done a sidebar where we swap that day with the day before the pilot the winter holiday break some of my first day of school is a full day and then December 23rd is a half day however because I'm following the contract with this I every year when I click the calendar initially forward I put the first day of school as a half day and

100answer the Association if they want to to approve the same sidebar so I do believe that they were going so I may be asking you I may that may be one adjustment I make on this and I may also be asking you to make an adjustment on the coming years calendar just to make that first day of school full day but that's why I'm here it says it says half day even though we've adjusted that every year but this calendar looks exactly the same as the B 2021 calendar in terms of the movies it's more it's so what I try to do each year with spring break is overlap the the week that we give off thats related to Easter with the week we give off related to paso fit so that it overlaps our

101Passover so generally it's the the past couple of years Passover has falled fall in the week before Easter during this year happens to fall the week after so it's Good Friday and the following week that's how that falls but we try to coordinate them so that they overlap but our winter break is a little short [Music] any other questions on agenda or future discussion Madam President I do one thing that I do want to touch base on sure it's under the future agenda items number 19 it's some technology item 19 yeah D 19 but the future yeah yeah so one of the things that I've tasked for Anthony here with you may have heard some stories you heard certainly heard Livingston but I think there's other areas that have been hit with cybersecurity attacks and

102those kind of things so we're you know to that end we're trying to implement things in-house but we're also doing some things with the hardware to health one is a bid that we have today we had today that we're kind of looking at right now for Muraki network switches Mantha you gotta help me out with these things but anyway so so that that's part of that so I think this is part of their this is kind of redundancy but maybe you can explain that to them just so they understand that because it's a lot for me to do thanks Mike I'll do my best technical so our infrastructure servers are virtualized and they live in a cluster of three servers or three nodes right now we have no failover capability they're fine they are backed

103up but if one server should have a hardware issue it won't be able to failover to another node so we're requesting hopefully with your support a purchase of a fourth node that will help us stay up and running in case we experience a hardware failure in that area it's also good for security purposes that it allows us to do some things later on that I plan to implement here that may involve some cloud backup and on replication between multiple servers so if something should happen to one machine we have another machine that will run at the same time so redundancy is the goal here so for example if one server was your email server and the email server went down it would it wouldn't go down could go over to something else everything but yes

104I'll give you a file server let's go with a file server right now our whatever our file servers go down staff would not have access to their files with this redundancy gives us more room in space to bring up another server which will replicate with each other so if one server needs to go down for maintenance or there's a hardware issue on that node because it's virtualized it's kind of hard to explain this but there's a hardware issue there it allows the second server to keep running its distributed file systems essentially that's what it does credit card companies work this way you know when you're in Chicago you ring your credit card but the databases in New York how does it know your bank account in Chicago it kind of replicates around the country it's

105kind of how it works yeah this is a local vendor I think they're in Somerset yeah here there we've been dealing with them they have coop agreements and their preferred Lenovo vendor we've used them before to buy that infrastructure piece we also use them for our laptops or some other equipment that we've had here and that and the supplier then the vendor that that communicates with Lenovo for pricing and then provides us a price Lenovo yes a little hardware oh yeah it's using the tonics which is the management piece that's part of them manages that cluster of servers yeah okay yeah a lot of the specialist cloud backups since you're using VMware they allow you to spin up a VMware server within 30 seconds yes so you say ok this nose-down move next one launches

106and you're back on the line before no it's down so that's yeah the note onyx piece there he manages to three hopefully for if something should happen to one of the nodes it automatically moves it over to the fourth node you don't even notice anything it just does it automatically [Music] [Applause] [Music] Madam President I'd like to move items a1 through a4 second any questions or comments on a1 through a4 hearing none dr. Chan yes mr. Fallon yes Jack yes mr. Hunsinger yes tomorrow sand yes mrs. / yes solder yes like to she will ski yes Mr Bond yes miss I'm gonna stain for me one day - yes day three and a four day Russians care Madam President can move item a five second any questions or comments dr. chan yes Fallon yes Hey

107yes good singer yes Morrison yes it's over yes back to Chappelle's key yes Mr Bond yes and yes carries Madam President I'd like to move item c1 to c4 second any questions or comments sharing then dr. Kane yes family yes yes yes yes it's Dover yes Carter yes thank you she'll ski yes Mr Bond yes yes [Music] is it the Minitab I think it's the preview item that's future action that's a policy issue dr. Chynn yes mr. Palin yes yes yes Morrison yes yes yes dr. Chappell ski yeah okay seeing none other business and just a point of clarification could you repeat what your comment was regarding the Regent regionalization discussion is continually we're continuing to communicate with the case of eights to see if they were willing to go with it go with us

108into the grant in the meantime we're gonna get do a information pertaining to the tax impact like preliminary information that vewy can actually kind of give us those numbers but after the whole study just on the tax impact just to get that information so that we can continue to have the conversation obviously the conversation is just not tax impact it's about articulation about all these other things but we're just the communication is ongoing there hasn't been a decision where all the k2 rates have said yes no yes I'm just intrigued on how they do a tax impact evaluation if you don't know what the they what what a configuration is ultimately they'll sit and they the states very clear because so and we actually need that information in order to apply for the grant Mike

109what are their frustrations with the grant is in order to apply for it it seems from what I've read a lot of the application requires us to start the feasibility study to get some of the information that they're asking for because they actually asked in the grant application for how what cost savings do you see well that's going to do the feasibility but they do ask for some of his data and so Roger Jenks the county suit yeah when he knew that we were looking at the grant had mentioned to me that he can go ahead and notify the state that we're looking for that information now what they do though in that calculation is they just assume that the tax levy will be all of the tax levies combined and then what they do

110is they similar to how Tim was presenting how they figure out the formula based on the enrollment and the valuation of the homes they'll use that to then figure out what the tax allocation will be for each of the portal oh okay I got it got it got it are they including greenbrook in that yes yes they so they're coming up with a new contract and I well and actually what I did ask them if they can do as well because this has come up before and Bruce had brought this up is if greenberg were to become a constituent district rather than a son receive I also asked them if they can calculate what how that would affect the tax allocation that one is a little trickier to do because they can't dreamer pays us

111tuition pays for their entrance rotation so Tim and I I Tim looked at my email before I send it to Rogers she sends it to the state to make sure I had all that in there because we said look this is just a matter of adding up the tax levies and dividing it you know they we have to account for that tuition and how that would factor into our tax levy so but I did we did send all I sent that to Roger who was sending that to the state and they were in the midst of their budget craziness so they said it would take a little time but I do believe that's information we need to apply for the grant anyway so they're starting to work on it so that will be really good

112initial information to get her discussion I also did reach out to the South hundred in the former south uttered a superintendent who was there when they went through the regionalization and and they shared with us their feasibility study and some other documents that I've been accumulating and we can actually I can put those in the board folder for anyone who's interested at the same time they're reading you know what Tim referred you to on the state was the the fund balance and information you know if you really are having trouble falling asleep you can do the feasibility studies but I had a great conversation with that superintendent and you know the one thing the one comment that she did make is if in that region there they had their elementary districts were so so small

113that it was very very financially hard for them to to maintain those districts because they just couldn't afford to have the personnel that they needed to to oversee different things so they had really been looking at it for a number of years I think they might have even had one of the towns that didn't have an operating School District so she said that you know the big enticement there was that nobody was going to be a loser in terms of the tax allocation from the new district and she said if that had been the case conversation would have been very different but because they essentially were all winners from the formation of that district it made it a very different conversation but she did share that information with us so we're starting to collect all

114of that and if the I can compile that into a folder in the board folder just for any board members who want to take a look at that report was and and and just to clarify when is the state doing of an analysis based on the three and then another analysis based on the four are they displaying they're doing a k-12 as of right now they're doing it as if we were a k-12 for all five districts out of there and then if we stayed it with the same 912 regional high school structure but greenbrook were to become a constituent district rather than a having some receive relationship meaning that they're you know like they're like right so yes there regionalized but they're not we're not part of one exactly got it but just so

115everybody's clear that all of this takes a lot of political will so don't get this moving we're all gonna kind of have to like talk to our constituent districts after we get that information to see if we can all even get together to do this grant because people help might change ready and one of the things that I think is interesting about the South hundred and regionalization I mean there they were were the last districts that went through a regionalization process which was now but six or seven years ago there was and before that it was another 15 20 years before there was you know and another regionalization but one of the things that they talked about is oftentimes a lot of people focus on what's the tax implication what's the tax implication who's gonna

116benefit you know who are the winners and losers but and I don't know if she shared this with you but one of the things that came out from their work was their their tax benefit savings might have been marginal but their education impact was significant and just the improvement to the overall educational environment for the students made you know that's why you do it I mean if it's great if there's a tax benefit and we certainly would want to have the due diligence but the other the bigger piece of this is how do we provide an even better educational environment for our students and that that's the reason you look to regionalize because any cost savings are not going to occur till years down the road when rain when you know and inr mark a

117districts have already done a nice job of sharing services with special education programs where rather than all four of them trying to all have every program they each have you know specialize so that they can send students to each other and and so those are the types of savings that you see years down the road but anyone who's expecting immediate savings to come from regionalization it's not going to happen but the educational benefits you know we're certainly there with articulation and and that being said are the boards of the Cates and the administrators and and us I think have made tremendous strides and really are very committed to acting as much like a unified district as we can given the current structure so we've made tremendous strides with that but you know obviously when you

118have five different districts there are certain limits thank you I suppose like you mentioned the problem of traditional mathematics right from middle school to high school [Music] my question for you as a new actor you mentioned last time in operation committee that that you were planning to buy a tool or get a tool for to do the number etc you know for the project is the program the program our program you know you were talking about you know what are you doing in the state budget program being the least probably interrupts probably the state budgets off for that event each year each year the state gives us different budget software and can't fully put together everything until he gets that from the station bondo I said something that they do it's what I was actually

119what I wait for it it's kind of like an edit check so when you're putting in information in their software it calls out any problems or mistakes that they're looking for I see so when they review so if you do run all your edit checks in you're okay then you I feel more confident that the numbers are good because I'm complying with what they want that's marinating in my head these past few weeks and I feel compelled to share them with you guys it's a passion area of mining inspired me last time with your passion of policing so hopefully it's not gonna be too stream-of-consciousness but is you guys aware were in an election year and that's quite a historic time period why we got a bunch of billionaires running we've got a socialist or

120socialist Democrat running and so you know I tried to summon my my sophomore to come to sit with me watch some of the debates and the response I got from him is and slammed with homework I can't you guys you have US history don't you guys discuss that in class and he's like no you don't talk about her innovate so I thought well that just can't be maybe it's my robotics guy or unless it has a driveshaft or something like that maybe he's just not into it so I started just talking to his friends doing my little focus groups I know the marketers I just do these groups all the time I learned that that is indeed the case that we don't require students to watch the news and you know again from my little

121focus groups discuss current advance in the classroom environment and I feel like you know as I think as I marinate with strategic plan being top of mine and I feel like hey we want our students to be global citizens well how can you be a global citizen if you don't know what's happening in your own backyard and you can't debate and discuss it how do we want to do critical thinkers right something that's very important for us as well and as I do my little focus groups and talk to students the other thing that I learned is that in history classes students are given a list of sources that are reputable sources that they could go into or you know should turn to for for their work and the students themselves point out that those

122sources are very kind of one-sided and they see it and so as I think about us wanting to raise critical thinkers I'm thinking well should we be handing them a list of sources or should we be teaching them on how to critically think and choose and analyze why is one source better than it the other should we be giving them two sources that are from opposite ends of the argument and asking them or requiring them to listen to both sides of the story and critically compare so I just feel like you know I mean we've got this amazing movement by the youth happening right now you know the greatest democracy of all is has the movement towards socialism social democracy whatever you call it I just feel like you know we are we preparing our

123students to critically assess the implications and understand the implications of what's going on and where a nation is moving and I don't know what percent of our senior turning 18 this year they may be voting holy-moly are we preparing them to make informed decisions and I just worry that the answer is not to many of these things and I would just like to challenge our curriculum and challenge our approach especially as we happy in our current strategic plan and I hope be raising global citizens and critical thinkers does not go away because to me that's the foundation of education and it's one thing that needs to be in well I'll be weird we have what two years let's find out because I know they do a lot of work around the election and they have

124a mock election and so I will follow up just to see if that's an accurate portrayal of what or if that's just a certain students who happen to be in a particular track that have that experience so that that's the first piece of this and again that might be a particular teacher that approaches is that approaches it that way because one of the things you know one of our goals is we need to teach them to be critical consumers of information so so I searched and I remember like you know look at these sites or write this we want to make a lot of pressure but at this point in high school let them go and tell me why is it fresh slate they might take to take CNN and a fox news for try

125now I'll listen to the same story of both of them and talk to me what have you heard how do you assess writing I feel to me I feel like that should be part of our curriculum and have what we are requiring of any level of any kid because all of them are going to be boarders I don't care what track yeah oh I think it's a worthwhile discussion to explore happy more mainship all students for Justin I'm not anyone's interests are providing more examples where you're talking about we had college or Leonard lands comfort talent for students it's about collection we analyze different sources we had those fruitful discussions with different hours are very very vocal and have a debate with other students you know we have the JSA in the mock trial where

126the students are actually researching so I person obsessive politics and I follow so if it's about the issues I make sure that all of you to have that experience in it that it's not dependent especially I'm not talking about you guys Jordanna one thing about what's in the curriculum and we as a local school board have have local control over that but my 19th year now on school boards I've been through the State Department of Education when it back when it was the core curriculum standards when it was the thing before that and in 19 years there's only been more things that have got into the curriculum and I've yet to see anything ever come out of the curriculum yeah okay so that's something we also have to be conscious during my interview with Judy

127I forget things that question if she that she asked me but it's something like do you feel like we're preparing our students for the future kind of thing and my answer was like me from up from a knowledge perspective Davis sure we were cramming lots of facts into their heads but you guys know what happens five minutes after the test is over come on wait versus teaching them how to think right that is gonna last forever and I just feel like and and it's not this school I mean I get it it's our educational system so but you know what we wearing power to control what we can control over the year so I have a lot of passion for I know we've got the standards no this is complicated but teach them how to

128never forget okay the rain is still on sorry anything else should I have a motion to adjourn say hello thank you